In the Big Ten, State wins the numbers game
Michigan State waited years to get into the Western Conference, and it can only be counted as a good thing that in 1953 the membership finally got around to admitting the Spartans as the 10th member. The sad truth is that if State were not in there right now holding up the conference honor a lot of people would be saying Big Ten football was slipping. People are saying that anyway—but not out loud in East Lansing, where somebody like Bubba Smith would sit on them if they did. Bubba is 6 feet 7, weighs 278 pounds and plays various parts of the defensive line, sometimes simultaneously, for Michigan State, and he has been known to boggle opponents just by standing quietly at the door of their locker room with his arms crossed and his gaze fixed.
Bubba Smith and his headstrong friends on the Michigan State defensive team sat on a few who tried to run the football for the University of Michigan last week at East Lansing. So successfully daunted were the Wolverines that Quarterback Dick Vidmer filled the air with passes—47 in all, two short of the Big Ten record—in an approach to offense that used to be called the P.S. (for panic-stricken) plan and got, in this case, the predicted result: Michigan State won easily, 20-7 as Vidmer completed only 17 passes in a game played viciously and also sloppily (eight fumbles, 13 penalties). The game showed again that, besides awesome Michigan State and possibly Purdue, there is not a lot to brag about in the Big Ten these days.
The Big Ten has troubles, my friends, troubles right there in Iowa City, Madison, Champaign and Bloomington, and all the Midwest is atwitter over them. The troubles go like this: while Michigan State is crunching rival Michigan in a league game on Saturday, league-member Wisconsin is out being crunched by Nebraska of the Big Eight 31-3. Spread that over the past three weeks and what used to be an exception—a Big Ten team losing—becomes a regular embarrassment. Two weeks ago Big Ten teams lost five out of six games against teams from the great outside.
Wisconsin's loss Saturday was the 14th for the Big Ten in 25 nonconference games this fall. Not since 1939, when it broke even in 24 games (plus a tie), had the Big Ten failed to finish above .500 against outside competition until it went .500 last year. As late as 1960 the record was 19 victories, two losses and two ties.
The slip began a few years ago, but it did not begin to show until recently. In the last four years the Big Ten has gone from 15-7 to 14-10 to 13-13 (excluding ties) and now to 11-14. By contrast, the Southeastern Conference, which has for some time played the best football with the best-coached teams (a prominent Big Ten assistant says that when he wants to learn something about football he looks to the SEC), has won 16 and lost 4 for the season against non-SEC teams (1-0 vs. Big Ten teams). The Big Eight is 10-8 (4-1 vs. Big Ten teams), the Pacific Coast 12-10 (3-4) and the Southwest 9-10 (2-1).
What is most discomforting, however, is the manner in which Big Ten teams have been beaten—by scores of 35-0, 24-0, 43-7, 38-3, 31-3 and 35-7. No need, either, to brag about the caliber of the opposition—there have been losses to Miami of Ohio, Kansas, Oregon State and North Carolina—and none of the 11 victories have been over rated teams. In games with the very best—Nebraska, Notre Dame, USC and Florida—the Big Ten has lost five out of five.
A number of reasons have been advanced for this morbid state of Big Ten affairs, some of them ridiculous and some of them sublime: 1) Big Ten teams do not take nonconference games seriously; 2) it is too hot in Gainesville, Fla. for a Chicago boy to play football there in September; 3) there is an ability gap, because high school football in the Midwest is not what it used to be; 4) Texas backs run faster; 5) Texas linemen run faster; 6) the Big Ten ought to get more players from Texas; 7) restrictions on numbers, scholarships, traveling squads, redshirts and academic standing combine to make the Big Ten more Ivy League than big league; 8) Big Ten schools ought to schedule Ivy League schools and drop Big Eight schools; 9) West Coast teams have a superabundance of junior college transfers; 10) they should a) build more junior colleges in the Midwest or, b) bar junior-college transfers; 11) desegregation is breaking up that old underground railroad of southern Negro talent and 12) there is, across the country, a Great Leveling Off, and no conference or team will ever dominate again.
Many Big Ten coaches have expressed their nonchalance over nonconference games (Woody Hayes of Ohio State used to call them "exhibitions"). But a loss by any euphemism is still a loss. Most Big Ten teams play three nonconference games a year. What sense does it make to sluff off 30% of your schedule? "I take them all seriously," says Michigan State's Duffy Daugherty, an advanced thinker among Big Ten coaches. Daugherty's teams since 1954 have won 29 and lost only seven in games outside the Big Ten. If he had not won his three nonconference games in 1958 he would not have won at all.
The principal points of contention for the coaches, of course, are condensed in No. 7 above. "All we want is an even break," says one who does not want to be named, "and we're not getting it now." Murray Warmath of Minnesota says he "cannot apply any logic" to rules as now outlined in the Big Ten handbook. It is a numbers game that the coaches speak of, and Daugherty and all the rest are against these numbers in the Big Ten. To wit:
SCHOLARSHIPS. Each Big Ten team is allowed 30 a year, as compared to 45 in the Big Eight and 40 in the Southeastern and Atlantic Coast conferences (actually 140 for the four classes, but they include basketball scholarships). The Southwest has an unwritten limit of 100 for four years. In actual practice the conferences are closer to being equal than ever before. Most teams keep about 100 football scholarships active at one time (between a Big Eight high, say, of 132 at Missouri and an Atlantic Coast low of 88 at North Carolina State). Michigan State at present has 107 on scholarship. Daugherty complains that he is not deep in talent after the first 22, but this is a familiar complaint since the return of two-platoon play, and most coaches would trade their first 44 for Daugherty's first 22 any day.
REDSHIRTING. The Big Ten and Ivy League prohibit the practice, and it is to their disadvantage. Others allow an athlete to complete his eligibility over a five-year period, because nowadays it usually takes the student-athlete five years to wend his way through undergraduate school. Some coaches take better advantage of redshirts than others (Alabama averages about 10 a year; Texas had nine seniors age 22 or 23 when it played—and routed—Indiana). It is more likely, however, that if a boy is good enough he will play the first three years of his varsity eligibility. The exception is the talented one who suffers an injury, and the Big Ten makes allowances for him. Michigan's Vidmer and his favorite target, Split End Jack Clancy, were both redshirted due to injuries. The secret is getting more than just a shirt out of a redshirt. North Carolina State, for instance, had 19 boys who were 21 or over for its game with Michigan State, and should have had an advantage over the comparative babies from Sparta. It lost, however, 28-10.
Scholastic requirements are close to being just and equal across the country. There are some exceptions that might pinch the Big Ten—their requirements are slightly tougher, say, than the Big Eight's, and Big Eight teams have been particularly tough on the Big Ten lately. But, as is true in all conferences that take their athletics seriously, the Big Ten will get that borderline case into school if he can borderline it from goal line to goal line in 9.6 seconds. The Big Ten's 1.7 scholastic-average requirement is negligibly higher than the 1.6 prescribed by the NCAA. But the Big Ten's 40-man limit for traveling squads (other teams begin at 44 and go as high as 55) is, although a minor handicap, absurd. Football money in the Big Ten is big money. If university officials and freeloaders want to go on football trips so badly that they limit player space, they ought to charter another plane.
It is probable that the Great Leveling Off long ago affected the high schools across the country and that that is now playing a part in the Big Ten's decline. Certainly the days are gone when a Bernie Bierman could recruit entire teams of big, tough, immobile players from within the state of Minnesota and win three national championships. High school talent in most of the Big Ten area (save Chicago and Ohio) is behind that of other areas today, mainly because of spring-practice restrictions.
So far, most of the Big Ten coaches have found the 1966 season a painful and unrewarding experience; two weeks ago Washington Halfback Don Moore gained more yards rushing (211) against Ohio State than the combined total of 190 yards gained by four Big Ten losers—Indiana (87), Ohio State (40), Northwestern (40) and Minnesota (23).
In an effort to cope Big Ten recruiters are ranging far afield, and there is no better ranger than Duffy Daugherty. On the starting Michigan State defensive team, which has intimidated quarterbacks and stifled running backs and reduced cavities four ways, there are only two players from Michigan. Bubba Smith, who tools around East Lansing in a 1966 air-conditioned Buick Electra with BUBBA on the side, just in case he might be mistaken for some other 6-foot 7, 278-pounder, came all the way from Beaumont, Texas to do his intimidatin'. Another All-America candidate, Rover Back George Webster, is from Anderson, S.C. End Gene Washington, who caught his third touchdown pass of the year to put the Michigan game out of reach, is from LaPorte, Texas; Fullback Bob Apisa, who ran for 140 yards Saturday and was the day's best back, is from Honolulu; Quarterback Jimmy Raye is from Fayetteville, N.C.
Smith, Webster, Raye and Washington are all southern Negroes who at a later date might have wound up on integrated teams at Duke or Kentucky or South Carolina or SMU. Thus will come another phase in the Great Leveling Off that will ultimately affect the Big Ten. Equality is here, and the proud old Big Ten must live with it. If Duffy Daugherty and Bubba Smith will just cooperate.
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BREAKING UP PLAY, STATE'S MASSIVE MAULERS, JEFF RICHARDSON (57) AND BUBBA SMITH, TROMP OVER BATTERED MICHIGAN LINEMEN
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DESPITE IMPRESSIVE WIN, SPARTANS' DUFFY DAUGHERTY WAS SOMBER AFTER GAME