It matters when Ohio State and Michigan play
To paraphrase an old joke, the Big Ten never needed to create a championship game because it already had one: the Ohio State v. Michigan game. Thing is, that’s not a joke. And it’s also the biggest reason to keep The Big Game the way it always has been- once a year, at the end of the regular season.
While Big Ten officials decide how to configure the new-era Big Ten, rumors have surfaced suggesting that OSU and Michigan might end up in opposite divisions. This would allow for the possibility of the two schools to meet up in the official Big Ten Championship game, but might also mean that the regular season matchup might move earlier on the schedule.
The response from many fans has been negative. For the most part, the gnashing of teeth has consisted of emotional pleas to preserve the pageantry and tradition associated with the game. Ramzy at Bucknuts and Dan Wetzel at Yahoo wrote two great columns representing this viewpoint. But some, like Spencer Hall at SBNation, are not persuaded by the “It’s tradition, dammit!” argument. Spencer is right that tradition alone is no argument against progress. Furthermore, the Big Ten Championship game is a positive step forward for the conference. But there’s more to The Big Game than just tradition. No offense to everybody else, but there are national implications whenever Ohio State and Michigan play.
In fact, since 1935 (when the game moved to the last week of the regular season), OSU and Michigan have played for the Big Ten title 22 times, and the game has had a direct impact on determining the conference champion an additional 25 times. The Big Game is the biggest rivalry in college football, but not because of the bands, stadiums, hatred, coaches, or the weather; every rivalry has those (to a certain degree). It’s the biggest rivalry because The Big Game has that, plus major consequences.
Adding the Big Ten Championship game diminishes the OSU v. Michigan rivalry (regardless of configuration) because it takes away some of those consequences. And that’s fine. A conference championship game is great progress for the Big Ten. But to keep the rivalry as strong as possible, it needs to keep as much of its national relevance as it can. The best way to keep the game relevant and important? Play it at the end of the year, and play it once.
The biggest games of the season (in American team sports) are the ones at the end: conference championships, playoffs, bowls. Why? Because it takes a while to figure out who the best teams are (i.e. you have to play the games). In addition, we also tend to view seasons as journeys: some teams start strong and fade, some start slow but recover, others dominate throughout. Interestingly, there is empirical research that suggests we view the beginning of the season differently than we view the end. Specifically, our opinion of teams tends to solidify as the season goes on. So what better way to differentiate between two teams at the end of the season than with a head-to-head matchup?*
* The three-way tie between Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas Tech a few years back is the perfect example of how late-season head-to-head matchups influence us (rightly or wrongly). Texas beat Oklahoma early, and then Texas lost to Texas Tech a little bit later. But Oklahoma beat Texas Tech last, and that victory is what led voters to rank Oklahoma ahead of the other two schools (and ultimately, what helped them reach the BCS title game). Had the order of those games been different, the outcome would likely have been different. Because there was no easy way to distinguish between the schools, voters put the most emphasis on the last game of the three.
In addition to being the last game of the regular season, OSU v. Michigan has to happen only once. One of the arguments for creating the possibility of an OSU v. Michigan rematch is that “if one is good, then two is better.” This isn’t necessarily true. First, if OSU and Michigan really are such behemoths that they need to be in different divisions, then a regular season matchup would render the rivalry irrelevant, because presumably both teams would win their divisions anyway, and then the championship game would be a winner-take-all affair. A game of reduced importance will result in reduced ratings (if you disagree, let’s put it this way- the ratings for that game wouldn’t be higher than they were before).
Second, the Big Ten championship game is going to be a draw anyway (or at least as far as anyone can predict the future, it will be). It’s hard to believe that an OSU v. Michigan rematch would be so much more compelling than any other potential matchup that it would be worth rendering the regular season game irrelevant. The Big Ten Championship is going to be THE BIG TEN CHAMPIONSHIP (whether or not OSU and Michigan are playing in it). If your conference is popular enough to own its own television network, then you don’t need OSU v. Michigan to draw in viewers for your championship game. (The ACC, however, is a different story.)
In addition, college football seasons are very short, in terms of trying to figure out who the best teams are. If one of the goals for the conference is to find the team with the best shot of winning a National title, then a rematch game likely wouldn’t tell you as much as a game against a different team. In a rematch scenario, either you find out something you already knew (if the same team wins twice), or that you know nothing (if they split). Once is enough.
So since the presence of a Big Ten Championship game has already diminished The Big Game, let’s try to preserve as much of the importance of the OSU v. Michigan rivalry as we can, by making it the de facto Big Ten Semi-Final game. Because let’s face it, the way these two programs are headed, a mid-season OSU v. Michigan game might one day become the Homecoming game for Tressel and Co.
