By Woodrow Carroll
With football behind us for now and baseball still on the horizon, we can concentrate on something else.. Take nothing away from the National Basketball Association, however, college basketball almost always provides us with an interesting story, or two, to digest.
Conference affiliations and the teams that make up conferences present an interesting look.
The Big Ten Conference and Mid-American Conference (MAC) are in our backyard. The Big Ten stretches from Nebraska in the West to Rutgers and Maryland in the East. The MAC is similar n its range from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb in the West to Buffalo in the East. The range of the schools in both conferences runs more east-west than north-south.
The teams in the Big Ten and MAC feature the same schools football and basketball. The alignment can change in other sports.
Unique situations and location make for creative alignments, One example is the Big West Conference and men’s basketball.
The Big West Conference has 11 men’s basketball teams.
Ten of those schools are in California with Hawaii. Although California may be a large state, the third largest after Alaska and Texas. The 10 California schools are well within reach of one another. Only Big West member UC-Davis is in the northern part of the state.
Hawaii plays football at the top collegiate level in the football bowl subdivision (FBS). Those 10 California schools have no football.
On an historical note, the first modern bowl game for Northern Illinois was the 1983 California Bowl in Fresno in which the Huskies defeated the Titans of Cal State-Fullerton, 20-13.
What’s in a name? How about the Long Beach State Beach of the Big West, Seemingly a bit redundant!
At one time Long Beach State was called the 49ers with Pete the Prospector as the mascot. It made good sense given the history of mining exploration from north to south. Long Beach is on a huge oil reserve. As for the new Long Beach mascot, Elbee the Shark, was selected. From a phonetic standpoint, Elbee sounds just like LB for Long Beach.
The late George Allen was a most interesting football coach. Noted for his time in the professional ranks, Allen found his pro start with the Chicago Bears in 1958. A defensive genius, Allen masterminded the Chicago Bears National Football League (NFL) championship run in 1963.
Allen’s hard-driving ways did not always set well with team ownership, management, and players. Yet, those could put up with Allen, were going to win more often than lose.. In 12 seasons as a head coach in the NFL, Allen’s record was 116-47-5 for a .705 winning percentage.
In those 12 NFL seasons, Allen never once had a losing season. Only Vince Lombardi and John Madden exceeded Allen’s winning percentage in modern times.
Never one to back a way from a challenge, Allen signed on to coach at Long Beach State in 1990 late in life. The football program at Long Beach was struggling and in danger of being shut down. Attendance and interest at the school were down and in the three years prior to Allen’s arrival, the football teams’ record was 11-24-0 combined.
Long Beach was 6-5 in 1990 in Allen’s lone campaign at the school.
Allen often regarded that season as his finest coaching effort. It proved to be Long Beach’s penultimate gridiron run, however. It wrote finish to Allen’s time on earth. Allen passed away New Year’s Eve1991 and the school dropped the sport after a 2-9 record in 1991.