A Quick Reference Guide to the Big Ten for Nebraska

UPDATE: Check out the Weekend Hangover - discussing all the things to "Love" or "Hate" during the past weekend.

Welcome to the Big 10 Mr. Cornhusker. Once it is officially announced later this week, Nebraska will eventually become part of the Big 10 conference and will have played a major part in the collapse of the Big 12 conference. Congrats on that. So as you start your journey, I wanted to put together a quick reference guide to make you feel at home and realize that things are not all that different in your new surroundings. In fact, there are quite a few similarities between your old conference and your new conference, and here is a school by school breakdown of your new neighbors.

First, let’s start with your prettier and more outgoing twin sister, the Wisconsin Badgers. Wisconsin is what you would look like if you lost 15 pounds (which would make you faster on the football field) and got a boob job (aka improve your basketball program so that the best player to ever come from your school is better than either Eric Piatkowski or Tyronn Lue). Wisconsin should be the poster on your wall for what you want to be in 7 years if you make smart changes. Joining the Big 10 was your first smart move. Calling Notre Dame and telling them to stop being such arrogant deuchebags and suggesting they join you would also be a smart move.

The Ohio State Buckeyes are like your Texas Longhorns. They are the biggest and the baddest in the conference. They spend the most, they make the most and they have the loudest, most loyal and vocal fanbase. Don’t ever say anything bad about them because they will rally the rest of their rabid irrational fans and you will never hear the end of it.

The Michigan Wolverines are the Oklahoma Sooners. They think they are the big powerhouses of their conferences because they have strong traditions, but they fail to realize that they’ve been completely surpassed by their rivals (Ohio State for Michigan and Texas for Oklahoma).

The Indiana Hoosiers are your Colorado Buffaloes. They have some tradition in sports, but haven’t been relevant in years. They are also among the biggest party schools in the conference and have the easiest girls that like to party. If you’re looking for a good time, the same way you used to head to Denver, you now can head to Bloomington. Yes, I know, that’s in Indiana, and it’s hard to believe that a good time can be had in Indiana.

The Iowa Hawkeyes are the well, Iowa State Cyclones. They are both inbred, corn-fed farmers that occasionally put together a decent team or two when they get a good recruit like Marcus Fizer or BJ Armstrong. Oh, and no offense to you, Mr. Cornhuster for that “corn-fed” comment. Then again, the Beach Boys did let us know that the midwest farmer's daughters really make you feel alright, so there is something to be said for that.

The Minnesota Gophers are your Texas Tech Red Raiders. They have hideous uniforms for every sport and while they may hire a big coach (Tubby Smith like TTU’s Bobby Knight), they still suck. It’s not really worth spending too much time on a team whose mascot is a smiling furball wearing a maroon polyester sweater.

The Purdue Boilermakers are the Baylor Bears. The Boilers are the forgotten team in Indiana like Baylor is the forgotten team in Texas. At least Purdue has not had the scandals that plagued the Bears a few years ago. They are never really contenders for any titles despite having some really good players, like Drew Brees, Glen Robinson or Kyle Orton.

The Illinois Fighting Illini are the Oklahoma State Cowboys. They wear orange, they’ve had some issues in the past with rule breaking (Eddie Sutton at OSU and the whole Deon Thompson issue with Illinois basketball), and they’ve produced some of the on-air talent at ESPN – Doug Gottleib and Steven Bardo. Illinois does have the ability to recruit some off-field talent from the greater Chicago area, much like Oklahoma State can recruit from Oklahoma City or Tulsa. Why would you recruit talent from Tulsa? Because spell out Tulsa backwards and you’ll learn what you can find in that city.

The Penn State Nittany Lions are the Kansas State Wildcats. They are the state schools that play the ugly step-sister to their “non-state” teams – Penn is tremendously more accomplished academically than PSU, and Kansas has the athletic tradition that KSU wishes it had. Both PSU and KSU also have coaches that provide endless moments of unintentional comedy with Joe Paterno and Frank Martin.

The Michigan State Spartans are the Kansas Jayhawks. They are both basketball powerhouses that are perennial title contenders. Unfortunately, that’s all they have going for them. It’s tough to find pictures of talent from the schools – seriously, I looked – and their football legends include Plaxico Burress, TJ Duckett, Charles Rogers, and Todd Reesing (yeah, that’s the best Kansas had to offer). At least Kansas will likely be able to dominate the Mountain West basketball standings now.

The Northwestern Wildcats are the Texas A&M Aggies. Well, the Wildcats are really like the Aggies with a large dose of Adderall. Unlike your former conference, you will actually find more than one school in the Big 10 that has strong academics – assuming you overlook the fact that the Big 10 can’t count. Texas A&M probably wouldn’t crack the top half of your new conference, and we know that your academic record will put you at the bottom of the conference next to Penn State, Indiana and Minnesota.

So welcome to the Big 10!! We hope that this has helped to make you feel at home and see the many similarities to your old neighborhood and the many upgrades and amenities that are now available to you. We hope you’re prepared to step up your game and bring some of your finest talents to our towns. We’ll make sure they are taken care of. Good Luck!

Weekend Hangover - Love/Hate

Well my bracket is completely busted after the first weekend of the NCAA tournament, so that’s the hate of the week………….the link is on the right to check the standings of the Sports Addict Brackett Challenge and see how awful my picks were.

LOVE

- Who was the biggest hero of the weekend? It definitely wasn’t the politicians who want to celebrate the fact that they actually did something over the weekend. And let’s face it, they really didn’t do anything since there are still more hoops to jump through. The real hero of the weekend was Ali Farokhmanesh, the Northern Iowa kid who hit the 3-pointer that sent home tournament #1 seed Kansas. His shot wasn’t just a clutch shot, it was one of those shots where the coach is yelling “Noooooooooooo! Yes!!!” because you’re up 1 with under a minute to play and typically the coach wants you to run some clock before shooting. Yet the Kansas defended backed off Ali, and to quote the great Gus Johnson, Ali decided to “rise and fire” from beyond the arc. Immediately after he hit the shot I got a text from my brother “that kid has balls the size of….well…….Iowa.” Enough said.

- The other contender for hero of the week? Korie Lucious of Michigan State, hitting the game winning shot to send the Spartans past Maryland into the Sweet 16. In a highly entertaining game that went back and forth in the final minute, Lucious carried a team that lost its best player, Kalen Lucas, and was also dealing with an injury to Chris Allen. It also ended the career of Maryland’s star guard, Greivis Vasquez, and it will be interesting to see where Vasquez’s pro potential ends up. The Spartans will have their hands full dealing with the Northern Iowa team next week, especially if the Lucas injury is a torn achilles heel like it appeared to be.

- So what is the best conference this year? There are 11 conferences represented in the sweet 16 which is a great illustration of the parity and thin line between the major conferences and the mid-majors. There is only one conference with more than 2 teams still alive: The Big Ten (Michigan State, Ohio State & Purdue). The Big 12 (Kansas St & Baylor), Big East (Syracuse & West Virginia) and SEC (Kentucky & Tennessee) have two teams each, and the rest are single teams from conferences including the ACC, Pac-10, Ivy, Atlantic-10, Missouri Valley, West Coast and Horizon. It was a very impressive showing for the much-maligned Big Ten.

- On the other side of the spectrum, it was enjoyable to watch teams that were definitely overrated show how overrated they were. I’m talking directly to New Mexico, a team that cried about a lack of respect for their great record and then they completely wet themselves in the tournament. They were completely dismantled by the 11th seeded Washington team. Other teams that were exposed as frauds during the first weekend: Temple, Vanderbilt, Richmond, Pittsburgh and yes, Wisconsin. It happens every March when teams cry for respect or build up expectations, only to deliver a performance like Jennifer Lopez like Gigli.

- The quote of the weekend. It had nothing to do with basketball, and took place at dinner Saturday night with a group of friends discussing how a girl should pace herself drinking on a date to roughly match the amount that the guy is drinking. We got into a discussion of a girl who was drinking 4 cocktails to 1 for her date because she figured it was free drinks and she knew the date wasn’t going to lead to a second date (or even a second bar). To which my friend just deadpans “Why would you waste a hangover on a bad date?” Well said.

HATE

- The performance of Wisconsin was pitiful. First, Cornell was flat-out better than the Badgers in every aspect of the game. Their big slow white guy was better than Wisconsin’s guy, Nankovil. The Cornell scorer (Wittman) was equal to the Wisconsin scorer (Leuer). The Cornell undersized point guard played under control, didn’t turn the ball over and made shots – all things that Trevon Hughes did not do. The Cornell shooter (Jacques) made his shots, and Wisconsin’s shooter (Bohannon) could barely hit the ocean if he fell out of a boat. Cornell had guys coming off the bench that made contributions, and the Badgers did not. At the end of the day, there are not many teams that can out-fundamental a Bo Ryan team, and Cornell did that.

The most disappointing aspect was the disappearance of the Badger senior backcourt of Hughes and Bohannon. When the Badgers got hot near the end of the regular season after Leuer returned from injury, those two were driving the bus. In the Big Ten tournament and in both NCAA Tournament games, they drove the bus into a ditch and lit it on fire.

- In addition to the Wisconsin veteran backcourt collapsing, the same happened to Kansas and Villanova. Kansas’s Sherron Collins was awful in the Jayhawks debacle and he wasn’t able to step up and carry the team like you would expect from a senior All-American point guard. Similarly, Scottie Reynolds couldn’t get Villanova past St. Mary’s in the second round, proving that the first round struggles were not a fluke and Villanova was not nearly as good as everyone thought. Time to change the thought that an experienced floor leader is what is needed to advance in the tourney. And it also put an end to my “Fat Point Guard Theory.”

- If you were a pseudo-small market team and were about to sign your franchise catcher to the biggest contract in the history of the franchise (and among the top 5 contracts ever in the sport), wouldn’t you want that to be the lead story in sports? Wouldn’t you want your team to get the publicity it deserves for keeping its star player? The Twins signed the best catcher in the game, Joe Mauer, to an 8-year, $184 million contract that will keep the Minnesota-native home and keep the Twins competitive. Yet they announce it on a Sunday when all the national sports outlets are spending their time on the NCAA tournament and the Tiger Woods interview. Wouldn’t they have been better served holding on to the announcement until Tuesday when the college hoops dies down and they can get the attention of the media?

(and I say pseudo-small market because Minneapolis is not Milwaukee, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, San Diego, Baltimore, Tampa or Cincinnati)

Every Monday I give a quick recap of some things during the weekend that were a “love” – enjoyable, good, or entertainment – or things that were a “hate” – things that stunk, bad plays, or other things that were painful to watch.

Week 17 Hangover - Love/Hate

LOVE

- I have to believe that the Jim Zorn firing this morning probably went something like when Kramer got fired on Seinfeld…….

- The Big 10 finally showed up for bowl season. In addition to Wisconsin throttling Miami, Penn State beat LSU, Ohio State handled Oregon, and Northwestern should have beaten Auburn. After years of taking abuse for the conference losing all of its bowl games, the teams put up a pretty good showing. The ending of the Northwestern game was among the best overtime college football games I’ve ever seen (that didn’t have any real meaning) - losing the game on a fumble (then having it overturned), missing a tying field goal (then getting a first down and losing your kicker to injury on a roughing the kicker penalty), and finally losing the game by faking a 20 yard field goal because your starting kicker was injured. I’d say the fake field goal attempt probably ranked up there with the Diane Lane sex scenes in Unfaithful…..it fit in given the context of the situation, but it definitely hits you as shocking at the time and makes you rethink what you thought about her.

- Coaching will be the difference in the NFC playoffs. With both wildcard games in the NFC this coming weekend being rematches of games from Sunday, the difference will be the adjustments and strategy that the coaches make during the next week. That makes the Philly-Dallas game even more interesting because Wade Phillips is not known as a great strategy guy, and Andy Reid has a great history of choking in games that matter (see Sunday as example A).

In Arizona, Ken Whisenhunt will be tested to come up with a way to score points against the Packer defense, and find a way to slow down Aaron Rodgers. Mike McCarthy, this is your chance to show how well you can prep a team to get a road win and potentially set up a chance at Brett Favre in the divisional playoff round.

- Great gambling finish to the season for the Sports Addict, including a perfect 9-0 record in the early games on Sunday and a 12-4 record overall for the day. If I had just placed a sweet 9-team parlay bet with the early games, I could have racked up a nice 150-1 odds winning ticket…….
Oh, and of course, the only week I pick against the Packers and they come through big time in sending a message to the Cardinals what they will be bringing back to the desert next weekend.

HATE

- Eagles Coach Andy Reid must have told his team that Sunday was the beginning of the playoffs, because they switched from their powerful regular season team mode into the heartless, effortless Philly team that shows up every year in the playoffs. Donovan McNabb and company flopped like a European NBA star on a fast break. It at least makes for an interesting rematch next week when both teams try to shed their past playoff failures.

- What a pathetic showing by the Giants to finish the season the past few weeks. Tom Coughlin is probably going to keep his job based on his Super Bowl win from 2007, but after the way the team quit, you have to wonder if he and defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan should share a cab out of town. The Giants will have some major improvements to make before next season if they want to keep up with the young Eagles and the more talented Cowboys within the NFC East.

- The Broncos are in major trouble. So let’s see if we have this right. They start the year 6-0, then proceed to lose 8 of their last 10, their star WR has beef with his coach, and their QB does not look worthy of a long-term contract. So what exactly did Josh McDaniel accomplish this season? They threw up on themselves like many people on New Year’s, and their future looks worse than when McDaniels took over.

- What a strange NFL season where the top seeds in the NFC and AFC enter the playoffs on 3 and 2 game losing streaks, respectively. In addition, the 2 seed in the NFC enters having lost 3 of their last 5 games. I guess this will be the perfect year to determine whether momentum really comes into play in the NFL.

- You have to feel for Wes Welker, who blew out his knee in the first series on Sunday. It’s a crushing blow to the Patriots chances of advancing deep in the playoffs. I guess that’s the proof that the Colts need to confirm they did the right thing last week against the Jets.

- One last hate - the weather. It has been nut-rattling cold in the Northeast the past few days. Miserable.