Around the Empire: October 10, 2023

Honestly, it was nice to get the excruciatingly ugly Illini loss out of the way early on Friday night. It was a pretty stellar college football weekend, from the dramatic Oklahoma-Texas game to the truly idiotic Miami-Georgia Tech finale. In addition, we had playoff baseball and NFL games and Premier League matches! As a long-standing fan of non-traditional sports, I even got to watch Italian cycling and the gymnastics World Championships. We haven’t come into range of a traditional sports equinox just yet, but weekends like this might be even more entertaining.

At any rate, there’s a lot of news to cover. Here’s what you might have missed from around the Big Ten and beyond this weekend. If I forgot anything important or missed any good articles, share them in the comments!

Scores:

Nebraska 20, Illinois 7

Michigan 52, Minnesota 10

Ohio State 37, Maryland 17

Wisconsin 24, Rutgers 13

Northwestern 23, Howard 20

Iowa 20, Purdue 14

Football coverage from Off Tackle Empire:

• A lot of fanbases punching in this week in GoForThree’s Sunday Morning Coming Down (Looking at you, Minnesota and Illinois fans).

• Dead Read reviews the mollywhoppings that were in this week’s Stock Report. Only 4 buys, and one of them is Iowa. Rough week.

• A week after the firing of Walt Bell, Buff Komodo looks at the official non-interim hiring of Rod Carey as Indiana’s offensive coordinator, as well as his whopping $815,000 salary. I’m sure this will end well.

• MNWildcat returns from the Northwoods and just barely survives Mass with the little one in this week’s mailbag call. Send us your questions and your stories of inappropriate laughter at inopportune times!

• GTom and Off Beat Empire column are back with another week of band routines!

• Vaudvillain provides an update on offense across the B1G against the vaunted Ferentz Line. Unsurprisngly, the West isn’t very good at scoring more than 25 pts a game.

• Don’t forget to get your choices in for Survivor and for the ATS picks games. Many thanks Green 96 and Ziowa09 for running those!

Off Tackle Empire previews the upcoming basketball season:

• OTE continues its basketball preview series this week with an analysis of the Wisconsin Buzzcuts. If you’ve missed the other teams, take a look at Minnesota, Ohio State, and Nebrasketball.
• And BoilerUp89’s non-conference schedule grading continues apace with the three schools receiving Ds: Nebraska, Maryland, and Rutgers. At least they didn’t get Fs like Penn State and Minnesota. And there’s more basketball coverage to come as the season approaches!

Big Ten football:

• The Only Colors writer Oren Basse speculates on the vacant coaching seat in East Lansing and the aimless search for Mel Tucker’s replacement. It’ll probably be Urban.

• Matt Reisener at Black Heart Gold Pants stares into the void that is the Iowa passing game.

• Pat Fitzgerald wants $130 million to no longer coach at Northwestern, per David Gold at Inside NU. I would also like to get money for not coaching in Evanston.

• Ohio State beat an undefeated Maryland team and even covered the spread. Predictably, fans want Ryan Day to get canned. Land Grant Holy Land’s Gene Ross makes the case.

• Bucky’s 5th Quarter writer Rohan Chkravarthi analyzes Tanner Mordecai’s emerging skill at scrambling for extra yards.

• And a beautifully written ode to Dick Butkus from Pleas A Honeywood at the Champaign Room. Rest in peace, #50.

Beyond the Empire:

• 37 Olympic and World Championship medals. Another team championship for U.S.A. And yet another all-around gold. Simone Biles is the best gymnast of all time and arguably one of the greatest athletes ever, bar none.

That looks like a future B1G West team to me.

Have a good week, all. It’s almost Saturday.