It's never late enough in the season for Big Ten football coaches to make a prediction.
While the first Bowl Championship Series standings, released yesterday, have four Big Ten teams in the top 15 -- Ohio State is ranked sixth, Purdue is eighth, Michigan State is 13th and Iowa is the last team in at 15 -- very few coaches were willing to make a guess as to their team's post-season destination.
"I don't take a look at that stuff too much," said Michigan State football coach John L. Smith. "If we can be the strongest conference in the country that's what we want. We want to be as good a football team as we can be and as good a league as we can be and where you end up is where you end up."
The current projections give the Big Ten more than double the number of teams of any other conference in the BCS top 15. The SEC, Big East, Pac-10 and Big 12 all have two member schools ranked in the first poll.
Those rankings don't necessarily equate to being the top football conference, however. Big East representatives Miami and Virginia Tech, ranked second and third, respectively, giving the dissipating conference the only league with two teams in the top five.
Early standings often have little relevance to the final results, a point emphatically emphasized by several coaches yesterday. Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr said that while it's too early to draw any broad conclusions, having four teams in the top 15 of the BCS standings speaks to a quality that makes the conference unique.
"The strength of this conference, in my judgement, is one of the things that makes Big Ten football so special because it's extremely competitive week-in and week-out," Carr said. "I don't look at it as any kind of negative. The truth is it's very difficult for anybody to go undefeated in today's football. We had a team that did it last year [Ohio State] and I think that spoke to the fact that it can be done."
Push 'em back
Experiencing a resurgence under Smith, who is in his first year with the Spartans, No. 11 Michigan State has righted a team that ranked 110th nationally in rush defense and 96th in scoring defense in 2002. This year, the Spartans are 13th and 27th in the respective categories and sit atop the Big Ten with a 7-1 overall record and a 4-0 conference mark.
The improvements, however, haven't been as forthcoming when it comes to penalties. After averaging 62.4 penalty yards a game in 2002 -- the third-worst mark in the Big Ten -- the Spartans are last in the category this year, averaging 10 penalties for 86.1 yards a contest.
"I guess they're throwing more yellow on us than the other guys," Smith said. "I think if you take a look at Florida State, who has won the ACC for year after year after year, they're probably the most penalized team in league. Maybe aggressiveness or maybe it's being dumb. It's one or the other."
This season, the 6-1 Seminoles are averaging just over six penalties for 64.4 yards per game, making them the third lowest in the nine-team ACC.
