lepton, you are continuing with some of the weakest excuse-making I have ever seen. As I have said before, the visiting teams come to the Rose Bowl at least a week ahead of the game. There is no such thing as an 8-day jet lag, especially for 21 year olds. You complain about the weather being different? It's 65-70 degrees out here when the Rose Bowl is played. Ohio State and Michigan can't play in that kind of weather? The Big 10 team regularly fills half that stadium with their fans. I have been to 11 Rose Bowls, I have seen it first hand. There is no home crowd advantage at the Rose Bowl. Along these lines, the Big 10 teams had trouble when Arizona State or Washington or anyone else was in there too? What home field advantage did these teams have?
Here are the facts, whether you want to acknowledge them or not. Throughout the 70's, 80's and to the mid 90's, the Big Ten teams, almost across the board, continued to embrace out-dated, rudimentary, slow, and unimaginative offensive approaches while the Pac-10 ran pro-style offenses, threw the ball effectively and played the game at a faster speed. And every year, a 10-1 Big Ten team with power running attacks (and a defense geared to stop the other power running attacks they faced in the Big 10) came to the Rose Bowl and was overwhelmed trying to keep up with the passing and speed they faced when playing the Pac-10 schools. From the early 70's to the mid 90's, the Pac-10 won 19 of 23 Rose Bowls. NINETEEN OF TWENTY THREE! Are you trying to tell me that it was jet lag or the sheer hell of having to play in 65 degree weather that accounted for this incredible gap between the leagues?
The upside to all of this for the Big 10 is that they finally began to change, they upgraded their offenses to the 20th century, they began to produce great quarterbacks and receivers to go with their running backs, and as a result, their defenses improved against the pass because they had to. And they finally started to win some Rose Bowls and the league is better as a result. Now, you have teams like this year's Ohio State and this year's Michigan that throw the ball as well as anyone. And you can credit all those Rose Bowl losses for the league's improvement.
Great analysis and your 100% correct. The Big-8 and South West conference suffered from the same problems especially when the met up against passing game and super fast defenses of Miami.
The SEC has always relied on speed and athleticism on both sides of the ball pretty much since the days of Bear Bryant. They can be pushed around at times (Nebraska vs UF in 1995) or passed into oblivion (USC vs Arkansas), but they generally hold up pretty well.
The SEC embraced the pro style offenses in order to keep up with Spurrier's UF teams but since he left, they have returned to a more ball control type style of offense.
I do believe that climate determines to a large degree what sort of offense a conference will gravitate toward. In the Big-10 and especially then Big-12 North, the winter conditions really require the ability to grind the ball out on the ground as passing in those conditions, especially by a college level QB, can be very challenging.
Not all of the Big10 teams had those schemes. Some were fast and passed like mad...and those that were built like the PAC-10 teams lost when the weather turned cold. Overall during the regular season the Big-10 v. the Pac-10 was pretty even, though a superficial glance suggests that it was mostly bottom-rung Big-10 teams playing (3-8 records show up frequently in USCs games), and a very notable difference in performance between home and away (with victories against mediocre Big10 teams at home being much larger than against poor Big 10 teams away).
A glance at Washington appears to show this too, though there are few examples.
78 RB Washington 27, Mich 20...but lost to 7-5 Minnesota
81 RB got hammered by Michigan, blew out winless Northwestern
82, RB 28-0 over 8-4 Iowa; DNP Big10, but lost 31-0 at UCLA.
91, RB 46-34 over 8-4 Iowa, but squeaked by 2-9 Purdue
92, DNP Big10, but was 12-0
You can find other examples of how different it is early in the season compared to later, like 1974 Ohio State beating UCLA 41-20, then losing 23-10 in the Rose Bowl. You can't make a sane argument that that was from slow v. fast.
From the early 70's to the mid 90's, the Pac-10 won 19 of 23 Rose Bowls. NINETEEN OF TWENTY THREE! Are you trying to tell me that it was jet lag or the sheer hell of having to play in 65 degree weather that accounted for this incredible gap between the leagues?
And...And...And...
It is commercially impractical to have the bowl games in the midwest in January...but you'd see the SEC and southern 3/4 of the PAC-10 get eaten, probably to a like degree (See Tampas record in games below 40 degrees, or New Englands for the opposite extreme). There's reasons the teams in the BIG10 were built the way they have been - it reliably works in the cold and ick. They've spent the last two months in winter, and function best at about 50-55 degrees, and advantageously below that. A Purdue or Illinois passing team falls apart in that weather and doesn't get to the Rose Bowl - not that either was top-notch this year anyways. Tressels teams have been more bowl-built than past OSU teams.
And Arizona State that went 1-1 in those three decades? That streak is almost all USC and UCLA with a few Washingtons stuck in there.