Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten tries to describe football action in the conference everyone else calls "overrated."RIGHT: The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, which won't be missed by very many people in the Big Ten.
And so it has come to this, the ultimate weekend of the penultimate season when Big Ten football ends before Thanksgiving. Starting in 2010, the Turkey Day tables will be a little less crowded as everyone's season extends to the last weekend of November. But that's two years from now. This weekend we say goodbye to the conference's second-longest serving coach, and bid a fond farewell to its least-loved stadium. Along the way we sort out who's going where when, and how all the teams will be positioned for next year.
Before we get on to the games, a note about the Big Ten's bowl selection process. The conference does not require bowls to select teams in order of their finish, but requires that a selected team have no more than one fewer win than the remaining team with the best record. Thus, a seven-win team can be picked before an eight-win team, but not a nine-win team. Oh, and if the league gets two teams into the BCS, some of the non-BCS bowls get to ignore all the rules.
