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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2008 > September > 19
Friday, September 19, 2008
blog: Big Ten football — overrated, under-powered
By Saturday, most places around here figure to have their power turned back on, but one noticeable exception will be the Big Ten.
The glow coming from the once preeminent football league is now more flickering candlelight than center-stage Klieg lights. These days the conference is overrated and under-powered.
Think not?
Then explain Ohio State, the Big Ten’s poster program, getting chewed up and spit by USC last Saturday night. Then there was Illinois, after having Missouri ring up 52 points on it, having all it can handle with Louisiana-Lafayette.
Minnesota barely escaped Northern Illinois and, as for Michigan, well, the Wolverines are but a shell of their old selves: Roughed up by Notre Dame, lose to Utah at home and have a tough time with a visiting Miami RedHawks team that’s looking real shaky itself this season.
Minnesota will counter that its 3-0, but it may play even more non- conference patsies than the Buckeyes.
Other conferences do the same, but in the Big Ten — where you have perennial stumblers like Northwestern and often, Indiana and last year 1-11 Minnesota — you can end up with nearly half a schedule full of weak sisters.
And what does that get you?
Ohio State losing its last three big games on the national stage — Florida and LSU in the past two BCS title games and USC last weekend — by a combined score of 114-41. In those three losses the Bucks gave up 1,087 yards and turned the ball over eight times.
You get USC pushing around Illinois in last year’s Rose Bowl. You get Appalachian State coming into Ann Arbor and stunning the football world.
You get the Big Ten losing more bowl games than it wins the past few years. You get OSU 0-9 against SEC teams in bowl games.
A similar point to this was made by Indianapolis columnist Bob Kravitz this week. His story drew some lively debate and then there was this comment from an e-mailer called Smitty2:
“Question — What do you get when you combine big slow white guys and the “I” formation?
“Answer — Big 10 football and Notre Dame.”
Saturday, Ohio State will try to remove itself from a week as the butt of football jokes and reposition itself for the season.
The Bucks will do so with a healthy dose of Terrelle Pryor, the stand-out freshman quarterback who handled himself pretty well last Saturday night in the Coliseum.
He may well be the answer at quarterback, but I hate to see come at the expense of St. Henry’s Todd Boeckman. There’s not a finer, more loyal player on the Bucks’ roster. There is no one I like better on the team and I’ve known him for just about a decade.
Granted whoever is at quarterback Saturday afternoon, the Bucks should be able to push aside Troy without too much of a sweat.
But in a season when you’ve already played 1-AA Youngstown State and Ohio University, what does another game like this do for you? Two in one season is plenty. Three is a joke. It’s starting to look like the Dayton Flyers non-conference basketball schedule.
Sure there are some real challenges ahead for OSU. The Bucks at Wisconsin Oct. 4 and hosting Penn State in the Horseshoe three weeks later.
And if OSU handles those challenges — which I think they will — they may even been in another post-season BCS game.
Then they better hope they avoid the SEC.
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