FanHouse Kellen Lewis

You can't win in college football without a few playmakers, and the Indiana Hoosiers just lost one of theirs. The team announced Wednesday that quarterback turned wide receiver Kellen Lewis is no longer part of the Hoosier football team. Lewis (right) was dismissed for the ever-classic "undisclosed violation of team rules."

This was not Kellen Lewis's first encounter with the UVOTR. He spent most of the past off-season under suspension as well, only to be reinstated just prior to fall practice. We didn't know what Lewis did back then, and we don't know what he did now, whether it was the same undisclosed violation, or a whole new one. It's clear, though, that IU's coaching staff had already lost a great deal of confidence in the one-time wunderkind.

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.

Hey, it's always football season at FanHouse. Welcome to "Greetings From Flyover Country," a new weekly feature that will keep you up to date on Big Ten, Big 12, and MAC football. We'll also cover any Midwestern stories which have national repercussions, along with rounding up the week's arrests and suspensions.

We start this week with a decision bound to have people from San Ysidro to Bangor scratching their heads. Please give a moment's thought to the worst aspect of the last postseason. While the Big 12 championship was settled on the field, the Big 12 South championship wasn't. Instead, the conference gave the division title to Oklahoma, because they use the BCS rankings as a tiebreaker.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking, smart guy. You're thinking this post should be one letter long, and that letter should be 'F.' It's true that the Big Ten did little to advance its reputation during the season, and even less during the postseason. In spite of it all, there are still a few diamonds among the, um, whatever else it is the diamonds are scattered among.

They're scattered among things like 35-3, a 1-6 bowl game record, the fall of the Michigan dynasty, a tragically unwarranted and completely unjustified preseason overrating, several regressions to the mean, and the worst sendoff since the last episode of "Seinfeld."

So we'll go through the league team by team, painful as that is, to build up the successes and try to understand the failures of Big Ten football in 2008. Yes, I used "success" and "Big Ten football" in the same sentence without the connecting phrase "lack of." Deal with it, Buck. Every team gets an overall grade and a quick look at its prognosis for the 2009 season. For you Big Ten fans, I promise you it's not all bad news; for you Big Ten haters, I promise you it's not all good.

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

RIGHT: A typical offensive gameplan dreamed up by Woody Hayes.

So now there's one. One team all alone in first place, controlling its destiny. But hey, they have the week off.

The question is, "Has anything really changed in the Big Ten?" and the answer is a qualified "Maybe." The road to the Big Ten championship has run from Ann Arbor to Columbus ever since Murray Warmath hung up his whistle in Minnesota. In eight of the last ten seasons, either Michigan or Ohio State has won at least a share of the conference title; the last time anybody else won an outright title was 2001.

A shakeup in the conference might lead to a change in philosophy. If you can't win the Big Ten without a vertical passing game and the ability to defend same, we've seen the last of "three yards and a cloud of dust." Good riddance. The old-school power running game is ill-suited for the kind of football played in the other BCS conferences. Ball control works great in a game where neither team scores 30 points, but if you're down by ten with five minutes to play, you don't want to (and probably can't) start throwing the ball.

So, while I know Buckeye fans are in pain right now, it's a necessary pain. College football has reinvented itself in the past decade and, as usual, the Big Ten was the last to get the memo.

Sigh. Onward.

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.

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

RIGHT: Let's face it, this is what everybody's talking about in the Big Ten this week.

We're now two weeks into the conference season and already things are starting to sort themselves out. It's clear that Penn State and Ohio State are going to duke it out for the conference title and a Rose Bowl berth, unless Penn State wins out and gets some help from the Big XII and SEC. It's clear that Illinois, Michigan State, and (probably) Northwestern constitute the conference's second tier. Just below them, put Minnesota (gadzooks, how long has it been since you could put the Gophers ahead of anybody in this conference?) and ... yeesh. Is Minnesota all alone in the third tier?

That leaves us with five teams who right now are fighting for one bowl slot, unless two Big Ten teams wind up in the BCS. Early estimates would favor Wisconsin, though it's starting to look like the Badgers may have been overhyped. (I'll save you the trouble, SEC fan: "All teams in the Big Ten are overhyped!" Oh, look, none of your teams have beaten Vanderbilt!)

Iowa is a strange case, as usual. The Hawkeyes have been more unlucky than awful in their three-game skid, but there aren't any easy games left, except maybe this week. Purdue, Indiana, and Michigan? Stink, stank, and stunk.

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.

Troubling news out of Bloomington today, as incumbent starting quarterback Kellen Lewis was suspended indefinitely for a violation of team rules. Coach Bill Lynch declined to provide any additional details, but it doesn't sound good. One blog (DISCLAIMER: blogs are not to be trusted. Ever.) claims that multiple credible sources assert that Lewis is done, done, done.

If true, the news is devastating; put simply, the Indiana offense needs Kellen Lewis. In his first two seasons at the helm of the Indiana offense, Lewis amassed 57 touchdowns (42 passing, 14 rushing, one receiving) and well over 6,000 yards of total offense. Lewis was a freshman All-American in 2006, and was named to the All-Big 10 second team by both the coaches and the press. Meanwhile, behind him on the depth chart is redshirt sophomore Ben Chappell and, like, a traffic cone.

Making the suspension even worse is the early departure of superfreak wideout James Hardy, who will likely be taken in the first round of next month's NFL draft. With those two, the Indiana offense was a terror last season--Indiana topped 30 points in eight of their 13 contests. In light of the suspension, the Hoosiers now look positively toothless.