Conferencing

I stumbled upon a thoughtful article on ESPN.com this morning. The author writes about the perception of the Big Ten as an outdated conference in college football -- a conference that will never compete with the gunslinging Big 12 or speedy SEC unless it modernizes its game. This bowl season is a chance for the Big Ten to show the world it can still play football, with Penn State facing USC, Ohio State facing Texas, and even Michigan State facing Georgia. All are underdogs, but all have a realistic shot of winning.

As a long time aficionado of the Big Ten, it was a long three years living in Atlanta, where the perception was that the SEC was the only conference worth paying attention to. I often touted the Big Ten as a mass producer of linemen and linebackers for the NFL, but Ohio State's back-to-back championship game losses to SEC teams really hurt the Big Ten's reputation.

I'm willing to admit that the Big Ten and Pac-10 are not as competitive top-to-bottom as the SEC and Big 12 this year. But it's frustrating that the entire BCS system is configured to reward teams for the success of the other teams in their conference. For instance, why was USC not even considered for the national championship game? Because the Pac-10 has a reputation of being weak. Nevermind that USC voluntarily played the #5 team in the country in Ohio State, and steamrolled them like it was nobody's business. And Ohio State is a good team.

Hopefully, the Big Ten will get some big bowl wins this year and show people they can still hang with the big dogs. See, this is why I hate Ohio State: they ruin everything, including the Big Ten's reputation. Here's to the Big Ten and its physical, defensive, plodding style of play, and here's to a hopefully successful bowl season for those big, corn-fed, Midwestern teams.