Back in 2009, Big Ten football coaches took a vote to decide who would get the conference's Rose Bowl bid should all the tied teams have the same overall record and not played head-to-head.
↵The vote was 10-1 in favor of the current system that gives the Rose Bowl bid to the highest ranked BCS team. The lone dissenter? Michigan State's Mark Dantonio.
↵↵↵"It was a 10-1 vote, you know who voted against it," Dantonio said. "You’re looking at him."
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Perhaps it was a little bit of foreshadowing of the BCS mess that was to come. MSU would have made the Rose Bowl under the old system, which eliminates the team that made the Rose Bowl most recently. That would have meant Ohio State, which defeated Oregon last year, was out. MSU would have then won the tie with Wisconsin due to their 34-24 victory over the Badgers.
↵Dantonio didn't understand why the coaches wanted to depend upon computers and voters to make the decision for them, a sentiment that is shared by many who dislike the BCS system.
↵↵↵Dantonio said he voted against using BCS rankings because he doesn't believe the Big Ten should "outsource" such decisions to voters and computers. He thinks the Big Ten should take its own vote in situations like this."That’s the thing that’s frustrating," Dantonio said. "Because I thought we had that power as a conference, and we chose not to do that as coaches."
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Dantonio said he just wanted a little more respect for his club. The Spartans finished 11-1 and won a share of the Big Ten championship for the first time since 1990, just the seventh time the program has been able to call itself "champion."
↵↵↵"I’m not saying we deserve absolutely to be in (the Rose Bowl)," he said. "But I’m just looking for a little more consideration. ... Why not us? We've come the farthest way. We got a great story to tell. "I’m not trying to dis any of the other (Big Ten) programs. I'm just looking for a little respect, you know? Let’s just talk about it a little bit, let's weigh in on the conversation instead of just saying it’s a done deal."
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