13 Weeks of football are done, and we have three non-BCS conference champions already sorted and two more to crown before 4 PM Saturday.  We still have two teams sitting unbeaten, eagerly watching the scoreboards of championship games around the country to see what shakes out and where they might be headed.  Writers (and hacks like myself) have spent hours futzing with bowl projections, stalking Google News and Twitter for bowl acceptances and rumors, and so forth.  And by 9:00 on Sunday, it’ll all be over.  Except for the part that’s not over.

But we’ll get to all that in a minute.  First, a look at the league championship games this week: (more…)

Okay. Well, that was an interesting week. That is, if you like chaos. Northwestern threw a huge wrench into the Big Ten cog, and might have the BCS muckity-mucks sidling up to the Boise State faithful to see how they’ll like Tempe.

We’ll review a couple of the games from this past weekend, look ahead to the huge events coming up this weekend, and reexamine the Big Ten Bowl picture.

Walk this way…

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It was a wild, if not entirely competitive week last week for the Big Ten. Ohio State and Wisconsin won blowouts, and Illinois beat up Michigan in a games that wasn’t nearly as close as the 25 point spread suggested. Wild second halves made Iowa and Penn State winners in games that were close at halftime. And Minnesota had a big win against Michigan State, despite the loss of Eric Decker.

I know you’re thinking, what are you going to discuss? Well, let’s just see what a bit of stream of consciousness gets us, shall we?

If you’ll follow me…

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The football this past weekend was, mostly, uneventful (Iowa-Michigan State notwithstanding). However, around the league, many more interesting things were going on that, for once, made me thankful that the schedule(s) that I keep have pushed this back towards a later in the week process.

So, let’s discuss the Iowa Hawkeyes, Eric Decker, and the rest of the Big Ten in the week 8 recap.

It’s ok to be afraid… it’s only Halloween!

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So normally you’re reading this to hear how the weekend rolled out. Well, it went mostly as expected. There were a lot of blow outs (Boise State destroyed Hawaii), some close calls (Mississippi State and Tennessee can revel in their moral(e) victories, if not real ones), and an upset, maybe two (Clemson took down Miami (FL)). More sentimentally (and I’m going out on a limb and assuming that sports fans are a fairly sentimental bunch), an emotional UConn team nearly upset West Virginia. I didn’t know Jasper Howard, but Robert Lunn, who did know him and who did play with him, wrote a moving piece on his tragic death. I will not cover that here because I will be unable to do it justice, not because it is a story unworthy of attention. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

I’m not going to cover all of that in-depth today. Apologies all around, but this late in the season, people are starting to take a closer look at the rankings. Teams are for the most part developed at this point. The talent level has been gauged, kinks have been worked out (and new ones have been thrown in – let’s be honest, there have been some big injuries this year), and teams are entering the zone: next year, when we think “goddamn, this team was better last year”, this is what we’ll be thinking of. Oh I’m veering into sentimental again, but I have a point, I swear.

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We’re midway through the college football season for the Big Ten, and not all the schools have decided to focus solely on basketball just yet. Purdue, Iowa and Penn State put up huge victories this past weekend, while Michigan State, Michigan and Indiana put up moderately important wins as well. We’ll discuss the three big games, talk a little about the outlook for the rest of the year, and have some fun.

Come on in. (more…)

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to all. Unfortunately, my column topic this week isn’t particularly joyous. I’ve been writing a lot recently about the dominance of the NFL, and for good reason. The NFL does so much right on the marketing, television, scheduling and revenue-sharing sides that it’s not surprising that the league does well. The magnitude of its success is interesting though, especially given recent indications that 40 per cent of self-described baseball fans would prefer to watch a football game than a baseball playoff game and the lacklustre Colts-Titans matchup last night achieved more than double the ratings of the Yankees-Twins playoff game. There are some other factors that go into that, such as Sunday Night Football being over-the-air on NBC and baseball being on cable (but a widely-available cable channel), but it does show that the NFL has a tremendous amount of popularity. That popularity is also true for other leagues; both American and Canadian college football have had some great ratings successes this year, as has the CFL.

Despite the success of football at each of these levels, there is an elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about; the increasing amounts of proof that football is an extremely dangerous activity for all involved. Check out pieces like GQ’s excellent Game Brain for plenty of disturbing information on exactly what a football career can do to your mind.
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Welcome to another edition of the Big Ten Recap. Despite some lackluster games, and an unfortunate computer crash, we were able to get through the games and answer some questions this week. But much like Lost, the more questions that were answered, the more other questions came up.

Let’s see what we’ve got. (more…)

One of the great things about October is the sheer variety of sports available for consumption. NFL football is in full swing, as are both Canadian and American college football and most European football (soccer) leagues. CFL teams are in the middle of their playoff stretch drive, as are MLS teams. The NHL season is underway, the NBA season is about to get going and the MLB playoffs are just taking off, and there are plenty of smaller sports and leagues to follow as well.

The problem with this abundance of sports is it often leads to oversimplifying in a search for an overarching narrative, which results in some of the less popular sports being driven to the margins. The biggest culprit in this is the NFL, which dominates the North American sporting landscape for a variety of reasons including the limited supply of games, the limited amount of time it takes to follow the league and the league’s use of narrativium.

Now, that dominance isn’t necessarily bad, as it provides a ton of access and coverage for football fans. However, it does make life difficult for other sports. Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s famous quote in a 1969 speech to the Washington D.C. Press Club comes to mind: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” Those words are quite reflective of the Canada – U.S. relationship, which Trudeau was discussing, but they can also apply to the NFL’s relationship with other sports.
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I never thought I’d say this, but it appears that the Jets had Tom Brady’s Number this Sunday. Now I know everyone’s used to hearing cliches like bringing pressure on the quarterback, but judging by what Rex Ryan did, that’s exactly how you slow down arguably the best quarterback in the NFL. This is in contrast to the Pats Peyton Manning strategy, which involved 3 deep zones with blanket coverage underneath. (more…)