Ohio State looks to redeem Big Ten in Big Easy

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Jim Tressel and Bobby Petrino dutifully posed in front of the Sugar Bowl trophy Monday, forcing smiles and mumbling a few pleasantries to each other while the cameras clicked away.

Surely there was no mention of what happened on New Year's Day.

That would have wiped the grin right off Tressel’s face.

The Big Ten is still stinging from an embarrassing performance on the first day of 2011, when its teams put up an oh-fer in five bowl games. Making matter worse, three of those defeats came against the Southeastern Conference, the other half of that perennial debate over where they play the best college football: the North or the South?

No. 6 Ohio State can soothe some of the sting by winning Tuesday night’s Sugar Bowl against eighth-ranked Arkansas in yet another Big Ten-SEC matchup.

Tressel would prefer not to put the entire conference on his team’s back, especially since the Buckeyes (11-1) have never won a bowl game against an SEC team in nine previous tries.

“We always say if you ever want to become the best, you play against the best,” said Tressel, who has an 0-3 bowl record against the SEC in his decade as the Buckeyes’ coach _ including back-to-back losses in the national championship game.

There’s little doubt the Big Ten is feeling a bit of inferiority complex against the SEC, which already has claimed an unprecedented four straight national titles and has shot at making it five in a row when Auburn faces Oregon in the BCS championship game next week.

Ohio State will be the final Big Ten team to play this season, relegated this time to one of the BCS backup games. But there’s always a bit of a subplot when these two conferences get together.

They are the two richest football-playing leagues, rolling in dough from lucrative television deals. For at least the past two decades, they’ve ranked 1-2 in attendance, so there’s clearly no lack of passion on either side. And, of course, the regional debate over who’s the best has raged for much longer than that, a latter-day civil war played out every Saturday from Ann Arbor to Tuscaloosa.

This past Saturday, it was all SEC.

Alabama blew out Big Ten co-champion Michigan State 49-7. Mississippi State routed Michigan 52-14. Penn State was the only team to put up much of a fight, but the Nittany Lions fell to Florida 37-24. For those who can’t get their hands on a calculator, that’s an average margin of 31 points.

“I didn’t really see many of the games,” Tressel said. “Obviously, I saw the results. Does it add something more to our challenge? I don’t think so. Arkansas is enough of a challenge on its own. What someone else did or didn’t do is probably going to have very little effect on how we do against Arkansas.”

Still, he’s certainly aware of his personal record against the SEC.

“I’m not tired of hearing about it,” Tressel insisted. “It’s a reminder to me of just how good the SEC is in football. We are playing another great one in Arkansas.”

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