Sports Then and Now

The Big Ten enlarged to 12 teams starting in 2011.

The Big Ten Football Conference is dramatically changing its landscape for the 2011 season.

The addition of the Nebraska Cornhuskers brings about a division of teams into two leagues and a conference championship game for the first time in the history of the Big Ten Conference.

The Divisions:

Legends: Iowa, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska and Northwestern

Leaders: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin.

Each Big Ten team plays eight conference contests including each team in their respective division plus three conference games outside of their division, crossover contests.

Totally each team in the Big Ten plays twelve games starting on September 3, 2011.

The season concludes with the Big Ten Championship game played on December 3, 2011 in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium.

While most pundits haggle over the names selected, the division of the teams seems equitable to most.

As the 2011 season looms on the horizon here is a first glimpse of the season ahead in the newly aligned Big Ten Conference.

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Mark Herzlich at the 2011 Senior Bowl.

If you pay attention to College sports, then you would be hard pressed to remember a more turbulent year than 2010.

Cam Newton’s recruiting scandal was as big of a story in 2010 as his play on the field, in which he led the University of Auburn to the National Championship.

Ohio State’s scandal where five starters were involved in trading autographs for free tattoos resulting in a 5 game suspension that will begin with the first 5 games of the 2011 season.

Reggie Bush returned the Heisman for receiving improper benefits while he was a player at USC dominated the college sports headlines in the first half of 2010.

Meet Mark Herzlich, linebacker for Boston College, and the definition of what a College Athlete should represent.

At a time when many top tier college athletes are mired in recruiting scandals, Mark Herzlich stands out and not just for the reason you may think. Mark Herzlich is not just a top tier linebacker many experts feel will go in the early rounds of the NFL draft, but Mark is also a cancer survivor and his story has been an inspiration to many.

Mark was recruited by several top programs, including Johns Hopkins University to play Lacrosse, which Mark also excelled at while in High School. Lucky for the maroon and gold, after originally committed to play football for the University of Virginia, Mark later changed his mind and decided on Boston College.

As a freshman at Boston College, Mark made an immediate impact, starting all 13 games in 2006. In 2007, Mark finished second on the team in tackles, leading Boston College to the Champs Sports Bowl on defense. By the end of the 2008 season, Mark’s Junior year, Mark became the team leader in tackles, won the ACC defensive player of the year, was listed on many all American teams and was a finalist for the Butkus award, the award given for the nation’s top college linebacker. Mark had become one of the nation’s elite line backers, and was the top linebacker in the ACC, a BCS conference. The future was bright for Mark as he was heading into the end of his Junior year preparing for a much anticipated Senior campaign that would no doubt propel him into the first round of the NFL draft.

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The Texas Longhorns will get even more exposure in the future following their deal with ESPN.

I don’t mean to sound flip or disrespectful, but I was shocked and bewildered when I heard the news that the University of Texas is partnering with ESPN to create a specific television network that will be “All Longhorns, All the Time.”

While it left some of us scratching our heads, obviously more than one person at ESPN thinks this opportunity is as primed for success as a Texas oil mine because they are going to pay the University $300 million over the next 20 year for the right to help develop, launch and operate the network.

The network will include one exclusive UT football game each year (pretty good bet it won’t be UT-Oklahoma) as well as eight men’s basketball games and women’s basketball games that are not televised elsewhere. The rest of the programming will be a combination of Olympic sports, coaches’ shows for every UT program and other campus programming including visiting speakers, lectures and commencement.

I understand that UT is the largest university in the second most populated state in our wonderful country.  However, I can’t believe there are that many people outside of Texas that are really going to be interested in watching the UT men’s tennis coaches’ show or who will be waiting with baited breath to watch a women’s soccer game on a Thursday evening.

It sounds wonderful if you are one of the 48,000 students at the school, approximately 450,000 alumni, or even the 25 million residents of Texas, but what about the other 283 million people who live in the United States and don’t bleed UT orange?

Because it isn’t even like the athletic programs at Texas are all national powers with high-profile superstars and national championships coming out of their ears.

The national championship won by UT in men’s swimming and diving in 2009-2010 was the first by the university since they claimed the football and women’s indoor track & field during the 2005-2006 school year. Read the rest of this entry →

Hayden Fry began his coaching dynasty at Iowa in 1979.

Iowa has been skirmishing with Nebraska since 1891—mostly on the gridiron.

For the time being, we will forget about the Iowa-Nebraska legal border battles over land left in dispute by the meandering Missouri River. That is another whole story.

Since the two schools began competing, Nebraska has built a double-digit lead over Iowa (26-12-3). It is especially galling to the Iowa faithful that the Hawkeyes have defeated the Cornhuskers only once since 1946.

Fans feel their Iowa football team has played the role of punching bag way too often in this rivalry.

At least there were long periods of time when the Hawkeyes did not have to play their Missouri River border rivals. But that will all change very soon as Nebraska joins Iowa in the Big Ten Conference as a member of the “Legends” Division—more on those unfortunate division monikers later.

The first 10 games played between Iowa and Nebraska were held in the Omaha-Council Bluffs area, with Iowa winning four outright and tying the Huskers twice.

Iowa and Nebraska, along with Kansas and Missouri, were members of the Western Interstate University Football Association from 1892-1897. Iowa’s conference associations varied until it joined the Big Ten Conference in 1899.

Since Iowa lost to Nebraska in its first home contest held in Iowa City in 1903, the wins against the Cornhuskers have been pitifully few. Playing intermittently, the Hawkeyes scored victories in 1918, 1919, 1930, 1942, 1943 and 1946 as non-conference opponents.

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Even losses by a number of prohibitive favorites and the New Year’s Day Debacle by the Big Ten couldn’t derail the Sports Then and Now Zultan as he completed the 2010 season with a strong showing in the second annual Sports Then and Now College Football Bowl Challenge.

The Zultan posted a solid 15-10 bowl record, including a 3-2 record in BCS games.

A large field of would-be prognosticators struggled against the challenge of bowl season. The large number of early upsets made it tough for some challengers to get a solid start to the season. Overall, more than half the participants in the bowl challenge finished with a losing record.

Surprising losses by Nebraska, Missouri, Clemson and South Carolina along with poor performances by one-time “big boys” Miami, Georgia and Georgia Tech was difficult to overcome.

Then there was the abysmal New Year’s Day performance by the Big Ten. Many contestants were blindsided by the five losses suffered by the conference on that single day.

Miraculously, there were nine who overcame the odds to post a better record than the Zultan.

Leading the way was Martin Oravets (Sheffield Lake, OH), Michael Wilson (no city given) and Duane Bowers (Dallas, TX) with 18-7 records. Eric Stipp (Dublin, OH) and one unnamed participant finished with a 17-8 record and Angie Webb (Norwalk, IA), Thomas Cornelis (Washington, DC), Dallas Palmer (New Virginia, IA) and Morgan Brazitis (Wilmington, DE) posted marks of 16-9. The winner of the $100 PayPal gift certificate was Duane Bowers.

All who participated in the Bowl Challenge were entered into a drawing for one of three $15 iTunes gift cards. The winners of those prizes are Faron Hall (Sierra Vista, AZ), Karen Clark (Redfield, AR) and Diane Boettcher (Lawrenceville, GA).

Special thanks to our Zultan for another great year of reading the tea leaves and predicting the college football winners. Only the Zultan knows if he will continue to share his wisdom next year, but be sure and check back in late August to find out.

Freshman Herschel Walker rushed for 150 yards and two touchdowns to lead Georgia to victory over Notre Dame in the 1981 Sugar Bowl.

It is hard to believe that it has been more than 30 years since we were introduced to perhaps the best college football player of all-time. During his three seasons at the University of Georgia, Herschel Walker was in a class by himself as the prototype running back in college football.

As a freshman during the 1980 season, Walker burst on the scene with 1,616 yards rushing (5.9 yards per carry) to lead a Georgia team that had been 6-5 the previous season to a perfect 12-0 record and the first national championship for the school since 1942.

In the Sugar Bowl on January 1, 1981, Walker rushed for 150 yards and two touchdowns as the Bulldogs held off Notre Dame 17-10 to claim the national title. Other notable members of head coach Vince Dooley’s squad included quarterback Buck Belue, future NFL wide receiver Lindsay Scott and freshman defensive back Terry Hoage (who blocked a key kick early in the contest).

Over the following two seasons, Walker rushed for more than 3,600 yards as Georgia lost just one regular season game and won 18 straight SEC games to claim three straight league titles.

They went undefeated during the 1982 regular season as Walker was named the winner of the Heisman Trophy. The Bulldogs lost a chance at the national title with a 27-23 loss to Penn State in what would be Walker’s final collegiate performance.

Surprisingly, it would be 20 years before Georgia would claim another SEC Championship and they have yet to win another national championship.

Walker left following his junior season for the USFL and rushed for 5,562 yards in three seasons in the league. In 1985, he set the all-time professional football record for rushing yards in a season with 2,411 yards in 18 games. Read the rest of this entry →