Bigger Ten

So now we know what the Big Ten Conference's best month is, football-wise.

It's December.

You know, that month when they play all those fruit/car care/financial institution bowls, and the Big Ten gets to play the schlubs from all those other sorry conferences.

In case you missed it last night, Wisconsin gave Miami a head start and then smacked it upside the head in the Orange Bowl, and Penn State knocked off Washington in the Fiesta Bowl. (That these bowls, plus the Cotton, should rightly be played on New Year's Day instead of several days before is another Blob discussion for another day. But the universe is out of round when those games aren't on New Year's Day, and traditional second-tier dreck like the Peach, Citrus and Outback are.)

Anyway, Wisky won and Penn State won, and the night before (in the Cotton Bowl) Ohio State laminated USC, and that means the Big Ten is 7-0 in bowl games. Which suggests something a lot of us have suspected all along, which is that it was a better conference this year than the over-hyped SEC.

The SEC had Alabama, Georgia and Auburn, and after that it was Mediocre City. The Big Ten, outside of maybe Ohio State and Wisky, didn't have a 'Bama or Georgia, but it did have Michigan and Michigan State and Penn State and, occasionally, Iowa. Plus a vastly improved Purdue program. Top to bottom, it was a far tougher go than the SEC was.

As it's proved in December. Or at least has seemed to.