Ohio State, MSU, Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Purdue, Penn State, Indiana, Illinois, Northwestern, Minnesota

This year appears to be even better for Michigan, but to call that a success is to pick up the story from 2010, rather than following it back to 2007. Whatever the merits of the 2010 Wolverines or Rodriguez as a coach, the idea that early struggles would pay late dividends seems quite fanciful today. The best case scenario for this year cannot be more than 8-4, not when games against Ohio State, Penn State, and Notre Dame all come on the road. Add in home games against top-15 outfits Wisconsin and Iowa, and the Wolverines will have to flip a probable loss into a win just to hit that best-case number. Factor in deceivingly tough games against Uconn and road trips to Indiana and Purdue, and the case for 8 wins becomes even tougher. Even the “obvious” wins on the schedule may be anything but; Illinois has just as many regular season wins as Michigan over the last two years, yet Illinois won by 25 points in their matchups against the Wolverines in both 2008 and 2009.

Still, eight wins is plausible. So what? The 2007 Wolverines won eight games--nine, if you count their bowl victory--and it’s hard to imagine a Lloyd Carr team falling quite as far as Rodriguez’s 2008 version, even with the struggles at QB. A return to eight wins would merely be a return to a status quo that Michigan fans had so recently found unacceptable. And if the 2011 version isn’t on pace to be a legitimate BCS team--if you squint hard enough, you might see a Rose Bowl team somewhere in there two years down the line, though it’s difficult--that all that sturm und drang in 2007 and 2008 went for naught.

Unfortunately for Michigan, a failure in 2010 does not mean hitting the reset button and continuing onward. Rodriquez’s recruits are fitted for his system, and any new coach is likely to have difficulty reestablishing the traditional Michigan power attack. Defensive recruiting has been slow over the past two years, and many positions even now are dangerously thin. A failure to make a bowl game this year would mean that many recruits targeted by Michigan will have been in grade school or freshmen in high school the last time Michigan won a bowl game. And as pre-Saban Alabama fans or pre-Pelini Nebraska fans could tell you, it’s a long way back to the top, even for the most storied of programs.

Pro football is better than college football and the first three rounds of the playoffs blow anything college has to offer out of the water. Last weekend was an absolutely glorious two days of pro football.

I'm calling this is solid B+.

I still say that college football Saturdays are better than NFL Sundays. Obviously others will disagree.

I agree that the pro football playoffs are better than anything else.

I still say that college football Saturdays are better than NFL Sundays. Obviously others will disagree.

I agree with you, Rick.

Really? I'd call this a D at best. How much more wrong could you really have gotten it? Three year old kids and dan bernstein knew Ohio State was the best team in the conference. Everything else is pretty much wrong. Maybe Iowa is in the right spot.

Really? I'd call this a D at best. How much more wrong could you really have gotten it?

College football season is over, which means life sucks. I figured I'd look back at my thoughts/opinions from before the season and check where I ended up.

First, my projected rankings:


I'm calling this is solid B+. I had Wisconsin a little too low, but I do think OSU was the best team in the Big Ten. I was one of the few people to predict PSU would be very mediocre, so yay me. Iowa 4th, which I think was also against the grain. My biggest mistakes were Purdue, which perhaps was because of injuries, although they weren't exactly rolling before Marve, et al. went out; Indiana, who I thought would be stronger but really regressed; Northwestern, which more on that later; and Illinois, where I wanted to pick them higher but felt I was being too homerish.


I think this is solid. I don't know many people who expected MSU to do that well or Iowa to do that poorly.

Specific posts on teams to follow.

If we didn't have a shitty fieldgoal kicker, we would have beaten both MSU and Purdue (I'll file that under "Could Woulda Shoulda').

Pro football is better than college football and the first three rounds of the playoffs blow anything college has to offer out of the water. Last weekend was an absolutely glorious two days of pro football with two games being decided in the last minute and a third being won by a big dog in the final stages of the game.

I'm with Mud with giving Irish Boy and A- or B+ for his picks, you never know what's going to happen, with injuries or other things.

If you think about a 12 or 16 team playoff, the pro players don't even want to play 2 extra games, you think college guys want to play an extra 3-4 games, I will give you 37 days is a little long break, but I like that everybody would be healthy, next year's title game will probably be January 9th.

This post is a little too self-aggrandizing for my taste.

Ever level of nearly every college sport has a playoff system...D1 FCS football, D2, D3, football, Baseball, Hockey, Basketball, LaCrosse, field hockey, & on & on & on...except Division 1 FBS college football.

How did a discussion about the Big Ten schedule turn into yet another playoff debate?

How did a discussion about the Big Ten schedule turn into yet another playoff debate?

In any event, my point is over the next two weeks or so to go back and look at my old posts and see where I was right and where I was wrong. Sometimes, that will be self-congratulatory. Sometimes, I missed badly. I don't make predictions often, but when I do, I like to see what went right and wrong to learn from it. Also, I like these kinds of exercises because I like to combat the "everyone knew that" type of nonsense of JORR. People lose track of common wisdom very quickly. Certainly my own posts in August reflected some of that now-discredited common wisdom, and I find that interesting.

[You're right. Everyone is a genius before the season even starts.

Irish Boy, you had Michigan State as number 2, I don't think a lot of people see that happening, I think most would have put Iowa there.