I am admittedly a fan of Big Ten football. In the
interest of maintaining some level of objectivity on the blog I tried to avoid
being openly defensive about the league’s prospects. Since objectivity is not a
huge issue on a blog that receives tens of visits per month, I want to engage
with some comments that a friend of mine sent in response to my recent post on
the Big Ten’s bowl season prospects.
His points are as follows:
- The Big Ten’s bowl lineup is unfavorable
- B1G draft picks perform strongly in the NFL
- Demographic shortcomings are overstated
- Cultural issues (coaching salaries/oversigning)
Bowl Lineup
I’ve written about this one tangentially (check out the
top section of this
post), but it bears repeating. The Big Ten, by virtue of being located
almost entirely in a region that no one wants to visit in late December or
early January, would be the visiting team for nearly any bowl. The fact that
they compound the problem by playing the Pac-12 in Southern California, the Big
12 in Texas and the SEC in Florida is icing on the cake.