After the latest Big Ten-BCS debacle at this year’s Rose Bowl (USC 38 Penn State 24), pundits nationwide have been taking shots at the conference. I mean EVERYBODY is piling on top of Penn State and the Big Ten. It seems like the cool thing to do thus far in 2009. Here are some examples…

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David Lubach of the Sheboygan Press in Wisconsin:
We should all be grateful for Iowa. Not that the Hawkeyes have the Big Ten's only victory in the bowls, but because they handed Penn State the loss that knocked the Nittany Lions out of the BCS Championship Game.

It's obvious after Thursday that Penn State clearly would not have belonged.

Chris Dufresne of the Los Angeles Times:
In the end, it was the same old Rose Bowl story -- too much USC and too much Pac-10. The conference, savaged this year for going 1-6 against the Mountain West in the regular season, finished with a 5-0 record in the bowls.

The Big Ten fell to 1-5, with Ohio State still left to play Texas in the Fiesta Bowl.

There really have been memorable Big Ten moments in the Rose Bowl, and if you'll give me an hour I'll try to recount some.

Oh yeah: In the 1998 game, Michigan won the AP national title with a victory over Washington State. And Wisconsin, led by Ron Dayne, bull-rushed UCLA and Stanford the next two years, but since then it's the Big Zero.

You'd like to say better luck next year, but luck may have nothing to do with it.

Kurt Streeter, also of the LA Times:
So far this bowl season, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Minnesota and now the Big Ten champs have all suffered humiliating defeats. Forget about talk of college football playoffs; how about this simple, small change? Maybe the Rose Bowl should just ditch the hulking Midwestern clunkers altogether and form a new bond with somebody like the Western Athletic Conference. After today's 38-24 manhandling, USC vs. Boise State has a certain special ring to it. We'd probably get the same final result, but the games would probably be a whole lot more entertaining.

Arash Markazi of Fan Nation (a Sports Illustrated blog) was especially harsh on them:
Penn State's lackadaisical reaction to being disrespected and insulted was an extension of the way the Nittany Lions played throughout the Rose Bowl and really the way the Big Ten has played in BCS games the past three years (0-5 since 2006).

Ray Holloman of Fan House (an AOL Sports blog):
You beat a Big Ten team in a virtual home game in a BCS bowl. It isn't exactly curing the common cold and, statistically speaking, beating a Big Ten team in a BCS bowl game is exactly as likely as eventually catching a cold.

Lindsey White of the Chicago Daily Herald:
For the last two years, the six Bowl Championship Series computers have screamed to us - likely using Stephen Hawking's voice synthesizer - that human pollsters tragically overrate Big Ten teams.

(Here's what I mean: In this year's final regular-season polls, five Big Ten teams received votes from either the coaches or the Harris Interactive people. All five teams had a better average rank in the polls than with the computers, a few teams significantly so. In 2007, four of the five Big Ten teams that got votes in the final regular-season poll had a better poll average than computer average.)

And in each of the last two years, once it became too late for the computers to do anything, Big Ten schools have proven them right with their colossal bowl crudulence.

Finally, the Big Ten Network posted an article written on the Austin American-Statesman in Texas:

Asked if the Buckeyes have been unfairly criticized, cornerback Malcolm Jenkins [of Ohio State] said, "I wouldn't say unfairly. If I wasn't in this conference, I would probably say the same thing about us. I guess that's one way to prove how your conference is, how you play in the postseason."

Let's be real. The decline of the Big Ten is about so much more than two lopsided losses by the Buckeyes to SEC elite teams LSU and Florida. The Big Ten was fading before that and has lost five straight BCS games. With the Nittany Lions' loss, the Big Ten reps have dropped every Rose Bowl since Wisconsin's win in January 2000. Even Ohio State's national title in 2003 was tainted because of a late pass interference call.

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Yikes! Even I would admit that this has gotten a little ridiculous. Despite the fact that the Big Ten has been coming up small in bowl games for most of this decade, most of the nation has now become relentless. I’m not even sure what all these people want to do to fix it.

If Ohio State gets blown out by Texas on Monday, what happens then? Does the Big Ten lose its automatic bid to the Rose Bowl? Do they get replaced by the Mountain West for BCS bids? Do they get moved down to the FCS?  I wouldn’t even be surprised if LA Times pressures local legislature to pass a restraining order on Big Ten teams to keep them away from the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

I said a couple weeks ago that the integrity of Ohio State and Big Ten football are at stake in this year’s Fiesta Bowl. Looking back at it, that ranks near the top of the all-time understatement department, slightly above “The Illinois senate situation is a mess” but still slightly below, “Amy Winehouse takes too many drugs.”

Good luck Terrelle Pryor, Beanie Wells, James Laurinaitis and the rest of the Buckeyes. The weight of the rest of “hulking Midwestern clunkers” in your conference rests on your shoulders.

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ChiChi Madu
ChiChi was born in New York City and instantly became a fan of the Giants, Knicks and Yankees. More