Twenty-six college football seasons ago, mighty Michigan won all the marbles. Actually, that’s incorrect; the Wolverines shared the marbles — the still-mythical national championship — with Nebraska, then the powerhouse of the Big 12. It was the final season before the onset of the Bowl Championship Series, and things still could get muddy at the top. One team, with the best defense in the land, won the Rose Bowl to finish 12-0; the other, with the most unstoppable rushing attack on the planet, won the Orange Bowl to finish 13-0. To Splitsville, they all went and celebrated.
But what a team, those Wolverines. Lloyd Carr gobbled up all the national coach of the year awards. Charles Woodson broke ground as a Heisman Trophy-winning defensive superstar. Sophomore quarterback Tom Brady was so clearly bound for greatness, he watched from the sideline while Brian Griese directed an offense that didn’t have a 1,000-yard rusher or a receiver with more than 404 yards, yet never screwed the proverbial pooch.
Anyway, that was a long time ago. Would you believe it remains the only national title for Michigan — the school with the most wins in history — since 1948?
Michigan badly needs another one Monday night against Washington at NRG Stadium in Houston — for the 100,000-plus strong who show up to Michigan Stadium during the fall, for Jim Harbaugh and arguably the finest coaching staff in the college game, for J.J. McCarthy, Blake Corum, Mike Sainristil and all the team’s stars. If it drives Wolverines haters a little batty, all the better.
The Big Ten needs it, too. In football — and in men’s basketball — a conference that loves to bill itself as the very best in the business has had nowhere near enough championships in either sport to back up that claim.
It has been an interesting journey — an often unsatisfying one — over recent decades for the Big Ten. Penn State has been mostly quite good, though far from great, in football since debuting as the league’s 11th member in 1993. Nebraska has been an all-out disappointment in football since making it 12 in 2011. Maryland and Rutgers, newbies in 2014, set about adding what has been little to be remembered in either sport. The additions next school year of Washington, Oregon, UCLA and USC presumably will accomplish more than stretching the word “Ten” even further beyond credulity, but what about dancing under College Football Playoff confetti and cutting down Final Four nets?
Because that’s what this is about.
Michigan’s shared title was followed by 16 seasons of the BCS, an often controversial system under which the two teams rated highest by a combination of computer rankings and human polls played for the championship. Only once in all that time did the Big Ten come out on top, when Ohio State’s 2002 squad pulled off a major upset of Miami. The 2006 and 2007 Buckeyes lost to Florida and LSU, respectively, as the SEC — which would win seven straight titles — began to assert itself as a league unlike any other.
Ohio State upset Alabama and then Oregon in the first College Football Playoff, capping the 2014 season, and made it back to the finale in 2020 — led by quarterback Justin Fields — before losing to Alabama. That sums up the Big Ten’s participation in championship games since Michigan last won it all: a 2-3 record by the Buckeyes. No other Big Ten school has sniffed success or failure on the ultimate stage.
Meanwhile, the SEC has piled up 15 national titles — shared by six schools — since the dawn of the BCS. Even without Alabama’s peerless contributions, the SEC still would have nine titles; three for LSU, two apiece for Florida and Georgia, and one each for Tennessee and Auburn. Again, a league unlike any other.
And then there’s basketball. Since Michigan won the football title in 1997, there has been only one Big Ten natty on the hoops side — Michigan State’s in 2000.
Since the Spartans shot down Florida in Indianapolis, seven Big Ten teams have played for the championship and all seven have gone down in tears. Indiana lost to Maryland — then of the ACC — in 2002. Illinois lost to North Carolina in 2005. Ohio State lost to Florida in 2007. Michigan State lost to North Carolina in 2009. Michigan lost to Louisville in 2013. Wisconsin lost to Duke in 2015. Most recently, Michigan — after ending Loyola’s run in the semis — lost to Villanova in 2018.
So, yeah, finish the job against Washington on Monday? For the Big Ten, it would beat the heck out of continuing to be the Washington Generals.
As long as we’re mixing football and basketball in the same pot, do we dare imagine a world in which Michigan wins it all and then Purdue hoops — currently ranked No. 1 for the third straight week — does likewise? The Big Ten hasn’t won both titles in the same school year since 1940 (Minnesota football) and ’41 (Wisconsin basketball).
