Big Ten Football Week 1
BG thanks for getting me all fired up with your last post. It really is my favorite time of the year. Time to look at the Big Ten week 1. The Big Ten gained some credibility last bowl season by posting a winning record, 2 BCS bowl wins, the top 4 teams all won and a tough OT loss by Northwestern. Week 1 is filled with anything but gimmies for the Big Ten. There are 5 games in which the Big Ten is a dog or favored by 3 or less when the lines opened (NW has moved up).
Illinois + 11 vs Missouri in the Arch Rivalry- Illinois will probably get smoked again. Let's face it this would be like Wisconsin and Baylor playing a rivalry game, they aren't really of equal caliber. Still it would be nice if Illinois could hang in there.
Minnesota -3 vs MTSU- The line on this game moved from MTSU -4.5 to plus 3 when their QB Dwight Dasher was suspended for taking $1500 from an 80 year old guy to play in a poker tournament (idiot). No excuses if the Gophers do not win this one now. Brewster has lost to a Sun Belt team before, Florida Atlantic.
Northwestern-5.5 vs Vanderbilt in The battle of Nerd Us- This is the most important game of the weekend. If NW loses this game the Big Ten loses all credibilty south of the Mason Dixon line.
Ohio St -28.5 vs Marshall- While OSU has had success inside the Big Ten, I believe it is their flops outside the Big Ten as much as anything that has led to Big Ten bashing. Let's all hope this is not a repeat of Navy last year. Does anyone have a better name than the Thundering Herd?
Michigan -3 vs Conn- HUGE game. No one needs a win more than Rich Rod. UConn, as the predicted #2 team in the Big East, needs the win to represent it's conference well against a projected second tier Big Ten team. Gamblor is all over UConn.
Purdue +11 vs Notre Dame- I give purdue a better shot in this game, than I do Illinois in theirs. I hate that Notre Dame plays an abbreviated Big Ten schedule and that it always seems to contain teams from the lower tier (with the exception of Michigan back when they were good).
Wisco -21 vs UNLV- If you were in Las Vegas would you go to this game or just sit in a sports book? The sports book, I thought so.
Mich St -23 vs W. Mich- I have said it before Mich St is the most frustrating team in the country. I would not put it past them to tank this one.
Unlined: PSU vs Youngstown State, Iowa vs E. Illinois and Indian vs Towson. I am just hoping there are no NIU almost upsets this year.
PS- the spell check does not seem to be working so if my spelling is more egregious than normal I apologize.
7 Comments:
RTS - love the breakdown of week one in the Big Ten. I have to agree that the NU/Vandy game is one of the more important games for the conference, as Vandy is considered the worst team in the SEC (by far), and Northwestern has recently been mid-tier in the Big Ten. So, what would it say if a mid-tier Big Ten team lost to the worst team in the SEC. I hope I don't have to start apologizing come Sunday...
Gophers caught a HUGE break with this Dasher guy, as everyone was calling for the "upset" in this one (even though the Gophs were the underdog). Purdue might surprise people this year, so I think they could handle ND. And I love your UCONN over Michigan pick. UCONN is supposed to be solid this year, and Michigan has the potential to choke under pressure this season.
All in all, it should make for a great opening weekend.
August 31, 2010 at 6:47 PM
Big Tweleven re-alignment:
Dumb. Sure, they can go keep the rivalry games with cross-conference teams, like Michigan/Ohio State, but (i) they wouldn't even have to go to any trouble to do so if they went East-West*, (ii) there's now the possibility of Michigan/Ohio State two weeks in a row, and (iii) most importantly to me, now they lose the potential nice East vs. West subregional rivalry between the two halves of the conference. Also, don't Michigan and Ohio State want to be competing with each other in the standings, as well as the one game/yr? Now they don't get to.
* Other than the Little Brown Jug game, there's not really any historic rivalry between an East team and a West team that needs to be retained, unless you want Iowa/Penn State, which is not likely to happen under the new alignment anyway. And now, you also have Minnesota and Iowa both wanting to protect their Wisconsin game, and Iowa likely getting shafted.
Me no likey. There's really no reason to think that the dropoff from the nexus of Ohio State/Michigan/Penn State to Nebraska/Iowa/Wisconsin in football is worthy of throwing out the simplicity of East-West. Which side of that coin's been more successful the last 10 years?
One funny thing I heard today, though: possibility of calling the annual Iowa-Nebraska game "Farmaggedon."
September 1, 2010 at 3:05 PM
On the Big Conference realignment, it seems to make sense to me. I hear the arguments about east/west but I almost like the randomness of it all.
I don't think that anyone other than Wisconsin can complain. And they should be complaining loudly, unless they see value in having Ohio State and Penn State on their schedule every year. Beyond that, it sucks for them.
My biggest observation about this whole realignment is how much energy and excitement Nebraska is bringing to this football discussion. "Farmageddon" (which I love) will close the year for Iowa and Nebraska every year which is a ton of fun and right now, with Michigan being down would be the de facto division championship game. Nebraska also gets Minnesota every year, which makes sense, and has the historical-greats match up with Michigan too. That division should be very competitive in the next few years, including Northwestern.
I think that still capping the season with Michigan and Ohio State is dumb, especially if they were to end up splitting back-to-back games and ruin the BCS chances for both.
Losing Iowa/Wisconsin is sucky but what can you do.
September 2, 2010 at 8:59 AM
I don't the idea of a split conference at all. I don't like it with the ACC, SEC or Big 12. They shouled have just palyed with one big conference, increased the schedule to 9 games and still not played 2 teams. Let's say OSU goes undefeated in conference play includuing beating my beloved Hawks. Iowa wins their side but has two losses, OSU and the annual loss to NU. Do they really deserve another shot at the Rose Bowl? No. It should be one chance to pet the pony. The split conference totally minimizes the schedule and emphasizes one maybe two games in the mini-conference. I don't like it, I don't like it at all.
I do like Farmageddon, even without the cool nickname. They should have been playing this game for the last 30 years.
You can call me coach RTS for the next 10 weeks as I am the assistant soccer coach for my daughter's team.
September 2, 2010 at 9:02 AM
Personally, I broke a little grin when I read about Wisconsin's predicament, largely because the Gophers scored and the Badgers got punked in the new alignment. What's ironic, though, is that Wisconsin got screwed largely because of their own success, which required that they be split up with Iowa.
I tend to agree with Tapani that, given the circumstances, this was the best outcome we could have hoped for, short of the East/West alignment that MCA mentioned. Apparently, Delany was concerned about grouping 3 of the biggest 4 "brands" in the conference...for fear that a Big 12 situation would develop (OK, Texas and other TX schools in the Big 12 South dominating every year).
RTS - your argument against divisions is the best I've heard to date. Couldn't the championship game just feature the 1st and 2nd place teams in a 12-team, one division league?
Hard to deny that the Nebraska addition has created a ton of buzz, which is only good for the conference and its schools.
September 2, 2010 at 3:18 PM
P.S. They can't possibly use these divisions for basketball, can they? I mean, IU, Purdue, Ohio State and Illinois in the same division? While Michigan State rules the other, unopposed? If so, again, MN has to like its place.
September 2, 2010 at 3:20 PM
Basketball's not affected, I think. Just an unbalanced 12-team league. They were already unbalanced at 11, anyway, so no real change there.
No doubt that, if anyone got screwed, it was Wisconsin. And that if I could have picked one school to get screwed, it would have Wisconsin. And no doubt the Gophers made out like friggin' bandits - they had the most to lose in terms of really old, tradition-laden (if not recently competitive) rivalries, and they kept all three. They also get to have winnable games against MSU and NU every year.
I still don't like it, though. I don't think it would be at risk of serious top-heaviness if it were kept East/West, in terms of overall quality. Ohio State's been the only consistently excellent Big 10 team the last 12 years (yuck), but Wisconsin's been the only consistently really good one (double yuck). And right now, Nebraska's back in the national title talk and Iowa's a darkhorse to be a factor, too. Michigan's still years away, and remember how awful Penn State was just 10 year ago?
I get the fear of longterm top-heaviness if you get a dominant Michigan/Ohio State nexus, but that's not all that different from Michigan/Nebraska, and I think it's far from a given that Penn State won't have a serious post-Paterno hangover. I see more similarities with the SEC than the Big 12 in terms of competitiveness, either way you design it.
Nonetheless, I see the point on brands and markets. I could imagine the Big Ten network realizing its ratings shoot up for all the big East games, and soon enough the East holds media dominance and thus political dominance. Then you've got your Big 12 analogy for sure.
The fix to this, it seems to me, however, would be not to ship out Wisconsin and Illinois (and thus, the majority of the Chicago market) to join Penn State and Ohio State. It would be to send Iowa and someone.
Whatever; I'm not gonna lose sleep over it, but I will miss the Plains vs. Great Lakes, Cornfields vs. Shuttered Auto Industry Plants feel an East-West alignment would have given.
September 2, 2010 at 5:04 PM
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