To win a national championship today in college football, a school must have certain building blocks. A massive fan base that buys tickets and makes donations. A legacy of success that attracts recruits. An administration willing to pay for top-flight coaches and facilities.
But it's become clear that one element trumps them all: local talent. The best players, increasingly, come from the South and West, and that's a problem - potentially a permanent one — for the Big Ten Conference...
Subscribe to Penn State Clips via EmailAs the college-football season starts this week, the Big Ten — an ancient group of Northern schools stretching from Iowa to Pennsylvania — is again out to rebuild its tattered reputation. The conference has lost its last six appearances in the Rose Bowl, equaling its longest losing streak there ever. It has won two Associated Press national titles since 1969 — in 1997 and 2002 — while the Southeastern Conference has won the last three in a row.
The general knock on the Big Ten is that its players are slower than those in the other power leagues. Last year's 1-6 bowl record weighs on the minds of its fans and players alike.
Money and tradition have nothing to do with the conference's decline. Founded in 1896, the Big Ten is college's biggest, richest and oldest major conference. The average undergrad enrollment at each of its 11 members — roughly 30,000 — is greater than that of any other league, and the amount it shares in revenue has also been superior to that of the other major conferences.
The conference's teams also have been perfectly willing to spend money on football. Ohio State's Jim Tressel and Iowa's Kirk Ferentz earn above $3 million a year, placing them among the 10 highest-paid college coaches in the country. Average coaching pay is comparable to rival leagues.
Strategy isn't the problem, either. The league has adapted to modern ways and largely shed its conservative, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust offensive approach. Last year, Penn State installed a new offense that gained more yards per game than national-champion Florida, and Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez helped pioneer the "spread" attack that forces opponents to defend the entire field.
Even top-level recruiting is solid within the region. When the North produces an elite prospect, such as Ohio State quarterback Terrelle Pryor of Jeannette, Pa., those players still tend to remain near home.
The main problem seems to be rooted in the population growth of the South and West, and the greater zeal for high-school football in those regions. Historically, Pennsylvania and Ohio rank third and fourth all-time in terms of the number of NFL players born within their borders. Florida is fifth. But today, Florida has nearly twice as many active players as Ohio and more than three times as many as Pennsylvania.
The South and West continue to benefit because of the national population trend: 47 of the 50 fastest-growing metropolitan areas between 2007 and 2008 were in those regions, according to the Census Bureau.
Playing football also is just not as important to Northerners. In the last school year, more high schoolers in Georgia played football than in Pennsylvania, according to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations, even though Pennsylvania has nearly three million more residents.
Where this is hurting the Big Ten is with elite, one-of-a-kind players who can dominate a game.
None of the top-25 recruits in this year's freshman class, as ranked by recruiting site Rivals.com, were from a Big Ten state or chose a Big Ten school. Besides Michigan, which is coming off a 3-9 season and has been sidetracked by a report of possible NCAA violations, the conference's pillar programs aren't significantly changing their recruiting patterns.
Ohio State's 2009 roster lists a combined 12 Floridians, Californians, and Texans, compared to 14 in 2002. Penn State is only slightly less reliant on its region: 59% of its current players are from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New Jersey, down from 65% seven years ago.
"It's become apparent in the Midwest that the rare guys who can change the game on a dime are few and far between because of the talent pool," says Jeremy Crabtree, a recruiting editor at Rivals.com. "The Big Ten schools have to go to new territories. They have to go to Florida."
Circumstances may finally be turning in the Big Ten's favor. The Sept. 12 Southern California-Ohio State game — the league's next opportunity to prove its worth — is in Columbus, marking USC's first Big Ten road trip under coach Pete Carroll. USC will be playing with a freshman quarterback and without one of its top wide receivers. Penn State quarterback Daryll Clark says he'll be a Buckeye fan that day, even though rival Ohio State is the Nittany Lions' top competition for the Big Ten title.
"I feel like everyone in the Big Ten needs to take all of this as a sign of disrespect," he says. "We're perceived as a very weak conference, which is not true. We're as fast as everyone else; we're as strong as everyone else. We just need to start winning these games."
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