|
I admit to not understanding your point and feel that you have subscribed views to me that I have never held. I would invoke the John Kirk rule, but since our fearless leader has deleted all the relevant threads in his never ending quest to make this board "better," invoking the JK rule would not be entirely fair.
NIU is pretty much at their peak right now. They are expected to win their division of the conference, and maybe the entire MAC. This team you are watching is pretty much the limits of what you can hope to see from them. In a year or two, they will return back to the middle of the MAC, then rise again, and so on, like the rising and falling of the tides. The 2010 NIU Huskies are 1-1 against Illinois and Minnesota (and lost to Iowa State, but let's ignore that). If they played an entire Big Ten schedule, they would play six other teams. I'll be charitable and say since they had to play Illinois and Minnesota on the road, they would get Purdue and Indiana at home--this would mean they miss two of the seven better Big Ten teams. I'll even be charitable and say they beat Crossroads of America teams at home, even though Indiana would be favored against NIU in Dekalb.
Where does that leave them? NIU would have no chance--absolutely none--against six of the seven teams remaining this year, and they would be very clear underdogs to Northwestern. What you are boasting about in this thread is that the 2010 NIU Huskies--a top version of NIU, not the crappy bottom-feeding versions--could maybe, maybe, go 4-4 in the Big Ten. For that to happen, everything would have to go their way schedule-wise (missing two of OSU, PSU, UM, MSU, Iowa, and UW), and you'd have to assume improbable wins over Northwestern and Indiana (they already lost to Illinois). That's the best case scenario. Worst case scenario, NIU goes 1-7 or 2-6 this season, while they are in top form.
My point has never been that no MAC team will never beat any Big Ten team, because obviously that's not true. But this entire debate feels like a carny game where the clown's mouth is moved on me after taking fire. There will always be some top MAC team that could compete with some Big Ten teams some years. This year, NIU would go 3-5, plus or minus a win, just as CMU would have last year, and Ball State the year before that. That's just the cyclical nature of college football; there are Colonial American Association teams that would beat Minnesota, or Wazzu, or Duke, or Vanderbilt, or Kansas, or Syracuse this year (just to be ecumenical about conferences). That proves nothing about the CAA beyond that some major conference teams blow.
I had, and have, two basic points. The first is that the MAC really, really sucks. Sagarin has the MAC as the 11th best conference in college football (not counting "independents", who are also better), better than the Sun Belt and worse than the I-AA CAA. The MAC has gone 3-20 against BCS competition and 2-10 against the Big Ten. This is a relatively permanent state of affairs. No MAC team has beaten a Big Ten team that finished the season over .500 since 2003, and that's not going to change this year. If the Sun Belt did not exist--and it shouldn't, if not for clever accounting by the NCAA--the MAC would consistently, year after year, be the weakest conference in I-A.
My second point is that there is no team in the MAC that is consistently good enough that it could regularly compete in the Big Ten. That's fuzzy, so let's try to define it further; there is no MAC program that could average three wins a season over a decade in the Big Ten. Take any program in the MAC over any 10-year stretch over the past two decades. Maybe you could strain a muscle trying to prove that Central Michigan could, but remember, the best CMU teams during that period lost to Purdue three times during a 13 month stretch. NIU certainly could not have done so, and remember, it was unconscionable NIU boosterism that prompted all of this.
I don't hate the MAC. I thought Temple would beat PSU. I thought NIU would beat Minnesota. Etc. Also, I don't know what would happen if some MAC team actually became a Big Ten team and received Big Ten revenue, recruiting, etc. I'd assume they'd be something like Indiana as a worst case scenario and Purdue as a best case scenario. Such a team would, at some point, compete well in the conference and have surprise seasons. That is also true of SIU and every school though, and thus unexceptional.
Finally...wait a second, who is taking shots here? Some asshole with a College Napoleon Complex spent the majority of last year reminding me of how much Illinois sucks, how NIU was clearly a better program, and how he would be willing to give Dr. Ken points (seven of them, IIRC) last offseason for the game. Illinois won by six, with the result that close only because Jerry Kill had an endgame strategy designed to keep the game close, rather than try to win. That asshole isn't here, I notice. Now, for some reason, I'm also supposed to also take up the mantle of the Fighting Brewsters? No thank you. My sad-sack uncompetitive program ran the ball down the fucking throat of your sad sack uncompetitive program, despite starting a freshman in his second ever I-A game at QB and having lost most of their secondary to injuries over the first two weeks. And I didn't say a word, because Illinois is supposed to beat NIU. Illinois always beats NIU.
_________________
Fire Phil Emery
|
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
).
