Meet The New Pac-10

I don't think anyone's picked up on this distressing nugget of news yet, but it's pretty stark. When I was previewing Michigan State I ran my eye across the vast array of stats provided by the Big Ten website and found this in the "conference only" section:

TOTAL DEFENSE            G  Rush Pass Plys Yards  Avg  TD Yds/G
---------------------------------------------------------------
1. Ohio State..........  8   646 1523  525  2169  4.1  12 271.1
2. Penn State..........  8   948 1595  573  2543  4.4  16 317.9
3. Michigan............  8  1167 1868  568  3035  5.3  18 379.4
4. Michigan State......  8  1567 1670  536  3237  6.0  31 404.6
5. Iowa................  8  1018 2292  627  3310  5.3  21 413.8
6. Purdue..............  8  1389 2047  618  3436  5.6  22 429.5
7. Minnesota...........  8  1478 1986  563  3464  6.2  31 433.0
8. Indiana.............  8  1715 1821  583  3536  6.1  35 442.0
9. Northwestern........  8  1699 2062  642  3761  5.9  28 470.1
10.Wisconsin...........  8  1917 1913  613  3830  6.2  28 478.8
11.Illinois............  8  2090 1909  601  3999  6.7  46 499.9

Great googly moogly! The horrendous, Jaren Hayes-featuring Michigan State defense was the fourth best in the conference despite yielding over 400 yards a game! "Three yards and a cloud of dust" was more like six and change. Exactly three teams could be described as "not total crap" with even the slightest degree of accuracy, and one of them was Michigan's totally mediocre unit. The mind boggles. The national rank (in yardage) of each Big Ten defense over all games:

Damn Good

5. Ohio State
12. Penn State

Middling To Bad-Ish

36. Michigan
67. Iowa

This Fortune Cookie Says "Onside Kicks Are Your Friend"

87. Michigan State
90. Minnesota
92. Wisconsin
93. Indiana
100. Purdue
115. Illinois
117. Northwestern

(I totally should have saved "great googly moogly" for this bit. Er, how about...)

Sweet fancy Moses! What happened? Some hypotheses:

• The sudden spread-happiness of the Big Ten increased the efficacy of previously inept offenses like Indiana and Illinois. Meanwhile, its tendency to lengthen the game with scads of incomplete passes gave their defenses even more chances to play matador.
• Laurence Maroney and Brian Calhoun.
• Generally solid defenses like Iowa and Wisconsin were gutted by graduation; Purdue's usually decent unit was caught up in the team-wide Boiler implosion.
• Ancient quarterbacks. Every team outside of Indiana and Illinois started the year with an quarterback with at least a half-dozen games under his belt.
• Jim Herrmann.

Maroney, Calhoun, and Herrmann are gone, but the only quarterbacks on their way out are Michael Robinson, Brandon Kirsch, and Brett Basanez, and Kirsch lost his job at midseason anyway. No team has decided to abandon the spread. The two defenses that were actually good lost nine (OSU) and seven (PSU) starters. It's unlikely that any of the bottom-feeders miraculously find some backbone. All signs point to it raining touchdowns in the Big Ten next year.