“The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished, and glorified through the furnace of
tribulation.”
–Edward Chapin
Are the Ohio State Buckeyes really the #1 team in the country? I think the message being sent here is that quality of schedule is for fools. With a 7-0 record that includes huge wins over Youngstown State, Akron, Kent State and Northwestern, the Buckeyes have managed to survive the early part of this unpredictable season without a blemish. The question is: Do they deserve to be?
What kind of message is being sent to the rest of the country when Big 10 teams line up more cupcakes than the bald dude from Ace of Cakes? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the players from Buffalo, Florida International, UNLV, and –ahem, Appalachian State earn scholarships just like the big boys. That’s not the point. The point is that we learn very little from a 38-6 victory by Ohio State over Youngstown State. The only thing that of substance that can be understood learned from games like this are negatives.
· A team struggles against a 1-AA team and they have weaknesses.
· A team loses to a lower echelon team and boosters will declare it a rebuilding year.
· A team pounds a weaker team, its viewed as simply “taking care of business”
After the first couple of weeks of the season, I respect Illinois more than any other team in the Big 10. By competing with a very good Missouri team until the last minutes, they probably had the best out-of-conference showing all year. The other nominees are Ohio State over the University of Washington (one of the worst Pac 10 teams), Penn State/Michigan over Notre Dame (yes, Notre Dame), and… well, that’s it. There are no other nominees, because Western Michigan and Syracuse don’t count.
So what happens when Ohio State runs through the Big 10 undefeated? Their high quality wins will be against Illinois (who lost to Iowa already) and Michigan. The last time Michigan played a team with any speed, they lost by 32 at home! What do these wins prove? Of course they should win these games—they’re Ohio State! Put the Big 10 against either the SEC or the Pac 10, and I seriously doubt they’d win a single game. Teams like LSU, Cal, Oregon, Florida, and USC have schedules that are so much more difficult that Ohio State, I’d respect a one-loss team from one of these conferences before I’d take the Buckeyes seriously.
All the players from Ohio State can do is go out, play the teams on their schedule, and win each game. My only fear is that after seeing such a rollercoaster year like this, athletic directors around the country will be inclined to take the easy victories in hopes of a BCS payday. The losers would not be the schools that chose to play a difficult schedule. The big losers would be the people that watch college football every Saturday, watching for the upset, waiting for greatness. A team can not prove greatness by beating weaker teams. Man up. Play someone decent. I’ll take a one-loss LSU (who beat Virginia Tech, South Carolina, and Florida) or Oklahoma (who took care of Texas and Missouri) over any untested undefeated team. If for no other reason, we know what these teams are capable of this year. By playing a decent schedule, you may lose, but at least we’ll find out how good they are that season. More importantly, they’ll find out how far they’ve come—and in the case of Ohio State, how far they still have to go.
Matt Reitz
Matt Reitz is an NHL Writer for ProHockeyTalk on NBCSports and the Editor-In-Chief here at ViewFromMySeats.com. When he's not shoving a mic in the face of NHLers or explaining why home teams should wear white, he's usually trying to figure out what song to play next on his iPod. It's a never-ending job.
