With the addition of high-powered offenses in former Pac-12 schools, the Big Ten has to evolve.
Luke Fickell wants Wisconsin to reach the College Football Playoff and win a national title, and to do that, the Badgers have to evolve.
"I wanted to be innovative," Fickell said."If you really want to win on a continued basis, you have to grow and change."has succeeded with a modern offensive attack, much of the rest of the league remains old-school. The Big Ten is a place where punting is an art form and the forward pass is often viewed with the same skepticism as a new cryptocurrency.
"There were times where it'd be fourth-and-1, and we didn't get it," Fickell said,"and I'm thinking, 'S---, if we did it like they've been doing it here for the past 25 years, we would've gotten it.'" In the process, Wisconsin might be offering a window into a new era of Big Ten football. It's the canary -- or the badger -- in the coal mine, as the conference prepares for a brave new world of offensive football.
Ohio State has averaged more than 41 points per game in the playoff era and posted a Big Ten-best 115-15 record. The rest of the league has approached things differently. As a group, the other 13 Big Ten teams have averaged just 26 points per game over the past 10 years, with Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern and Rutgers among the lowest-scoring programs in college football in that span.
And none of this is inherently bad. The Big Ten's defenses routinely rank among the best in the nation. Of the 11 Power 5 teams to win at least nine games while averaging fewer than 26 points per game, eight are Big Ten programs. Michigan won a national title last year with a first-round draft pick at QB who completed just 10 passes in the championship game win over Washington.
Of course, the harsh weather of the Midwest is a challenge for high schools, too, which translates into a different recruiting pool.Big Ten country has been known as a hotbed for big bodies -- stout tailbacks and hulking O-linemen -- while suffering a dearth of skill talent. The schools, as a result, have built their offenses around the raw material available to them.
Just look at Ohio State, the exception to every Big Ten rule over the past 20 years. The Buckeyes have played a wide-open offense, and they've recruited exceptional talent on the line of scrimmage and at the skill positions. They've pulled big men from the Midwest and receivers from Florida and California. They do it all, so they can recruit anyone. They recruit everyone, so they can do it all. It's a self-referential blueprint that Wisconsin wants to follow, too.
Perhaps this is the true end game of this new era of Big Ten football -- not so much a full transition into Big 12-style passing attacks, but a blend of flavors that mixes the intricate design of Riley's USC with the brute force of Iowa's power run game. It's a common refrain among the disruptors of the Big Ten. They're not so different, really. Fisch notes that at Arizona last season, his QB was under center more than any Big Ten team but Iowa. Riley points out that during his tenure at Oklahoma, they ran the ball better than nearly anyone.
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