BCS Rankings: Is 2011 the Worst Season in Big Ten History?

The 2011 season was supposed to be a groundbreaking season for the Big Ten conference.

It marked a new era for the conference, which changed to a 12-team, two-division format over the offseason, and added the Nebraska Cornhuskers, one of the most prestigious and successful programs in college football history.

With a new, revenue-generating conference championship game and a conference television channel that was starting to gain significant ground, it looked like the Big Ten was primed for major success in 2011.

It didn’t hurt that five Big Ten teams started off the year ranked in either the AP Poll or the Coaches Poll.

It seemed like the conference was going to be able to overcome the resignation of Ohio State coach Jim Tressel in May, which was a significant blow to the Buckeyes, a team that had been the Big Ten’s flagship program for most of the last decade.

All seemed well in the first month of the season, as Wisconsin quickly got off to a hot 6-0 start and rose to No. 4 in the polls.

It looked like the Badgers were serious contenders for a National Championship berth.

But Wisconsin pulled a Wisconsin and stumbled in a tough road environment like the Badgers always do, dashing the Big Ten’s hopes of landing a team in the National Championship Game.

The sting of Wisconsin's loss certainly hurt, but the worst was still yet to come.

Last week, the horrific sexual abuse allegations and alleged cover-up that rocked Penn State quickly turned into national headline news, and it’s shaping up to be one of the worst scandals in sports history.

What's happening at Penn State is the type of tragic scandal that will take years to overcome.

This may not be the worst season in Big Ten history, because the race to Indianapolis is actually setting up to be pretty interesting, but it certainly won’t be one to remember.

Once again the Big Ten will come up short in its quest to bring home a national championship (keeping its total at a mere one during the BCS era), and the conference will now have to try to figure out how to deal with two of its marquee teams being rocked by serious scandals.

The combination of on-the-field struggles and off-the-field sorrow makes 2011 the type of season that the Big Ten will soon want to forget.