They won't. I won't feel bad either. In fact, this is the first time I've ever not looked forward to watching Ohio State in a bowl game. Pryor and Tressel makes things very different right now for tons of Ohio State fans.
A simple football game? No.
Serious effin business? Yes.
Anyway, Big 10 is terrible. This is no surprise. Not a single, that's right, not a SINGLE good out of conference win for any, ANY big 10 team this year. Wisconsins best OOC win? Beating the 6-6 powerhouse, Az. State. Michigan States best OOC win? Super awesome Notre Dame. Ohio State? Miami, which ended up being a sucktastic team. Iowa? Beating up on big time Iowa State. Penn State? Well, they did beat Temple. The point, not a single big 10 team had a win over an out of conference opponent that ended up finishing the season ranked. Before you counter this with the arguement that they beat ranked teams AT THE TIME, I don't care. I could care less where pre-season pollsters rank a team before they acutally play, doesn't tell us how good a team is in the least. Don't get me wrong, most of these big 10 teams did schedule foes that they thought would be really tough. Miami just ended up being terrible. Arizona State was too. Iowa player Arizona, but lost. Penn State played Alabama, but also lost. Michigan and MIchigan State played Notre Dame, but they suck too. So I'm not saying that the big 10 teams scheduled weak teams on purpose, it just turned out that way for a season.
All of the rankings came from beating crappy teams out of conference and then teams within the conference. I seriously won't be surprised if OSU gets smoked by Arkansas for this very reason. Ohio State, afterall, finished the season with 0 (yea 0) quality wins. I honestly have no idea if Ohio State is actually a good football team, because they honestly haven't BEATEN any big time competition. Michigan was awful. Iowa was incredibly overrated. They didn't get to play MIchigan State. And they lost to Wisconsin. Ohio State has yet to show anyone this year that they can beat an honest to god, good football team.