The Spread, Week Three: 1 G1VE UP

THE B?G TEN

As I predicted last week right here in front of all six of you, the Big Ten laid a serious egg this weekend and convinced me that it’s just as well that OSU can’t play in the postseason because there’s no way this conference is putting a team in the title game anyway. Let’s take a look at just how horrible our league is right now and what’s in store for us this weekend, if we can stand to watch:

Wisconsin: The Badgers were probably most people’s pre-season favorite to repeat as conference champs with both of the other good teams in the Leaders division ineligible for the title. Then they went and barely beat something called Northern Iowa, which I imagine is similar to North Korea but with corn and soybeans instead of thinly-veiled nuclear proliferation. That red flag manifested itself on Saturday against Oregon State, a team that probably isn’t even going to have a winning record this year. Wisconsin failed to score for the first 58:19 of the game and then had what appeared to be a successful onside kick called back after finally getting one those “touched downs” of their very own. So, yeah, go ahead and say the Badgers got screwed, but we both know they weren’t going to score anyway.

This week, Wisconsin hosts Utah State, fresh off of an upset of in-state rival Utah, a Pac-12 team that’s better than Oregon State. Since the transitive property is never wrong in college football, this means Wisconsin will lose to the Aggies by two touchdowns, so 14-0 probably.

Michigan State: The Spartans are going to win the Big Ten and it’s probably even going to be close. But first they have to lose to Notre Dame. They will do this with a late pick-six on what should have been a drive to set up the game-winning field goal.

Michigan: Michigan is back, or so I’ve been told, but it seems that wherever they went, they learned a few things there. A week after being treated like a MAC team by Alabama, the Wolverines almost fell victim to Air Force’s version of that nasty service academy option attack. This means that Michigan is a laughably bad team and there is nothing anyone can say to disprove that. I know this from my own experience with Michigan fans following the Ohio State/Navy game in 2009.

This week Michigan plays UMass, which is a school with a football team and not a Catholic social networking site like I thought. Thanks, Google!

Nebraska: I was so fooled by the Cornhuskers beatdown of Southern Miss in week one that I didn’t even include their game against UCLA in my doomsday prediciton. Oops. This week they play Arkansas State and should probably win by 30. They won’t though. They’ll probably lose.

Iowa: Iowa lost 9-6 to Iowa State in THE GAME OF THE CENTURY!!!!!! RE-MATCH! RE-MATCH! RE-MATCH!

This week they play Northern Iowa, that team from earlier who almost beat Wisconsin. Poor, poor Iowa.

Penn State: Despite all their sanctions, I honestly believed that PSU would still be a decent team this year. Well, forget it. They’re terrible and they deserve it. Make no mistake about it, they lost to Virginia because of Jerry Sandusky. When Texas took advantage of the open-season on PSU players and snagged their kicker, they also snagged a W. His replacement missed on 13 points’ worth of kicks in the 17-16 loss. Is it all his fault? No, not technically, but it is like 95% his fault.

Penn State loses to Navy this week.

Purdue & Illinois: With the situation in the Leaders division, you could have made an argument for one of these teams getting to the B1GCG this year, and I guess you still could. Purdue only lost to Notre Dame by 3 so maybe they’re still in it. Illinois on the other hand got totally Michiganed by Arizona State’s Alabamacity. It’s pretty embarrassing.

These two will be playing Charleston Southern and Eastern Michigan this week and it doesn’t really matter which one is which.

Northwestern, Minnesota & Indiana: These teams are a combined 6-0. Besides Ohio State and Michigan State, they are the only unbeaten teams remaining in the conference.

I know.

Indiana plays Ball State and Minnesota plays Western Michigan. I wouldn’t even know what to predict for those games at this point. Northwestern will take on Boston College, who hired Jim Bollman to coach the offensive line because nobody in Boston has ever seen football played by humans I guess.

ALSO HAPPENING

Florida @ Tennessee, if you like pretending it’s the ’90s and can’t find a 90210 marathon.

Arizona State @ Missouri sounds like something I should care about, like politics or children.

USC @ Stanford probably won’t live up to the hype.

BYU @ Utah, because the loser has to try to sell people on Mormonism for two years.

Comments

  1. BYU @ Utah, because the loser has to try to sell people on Mormonism for two years.

    Hey now! Some of your fellow MotSaG’ers tried to sell people on Mormonism for two years!

    (But we did not, however attend BYU or Utah)

    😉

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