[NU Sports] Three things the Big Ten needs

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

> The NFL game in London sold out and it didn't affect
> anyone's view from their living room so I can't see

The only thing it sold out were fans who gave up a home game for this joke of a spectacle, and the teams who had to fly absurd amounts of miles to make the game and disrupt their weekly schedule in the middle of a regular season. 

Despite the efforts of the NFL, Londoners like their football with yellow cards and sideouts. (BTW - the box score showed 83,000 in a 90,000-seat stadium -- plus there looked to be more empty seats than that from TV).

> However, Stephen's email did give me another thought.
> the conventional model says that you have two 6-team
> divisions and the winners of those divisions play for a
> conference championship. The Big Ten could buck the trend
> but still have a championship game. 

Intriguing, but again - why do we need one? The only one who really does their title game well is the SEC (and even they couldn't get it right the past two years with no LSU-UGa last year and no LSU-Florida the prior year). There may be more fans at a spring training game in Florida than at the ACC title tilt in Tampa next week.

> We could simply have the two highest BCS rated schools meet
> in the final game (ignore your feelings about how the BCS

But in a year like this, why would we need it? PSU already beat OSU on the field in Columbus. Some years it would come in handy if the two hadn't met, but that could be rectified by a true-round robin like the Pac 10.

Then move games later in the season like the Pac 10 and Big East to keep our teams in the national discussion and maybe add some of your neutral site games (a good idea - as long as they're in Big Ten country and not London or Toronto or Tokyo or Mexico City!:) ). 

> The problem can be solved. 

Not sure there's a huge problem. Just win the bowl games and all problems will be solved. 

Just like how they said the Big Ten needs a basketball tournament to compete in the NCAA ... so we schedule one and what happens the final year without a tourney? Minnesota makes it to the Final Four without the league tourney's help. Now, with the tourney, we give up a couple more league games (leading to some wildly unbalanced schedules) and play tourney games in cavernous NBA airline hangars that don't sell out because of the pricey tickets. The ACC is really the only league to do their hoops tourney right. The rest are fun at times, but unnecessary.

GO CATS!!!
-SjT