As Season Starts, January Jinx Still Looms Over Big Ten

Big Ten Media Days are now under way in Chicago, hot on the heels of the goat auction that was SEC Media Days last week. This is sort of like chasing a shot of Glenfiddich with a can of room temperature Diet Squirt, but we press on regardless. The Big Ten's fortunes are muddled and murky, but the conference still matters, and not just in the Midwest, either.

Thus, it behooves us to look at some of the bigger questions surrounding The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight Big Ten football in 2009. Can anybody from the conference make a run at a national title? Are there any dark-horse Heisman candidates out there? And aren't these awfully heady questions to be asking of a conference that went 1-6 in bowl games last season? Make the jump and find out.

Is there a national title contender in the Big Ten this season? The media has already established the 2009 Big Ten season as a two-horse race between Ohio State and Penn State. This is probably accurate. Whoever wins the conference will almost certainly play in Pasadena ... on January 1, that is. Barring a complete meltdown in the SEC and Big 12, it's difficult to see the coaches and the Harris Poll voters giving either team a shot at the title. Ohio State has simply gacked once too often, and Penn State fared poorly in last season's Rose Bowl against the toughest competition they faced all year. Either team would have to run the table and hope that nobody gets out of the SEC and the Big 12 without at least two losses. Then it might happen. Maybe.

Okay, how about a Heisman candidate? If there is one, it will be a situation like Iowa's Brad Banks in 2002, where a player simply comes out of nowhere and puts up numbers that can't be ignored. Ohio State's Terrelle Pryor would be the most likely person to do so, but it's a crowded field of quarterbacks out there. I mean, there are two guys playing this season who already have Heisman Trophies. If Pryor accounts for 40-plus touchdowns, throws fewer than 10 interceptions, leads OSU to the national title, and foils a major terrorist plot, he might get 30 percent as much attention as Tim Tebow and Sam Bradford.

At any rate, I don't even think Pryor is the best offensive player in the conference. Illinois' Arrelious Benn (pictured right) is, but wide receivers aren't eligible for the Heisman any more, apparently.

Gee, Mark, you sound optimistic. So what are the stories we should follow in the Big Ten this season? I can see four things you should definitely keep an eye on.

First, there's how the conference performs in its big non-conference games. Not that there will be many of these, but when the rest of the college football world has been going all Harlem Globetrotters on your conference in the postseason, you need to prove that the teams in your conference can't just beat up on each other.

Ohio State-USC Sept. 12 is the game everybody has circled, with few outside of Columbus expecting the Buckeyes to prevail even though the game is in the Horseshoe. A "success" here might mean keeping the game within two touchdowns. Illinois could make a statement in Week 1 with a victory over a regrouping Missouri team, and the Iowa-Arizona game Sept. 19 could prove to be more of a dogfight than anyone thinks. Meanwhile, the Michigan-Western Michigan season opener will let us know just how far Rich Rodriguez might go in his second season.

That, by the way, is the second thing you should watch for. Michigan has been all but written off by everyone, with a few pundits predicting an outside shot that they might go to the Motor City Bowl or something. RichRod took West Virginia from a 3-8 team his first season to a 9-4 team in his second. Before you say "that was in the Big East," please remember that Miami and Virginia Tech were also in the Big East in 2002, and they were at least as good then as Ohio State and Penn State are now.

The third thing to watch for is that venerable Big Ten institution, the sort-of-good team that skips one or two of the conference's best teams. That team this year would be Michigan State. The Spartans don't play Ohio State and get Penn State in East Lansing for the season closer in the battle for the trophy the Big Ten found in a dumpster behind the Salvation Army store. (Behold, the Land Grant Trophy!) It's entirely possible Sparty comes into that game undefeated, ranked in the top 10, and the subject of much bawling from the fans of whatever two-loss SEC team just fell out of the top 10.

Of course, Northwestern could find themselves in a similar situation, as they also don't play the Buckeyes, and Penn State is coming to Evanston as well. The Spartans and Wildcats square off Oct. 17 in East Lansing. You might want to make a note of that.

The last thing to watch for will be the performance of two coaches who probably should be on the hot seat but aren't. Illinois' Ron Zook just signed a one-year extension and thus is now more expensive to get rid of. He can recruit national title-level talent. Just ask Urban Meyer. Zook has not shown that he can win consistently with that talent, and his top assistant, Mike Locksley, is now the head coach at New Mexico. Another subpar season might hurt his vaunted recruiting classes, and if Juice Williams goes from "all-everything high school quarterback" to "undrafted free agent," which is a distinct possibility, that's going to hurt the Zooker in the recruiting zoo as well.

Likewise, Wisconsin's Bret Bielema started circling the drain last year, though Barry Alvarez is still pleased with his protégé's performance. The Badgers' schedule is very friendly, with a trip to Columbus looming as the only Insta-Loss. Eight regular season wins plus a bowl victory would probably keep the Mad Town fans from spending the offseason crying into their Spotted Cows.

So there is a quick and dirty overview of the Big Ten's big picture. This remains a conference with a lot to prove to college football fans outside the Midwest, but there are enough compelling stories and enough good-to-very-good teams to keep things interesting. There may not be a lot of surprises in the Big Ten this season, but the football will be better than you think.