Every year during both football and basketball seasons, there seems to be a debate as to whether the Big Ten is the best and deepest conference in existence.
In the sport of wrestling, there is no debate.
Currently, five Big Ten teams are ranked in the top 10 in the Intermat wrestling poll, with No.1-ranked Minnesota leading the way.
The conference is also home to six-time defending NCAA Champion and No. 3-ranked Iowa, who won all but two of the NCAA titles in the 1990s.
In addition to Minnesota and Iowa, the other Big Ten schools ranked in the top ten are Michigan at No. 5, MSU at No. 7 and Illinois at No. 8. Four more Big Ten teams - Ohio State at No. 11, Penn State at No. 21, Indiana at No. 22 and Wisconsin at No. 23 - are ranked in the top 25.
There are several factors that contribute to the Big Ten’s dominance, including a greater commitment by all the schools to hire quality coaches, MSU head coach Tom Minkel said.
“If you look at the credentials of the coaches in the Big Ten, it’s amazing,” he said. “The national champions, the Olympians, the all-Americans - it’s a remarkable group of coaches and I think that’s translated into a remarkable conference for wrestling.”
“It’s without a doubt the strongest conference top to bottom of any conference in the United States.”
Minkel, who is in his 10th season as the Spartans’ head coach, said the road to MSU becoming a premier team starts with climbing to the top of the ladder in the Big Ten.
“To win the Big Ten, you also have to be competing for a national championship - it’s one in the same,” he said. “Our mission everyday is to move to the top. If we move to the top of the conference, we’ve also moved to the top of the nation.”
Minnesota head coach J. Robinson, who is in his 15th season with the Golden Gophers, said the influx of younger coaches throughout the past 10 years has made the Big Ten a deep conference.
“When you have solid competition everywhere, it makes it a premier conference,” he said. “You know whoever you wrestle each week is going to be good.”
Robinson said wrestling such top-notch competition every week makes a team much stronger when the NCAA tournament rolls around.
“It makes you tougher,” he said. “The better the people you wrestle are, the better you’re going to be at the end.”
John Fuller, a writer for www.intermatwrestle.com, said the reputation the conference has in all sports is what allows the Big Ten to lure the best wrestling prospects to their schools.
“I think the major reason is the name of the Big Ten, the prestige and the history the conference has,” he said. “When kids come out of high school that’s something they consider.”
Another factor in why the Big Ten is so strong is because of the number of wrestlers that teams in the conference are allowed to send to the NCAA Tournament.
In wrestling, the NCAA determines how many wrestlers a conference can send to the tournament based on a formula that includes its size, how many past all-Americans and NCAA champions the conference has produced and how many highly ranked teams the conference has.
Since the Big Ten is one of the largest conferences in the NCAA, has had so many all-Americans in recent years and has seen Iowa turn the NCAA into their own personal sideshow, it was allocated 72 individual spots for this year’s tournament.
“I would personally say the Big 12 is the best conference pound for pound, but they don’t have the numbers to compete with the Big Ten,” Fuller said.
Despite Iowa’s dominance over the past couple of decades, Fuller said other teams have emerged to establish parity in the Big Ten and could soon displace the Hawkeyes from its current throne atop the conference.
“Teams like Illinois, Michigan and Michigan State have really started getting into the mix and making a name for themselves,” he said, adding Minnesota and Illinois have established themselves as the conference’s recruiting powerhouses.
“It’s not a race for No. 2 in the Big Ten anymore.”
