Here's another:
ALL YOUR BUCKEYES ARE BELONG TO US!
Posted on 08/02/2007 12:24:56 PM PDT by GOP_Raider
Bring up the Big Ten this off-season and you’ll get two topics of discussion: the schedules and the perceived lack of speed. While it might be the granddaddy of the conferences, it has a lot to learn from the younger, hipper leagues when it comes to scheduling, and to some, fielding teams with fast players.
Schedule-wise, forgetting the mega-gap between the end of the Big Ten season and the bowls (Ohio State beat Michigan on November 18th and didn’t play Florida until January 8th), the league that can’t add up its own teams continues to have a big problem with the configuration of the slates.
Having eleven teams makes it realistically impossible to have a round-robin schedule like the Pac 10 (no way the Big Ten teams are going to give up the cash cow of a third non-conference game), and not having twelve prevents the league from splitting into two divisions and settling things with a title game. Therefore you have a situation like last year when Wisconsin and Ohio State didn’t meet, and Purdue didn’t have to play Ohio State or Michigan.
Talk about your unfair draws, Iowa, a very good team, but not an elite one, doesn’t have to play the Buckeyes or the Wolverines meaning it’ll be right in the hunt for the Big Ten title, while other teams miss some of the lightweights. That still won’t change.
(Excerpt) Read more at cfn.scout.com ...
Yes to both questions. MSU was famous in the fifties and sixties for recruiting black athletes from the south that were not recruited by the traditional southern powers. Once all universities started recruiting black players, their dominance faded. Their most recent Rose Bowl trip was 1987 or so, before new recruits were even born. Heck, it’s been 6 or 7 years since they’ve beaten Michigan at all, and maybe close to 20 since they’ve won in Ann Arbor. Someone has to be middle-of-the-pack, I guess...
But let's not forget that tOSU helped us get our first NC back in 1996 when they beat Arizona State, so it's hard to hate them too much.
I don’t care what the scheduling issues are like, the Big Ten still rules the collegiate sports world. GO MINNESOTA!!
And yeah, it IS the Big TEN, that means Penn State needs to get the hell out and join the SEC or something. They’re the eleventh member and an eastern school in a midwestern conference of ten. In a true fan’s book they don’t count.
they are totally dead on on the scheduling. The Big 10eleven has the lamest scheduling known to man. I don’t know why they don’t add a team and go to two divisions like the Big 12, or lose a team and go to a schedule like the Pac 10. Or just play 2 OOC games and have a schedule against every team.
That is freaking hysterical.....
Concur. I never figured out how one went about scheduling a conference slate with 11 teams in it.
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