Big Ten Lives Up to Expectations in Bowl Games With A 1-5 Record So Far

1-5, with one game to go. One chance left to raise the conference's winning percentage to a mighty .285. And that chance rests on the less-than-broad shoulders of the Ohio State Buckeyes. Expecting the Buckeyes to show up in a big nonconference game is like expecting a bridge made out of meringue to hold up underneath a couple SUVs. It's just not something a sensible person would ever do.

It's not like anybody expected more of the Big Ten in this year's bowl games. Most folk expected the conference would be lucky to win one game and not only were they right, they were right about which game that would be. Iowa's 31-10 slashing of South Carolina is about the only thing the conference can be proud of.

Yes, Penn State had a good second half against USC. Wahoo! They almost came back against college football's laziest elite program! There's something to hang your hat on. Look at the rest of the games, if you dare. You can be a little proud of Northwestern for giving Missouri more fight than anyone expected, but there's a big fat load of Florida State 42, Wisconsin 13 festering out back, waiting for you. Crimony.

So here it comes, Ohio State versus Texas, the last hope for the Big Ten to make a statement in the bowl season, or at least to make a statement other than "Everybody else is pretty much right about us." Sure, Jim Tressel has a national title. He won it largely with John Cooper's players. Yes, he's beaten Texas before. In Austin, no less. That was three seasons ago. That was also OSU's last big out-of-conference win, unless somehow you were impressed by last season's victory over Washington or this year's valiant stand against, um, Troy.

Even an obnoxious Big Ten homer like me can't ignore the results on the field. The conference is down, maybe way down. A lot of it is the expected outcome of a steady diet of pastry on the nonconference schedule. Some of it is dated reliance on power football coupled with complete ignorance of how difficult it is to compete at an elite level if you can't throw the ball well. It's even harder when you don't face passing teams all season. Your defense never learns how to stop the pass. But what chance do you have if high school coaches in your prime recruiting areas are too bwauk-bwauk to throw the ball in the first place? Just pump up your linemen to 35 PSI and let the short running back get lost among them! Whoops, the other team just scored again on a six-play, 74-yard drive that took less than three minutes. Now we're down by three touchdowns. Time to get in there and run down the clock!

The Big Ten's problems in football are deep-seated and they aren't just the result of conservative head coaches or cold weather. It's a systemic problem. Football just doesn't matter enough, not on the eleven campuses and not in the states surrounding them (Ohio and Pennsylvania excepted, of course). This is how it's going to stay until more people in the Midwest realize that the child is father to the man, and recruits almost always wind up being what they were in high school, just a little more so. Midwestern high school football needs more 300-yard passers and 120-yard receivers. It needs fewer 200-yard running backs and a lot fewer 325-pound linemen. That's the way out of the Big Ten's mess. The league needs more recruits who don't have to learn a new game when they get to college.