July 1st? Too early?

So it's just about time to get it in gear.


We'll start with this for the time being. It's collegefootballnews.com doing what they do best, discussing college football in a relative and interesting manner.

One of the latest offseason round table discussions is the provocatively named "Why Does the Big Ten Stink?"

Some great stuff out of the gate from College Football News' publisher Pete Fiutak:

A: You mean besides billing itself as a collection of eleven of the world's elite institutes of higher learning while being named the Big Ten?

Is the Big Ten as good as the SEC? No. No one is. But the conference, outside of Ohio State, has had its moments against the big bad boy on the block with Michigan and Penn State winning New Year's Day games over the SEC a few years ago and Iowa beating up South Carolina last year. Wisconsin has always played the SEC tough and Michigan State wasn't horrible in last year's Capital One Bowl loss to a superior Georgia team.

The problem is that the league hasn't come through on the biggest stages, with issue one being the constant waterboarding provided by a USC program that, when fully focused, is the best in America and would beat 110 other teams in the Rose Bowl by three touchdowns, would beat six of the top teams by double digits, and would be in a battle to the final gun against the other three, whichever they might be, and would probably win two of those games. You can't dog an entire conference because it has problems with USC.

The Big 12 was a better league than the Big Ten last year, but that's relatively new and that's mostly because Texas and Oklahoma have been killers. So, at worst, the Big Ten is probably the third best league in college football. However, because of all the attention, and because of the TV time slots, helped by being in the middle of the country and by getting the first games on ESPN on a weekly basis, many believe the Big Ten should be better.

While USC is the big problem, the other issue in the conference's national perception is Ohio State, who gets obliterated by fans and media because it can't beat the best of the best teams in America over the last few years. But again, you can't rip on a team or a conference because they can't beat USC, and there shouldn't be too much ripping on a team or a league because of losses to the elite.

I've used this fun stat before, and I'm going to throw it out there again because it's so interesting when it comes to these debates. Look who Ohio State has lost to over the last four years.

- 2008: USC (Rose Bowl champion), Penn State (Big Ten champion, Rose Bowl bound), Texas (arguably the best team in America, lost in the Fiesta Bowl).
- 2007: Illinois (Rose Bowl bound), LSU (the national championship).
- 2006: Florida (the national championship).
- 2005: Texas (the eventual national champion), Penn State (Big Ten champion, Orange Bowl champion).

The Buckeyes have lost eight games in four years, all to BCS teams including three national champions.