There are three big reasons the Big Ten teams tend to play that style. One, the weather up here can be pretty shitty during conference play in a way that the other conferences don't have to deal with. You'll notice that the MAC schools also tend towards the running game. Two, the high schools produce kids that fit such systems. Ohio is the gem of Midwest recruiting, but our biggest schools aren't great compared to the south and California. What we do have is a wealth of lower division schools that could go toe to toe with similarly sized schools anywhere. A lot of these schools play defense and hand the ball to the fullback. They are also predominantly white. The third reason is that everyone else plays that style of football. Those modern play styles aren't magic bullets. Michigan tried to go to the spread and failed magnificently. Small and fast is great for a bowl game, but eight games of getting punched in the mouth is hard to get through. Matching up against the SEC doesn't matter if you lose your conference games. Oregon's fancy offense sputtered out against Ohio State and Stanford, which looks a lot like a big ten team. Alabama plays defense and runs the ball. They just have NFL caliber players. Ohio State and USC and Texas run pro-style offenses because they can get pro-style players. It's not like Big Ten teams don't mix things up. Josh McDaniels wanted Kyle Orton because he played in the spread at Purdue. Antawn Randall El played QB at Indiana. Northwestern has done some nifty things with Kafka/Persa/Kolter. Minnesota's biggest problem is a lack of in-state talent plus not being good enough to woo kids from out of state. Their best player in recent history was a white receiver that no one else wanted.
Not Big Ten but this is interesting. http://espn.go.com/college-sports/s...heels-dispute-internal-study-athlete-literacy
Not really interesting I would say so much as standard. There are kids out there that have been getting rubber stamped through school since preschool just because someone found out they were fast.
Anyone else a little surprised the lowest percentage comes from the Pac 10+2? My uneducated assumption is the majority of those schools have fewer 'student athlete' majors than other conference schools. Also, could the number of players declaring early for the draft be enough to affect the percentages in any meaningful way?
He'll with USC calling that conference home, I'm surprised its that high. Stanford can only do so much.
I'd imagine you have schools like Cal, USC, UCLA which are challenging academic schools that don't have the strict admissions standards for athletes like Stanford. So you have marginal students entering good schools without a major like basket weaving, and graduation isn't then a forgone conclusion.
Yes, its also hard to tell how meaningful that stat is without other information. Who are the people leaving early? Where are they going? Were they drafted? Or did they just drop out?
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/4/10/5594348/college-football-bag-man-interview" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.sbnation.com/college-footbal ... -interview</a> This is worth a read, I think. Pretty dirty, but interesting.
Really interesting article. It just makes the amateur status people like to throw around even more laughable.