The Big Ten strikes back: Parity in an age of dominance
The Big Ten, at its root, is imagery. It is the conference of crisp fall mornings, of Maize, of Scarlet, of Whiteouts and now of Big Red. However, it’s a conference that’s getting an image makeover. The parity’s still there, but on a different level, and new traditions are rising to the fore. The conference still carries the weight of its history, but it’s starting to make some new moves as well.
The conference’s crown jewels, Ohio State and Michigan, fought for years in what amounted to single combat for supremacy. There was talk, once upon a time, of naming the Big Ten’s divisions after legendary coaches Woody Hayes and Bo Shembechler. Parity in the Big Ten used to mean that U of M and OSU were relatively evenly matched (recall the 2006 season when No. 1 OSU narrowly beat No. 2 Michigan for the right to get kicked in the teeth by Urban Meyer’s Florida in the BCS Championship Game).
There’s still parity, but it means something completely different these days. Michigan is bouncing back after a few bad years under Rich Rodriguez but isn’t all the way there yet despite its No. 11 ranking. Meanwhile, perennial powerhouse Ohio State has flopped following the scandal-plagued departures of coach Jim Tressel and quarterback Terrelle Pryor.
If there’s any team that stands out at the moment, it’s Wisconsin, as powerful conference newcomer Nebraska recently played Alderaan to the Badgers’ Death Star. Nebraska, Illinois and Michigan State are also ranked, though, and the latter two are undefeated. There’s plenty of power and parity present, but it’s not all in the typical environs of Columbus and Ann Arbor.
The Wisconsin Football Machine, Michigan’s spread offense, the Penn State crowd, all deserve (and often get) the David Foster Wallace on Roger Federer treatment of sports as a religious experience. This is, probably, a good thing, but it’s far too easy to wax poetic about the magic of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry. Better that we sportswriters have the opportunity to think about the implications of, say, a Michigan State-Nebraska matchup than get caught up in the dominance of one truly great team.
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That said, there is a compelling argument that the conference should be an SEC-like meat grinder where any team that somehow survives undefeated is likely to destroy any opposition another conference can produce. This would require a high competition level, much like the one expected this season, in order to properly season a would-be championship contender. A poorly implemented version of this model last season saw Wisconsin lose to Little Sister of the Poor Texas Christian University in the Rose Bowl and Ohio State play to a close (and, later, vacated) win over Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl.
The alternative, a conference with only one or two teams with the potential for greatness, could limit the adversity a team faces. In 2006, Ohio State’s national championship, one could argue, was the Michigan game. Under the lights, in a game that carried all of the hype of a BCS matchup, OSU triumphed over its hated rival in dramatic fashion. Playing any other team would have represented something of a letdown.
Letdowns have become the norm rather than the exception for the Big Ten. For a conference whose storied history is trumpeted at nearly every conceivable situation in which it might be relevant, it has not really been relevant in the BCS Championship picture for some time. Cynical Big Ten fans are used to seeing the conference embarrassed by SEC teams, beaten down by Big 12 teams, and run out of town by members of the erstwhile Pac-10. These facts speak to a larger truth.
The Big Ten (or, as its logo and its number of teams would suggest we call it, the “B1G”; perhaps even “The Notorious B1G” would be apropos given its relatively weak record in bowl games) trades in the quintessentially American idea that our athletes should not be flashy, should not have the Hollywood swagger of USC or the arrogance of Alabama. Everything from the conference’s Legends and Leaders division names to its endless commercials about academic acheivement and legends of the past trades in the idea that our athletes should be incredibly successful yet humble and mature beyond their years. Put more plainly, its teams hail from some of the whitest states in the Union and sports fans and writers alike are quick to embrace its programs for their traditions – some of which are pretty nebulous.
The eye test would tell you that “tradition” means an effective, pro-style offense, dedicated fans who probably scored pretty well on their ACTs, and who love American beer, and consistent overrating by national pollsters. Traditions could also mean the old style of football that harkens more to its roots in Rugby than the modern game seen in the NFL, the game of the early 20th century.
However, those traditions of white, all-American, Midwestern men beating the snot out of other white Midwestern men have been continued by a black man named Denard Robinson who electrifies the Maize and Blue crowd at Michigan Stadium with play that harkens back to the free-wheeling early 20th century football that “traditionally” defined and continues to define the Big Ten.
Robinson, and Wisconsin’s Russell Wilson, are the closest things the Big Ten has to untarnished stars these days. Terrelle Pryor was the prototype for both of these two, and the center of the scandal that brought down Ohio State’s venerable Jim Tressel. Wilson plays the game in a cool, collected sort of way. Each of his passes appears to be reasonably well thought out and he is perfectly adept at both rushing and handing the ball off to a running back so he can get behind the giants on the Wisconsin offensive line. Robinson’s style of play is a frenetic spread that favors quarterback draws, busted-play sprints to the wide side of the field, and ill-advised, wobbly passes maybe to a receiver.
If Wisconsin’s offense is the calm, methodical, incredibly destructive Empire, then helter-skelter Michigan, in giddy defiance of its staid tradition, is the Rebels. The repetition, the driving, inexorable repetition, of the Wisconsin attack has an air of inevitability to it; with Michigan there is the thrill of the unknown. Robinson unleashed one of his loose-spiral passes with two seconds remaining in the fourth quarter to beat Notre Dame earlier this season. The Rube Goldberg offense should not work, and yet, in Michigan’s case, it does.
Moving on to Michigan State and Illinois, the two seem perpetually destined to cause fits for a contender and perhaps cost them a slot in a BCS bowl. Historically, the two suffer from the inability to consistently produce competence at key times. Illinois lost to the Rich Rodriguez Traveling Circus 67-65 last season. Michigan State had thoroughly pantsed the same team three weeks previously. No. 5 MSU was later dominated by Iowa and eventually was beaten to death by Alabama in the Capital One Bowl.
The Big Ten is unique in its combination of proud tradition and ambiguous future. It also reacted to this year’s conference realignment mayhem in typical B1G fashion, with the safe, conservative approach of doing nothing. The conference appears content with its current twelve-team arrangement and so will seek to ride out further conference realignment on its own. Drastically changing the character of the B1G by adding, say, Notre Dame, would remove some of the exclusivity (whether or not this exclusivity is artificial is open to question) the conference covets. That exclusivity, though, pales in comparison to the lack of actual results that the conference has produced on the BCS Championship scene. Tradition can only go so far for a conference; at some point the Big Ten must begin to write more history.
A natural question thus emerges: is the current Big Ten best suited for success in the modern Division I Bowl Championship subdivision? At face value, it would seem so. There is enough competition in the conference to season teams effectively, and the conference has a BCS automatic qualification bid for its champion. Could a 13-0 Wisconsin beat an undefeated LSU, Alabama or Oklahoma? It is possible. While the Badgers are the cream of the conference this season, Nebraska and Michigan could challenge for the conference title and, potentially, the BCS Championship in some time.
Is the conference’s decision to stand pat a good idea? We shall see.
For now, it possesses two of the most compelling players in Division I. It’s got some powerful teams and plenty of parity that should lead to exciting contests. Beyond that, there’s the magic of winged helmets, buckeye stickers, Camp Randall Stadium, the Penn State Whiteout, and enough tradition capital to tide it over for now.
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