Every single year, there is always a debate about which conference is the top one in college football. You have your SEC homers chanting S-E-C from the top of their lungs, as well as the Big Ten fans who say that the last two national champions have come from their conference.
Call me biased, but I believe the Big 12 is the best conference in all of college football. Sure, it doesn’t have as many National Championships as the Big Ten or the SEC does, or it may not get as many teams into the College Football Playoff, but it is still the best football conference in my eyes.
Before you call me crazy (which is not the worst thing I’ve been called over the years), hear me out. As great as the Big Ten and SEC are when it comes to national championships, take a look at the rest of the conference.
My original plan was to include the Big Ten and SEC in a single article, but I decided to turn this into a series, focusing on each major conference. Today, I take a look at the Big Ten, which has seen a lot of changes over the last 15 years.
The last two national champions have emerged from the Big Ten, with Michigan and Ohio State. As great as that is, what about the rest of the schools? Not counting Nebraska (which was a Big 12/Big Eight school at the time), there hasn’t been a Big Ten school other than Ohio State or Michigan that has won a national championship in the last 38 years.
Adding USC and Nebraska has helped the national title total, but neither one of those schools was in the Big Ten when they won those championships. While the Big Ten now has 18 teams, they are still facing a bit of a problem.
They are extremely top-heavy. Michigan and Ohio State have done the heavy lifting over the last 30 years, and that still remains true at this very moment. Now, Oregon, Penn State, and USC are all considered blue bloods of the sport, but two of those three are going into year two in the conference, and USC hasn’t been the same since Pete Carroll left over 15 years ago.
Purdue, Maryland, Northwestern, Rutgers, Minnesota, Illinois, UCLA, Michigan State, Nebraska, what have these programs done lately? I just named half the conference right there. And if you want to bring up Iowa, that is a program which has greatly benefitted from soft schedules due to piss poor schedules prior to expansion.
Before the divisions were eliminated, the Big Ten East won 11 consecutive championships over the West. Why? Because the divisions were incredibly unbalanced.
The East Division had Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State, which meant the three blueblood programs were all in the same division. It didn’t matter who came out of the Big Ten West because they never stood a chance, and if you could avoid playing all three of those blueblood teams, your chances of getting to the title game improved drastically.
Overall, I believe the Big Ten has improved with the new schools it has brought in. The money is good, but again, half of the conference is dead weight.
Once USC, UCLA, and Nebraska can get back to being respectable, I can buy into the conference more. However, until then, this conference remains extremely top-heavy.
