It's hard to make much sense of this year's regular season comparisons because of all the cancelled games and waves of players missing games because of positive COVID tests. That said, peering as best we can through the COVID funhouse mirror, I'm not sure it's accurate to say the Big Ten had a down year. The disturbance in the force is that both Michigan and Penn State had trainwreck seasons, while Indiana (Indiana!) was actually good. (Penn State will be back soon; Michigan, maybe not, but that's another story.) This year, IU, Wisconsin, Northwestern and of course Ohio State are all legitimate top 10 caliber teams. Wisconsin thumped Wake Forest 42-28. Northwestern whipped Auburn 35-19. Indiana with Michael Penix healthy was a threat to beat anyone. They lost Penix late in the season; without him, they out-Wisconsined Wisconsin to end the season, winning that game in the trenches with an untested backup qb. We'll see how the Hoosiers do today, but they're a good team missing a very dynamic quarterback.
Indiana and Texas A&M both got shafted on bowl games. Notre Dame had no business in the playoffs after being crushed by Clemson in the ACC title game. Once again, for the umpteenth time, college football needs an eight team playoff, and NO conference runners-up should be included. If you can't win your league, you stay home. If that means the conferences that have bulked up to two-division television marketing combines have to slim back down to traditional conference size, fine. That's overdue. All the power conferences should play a full round robin, with the winner going to the playoffs. Period. That would leave three spots in the playoffs for the best from the smaller conferences and independents. (Notre Dame would probably again go independent.) Taking a Notre Dame team that had just been brutally exposed while leaving A&M out was a joke. Slotting three loss teams into major bowls ahead of 6-1 Indiana, which gave Ohio State its only real test so far this year, was a joke. The people running college football continue to beclown themselves. They're all about the television dollar, nothing else.
Great post.
It was good to see Fields get the Lawrence-always-winning monkey off his back.
There was one point where I thought Lawrence looked like he was going to pass out from the trauma of losing so badly. He was on the sideline very late in the game when the camera panned to him. He looked like he had the vapors.
A&M would have been a real game with Alabama. As usual ND bought their way in and suffered their usual humiliation on national tv.
You mean the team that lost to Alabama by 28? You say ND did not deserve to be in and wanted Texas A&M who did not even make it as even conference runner up and lost to Alabama bad already.
Indiana got left out because bowls have conference affiliations and the Pac 12 bailed out of most bowls.
The previous two games Ohio State played, they played without 20 players in each due to COVID restriction - some of whom were actually ill, but all of whom were barred from any working out for at minimum 10 days. 22, including Olave, against Northwestern.