Buckerine Files: Day 3- The same way Batman is scarier than Clark Kent

For observers from outside the Big Ten, The Game might as well be between children.

The fact that Michigan and Ohio State were both such dominant football programs for so long led to their conference, the Big Ten, being referred to jokingly as the Little Eight and Big Two. These were the days when college football was ruled by a select handful of team who were perennially elite. When the national championship was almost certain to wind up in the hands of one of a dozen teams that stood on a level above the rest. While once such dominance was simply assumed to be the sign of a strong program, now it has become a indictment of that the conference true strength and depth, of the team's scheduling chutzpah, and of the team's basic credentials to play for a national championship. The fact that Ohio State and Michigan seem to be the only teams to consistently excel in the Big Ten has come to reflect poorly on the conference and even worse on the significance of The Game itself.

Why is the Big Ten consistently ranked toward the bottom of the conferences that established the Bowl Championship system? How can it be that sports talk radio personalities are openly stating that no one cares who wins the Big Ten? What has happened that the Big Ten's start up cable channel, the Big Ten Network, can't get programmed by a major cable company? Is the Big Ten really a terrible football conference -therefore making Ohio State and Michigan paper tigers? Or has it simply fallen victim to a rather pernicious misconception in the last few months?

Can anybody hear me? Is anybody there?

Let's start with the major cause for all the recent Big Ten bashing. In the two highest profile games played by Big Ten teams against teams from other conferences, the Big Ten's representatives -Ohio State and Michigan who usually define the strength of the conference in the average fan's mind- both lost big. One, Michigan, was embarrassed in the Grand Daddy of Them All, the Rose Bowl in front of millions on New Year's Day. Then a week later, in front of even more millions of people, the Big Ten Champion, Ohio State, was humiliated in the National Championship game. By all reasonable accounts, that was when the backlash started. Never mind that Michigan had trounced a highly ranked Notre Dame earlier in the season, and Ohio State easily dispatched of defending national champion Texas which would go on to win 10 games. Forget the fact that just the year before the Big Ten had two teams in the BCS bowls and went 2-0. In college football it's all about what have you done for me lately, and what the Big Ten had done lately was suck.


Then this season began and it all went downhill from there. Michigan found itself on the wrong end of the biggest upset in college football history. The Big Ten teams gave up victories to Duke, Iowa State, and Florida Atlantic. The one out of conference game several Big Ten team's were relying on to give their schedules some credibility, Notre Dame, turned out to be a total joke this season. Then once conference games began, remaining contenders who were still looking respectable nationally, like Wisconsin and Penn State lost to teams who weren't even ranked in the national polls. It reached a point where Colin Cowherd (the only national sports radio host to pimp college football and destroy innocent blogs) called out the Big Ten for having no legitimate teams outside of Ohio State and, recovering nicely by this point, Michigan. Clearly the Big Two couldn't carry this league by themselves and be seen as legitimate; they would need some help from the Little Eight (or actually Nine, curse you Penn State for making the conference's name an embarrassing misnomer!). In fact last weekend's losses by Ohio State and Michigan probably did more to boost the Big Ten's legitimacy than if we were left with another year where the only thing keeping Ohio State out of the title game was Michigan.

Now it can easily be argued that all this stuff is just bunk. That ranking the conferences is really just splitting hairs. Determining what conferences are best and what are worst are all just a matter of perception. That would be nice if it weren't also true that in college football perception is reality. This is a sport that determines its champion principally on the basis of opinion polls. The plain facts are that the Big Ten has presented such an appearance of suck, that it now has a hard time convincing others they don't actually suck.

Being the complete geek I am, I thought of an apt analogy from the world of comic books. See there are conferences out there like the SEC who are like Batman. In their true nature they aren't super-human just very impressive specimens, just like Bruce Wayne. Yet when they endlessly talk about how tough their conference is at every opportunity and secure exclusive deals with CBS so Gary Danielson can gush over the superiority of SEC football on national TV, they convince everybody they are a lot scarier than the actually are, just like Batman. In fact there's one famous Batman comic where a bunch of crooks are swapping Batman stories and they keep talking about him like he has fangs and claws and magic powers. We as readers know that isn't true, but we understand that Batman is such a badass that the crooks probably really do believe he's some kind of demon or something.

On the flipside the Big Ten is like Clark Kent. Note, I am not talking about Superman here, but rather his mild mannered, and unimpressive alter ego, Clark Kent. Lurking beneath the surface there is some true power, but nobody will ever notice because the Big Ten keeps projecting an image that screams pathetic. Clark Kent has his rumpled suit and coke-bottle glasses. The Big Ten has their embarrassing commissioner and refusal to schedule quality opponents. In a terrific Superman story, Superman does reveal his identity to Lois Lane, but since Lois has spent so much time looking down on Clark Kent, she just can't accept that he was really Superman. In the same way, lots of commentators refused to treat Ohio State like a legitimate number one team, because they had spent so much time reflecting on that 41-14 disaster in the desert. Perception was defining reality for Lois and for the Buckeyes

The Big Ten is known as a throwback conference still playing and acting like its the 1970's. In truth, Big Ten teams like Purdue and Northwestern were pushing spread offense on the major level before Urban Meyer made it sexy and the ESPN talking heads went "Woot! Spread Offense pwns n00bs!". They are pushing the edges with the Big Ten Network. The reason cable companies are fighting so fiercely against it is because they can't afford for other conferences to try it. Yet instead of proving that the audience for their programming exists, the Big Ten insists on getting in fights about Iowa's women's volleyball.

If the Big Ten wants respect, this has to stop. Teams have to be pushed to schedule someone other than Notre Dame. They have to get savvy about modern media relations. They need to hire a real professional as commissioner. They need to get their channel in people's homes. The Big Ten has power within it just refuses to act like it. The reason why the SEC is getting more respect than the Big Ten this season definitely has something to do with the last championship game, but it has as much to do with the larger image each conference projects. Because Superman may be way stronger than Bruce Wayne, but everybody knows Batman is scarier than Clark Kent.