COLLEGE FOOTBALL : THE BOWLS: 1986 : Bo Says Bah to Recent Big Ten Bumbling : ROSE

The way Bo Schembechler looks at it, the Big Ten was a stronger football conference in 1985 than the Pacific 10, but in the Rose Bowl the Pac-10, represented by UCLA, buried Iowa, the Big Ten champion.

This year, the Michigan coach believes that the pendulum has swung to the Pac-10. Left unsaid is what he believes will happen in the Rose Bowl, where his Wolverines will play Arizona State Thursday.

“Last year the Big Ten had all those great quarterbacks (Jim Everett, Chuck Long, Jim Trudeau) and I felt from top to bottom, it was the stronger conference,” Schembechler said. “Then Iowa got blown out in the Rose Bowl. I don’t have any reason for that.

“This year, I have seen all the Big Ten teams and I have studied Arizona State’s film against the other Pac-10 schools, and I would say they are better than the teams in our league. I believe Arizona State will be the finest team we have met all season. Ohio State (which tied Michigan for the Big Ten title with a 7-1 record) is not as good defensively as Arizona State.

“But that’s the way it will always be between our two great conferences. The strength will bounce back and forth. One year we’ll be better, one year they will. When we meet in the Rose Bowl, our champion against theirs, it’s just one football game and obviously, the Pac-10 has been the most successful in recent years.

“Especially against me.”

Schembechler is 1-6 since coming here first in 1972. During that same span, the Pac-10 is 13-2 and has won 11 of the last 12. Since the conference tie-up began in 1947, however, the Pac-10 margin is a slim 21-19.

“I’ve heard all the excuses why we aren’t winning out here,” Schembechler said. “How we have so far to travel, that we aren’t acclimated to the time or the weather, how we aren’t used to playing on grass, how USC and UCLA, which have played in 11 of the last 14 games, have a home field advantage, how the population density has moved west, giving West Coast schools more to choose from. I’ve heard ‘em all.

“You know what I say to all those excuses? Hogwash!

“I have no explanation why the Pac-10 wins. I imagine 25 or 30 years ago, the Pac-10 guys were wondering what they had to do to beat the Big Ten.”

Arizona State Coach John Cooper, who has been to the Rose Bowl twice as an assistant coach, is making his first trip as the head man.

“I believe that when USC or UCLA plays, they definitely have a home-field advantage, but I don’t know about us,” Cooper said Monday at a Tournament of Roses Assn. get-together at Wrigley House in Pasadena. “I guess you might say we have a slight home-field advantage because we played UCLA in the Rose Bowl this year. We had probably our best game against them.

“We were leading, 13-9, when we brought the ball off our goal line with a long march that won the game for us.”

Two of the most discussed topics surrounding the game are Michigan’s lack of experience on natural grass and Schembechler’s woeful record in bowl games.

Both, claim the Wolverines, were answered a year ago when Michigan played on grass in the Fiesta Bowl at Tempe, Ariz., and defeated Nebraska, 27-23.

“Some of us were out here as freshmen in 1983 and when we lost, all we heard was how Bo couldn’t win a bowl game,” said quarterback Jim Harbaugh. “Then we lost two more (9-7 to Auburn in the 1984 Sugar Bowl and 24-17 to Brigham Young in the 1984 Holiday Bowl) and maybe we started believing it ourselves. But last year in the Fiesta Bowl, we wiped out the stigma. There’s no monkey on Bo’s back now. We know we can win a bowl game.”

Schembechler still believes that he has something to prove for his Big Ten peers, however.

“The last time the Big Ten won was 1981 against Washington,” he said. “That’s not right. Our job is to do something about that. Everybody back in the Big Ten wants us to win. That should help in our motivation. It’s an enormous challenge, but I think we’ll be up to it.”

Cooper’s challenge is to maintain the recent Pac-10 supremacy despite coming off a resounding 34-17 loss to Arizona in the Sun Devils’ final regular-season game.

“Disappointments last only as long as you let them,” Cooper philosophized. “It was a long weekend, but I haven’t thought about the Arizona game since the Monday after it was over. We have talked with our kids about it, though, and we hope they learned something from it.”