Big Ten Bloggers: Relevance Redacted
October 8, 2007 by Run Up The Score!
They roll into town under the cover of night, drinking your whiskey, sexing up your womenfolk, and bitching about Mark May. They’re the Big Ten bloggers, and I humble write their discussion questions this week. Responses will be posted either late Thursday or early Friday. Word.
1. We’re halfway through the season. Practically the entire national media has declared that the Big Ten is having a down year. Is this cyclical, or is the conference actually becoming less and less relevant? What is your team doing to enhance or destroy the conference’s reputation?
2. Illinois is winning football games. Football games! Illinois! How much longer will we have to put up with this crap?
3. I’m a man! I’m 32! For you, fair Big Ten Blogger, where does the line get drawn when, as Sunday Morning QB eloquently states, “second-guessing the split-second decisions of college kids under extreme physical duress”? Hypothetically speaking, would you settle for saying that your underwhelming quarterback “simply isn’t performing well and needs to be replaced”, or would you call him “a functional retard that is one drool cup shy of riding the short bus to practice”?
4. Finally, a quick two-part question. Which player or players on your team have you been pleasantly surprised with this season, and what is the most important game remaining on your schedule?
1. This is a cyclical thing where if the flagship team , I’m looking at you Michigan, struggles early on then the media proclaims that the conference is in a “down year”.
What is my team doing? Oh gosh, my team is doing whatever it can to throw games away by promoting nepotism and refusing to bench the Rex Grossman of college football.
2. Until Ron Zook leaves; he is a good coach. I have had a bad feeling since the first day he took that job, I thought they’d win the big ten next year; I may have been a bit late on that one.
3. Since we are in hypotheticals, I would settle for calling him a functional retard that has the arm of a cannon and the head of a rock…actually that’s what I said last week and will until he proves me wrong.
4. I’d like to just say the defensive-line, I was worried about the youth and in-experience of those big uglies down in the trenches; but they are getting stuff done.
Every game on the schedule is a big game at this point; with 2 loses, a team that’s losing all form of discipline — any more loses could result in a downward spiral of ‘99 proportion
Oops…meant to post here. LTP’s responses are on the board.
http://www.laketheposts.com/2007/10/big-ten-blogger-roundtable-week-7.html
I humble ask just where all these big ten bloggers hang out - because I can pretend to be womanfolk (I have a bottle of JD in the drink basket).
1. It’s less relevant, but so is the ACC, which spent a gajillion dollars adding teams only to find out that, with actual competition, VT and Miami can’t run up gaudy records and play for a title every year. I think what we’re seeing overall is more parity, which means fewer truly outstanding teams per conference.
That said, the Big Ten *is* down - you can tell that because my Illini are tied for first. For reference, see 2001.
2. Until somebody offers Zook a better contract than he’s getting at Illinois. Remember, this is the team that people thought might compete for a conference title *next year* (at the earliest!), but now there’s an outside possibility the Illini could end up one loss short of the BCS championship game. It makes me slightly nauseous to even think about it.
3. You can’t treat an amateur athlete like that. Period. Sure, some of these kids might suck, but it’s the fault of coaches who couldn’t recruit or develop the talent they needed to compete in their leagues. Don’t blame the poor D-III player they forced to take the position because they didn’t have anyone else to put there.
4. O-line, O-line, O-line. Illinois has had some good running backs over the past decade, but without an offensive line that can run block, we relied way too much on the pass (which when we didn’t have Kurt Kittner doing the passing, turned out to be an unmitigated disaster). Also have to give props to the D-line because they’re actually stopping the run for the first time since 1997, when I started watching Illini football.
A lot of people will say Ohio State, and they’d be wrong. That’s a game we should almost certainly lose, which means it isn’t very important at all. Also, there are at least three obvious trap games (at Iowa, Minnesota, and Northwestern), but the way the team is putting out a workmanlike performance each week, I think we win those too.
The game I’m really concerned about is Michigan. It’s a nationally-televised night game (no pressure, kids!) against a team that Illinois *should* beat. It’s a team that everyone thinks we’re going to beat because they “can’t defend the spread”. Well, let me tell you: Michigan has a better defense than people give them credit for, and they recruit great athletes. When you have a team like that, they can beat anyone on any given Saturday. Plus, Lloyd Carr has owned Illinois pretty much forever. So yeah, it’s the Michigan game that Illini fans need to look out for.
My responses are over at:
http://pennstateminutiae.blogspot.com/2007/10/big-ten-blogger-roundtable-week-7.html
Maize n Brew’s responses. Thanks for hosting.
http://www.maizenbrew.com/story/2007/10/9/14818/3229
Alright. We’ve had about enough of of this “Big Ten Sucks” stuff. It’s not the Big Ten, it’s certain members of the Big Ten. It’s why we don’t want to stand next to you at the school dance. We’re afraid something might rub off.
As for the round table response.
http://www.thebuckeyeblog.com/2007/10/10/big-ten-blogger-round-table-media-cya-those-damn-illini-and-blinding-moments-of-clarity/
[...] to Run Up the Score’s questions to find links of what other Big Ten Bloggers are [...]
Buckeyelane’s answers are up
http://www.buckeyelane.com/big-ten-roundtable-of-bloggers-week-seven/
The Hoosier Report’s answers are up.
Week 7 BTB roundtable
MSC’s answers: http://www.michigansportscenter.com/2007/10/big-ten-bloggers-roundtable-week-7.html
Around the Oval’s answers:
http://www.aroundtheoval.com/story/2007/10/10/225317/86
I’m in:
The Nittany Line
We’re up, in our usually interesting fashion (I don’t want to give anything away, but ZOOK IS PARTYING LIKE A ROCKSTAR, BRAH!)
http://www.blackheartgoldpants.com/story/2007/10/11/11558/340