The Big 12 North remains a ways from returning to the prominence it enjoyed when the conference first formed in the late 1990s, but if Saturday's matchup between Kansas State and Nebraska for the division title is any indication then better days are certainly on the horizon.
After years of struggles by the Kansas State Wildcats and the Nebraska Cornhuskers, which have coincided with a dip in the North's strength, the two meet Saturday in Lincoln for a winner-take-all showdown. Neither team has had quite the season it anticipated but each has won enough for the right to play for the Big 12 championship, likely against No. 2 Texas, Dec. 5.
"Certainly we've been in this position before, probably in different ways," said veteran Wildcats coach Bill Snyder, who broke out of a three-year retirement to return to the sidelines this season. "By the same token, I can't remember other than the very early years that playing against the Nebraska teams was not a great challenge and certainly key ball games were after those initial years after they beat us so soundly."
Iowa State coach Paul Rhoads says junior quarterback Austen Arnaud is ready to return to the Cyclones starting lineup this week when they take on Oklahoma State.
Arnaud, a two-year starter for the Cyclones, has been sidelined the last weeks with a bruised throwing hand. He was injured during the Oct. 17 win over Baylor.
Rhoads says Arnaud was close to returning to the lineup last Saturday at Texas A&M but that his velocity just wasn't there so he stuck with redshirt freshman Jerome Tiller for one more week.
It's just three weeks into the full-swing of Big 12 play but the North Division is looking like any of the six teams could win the race.
That doesn't necessarily bode well at all for the weaker half of the two-division league.
Nebraska and Kansas came into the season as the presumed favorites to represent the North, but after two weeks of inconsistent play neither seems as powerful. The same can be said for two-time North champion Missouri, which started the season a surprising 4-0, but has dropped its first two games of the Big 12 season.
Riding a pass defense that kept the field clogged all afternoon long, the Iowa Hawkeyes broke a six-year road jinx with a 35-3 victory over Iowa State at Jack Trice Stadium in Ames.
Six Cyclone turnovers combined with a plethora of other mental errors to doom Paul Rhoads' team. Quarterback Austen Arnaud simply couldn't find his receivers all afternoon long, going 10 for 22 and only racking up 79 yards. The junior from Ames threw four interceptions, with backup Jerome Tiller adding one more and tailback Alexander Robinson fumbling once.
Iowa's offense was far from wonderful in the first half, with quarterback Ricky Stanzi overthrowing receivers or simply heaving the ball towards no one at all. For the Hawkeyes, though, the real story was the emergence of two stars.
Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten previews the weekend's action, even when the truth is ugly.
It was a bad week for vowels.
The seven Big Ten schools whose names start with consonants played anywhere from OK to brilliantly this past weekend. The four that start with vowels -- Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio State -- all dropped a pantload on the field.
Illinois gets a partial pass because Missouri has been on a nice run lately. Ohio State played a Navy team that usually goes bowling. Indiana struggled with a Division I-AA FCS school, but they're Indiana; you kind of expect these things from them after a while.
That leaves one school. Iowa. And if I was an Iowa fan ... wait. I am an Iowa fan. Make the jump and see what has me feeling punchy. I promise I'll get around to the games eventually.
First-year Iowa State football coach Paul Rhoads is definitely trying to drum up support for his program anyway he can.
Rhoads has joined a recent trend of football coaches across the country, jumping aboard a tour bus and coming face-to-face with the Cyclones faithful in Iowa. In scenes reminiscent of our nation's latest presidential campaign, Rhoads is shaking hands, kissing babies and making big promises during his city-to-city Tailgate Tour.
The move hasn't been officially announced yet, but it has been confirmed by ISU officials. Paul Rhoads will be paid $1.15 million a year over five years with the usual pile of incentives. His hiring comes after rumors of Terry Bowden and Mike Stoops were floating throughout Cycloneland. After hearing about name coaches who might have been interested in becoming the head Clone, you wonder if Rhoads is a sexy enough hire to placate the fans.
Then again, Rhoads just finished his first season at Auburn, where his efforts were wasted behind a kittenish offense. The Tigers finished 15th in scoring defense and 27th in yards allowed but only got a 5-7 record to show for it. Before that, Rhoads was the defensive coordinator at Pitt for eight seasons, a job he got after four seasons coaching Iowa State's linebackers and secondary. But that's not the most important qualification he brings.
Not Paul Rhoads at right. I bet you know who that luxurious mustache belongs to.
Former Pitt defensive coordinator Paul Rhoads is Auburn's new DC, replacing enthusiastic Texas-bound Will Muschamp. This would seem an excellent hire by Auburn after Pitt's defense finished 5th in the nation and shut down West Virginia's spread 'n' shred in the epic upset that kept the Mountaineers out of the national title game.
Chas notes further that the defense's slide from good to real bad happened "minute the talent previously recruited started graduating" and follows it up with a wide array of links to previous stories about Rhoads' various failings as a coach -- no sour grapes upon departure these.
But... like, I dunno. That's four good years of seven at a program that's never had much in the way of support or talent until this recent inexplicable Wannalanche of high-profile recruits. As soon as Wannstedt's guys started seeing time with regularity, things bounced back up; Pitt Blather tends to blame Rhoads for the awful run defense when it could more properly be attributed to undersized and largely overlooked true freshman holding down key spots in the Pitt line in 2005 and 2006. At Auburn, Rhoads will not have the same issues.
The Big 12 North remains a ways from returning to the prominence it enjoyed when the conference first formed in the late 1990s, but if Saturday's matchup between Kansas State and Nebraska for the division title is any indication then better days are certainly on the horizon.
Iowa State coach 
It's just three weeks into the full-swing of 
Riding a pass defense that kept the field clogged all afternoon long, the 
Every Thursday, 
First-year Iowa State football coach 
While it wasn't exactly the spite hite many were hoping for, we now know for sure that the Ames-to-Auburn pipeline runs in both directions. A week after 
