It doesn’t seem that long ago that the rest of the nation was grave dancing on the diminished success of the Big Ten. Conference pack mentality had taken over college football with the advent of the BCS and the brilliant marketing of mainly the SEC.
The victim was the Big Ten, which could “only” point to its pocketbook annually as a means of displaying success as the conference rummaged through embarrassing loss after embarrassing loss on a national stage, most notably in big games.
But fast forward to 2016, and by golly, Jim Delany’s Big Ten needs no introductions about how strong it is. And it happened in three specific ways.
- Ohio State defeated an SEC team in the CFB Playoff
It’s often said that you can massage numbers or opinions to show exactly what you want your audience to see. But in sports, the proof is almost entirely visual when it comes to opinion. The perception pendulum … particularly the one about SEC dominance … was never going to change until the Big Ten clipped one of their champs in a championship postseason format. So two years ago, it was the champs of the Big Ten with a third string quarterback who’d started only one game against not just an SEC champ, but thee SEC champ, Alabama. The Buckeyes controlled the game in a way they’d been mocked for nearly a decade about not being able to do, and you could tell, the shine was suddenly wearing off the old narrative. We saw it before our very eyes, and thus couldn’t deny it.
- Big Ten HR departments started earning their keep
If there was an obvious organic gap as to why the Big Ten started to dip in comparison with the rise of the SEC, it was the coaching gap. During the time when all of the negativity around the Big Ten started … Ohio State’s loss to Florida in 2006-07. So it took a few years, but Ohio State, Urban Meyer, and fate met in center square after Jim Tressel was removed from the program and Meyer retired within two years of each other to make it happen.
Other teams around the conference started making big time hires, too, and Mark Dantonio of Michigan State grew to become one of the nation’s elite. Michigan finally got their man in Jim Harbaugh after stints with a guy who didn’t fit (Rich Rodriguez) and a guy not qualified for the job (Brady Hoke). Penn State poached rising SEC coaching star James Franklin from Vanderbilt. Nebraska yanked one of the top two coaches in Oregon State football history and brought him to Lincoln, TBD on the success.
Meanwhile, the SEC lost a lot of those guys with such historic resumes, guys like Steve Spurrier, Phil Fulmer, and obviously Meyer. Tennessee has struggled to find coaching consistency since Fulmer. Florida is just now rebounding off of a rough Will Muschamp hire. Auburn won a title on the back of Cam Newton, masking the lack of fit by Gene Chizik. Les Miles has declined as an in-game manager.
- The money has somehow increased
Even in the “dark ages” of Big Ten football, when the conference was routinely mocked for its on-field product, it didn’t exactly hurt finances. The Big Ten was like college tuition … even when it does less for you, the price only increases.
This past spring, the Big Ten signed half of its rights deal to Fox to the tune of a smooth $250 million or so. As a result, the individual payout to each Big Ten school could be up near $40 million per, which is an astounding number. The fact that the on-field product also is getting better is throwing gas on a fire. Delany is set to retire in 2020 from his post, in which the Big Ten will lose arguably the most single influential figure in college sports. How they go about handling that transition will likely determine if these massive deals continue to just get bigger and badder.
Now, look at the conference. You can say thus far in 2016, you don’t know much about Ohio State and Michigan, the traditional powers, but come on … they’re rolling up folks with an ease befitting what they always have been. Michigan State has done enough to earn the benefit of the doubt that they’ll be a top 15 type team.
In the West, which often looks like the SEC East of the conference, Wisconsin knocked off LSU in a high-profile game, Iowa is coming off of a fantastic season and looks the part once again. And you look at Illinois, who’s jumping on the “good hire” bandwagon, siphoning Lovie Smith away from the NFL after the Chicago Bears let him go.
Folks, the tide is turning (no pun intended. There’s no easy synonym for “tide is turning”) on the Big Ten, and it’s turning fast. The key to success is and always has been coaching up and down the conference, but especially at the top.
If you thought the Big Ten was done, rethink that logic. It’s coming like an 18-wheeler down the highway with no weight checks or state patrol in sight.
