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Monday, March 19, 2007

Big Ten Overrated

It's time to admit that the Big Ten is overrated, probably due to structural reasons in the media.

Football: Ohio State and Michigan were #1 and #2 when they met in a classic game that cried out for a rematch for the best two teams in the country. But both of them went down to lopsided defeat in the January bowl games, so they probably weren't #1 and #2 to begin with.

Basketball: Ohio State and Wisconsin were both rated #1 late in the season, and OSU got a #1 seed. OSU escaped in the second round against Xavier, and Wisconsin lost in the second round and didn't make it to the top 16. The other Big Ten teams are also gone.

Structural reasons? There are a lot of big cities in Big Ten territory, and the teams are located in the favorable Central time zone. So, they get more national press than they probably deserve.

1 comment:

  1. The follow-up to this is, of course, that OSU lost to Florida in the NCAA basketball championships.

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