FanHouse AdamWeber

Every Thursday, Pickin' on the Big Ten previews the weekend's games so Big Ten haters can get even more nervous.

I don't know if you've noticed, but the rest of the college football universe is sort of obsessed right now. They have a deep, lingering fear of Iowa winding up in the BCS Championship Game. That, to them, could only mean one of two things. The Hawkeyes could get blown out in a total snoozer. That would be bad. They could also win, which would be worse. Now what conference would they have to say is overrated? Their own?

Okay, it was a long shot anyway. The Minnesota Golden Gophers would have needed Ohio State to lose one more game down the stretch. Then they had to hope that the Rose Bowl committee would continue to favor tradition over justice by picking a two-loss Big Ten team over a one-loss team from some other conference. The latter is likely (they took a three-loss Illinois team last year, didn't they?); the former, quite unlikely.

Still, how could you not root for them? On a day when Michigan's plus-size bowl streak came to an end, Minnesota's Rose Bowl drought is now guaranteed to continue. How long has it been since the Gophers played in Pasadena? Here's a clue: The last time the Gophers played in a Rose Bowl, it was the first time a nationally-broadcast college football game was shown in color. That would be January 1, 1962. Current Gopher coach Tim Brewster was just a little over a year old.

Then again, it's pretty obvious the Gophers are about a year away from contending for a title. Today Minnesota blitzed early and often, gambling that Northwestern's backup QB Mike Kafka wasn't quite ready for a big game. That proved to be a bad bet.

If the Minnesota Golden Gophers aren't the most improved team in college football this season, who is? Through seven weeks of play, Tim Brewster's squad is enjoying the sort of success that always seemed to elude his predecessor Glen Mason. The Gophers are now 6-1 with a signature road win over Illinois and their sole loss coming in Columbus.

Nobody was complaining about the Gopher offense last season. They just weren't up to the task of bailing out the nation's worst defense week after week. Statistically this season's Gopher offense is mid-pack by almost any measure. The difference is on the other side of the ball.

It's not that the Gophers have moved way, way up. It's that the Gophers had nowhere to go but up. Their defensive statistics this year aren't the stuff of dreams, but the Gophers are allowing, on average, about 130 fewer yards and 19 fewer points per game than they were a year ago. New defensive coordinator Ted Roof didn't work out as a head coach at Duke. Both Duke and Minnesota are happy for that.

Anybody can post good results against a squishy schedule, however. The Gophers hung in against their most challenging opponent to date (Ohio State) but failed to win. That raises the question of whether the Gophers can stand up against the other challengers in the Big Ten.

While college football fans across the country await the start of the new season with a drooling fervor there are also some fans who dread it. Why? Because they know their season is already over before it's even started. Oh sure, their boys are still going to go out there every Saturday and play hard for 60 minutes, but it's not going to make a bit of difference.

They're going to lose, and they're going to lose a lot.

No conference can escape from having teams like this, it's just a part of the game. They still serve their purpose because the good teams in the conference need a breather once in a while, and they also need six wins to qualify for a bowl game.

These teams are the conferences dirty little secret. They're the red-headed step child that's told to stay in their room when company comes over. They are the dregs of Big Ten, and they're here to play another set of 12 games whether we want them to or not.