Who Loses First In The Big Ten East: Penn State, Michigan, Maryland or Michigan State? Week 5 Preview

Okay, I’m sick of this narrative that because the Big Ten East looks really good so far this year, we should shuffle the divisions around. What, then should we just shuffle them every single year based on the previous year’s results? Do a snake draft type thing where the previous year’s 1/4/5/8/9/12/13 teams are in one division and 2/3/6/7/10/11/14 are in the other? Do like the ACC and Mountain West and call one division the Big division and the other the Ten division?

The conference is now too big to eliminate divisions because the TV revenue from a Conference Championship Game is so sacred that it must be preserved at all costs. The NCAA has stipulated that if it’s round robin, every team must play every other team in order for there to be a CCG. That’s not happening until the regular season is at least 16 games. So...screw it, I guess let’s be Leaders And Legends in this era of college football where nothing is permanent enough for any fans to get attached to it anymore and rebalance the divisions every single year.

It looks this way because Northwestern without functional quarterback play is always terrible, Illinois has increasingly been hiring atrocious coaches and always holds on to them too long, Nebraska has Ron Zook, Iowa’s coach will never change anything about the program, Wisconsin has lost two games due to really bad turnovers and the jury’s still out on Minnesota and Purdue’s chances to elevate their programs. Meanwhile, Ohio State exists, Michigan’s coach has always recruited well, James Franklin got good players to go to VANDERBILT, Maryland hired an excellent talent-wrangler, Rutgers hired back the coach that made their program actually win games, Indiana finally stopped wandering in the desert for a while and Michigan State hired a good coach that recruits well.

The West teams, especially Illinois and Nebraska, aren’t powerless to change this.

Anyway, we have a preview podcast to listen to, don’t we?

• Recapping the rest of the country’s Week 4, from Oklahoma’s third narrow escape to Clemson’s second failure to escape. Also, Florida State is 0-4
• The Official Team Of Friday Night Big Ten hosts Iowa in a first-vs-first division crossover
• Somehow, I’m confident in an Illini win, but it doesn’t mean much
• How worried should Michigan State be about Bailey Zappe?
• Can Rutgers actually compete with Ohio State?
• How the hell did we get to a place where Minnesota-Purdue looks like a 13-10 final in the works?
• There is no such thing as a relevant prediction for Northwestern-Nebraska
• Can Wisconsin stop shooting themselves in the dick long enough to capitalize on Michigan’s low-upside offense slowing their scoring down?