Posts tagged Bmibth at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

The phrase "three yards and a cloud of dust" was coined to describe Big Ten football, and it's still a fairly apt description of the conference's beefy, run-first mentality. That is not to say, however, that the forward pass is still a novelty in the Big Ten. Indeed, some pretty good quarterbacks have come out of the conference. A guy in New England comes to mind, for instance.

There was one particular day, though, when everything truly went berserk. That day was November 8, 1980. On that Saturday afternoon, the Big Ten's record for the most passing yards in a single game was broken not once but twice. In fact, not only was the conference's single-game passing record broken, so was the NCAA's. Even more improbably, two other national passing records were broken that day, though not by Big Ten quarterbacks.

Was there something in the air that day? Well, duh. Footballs were in the air. Everywhere.

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

ABOVE: This plaque at Kinnick Stadium depicts Nile Kinnick's game-winning touchdown run against Notre Dame in 1939.

When Nile Kinnick graduated from the University of Iowa in 1940, he held three great distinctions. He was the student body president, he held a Phi Beta Kappa key, and he was the reigning Heisman Trophy winner. The last of these is the least relevant to understanding who Kinnick was.

It's not that he wasn't a tremendous football player. Hearing a description of his 1939 season is like reading one of those lists of Chuck Norris facts, except all this stuff actually happened. He played all but 18 minutes of the entire Hawkeye season. He was responsible for 16 of Iowa's 19 touchdowns, passing for 11 and running for 5 more. And those 11 touchdown passes came on only 31completions.

Kinnick wasn't just the Heisman winner in 1939; he was also named the AP's Male Athlete of the year. He beat Joe DiMaggio for that honor in a year Joltin' Joe hit .381. That's how good Nile Kinnick was.

For all he accomplished on the field, however, the real legacy of Nile Kinnick is found elsewhere. It's a story both inspiring and heartbreaking, one filled with what John Greenleaf Whitter called the saddest words of all: "It might have been."

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

There are a lot of firsts and onlys on this list, but this one surprised even me. Only one Big Ten team has ever won back-to-back Rose Bowls, and it didn't happen way back in the 1950s. In fact, it happened less than ten years ago. When the Wisconsin Badgers won in 1999 and 2000, they became the first and so far only Big Ten team to do so.

Now, it's important to remember that prior to the early 1970s the Big Ten had a rule forbidding any team from going to the Rose Bowl in two consecutive seasons. Once that rule was lifted, Ohio State went to Pasadena four straight years (1973 through 1976) but only won once, in 1974. Not to be outdone, Michigan then went to, and lost, three straight Rose Bowls themselves. Throughout the 1980s no Big Ten team would make consecutive West Coast swings. Michigan split their 1993 and 1994 Rose Bowls, but it looked as if no Big Ten team would ever win the thing in back-to-back years

But they didn't count on ... one man.

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

ABOVE: Spartan Stadium in East Lansing hosted the 1966 Game of the Century.

Any game which matches the #1-ranked team against the #2-ranked team will almost inevitably be called a 'Game of the Century.' It seems like there's a GotC every three to five years or so. But the 1966 game between Notre Dame and Michigan State was among the very few that actually managed to live up to their billing, and it's a sign of this game's signficance that it's still controversial forty-two years later.

This was a #1 v. #2 game, but it was not so clear which team was #1 and which was #2. The Spartans and the Irish were both ranked #1 in one poll and #2 in the other. Coach Duffy Daugherty's Spartans were the defending national champions. Neither team had lost. To to it all off, it was the last game of the season for the Spartans, and they knew it. Big Ten rules of the time prevented any team from playing in back-to-back Rose Bowls, and from playing in any bowl other than The Grandaddy of Them All. Notre Dame had one game left against Southern Cal, but that would be it for them as well. The Irish didn't accept any bowl bids until 1969.

So, with the two teams so evenly matched, something had to give. Right?

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

There ought to be a unit to measure cockiness in athletes. There should be some means of comparing one athlete's self-confidence with another's. Yes, there should be such a unit, and if there ever is, it should be called the Howard. One Howard would be equal to the amount of cockiness displayed in the photo above, the infamous moment towards the end of the 1991 Ohio State-Michigan game when Desmond Howard struck the Heisman pose, knowing--knowing--that he had just locked up the award.

I remember seeing this moment on live TV. At the instant Howard struck his pose I had never admired nor loathed an athlete so much. He was arrogant, and he was right. Howard didn't just win the 1991 Heisman, he claimed it. Howard scored 138 points for Michigan that season, becoming the first receiver ever to lead the conference in scoring.

It wasn't just what Desmond Howard did that earned him the Heisman, though. It was how he did it. He caught 61 passes for 950 yards that season. That's more than respectable, but those aren't dizzying numbers. Last year Texas Tech's Michael Crabtree caught 134 passes for 1,962 yards. Crabtree even outdid Howard in touchdown receptions, 22 to 19. But did you catch something in those numbers?