The Big Ten won its first Big Ten-ACC Challenge on Wednesday. How big of a deal is this?

BOBBY: As far as the national perception of the conference? I don't know. It's a bigger deal to me, as a fan, to see it finally happen. Would I rather see the Big Ten sweep the SEC in bowl games? Yeah, that'd probably be more satisfying, but, I mean, the Big Ten was 0-10 going into this year's challenge. We were basically flat-lining.

I've had a checklist for two-ish years of five random things I want to see happen in sports, and the Big Ten winning this challenge was actually on it (the others: someone breaking DiMaggio's 56, 16-over-1 in NCAA tourney, any non-Dolphins NFL team going 19-0, a running back gaining 300 yards in an NFL game).

I'm still not even over how the Big Ten victory actually went down. It had to be a final score 6 to 5 -- the slimmest possible margin. It had to be Duke losing its first ever game in the challenge to an unranked Wisconsin team. And, of course, it had to include my two favorite teams -- Iowa and Michigan -- each losing by single digits at home.

Maybe not the "shot heard 'round the world," but I'd like to think the Midwest and East coast are at least paying a little attention.

RICKY: The answer, I believe, could depend on your age.

I wrote about how fantastic this Big Ten triumph is yesterday at Full Court Press. The third comment read: "?????????????????????????????
BOBBY: A quick hit on national perception: "The Big Ten must have a pretty good league this year," said my editor, a George Washington graduate who also moonlights as a Florida fan, "but they did get their butts kicked for a while."

I'd imagine that sums up the outsider view, at least the gist of it.

What I'm thinking about now... as winners, does the Big Ten conference play the White Sox while the ACC plays the Cubs? Like, forgetting about national perception from people who follow unaffiliated conferences, do you think we as Big Ten fans cared way more than the ACC fans did?

Like you said, maybe it started as media hype, but as the losses piled and piled, it became about just winning the damn thing once. Now that we did, did ACC fans lose some invincibility/bragging rights this year, or was it more like "yeah, nice going, but you guys are still 1-10 all-time."

I think the Big Ten is either the White Sox (caring more while the Cubs care less while ultimately it doesn't matter in the big picture) or possibly the Red Sox post-Yankee slaying (yeah, there was tons of futility in years past, but this one thing was an incredibly positive and welcome change, now things aren't the same anymore, regardless of the rooted history which says otherwise).

Maybe a little bit of both?


RICKY: I'm sure Big Ten fans cared way more than ACC fans. Your Sox-Cubs analogy seems more fitting to me than the Red Sox-Yankees one.

One change I would like to see made to The Challenge in the future: wouldn't it be cool if we could put all these games in one gym, with the other teams all watching each other play? We can even throw in a huge second scoreboard that makes a 'ding!' sound after every victory. The game times are staggered anyways, they're all on TV, so let's take it one step further and make this like a grade school holiday tournament.

I used to love playing in those grade school tournaments for the comrade aspect. The younger kids would play first, but everyone would stay afterwards to watch the older kids. By the time the main event (8th grade hoops domination) was ready to kick off, you'd have the 5th, 6th, and 7th graders from both teams in the house cheering on. What an electric atmosphere! (Note: it probably wasn't electric at all, but it certainly was in my mind.)

This is what we need. Iowa-Virginia-Penn St.-Miami would play first. Michigan State-Ohio State-Duke-North Carolina would be like the eighth graders.

I am almost positive this would be flawless.

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Check out my Tiger post at Full Court Press, too.