2012 Big Ten Football Preview Series Complete

One of the more interesting, underrated storylines to follow in the 2012 college football season is the race for the Big Ten Leaders Division title.

Wisconsin is the defending champion and clear favorite, but the Badgers have suffered just enough losses, both on the field and on the coaching staff, to raise eyebrows. If they slip more than anticipated, then they could be challenged by teams like Penn State or Illinois (operating under the radar with new coaches) or, technically, Purdue or Indiana (but probably Penn State or Illinois). The Football Outsiders Almanac 2012 gives Wisconsin a 63 percent chance of finishing 6-2 or better in conference, while Penn State comes in at 26 percent, Illinois six percent. Though Wisconsin is an obvious favorite, they have some work to do.

October 23, 2008:

April 2, 2009:

I’m not going to lie: I really didn’t want to write this preview. In a vacuum, the Penn State football team, with a new coaching staff, a loaded two-deep in some units and black holes in others, would be pretty interesting to discuss. But with all that has happened at the university in the past eight months, and with all that is going to happen, it almost feels as if there are not enough disclaimers in the world -- “Obviously football is not the most important thing right now;” “Obviously Joe Paterno’s legacy is stained;” “Obviously the real victims are not the current players, but the Sandusky victims;” et cetera -- to get you to where you can simply talk about Penn State football. But we’re going to try.

Following the Jerry Sandusky abuse scandal has been disgusting, depressing, and infuriating. Most of all, it has been incredibly disturbing, because it happened for such a long period of time, because there was obvious a cover up of some sort and to some degree, because it confirmed that we don’t actually know any of the coaches and higher-ups we hold as morally indefatigable (when they’re winning) because of three-hour sample sizes, and because it reaffirmed all of the “football is a little too powerful” concerns we hear a lot but prefer to ignore. It has made many of us shake our heads at the Penn State fanbase, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we know that this pretty easily could have happened at any of our schools. We hope it wouldn’t have gone on for as long, or to the same degree, but we don’t know that for sure, so we assume the best.

When Iowa hired Baltimore Ravens offensive line coach Kirk Ferentz as its 26th head football coach in December 1998 …

Kirk Ferentz is the dean of the new Big Ten, and really, it’s not even close. He has seen Iowa through downs (4-19 in 1999-00), ups (31-7 with three top 10 finishes from 2002-04), to downs (12-13 in 2006-07) and more ups (28-11 from 2008-10). He has mirrored the tenure of his his predecessor, the legendary Hayden Fry (9-13 in 1979-80, five straight ranked finishes from 1983-87, 11-10-3 in 1988-89, 10-1-1 in 1991, 16-18-1 from 1992-94, 17-7 in 1995-96), and with his four Top 10 finishes, he has actually surpassed Fry. Given time and patience, there is little reason to believe he won’t again turn out another Top 10 season or two at some point.

It’s an interesting time to be a Nebraska fan right now. In a still-new conference, in a college football universe dominated by the southeast, Husker fans are in the odd position of being separated from the elite programs in the country while still close enough to recent elite play to both expect and demand it.

This, after all, happened fewer than 20 years ago.

In the last two seasons, only six teams have a win total higher than Michigan State’s 22: Boise State, LSU, Oklahoma State, Oregon, Stanford and TCU. Ohio State and Michigan are both 18-8, Nebraska is 19-8 and two-time defending Big Ten champion Wisconsin can only match the Spartans at 22-5. State performed at a top 10 level last year, and it returns almost its entire defense and running game.

Of course, State also lost a star quarterback, a pair of great defensive tackles and almost every receiver who caught a pass last year. So how much does depth matter over star power? Granted, in players like running back Le’Veon Bell and defensive end William Gholston, State still has some stars, but the quantity has dropped from this time last year. And it is a testament to the job head coach Mark Dantonio has done that, apparently, people aren’t automatically writing off the Spartans following the turnover despite the lack of a first-tier name.

In the first week of January 2011, Ohio State defeated Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl, and Michigan got its doors blown off, 52-14, by Mississippi State in the Gator Bowl. Ohio State was averaging 11 wins per year over the last six seasons, and Michigan was averaging seven losses per year over the last three.

In the first week of January 2012, Michigan defeated Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl for its 11th win of the season, and Ohio State lost to Florida in the Gator Bowl to finish 6-7. Michigan finished ranked 12th in the country and is all but guaranteed to start the 2012 season in the Top 10. Ohio State, meanwhile, is banned from the postseason.

In the last five years, Illinois has gone 31-32, found themselves ranked in three of those years, and gone to three bowl games. It has easily been the Illini’s best sustained stretch of play since the heydays of John Mackovic and Lou Tepper (they combined to go 48-33-2 from 1988-94). But there has been, to say the least, an enthusiasm gap even as the wins keep rolling in at a medium pace.

Illinois averaged attendance of 61,707 in 2008 following their Rose Bowl season of 2007. In 2009, attendance fell four percent to 59,544. In 2010, it fell nine percent to 54,188. In 2011, despite a bowl in 2010 and a hot start in 2011, attendance again fell by nine percent, to 49,548.

It’s time to check in. A year ago, I raved about how Northwestern continued to thrive in close games and pull out winning records despite consistently mediocre (at best) statistics.

In a somewhat backhanded way, this was clearly intended as a compliment toward the job Pat Fitzgerald is doing in Evanston, a place to which you are probably never going to sign a Top 10-15 recruiting class. (Then again, Stanford and Vanderbilt are beginning to shed the can’t-recruit-to-a-smart-kids-school meme…) But in the following days, Northwestern fans showed skepticism regarding the positive part of what I said.

It can be done, you know. If college football’s long history tells us anything, it is that a) you can have good seasons at Indiana, and b) it is really, really difficult.

In 1967, John Pont’s Hoosiers surged forward after a long era of poor play (IU went 14-50-1 from 1960-66) to surge to a Rose Bowl bid and a No. 4 final ranking. They were ranked in portions of each of the next two seasons as well. In 1979, Lee Corso’s Hoosiers went 8-4 and won the Holiday Bowl. From 1986-93, Indiana went to six bowl games under Bill Mallory, winning at least seven games four times and finding themselves ranked in portions of six seasons. In other words, they have won in the lifetimes of most writers and many fans. When former Oklahoma offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson took the head coaching job in 2011, he did so with the knowledge that you can at least go about 8-4 in Bloomington if things go your way.