You want it too easy. You want to judge the Washington team by their overall record. A season is long and teams change through them. Washington like Troy started poorly and finished guns blazing. Injured players return, young players develop. Look at the last four or five games and than judge. The Huskies the Huskers played last night beared no relation to the early season Huskies. Sorry you don't get to tag Washington by how they started. The Huskies are not 6 & 6 the are a bowl winning team. It is not were you start that matters it is where you finish that counts. Life is like that too.

ArtiCle from the NYDaily News:


Looks like we've been drinking a little too much of that SEC Kool-Aid when it comes to comparisons with the Big Ten.

Since 2003, the Big Ten is actually a highly competitive 9-9 in bowl games against college football's supposedly top conference. The Big Ten will have four chances to improve on its post season record against the SEC next month when Penn State plays Florida in the Outback Bowl, Mississippi State plays Michigan in the Gator, Michigan State plays Alabama in the Capital One and Ohio State plays Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl.

The Big Ten finished with three teams in the AP Top 10 last year and should finish with three more Top 10 teams at the end of the season. Ohio State won a national championship in 2002 and the Big Ten was 4-3 in bowl games last year, but the conference's image has taken a PR hit in the past because of its overall bowl record since 2003, which is 19-31.

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Let's face it...Midwestern football has really SUCKED this Bowl season.  Not sure what ALL the factors are but one that is obvious is the lack of athletes in comparison to southern and western teams.  Anybody got more answers?

Well, I enjoyed watching the Big 10 get trounced today.  

After Gordon Gee's arrogant comments, the whole Legends and Leaders thing, and the free pass on the OSU violations, I've decided to despise the whole conference, including Penn State, who was my boyhood favorite college football team.

So, it was a fun day of football watching.

Well, I must support the U of M -- Minnesota -- my mother's alma mater.  However, I'm with you on the rest of the conference.  How do you spell OVERRATED?

OK, JCW, I know most Big 10-12 teams are better than most MAC teams.  (sorry, just trying to be preemptive)

Looking forward to my drive home from work Monday afternoon and listening to torg and the common man on 1460 the Fan in Columbus. With the big 10's 0-fer today plus Notre Dame's win Friday I'm sure those two tools will be in special form. It will only get better if Va. Tech wins Monday night (I think they hate Va Tech almost as much as ND). The perfect storm would then include an o$u loss in the Sugar Bowl.

They do in BB too, right?

Absolutely.

OK, roger, if the only intangible that matters is speed, please explain the Washington vs Nebraska reslult? Early on in the year a Husker easy win then later in the bowl an easy win for the Huskies. Did the Huskies all of a sudden get a lot faster? After a fashion, I believe their defense did. A matter of the D getting their act together along with having their senior middle LB available did put defenders where they needed to be at least a step or two quicker. Though I would credit coaching more than speed here.

My guesses as to what happened include Martinez not being the same player he was earlier  in the year when he was being mentioned as a Heisman candidate (crazy idea-I know)and absolutely no interest in playing this game by the players at NU (much like the fans who decided not to go to a repeat igameUltimately it comes down to the coaches getting a team ready, but sometimes the players aren't real interested in playing.

Not in the game I watched.  Coaching, or lack thereof, won this game.  Not speed.

Wisconsin was having their way on the ground the entire game.  If they would have just kept pounding and not trying to pass in the second half, they would have won this game.  They could have also ran John Clay up the middle on the 2 point try and likely gotten it, as the O-line was blowing their D-line way off the ball.  #43 from TCU was sick though.  Bielman blew this game.

One year ago the Big 10 did just fine, going 4-3.  And if Northwestern's kicker wouldn't have missed like 5 field goals, they would have been 5-2.  Every year is different, and anyone who ranks conferences by bowl record in any particular is oblivious.  Watch the games.  The SEC is the best conference and it's obvious.  Whether you believe the correlation that it also has the lowest academic standards is up to you, but in my opinion, there is a reason Vanderbilt cannot compete.

The Big 10 had a terrible draw this year.  Michigan was awful, and frankly (like OU) should not have even been invited to a bowl, and they draw a ranked team.  Alabama probably has the most talent in the country, and they get a Michigan State team who barely beat Notre Dame and got trounced by Iowa.  Penn State was down, and drew Florida, in Florida.  Bad matchups all the way around, which leads me to my next rant:

Why the hell are there so many bowl games?  Some of these games are a joke.  Nobody wants to see Michigan play Mississippi State or OU play Troy.  If a playoff is out of the question, which it shouldn't be, then 12 bowl games, MAX.

You might want to bounce that off Michigan, Mississippi State, Ohio and Troy fans as well as outlying conference / regional fans.  Additionally, there's a reason these bowls are all around...They still get ratings and they bring commerce to the host cities.