What happened to the Big Ten ─ the best conference in America in the 1950’s and early 1960’s ─ is that teams from the south long ago integrated their teams with black players. Then, too, population shifts with more Americans living in the south and west produced greater numbers of high school football players. And warm weather allows players to be outside practicing throughout the year.
In places like the deep south and Texas there’s a zeal and commitment about football that helps fuel the success of college teams from those areas. The Big Ten likes to boast about its history, but in the SEC teams are making history.
The SEC produces monster players and coaches. A lot of college coaches will tell you the most difficult high school player to recruit is a stud defensive lineman like Nick Fairley who helped Auburn to last season’s national championship. The south’s football factory specializes in guys like Fairley and South Carolina freshman defensive end Jadeveon Clowney. And the old factory turned out a monster quarterback in 6-5, 248-pound wonderman Cam Newton, the QB on last year’s Auburn team.
Two coaches with Big Ten ties will be on the sidelines when Alabama and LSU play tomorrow. Don’t hold your breath that either Alabama’s Nick Saban or LSU’s Les Miles have any plans to come back to the Midwest. Saban, who once was head coach at Michigan State, left the NFL to coach at tradition-rich Alabama and Miles reportedly turned down Michigan to stay at LSU where he’s won one national title (Saban has championships at both LSU and Alabama). Miles was once an assistant coach at Michigan.
The SEC coaching roster also includes the “old ball coach,” Steve Spurrier. He has a national trophy in his cabinet, too, winning one at Florida before going to the NFL and then landing at South Carolina.
The 12 Big Ten head coaches have a total of three national championship trophies in their awards vaults. But Penn State’s Joe Paterno, 84, won all three before his school joined the Big Ten.
So what can the Big Ten do to improve its football product? Well, don’t count too much on improvement. The league is likely to ride along on a scale that from year to year has it weighing in as somewhere between the second best conference and the fourth or fifth.
You can dream about Big Ten programs spending more money on their programs attempting to overtake the SEC, or at least be entrenched at No. 2 among conferences. More cash might attract even better coaches and produce better teams, but Big Ten programs know they are already in a football arms races and are trying to preserve some fiscal balance to maintain a long list of other men’s and women’s sports.
League teams could lower their admission standards and recruiting values to attract talented players with academic and behavioral issues. Not likely, though, since there is only so far schools will go in recruiting problem children.
More realistically what may give the Big Ten football product a boost is growing momentum among schools across the country to improve academic performance and make eligibility more demanding. It seems possible that this measure could cause more of a talent drain on some conferences than on the Big Ten.
Maybe one day we can confidently chant: “We’re No. 2! We’re No. 2!”
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