FanHouse JimTressel

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?

Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten previews the weekend's action, settling the scores before the scores are settled.

Penn State has declared that Saturday night's game with Iowa will be a "whiteout" game. That distinction is usually reserved for games of the utmost importance, and if you don't know why this game is so important to the Nittany Lions, you must not remember what happened last year in Iowa City. A Daniel Murray field goal put the Hawkeyes on top and ended any hopes Penn State had of getting blown out by Florida playing in the BCS National Championship Game. It's time for revenge.

Penn State, however, is not the only Big Ten team with a little revenge on its mind this weekend.

Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten previews the weekend's action, or lack thereof.

There are weeks when many of us would trade lives with Jim Tressel. This is not one of those weeks.

Not only did his Buckeyes fail to finish USC when they had the Trojans on the ropes, Tressel also saw "Tresselball" ripped apart by Chris Brown of Smart Football, faced a fan base who want him fired three days ago, had to lash back at some of those same fans, discovered that one of USC's touchdowns may not have happened, and now he has to face a Toledo team that just mashed Colorado into goo.

Yes, there are a lot of reasons why you wouldn't want to be Jim Tressel this week, but "because he's on the hot seat" isn't one of them.

The other day a commenter asked me what I thought the Big Ten needed to do to get back on track. Well, I've only thought about that question every day since the end of last season, so as you might suspect, I have a few ideas.

First off, let's put all the cards on the table. What is "broken" in the Big Ten? The league suffers under the perception/reality that, while its teams look very good against each other, they fold up in competition with teams from other conferences, specifically the Big 12, SEC and Pac 10.

Why? Because the Big Ten has become synonymous with a slow, plodding, and most of all boring style of football. Does this sound familiar to some of you? It should.

It's barely spring here in the Midwest but spring football is well under way, and there's abundant intrigue in the Big Ten conference. Coming off what seems like the 46th consecutive disappointing bowl season, including a Rose Bowl where Penn State's Daryll Clark (right) did his best but the Nittany Lions still couldn't beat Southern Cal, nobody will be expecting much from the conference or its teams when fall rolls around. Somebody has to win it, however, and now is when the jockeying for position really begins.

FanHouse gathers around the TV to bring you insights from Bowl Season '08.

The Fiesta Bowl is tonight. You've probably seen some of the hype and discussion. Ohio State and Texas aren't exactly programs that can fly under the radar, particularly in a game worth eight figures for each school and conference. Both coaches own national championships, and the Heisman Trophy runner-up and quarterback of perhaps the best team in the land will be playing. So will many other great athletes you will see on Sundays.

So, too, will a true freshman quarterback with average numbers, and he's the source of this week's tempest in the teapot that is Glendale, Arizona. You see, Ohio State withheld their still-developing, perhaps immature phenom quarterback named Terrelle Pryor from a scheduled media event. Fiesta Bowl officials promptly flipped out.

1-5, with one game to go. One chance left to raise the conference's winning percentage to a mighty .285. And that chance rests on the less-than-broad shoulders of the Ohio State Buckeyes. Expecting the Buckeyes to show up in a big nonconference game is like expecting a bridge made out of meringue to hold up underneath a couple SUVs. It's just not something a sensible person would ever do.

It's not like anybody expected more of the Big Ten in this year's bowl games. Most folk expected the conference would be lucky to win one game and not only were they right, they were right about which game that would be. Iowa's 31-10 slashing of South Carolina is about the only thing the conference can be proud of.

Yes, Penn State had a good second half against USC. Wahoo! They almost came back against college football's laziest elite program! There's something to hang your hat on. Look at the rest of the games, if you dare. You can be a little proud of Northwestern for giving Missouri more fight than anyone expected, but there's a big fat load of Florida State 42, Wisconsin 13 festering out back, waiting for you. Crimony.

The bowl selection of Texas and Ohio State to the Fiesta Bowl is alternately disappointing (for Mack Brown's crew) and fairly thrilling (for Jim Tressel's Buckeyes). See, Texas beat everyone they were supposed to, with the exception of Texas Tech, who the Longhorns happened to lose to near the end of the season. Ohio State, on the other hand, got de-pantsed by Southern Cal in the third week of the season and later lost to Penn State in a close game.

In other words, the Buckeyes have, for all intents and purposes, done the same thing this year as they have in the past -- win against an easy schedule and luck out by not having any tough games to close the year, much less a Big 10 championship game to play in.

They finished second in a freaking weak conference, pummeling third-place finisher Michigan State 45-7, and for that they get rewarded with a BCS appearance. So, yeah, they should be thrilled.

Except they're playing a pretty cheesed-off Longhorn team that hasn't really started to complain how the BCS system is effectively screwing the best regular-season team of the year out of a shot at winning a national championship.

And even worse for the Buckeyes, Texas has a good reason to get up for this game -- a really, really strong showing by the Longhorns will give them plenty of reason to clamber about not getting a shot at a) the Big 12 championship or b) the BCS championship. And since I have zero faith in a Big 10 team coming out and dominating a Big 12 team that's fired up, I'll take the Longhorns by double digits in this one.

Hell hath no fury like a sports dad scorned, and Buckeye receiver/returner Ray Small's dad isn't pleased that his son will not play in this weekend's OSU-Northwestern game. Buckeye coach Jim Tressel suspended the younger Small for one game--"to start with," in Tressel's words--for repeatedly violating team rules.

Small's dad, Ken Small, is calling shenanigans.

"They're intentionally trying to blow his career," Ken Small told The Associated Press by telephone from his home in suburban Columbus.

There is evidence to suggest that Ray Small is blowing his own career, without any help from the Ohio State coaching staff. He was "demoted" from jersey number 4 to number 82 last spring; he is also the only Buckeye on scholarship without a biography in the school's media guide. Hence, he's clearly been in trouble before, and maybe he hasn't quite gotten the message yet.

Small's dad doesn't dispute that his son violated team rules, stating that Ray Small had been late for classes and meetings and had some parking tickets. So give him credit for staying away from the "Not My Kid" syndrome familiar to anybody who's ever worked with kids and their parents. Ken Small has something else he's pondering, though, and it's worth looking at.

Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten breaks down action across the conference.

RIGHT: Brian Hartline, the harbinger of Spartan doom.

Look, I tried to warn you. I told you last week that Michigan State just didn't have enough defense to contain the Buckeyes. The only thing that shocked me about the outcome of that game was how easy it was for Ohio State. Clearly, I failed to consider the possibility that ur-conservative Jim Tressel might start letting Terrelle Pryor throw deep. Clearly, neither did Mark Dantonio, who probably went into his office after the game and knocked all the stuff off his shelves.

Tressel did it the way you're supposed to do it. He used the running abilities of Pryor and Beanie Wells as bait. Once the Spartans were forced to stick close to the line of scrimmage lest they give up another 20-yard (or more) run, Pryor hit Brian Hartline on a 56 yard pass. That marked the official beginning of the "we don't know what to do next" phase for Sparty. Enter fumbles and interceptions; exit, Sparty's hopes of being a dark horse.

The Spartans get to recoup against a doddering Michigan team which once again wasted a good half of football in order to become the latest thing stuck to the bottom of Joe Paterno's shoe. The Buckeyes move on, too, for their second Clash of the Titans remake of the season.