Accountability is for losers

I read something yesterday, while browsing through the Ohio State blog diaspora, that irked me. Basically, a fan of some other Big Ten team - I know not which nor do I really care to know - left a cheap shot comment at the end of a fairly good post  (one about basketball, even) that basically read:

Don't go and embarrass the conference in the Rose Bowl again.

Ex-squeeze me? Bacon powder*? The last time Ohio State trekked out West to The Granddaddy of 'Em All, this happened:

*yes, it is 1992 again

Let's see how the rest of the Big Ten has fared since:

No, really, you guys have done a wonderful job of defending the conference's honor while we were away. Now, quick: which one of you named a horse as consul?

Alright, I'll come clean: typically, I'd dismiss the above comment as typical internet trolling designed to get a rise out of people, and that's probably all it was. I'd ignore it entirely if I didn't think it was emblematic of a larger, ignorant thought process (and if I wasn't desperate for bowl break non-basketball content).

Here's the meme, and I'm sure Buckeye fans are quite familiar with it: Ohio State's twin title beatdowns are the sole source of the conference's current woes vis-a-vis national reputation. 41-14 and 38-24, as haunting as they are for Buckeye fans, are far more grating to other Big Ten schools, who feel they should not be punished for Ohio State's faceplants. They are correct in this assertion; it's ridiculous of the media to assume that because Ohio State stunk up the field against Florida and LSU, Penn State and/or Iowa would automatically do the same against a similar caliber opponent. The frustration that flows naturally in multiple Big Ten fanbases from this "glass ceiling" of what Big Ten teams can and cannot do is understandable, but to say this situation is entirely the fault of Ohio State is ludicrous. There are other obvious factors affecting the conference's reputation, and other guilty parties in this whole fiasco.

• First, Big Ten "heavyweight" teams and their staff are partially blame for letting this crap happen in the first place. If the Buckeyes are so easily beatable - so "overrated" as many BXI partisans frequently claim - why is it that Kirk Ferentz, Joe Paterno, Lloyd Carr, and insert-BXI Coach Of The Year-candidate-here  can't just figure out a way to put away the Buckeyes for a season or so on anything approaching a consistent basis? And why is it that, when they finally do, these coaching staffs can never put together a gameplan that will "SAVE THE CONFERENCE'S NATIONAL REP" by actually winning the damn Rose Bowl, or any other BCS game for that matter? (For the record, no one game is ever going to SAVE THE CONFERENCE'S REP, but that's another discussion for another time)
  

• The conference as a whole is decidely down. Can this be argued? We're talking about a conference that has fielded six-to-eight bowl teams consistently over the past decade, yet hasn't gotten more than three wins out of field since 2002. There are many reasons for this, which would take another post or eighty to sufficiently analyze, but the facts are the facts: this is not an elite conference. It's probably not even all that close, either. But Ohio State owns it nevertheless, having won it ouright or shared the title five times running, and make no mistake: it is the powerhouse, with more NFL draft picks, more award winners, and more current national prestige than any other Big Ten program you care to name.You simply can't fault Ohio State for taking care of business; we're trying our best to overcome the conference's Charmin state by scheduling a genuine OOC foe or three over the next few years, but beyond that, it's not like we're going to willingly tank and let someone else plow through the third-worst conference college football has to offer.
• I touched briefly on this earlier with respect to the Rose Bowl in particular, but Ohio State isn't the only team with OOC trouble. Michigan, of course, lost to Appalachian State. Michigan State got rolled by Cal, as did Minnesota. Iowa lost to Western Michigan at home. Minnesota lost to North Dakota State at home. Penn State never schedules anybody. Alright, that's not fair; they scheduled Oregon State and beat them convincingly, and that probably stands as the conference's best regular season OOC win since Ohio State's win at Texas in 2006. Nevertheless, it's not like Ohio State is failing massively on the grandest of stages while the other Big Ten schools are uniformly taking care of business. Life's tough all over, folks, and I don't think things aren't getting better any time soon, with Minnesota putting their 2010 and 2011 dreams out of their misery early by scheduling USC, and Penn State taking on behemoth Alabama teams over the course of the next few years. Perhaps the Nittany Lions will take steps toward redeeming the conference in Tuscaloosa, but with a first-year starter at quarterback, another questionable secondary and quite a bit of NFL defensive talent likely gone after this year, I wouldn't count on it.

I suppose it's an issue of how these complaints about Ohio State are framed. I agree wholeheartedly that labeling conference teams as "unworthy" of the title game due to Ohio State's bowl game shenanigans is bullshit of the highest order and that any media outlet that peddles such garbage should be burned to the ground. I do not agree, however, that Ohio State is the sole reason this shit is happening. We certainly helped, but, like any good clusterfuck, everyone has had a hand (or... something else) in this. Even if you want to say Ohio State is responsible for most of the Big Ten's problems, you must do so under the assumption that a tree fell on Penn State last year in the Pasadena and nobody heard it, or that hardly anyone watched a top-5 Michigan squad lose to an FCS power at home. (ed. note: I suppose that "hardly anyone" actually watched that Michigan game, given that it was on BTN and no one likes to subject themselves to the sports broadcast equivalent of waterboarding, but people saw the highlights on ESPN and everyone heard about it seconds after the final blocked field goal. Semantics.) Just in case it's still unclear, under no circumstance am I alleging that Ohio State is a) faultless, or b) more or less to blame for the conference's present reputation than anyone else. As I said, we've all had a hand in screwing up what we had, and we're all going to have a hand in putting it back together.