[beenutt]

Good points COOP!

I want to make it clear that I'm not saying that the Big Ten is a poor football conference. They are good - solid teams. I have noticed that the upper teams of the Big Ten are overly hyped meaning primarily Ohio State, Michigan and psuedo member Notre Dame. How do you explain Ohio State being ranked number one at the beginning of the year after losing almost their whole defense to the pros and graduation? They beat Texas early so it seemed to solidify the notion that they were really that good. Then they beat the Big Ten teams and didn't even play Wisconsin. Once they got by Texas, they were double digit favorites till they got to the last game of the year! Week after week, they were 25 point favorites. They were talking about the Michigan game 5 weeks in advance because everyone knew that they did not have any competition. Compare that to Florida's schedule where they had to play Auburn, Georgia, Tennessee, LSU, Kentucky, Alabama, South Carolina, Florida State plus and extra game with Arkansas to close out the year!

I heard an ESPN radio commentator admit this week that the ESPN bias to the Big Ten is real. ESPN has a TV contract with the Big Ten and ESPN has the biggest influence in college football. Just watch the TV and take notice of how many games are televised by ESPN and related networks. It is not a conspiracy theory - it is just a relationship that ESPN has with the Big Ten.

I watched a whole lot of college games this year with my son Kyle. I would watch the Big Ten games early in the afternoon on ESPN. I commented several times to Kyle that the action looked slow - the team speeds were slow. I would then watch the SEC games on Saturday night on CBS and the action looked much faster in general. The players were faster especially the upper teams : LSU and Florida. The PAC 10 teams also looked faster.

The Big 10 fans that I talk to are real football fans and do not make escuses. But the commentators after the game were giving all kind of excuses such as the layoff and the injury to Ted Ginn. This just reinforced the bias that I have noticed for some time now.

I'm just glad that the BCS went the way it did and that we were able to find out on the field who the best teams are.

beenutt