The Clemson football team will take on Ohio State in the CFB Playoff. Here are four reasons the Tigers would love a Big Ten schedule.
Throughout the entire 2019 season, we heard analyst after analyst talk about the Clemson football schedule.
The Tigers didn’t measure up well when you look at strength of schedule and it’s very clear that the ACC was down immensely from where it has been in the past.
However, it’s a bit ironic that Clemson football will matchup with Ohio State in the first round of the CFB Playoff.
For the entirety of the season, we’ve had to hear about how the Buckeyes were the ‘most complete team in College Football.’ According to many analysts, Ohio State faced a gauntlet of a schedule with powerful Big Ten teams like Penn State, Michigan and Wisconsin, all of which are fairly highly-rated.
While there’s no doubting that the Buckeyes may have played a bit more difficult schedule compared to Clemson, the bias in favor of the Big Ten was absolutely deafening throughout this season and, honestly, unwarranted.
Here are four reasons Clemson football would excel greatly with a Big Ten schedule, maybe even more so than in the ACC.
4. The bottom is weak
I know people want to talk about the ACC and how bad it was this year, but at least the conference isn’t absolutely bottoming out like the Big Ten- and other Power-5 conferences, as well.
The Big Ten has teams like Maryland (3-9), Rutgers (2-10), Purdue (4-8) and Northwestern (3-9) rounding out its bottom half. Even middle of the road teams like Nebraska (5-7), Illinois (6-6) and Michigan State (4-5) aren’t impressive.
While the conference may have some solid teams at the top, there’s certainly no depth and that bottom is as bad as any conference in the country, including the ACC.
3. Inflated rankings
Here’s an area that the ACC certainly doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.
We’re not hear to argue that the ACC is equal to the Big Ten this year. There’s no doubting that the conference was awful, but what we are here to argue is that the Big Ten thrives because of inflated rankings.
Because teams like Michigan and Wisconsin were ranked highly in the preseason, they get the benefit of the doubt when the CFB Playoff rankings are released.
Do you really think Clemson would be afraid to play Michigan, Penn State or Wisconsin? Those games wouldn’t even be close.
But if the Tigers had those programs on their schedule, they’d all of a sudden have ‘quality wins.’ We all know that the Big Ten outside of Ohio State is overrated and none of those teams would even put up a fight against Clemson football.
2. Too much talent and depth
You may ask ‘why wouldn’t they put up a fight?’
Well, the answer is two-fold and it begins with this reason No. 2: Clemson just has too much talent and depth.
The Tigers are among an elite group of programs that just have more talent and depth than basically any of their opponents. You can see how this played out this season.
The talent-level between Clemson, Ohio State and LSU compared to the rest of the country is absolutely recognizable.
Honestly, the drop-off between the No. 3 team in the country and the No. 5, 6 or 7 has never been greater and that would play out if the Tigers played in the Big Ten, just as it did with Ohio State this season.
1. The Big Ten is archaic
Finally, the Big Ten- outside of Ohio State- is still playing a brand of archaic football and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
While the Buckeyes have transitioned to more of a spread attack and have athletes to fit in that system, the rest of the conference just doesn’t.
The Big Ten is still playing this boring brand of football and it doesn’t take long to watch a game between two teams in that conference and figure that out.
The speed sideline-to-sideline is not the same.
While there’s plenty of physicality, the athleticism is still not present. It’s slowly getting better, but the entire conference is lightyears behind the Buckeyes at this point.
If you put Clemson football against those opponents, the Tigers would have no trouble marching towards 13-0, but they’d have the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the CFB Playoff committee. It seems like the best of both worlds.