This is an opinion piece.
The NFL of college football. That was the phrase of the day Wednesday at Big Ten Media Days. Those were the curious words Nebraska coach Matt Rhule chose to describe a conference that’s now so vast it needs two Hollywood Squares grids of three down and three across to fit the logos of all 18 members.
Mock that classic game show flashback if you like, but it fits. Hollywood is now in the Big Ten footprint.
Rhule, playing the good corporate/conference soldier, said he believes the Big Ten should get four teams in the new 12-team College Football Playoff every year “because this is the best league. This is the NFL of college football, in my mind. It stretches from coast to coast, different time zones, different weather.”
That sound you heard in response was the rolling thunder of laughter from every corner of SEC country. I’m picturing SEC newbie Barry Switzer cackling so hard he doubled over.
It’s almost too easy to flag Rhule for excessive celebration, to harpoon his hyperbole while explaining the elementary concept that “biggest” does not equal “best.” Consider the national championships earned by the current conference rosters during the 26 years of the BCS and CFB Playoff.
SEC: Eight of the league’s current schools won 17 titles.
ACC: Three of its current schools won five titles.
Big Ten: Three of its current schools won four titles.
That’s it. That’s the list. The imbalance tilts even more dramatically in this direction when you take into account the NFL Draft, where the SEC collectively has had the most players selected overall for 18 straight years. Sharing the actual numbers would be considered piling on and giving the Big Ten the business.
By comparison of any relevant on-field measure, despite Michigan’s unfamiliar stature as the reigning national champion, the Big Ten is more like the UFL of college football.
Perhaps realizing the absurdity of his claim as the words rolled trippingly off his tongue, Rhule added, “That’s not to diminish any other league. The SEC is amazing.”
Not to diminish Rhule’s fervor, but there’s a far more interesting way to look at what he said that goes beyond demolishing his credibility on the subject of conference strength. It’s the superlative he chose. As a standard of excellence in the sport, the NFL certainly qualifies, but ask yourself this: Why would any conference want to be known as the NFL of college football?
The more the college game comes to resemble its professional counterpart with inevitable and overdue “innovations” like the adoption of free agency and the approval of direct player compensation, the more critical it becomes for college football to protect the pillars of its unique identity.
The tether to higher education. The ties that bind a fan to a school. The traditions that never grow old.
Greg Sankey gets it. The commissioner said something at SEC Media Days to demonstrate his grasp of what should be obvious but too often gets lost in the sport’s mad scramble for more cash.
“We know who we are,” Sankey said. “We’re the one conference at this level where the name still means something.”
While the numbers no longer add up in the number conferences and the geography is all over the map in the directional conferences, the 16 SEC schools live in 12 contiguous states. They do stretch somewhat beyond the traditional boundaries of the Southeast but not by an obscene distance. Like, say, the 2,848 miles a Washington fan would have to drive to watch the Huskies play Big Ten opponent Rutgers in New Jersey in September.
In that sense, Rhule was smart to cite land mass as a common thread between the Big Ten and the NFL. Fun fact: Fourteen of the 18 Big Ten schools live in a state that at least one NFL team also calls home. Or 15 if you include Rutgers. New York is in their names, but the NFL’s Giants and Jets play their home games in New Jersey.
Meanwhile, only seven of the 16 SEC schools share a state with the NFL. In just about every city, county, hamlet and holler in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Carolina, college football is the big game in town.
So maybe Rhule was right, though in a way he didn’t intend. In so many ways, from geography to style of play to general monotony, the Big Ten really is the NFL of college football. That is one title the SEC should have no desire to take for itself.
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