Quit your beefing
I’m getting a little tired of hearing fans and coaches gripe about the disparity of some conferences playing league title games and some not. No one put Pistol Pete’s six-shooter to anyone’s head. If a league is playing a title game, it’s by choice.
And besides, a league title game in the Big Ten or Big East wouldn’t solve anything anyway. If Ohio State played a title game this week, exactly how much hope would you place in the Buckeyes going down? An upset is possible, but a big upset it would have to be. Ohio State played one bad game, lost at home to Illinois, and no one else in the Big Ten put up much of a fight.
But at least the Big Ten historically has had some parity. Not so with this new Big East. West Virginia is going to make the title game with one of the easiest roads ever. West Virginia is 10-1 and will be 11-1 when it spanks Pittsburgh. Kansas is 11-1 and I’ve been hooting the Jayhawks’ schedule all year. But KU’s schedule is no worse than West Virginia’s. West Virginia’s best wins: at Maryland, which finished 6-6; home against Mississippi State, 7-5; at Rutgers, 7-4; at Cincinnati, 9-3; and Connecticut, 9-3. So its best wins are Cincinnati and UConn, two upstart programs. West Virginia lost to South Florida.
Compare that to Kansas. Its best wins are at Texas A&M, 7-5; at Oklahoma State, 6-6; and at Colorado, 6-6. UConn. Kansas lost to top-ranked Missouri.
I don’t see much difference. Yet West Virginia is ushered into the national title game, because of the softness of the Big East. The problem isn’t conference tilte games. The problem is some conferences.
Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel.
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Maybe a little off the subject, but here goes. Who doesn’t make a bowl game these days. The days of Notre Dame turning down bowl games, because they were not worthy, are gone. OSU should turn down their bowl game, they are not worthy. These days, you have to try hard not to get into a bowl game.