The Big Ten Conference Gets No Respect

So, when did the Big Ten become the Rodney Dangerfield of the NCAA?  We get no respect from any quarters these days.

Come on, the Big Ten is the heartland, the moral center of this vast country—the hog butcher for the world—populated with endless cornfields and yellow school buses.  We are Hoosiers and Hawkeyes and Boilermakers!

Okay, so we went 1-6 during the 2008 football Bowl Season finale.  Those mighty Iowa Hawkeyes, the best football team in the Big Ten, managed a win over Steve Spurrier’s South Carolina Gamecocks!  But everybody else fell a little short.

Now, we get absolutely no respect from the NCAA Selection Team—giving us seven entries into the Big Dance, with Michigan State seeded No. 2 in the Midwest.  Illinois and Purdue were awarded No. 5 seeds, Ohio State was granted a No. 8 seed, Michigan and Minnesota received No. 10 seeds, and Wisconsin eked out a No. 12 seed.

Where is the respect here?  This is a true left-handed invitation, with one hand extended in greeting while the other one shoves you out the door!

What is worse, the committee gave the Big East three—count them, three—No. 1 seeds!  Who is kidding whom here?

The Big East

Louisville is the No. 1 seed!  During the season, the Cardinals lost to lowly regarded Minnesota, seeded No. 10, and were torn apart by Notre Dame—a team that got no dancing shoes!  They also lost to Western Kentucky, rated a No. 12 seed by the committee.  One and done at best for Louisville!

Similarly, UConn follows suit with another solitary win, taken out by the fierce aspirations and the brilliant footwork of Brigham Young...just as Marquette falls to Missouri.  Oh, the Big East will be whirling in indignation at this point.

Tennessee will see fit to end Pittsburgh’s misery in their second game, while West Virginia fades fast in round one to the Flyers from Dayton!  Woo-Hoo!

Gone as well in the second round are Villanova at the hands of UCLA and royally pooped Syracuse to the mighty Temple Owls.

The party’s over...it’s time to call it a day...

The Big Ten

The Big Ten, however, is going to outstrip its lowly seeding!  Hot, hot Ohio State will fight its way into the Sweet 16, where they will go down in defeat, while Wisconsin claws their way into the Elite Eight—finally falling to an ACC team—Duke!

Minnesota will lose early to Texas, but Illinois will win their opener, falling in the second round to Gonzaga.

Michigan joins Ohio State in the Sweet 16 where they will be defeated by Temple.  Michigan State will finally up-end Purdue in the Final Four, making it to the Last Dance, where the Spartans will lose out to sweet-footed North Carolina.

Should these extremely sound but gutsy predictions come to pass, it would mean that Big Ten teams will almost triple the number of wins by the Big East—who must go down as the most overrated conference in the nation!

Of course, Bob Knight does not agree.

“There are a lot of times when I thought the Big Ten deserved six, seven, eight teams, but this certainly isn’t one of them," he said.  "As I have watched Big Ten Basketball this year, I don’t think they are anywhere close to the Big East or the Atlantic Coast Conference...”

Does anyone taste sour grapes?

Even confessing my slight Big Ten bias, you have to admit that the Big East is highly overrated by the NCAA Selection Committee.  Given that, how are you going to fill in your brackets to reflect the true measure of the teams in the field of 64?

We bring our loyalties and our prejudices to the selection process.  We see what we wish to see and focus our dreams on the ultimate victory—assuming we got a chance to dance in the first place.

The Big Dance, March Madness, the Big Ten, the Big East—it all boils down to fast-paced furious action with survival as the prize.  We get to watch it all unfold in unending, tantalizing, frenzied live moments.

It is the high point of college athletics and the best gauge of a true champion in the NCAA.  As fans, we look forward to it every year.  We scream and yell and pace in front of our big-screen televisions, collapsing in joy or pain depending on the outcome.

Maybe football should figure out a way to do the same thing because there is money to be made here and there are fans to please.

Even those of us secluded in the upper Midwest as part of the passé Big Ten need hope!

[Thanks to Bill Simonson of mlive.com who inspired my Big East/Big Ten predictions in a great piece he wrote called Big Ten will outshine Big East in NCAA tournament.

[For those few who may disagree with my predictions, you can let me know by commenting below—just no name calling, please!]