Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Football Tuesday (I know, just a little late): The Crazy Big Ten

I wanted to get one more post done before I get super involved with NaNoWriMo (which I’ve started, yay!).  I hope to keep updating the blog, but we’ll see how this month goes with all the other writing I’ll be doing.

So the last time I talked about college football I hyped up Wisconsin. Since then, they’ve lost two games in a row...yeah...so apparently my hype is the kiss of death, awesome.  For a while it looked like Wisconsin was going to run away with the big ten, win their division and totally out play the other team in the championship game.  Well, that might not happen now that they’ve lost two games. 

There are all kinds of different scenarios that would play out, causing lots of possible combinations of teams playing for the Big Ten Championship.  The teams left in the race on the Legends side are Michigan (yay!), Michigan State, Nebraska and Iowa (although after losing to Minnesota I can’t see them making it). And on the Leaders side are Penn State, Wisconsin, and Ohio State. 

kinda what it feels like...

I’ll only get into how Michigan can get there.  Mostly, they have to win out and hope Michigan State loses one more conference game.  There are some crazy scenarios if Michigan loses another game it would have to be cross division (Illinois or OSU) and hope that Michigan state loses a division game.  Michigan can’t lose to Iowa or Nebraska if they want a shot at the championship game.

All of these weird losses in the Big Ten just show that it isn’t the strongest conference out there.  This makes me sad, because the Big Ten is my favorite conference (obviously!) and its hard for others to give them respect when they can’t earn it. 

As for the rest of the country.  The big showdown is this weekend between LSU and Bama, should be a good game the only downside of it is that its on CBS.  Not sure what it is about college football on CBS but its just not as good as ESPN or ABC, I don’t feel like they capture all the greatness that is college football. 

As for the other unbeatens, it would be fun to see Stanford go undefeated and get the chance to play for a national championship (since I live close to their campus).  I think Oklahoma State will lose a game and I don’t see Boise State dropping one but if there are already two unbeatens then I don’t see them getting a shot at the title game.  However, if the only two unbeaten teams left are an SEC champ and Boise State I think Boise should definitely get the chance to play for a national championship over a one loss team.

Hopefully I’ll get a post out this Friday but no promises (that whole NaNoWriMo thing might be taking up all my free time).