A Nebraska writer thinks the Cornhuskers were ‘slumming in the Big Ten West’

There are legitimate discussions to be had about why the West struggled since its inception. Nebraska’s fall is part of that discussion.

The arrival of 2024 will trigger significant shifts in the college football world.

The College Football Playoff will expand to 12 teams. Oklahoma and Texas will join the SEC, and USC and UCLA will join the Big Ten. What feels normal will no longer be; the only normalcy in the sport moving forward will be how often things change.

In our backyard, a change to note will be the Big Ten eliminating the East and West divisions and ushering in a flex scheduling model. Many of the Badgers opponents will be familiar each year. Iowa and Minnesota will remain as annual rivalries on the schedule. But the years of the Big Ten West being the conference’s laughingstock are over. There will be no more comments from the Big Ten East side of the aisle noting how much better Penn State may be than the West’s winner.

There are legitimate discussions to be had about why the West struggled since its inception. The division never won a Big Ten Championship. It obviously never had a College Football Playoff participant and the seven teams combined to go 15-57 against Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State in the divisions’ nine years of existence.

My argument would focus on the power of the name brands of Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan, the talent level at those schools and how few teams nationally have fared well against them in recent memory. But it would also note that a few bounces of the ball separated Wisconsin from winning two of those Big Ten Championships. Also, the numbers look a lot different if Ohio State was taken away (the Buckeyes dominated everybody for most of the time period). Also recall that when the division breakdown was created, Nebraska was supposed to be relevant.

That last thought isn’t shared by everybody. The Omaha World-Herald’s Tom Shatel wrote about the Big Ten’s movement away from divisions last week and expressed excitement for what Nebraska would face moving forward. Excitement seems to be shared by many stemming from every team in the conference playing more premier games every season. He included a jab at the West at the end of the thought, saying the new schedule “beats slumming in the Big Ten West.”

The general premise makes sense. Schools such as Nebraska will need to adapt and improve to not fall behind. Facing more premier teams means more opportunities to get exposed if a program isn’t up to par. That idea is part of the reason both Nebraska and Wisconsin have new coaches entering 2023.

But slumming it in the West? The division was supposed to succeed with name brand Nebraska setting the pace. It’s tough to look across the rest of the division when no program has fallen further since its inception than the Cornhuskers.

Wisconsin could argue it’s been held back by the division, as that program has won the division more than anybody else. Nebraska? The program is 47-60 since 2014 and 1-10 against Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan.

Wisconsin, Iowa and others have been slumming with Nebraska.

Now we see if Matt Rhule can save a dying brand.