The Big Ten is Officially Down

Every year when that classic debate arises of which football conference is the strongest, Big Ten supporters always point to the bowl games and its surprisingly good bowl record. And with good reason. Bowl games are always a good measuring stick for conferences because teams are playing competition from other conferences that they don't face very often. It actually makes the bowl season a little more interesting to watch. So Big Ten fans make it a point that the conference isn't really down because of what they do in bowl games over the last couple of years. Well, they won't be doing that this year.

Everyone knew that the Big Ten was down this year during the regular season and now you are getting real proof at just how bad it is. The Big Ten is an awful 1-6 in bowl games so far this season and with Ohio State left to play Texas Monday...I'm not really expecting much out of them. If OSU loses, it will drop the Big Ten to 1-7. If that wasn't bad enough, Penn State, who for most of the season looked like an explosive team that had a good shot at the national title, got leveled by USC in the Rose Bowl. The only conference with a worse winning percentage this year is the MAC, which is 0-4 with one game to play.

Iowa is the only Big Ten team to record a win so far while Wisconsin was blown out by Florida State, Michigan State lost to Georgia, Minnesota was hammered by Kansas. Northwestern was the only team to put up a close fight, losing to Missouri in overtime. Maybe the record wouldn't seem as bad as it is, but then you look at how the majority of the teams lost, it's not a good sign for the conference. I don't think it'll get any better for the Big Ten in the next couple of years either. The SEC seems to get better every year, the Big 12 has four to five elite programs now and the PAC-10, who is another conference the rest of the country writes off, went 5-0 in bowl games this year.