What Exactly Is The Big Ten

I picked up the Athlon Sport Big Ten edition of their preseason guide.

When I got home, I noticed a big blurb on the cover saying “Irish Still Pack A Punch.” When did Notre Dame join the Big Ten. I know they cover some other regional stuff like the MAC, but if the cover says Big Ten in gigantic letters on the cover, can we stick to putting pictures of the Big Ten players on the cover.

Notre Dame is not in the Big Ten. If they want to be on the cover of one of the conference magazines, they should join a conference. Preferably one that all of their other sports teams already seem to be participating in.

Hawkeyes Picked 5th In Big Ten

I was reading Athlon Sports Big Ten preview magazine the other day that picked the Hawkeyes 5th in the Big Ten and I wondered if it was really possible to finish that poorly without Ohio State or Michigan on the schedule.

Here’s the Hawkeyes Big Ten Schedule

• at Wisconsin
• Indiana
• at Penn State
• Illinois
• at Purdue
• Michigan State
• at Northwestern
• Minnesota

I can understand losing at Wisconsin since they are supposed to be pretty great this year. I can see the Penn State game being a good game that Penn State could win. Purdue will probably be a pretty tough game, too. So for the sake of worst case scenario, let’s call that a potential loss.

I don’t think anybody would go out of their way to predict Iowa to lose any of the other games. That would put Iowa at 5-3 in the conference.

Last year that would have tied for 4th place. That would have been tied for 3rd place in 2005 and tied for 4th place in 2004 and 2003.

I would imagine that those loose predictions aren’t too crazy to be somewhat expected. If anything, people would probably pick Iowa to beat Purdue which would put the Hawks at 6-2.

If the O-line and D-line can stay healthy, there’s no reason that this shouldn’t be a pretty good year for the Hawks.

Ohio State is still number 1

My homer pick didn’t pan out to well.

Ohio State is a very good football team that just flat out does not make mistakes.  They have the talent to do way more offensively than they do, but their style is to grind it out, refuse to turn over the ball and score enough to beat your.  And they have the talent to make it work.

There were some things I did note during the game.

Iowa receivers were wide open throughout most of the game.  Tate had several passes that were way over/under thrown.  He also had a ton of passes that were dropped.  On most of those incomplete passes, there was no defender around to influence the catch.  The offense would have looked quite a bit better if they completed those easy plays.

I can’t help but wonder if the abdominal strain that Tate is recovering from is hurting him a little more than he lets on to the press.

The defense is pretty good.  Ohio State’s receivers are really really fast.  Iowa did not get burnt on deep passes the way I expected.  They got burnt on short passes where the receiver (Anthony Gonzalez normally) went crazy after the catch.  The running defense did a good job of stuffing anything up the middle.  Most of the big runs were plays designed up the middle where the back saw nothing there and took off toward the sideline.  Ohio State is fast and won those semi-broken play battles.  Anytime you ask your defense to be on the field for more than 40 minutes and more than 24 minutes of the second half, they are going to give up some points.

Plus, Iowa was missing Paschal and his backup.  Not a good game for that.  A lot of those 3rd and longs that OSU converted might have turned out a little different if one or both of them were available.

In the end, OSU is deeper, more skilled, and a very well coached football team that won a very tough road game and deserve to be ranked number 1.