Big Ten’s title hopes take hit with Badger loss

Wisconsin was looking like the Big Ten’s best bet in the BCS championship race. Now, the conference appears to be looking in from the outside.

The Badgers tumbled eight spots to No. 12 in the AP poll after losing 37-31 to Michigan State on a 44-yard touchdown pass at the end of Saturday’s game, leaving the Big Ten with no undefeated teams.

Ohio State coach Luke Fickell insisted a team from the league can still make the BCS title game.

“I think you’re going to see the balance of this conference,” he said Tuesday. “It’s happened several times here in the past few years, and there’s a good chance it could happen again this year. It’s a part of the game. It’s a part of showing there’s a lot of great teams in this league.”

Other than the 2006 and 2007 Ohio State teams under Jim Tressel, no conference program has played in the BCS title game, and the Buckeyes got blown out by Florida and LSU.

The Big Ten has been a spectator since then and the picture isn’t promising at the moment.

With byes this week, No. 1 LSU and No. 2 Alabama will go into their showdown Nov. 5 in Tuscaloosa with perfect records and almost certainly as the nation’s top two teams. The next four teams in the AP poll — Oklahoma State, Stanford, Boise State and Clemson are all unbeaten. So are No. 10 Kansas State and No. 18 Houston.

Michigan State is the highest-ranked Big Ten team in the BCS standings at No. 11. The Badgers are No. 15, Michigan is No. 18 and Penn State is 19th.

So the Big Ten will probably need some help.

Don’t forget, though, that it now has a title game. That could provide a boost in a year where everyone in the conference has at least one loss.

“I think there’s great football played in this conference, and I do think that having a 13th game, where that eventual champion would beat another football team with a lot of wins, is going to give their power rating a big boost and maybe that can happen,” Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio said. “But I guess it’s dependent on what everybody else does as well.”

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