In the first installment of the end-of-season report card on the Big Ten, we looked at the schools in the first half of the alphabet. Know what letter is in the first half of the alphabet? That's right. F. But then, all the other grade letters are in the first half of the alphabet too.
Even though it wasn't a great year overall for the conference, there were plenty of bright points and hopeful signs and "wait until next year" moments which should have Big Ten fans excited for next season. Either that, or we'll all look like Charlie Brown did five seconds after Lucy teed up the football. But I digress. Let's take a look at the teams in the second drawer of the Big Ten file cabinet, shall we?
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 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.
Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten tries to explain what's going on in the nation's least explicable conference.
RIGHT: What it felt like to be a Big Ten fan this week.
You had to expect a certain amount of grave-dancing and dead-horse abuse in the wake of Penn State's loss in Iowa City last weekend. What was unexpected was the number of pundits who spun this loss as a good thing for the Big Ten. Another title game loss (which everybody assumed would've happened) would have damaged the conference's reputation even more, if that was even possible.
Still, the loss actually is good from the Big Ten's point of view. It shows some of the second-echelon teams are beginning to come back to life. It also bears out Hasty's Law of College Football: Competition creates competitors.
Yeah, I know. The Big Ten's non-conference schedule is as weak as nursing home coffee. Whose isn't in the BCS conferences? In-conference competition creates competitors too, even though I created Hasty's Law to poke fun at Bill Snyder's nearly-annual November collapse.
Penn State hadn't really been tested, at least not in the way Iowa had been. They played a close game at Purdue and another close one at Ohio State. The Hawkeyes played four close games and lost all four by a total of fourteen points. They knew they didn't want to lose a fifth one. They felt the burn, and they did what they had to do.
Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten breaks down action across the conference. Except for the weeks when it just breaks down, period.
Okay, sure, but what about the rest of the conference? Once again, I get it; nobody outside of State College wants Penn State to win out and make it to the title game, particularly if it comes at the expense of a one-loss champion from the Big XII or SEC. The Coke-Bottle Glass Guy must pay for the coaching sins of the Sweater Vest Guy, and the whole conference suffers until, you know, they actually win something.
So I'm guessing that whatever SEC teams wind up in the Capital One and Outback Bowls will have it penciled in as an Insta-Win; ditto the Big XII and the Alamo Bowl, the likely destination for whoever is unfortunate enough to win the North Division. I don't know what to say, other than that it's hard to argue with somebody when they're probably right. Who knows? The conference might not even win the Motor City Bowl this season, given that it's likely they'll be facing a bevy of honked-off Ball State Cardinals.
Blame, of course, is like fruitcake: Somehow it seems like there's always enough to go around. Who do I blame for the fact that the Big Ten keeps getting force-fed giant bowls of Scorn Flakes? Go back to the first paragraph.
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.
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.
RIGHT: One of these is the alpha cub. But which one is it?
They're 6 and 1. They've lost to the only good team they've played. Their signature win thus far is over a team that, in retrospect, may not really be that good. They're solid on one side of the ball but they have issues on the other. Quick, which 6-1 Big Ten team am I talking about?
Answer? All of them. Ohio State, Minnesota, Michigan State, Northwestern ... on some level, they're all the same team. You know about OSU. Lost to USC, has a gutty win over Wisconsin which seemed huge at the time, solid defense but an offense that suddenly isn't doing so hot. Minnesota lost to the Buckeyes but beat Illinois. So have two other teams. The Gopher defense is much improved but still isn't great. No complaints about the offense.
Northwestern has seen tremendous improvement in its defense. coupled with an inexplicable drop in its offensive production. The Cats' biggest win is over ... who? 3-2 Duke? Or 4-3 Iowa? 3-2 Southern Illinois? Those are the only teams NU has defeated who currently have winning records, and SIU doesn't really count, being a 1-AA Football Championship Subdivision squad. When the Fightin' Fitzgeralds went up against Michigan State, a team with a pulse, they got flounced.
Oh, and what about Sparty? Does Mark Dantonio's team break the pattern?
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.
ABOVE: Wisconsin's Jonathan Casillas couldn't catch the above quarterback, who is not John Elway. Perhaps if Casillas had a motorized vehicle of some sort ...
Okay, I know it's still quite early in the season, but I think we've seen the Horrible Pants-Blasting Loss of the Year. Not to take anything away from the Wolverines, but when you look at the box score from last Saturday's Wisconsin/Michigan game, you can't help but come away thinking, "How on Earth did the Badgers lose that game?" Up 19-0 at halftime against a team that had only scored 19 points once in three games, with a clock-gobbling running game and a usually stifling defense ... and they gacked.
Sure, there are some good reasons why they lost. Allan Evridge is an inexperienced quarterback. Then again, he's more experienced than Steven Threet, who looked like John freakin' Elway in the fourth quarter. (Okay, he looked like Elway would have looked if Elway had been able to run. I haven't forgotten all the O.J. Simpson jokes, you know.) Again, you have to give Michigan credit for doing what it took to win that game ... but how did Wisconsin lose it? You can only reach one conclusion: Pants-blast.
Other teams whose lower body laundry you wouldn't have wanted to do last week: Indiana, Iowa, and Purdue, who I think became the first team ever to not intercept Jimmy Clausen. How will these teams rebound this week? Hint: like a dead cat.
In the first installment of the end-of-season report card on the Big Ten, we looked at the schools in the first half of the alphabet. Know what letter is in the first half of the alphabet? That's right. F. But then, all the other grade letters are in the first half of the alphabet too.
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. 
Every Thursday, 
Every Thursday, 
Every Thursday, 
Every Thursday, 
Every Thursday, 
Every Thursday, 
Every Thursday, 
