As I sat around watching football yesterday, I kept thinking to myself, “what the hell am I going to write about tomorrow?” It was a typical Week 2 where most of the teams were playing weak opponents and there were just a smattering of good games. I debated writing about the end of the Michigan-Notre Dame rivalry. It wasn’t a bad idea. Here was another great rivalry lost to the 21st Century College Football Money Grab. However, before my proverbial pen touched paper, I noticed a pattern emerging. What the hell was going on in the Big Ten? Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State all losing in the same day? Certainly this was foretold in the football bible as a sign of the apocalypse. Couple that with Wisconsin’s loss to LSU in Week 1 and it meant that the Big Ten might be finished for the year in terms of landing any team in the final four, (has anyone come up with a better name than simply stealing a coined basketball title?)
Michigan has virtually no hope of making a playoff scenario. First, no one in their right mind, including the most deluded fans in Ann Arbor will think that Michigan could run the table from this point and even if they managed to do so, a 31-0 loss will preclude them from any conversation about being in a playoff.
Ohio State’s loss to Virginia Tech is far more forgivable but again, they would have to run the tables and they would have to hope that Virginia Tech is a surprise team in the ACC. This is all possible but not probable. Even if all this happens, it’s going to be hard to forget that Ohio State lost by fourteen points and was never in the game. Not only would OSU need to run the tables but they would need to dominate from this point on and be able to make an argument that their early season loss to Virginia Tech was related to transitioning with a new quarterback.
Michigan State very likely lost to a playoff participant in Oregon but they lost by nineteen points and the team that last year boasted the best defense in college football allowed forty-six points in Week 2. The irony with Michigan State is that where the other Big Ten schools would be hoping that the teams they lost to do well, Michigan State would be hard pressed to make an argument to be in a playoff scenario that also included Oregon.
Out of the four power teams that lost, Wisconsin’s Week 1 loss gives them an easier road. Ideally, they would need to run the tables and they would also need to be the biggest LSU fans north of Baton Rouge. Not many would have problems with a rematch of LSU and Wisconsin. The game was close and it was one that many think Wisconsin simply let slip out of their hands.
Here is the problem, there doesn’t appear to be a dominant team in the Big Ten this year which means that most likely no one will run the table. At this point, the Big Ten’s greatest enemy in making the playoff will be themselves. More than likely the 2014 Big Ten champ will have two losses. We still have some “unknowns” in the Big Ten. Nebraska is undefeated but barely survived McNeese State. There is a higher probability that Pelini doesn’t finish the year versus Nebraska being a playoff participant. Penn State is also undefeated but Penn State is handcuffed to sanctions so they are out. Iowa hasn’t been at the top for quite a while. Maryland is unlikely to win it all. The long and short of it is that the Big Ten is most likely out of the playoff. The Big Ten not being in the playoffs isn’t shocking. The shocking part is that they have been virtually eliminated in Week 2.
The Week 2 massacre is another setback in a recent history of Big Ten setbacks. The conference that was once considered the premier conference in college football has been falling off the charts. The question is whether this week’s woes was simply an anomaly for a conference that is working their way back up to the top or if Week 2 represents another marker for charting the Big Ten’s low tide point. My guess is that it is a little of both. Braxton Miller getting hurt was a fluke, Michigan will get better when they finally find the right coach, Penn State will probably be back on top in a couple of years and Michigan State, despite its loss to Oregon, has greatly improved over the years. Neither will Nebraska always be a team in transition. However, any long term belief that the Big Ten will somehow dominate all other conferences would have to be tempered with the knowledge that college football has turned into a successful business venture and the Big Ten has made poor decisions over the last few years.
Conferences are essentially Fortune 500 companies with the commissioners being akin to CEOs. Where the SEC, ACC, and PAC-12 have dominated in their decisions, the Big Ten has made many questionable decisions. The Big Ten’s addition of Nebraska, Rutgers and Maryland weren’t exactly home run decisions. None look to add to the overall Big Ten product any time soon. Compare that to the SEC’s addition of Texas A&M and Missouri. A&M has been the hot team since joining the SEC and Missouri has already won the SEC East title. The Big Ten had a chance to add Missouri. It was actually Missouri’s possible defection to the Big Ten that created the domino effect of conference realignment a few years ago. The Big Ten chose Nebraska with the idea of keeping a solid product even though it meant losing a lot of potential viewers in a top television market of St. Louis. This would have made sense but for the decision to then add Maryland and Rutgers which weakened the overall Big Ten product at the expense of adding bigger television markets on the East Coast. Then, Notre Dame, with all of its history with the Big Ten chose to partner up with the ACC. Notre Dame’s decision speaks volumes.
The initial decision of starting the Big Ten Network looked good but compared to the SEC’s decision to partner with ESPN, it now comes across as short-sighted. It took an all SEC national championship game to make the Big Ten finally concede that a college football playoff was needed. These decisions affect the long term success of the conferences. If you are sitting in Ohio, you most likely have as much access to SEC matchups as someone sitting in Mississippi. Access to SEC games is now national for fifty states. When it comes to Big Ten games, outside of the Big Ten footprint, a viewer gets a few games each Saturday. All of this doesn’t add up to the end of the Big Ten. Again, much of what we have seen is more an anomaly. It’s possible next year that the Big Ten has two participants in the four team playoff but national access and money are flowing South, East, and West more than they are flowing to the North and the Midwest and if that continues, the long term outlook for the Big Ten means that there are more 2014 Week 2’s in their future.
As promised, starting this week I am providing my top four thus far. Again, this is not a prediction of the four playoff teams as it is my opinion of which teams would be in the playoff if the playoff started today. I expect this to be a very fluid list for most of the season. I won't consider a team that hasn't faced real competition.
The Top Four Teams Thus Far:
1. Florida State
2. Oregon
3. Texas A&M
4. Virginia Tech
Just outside, LSU, USC, and Notre Dame.
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