Opinion: Where are all the Katzenmoyers?

September 17, 2008
By Marcus Johnson
Sports Writer

As a college football enthusiast ever since I can remember, I grew up rooting for Big 10 schools. When I was younger, the Big 10 ruled the football world. Thoughts of Northwestern’s Darnell Autry, Michigan’s
Charles Woodson and Ohio State’s Andy Katzenmoyer run through my mind to this day. But as I started to get older, I’ve ventured outside of Big 10 teams and started seeing how much weaker the Big 10 has gotten as the years progressed. When watching the USC-OSU game on Saturday, I realized that I no longer have any faith in Big 10 football as a conference. They have finally let me down in all aspects. I know this sounds harsh, but most people don’t understand how much I love College Football and Big
Ten sports. Well, used to love Big 10 sports.

In last week’s AP rankings, the Big 10 has three teams ranked in the top 25 (#8 Wisconsin, #13 Ohio State, and #22 Illinois). Of those three teams, only Wisconsin is undefeated and has a win against a ranked team this year. But even though they have a win against a ranked team, that team, Fresno State, isn’t in one of the power conferences. The Big 10 hasn’t flourished against other major conferences as of lately. More examples of this are bowl games in the past few years. There were eight schools that made it to bowl games last year. Playing against power conference teams in bowl games last year, the Big 10 had a record of 2-5, with one team playing against a mid-major school in a bowl game. The year before that, seven teams played in bowl games and in those bowl games against power conferences they had a record of 2-4. The past two seasons they have had under .500 records against power conference teams. Now let’s compare these records to twenty years ago. During the 1987 bowl season, the Big Ten had five schools that played in bowl games and they went 3-2 in those bowl games. In 1986, they had six teams that ap-peared in bowl games. The Big 10’s record was 3-3 in those games. Not excellent records,
but much better than what they are presently.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how much the Big 10 has been on the downfall in the last few years. But when I was watching the USC-OSU game on Saturday it made me think more about how the Big Ten just simply can’t compete with these other power conferences. The question is: What is the problem? One problem it simply can’t be is the recruiting budgets that the teams have. The Chronicle of Higher Education published a report for its August issue detailing the recruiting budgets for more than 1,000 collegiate institutions across the country. Two Big 10 teams, Illinois and Ohio State, were in the top ten. Maybe it’s the coaches and not being able to reel in the big name players. According to ESPN’s Top 150 recruits from 2008, only two of them committed to a Big ten school. This is very terrible in comparison to the SEC who had seven players from the top 20 and the Big 12, who had six of the top 20 players commit to them.

The Big Ten simply has to step up their recruiting efforts in order to be the best. The reason why schools like USC and Florida are always on top are
because they recruit the best players. The Big 10 talks about how they want to be the best. But in order to be the best, they have to beat the best not only on the field but also in recruiting.