Big Ten Gets Owned

Well, Saturday the 13th wasn't unlucky for the Badgers (although I have yet to finish watching the Fresno State game that I tivo'd last night), but man, the rest of the Big Ten looked bad. The Beanie-less Ohio A&M gets completely owned by USC on national broadcast TV, after looking decent at the start of the game. Purude blows a 17 point lead at home to lose to Oregon, and still hasn't beat a ranked team since 2003. Michigan, largely due to its own errors, gets its butt kicked by a Notre Dame team that most sane people were hoping was going to be horrible again this year. Illinois beats the Ragin' Cajuns by only 3 points, in a game at Memorial Stadium. Not good.

Yes, Penn State stomped Syracuse, but the formerly interesting and talented teams the 'Cuse used to put out are no longer. The Orange may be the worst BCS conference team in the country. And yes, Iowa beat in-state rival Iowa State, but the Cyclones aren't expected to do much this year, and the game was quite close until the last few minutes. I also refuse to argue that Sparty, Northwestern, and Minnesota beating patsies at home does much of anything for the Big Ten's reputation. Be prepared for the league to get ripped this next week, regardless of Wisconsin's tough achievement out there in the agricultural hinterlands. We've still got to be ahead of the Big East and the ACC, but right now it's looking like the Pac-10, SEC and Big 12 have far more street cred. (Even though the Pac-10 looks very top heavy-- UCLA, Washington, Cal and Arizona State all had bad losses yesterday, and PSU killed Oregon State last weekend.)