Ohio State football: Big Ten needs change

Did you happen to watch that debacle Saturday night? If you were able to stay until the end of Iowa’s no-show performance in that 41-3 loss to Michigan in the Big Ten championship game, you deserve a pat on the back. It was awful, an embarrassment to the conference, and a signal the Big Ten needs change. It is time to do away with divisions and take the two best teams to the conference championship game.

Some claim I feel this way only because the Ohio State football team was not the one pounding Iowa. If it had been the Buckeyes, they say, instead of hated rival Michigan, I’d feel differently. I doubt it because it was such a horrid display.

Ok, so go ahead and say I’m only advocating change because the Buckeyes were not playing, but then tell me if I’m wrong. Since the Big Ten went to its current East/West format, the East has won every championship game. All of them. Eight straight wins. Only three of those games have been decided by less than ten points. The East’s average margin of victory in those eight meetings is twenty points.

It has been the last four years that illustrates how the gap has widened between the two divisions. The East has won by margins of 21, 13, 12, and 39 points. However, it is the rankings that really show the expanding gap. In the first four games, the West representatives were ranked 13th, 6th, and 4th twice.

Only once in the last four games has a Big Ten West team been ranked in the top ten entering the championship game (Wisconsin was eighth in 2019). The other three were 21st, 13th, and 14th. That’s not much of a help when you want your conference champion to get into the playoff.

The Big Ten has historically portrayed itself as the standard of excellence in academics and athletics. The current divisional format the conference is using for football is not providing excellence in its championship game and needs to be changed.