Well it appears that all seven bowl-eligible Big Ten football teams will indeed be bowling this winter as we identified in the Big Ten Bowls post yesterday. But the big question is where will Michigan be spending there days in early January. Last Saturday I posed the question How can the loser of this game NOT be #2? on the Big Ten Fans football forum.
With USC currently #3 in the BCS behind Michigan at #2, but only percentage points behind, the talking heads of college football are saying that if #3 USC defeats #6 Notre Dame on Saturday night they will jump Michigan into the #2 spot. But let's take a look at Michigan and USC:
- Michigan's only loss on the season was to #1 Ohio State by a score of 42-39. USC's only loss was to a solid Oregon State team that is 7-4 on the season. While Oregon State (OSU) is a strong team this OSU is not in the same class as the clear-cut #1 OSU from Columbus.
- As #3 USC prepares for #6 Notre Dame, remember that Michigan played the Irish earlier this year and thumped them 47-21 in South Bend. While this game will be a road game for Notre Dame, anything less than a 26-point blowout win by USC will, at least in my mind, not be enough for USC to deserve to surpass Michigan.
So I think it is clear where I stand on this topic. Heck, if Notre Dame can pull off the mild upset this may not even be an issue. But when you compare these two teams side by side I think that the Big Ten does indeed have the two best teams in the nation in 2006.
Michael Shull, a native of Ohio, has been a fan of Big Ten football for over 25 years. Shull grew up following both Ohio State and Michigan very closely as well as the 6 Ohio MAC schools. Shull is a guest writer for both BigTen-fans.com and the highly-respected MAC sports fan site VanDelaySports.com.
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