INDIANAPOLIS – Saturday night served as a fitting coda to the Big Ten West, a division that rarely did much more than let its conference down for 10 lopsided, unimpressive years.
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No. 2 Michigan booked its place in a third consecutive College Football Playoff, stamping out No. 16 Iowa 26-0. What was never in doubt took the breadth of one field goal and one special teams breakdown to confirm — the Hawkeyes were barely even second-best in this game.
Only three times did they even manage to cross midfield, and one of those came because a physics-defying bounce off a Michigan punt sent the ball careening back across midfield. Iowa managed just 155 yards of total offense.
The result itself wasn’t surprising. Michigan was a heavy favorite. Vegas wasn’t completely confident Iowa would even manage a touchdown, which proved prescient.
Historically, the Hawkeyes only managed to serve as an unwanted posterchild for a West that — with divisions on their way out as the Pac-12 schools come east — never won this game in 10 years.
Seven of those 10, the final margin of defeat was at least 12. Three times, the West champion lost by seven or fewer points. Five times, the margin was at least 21.
The East’s margin of victory across the last three years of divisional play? Almost 29 points per.
Again, both the nature and the result Saturday night were expected. But in a way that’s kind of the point.
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Since the Big Ten realigned its divisions from a competitive balance to a geographic one in 2014, three teams from the East (Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State) have appeared in the College Football Playoff. A fourth (Penn State) finished fifth, in 2017.
The closest the West ever got? A No. 5 finish for 12-1 Iowa, which lost to Michigan State in the 2015 Big Ten title game, and then got bulldozed by Christian McCaffrey’s Stanford in the Rose Bowl.
The Big Ten spent 3½ years absorbing college football’s derision for its original alignment, primarily over the decision to (rather arrogantly) call its divisions the Legends and the Leaders. From a competitive standpoint, the league would’ve been better off living with the memes.
Instead, it got a West that atrophied as it aged.
Paul Chryst’s early success at Wisconsin slowed to a crawl, before he was unceremoniously dismissed midseason last year. Any bet the conference made on Nebraska was a tremendous bust — the Huskers haven’t posted a winning season since 2016.
P.J. Fleck got Minnesota competitive but never won the division. Northwestern made two appearances in Indianapolis and lost them by a combined 33 points. Purdue made one trip south on I-65, and for its trouble it lost to Michigan by 21, then lost its coach to Louisville, then lost the Citrus Bowl 63-7.
In many ways, Iowa has been the West’s best across the last 10 years. In the Playoff era, the Hawkeyes have never finished a season with a losing record, and Kirk Ferentz’s teams have four 10-win seasons (including this one) in that time.
They’ll finish the East-West era 0-3 in this game, with an average margin of defeat of more than three touchdowns.
None of this has held the Big Ten back nationally, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Urban Meyer and Ryan Day made Ohio State a regular Playoff participant, while Jim Harbaugh is about to take the Wolverines to their third-straight national semifinal.
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In the same stretch, Penn State has won a Rose Bowl, a Fiesta Bowl and a Cotton Bowl. Michigan State reached the Playoff under Mark Dantonio. Even Indiana managed a top-two finish in the East, during the COVID season in 2020.
But the Big Ten wants to — and should — measure itself against the best. It should strive to better the SEC. In the Playoff era, the SEC has six national championships, the Big Ten one. Even the ACC, thanks to Clemson, has won more.
And it should not go unsaid that the SEC, the Big Ten’s only serious financial or political peer in modern college football, has split those six championships 4-2 divisionally: Alabama and LSU from the West, Georgia holding up the East.
This is all academic now.
Lucas Oil Stadium, the site of Saturday’s conference championship, has become the Big Ten’s preferred venue for its annual summer kickoff and football media days. Presuming that doesn’t change in 2024, the league will convene on the same field in roughly eight months heavier four teams. Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA will make one of the nation’s toughest conferences even tougher.
They might even make it the SEC’s equal, finally, at the dawn of the 12-team Playoff.
And they certainly spell the end of divisions. The Big Ten will transition to a flex model that will protect a small handful of opponents per team, and eliminate divisions for good.
Not too soon. The Big Ten West died Saturday as it had lived for the previous decade — a loser.
Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.
Source: https://t-tees.com
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