Hlas: Big Ten football is riches and rags

No one will hold any clothing drives for Big Ten football. But to borrow from Mr. Springsteen, some days the conference looks like a rich man in a poor man's shirt.

There's so much money and clout in the league, so many people living large just by riding the conference's coattails. Yet, something seems askew.

You have Nebraska firing coach Bo Pelini after yet another season of at least nine wins because those wins haven't included the ones Nebraskans most wanted. And, because Nebraska wants to be old Nebraska again, though it hasn't been old Nebraska in well over a decade and isn't likely to be again given the differences in college football then and now.

Nebraskans are most incensed over getting humiliated by Wisconsin at the 2012 Big Ten title game and again in Madison last month. Wisconsin, the boss of the Big Ten West, didn't look too bossy at last Saturday's Big Ten championship when it lost 59-0 to Ohio State. Then, its coach skipped out.

Two years ago, Bret Bielema left Madison after winning the Big Ten title. Last week, Gary Andersen fled Wisconsin. They ran away to ... Arkansas and Oregon State?

Meanwhile, storied program Michigan is looking for its third different head coach since bidding adieu to Lloyd Carr in 2007. The Wolverines, in this age of a mediocre Big Ten and watered-down nonconference schedules, couldn't as much as get to bowl-eligible this season.

Michigan, once one of the top five programs in America, is 46-42 over the last seven years.

Penn State? Forget the off-field nightmare of a few years ago. On the field, the once-mighty Nittany Lions are going to the Pinstripe Bowl. Enough said.

Not that all is cheery in Iowa City.

Meanwhile, Urban Meyer's Big Ten regular-season record at Ohio State is 24-0, which doesn't shine a lot of hope on the rest of the conference. Meyer's third-string quarterback, Cardale Jones, looked a lot better in his first career start than the experienced quarterbacks of Big Ten New Year's bowl teams Wisconsin and Minnesota did in late November.

But then you have the Big Ten-champ Buckeyes going toe-to-toe with SEC-champ Alabama in the playoffs, and the Crimson Tide are 9.5-point favorites. You can't be blamed for wondering if Ohio State is in the playoff instead of Baylor or TCU because of its name more than its body of work.

As for point spreads, you would think the following is borderline impossible: All 10 of the Big Ten's bowl teams are listed as underdogs by at least 2.5 points. It's not as if each of the 10 opponents are Alabama.

There won't be a sweep, of course, and you might do pretty well for yourself if you bet on all 10 underdogs with the points. But also know the Big Ten is 11-21 in bowls over the last four years. That isn't a new phenomenon. The league is 39-62 since the 2000 season.

Then there's television. The Big Ten Network gives its member schools enough money to build libraries made of platinum. But the games the nation watches the most come from elsewhere.

Of the 10 most-watched college games this season, six involved teams from the SEC. Four were ACC matchups, counting Notre Dame-Florida State. No Big Ten team was in any of them.

Well, maybe Ohio State will do to Alabama what it did to Wisconsin and reverse the Tide, so to speak. But a tide is a hard thing to turn.