Monday, December 13, 2010

Big Ten Logo, Divisions and Trophies fiasco

The Big Ten issued its new logos, Football Division names and trophies today.

The public opinion is less than favorable.

Stifled Chirp
Nice division names, there, . Sounds like a strip-mall sports bar in Peoria.

jesus, the logo may be worse than the division names.

Dave Presser
Ironic how the divisions are labeled "Legends" and "Leaders", neither of which apply to the administrators themselves.

Alex Cohen
Legends and Leaders? Come on now. I feel like I'm looking at something out of Summer Camp Color War.

Carolynn Boeh
why the hell is a trophy named after a Univ. of Chicago coach who coached 78 years ago? fail

Ryan Gray
does Mich have to remove the line "leaders and best" from The Victors since they are apparently "Legends" and not "Leaders"?

I haven't heard or read much favorable response to anything announced today.

I understand what they tried to do with the trophy naming - give each school somewhat equal representation. But when M and OSU have won or shared 42 & 35 title respectively (in 115 conference seasons) yet are represented on only 9 of the 36 trophy slots.

Coach of the year - not named for Yost and his 10 titles, Williams or Bierman from Minnesota and their 8 & 7 titles; Illinois Bob Zupke and his 7 titles... but Stagg from Chicago - a school that dropped football in 1939 and Paterno with 3 titles. There are 20 other coaches with 3 or more titles including Gary Moeller, who managed 3 titles in just 5 years (8 total). I get it that he's the all-time leader in victories, but not in the conference. Northwestern has as many conference titles as PSU since they joined the conference in 1993.

Offensive MVP - Otto Graham and Eddie George. Ugh! OK so Graham is fine, I guess, you're looking for another NU representative but Eddie George gets picked over other (IMHO - more deserving) OSU representatives like Hopalong Cassady, Troy Smith or Vic Janowicz. Not to mention players form other schools who aren't on any trophy - Tom Harmon, Bruce Smith or Elroy Hirsch...

The overall by school breakdown has:

OSU 5
Michigan, Wisconsin 4
Illinois, MSU, PSU & Purdue 3 (two of Purdue's 3 are on the same trophy)
Indiana, Iowa, Northwestern 2
Chicago, Nebraska 1

I am totally biased on this, but I think Michigan is under-represented on these lists. I think it is ridiculous that in choosing the stupid Leaders and Legends divisions, they didn't put M in the leaders division...

I think the conference has given too much lee-way to Penn State over the years and they continued in this effort - you could argue the new logo uses their colors! Ted Kwalick on the best TE trophy? His record against Big Ten schools was 0-1. I doubt he could have made that much of an impression in a 42-8 loss to Michigan State...

1 comment:

  1. Blah logo, ugly colors. They can't make up their minds if they are celebrating the Big Ten history or the history of the current teams. Using 2 names per trophy is kindof annoying.

    I'm counting the QB trophy as one for Michigan (Brian Griese).

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