Big Ten Football: Embarrassing Losses Bury the Conference Again This Year

Let’s be honest. The Big Ten as a football conference did not die last Saturday. It was already dead, 10 years and counting.

From 2004-2013, the Big Ten won zero national championships, went 29-47 in bowl games, finished 7-11 in BCS bowls games and had a 69-70 nonconference record against BCS opponents. Try as we may to defend the conference, the performances on the field were mostly dreadful.

Only using results since 2004 is definitely arbitrary, but the sample data seems sizable enough to judge how the Big Ten has performed lately. Regardless, the strength of the conference 30 or 40 years ago is hardly relevant today.

Besides Michigan State’s Rose Bowl win over Stanford last January, I struggled to think of the last time a Big Ten team won a significant game. Michigan’s 23-20 win over Virginia Tech in the 2012 Sugar Bowl came to mind. Two noteworthy wins in three seasons is dismal.  

The lack of key nonconference wins is exactly why there was little respect for Urban Meyer’s 24-0 start at Ohio State. The teams the Buckeyes were beating were also getting trounced by Notre Dame, Arizona State, Washington, UCLA, Virginia, UCF, Alabama, Missouri, Navy, Oregon State, Northern Illinois, Iowa State and Cincinnati. The streak was nice, but there are probably six other teams that could have done it too.

Tragically, the Big Ten has become Charlie Brown and the rest of college football is Lucy. Every year begins with renewed optimism that quickly evaporates with a barrage of embarrassing nonconference losses and ends with another dismal bowl season. The conference slogan should be changed to “Aaugh!”

The Big Ten is a proud conference loaded with tradition, but it is in the cellar competitively right now. The SEC, Pac-12 and ACC are all significantly better from top to bottom and the Big 12 is about the same.

The steady climb out of the abyss was supposed to begin last weekend, but Notre Dame, Virginia Tech and Oregon killed any chance at a resurrection this year.

Little can be done to repair the Big Ten’s image this season. A perfect bowl record might help, but the chances of that are dire. Rebuilding the perception is going to take substantially longer than expected.

On the surface, it appears that the Big Ten is following the right path to becoming a premier conference again. The coaches are paid well, the facilities are plush and considerable money is being spent on recruiting. All three areas appear to be on par with the rest of the conferences. So why has the downfall lasted this long?

Like it or not, the problems are still rooted in brand promotion and talent. The SEC redefined the college football landscape over the last 20 years by pushing conference superiority. The SEC ensures that the whole is stronger than any one team. Administrators, coaches, players and fans all preach the same message. Every game is difficult, every week is a grind and the SEC prepares players for the NFL.  

This powerful message is appealing to elite high school players and translates into the conference routinely having several schools with top-10 recruiting classes every year.

The Pac-12 and Big 12 both attract high-quality offensive players in the talent-rich areas of Texas and California. Their message is "play in our conference if you want to score points," and the results reflect that it is working.

By comparison, the Big Ten’s image is stale and its teams are at a clear disadvantage right now because many of the best high school athletes live in areas outside of the Midwest and Northeast.

The conference changed geography a bit during expansion, but attracting more of the elite players will require the creation of a football brand that resonates nationally. The coaches also need to develop innovative strategies to pull more players from areas outside of their base recruiting territories. Until this happens, the Big Ten will remain the fifth-best FBS conference.

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When the Big Ten realigned the divisions to accommodate Maryland and Rutgers, there was a sense that it imagined the East Division could become the equivalent of the SEC West within two years. This may seem laughable, but Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan State have the coaches, revenue, tradition and alumni footprint to be dominant. Maryland and Rutgers can be consistently good, and Indiana can pop in and out occasionally.

In the West Division, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany should do everything possible to avoid the division becoming an annual contest between Wisconsin and Nebraska. This might be tough, but he needs to hold Northwestern, Illinois, Minnesota, Purdue and Iowa accountable for staying competitive. Being good one year out of five is not acceptable. He can’t force these schools to use the $31 million they receive in revenue sharing on football, but he should strongly encourage it.

The Big Ten is in a long slump, but comebacks are the spice of sports. The conference has to move on from last weekend, but the humiliation and disappointment should be the fuel that ignites the desire to get the Big Ten back on top where it belongs.