MOVING UP!

Henceforth, Pickin’ on the Big Ten has a new home at AOL’s Fanhouse. First installment is up. See you over there.

BLOGPOLL BALLOT #10

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU	1
2	Ohio State	1
3	Boston College	1
4	Oregon	5
5	Oklahoma	—
6	South Florida	3
7	Arizona State	1
8	Kansas	4
9	Missouri	2
10	Florida	3
11	South Carolina	4
12	Virginia Tech	2
13	West Virginia	3
14	Kentucky	6
15	Virginia	9
16	Georgia	3
17	Michigan	9
18	Rutgers	8
19	Hawaii	1
20	Boise State	3
21	Connecticut	5
22	Alabama	4
23	Southern Cal	2
24	Oklahoma State	2
25	UCLA	1

Discussion: I give up. Seriously, I give up. I’m not at all sure wins and losses are the best way to rank the teams this season.

PICKIN’ ON THE BIG TEN, SPECIAL ZEN EDITION

Normally there’s a clever introduction here, and a lot of thoughtful, snarky analysis that goes into each pick. But it’s been a week for major Real Life Intrusions, and today is my middle daughter’s third birthday, so instead you’re getting a bunch of pseudo-profound one-liners. And they said a degree in philosophy would never be useful for anything!

MICHIGAN @ ILLINOIS

Success before failure is always illusory; success after failure is the ultimate reality.

PENN STATE @ INDIANA

In a meeting of two equals, things are never equal.

NORTH DAKOTA STATE @ MINNESOTA

A mouse can bring down a giant, but the mouse must be crafty and the giant must be dull.

NORTHWESTERN @ EASTERN MICHIGAN

If there is nothing to say, say nothing.

MICHIGAN STATE @ OHIO STATE

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

IOWA @ PURDUE

What happens when a movable force meets a resistible object?

NORTHERN ILLINOIS @ WISCONSIN

Two things are certain: You are here and it is now.

Next week:

• Ball State @ Illinois: Trap game!
• Michigan State @ Iowa: Hawks have no chance against Sparty’s pass rush
• Minnesota @ Michigan: Goldy could keep it interesting
• Ohio State @ Penn State: The Nits, on the other hand . . .
• Northwestern @ Purdue: Take the over, whatever it is
• Indiana @ Wisconsin: These two teams do not match up well against each other

NEBRASKA DROPS THE AXE

Not on Bill Callahan . . . but on athletic director Steve Pederson, who has been fired, according to Brian Christopherson of the Lincoln Journal Star.

BLOGPOLL BALLOT #9

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Ohio State	1
2	LSU	1
3	South Florida	2
4	Boston College	—
5	Oklahoma	1
6	Arizona State	3
7	South Carolina	6
8	Kentucky	6
9	Oregon	3
10	West Virginia	—
11	Missouri	—
12	Kansas	6
13	Florida	6
14	Virginia Tech	9
15	California	12
16	Texas Tech	10
17	Auburn	7
18	Tennessee	7
19	Georgia	7
20	Hawaii	4
21	Kansas State	5
22	Cincinnati	14
23	Boise State	3
24	Virginia	5
25	Southern Cal	3

Discussion: I feel about this poll the way I feel about every presidential election: Nobody deserves to win it, but somebody has to. In the end, I only dropped LSU one spot because (a) Kentucky is pretty good, and (b) I feel pretty sure that LSU could take either South Florida or Boston College.

Oh, and I finally saw Hawaii play–nice comeback, but that is not a great football team. That’s Tulane in 1998, going 11-0 against a weak schedule.

PICKIN’ ON THE BIG TEN, v2007.07

It’s hard to believe I still care about this. It’s hard to believe I’m still writing this column. I watched the Iowa/Penn State game in its entirety on Saturday, and yet here I am, still interested (or at least pretending to be interested) in Big Ten football.

I really need a new hobby, one that doesn’t rip my heart out quite so often or quite so spectacularly.

But, press on we must. It’s taken me ten seasons to build up my cadre of nine loyal readers. Can’t disappoint you now!

ILLINOIS @ IOWA

The reputation swap is now complete; the mantle of Genius rolled down I-80 to Davenport, then slipped undetected all the way across Illinois on I-74 to Champaign. Illinois has most of what you need to win in the Big Ten: a playmaking offensive back (actually, two of them), a dominating middle linebacker, just enough of a defensive secondary, and solid play on both sides of the line. Iowa is short a couple of those things. Really, what’s amazing is how quickly Iowa’s offensive line has gone from class-of-the-conference to execrable. Part of that may be due to inexperience, but as they point out over at Black Heart Gold Pants, there may be another reason:

In regards to the “fire O’Keefe or fire Ferentz” nonsense, Reese Morgan is probably a bigger sideline liability than KOK. At least O’Keefe was doing his job well when things were going well. Reese Morgan’s been with Iowa for 8 years, but after three solid years as recruiting coordinator and coaching tight ends (see Clark, Dallas), he moved to coaching the offensive line after the 2002 season, when Joe Philbin left. It seems now that this team misses Philbin (now the offensive coordinator for the 4-1 Green Bay Packers) more than we ever would have imagined. It certainly seems likely that he was every bit as responsible for the development and sustained success of the offensive line as S&C coach Chris Doyle was. [. . .] Look, Reese Morgan is a good guy, and he was a great tight end coach. Dallas Clark’s an obvious example, but Erik Jensen and Ryan Majerus were bona fide starters themselves. How easy it was to have tackles with receiver-eligible jerseys on the ends, taking up linebackers’ play action responsibilities on third and short.

But that’s not Morgan’s job anymore. Offensive line coach is, and the line’s been offensive in a different way for a couple years now. Worse, it doesn’t look like it’s getting any better, and that matters a whole lot more to the future success of the football team than any stylistic concerns we’ve got about play-calling or “using the whole field.”

BHGP aren’t the only folks who have noticed a change in Iowa football–so has former Hawkeye QB Drew Tate, currently freezing his foofoo in Saskatchewan:

“You can say all you want about scheme. I won’t get into that with my opinion,” said Tate, who tossed 18 touchdowns last year. “But it just seems, once we got into the second half of the season, every time we played somebody, (expletive), they knew everything we were going to run. They covered up everything. And throw on top of that young receivers that don’t know what’s going on, and I was hurt all last year … I think this year is kind of the same. You’ve got injuries and new guys and the schemes - the schemes are Iowa football.”

Read between the lines, which isn’t hard to do: It’s the schemes. I apologize to Drew Tate for implying that he was a bit of a loon last season. It’s obvious now that he played the way he did so that there would be at least one person on the offense who acted like he cared what happened in the game.

Speaking of the game, well, Iowa’s only hope will be to shut down Illinois’ not-quite-a-spread option attack. On offense they’ll need every last flake of Kinnick Stadium magic just to have a chance. But this team hasn’t scored more than 20 points on anybody but Syracuse all year. Why think they’ll start now? Illini roar to 6-1, but Florida fans know that’s just a wayside on the road to 7-5.

PURDUE @ MICHIGAN

Okay, Purdue came crashing back to earth last week, nearly getting stuffed by tOSU. That’s what October is for: crushing Pete’s delusions of greatness. Now comes a matchup against a Michigan team that didn’t exactly please too many of its fans in last week’s closer-than-it-needed-to-be smashup with Eastern Washtenaw County Michigan. The Wolverine defense just isn’t good. There, I said it. Purdue: spread option. Two words Blue fans would just as soon not hear again this season. Michigan isn’t as bad as everybody thought they were, but Purdue isn’t as bad as they looked last week. Except on defense. There they are that bad. But in a shootout between Michigan and Purdue–and the way these two teams defend, it’s gonna be a shootout–who do you go with? I’ll go with Pete. Gadzooks. The things I have to say this year!

INDIANA @ MICHIGAN STATE

It should be illegal to have to play Indiana and Northwestern in consecutive weeks. It’s the sort of thing that can drive fans of mid-pack Big Ten teams to spend the whole weekend in the basement playing Halo 3.

Has Mark Dantonio finally got Sparty on the right meds? You’ll know in this game. And you’ll know the answer is ‘no’ since IU runs the spread even better than Northwestern does, and Sparty didn’t have an answer for the spread last week.

MINNESOTA @ NORTHWESTERN

You saw what CJ Bacher did to MSU last week. Sparty plays defense. Goldy doesn’t.

KENT STATE @ OHIO STATE

Yup . . . I love me this twelve-game schedule.

WISCONSIN @ PENN STATE

If there’s a watchable game in the Big Ten this week–and I’m not saying there is–this is it. Penn State fans can breathe again, a common aftereffect of playing Iowa lately. Wisconsin needs to regroup following last week’s game when they got schooled by Illinois. But Wisconsin is a tremendously better team than Iowa was last week, mostly since the Badgers have only lost one wide receiver, not thirty-eight of them. This will be classic, grind-’em-out Big Ten football. If you’re in to that sort of thing. In the end, Wisconsin prevails, if only because they have more playmakers on offense. Meaning they have one.

Next week:

• Michigan @ Illinois: Potential seismic implications in this game
• Penn State @ Indiana: These two go together like Twix bars and Sriracha sauce
• North Dakota State @ Minnesota: WHY didn’t Minnesota hire Craig Bohl?
• Northwestern @ Eastern Michigan: The Eagles should just join the Big Ten and get it over with
• Michigan State @ Ohio State: If Sparty is still Sparty, they’ll win this game
• Iowa @ Purdue: Hawks’ last chance to score 20 points before the Minnesota game
• Northern Illinois @ Wisconsin: Playing for the pride of the I-39 corridor

TEN RANDOM THOUGHTS, OCTOBER 10, 2007

1. With the arrival of the first industrial-strength cold front of the fall, I’ve switched into my seasonal uniform: colored t-shirt, flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots. For the next six months, wherever I go, it’s 1993.
2. Speaking of 1993, it’s been a couple years since the last VH1 list of 100 things, so now you’d better go vote for the 100 Greatest Songs Of The ’90s. And in case you wre wondering, Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend” came out in 1989 and isn’t eligible. Their choice of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” throws the whole list into suspicion–everybody knows the best song on Superunknown was “Fell On Black Days”.
3. I would rather hear Joe Paterno read the entire Pittsburgh telephone book than hear “Hey There Delilah” one more time.
4. Okay, my votes in the VH1 thing: #1 “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (how CAN you pick anything else?), #2 “You Oughta Know”, #3 “Jeremy”, #4 “Interstate Love Song”, #5 “Killing Me Softly With his Song”, #6 “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It), #7 “Everlong”, #8 “Mind Playing Tricks On Me”, #9 “You Get What You Give” (the New Radicals album was great, I don’t care what anybody else thinks), #10 “Closing Time”.
5. But the whole thing is suspect because among your choices were *NSYNC’s “Tearing Up My Heart” and Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”.
6. And I sort of feel bad about not voting for Radiohead’s “Creep” but let’s face it, they’ve gone in a completely different direction since Pablo Honey.
7. I used to like McGriddles until I saw that the one I liked best has 560 calories and 32 grams of fat. Good grief, what is IN those things? Egg McMuffin = 300 calories and 12 grams of fat.
8. I’m not saying it’s cold in my office but I think I’m getting frostbite.
9. Today is Brett Favre’s 38th birthday. Outsiders may wonder how we mark this occasion here in Wisconsin. At noon, the town sirens all go off and we all bow in the direction of Kiln, Mississippi for exactly 4 minutes. Then all able-bodied adults go outside and march one block for every consecutive game Favre has started. (Not such a big deal–you only have to complete 61.2% of it.)
10. As a native Iowan, I can conclusively say it’s high time that somebody else got to have the first-in-the-nation primary/caucus. Just be careful what you ask for, ye in other states who feel slighted. It’s a less-than-wonderful experience. Just the advertising ALONE is profoundly tedious.

BLOGPOLL BALLOT #8a

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU	—
2	Ohio State	—
3	California	1
4	Boston College	5
5	South Florida	2
6	Oklahoma	6
7	Florida	1
8	Cincinnati	3
9	Arizona State	7
10	West Virginia	—
11	Missouri	6
12	Oregon	1
13	South Carolina	9
14	Kentucky	8
15	Illinois	11
16	Hawaii	2
17	Wisconsin	12
18	Kansas	8
19	Virginia	5
20	Connecticut	5
21	Arkansas	2
22	Southern Cal	19
23	Virginia Tech	3
24	Auburn	2
25	Tennessee	1

Discussion: Finally got to drop some of the underachievers in the poll. Still a few seats on the Brian Kelly Greatness Express, but hurry. I hate having ASU in the top 10, but it’s hard to argue they don’t belong there. I fear I’m now underrating Illinois just because they’re a Big Ten team. Andrew, I listened to you, but honestly, if I could think of another team to put at #25, I would . . . I really don’t believe in Tennessee.

BLOGPOLL BALLOT #8

Rank	Team	Delta
1	LSU	—
2	Ohio State	—
3	California	1
4	Boston College	5
5	South Florida	2
6	Oklahoma	6
7	Florida	1
8	Cincinnati	3
9	Arizona State	7
10	West Virginia	—
11	Missouri	6
12	Oregon	1
13	South Carolina	9
14	Kentucky	8
15	Wisconsin	10
16	Hawaii	2
17	Illinois	9
18	Kansas	8
19	Virginia	5
20	Connecticut	5
21	Arkansas	2
22	Southern Cal	19
23	Virginia Tech	3
24	Auburn	2
25	Georgia	11

Draft. Commentary to follow.

PICKIN’ ON THE BIG TEN, v2007.06

For the most part, I don’t wanna talk about it. You know, football. Sure, it’s my favorite sport–I mean, pretty much the ONLY sport I follow–but honestly, I’m about ready to sign up for those treatments Jim Carrey got in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: I don’t care if I have to forget everything as long as I don’t have to remember . . .

I said last week would be an important one in terms of sorting out the conference. It was. It showed that, basically, this year, it’s the Big One. I have Ohio State #2 in my Blogpoll ballot this week, based on the fact that they haven’t played a truly stinky game this year, and their win in Seattle was more impressive than U$C’s. Of course, it’s fair to say that the rest of the Bucks’ schedule is unimpressive (Youngstown State, Akron, Minnesota, Northwestern), but I think that stacks up as the rough equivalent of Idaho, Nebraska, and Washington State. Minnesota has a better offense than Nebraska, after all.

As for the rest of the conference, it’s a wash. It’s a tossup. It’s not even worth considering. Everybody else looks incredibly mortal, and everybody’s just waiting for the cover to get blown.

Speaking of blown coverage, have I mentioned that right now I kinda sorta wish I could forget about football?

WISCONSIN @ ILLINOIS

No team benefited more from last week’s nationwide football crisis than Wisconsin, who once again did just enough to win a game and found themselves #5 in the country, even though I think everybody would feel a whole lot better if they were #13 or so. Thus it behooves the Badgers to lose this game so they no longer need be overrated. And make no mistake, this is a very losable game for Wisky. The match of Illinois and Ron Zook may have taken a while to come to fruition, but why do I have a sneaking feeling that the rest of the conference is going to start looking at the Illini the way gardeners look at zucchini?

MINNESOTA @ INDIANA

Look, everybody knows the Gophers are not a great football team right now. They’re still mistake-prone, and they’ve yet to learn that the defensive backfield must provide, y’know, defense. Comes now the Indiana Hoosiers and their barn-fire offense, not exactly what the Gophers need to see. A win here makes Indiana’s first bowl berth since 1993 practically a layup. Which is always a good term to use when you’re talking about basketball schools . . .

EASTERN MICHIGAN @ MICHIGAN

I’d like to say they can’t, but you know that Anything Is Possible This Year In College Football. Therefore, I must briefly consider the possibility that the Wolverines might lose to a directional school located about 10 miles from its campus.

considerconsiderconsiderconsider . . .

No. The Eagles defense is giving up close to 400 yards a game, and the best team they’ve played so far is either Vanderbilt or Ball State.

NORTHWESTERN @ MICHIGAN STATE

It’s hard to imagine a defining game just six games into Mark Dantonio’s tenure in East Lansing, but here it is. If he wants to forver exorcise Sparty’s mental demons, his team needs to come out strong against the Wildcats and their creepy brand of ninja football™. This is exactly the sort of game Sparty usually lost under both Bobby Williams and John L. Smith: a hanging curveball against a clearly inferior opponent the week after a heartbreaking loss to a good team. I expect Dantonio to bring all kinds of heat against a not-that-bad Northwestern offense, then run the ball right up the middle all day long. It’s a battle between MSU and Illinois for the title of Most Improved Team in the Big Ten; expect this game to make Sparty’s case.

IOWA @ PENN STATE

If this game were a movie, it would have been made in 1988 and it would have starred Wings Hauser and Yaphet Kotto as two cops who can’t stand each other but have to work together to solve a case that has great personal meaning to both of them. Moreover, it would be airing on Starz! at 3:15 on a Wednesday morning, you’d be able to finish every line of dialog before the actors could, and you’d watch about six minutes of it before turning over to The Weather Channel.

(N.b.: Wings Hauser and Yaphet Kotto did, in fact, appear together in a 1987 Perry Mason TV movie.)

OHIO STATE @ PURDUE

Purdue has been putting up arenaball numbers all season. They have yet to face a defense ranked in the top 100 nationally.

Ohio State is a top 2 defense.

Purdue, on the other hand, has the tenth-best defense . . . in the Big Ten. Crikey, they gave up 19 points to Notre Dame!

Next week:

• Illinois @ Iowa: There’s a new I-school genius now
• Purdue @ Michigan: This one will be extremely ugly
• Indiana @ Michigan State: With a possible trip to San Antonio on the line
• Minnesota @ Northwestern: Win now, or watch it all slip away
• Kent State @ Ohio State: Why?
• Wisconsin @ Penn State: Age and experience can’t always beat youth and treachery