Another year, another preview of two of the lamest named divisions in college football history. The Leaders Division of The Big Ten consists of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Penn State, Purdue and Wisconsin. Two of these teams will not be eligible to play for The Big Ten title or a bowl game. Does Wisconsin run away with the division? Will a dark horse challenge The Fighting Brett Bielema’s? Will Penn State and Ohio State play with a chip on their shoulder and play spoiler?

The Top Dog:

The Badgers have all-everything tailback Montee Ball returning from his record setting 2011 season and another free agent QB in the fold. Danny O’Brien comes to Wisconsin via Maryland, home of the worst jerseys on Earth.

O’Brien is not nearly as good as Russell Wilson who lit it up for the Badgers last year. (You are now instructed to click on Russell Wilson’s name to see his wife reacting to him being drafted to the NFL)

O’Brien will be solid, but this team, as it always has been, is built around their massive offensive line and an outstanding running back. Montee Ball amassed over 2200 yards from scrimmage and 39 TDs. Truly video game type numbers (well, if you are playing vs. el Kaiser, who is horrible at NCAA Football 13 on the Xbox 360). Offensively The Badgers will be down, with the loss of Wilson and the key to their season will end up being O’Brien who will have big shoes to fill. If O’Brien can’t produce, watch for Joe Brennan to get the nod.

Defensively, Wisky will have some question marks on the defensive line and in the secondary but they are loaded at linebacker with Chris Borland and Mike Taylor.

Brett Bielema will have this team ready and they are definitely in the drivers seat in a watered down division hampered by NCAA sanctions. They could finish 3rd and make it to the conference title game. But I don’t see them taking a back seat to anyone in the division.

The Post Seasonly Challenged:

How do you overcome the loss of a tremendously successful head coach and an ugly bout with the NCAA and lingering sanctions? You go out and hire the best college football coach in the country. Nope, I’m not talking about Bill O’Brien. I’m of course talking about Urban Meyer.

Meyer will bring his proven track record to the Buckeyes and that includes the much publicized spread option offense. His offense typically thrives when he has a dynamic dual threat quarterback and he has one of those in Big Ten Freshman of the Year, Braxton Miller.

The Ohio State offense will be like nothing we have seen at OSU in maybe ever. It will be a high octane, high energy aggressive in your face assault. There will be weapons all over the field. Young wide receivers Devin Smith, Evan Spencer and Philly Brown. Running backs Carlos Hyde, Jordan Hall, and true freshman Bri’onte Dunn. Everyone is excited to see what Tight End Jake Stoneburner can do and there have been whispers that outstanding fullback Zach Boren will tote the rock as well. The offense will be a no huddle, hurry up style from the mold of the Oregon Ducks. The only difference will be that Ohio State will still play defense.

Speaking of defense, the Buckeyes are loaded this year once again. Last year they had a down year and are looking to bounce back. John Simon and Jonathon Hankins leads the defensive line, while the linebackers will be a group of very athletic players lead by playmaking sophomore Ryan Shazier. The defensive backfield with be lead by Bradley Roby. The safeties will hopefully bounce back from a down year.

This is a whole new world for Penn State. Gone is a vast majority of the old regime along with some key players including Silas Redd who is off to USC.. New to The Nittany Lions is head coach Bill O’Brien and a boatload of NCAA sanctions thanks to the Jerry Sandusky coverup.

Here is the running list of Penn State players that have transferred or decommitted:

Justin Brown – Oklahoma
Tim Buckley – NC State
Rob Bolden – LSU
Anthony Fera – Texas
Khairi Fortt – Cal
Kevin Haplea – FSU
Ryan Nowicki – Illinois
Jamil Pollard – Rutgers
Silas Redd- USC

Dorian Johnson – Possible Ohio State target
Ross Douglas – Committed to Michigan
Will Fuller – Committed to Notre Dame

Offensively this team will be a complete and total train wreck. Without star running back Silas Redd, Penn State will rely heavily on terrible ginger quarterback Matt McGloin who split time last year with recently transferred (and equally terrible quarterback) Rob Bolden. Paul Jones will be nipping at the heals of the magic ginger. Hopefully McGloin won’t get knocked out brawling with any of his wide receivers like last year. If the Penn State spring game is any indication, The Fighting Freeh Reports will be worse than I think they will be. The top three QB’s accounted for under 50% passing and 5 interceptions.

Defensively Penn State will be stout once again, lead by All Angry Team linebacker Mike Mauti. Mauti spent most of the offseason working out his vocal cords telling the world how mad he is at Emmert, the NCAA, Illinois, The Smurfs, candy, slip’n slides, Voltron and Jessica Tandy. For those of you playing at home, Jessica Tandy is currently the #2 tailback on PSU’s roster.

It will be interesting to see how O’brien fairs in his first year as a head coach…of anything. Right now he is doing and saying all the right things however he has coached in exactly zero football games. Last year I thought OSU would be fine with first year coach Luke Fickell…boy was I wrong. Being a successful coordinator is much different than being a successful head coach. Time will tell for Mr. O’brien.

The Hopefuls:

Our old friend Tim Beckman, former cornerbacks coach at Ohio State has taken over for the Zooker. While the players were busy working out and prepping for fall practice their coaches were hiding in dumpsters, behind curtains and under cars waiting for Penn State players and a chance to poach them.

Nathan Scheelhaase will lead a revamped Illini offense that will look for the junior quarterback to sling it more than he totes it. Scheelhaase is a very athletic and talented player that will spell success or doom for his team. He doesn’t have a treasure trove of help as Donovonn Young will get the brunt of the work at running back splitting time with Josh Ferguson. Young is, well, young, but could be a valuable cog in the Illini offense. Gone is outstanding wide receiver A.J. Jenkins to the NFL. The slack will have to be picked up by a gaggle of solid WR’s in, Darius Millines, Spencer Harris and Jon Davis who combined for 67 catches in 2011.

Defensively the Illini are usually stingy and this year they return defensive linemen Michael Buchanan, Akeem Spence, Justin Staples and Glenn Foster. This quartet of big eaters helped Illinois to an impressive 7th ranked defense in the nation last year.

Illinois could be a team to sneak into the Big Ten title game with PSU and OSU down for the count. Their defense will lead the way along with their talented quarterback. They are definitely a team to watch.

The Boilermakers have logjam at quarterback and that is not a good thing. The have: Robert Marve, Caleb TerBush and Rob Henry (who is a good athlete and could play other positions) all vying for the top spot. There isn’t a top notch talent among them and with all three possibly getting playing time none of them will become effective QB’s. With three departures from last years offensive line and a line hampered by injuries, Purdue’s offense could be awful this year.

The Boilermaker defense relies on gimmicky formations and lots of movement before the ball is snapped. They are blitz happy and try to disguise everything they do to make up for the lack of superior athletes on defense.

Bottom line for Purdue — the are in some trouble this year.

Tre Roberson comes into his sophomore year after having a moderately successful season last year. He is a good athlete in the right offense to showcase his skills. OSU fans should remember him keeping a bad Indiana team in the game last year until the fourth quarter.

Other than Roberson, their entire team is terrible. Their running game is terrible. Their WR’s are terrible. Their entire defense is terrible. Last year The Hoosiers were 1-11 and this year will most likely be no different.

Predictions:

1. Ohio State
2. Wisconsin
3. Illinois
4. Penn State
5. Purdue
6. Indiana

Ohio State plays an easy schedule this year and a ton of home games against good Big Ten foes. They should “win” the division but will have to bow down to the runner up who should be Wisconsin. Penn State’s defense will be good enough to keep them from being terrible. I still think Illinois will push Wisconsin for the title.

Last November 900 year old Joe Paterno, head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions was fired. He was fired for his lack of leadership which allowed former PSU defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky to roam freely and abuse children, over and over and over. Shortly after this news was made public there was a massive outpouring of emotion from fans. No…not for the outrage over what Sandusky had done and what top leadership failed to do at PSU…but because Joe Paterno was fired. Students did this:

And they went to Paterno’s home to show their undying support for the wrinkled, diaper wearing false idol:

Oddly enough I don’t remember them showing the same support for the victims in the Sandusky situation. Football, football and more football. It reins supreme at Penn State. It trumps all. From top to bottom it created a culture where even child rape was swept under the rug and forgotten about. Why you ask? To protect the football team. Football in State College spiraled out of control. The current powers that be knew they had to do something. So they hired the former director of the FBI (Louis Freeh) to investigate what happened at Penn State and this is what he found:

Excerpts

● “Four of the most powerful people at The Pennsylvania State University — President Graham B. Spanier, Senior Vice President-Finance and Business Gary C. Schultz, Athletic Director Timothy M. Curley and Head Football Coach Joseph V. Paterno — failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade. These men concealed Sandusky’s activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities.”

● “The Board (of Trustees) did not create a `Tone at the Top’ environment wherein Sandusky and other senior University officials believed they were accountable to it.”

● “Before May 1998, several staff members and football coaches regularly observed Sandusky showering with young boys in the Lasch Building (now the East Area Locker Building or `Old Lasch’). None of the individuals interviewed notified their superiors of this behavior.”

● “Janitor B explained to the Special Investigative Counsel that reporting the incident (a 2000 encounter during which a colleague saw Sandusky molesting a boy in a school shower) `would have been like going against the President of the United States in my eyes.’ `I know Paterno has so much power, if he wanted to get rid of someone, I would have been gone.’ He explained `football runs this University,’ and said the University would have closed ranks to protect the football program at all costs.”

● “The special investigative counsel found no evidence to indicate that Sandusky’s retirement was related to the police investigation of him in 1998.”

● Handwritten note, apparently from Paterno to Sandusky: “If there were no (Second) Mile, then I believe you … probably could be the next Penn State FB coach. But you wanted the best of two worlds and I probably should have sat down with you six or seven years and said look Jerry, if you want to be head coach at Penn State, give up your association with the (Second) Mile and concentrate on nothing but your family and Penn State. … You are too deeply involved in both.”

● “A reasonable conclusion from Spanier’s email statement (in 2001after a graduate assistant reported seeing Sandusky with a boy in a shower) that `(t)he only downside for us is if the message isn’t `heard’ and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it,’ is that Spanier, Schultz and Curley were agreeing not to report Sandusky’s activity.”

● “Neither Spanier nor the University’s General Counsel, Cynthia Baldwin, briefed the Board of Trustees about the Grand Jury investigation of Sandusky or the potential risk to the University until the Board’s meeting on May 11, 2011 and, then, only at the request of a Trustee who read the March 31, 2011 article” published by The Patriot-News of Harrisburg.

● “Spanier and (university lawyer Cynthia) Baldwin opposed an independent investigation of the Sandusky issue, with Baldwin stating that `(i)f we do this, we will never get rid of this (outside investigative) group in some shape or form. The Board will think that they should have such a group.’ Spanier agreed.”

● “The Board was unprepared to handle the crisis that occurred when Sandusky, Curley and Schultz were charged. This contributed significantly to its poor handling of the firing of Paterno, and the subsequent severe reaction by the Penn State community and the public to the Board’s oversight of the University and Paterno’s firing.”

Findings
● Penn State officials including coach Joe Paterno and university President Graham Spanier concealed information of Sandusky’s activities from authorities and the public to avoid bad publicity.

● Paterno, Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley “empowered Sandusky to attract potential victims” by failing to restrict his access to the university despite receiving two reports of illicit sexual contact involving him and children.

● Spanier failed in his duties as president by not informing the board of trustees about the allegations against Sandusky and the subsequent grand jury investigation.

● Once aware of the grand jury investigation, the trustees failed in their duty to the university by not pressing Spanier for details about Sandusky’s situation.

Less that two weeks after the Freeh report rocked Penn State and the rest of the country the NCAA stepped in and we all know how that turned out. 4 year bowl ban, huge scholarship reductions and a 60 million dollar fine among other things. Upon hearing this news the Penn State faithful once again showed their disgust:

Again, their disgust is solely football related. Here is another gem…and this time 9/11 is compared to NCAA sanctions on Penn State:

Lest anyone forget, here is a rundown of what Jerry Sandusky will be spending the rest of his life in prison for:

Cruising the blogosphere since the NCAA handed down arguably the harshest punishment in NCAA history to Penn State I’ve read some insane posts by Penn State fans. Here is a taste of what I’ve read from around the web:

From PSU’s Scout.com forum:

OP: “I propose that this year, in remembrance of the victims, Penn State wear all
black helmets with black face masks.

Thoughts?”

Reaction to OP:

“Dumb”

“When Saturday afternoons roll around I want to enjoy 3 hours of
football not remember victims.”

“Why black? They’re not dead. This isn’t Baylor.”

“NOOOOO!!! No more apologizing!”

“I propose putting “409” on the side of every helmet and
across the chest where some jerseys have the school name, in large letters
VACATE THIS.”

“The victims are not the players problem they have nothing to apologize for……
Erickson signed the papers it’s his problem!”

This is just a small, small sample of what I’ve read. The level of hatred these people have for Louis Freeh, Mark Emmert, Rodney Erickson and the NCAA are at a frenzied level. I will say that this isn’t every single PSU fan out there. Some of them are actually sane and accept people have done wrong and there are consequences to those actions. But most Penn Staters I’ve read up on, are living in a fantasy land and seem to be sheltered from reality in some way.

What they fail to understand, even with everything that has happened and come out against their false idol is that they failed to lead when it mattered most. Sure, it’s nice that Joe Paterno was able to fart his way up to the booth to “coach” games and all, but when his leadership was needed most…when innocent little boys needed protection from a monster…football was chosen, time and time again.

At the end of the day who cares what these Penn Staters thinks…they got blasted worse than any school in the history of college football. And did so because the highest ranking leaders protected a game over protecting children from a known serial rapist that once begged for death, because he could stop himself. They protected this:

I keep asking myself why they have so much hatred for the NCAA, Freeh, Emmert and Erickson, and not the same level of hatred for Sandusky, Paterno, Spanier and Curley? It’s because of what happened at the top for so long. It’s why the NCAA stepped in and did what they did. The fans in State College have been poisoned by these people. The culture from the top all the way down to the bottom is rotten at Penn State. Football trumped child rape for 2 decades at the highest levels of leadership…and today, after Paterno is disgraced and dead, Sandusky locked up for the rest of his life, Spanier and Curly waiting their fates in court Penn State fans still put football first.

If you look close enough…

…you can almost see the ghost of a liar and a coward.

We Are!

The SEC has dominated the world of college football for a better part of a decade. We’ve heard rumors about under the table dealings in the SEC forever. It’s probably the worlds worst kept secret. Here is a funny story Charles Barkley tells about Dirk Nowitzki.

Yet here Ohio State is…serving a brutally harsh penalty for a coach “covering up” free tattoos and trophy selling.

Dear BCS:

Fans have been clamoring for it forever and today the BCS Presidential Oversight Committee approved of college footballs first playoff ever. This model was approved by the 11 conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s head honcho last week. It’s funny to listen to these empty money grubbing suits talk about how great this is for college football when in the recent past these same people were quoted for years as saying a playoff would ruin college football. But to their credit, they got the ball rolling.

When:

Not soon enough!

The new playoff format will start on December 31st of 2014. One game will be on the 31st(much to the chagrin of every party planning woman associated with any red-blooded American male in America) and another on the 1st of January. The title game will be played the following Monday night as long as it’s at least six days after January 1st. #2 will play #3 and #1 will play #4. The contract will be for 12 years. I guarantee the number of teams will increase from here. This is certainly not an end all be all situation.

Why not bump this up to 2013? Why wait 2 years? UGH!

Where:

The semi-final games will be rotated among 6 bowl games that already exist. Those bowl games have not been selected yet, however one can guess that they will be The Rose Bowl, The Sugar Bowl, The Orange Bowl, The Fiesta Bowl, The Cotton Bowl and perhaps the new bowl game that will be played by the SEC and Big 12 winners. The title game will be bid out to the highest bidder. I’m sure there will be no under the table deals going on for these rights…

Why:

Because the powers that be caved under massive pressure from college football fans nation wide. They finally listened! Actually a better way to put it would be that they finally figured out they could make a lot more money with a playoff. Everything from merchandising to local booms in the economy to TV rights. Speaking of TV rights, one of the reasons for the change had to be the plummeting TV ratings of the BCS bowl games as well as the rest of the bowl games. Fans were revolting…tuning out. Meanwhile the NFL has been busy basically printing money due to massive playoff TV ratings. It’s been estimated that TV rights alone could bring in 6 billion in revenue over the life of the new college football playoff contract. Pretty much the same players will be padding their pockets, but instead of a wad of twenties it will be a wad of hundreds.

How:

A selection committee will rank the teams, based on factors like strength of schedule, prettiest cheerleaders and best mascot. No details on how the committee will be selected. Perhaps a committee to select a committee will be needed. This too leaves a bit to be desired. The selection committee method works for college basketball but again who will be on the committee and what will all the factors be? Will they once and for all get rid of the fake computer rankings? This process needs to be transparent. This does not eliminate controversy as now instead of the #3 team getting left out the #5 team will be left out…but we will take it. We will take it like a detoxing hobo taking a vodka soaked Baconator…more please-(British accent). With all joking aside hat will the committee take into consideration? They will look at head to head match ups, win loss record, strength of schedule and conference champions. Last years Big Ten Championship game was relatively meaningless. It was one of the better games of the year if you watched it, but at the end of the day, it was totally meaningless. The winner got to go to the Rose Bowl and the loser didn’t even get to go to a BCS bowl game. With this playoff the winner could very well be in contention for a shot at a National Title. Gotta love it.

More details to come…it will be interesting to see how this effects the polls the bowls and the regular season.

I’ve been a fan of college football my whole life, but there was always something missing…a postseason that made sense. It started with the “nothing” approach with just simply ranked teams that rarely ever matched up #1 vs #2. Then came the BCS which was exciting at first but proved to be a major league head scratcher. For years the BCS was surrounded with controversy, capped off last year of course with LSU playing Alabama in the title game. Alabama didn’t even win their on division, let alone their own conference, yet there they were in the title game. Oh…and they won it too. It sort of took a wrecking ball to the idiotic notion that the BCS protected the sanctity of the regular season and guaranteed that every game counted. We all knew that was ridiculous.

So this is a great first step forward. What is missing? What could they do better with? Time will tell. I for one would love to see the semifinal rounds held at the home field of the higher seed. I’d hate for OSU to have the #1 seed and have to play #4 USC in The Rose Bowl. That wouldn’t make any sense at all. Hopefully the “committee” takes that into consideration.

Playoffs? Yeah…we are talking about playoffs!

Yes Jim, playoffs.