Is the B1G dying as a football power?

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JPIIGopher

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It dawned on me today as I watched team after team struggle from the B1G that our conference is just a shadow of it's former self and there seems to be little hope in sight of turning things around. Just a few examples from the past couple of weeks:

Ohio St, playing another scandal ridden team dealing with suspensions, wasn't even in the same league as Miami. With 40 seconds left in the game OSU had only completed 2 forward passes! I get 3 yards and a cloud of dust but that's unfathomable!

Michigan St, a strong preseason favorite to win the Legends division, was handled easily by Notre Dame. Michigan St. managed to rush for 29 yards against the traditionally soft Irish defense.

The once mighty Penn St needed a late 4th and 1 conversion just to beat Temple? Are you kidding me!? I don't care how good Temple is, Penn St. should always be 3 tounchdowns better!

Iowa playing a terrible Pitt team at Kinnick, needed 21 4th quarter points to avoid going 1-2 after last weeks loss at Iowa St.

Nebraska, who was supposed to have the best defense coming into the B1G this year has given up 29 and 38 points to Fresno and Washington. They hardly look the part of the National Title Contender they were touted to be.

Brady Hoke would have you believe that Michigan doesn't need to rebuild, it reloads...because why? Because..."we're Michigan!" The truth is Michigan is trying to resuscitate itself from the Rich Rod debacle. Earth to Brady Hoke: Michgan has sustained incredible damage because of the previous administrations neglect of the defense, Michigan of old never gave up 513 yards on defense to Notre Dame. This is NOT the Michigan of old.

Purdue loses to Rice, Northwestern loses to Army, Minnesota loses to New Mexico St, and Indiana loses Ball St. Even our bottom feeders aren't immune from the fall.

All we are left with is an improved Illini team and God help us...a Badger team that looks the part of National Title Contender.

Is it just me or has the B1G lost it's swagger? As I watched Tennessee play Florida today, I couldn't help but notice the difference in speed and athleticism at virtually every position compared to the B1G! Why is this? Do we need to start cheating or paying our players too?!

I don't know about you but I miss the Big 10 of old. :cry:
 

For the time that I have been watching college football (I'm young so last 10 or 12 years) the Big Ten has not been that good. It's always been the SEC, PAC-10(12), Big 12, and I remember the Miami team that had Willis McGahee. Only National Champion that I remember in my lifetime from the Big Ten is Ohio State and that was one year. I would not consider the Big Ten to be in the top 3 of conferences right now.
 

The answer is yes. Welcome back to planet earth.
 

Sounds great if you ignore that, as a conference, the B1G is 17-18 in bowls against the mighty SEC in the BCS era. The lack of a truly top-flight national contender does not mean the brand of football, as a whole, is crap. Granted, I don't think it's all that deep of a league this season - but things are cyclical, and I have a feeling come bowl season the conference will have some wins against Pac-12 (who, to be honest, is not deep this year either) and against SEC teams. Step away from the ledge ... for now.
 

You mentioned only 11 of the 12 teams in the conference.

JPIIGopher said:
It dawned on me today as I watched team after team struggle from the B1G that our conference is just a shadow of it's former self and there seems to be little hope in sight of turning things around. Just a few examples from the past couple of weeks:

Ohio St, playing another scandal ridden team dealing with suspensions, wasn't even in the same league as Miami. With 40 seconds left in the game OSU had only completed 2 forward passes! I get 3 yards and a cloud of dust but that's unfathomable!

Michigan St, a strong preseason favorite to win the Legends division, was handled easily by Notre Dame. Michigan St. managed to rush for 29 yards against the traditionally soft Irish defense.

The once mighty Penn St needed a late 4th and 1 conversion just to beat Temple? Are you kidding me!? I don't care how good Temple is, Penn St. should always be 3 tounchdowns better!

Iowa playing a terrible Pitt team at Kinnick, needed 21 4th quarter points to avoid going 1-2 after last weeks loss at Iowa St.

Nebraska, who was supposed to have the best defense coming into the B1G this year has given up 29 and 38 points to Fresno and Washington. They hardly look the part of the National Title Contender they were touted to be.

Brady Hoke would have you believe that Michigan doesn't need to rebuild, it reloads...because why? Because..."we're Michigan!" The truth is Michigan is trying to resuscitate itself from the Rich Rod debacle. Earth to Brady Hoke: Michgan has sustained incredible damage because of the previous administrations neglect of the defense, Michigan of old never gave up 513 yards on defense to Notre Dame. This is NOT the Michigan of old.

Purdue loses to Rice, Northwestern loses to Army, Minnesota loses to New Mexico St, and Indiana loses Ball St. Even our bottom feeders aren't immune from the fall.

All we are left with is an improved Illini team and God help us...a Badger team that looks the part of National Title Contender.

Is it just me or has the B1G lost it's swagger? As I watched Tennessee play Florida today, I couldn't help but notice the difference in speed and athleticism at virtually every position compared to the B1G! Why is this? Do we need to start cheating or paying our players too?!

I don't know about you but I miss the Big 10 of old. :cry:
Click to expand...
 


Are Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois thriving states?

There's the long-term story. Or so I think.
 

Studwell55 said:
Are Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois thriving states?

There's the long-term story. Or so I think.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, or Tennessee are, either... You could argue Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, California (despite its HUGE budget deficit), Texas, and some other states are doing fine, but so are many states that have weak football teams.

I think the OP has some good points but is drawing from a very small sample (aka this week, last week, whatever). ESPN has not made things better for the B1G's perception by giving so much love and time to SEC teams, which gives the feeling that we truly ARE years behind with such a lack of talent/speed/whatever. We watch the bowl games every year and see the B1G doesn't stack up so bad (particularly against SEC teams, knowing that last year was a big debacle for the B1G). I would argue the PAC12 is definitely weak - the strongest team is Oregon and we watched them lose to LSU pretty handily. USC is down (barely beating US at home?), Oregon St loses to Sacramento St, Washington is STILL rebuilding, Cal is mediocre year in/year out, the Arizonas never look convincing or pull out wins in the big games, Wazzou continual bottom feeder, Stanford is still good but who knows for how long without Harbaugh and after Luck graduates, UCLA loses to Houston and Texas big, Colorado loses to Hawaii, and Utah jury still out. You could go conference by conference and make the same accusations/assumptions, even in the SEC. The SEC went 5-5 in bowls, the Big Ten and Big12 went 3-5, and Pac10 went 2-2. So if the SEC is so far beyond the B1G why doesn't the bowl record show it?

I think there some work to be done in the conference, and the expansion/BTN is helping a little with the branding and awareness. A couple bigger wins, particularly against the SEC, or a national championship game that doesn't feature and SEC team (good luck as the media will continue to take even a 1 or 2 loss team in that game over an undefeated Boise) will help even the perception. I also think mediocre to horrible coaching has left a lot of talented rosters (Michigan) without big seasons recently.
 

Yes, obviously, the B1G is done as the power conference, at least for the forseeable future. There are too many factors working against us and infavor of the SEC.

There's also no reason the conference can't remain competitive with the PAC-X and whatever other conferences remain, at least in the short term. In the long term, I definitely have some concerns.
 

Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan are the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th most populous states in America.
 



Last time I brought this up it got an intelligent "WTF". Where is the oblig. WTF?
 

Yes the B1G is dying because everyone is far to worried about tradition rather than trying to get with the times and change with the landscape.
 


dpodoll68 said:
Wrong!
Click to expand...

Is it too much to ask to play our rivals like Wisconsin, Iowa, and Michigan once a year, every year? Is it too much to enjoy the playing games against teams we've played for 50-100 years? To treat our fans to road trips that don't take 24 hours to drive to when we play at opposing stadiums? To have a group of colleges that banded together because their student bodies have similar cultures and the schools have similar academic missions?

With the current state of college football, each school in the BTN is getting $19.3M per year (through ESPN and BTN). That's for ALL sports that ESPN and BTN carry, not just football. By my estimation, the U now makes ~$16M in revenue just from TCF Bank Stadium - ticket sales, required donations, and concessions (not counting parking since that is not counted in athletic revenue), and it could well be more than I'm aware of. Add in hockey and basketball tickets/concessions, athletic sales at the U as well as licensing fees, and the uncounted parking the U gets plus any other bonuses and you get the U's total revenue of $70.3M in 2009. Our current TV cut is only 26% of our revenue, and we are middle of the pack in B1G revenue.

Now I recognize that this tv revenue has allows us to pay for and support a lot of non-revenue sports, new facilities, uniforms, weight rooms, recruiting, etc etc etc. But it's also allowed us to "afford" contract buyouts, ridiculous coach salaries, and more just to keep up in the landscape of college "simply because." We've had to bend over backwards for far too many 11 AM kickoffs in exchange for being on ESPN2 (regional) or BTN alternate (rarely in HD) for what? The U barely gets featured or discussed on BTN shows (very much still an OSU-Mich-PSU and team of the year discussion) so we're not getting much press. Same with ESPN. When was the last time they did Gameday in Minneapolis? The media continues to allow the "haves" to stay where they are (ND and Mich continue to be dicussed despite piss-poor performance over the last many years).

The only reason I see that we have to continue is to keep up with the fact that other conferences WILL grow their TV contracts and be able to pay coaches more, up the stakes on what facilities we can build and offer to students and coaches (think Tubby's desired practice facility). If we don't we let ourselves go into obscurity by not being on people's TV sets nationwide, not having the top coaching talent, and not having the draw to the student athlete other schools will. I guess I'd rather keep things the way they are because each incremental step more on the business side is a detriment to the general fan and clearly no help to the have-nots like MN.

I guess I'm just glad we don't have to shuffle around like A&M and completely lose our most historic rivalry, or be Baylor and ISU having to play in a conference thousands of miles away with no history. We're in a good position to be adding teams in to our fold...
 



Bo Darville said:
Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan are the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th most populous states in America.
Click to expand...

Not for long. The population is shifting from the rust belt to the southeast and southwest parts of the US, along with the economy.
 

Or are the mid-majors getting better?
Last week, #10 South Carolina only beat Navy by 3; Louisville beat Kentucky; Clemson beat Auburn; #14 Arkansas only beat Troy by 10. So the SEC hasn't been all that spectacular either.
 


zambam said:
Clemson is ACC, not mid-major.
Click to expand...
I know, and Louisville is Big East. Those were two separate paragraphs. The mid-majors are getting better and the SEC has not been all that spectacular.
 

Nokomis said:
I know, and Louisville is Big East. Those were two separate paragraphs. The mid-majors are getting better and the SEC has not been all that spectacular.
Click to expand...

Everyone knew Auburn would be bad, I personally don't think they'll make a bowl game and they were lucky enough to win their first two games. Alabama and LSU would really love to argue with that statement though about them not being spectacular though :p
 

If OSU and Wisconsin changed uniforms would this thread exist?
 

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