It is a tough road in the Big Ten East for programs like Maryland and Rutgers. And the same can be said for Big Ten West teams looking to challenge and make the conference championship game.
So says ESPN analyst Greg McElroy this week when answering a question on his podcast. McElroy tackled a question from a Minnesota fan who was wondering if this is the last legitimate chance for the Golden Gophers to make the Big Ten Championship Game.
With the Big Ten set to scrap divisions, it no longer means that the Big Ten West champion advances to the conference championship game. Now, the talent-landed Big Ten East might book both spots in Indianapolis.
McElroy, a former Alabama quarterback who played several seasons in the NFL, is the king of meanderingly nuanced answers. It is a wonderful skill set in a day and time when opinions are rarely shaded with any context.
And McElroy didn’t disappoint in his answer about the erasure of Big Ten divisions and what it means for the Big Ten West.
“I think as you move forward, it’s going to be more difficult – far more difficult – to win a conference championship than it is to get in the College Football Playoff,” McElroy said on his ESPN podcast.
“We’re going to a 12-team playoff and that’s going to happen sooner than later. We’re going to be there in two seasons. It’s going to be here before you know it and things are going to look very different.
“I think every job in the Big Ten West got more difficult and every job in the Big Ten East got easier. For instance, Maryland became significantly easier. Wisconsin became significantly more difficult. Doesn’t mean it’s not a great job, it means your job became tougher because your path to a conference championship no longer goes through Iowa, Purdue and Minnesota.
“Now your path to a conference championship goes through Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State and any of the aforementioned teams that might have been in your way in the past. It used to be that when the Big Ten West was not great, there were many years when they really weren’t really great. It was the lesser of many evils that is who got to the conference championship game. Same thing, for a long time with the SEC East.”
McElroy’s points are certainly rational. The Big Ten West is historically the weaker conference, having lost every conference championship game since the switch to geographic divisions in 2014.
The three prior years of the conference championship featured two divisions: ‘Leaders’ and ‘Legends’:
“If you look at just how all of these conferences have been structured…the Big Ten originally tried ‘Legends’ and ‘Leaders’ to try to balance out…because geographically you couldn’t balance it out. It wasn’t going to happen – eventually, they got to the geographical divisions because ‘Legends’ and ‘Leaders’ was so ridiculous that you just had to abandon that immediately,” McElroy said.
“So they decided to go East versus West. And unfortunately for those that are in the East, it became incredibly difficult…Unfortunately, I’m looking at you Maryland, I’m looking at you Rutgers. I’m looking at you, to a certain extent, Michigan State and obviously Indiana.
“You break it down East versus West, you have really three traditional and historically significant programs in Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State. Michigan State has been very significant in the last two, maybe three decades or whatnot. But for the most part, over the course of time, they would be number four in the division.
“Either way, think about how good Michigan State is and how difficult it would be to navigate that path on a year-in, year-out basis. Why do you think they’ve fallen on occasional hard times? Because anybody would if you had to run up against the brick wall that is Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State.”