Big Ten Struggling With Mediocrity

Since taking over at Iowa in 1979, Hayden Fry has employed a simple non-conference formula to prepare his Hawkeyes for the rigors of the Big Ten Conference season.

Call it the “Should’ve-Could’ve-Might’ve” theory of scheduling. Fry’s Hawkeyes play one game they should win, one game they could win and one game they might win. A weak opponent hungry for a big payday, a good team with a shot at an upset and a Top 25 school that should provide a true test. If all goes as planned, the Hawkeyes enter conference play 2-1. If things go better than expected, they’re 3-0. Worse, they’re 1-2.

In 1992, somebody messed with Professor Fry’s formula. Big time. Instead of the usual, early-season blend, the Hawkeyes faced 1992 New Year’s Day bowl teams North Carolina State, Miami and Colorado in their first four games. The result? Three losses. Only a victory over Iowa State--definitely in the “Should’ve” category--salvaged Iowa’s non-conference season.

“When I first came here, Iowa had had 20 consecutive losing seasons. (Nine, actually. Although Iowa’s previous plus-.500 season was in 1960, 18 seasons before he became coach in 1979.) I couldn’t figure it out,” Fry says. “Then I saw that we had long-term contracts with Oklahoma, Penn State and USC. I changed that.

“This year, however, has been the longest year of my life.”

Get in line, Hayden. While the Hawkeyes struggled with a young team and a hellacious schedule, the rest of the Big Ten labored as well. The 97-year-old conference posted a 13-17-1 non-conference mark--easily worst among the nation’s majors--and showed its age with a year of mediocrity.

Even the anticipated arrival of Penn State next season has lost some of its luster, thanks to the Nittany Lions’ 2-4 finish after a 5-0 start.

“The facts speak for themselves,” Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany says. “We lost more games than we won in September, and you can’t argue with that. In bowl competition, you can’t argue that we have been on top, either, be it in the Rose Bowl or any other bowl.

“When you go 13-17 in non-conference play, the majority of your teams don’t have winning records. That makes it difficult, especially when you have parity in your conference play.”

Only three Big Ten teams--Michigan, Ohio State and Illinois--finished with winning records. And only the Wolverines (No. 7) and Buckeyes (No. 15) were ranked in the Top 25. Lest anyone harbors delusions of a return to the two schools’ battles in the 1970s, consider that the Wolverines, league champions since 1988, have defeated the Buckeyes four consecutive times. In fact, Michigan is the Big Ten’s only true “national” team. It lures recruits from all over the country and appears on television just about every week.

But even the Wolverines have been humbled along the way. Remember last year’s 34-14 loss to Washington in Pasadena? Or the 51-31 home beating administered to the Wolverines by Florida State? “This is the Big Ten? Oh, my goodness, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Florida State nose tackle James Chaney said after that one.

No one’s laughing in the Midwest. Included in the Big Ten’s 17 non-conference losses this season were defeats to Central Michigan, Toledo and San Jose State. Wisconsin needed a questionable call on a last- second two-point conversion to sneak past Northern Illinois, and Ohio State could beat Bowling Green by only 17-6--at home.

Just imagine how the folks at the Citrus and Holiday bowls felt this season. They are contractually bound to take Big Ten teams for their bowls. Only two teams--Michigan and Ohio State--finished the season with more than six victories, and only a strong finish saved Ohio State and the Citrus Bowl. The Holiday Bowl had the right to Just Say No to what the league offered as bowl-caliber, but decided to take Illinois (6-4-1). It was close, however, for the Illini, who by virtue of their 14-10 victory last Saturday against Michigan State (5-6) reached the NCAA-mandated six Division I-A victories required to receive a bowl bid and edged out the Spartans for the Holiday berth. Minnesota, meanwhile, robbed Iowa of a Copper Bowl bid the school had already accepted. Last Saturday, the Golden Gophers (2-9) defeated the Hawkeyes, 28-13, leaving Iowa at 5-7 on the season, one victory short of the six needed to go to a bowl.

“There are some games teams should have played better in,” Michigan Coach Gary Moeller says. “Maybe it’s a down year, but I still think we have some good football teams in this league.”

That’s debatable. Over the past five years, the league’s 74-72-6 non-conference record ranks last among the nation’s seven major conferences (excluding the fledgling Big East). In bowl games--traditional Big Ten sore points--the league ranks fourth, with a bleak 10-12-1 record. Then there is the Rose Bowl. The Big Ten is an embarrassing 5-20 since 1968.

There’s more. The Detroit News reported earlier this season that entering this season, the league was 3-26-1 against teams that finished in the top 10 over the past five years. No Big Ten team has won a national championship since 1968--the longest drought of any major conference. Even the WAC (Brigham Young in 1984) has a more recent champ. The WAC!

One of the league’s few bright spots is its average of 12.7 active NFL players per team, which is good for fourth-place overall, just ahead of the Atlantic Coast (12.0) and Southwest (11.5) conferences.

“It’s a mediocre conference with mediocre coaches,” says ESPN analyst Beano Cook, a longtime Big Ten basher. “Back in 1962, the league was 19-1-1 against non-conference teams. Now they can’t beat anyone. The coaches were better back then, too. They had (Iowa’s) Forest Evashevski, (Michigan State’s) Biggie Munn and (Ohio State’s) Woody Hayes.”

The list of problems is long. Big Ten teams play boring football and continue to struggle with recruiting top-flight skill position players. Since 1983, 24 men have coached in the league. Average attendance--once the best in the nation--has dropped, and league teams are waiting for Penn State to ride to the rescue next season. What they may get is another elite team besides Michigan subjugating the great unwashed.

First-year Minnesota Coach Jim Wacker embarrassed the league by saying Big Ten schools would fare better out of conference if they played teams such as Division III Susquehanna, instead of Notre Dame. When Susquehanna suggested a home-and-home series with the Golden Gophers, cynics sneered that Wacker should accept--and maybe win a couple for a change.

“Take a look at the caliber of football teams we’ve played,” Wacker says. “Look at who Iowa played. Four teams played Notre Dame. It’s a tribute to the conference that it gets to line up and play them, year in and year out.”

Lining up is one thing; winning is quite another. Notre Dame was 3-0-1 against Big Ten teams this year. The Big East was 4-1. And the Big Ten was 1-11-1 against teams ranked in The Associated Press Top 25 the week of Nov. 2.

“In football, strength of schedule means nothing,” Delany says. “Wins do. It’s unusual to see Big Ten teams out of the Top 25. When it happens, it’s news. We have to use it internally. It certainly does ring the bell and give us a wake-up call. We have to see how to meet academic standards, have our kids behave and still win football games.”

NCAA officials may cringe when they hear Michigan defensive end Chris Hutchinson talk about the reality of chasing the national championship: Big scores attract attention.

“When the point spread is 20 points, we have to beat the spread, so we can stay up in the polls,” Hutchinson says.

Hutchinson’s statement represents a dramatic departure in Big Ten philosophy. Gone is the all-consuming Cult of the Rose Bowl. It is replaced--at Michigan, at least--by a desire to succeed on the national scale.

“In the past three or four years, getting to the Rose Bowl was definitely our team’s only focus,” Hutchinson says. “But coming into this year, we have a slogan: ‘Five & One.’ We want our fifth Big Ten title and the big one. It used to be Rose Bowl this and Rose Bowl that, but we want to go higher.”

Despite its poor showing in polls, bowls and intersectional games, the league still appears to command quite a national reputation. Its television coverage tops that of any conference, including weekly ESPN and ABC telecasts. The Rose Bowl payout ($3 million-plus per team) remains the best of any bowl. Add in three or four other bowl checks and some giant gate receipts at Michigan, Ohio State, Iowa and Michigan State, and the question of incentive rises. Does the Big Ten really need to be competitive nationally to thrive?

The answer is a resounding yes. Despite the league’s overall good picture, some Big Ten schools are struggling. Attendance is down at Wisconsin and Minnesota. Northwestern had to play a “home” game against Notre Dame at Chicago’s Soldier Field in order to get a bigger gate. Irish supporters easily outnumbered Wildcats fans at that one. With football and men’s basketball still responsible for funding athletic departments that must accommodate women more and more, increased revenue becomes paramount.

“When you’re gliding along getting exposure, everything looks OK,” Delany says. “It’s not until you lose on a regular basis that you have to deal with it. We have to deal with it.

“Some programs are losing their support base, and when that goes down, it’s tough to fund the program. At Michigan, both teams get $600,000 in gate receipts. At Northwestern, it’s $150,000. And while our television is good, from 1951 to 1984 we had a disproportionate amount of coverage. Now other conferences have great TV packages, too.”

Those conferences, particularly the Pacific 10 and Southeastern, have attracted attention with exciting play and postseason results. They can trace part of their success to an on-field quality sorely lacking in the Big Ten--speed.

You don’t find too many shoot ‘em-ups in Big Ten Country. The teams rely on hulking linemen, bruising backs and iron-ribbed defenses to win games. Few teams use one-back sets, and if they do, they generally come in tandem with two or three tight ends, not four wideouts.

“The lack of speed is leaguewide,” Fry says. “Michigan looked like they were running in mud against Washington. We played Miami and Colorado this year, and they were a lot quicker than us.”

A lot of the speed problem comes from geography. The Midwest’s cold winters (and autumns and springs) aren’t very conducive to year-round track competition. Add in the lack of spring football practice in any Big Ten state, and you can imagine that speed is hardly a commodity found in great volumes in the Rust Belt.

“All of us in Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota don’t have enough skilled-position kids in our states,” Wisconsin Coach Barry Alvarez says. “We have to go elsewhere to get them. Without name recognition, that’s tough.”

Of course, the league doesn’t do too much to encourage the fast guys to come north. The teams can’t control the weather: “A kid comes here for a visit, sees snow for the first time and then wants to get back to warm weather,” Alvarez says. But it can do something about the style of play. While the rest of the nation is embracing wide-open offensive sets and quick-strike capabilities, the Big Ten still prefers to play in combat boots.

Only one Big Ten passer--Michigan’s Elvis Grbac--could be found among the top 13 passing efficiency leaders in the country through Nov. 14. No Big Ten team was among the top 25 in overall passing offense, and only No. 2 Michigan was among the top 50 in total offense. “The league is still trying to be balanced offensively,” Fry says. “But a lot of people up here think defense first, running game second and passing third.”

Not helping matters is the fact that just about every Big Ten game is played for some silly-sounding trophy. Some are pretty well known, such as the Little Brown Jug (Michigan-Minnesota) or the Old Oaken Bucket (Indiana-Purdue). Others, such as the Brass Spittoon (Michigan State-Indiana), the Paul Bunyan Axe (Minnesota-Wisconsin) and the Illibuck Wooden Turtle (Illinois-Ohio State) are not. In Big Ten Country, a victory over a league rival trumps a triumph over Miami, Alabama or Texas A&M.;

“Every time you play a conference team, it’s like a bowl game,” Ohio State Coach John Cooper says. “When Wisconsin beat us, they acted like they won the national championship.”

The Badgers should get an Oscar for that celebration, because none of them was alive when the last Big Ten team won the Rose Bowl and finished the year atop the polls--Ohio State, in 1968.

Everyone has a reason for the Pasadena failures. Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz, an assistant on the 1968 Ohio State team, says it’s cyclical, pointing out that the Big Ten went 12-1 in the Rose Bowl from 1947 to 1959. Washington Coach Don James blames the distrac- tions, reasoning that it’s tough to get ready for a big game amid the banquets, parties and sightseeing. When Hayes took the Buckeyes west in ‘68, they downplayed the extracurriculars.

Cooper, a former Arizona State coach whose Sun Devils defeated Michigan, 22-15, in the ’87 Rose Bowl, adds that it’s a home game for the Pac-10 teams, which receive double the ticket allotment of their Big Ten foes.

And there’s always the weather.

“I’d like to see them come out and play us on a cold, windy day,” Indiana Coach Bill Mallory says. “The record might change a little then. We could change the setting, but I don’t think too many people would like it.”

Pick a Big Ten team, and you’ll find a unique set of circumstances that have helped set it back somewhat. Leaguewide phenomena such as style of play, lack of speed, bad weather and Rose Bowl-worship hurt, but most conference members are reeling from other issues, as well.

“I don’t think you can overgeneralize,” Delany says. “We have 11 institutions and 11 different challenges. The same problems don’t apply to everyone.”

But certain issues do affect more than one school. Take academic reform. The league’s stance is laudable. Rather than follow the NCAA party line, it has implemented trailblazing conference legislation on junior-college transfers and sufficient progress toward a degree. Its policies may win kudos from educators, but they don’t sit too well with football people. Coaches aren’t against reform. They just want a level playing field.

“When I was down in the Southwest Conference (as a head coach and assistant), we used to laugh at the Big Ten,” Fry says. “We could have more athletes on our rosters. We could redshirt. The Big Ten just won’t change its stance.”

For the past three seasons, any junior-college transfer who wasn’t Proposition 48-qualified coming out of high school and wanted to play in the league had to sit out a season--regardless of his academic performance while in college. No other league has such a rule.

Though the league has decided to suspend that regulation for players entering the league as of next August, it has hurt several teams’ recruiting over the past few seasons.

“It’s obvious to me that we’re trying to put ourselves on an island by not allowing junior-college transfers,” Michigan State Coach George Perles says. “If you’re playing against teams that allow juco’s, you’re at a disadvantage.”