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Absolutely anyone who cares about Big Ten basketball, no matter the size of their audience, publishes a Big Ten basketball power rankings. It’s the least original endeavor possible, and this year all of these power rankings are created equal.
From the Midwestern paper of record to somebody on Twitter with three followers and no avatar, to the people who make college basketball picks against the spread, they’re all equally valid.
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Today saw Gonzaga become the sixth different team to be ranked #1 in the AP poll. The all time record, for an entire season is seven, and today is just Christmas Eve Eve/Festivus. In other words, that record will inevitably be shattered to pieces and this fact conveys just how much chaos there really is, nationally, in college basketball this season.
Not just nationally, but on a local level too! When you’re making free college basketball picks against the spread, in the Big Ten, anything can happen! Upsets are occurring all the time and now that everyone in the Big 10 has played two conference games, 12 of the 14 teams in the league are 1-1. Michigan State is 2-0 while Northwestern is 0-2. Until MSU’s 77-72 win at Northwestern on Wednesday night, the home team had won every single Big Ten league team. So up until midweek, we had perfect symmetry in the Midwestern league.
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Everybody needs someone in their life who views them the way Northwestern Head Coach Pat Fitzgerald looks at his offensive coordinator Mick McCall. The fact that Fitzgerald has kept McCall on his staff, in spite of all the years of poor results, epitomizes loyalty.
It’s the truest and bluest that true blue can be. We’re 1/3 of the way through the season and Northwestern ranks 128th out of 130 nationally in scoring (15.5 points per game) and 129th in yards per play at 3.93. The Wildcats starting QB, Hunter Johnson, has one touchdown pass and 367 yards passing, in total, thus far this season.
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Wednesday is Big Ten Media Day, and if that seems extremely early, well that’s because it is really is. It’s 87 degrees in Chicago, host city for this event, as I type. Let’s talk basketball, amirite? I mean the Major League Baseball playoffs haven’t even started yet (the real postseason, not the play-in games) and we’re talking about an event that literally, just five years ago was held on Halloween.
That is the nature of the college basketball beast though. Everything is being moved up; way up in the calendar year. So without further ado, let’s look at the Big Ten basketball pecking order.
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We have 2020 vision, NFL Draft style, right here, right now. It’s our fourth 2020 NFL mock draft update, and the order was based on a combination of NFL.com’s power rankings plus how we see the teams finishing the season out. Team needs were sometimes, but not often taken into account, as it’s just way too early to factor in. Obviously this will be modified many times between now and 2020 NFL Draft day.
So I implore you to really not take this very seriously, and just have fun with it. Please refrain from pointless hostility and needless acrimony in the comments section. Don’t be that guy. You have too much to do in your life than to waste it on trivial online conflict like that. Enjoy!
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Republishing from 9-16-17
To pinpoint what’s so wrong with ESPN College Gameday in 2017, there are a couple different places from which you can start. You can begin with ESPN’s horrible bungling of the Jemele Hill and Robert Lee situations, and go from there. The same principle, that of “let’s try to never hurt anyone’s feelings ever, no matter what the cost, because hurt feelings means upset sponsors” applies across the board.
ESPN should have never apologized for what Jemele Hill said about Donald Trump.
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Don’t laugh- the best college football playoff contender in the Big Ten this year will come out of the West division. It’s the Wisconsin Badgers, led by Jonathan Taylor, their star tailback and strong Heisman Trophy contender. Taylor could be the best back in the country and he’s the only Big Ten individual player with a realistic shot at the highest individual honor.
He’s coming off back to back top ten finishes in Heisman voting, so the best online casinos usa will have him among the top contenders on their board to claim the award this fall. As they should, because Taylor is poised to become the first Badger to receive a Heisman finalist invitation to New York City since Montee Ball.
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Mark Twain famously said that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. Today’s college football playoff debate does in fact rhyme with the BCS, and the AP/UPI/Coaches/Insert Poll Name Here era of “deciding” the national champion. When it comes to the college football postseason, it’s all about the click-bait, and conflict, of course moves the needle.
The same will hold true if/when they go to 8, and then if when they go to 16. Today it’s about #5 and #6 getting shout out. In the future it will be about #9 getting shafted, and then #17 getting left out; if and when it comes to that. It may not because the more teams you add, the fewer the number of deserving teams get jobbed.
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Congratulations to the Northwestern Wildcats, on their overcoming a double digit deficit to defeat the Nebraska Cornhuskers and deny them their first win of the season. The Cats claimed the NU Bowl 34-31 in OT. Nebraska coach Scott Frost came extremely close to achieving his first win as the leader of his alma mater, but that milestone will have to wait.
If they can’t knock off the Fighting Flecks of Minnesota next week, then perhaps it will happen October 27th versus Bethune-Cookman. The home team now improves to 2-6 in the last 8 games of this series, and Saturday marked the first home win over the Nebraska Cornhuskers in Northwestern program history.
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I can only describe the current state of Nebraska football by invoking the words of C. Montgomery Burns during “Last Exit to Springfield,” an episode of The Simpsons widely considered to be among the best of all time. Mr. Burns told Waylon Smithers: “oh it didn’t use to be like this. It didn’t use to be like this at all.”
Among the 128 FBS programs, Nebraska is one of ten to win at least 800 games. Nebraska football has more victories against power five opponents than any other program, as well as the fifth most victories all-time, behind only Michigan, Ohio State, Texas, and Alabama. Yet here they are, headed to Ryan Field 0-5, 0-3 in league play and substantial underdogs to a Northwestern Wildcats team with a losing record. Yes indeed, year one under Scott Frost has had more “Growing Pains” than Alan Thicke and Kirk Cameron combined.
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Believe it or not, Big Ten basketball media day is Thursday. Yes, hoops talking season arrives though it may not feel like it, given the 80+ degree temperatures in much of Big Ten country currently. Some schools have actually already had their media days, and you know what that means- overlap season is here.
So while every single outlet on the planet is posting Big Ten football power rankings today, we’re doing the hoops equivalent.
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It’s really astounding when you think about it- in an era when almost no one is willing to pay for news content, recruiting services can survive and thrive off a subscription-based business model.
The year-round extensive coverage of college recruiting, at every step in the process, has destroyed media coverage of college sports. It’s not just the rise of the recruiting-industrial complex itself that ruined it. Recruiting sites flourished at the same time social media exploded and these two phenomena fed off of each other to concoct a toxic cocktail.
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