Every Thursday, Pickin' on the Big Ten gives you the bottom line on the upcoming weekend's games.
Every team now has six games on the books. Well, Illinois doesn't, which is good news/bad news. Illinois fans have only had to watch five games so far; that's good news. They have seven games left to watch, which is not such good news.
This would be a perfect time for mid-term report cards, but letter grades are so one-dimensional, don't you think? There are more meaningful comparisons to be made. Make the jump and see every Big Ten team compared to ... well, just go and look.
Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten tries to make sense out of the upcoming weekend's games.
It was not supposed to be like this for Mark Dantonio and the Michigan State Spartans. Sure, they lost in the Capital One Bowl last season, but not by much, which is why many people tagged them as the Big Ten's third-best team going into this year. It was going to be hard to replace Brian Hoyer and Javon Ringer, but at long last things were looking up for Sparty.
Now, after a heart-shattering 1-3 start, things are still looking up, if only because "up" is the only direction left. Now it's time to pull the wreckage of this season out of the ditch to see what can be salvaged.
MINNEAPOLIS -- Minnesota head coach Tim Brewster preached it all week. He knew his team had to somehow maintain its focus, despite the festivities planned to celebrate the dawn of a new era for Gopher football. The opening game of TCF Bank Stadium Saturday night did come with much celebration. For some time, the Gophers were caught up in the moment.
Thanks in part to some ill-timed penalties, Air Force took a 10-3 lead in the third quarter. The Gophers finally turned it on after that, scoring 17 straight points en route to a 20-10 win.
Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten previews the upcoming weekend's action in The Conference Everybody Loves to Hate.
Oh, it's here. It's finally, finally, finally here. No more depth-chart speculation, no more arguing about who is the best SAM in the conference, and only one more week until the game that will either restore the Big Ten's swagger or send it sobbing into the bathroom. The teams are ready, the stadiums are ready (well, except for Minnesota's), the cheerleaders and bands are ready, the vast charcoal forests of northern Michigan have been shaved to the ground, the beer cows of Wisconsin have been "milked" into millions of brown glass bottles ... it's time for some football, y'all.
So, grab a beverage, throw some cheddarwurst on the grill, and let's take a look at this weekend's action-packed slate of games, shall we?
The college football season is fast approaching, with many fall camps set to open this week. Thus it's time to lay aside our interregional bickering and turn our thoughts to, you know, what might actually happen on the field.
The big question in the Big Ten this season is whether Penn State's conference championship was just a momentary burp in the conference's Buckeye-dominated food chain, or whether things might actually be shifting just a bit in the conference. Do the Buckeyes claim the title again? Will the Nittany Lions defend last year's crown and make a run at the national title? Will there be some giant, world-rocking surprise team that comes in and knocks them both out of the BCS?
"Acted" might be a bit of stretch, actually. "Reacted" is closer to the truth, as the Minnesota State Legislature recently enacted a law mandating that if some fans would be able to buy alcohol at University sporting events, all fans of legal age had to be allowed to.
That seems like a silly law until you consider that the U of M planned to sell alcohol to people in TCF Bank Stadium's luxury boxes while making it unavailable in the cheap seats. I'm sure the Board had its reasons, but the Legislature stuck up for the little guy for once.
Of course, all this move does is correct a quirk that made the Metrodome (pictured) doubly unique among Big Ten football stadiums.
UPDATE: Play4Brew.com's blog page no longer carries the bio mentioned in this post. A call to the university's Athletic Communications office was referred to the football office. They have yet to return FanHouse's call for comment.
Nowadays, college football coaches are all over the Internet. Minnesota's Tim Brewster is no exception to this.
He has a Web site, is on Facebook, and also posts updates on Twitter. Part of Brewster's online empire is a blog that is regularly updated. On that blog is a bio that talks about Brewster's 20-plus years of coaching football. It is there that Brewster stretches the truth a bit to make himself look like an awfully successful coach.
College coaches are always looking for an edge. Since the NCAA put limits on the number of phone calls they can make, coaches started texting athletes to get around the phone call limits.
When the NCAA wised up to that behavior, the coaches were again left to find legal ways to communicate with recruits as much as possible. Enter Twitter, which is growing in popularity among college coaches. One of the latest to discover the benefits of Twitter is Minnesota coach Tim Brewster.
It hasn't taken very long, but the University of Minnesota's new on-campus football stadium is taking shape.
TCF Bank Stadium is set to open September 12, as the Gophers host Air Force, an unusually strong non-conference opponent by their standards. The facility is being built near their legendary hockey and basketball facilities, and it will fit in quite nicely.
When Tim Brewster was named Minnesota football coach in 2007, a big goal of athletic director Joel Maturi was to find someone who could improve recruiting. The Gophers were constantly getting beaten to the better players, often by Big Ten rivals. This was even true when Minnesota high school players were the ones being recruited.
From his first day on the job, Brewster talked about building a proverbial fence around the state's borders. In today's highly-competitive recruiting world, you don't get everyone you want from your home area. There will be some kids who want to go experience life somewhere else, no matter how good the home state program may end up being.
Every Thursday, Pickin' on the Big Ten gives you the bottom line on the upcoming weekend's games.
Every Thursday, 
MINNEAPOLIS -- Minnesota head coach Tim Brewster preached it all week. He knew his team had to somehow maintain its focus, despite the festivities planned to celebrate the dawn of a new era for Gopher football. The opening game of TCF Bank Stadium Saturday night did come with much celebration. For some time, the Gophers were caught up in the moment.
Every Thursday, 
The college football season is fast approaching, with many fall camps set to open this week. Thus it's time to lay aside our interregional bickering and turn our thoughts to, you know, what might actually happen on the field.
The University of Minnesota's Board of Regents has decided to go dry. 
College coaches are always looking for an edge. Since the NCAA put limits on the number of phone calls they can make, coaches started texting athletes to get around the phone call limits.
It hasn't taken very long, but the University of Minnesota's new on-campus football stadium is taking shape. 
When 
