A primer on Big Ten/Pac-10 relations

Modern Friends, in the world of college football there are some big rivalries: Alabama v. Auburn, Florida v. Georgia, Tennessee v. Alabama. Even though we Southerners don't readily acknowledge football outside the Mason-Dixon line, there is a bit of a rivalry among the SEC and Big Ten+1.

Today another conference rivalry hits the big stage once again on College Gameday: the Big Ten v. Pac-10. And because The Modern Gal is more of an expert on Southern football, she has turned to her friend Herman, an expert on Big Ten/Pac-1o relations to give us the lowdown.

So, football fans, here we are, gearing up for the big “Game of the Year,” featuring No. 5 Ohio State at No. 1 USC. Lest you be unaware of mega-implications of this huge, huge game (kickoff at 8 p.m. ET), suffice it to say that this is for all the marbles.

Winner of the game will cement its status as the top-ranked, numero uno, top dog team in all the nation — for this week, at least. Loser will…still likely be a national title contender, when all is said and done.

Ok, so these early season games are full of hype and often have little bearing on sorting out the national championship race. Such are the vagaries of the football polls and computer rankings that determine these things. But that’s no reason we shouldn’t play along with the hype. Big-time nonconference games this early in the season are rare, so go ahead and fire up the school pride, with conference bragging rights on the line — for this week, at least.

Since this huge matchup is a Pac-10 vs. BigTen affair, The Modern Gal has graciously asked me to guestblog on Pac-10/BigTen relations. I’m qualified to do this because I grew up in Los Angeles as a USC fan and then later attended college at Northwestern. (In fact, I am a season ticket holder for Northwestern football. I used to joke that this makes me a masochist for bad football. But then, we actually became a decent program, and now we NU fans are defensive about our team. Did you know, for instance, that since 1995, only four BigTen programs have a winning record against Northwestern? Just doing my part to spread “Wildcataganda,” as the esteemed NU football blog, Lake the Posts calls it.)

At any rate, the Pac-10 and BigTen share a pretty strong bond. It used to be stronger. And the bowl that bound was the Rose Bowl, which used to always match up the Pac-10 champion against the BigTen champion in sunny Southern California on New Years’ Day. But now, evil forces (i.e. money, greed, C. Montgomery Burns) have conspired to ruin this fine tradition.

See, back several years ago, the NCAA and university presidents decided that for the good of amateur athletics, they should convince network television to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for the rights to broadcast a series of made-for-tv bowl games. And thus the BCS was born. It is short for Big College Sellout.

Four bowl games, later expanded to five, are now the centerpiece of the BCS, and it features the champions of all the top conferences and Notre Dame, even when the biggest win Notre Dame has had all season is against the Sunny Hills High School JV squad.

The idea was that the tv network with the rights to the BCS could then match up the No. 1 and No. 2 teams, based on polls and rankings and eenie-meenie-meinie-moe, in a “BCS national championship” game. The other conference champions would play in these other BCS bowl games that the tv network would beg people to watch, but nobody would bother.

For a while, the Pac-10 and the BigTen resisted this move. They didn’t like the idea of having to play their top bowl game in places like Tempe, when they could be living it up in Los Angeles. But then the other conferences got mad and called the Pac-10 and BigTen obstructionist, un-American and “not seeing the big picture,” among other things. So eventually, they relented.

Well, I say, fooey, to all that. For decades, Pac-10 and BigTen teams have looked forward to the Rose Bowl, a New Year’s Day tradition. Every year, hordes of pasty BigTen fans would flock down to Los Angeles and subject unsuspecting Californians to high doses of Midwestern friendliness.

But now, you’re just as likely to see Texas or Florida State (ok, maybe not Florida State) in the Rose Bowl, and the Pac-10 and BigTen champs might be forced to play in the Orange Bowl or Sugar Bowl, because an NCAA official said so. The biggest slap in the face was in 2003, when an undefeated USC got shafted out of the national championship game (not overhyped enough). Why give up the tradition of the Rose Bowl when your conferences’ teams get jobbed of the chance to play for the national title, anyway?

So I say the Pac-10 and BigTen should pull out of the BCS and go back to pitting their champions in the Rose Bowl. The current system of determining the national champion is already a farce, so what would be the harm? College football, with its conference alignments, is a regional sport, with regional pride. Let the Rose Bowl have its BigTen/Pac-10 matchup, let the ACC and BigEast champs play in the Orange Bowl, put the SEC and Big12 champs in the Sugar Bowl, and there you have it.

It’ll never happen, of course. Too much money at stake. That’s an NCAA tradition that never gets old.