The Spread, Week Two: Big Ten, Little Help?

CONFERENCE OF DUNCES

So, the Big Ten didn’t exactly get off to a great start this weekend. Sure, the conference won most of its games, but it was by no means dominant. A quick recap: Ohio State, Purdue and Nebraska easily dispatched their lesser opponents by a combined score of 153-36.

Illinois handled Western Michigan pretty well, if not as well as they should have. Michigan State held off a Boise team that most thought would struggle to remain at the level of their recent success. But Boise was ranked and has been good for a number of years, so Sparty’s off the hook for now.

Northwestern beat Syracuse by 1 and while Syracuse is not exactly a powerhouse, neither is Northwestern, so we’ll cut them some slack too.

Here’s where things get ugly. Wisconsin and Iowa, two of the upper-level teams in the conference, barely scraped by the likes of Northern Iowa and Northern Illinois. Penn State, who was still expected to do well this year before the full effects of their recent sanctions set in, lost to Ohio. The real one, not the one that only exists in Brady Hoke’s mind. Indiana is always bad, but they’re not supposed to be almost-lose-Indiana-State bad. Minnesota is also always bad (lately), but again, not take-three-overtimes-to-beat-UNLV bad.

And then, to cap things off, Michigan got completely destroyed by Alabama. They didn’t just lose, which is what everyone expected them to do, they lost at losing. Not showing up to the game at all would have been a more competitive move than 99% of what they did on the field Saturday night.

For the most part, it doesn’t matter much to me if conference opponents win or lose, but it would be nice if half the league wasn’t actively making us look worse by association.

What’s in store this week? Minnesota and Indiana will be narrowly escaping with wins over New Hampshire and UMass while most of the rest of the conference puts our credibility on the line against a host of mid-range AQ conference teams. Raise your hand if you don’t believe Virginia could beat Penn State, Oregon State could beat Wisconsin, Notre Dame could beat Purdue, Iowa St. could beat Iowa, Vanderbilt could beat Northwestern, and Arizona State could beat Illinois.

That’s what I thought. Not only are those results believable after last week, I’m predicting right now that the Big Ten loses at least three of those games.

ALSO HAPPENING

THURSDAY: ESPN is going all out with it’s big time night matchup of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. While that might actually be an interesting NFL game, this one is actually between the universities and I think after Pitt lost to Youngstown State last week, we have no choice but to cheer for…

Them.

Yeah, that’s right. Ordinarily, I’d cheer for Ohio teams under any circumstances, but this time I’m going the other way. Let’s face it, UC fans are d***********s. They hate us and I hate them back. So the most acceptable outcome of this game is for them to lose to the team that lost to YSU. It’s what they deserve.

SATURDAY: Florida @ Texas A&M is the kind of game that could never have happened without realignment, because Florida is the agoraphobe of college football. Tune in to watch them break out in cold sweats at their bizarre new surroundings. Georgia also welcomes Missouri to the SEC in a game that I’m predicting will have that play that everybody is talking about on Sunday, and not in a good way.