Weekly Mailbag & Friday Open Thread

Good afternoon! It’s almost gameday, which means it’s time to provide some “content” for you to read while you glide to the finish line. If I could ask a small favor: if you’ve got the time and the means, it would really mean a lot if you could mosey on over to the Broken Chair Trophy’s website and make a donation. Team Jack & the U of M Children’s Hospital are outstanding organizations and could always use your support.

If you were the commissioner and you could kick one team out of the conference and bring any one team into the conference, who would you kick and who would you bring in? - RWReese (WSR Note: Pre-1990 B1G TEAMS ONLY, PLEASE. AND NO CHICAGO.)

BrianB2: I am glad that your pre-1990 specification has already kicked Nebraska, Penn State, Maryland, and Rutgers out of the conference. I can really appreciate someone sticking to traditionalist roots that have been outdated for 30-years. Also, because if you didn’t make this specification, everyone would naturally pick Penn State too boot ;).

Anyway, with these limitations, this exercise isn’t very fun. Kick out Northwestern, bring in...Pittsburgh? Without limitations, it also isn’t fun, but more obvious. Kick out Rutgers (or Maryland), bring in anyone better than Rutgers (or Maryland) that makes moderate geographic sense.

Candystripes: Kick Wisconsin, add whichever of Missouri or Kentucky you can get out of the SEC madhouse. You know, so there’s more football teams in this conference that we have a chance against.

MC: This game is way harder when it’s just the original ten. There are no good candidates for this. I initially was going to pick Northwestern but the logic doesn’t flow with what I’m going to do later. For me this is a battle between Iowa and Illinois, and I think Illinois goes. Solid academics, even with the rest of this original B1G as the scope, but I think the least is lost here. Iowa tends to fare worse in comparing athletic departments as a whole, but if you kick them out you lose their wrestling team, which combined with recency bias for bigger sports is why they survive for me.

I was going to kick Northwestern out for being a private school but, well...we’re adding Notre Dame. If this question is just regarding football and not overall, my answer is the same.

Stew: Kick out that newcomer, MSU. I would bring in no one.

WSR: You know, this isn’t an easy question when you take out Rutgers and Maryland. Everyone else in the conference fits geographically and (somewhat) culturally with our little group. And finding someone to bring in that’d fit that description while also adding something to the conference? Not simple. This one took some thought.

In the end, I resisted my urge to shove wisconsin back into the sea where they belong. Why? Because everything good needs something horrible. So they get to stay, Indiana gets to go (we already have Purdue. Why do we need more teams from Indiana?), and Mizzou gets the call to correct what should have been done when we added Nebraska.

MNW: Sigh. Especially pre-1990, the answer would’ve been to kick out Northwestern and add Notre Dame (even if it’s unrealistic), and I hate everything.

So a Tennessee fan snuck a live squirrel into Neyland Stadium last weekend that was wearing a little helmet and a jersey. What animal would you like to try to sneak into your stadium? - WSR

BrianB2: Naturally a snapping turtle, resting securely down the front of my trousers.

Thumpasaurus: well, when i’m at home, i have a dog that very actively seeks to console me when illinois fails. i don’t know why i should be denied this experience at the game as well. not like space is at a premium.

Candystripes: Copy-pasted directly from our Slack: “I would like to try and sneak in the most elusive animal: an actual IU football fan.”

MC: I would like to sneak in a mischievous-but-well-trained-for-a-puppy puppy. I don’t care much one way or another about different options for animals and dogs are the best, so we’re all set here.

WSR: I’ve actually seen a puppy smuggled into TCF Bank Stadium, so that’s been done and I’m going to take it off the list. A squirrel is pretty close to a gopher, so that doesn’t seem original enough either.

I think a really calm cat would be great, especially for games where it’s really cold because they’re incredible space heaters. So...can someone loan me a cat for Saturday?

MNW: I don’t want to just sneak any cat into a stadium, I want to sneak MY cat into TCF Bank Stadium for the “Circle of Life” bit on the Jumbrotron, then hold him up like Rafiki holding up Simba.

He will hate it, and it’ll be worth it.

What are your top (WSR Note: striking “non-horror”) Halloween-time movies? - Broasted Nutcrackle

BrianB2: I don’t get all that into Halloween. I think, in college, being coerced into donning a four dollar custom, heading to an overcrowded house-party and handing some stranger 10 bucks to drink three room temperature Natty Lights took the joy out of it for me. Final answer though, Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Candystripes: Ditto RHPS. There’s a reason it’s a cult classic.

Boilerman: Ernest Scared Stupid is the only answer.

Stew: I enjoy a good horror movie, but I don’t get to see them much. I’m not one for the gore porn shit that was really popular a few years back.

WSR: Halloween actually has a number of really good movies. RHPS, Nightmare before Christmas, Army of Darkness, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and Shaun of the Dead are all classics that should be watched.

MNW: What’s with all these restrictions on our answers, WSR? First we can’t kick any of the REALLY terrible teams out of the conference (starting with Penn State), then we can’t insert our best obscure horror movies in here, like “Christmas Evil” or “Death Canoe 4”? Bullshit.

Honestly, being basic white bitches in the suburbs, my wife and I have started a new Halloween tradition of dressing up half-assedly for the 30 kids who come to the door, getting wine-drunk, watching Harry Potter (whichever one we feel best), and trying to put costumes on the cat. Oh, and we eat pumpkin seeds. Fuck. Yes. Pumpkin seed season.

Which assistant overstayed his welcome the most at your school (non-Ferentz division) and was it ever as painful to watch as a Mick McCall offense? - Dan Pasqua

BrianB2: Maryland’s defensive coordinator was Andy Buh for three seasons, and frankly three days would have been too long of a tenure for him. At least he is working magic at Rutgers now.

Thumpasaurus: Garrick McGee overstayed his usefulness by two years.

MC: Chris Ash was a defensive coordinator at Wisconsin for maybe two years, so that seems like the en vogue choice.

Boilerman: It’s a tie between the creators of the Nordfense and the Shoopfense. Now, if you excuse me, I have some Purdue football memories I need to repress again.

WSR: There have been quite a few Minnesota coordinators through the years that have been just abjectly poor, but they always seem to get the hook pretty quickly when people realize what they’re doing just isn’t very good at all. Recently things were pretty rough under current PSU OL coach Matt Limegrover, but I’ve never figured out if that was him not being great or Jerry Kill pulling the reins back on trying to score points.

MNW: I’m not really sure what purpose I serve here—

/checks notes

Eastern Illinois is 0-6, has cracked 20 points once (a 40-29 loss to Tennessee Tech), and has yielded 16 sacks.

GOOOOOOOOOD RIDDANCE, ADAM CUSHING.

Hey, so again, Lovie Smith should be fired. - @headofbirk

BrianB2: Aight.

WSR: Sorry about your suffering. It’ll end eventually through the collapse of college athletics, the firing of Lovie Smith, or death.

MNW:

Thanks again, friends. Have a wonderful weekend and please don’t catch pneumonia. Here’s your spot to chat about the Friday night sporting world, if you so choose.