Last week, my colleague Bart Doan had some fun with Bret Bielema’s idea of a Big Ten-SEC Challenge.
I reacted inwardly on a few levels. First, I think the idea is great. The more high-profile non-conference games in college football, the better. Second, if any two conferences do not need to participate in a challenge such as this one, the Big Ten and SEC would rate as good examples. Why? The bowl season is, by itself, a Big Ten-SEC challenge, with the Outback and Citrus and other bowls giving these leagues a chance to go at each other.
My third thought, however, is the centerpiece of this column: If you’re going to have a true Big Ten-SEC Challenge (I would emphasize the need for a Pac-12-versus-SEC Challenge, given how rarely those two leagues meet in bowls and in general), the central feature must be balance within the context of the full season.
What does this mean, exactly? It means that if you’re going to have all 14 teams in the Big Ten and SEC play each other, Big Ten schools hosting games (one would presume a 7-7 split) get to play the games in November if they want to.
This is, in so many ways, the single most underappreciated aspect of college football (non-conference) scheduling: SEC teams, by living in the sun belt of the United States, are rarely exposed to harsh weather conditions, including and especially in the bowl season. When the season reaches is crescendo in November, teams from the South (especially the SEC) rarely if ever have to play in the great white North and its sometimes-freezing conditions, such as what we had for the Purdue-Iowa game this past Saturday.
The substance of a matchup — tactical strengths and weaknesses; positional battles; coaching considerations — naturally takes first place in an evaluation of teams. Yet, when one team or subset of teams is almost always able to play a game in mild weather conditions, it’s unfair to the other side.
Here’s a point within a point: I am someone who ardently supports the idea that sports should be played in ideal weather conditions. They offer the best measurement of who is best at a given art or craft. Tennis should not be played in 105-degree heat or 35-mile-per-hour winds. Football in a driving rainstorm reduces the competition to which team can hold onto the ball. Mild climates and calm conditions remove those variables from the equation and make evaluations much easier to arrive at. I like that clarity.
However, when scheduling bakes inequality into the pie, that’s not fair. As much as I don’t want weather to affect games, the reality that SEC teams are able to play Big Ten teams in domes or sun-drenched bowl environments (generally in the state of Florida) is a stain on college football. When will Big Ten schools get their fair opportunity to play SEC teams under different sets of conditions?
If the Big Ten-SEC Challenge takes place, the North should be able to host its seven games in the conditions it wants. The South shouldn’t have all the fun.
With all this in mind, consider two games from the past weekend in the American Athletic Conference:
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The Memphis Tigers and Houston Cougars were both unbeaten heading into November. They put on a show in a 35-34 Houston win on Nov. 14. Their two head coaches, Justin Fuente and Tom Herman, are about to make a lot more money, either by staying put or jumping to new jobs. These were the “it” teams in the Group of Five for two full months.
Over the past weekend, they went to Philadelphia and East Hartford and scored a grand total of 29 points.
Naturally, one should credit Temple’s defense under coach Matt Rhule for having a plan and a level of passion which overwhelmed the Tigers. Temple’s defense has been a rock this season with very few exceptions (SMU, South Florida), and that same defense has been good against teams outside the South, to be sure (Notre Dame, Penn State). Yet, it certainly appeared to all the world that Memphis looked distinctly uncomfortable on Saturday. The Tigers were slow and relatively unresponsive, a very different group compared to the team which dominated Ole Miss from start to finish. The wear and tear of the long season had something to do with the outcome against the Owls, and having lost two straight games probably created enough self-doubt to further affect Memphis’s performance. Yet, “Southern team loses in Northeast in November” certainly had to flash through one’s cranial nerves at some point during that game.
It wasn’t the only example of an AAC ambush on Saturday.
Just about every year — it happened last year when UCF traveled north — Connecticut picks off a Southern team in very late October or early November. A team from the state of Florida or somewhere else in the sun belt makes the journey to East Hartford and is run into the dust by the Huskies and their defense. South Florida struggled on a regular basis against UConn in New England when Jim Leavitt coached against Randy Edsall, and when Skip Holtz then took over at USF.
Now, Houston knows what it’s like to make the trek up to East Hartford late in a football season. Even though UConn’s offense is as scary as Bambi, the Huskies’ defense under Bob Diaco was able to put Tom Herman’s offense under wraps. Sure, one could attribute a good portion of Houston’s first loss of the season to the fact that a backup, Kyle Postma, was making a rare start. Moreover, due to his extended relief outing against Memphis, Postma enabled Diaco to study an adquate amount of film in preparation. UConn was able to prepare for an inexperienced (albeit very talented) quarterback. The Huskies made the most of the opportunity.
Yet, the long commute; the thick-cut grass which slowed down Houston receivers; and the generally foreign environment at Rentschler Field all contributed to Connecticut’s upset. Even though overpowering winds and slanting snow were not part of the environment for a late-afternoon kickoff which ended in night conditions, UConn still played the game in a context that was very different from what Houston had become accustomed to.
It’s not as though the team from Texas had to beat 1981 Pittsburgh or 1984 Boston College; it merely needed to beat 2015 UConn in the Northeast. It could not do so. This gives fresh and added life to the notion that if Big Ten teams could ever host SEC teams in November, the balance of power in college football could become very different from what it is today.
Don’t let that detail slide away when discussing the merits of a Big Ten-SEC Challenge… within or beyond the bowl season.
