Pickin' On the Big Ten: Can Anybody Here Coach This Game?

Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten previews the weekend's action, even when the truth is ugly.

It was a bad week for vowels.

The seven Big Ten schools whose names start with consonants played anywhere from OK to brilliantly this past weekend. The four that start with vowels -- Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio State -- all dropped a pantload on the field.

Illinois gets a partial pass because Missouri has been on a nice run lately. Ohio State played a Navy team that usually goes bowling. Indiana struggled with a Division I-AA FCS school, but they're Indiana; you kind of expect these things from them after a while.

That leaves one school. Iowa. And if I was an Iowa fan ... wait. I am an Iowa fan. Make the jump and see what has me feeling punchy. I promise I'll get around to the games eventually.

The most galling thing, to me at least, is found by taking a look at Northern Iowa's roster. It would be one thing if Iowa had melted down against one of those tricky, speedy teams with a plethora of players from Florida, Texas, Georgia, and all those other states where quick athletes seem to grow like zucchini. I counted two Panthers from Florida, one from Arkansas, and two from Oklahoma. Otherwise, that roster is made up of Midwestern kids, the overwhelming majority of them from Iowa or a bordering state. These are all kids who should have been and probably were on Iowa's recruiting radar, but either weren't offered scholarships or felt they'd never get on the field.

UNI quarterback Pat Grace was a Rivals two-star recruit out of Sioux City. Carlos Anderson, the running back who outgained any of Iowa's backs, came out of the Kansas City area with two Rivals stars attached to his name. I could go on.

Mark Farley, Northern Iowa's head coach, made a little more than $205,000 last year. Kirk Ferentz made about $33,000 more than that per game last year. One coach had his team ready for the season opener. One apparently didn't.

Northern Iowa just about beat Iowa in Kinnick Stadium, with the players the Hawkeyes didn't really want, and after the game Ferentz couldn't say much besides "Gosh, they're a pretty good football team." Yes, it's clear that a pretty good football team could be assembled from Iowa's leftovers, so long as they were actually ready for the first game of the season and didn't fall to shreds if they lost their top running back.

(Oh, and by the way, Northern Iowa was also without its top running back. Derrick Law, the Panthers' leading returning rusher, was suspended and didn't play a down this past Saturday. Like the injured Hawkeye Jewel Hampton, Law wasn't the feature back last year either. Carlos Anderson redshirted last season and had never played in a college football game before.)

Go read what The (Cedar Rapids) Gazette's Mike Hlas wrote about Farley's postgame comments. "It's not a matter if UNI will beat Iowa," Farley said. "It's a matter of when it's going to happen. It should have happened today and we didn't make the play at the end. That's football." I don't doubt him. I just wonder why you so seldom hear Big Ten coaches say anything like that.

It's time to kill the whole notion that talent is what's holding the Big Ten back. It's not talent. It's coaching. There are just too many coaches who can't quite seem to put all the pieces together. It's not every coach. It's just too many of them.

Right. The games. I did promise you, after all.

ILLINOIS STATE @ ILLINOIS

Three words describing Illinois last week: Stink, stank, and stunk. You can make the argument that they lost Arrelious Benn and running back Jason Ford early and didn't have their other main running back, Daniel Dufrene, at all. I can make the point that none of those guys play defense.

Illinois State is coached by longtime Purdue defensive coordinator Brock Spack, who came into town with Joe Tiller and left with him too. During Tiller's tenure, Purdue was 6-2 against Illinois. Don't go expecting miracles, however. Illinois State is a couple years from hanging with the Illini for even a half.

BROCK	3
MOCK	48

Know Your Non-Conference Tomato Can: Illinois State

As with last week's school, Northern Iowa, Illinois State is a teachers' college gone big. Located about two hours southwest of Chicago, Illinois State has grown into a university which enrolls more than 20,000 students.

Teacher training is still a primary focus at ISU, which is one of the top ten producers of teachers in the United States. The art education program in particular has received multiple national honors. ISU is also home to one of two collegiate circuses in the United States.

Illinois State's best known alumnus is probably Richard Roeper, the Chicago Sun Times columnist who replaced Gene Siskel as Roger Ebert's partner on "At the Movies" after Siskel died. Roeper sometimes gets to review movies starring other Redbird alums, who include Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, Judith Ivey, and Gary Cole, who won't let you watch this game because he really needs those TPS reports.

WESTERN MICHIGAN @ INDIANA

The squeaker over Eastern Kentucky last week wound up not being the Big Ten's most humiliating performance of the weekend against an FCS team, but nobody would have guessed that Thursday night. Bill Lynch wanted to emphasize "downhill running" this season. How did that work out for the Hoosiers? They ran for 73 yards against EKU.

Last year, in their season opener, they ran for 297 yards against Western Kentucky. Those are two different teams, I know. Still, when you work to install a new wrinkle on offense and don't get any better results than that, maybe your plan wasn't quite as brilliant as you first thought.

Western Michigan made Michigan look fantastic last week, though once the Broncos got their offense booted up in the second half, they were able to make a few big plays against the Wolverines. The Hoosiers got killed by big plays last week. It'll happen again this week, except this time IU won't win the game.

WHAT'S A CUBIT?	31
HEY, WE'RE THE ONES BUILDING THE ARK	24

IOWA @ IOWA STATE

I've already harped on the Hawkeyes enough. In their defense, that was a patchwork offensive line they put out there last week. Guard Dace Richardson found himself playing tackle as Kyle Calloway spent a game in the Naughty Chair. Guard Julian Vandevelde wasn't fully recovered from surgery and still isn't, but he is expected to see some action. The unit should perform much, much better this week.

The Hawkeyes have not won in Ames since 2003. The visiting team has lost the last five games in this series. As with mutual funds, past performance is no guarantee of future results, but for Iowa, the omens aren't good. Iowa State did not struggle in their opening game, dispatching a respectable FCS team in North Dakota State, 34-17. Cyclone quarterback Austen Arnaud flourished in his first game under Paul Rhoads, who said he wanted to spread the field, and did. Arnaud threw for 227 yards and is always a threat to take off and run.

The Clones had trouble controlling NDSU's rushing attack. The Bison actually outrushed ISU, 210-204. This is not great news for Iowa unless they can establish a run game early, however.

I'm guessing that Iowa learned from its mistakes, isn't actually as bad as they looked last week, and will come out markedly improved with its offensive line closer to normal. Will it be enough to break the nightmarish road streak?

No.

WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS	13
SOMEBODY USUALLY DOES	17

NOTRE DAME @ MICHIGAN

All the renewed enthusiasm for both teams has to be tempered by the harsh reality that they beat Nevada and Western Michigan respectively. Last year's Irish team wouldn't have pitched the shutout, however, and last year's Wolverines wouldn't have won at all.

Neither team faced a defense which was anywhere near as good as the one they'll be facing this week. Do you go with Jimmy Clausen's greater experience and notable improvement? Or do you go with the poise of Tate Forcier and the catch-me-if-you-can speed of Denard Robinson? Who's going to be the first to find a crack in the defense that will probably stymie both offenses in the first half?

Denard Robinson will be the first, which is why I like Michigan in this game.

YEAH, BUT AT LEAST WE DON'T ... OH, WHO CARES?	10
NOT QUITE AS GOOD AS WE'RE GOING TO BE	16

CENTRAL MICHIGAN @ MICHIGAN STATE

Sparty was wonderful last week, but it was against Montana State. All the Spartans did is exactly what you would expect them to do against their first ever FCS opponent.

Central Michigan has a highly touted quarterback in Dan LeFevour, who is sort of like Tim Tebow, except he probably owns a parka. Last week Arizona absolutely shut down LeFevour and the rest of the Chippewa offense, holding them to 182 net yards and no touchdowns.

With all due respect to Mike Stoops, I think Mark Dantonio has his team playing slightly better defense than Arizona overall . Sparty's going to make it look easy again.

THE ONLY CURE IS LESS COWBELL	6
TOUGH LUCK; WE'RE THE AG SCHOOL	37

AIR FORCE @ MINNESOTA

This is it, the debut game for TCF Bank Stadium, the first new football venue in the Big Ten since, um, the Metrodome.

It's impossible to know right now if barely escaping Syracuse in the Carrier Dome is a bad sign for the Gophers. The 'Cuse looked better than they did at any point in the Greg Robinson era, so it's probably not all bad. The defense did manage to shut down the Orange for the entire second half, after all.

Meanwhile, Air Force was Air Force last week, piling up almost 500 yards of rushing in a 72-0 rout of Nicholls State, an FCS school which has been trying to install an Air Force-style option attack. This game will depend on how quickly the Gopher defensive line can assert itself, which should be quite quickly indeed given their size advantage. Minnesota opens their new stadium with a win, but don't get any bright ideas about Cal next week.

OFF WE GO	12
WHAT'S THAT BLUE STUFF OVER US?	28

EASTERN MICHIGAN @ NORTHWESTERN

Pat Fitzgerald, along with Joe Paterno and Mark Dantonio, is a distinct exception to the jaundiced view I currently hold of Big Ten coaching. He's maintained the high level of performance Gary Barnett established while holding on to the winning culture Randy Walker wanted to instill in the Wildcat program.

Last week's game against Towson taught us little about what the Wildcats can actually do. It's tempting to say that this week's game won't shed any more light, given that Eastern Michigan lost to Army last week. However, that was the first game for new Army Rich Ellerson, who was at Cal Poly last season. Go ask Wisconsin fans if Ellerson can coach. He just might be the guy to get Army going again.

As for this game, it'll be another laugher.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE YPSILANTI	0
BROUGHT TO YOU BY LITTLE DEBBIE	44

USC @ OHIO STATE

"I don't want to write this," he said, but he had to, even though Buckeye fans are about as sensitive as a rug burn.

You want something to give you hope? Okay, here it is: For one quarter against San Jose State, the Trojans looked about as unready and unsure of themselves as the Buckeyes did against Navy. Heck, USC was even down 3-0 at the end of the first quarter.

They were up 28-3 at halftime.

Believe me, I'd dearly love to be wrong about this, but I just don't think OSU has an answer for Southern Cal's explosiveness. Yeah, the Horseshoe is intimidating for the visiting team. Yeah, it's a rare chance to get one of these gol-danged smart-mouth Pac-10 teams on the Big Ten's home turf. If Navy's offense, which is as predictable as an episode of Dora the Explorer, skunked your defense, what are you going to do about USC?

The fans will be up for this one, until USC's up by two scores, which may not take long. Enthusiasm alone isn't going to get it done.

NOW, PLEASE GO AWAY	27
WE WERE ABOUT TO TELL YOU THAT	7

SYRACUSE @ PENN STATE

Unlike last week, Greg Paulus will be going against a team that historically has taken defense very seriously. Also unlike last week, Doug Marrone's defense will not be going up against a school that just changed its offensive scheme during the offseason. Not only that, but the game's in Happy Valley. If last week Syracuse fans found out how far they've come under their new coach, this week they'll find out how far they still have to go.

YOU'RE LUCKY THIS ISN'T BASKETBALL, JOE	6
THIS ISN'T BASKETBALL, GREG	31

PURDUE @ OREGON

Last week was a nice story for Purdue, a nightmare for Oregon. This week Purdue rolls into Autzen Stadium to face a Duck team that has something to prove -- to the nation, to their fans, and most of all to themselves.

Buried in all the warm fuzzies flowing from West Lafayette last Saturday was the undeniable reality that the Rockets threw the ball almost at will on the Boilermakers, who gave up 423 yards and two touchdowns through the air. The Oregon offense was comically bad in Boise; they'll look a lot better in front of the home crowd this week as Purdue stumbles into a nest of angry Ducks.

BACK TO LIFE, BACK TO REALITY	10
THE FIFTH DIMENSION USED TO WEAR OUR UNIFORMS	38

FRESNO STATE @ WISCONSIN

The Badgers' offense looked darned good against Northern Illinois last week, as quarterback Scott Tolzien was deadly accurate and Wisconsin's standard multipronged rushing attack was in evidence. The opener of what is widely assumed to be Bret Bielema's make-or-break season would have been an unqualified success but for the fact that the defense let NIU back into the game during the fourth quarter, getting burned on pass after pass. So the win has to be qualified.

Fresno State is fresh off a tuneup against UC-Davis and is known as a team that always plays to the closing whistle. The Bulldogs have fallen off from the level they were at a few years ago, but they're still a dangerous team and the Badgers will have their hands full. Fresno State wasn't challenged last week, though, and Wisconsin was. The Badgers are sure to have learned from the experience and aren't about to let what happened last week happen again.

DIDN'T YOU USE TO BE PAT HILL?	14
DIDN'T YOU USE TO BE BARRY ALVAREZ?	24

Next week's games:

• Indiana @ Akron: Go to the sports bar and ask them to put this game on the big screen, I dare you
• Arizona @ Iowa: Homecoming for Mike Stoops
• Eastern Michigan @ Michigan: Homecoming for Ron English
• Michigan State @ Notre Dame: Homecoming for demoralized Irish squad
• California @ Minnesota: Got a bad feeling about this one
• Northwestern @ Syracuse: Just join the conference already, Syracuse
• Ohio State @ Toledo: Yes, AT Toledo
• Temple @ Penn State: Al Golden won't want any more homecomings
• Northern Illinois @ Purdue: Strangely, a must-win for Danny Hope
• Wofford @ Wisconsin: Who comes up with this stuff?