Big Ten Offers No Holiday Joy

John Reid and his buddies throw this holiday bash every year. It always works out nice, but it’s always such a pain. They run all over the landscape from College Station, Tex., to State College, Pa., trying to line up guests.

Wouldn’t it be nice, they reasoned, if they could issue something like an automatic invitation and then just sit back?

They could get out the linens and arrange the fine china and order the poinsettias and still have plenty of time left for Christmas shopping.

And so they made exactly such an arrangement.

The Holiday Bowl, their little Mission Valley party, would fill itself.

It would, as it has all but one year, have the champion of the Western Athletic Conference. This link was already in place. One guest was assured, hopefully an attractive one.

The other guest would come from the Big Ten, traditionally the most prestigious of football alliances. The Holiday Bowl would not get the champion, of course, nor the second-place team. It would get the third-best team, but it could not possibly go wrong getting the third best among those juggernauts.

Joy to the world, sang the Greater San Diego Sports Assn., under whose auspices the Holiday Bowl is run.

Unfortunately, the GSDSA has learned that either Scrooge or the Grinch or both must live in the Midwest and haunt the hallowed halls of Big Ten football.

At least that’s the way it seems this fall.

“There was a certain assumption that it would be easier this year,” said Reid, the Holiday Bowl’s executive director. “It hasn’t been. The changes in the Big Ten are causing us some anxiety. There isn’t a clear demarcation between the haves and the have-nots.”

Correction, John, there is a clear line, but it is drawn very high in the standings. The Big Ten has the have and have-nots. It has unbeaten Michigan and then it has the next eight teams in the standings pancaked with either two or three losses.

Those Big Ten standings are a frightening sight to someone like Reid, who keeps looking for someone wonderful to emerge from that pack and take charge as the second- and third-place teams.

It has not happened.

“We’re hoping that happens every week,” he said, “but the wrong teams have been winning. We always end up back at square one.”

Some people in San Diego are old enough to remember when the Chargers were in the hunt for playoff spots in December. It became almost a game each year to ponder who had to do what and to whom to get the local heroes into the playoffs.

That’s a little bit what it’s like in the Big Ten this fall.

For the record, Ohio State, Indiana and Michigan State are 3-2 and Illinois, Wisconsin, Purdue, Iowa and, gasp, Northwestern are at 2-3. Collectively, they are second through ninth in the standings.

“An ugly word creeps up,” Reid said. “Parity.”

Or parody?

Of these teams, Michigan State, Purdue, Iowa and Northwestern all have losing records overall. Neither Michigan State nor Northwestern has beaten anyone outside the Big Ten. Michigan State could not even beat Central Michigan, the seventh place team in the Mid-American Conference, for heaven’s sake.

However, those mighty Spartans could finish third in the Big Ten.

“The keyword,” Reid said, “is that we get the third pick from the Big Ten. It doesn’t have to be the third- place team.”

In most years, that would be a significant difference. However, anyone finishing lower than third place this year could hardly be expected to have a more attractive record.

Not with this bunch.

After this Saturday’s game, for example, it is possible that six teams could be tied for second at 3-3 or five teams tied for third with the same record. And three of those teams could have losing records overall.

If the Big Ten was a beauty contest, Roseanne could be a runner-up.

Now it is important to consider another keyword for Reid and Co.

Escape.

The Holiday Bowl can advise the Big Ten that it will not automatically take its third team. Notice I didn’t say third-place team. It can opt out, but it must do so by Monday at 2 p.m. (PST).

“We could still come back and invite them,” he said, “but they wouldn’t be obligated.”

Consequently, Reid will have a very anxious weekend. He will be watching the Big Ten, hoping the standings will begin to take shape. This is called hoping against reality. And he will be sorting through all of the consortiums and alliances trying to determine who else might be available.

Indeed, the Pacific 10 might be the place to look. Maybe someone like Washington State or Arizona or Stanford might be available. But there they would be, out beating the pavement trying to line up guests again.

And there is the touchy part.

How do you make a date with such an perennially attractive partner as the Big Ten and then ask if maybe it could make it some other time?

You could start by asking it to look in the mirror.