Blue White Illustrated

And the Cornhuskers aren't the only West Division team that appears to be on the rise. Purdue is coming off its first winning Big Ten season since 2006 and recently fended off an attempt by Louisville to poach its much-in-de- mand coach, Jeff Brohm. At Minnesota, P.J. Fleck has his team poised for a turn- around after winning four of six to end the 2018 season. The Boilermakers and Gophers don't have Nebraska's history, but they appear pointed in the right di- rection, and every little bit helps. "I think the West has gotten a lot bet- ter," said Fleck, who is preparing for his third season in Minneapolis. "You look at the coaches who have been hired. Scott Frost at Nebraska and seeing what they're doing in recruiting right now and the elevation of that program in- stantly, you can just feel that coming. … And you look at what Jeff Brohm has done at Purdue and elevating that pro- gram on a national stage and the things they were able to do last year. Most all of the Big Ten West teams have been able to elevate that. We feel like we're a part of that, as well." Fleck cited recent recruiting gains that West Division programs have made. As of mid-August, there were three Big Ten West teams among the top 30 in the Rivals.com team rankings for the Class of 2020: Iowa at No. 22, Min- nesota at No. 23 and Purdue at No. 29. "We feel like we're breaking bound- aries and knocking walls down in terms of recruiting the Twin Cities area, maybe doing things that haven't been done before," Fleck said. "The lifeline of your program is recruiting, so we have to be able to do that." But those rankings also showed that the Big Ten's Eastern bloc probably isn't going to fade anytime soon. While the West had three teams in the top 30, the East had three in the top dozen. Ohio State was third, Michigan sixth and Penn State 11th. If those rankings look much the same in February, they will be another coup for the East and another hurdle for the West to overcome. That's been a recur- ring theme, so maybe it's not so sur- prising that Big Ten West coaches have been looking to turn the division's per- petual underdog status into an advan- tage. Pat Fitzgerald, who coached Northwestern to a division title last year, said he urges his players to use the rankings and statistical analyses as mo- tivational fuel. "The West gets knocked. I enjoy it," Fitzgerald said. "That's what I tell our players, enjoy it. You've got to go out and earn it on the field, and that's what makes our game so great. We'll just continue to do that and control what we can control. But yeah, it's always fun to read this time of year how we stink. I should actually get better at golf be- cause I don't know why I coach. I should just golf." Fitzgerald's program received a big boost last year in the form of a 500,000-square-foot indoor practice facility. At $270 million, the Walter Athletics Center is the most expensive practice facility in the Big Ten. Its glass walls offer sweeping views of Lake Michigan, a visual that none of the Wildcats' conference rivals can match. But to Fitzgerald, the building's most enticing view is of the program's future. He said the new practice facility shows that the university and its supporters are firmly committed to taking the foot- ball program to another level. Said the coach, "If year one was a Big Ten West championship, I look forward to year two." For Northwestern and its West Divi- sion cohorts, that next step will be to win a Big Ten title. And that will likely mean defeating one of those perennial East Division powers, teams that have plenty of resources of their own, as well as the kind of history that no amount of money can buy. This year, the best of the traditional powers may well be Michigan. Har- baugh said in July that his team "is in a really good place." It often is. And the Wolverines' continual success high- lights the true nature of the challenge for the West. The division may be on the move, but it's not as if the East is stand- ing still. ■ P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L >> Big Ten's nine-game schedule sparks debate I n December 2011, the Big Ten and Pac- 12 conferences announced that they had formed a multiyear partnership in which their members would face each other in football and other sports. Hailed as an innovative alternative to the waves of conference expansion that were re- making college sports, the partnership was set to pit every Big Ten football team against a Pac-12 opponent annually dur- ing the nonconference season. But the ex- citement turned out to be short-lived. By July 2012, the agreement had already fallen apart. Scheduling con:icts and re- sistance from several Pac-12 schools tor- pedoed it 9ve years before the 9rst games were to be played. But while the partnership itself never came to fruition, the impact of its collapse is still reverberating, and not just around the Big Ten. As the league strives for a re- turn to the College Football Playo;, a place it hasn't been since Ohio State made the four-team 9eld in 2016, one of the domino e;ects of that failed partnership with the Pac-12 has become the subject of considerable debate. One way or another, Big Ten o

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