FanHouse BigTenMediaDays

Kirk Ferentz was on the podium at Big Ten Media Days today, and not surprisingly, football was not the main topic of conversation. Ferentz directly addressed the recent activity in Cedric Everson/Abe Satterfield case, in light of the letter from the alleged victim's mother which came to light earlier this week. The Des Moines Register reports what Ferentz said:

"The suggestion of a coverup - I can tell you this, I take great exception to that," Ferentz said. "If a logical person looked at this .... basically, you have to be morally bankrupt."

I'm not sure what that last sentence is supposed to mean, but I guess he's saying that a person would have to have prejudged Ferentz and the rest of the UI administration to assume that they were trying to cover up the incident. As much as I don't like how the university appears to have handled the investigation, he's right. If he wanted to cover up the incident and keep it quiet, he wouldn't have suspended Everson and Satterfield immediately.

Ferentz also asked reporters not to hold the 2007 team against the 2008, but to judge them based "on its own merits." However, football doesn't exist in a vacuum, and until there's some sort of resolution to the investigation of the investigation, the specter of last season will cloud the season. Every Hawkeye miscue, on the field and off, will raise the question of whether the team is too distracted to function properly.

But so what? There are things far more important than making sure that a football team isn't too distracted. The courts are now handling Everson and Satterfield; that's out of the university's hands. What is in their control is how the investigation of the investigation proceeds. If they're smart, UI administrators will make sure that this time the Iowa Board of Regents has full access to everything the university knows about the case. That wasn't the case last time, apparently, and it led some of us misguided souls to think there might have been a cover-up.

FanHouse is counting down the ten best, ten worst, and ten weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

In honor of the opening of Big Ten Media Days in Chicago, we wrap up the ten weird Big Ten moments with a look at what has to be the only moment of excitement or interest in the history of that venerable tradition. It came last season, when Mike Hart was chosen as one of the players to represent the Michigan Wolverines to the media.

You might remember that last spring, former Michigan quarterback Jim Harbaugh, who had just taken over at Stanford, commented in an interview that Michigan had a way of getting "borderline guys" into school. (For those of you not aware, Michigan is a very selective university. For those of you who are SEC fans, some universities have admissions standards.) Harbaugh was commenting about how Stanford (another highly selective school) had trouble attracting the very best athletes because a Stanford recruit needs qualifications beyond a good 40 time.

In context it's clear that Harbaugh was lamenting how great universities don't do their athletes any favors with the "jock majors" you find on almost every campus. It didn't really come across that way, however, and trust me, Mike Hart noticed.