CHAMPIONSHIP WEEK 2009

The BCS was been built with the six “power conferences” in mind, the ACC, Big XII, Big East, Big Ten, PAC-10 and the SEC. All of these conferences have developed their own style over the years as well. The ACC is the conference that wants to be a football conference but is and always will be a basketball first conference. The Big XII plays their games as if they are shoot-outs in the old mid-west, which is very fitting considering their geographical location. The Big East is the redheaded stepchild of the group, always underappreciated and can never do enough to get the attention it feels it deserves (as it shows in the picture, that is what comes up when I search "Big East Football Coaches" on Google). The Big Ten is about history, about playing the old-school style of football, 3 yards and a cloud of dust. The PAC-10 is like the Hollywood of college football. All the pretty boys and beautiful co-eds are in the PAC-10. And the SEC is all about speed, and everyone knows speed kills (or in this case, speed wins championships).

The great thing about each one of these conferences is that none of them try to be something they are not. They keep to their roots and may make subtle changes every once and a while, but nothing to drastic (unless you look at the ACC trying to become a football conference and raiding the Big East as drastic, I just think of it as stupid.) However, there is one conference that this does not work for, the Big Ten.

The Big Ten no doubt has some great football tradition to it. They have great programs that play in front of some of the largest crowds in the nation each and every Saturday, in some of the largest and historic venues in the country. Every game they play seems to be a rivalry game (except for those in which that Penn State plays in). Heck they have 12 different “trophy games” in which the winning team gets a trophy and keeps it for the year until it is once again up for grabs the following season. And that doesn’t even include the Michigan-Ohio State game since there is no trophy in that game. There is no problems with embracing a schools, a programs or a teams history, but it becomes a problem when you let that history hold you back. That is what is taking place in the Big Ten.

This week is the final week of the college football season and 5 BCS conference a conference championship game is being played. Two of those (the Big East and the PAC-10) happened do to a luck in the scheduling, while the other three (ACC, Big XII, and SEC) is an annual scheduled event. The lone conference not partaking? The Big Ten. They haven’t been playing football for the past two weeks. So while every other conference gets to show off their best teams on national television, the Big Ten teams sit at home studying for finals. While the other five conferences keep playing games into December each season, the Big Ten will have its conference champion not play a game for 40 days before their bowl. See it is “tradition” that the Big Ten does not play any conference games after Thanksgiving. It has also become tradition that the Big Ten fails miserably in bowl games after these long lay-offs (8-11 all-time in BCS bowls and 32-39 in all bowl games vs BCS opponents since the BCS began in 1998).

Here is a schedule of all the conference championship games that will be played this weekend, beginning tonight.

THURSDAY DEC 3-
PAC-10
Oregon State @ Oregon
FRIDAY DECEMBER 4-
MAC (yes even the MAC and C-USA are ahead of the Big Ten in this regard!)
Ohio vs Central Michigan
SATURDAY DECMEBR 5-
BIG EAST
Cincinnati @ Pitt
CONFERENCE USA
Houston @ East Carolina
SEC
Florida vs Alabama
BIG XII
Nebraska vs Texas
ACC
Clemson vs Georgia Tech

While all these championship games are being played Big Ten fans will take part in another time honored tradition in the Midwest, hunting!