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Every Thursday, Pickin' on the Big Ten previews the upcoming weekend's games and ponders the meaning of it all, staring into the yawning existential void and calling a fullback dive on third-and-seven.

With one more loss, Michigan will become ineligible for a bowl game for the second season in a row. This has not happened since W.A. "Brad" Thornwhistle's disastrous first two seasons in 1847 and 1848. To avoid this horrible dishonor, all the Wolverines have to do is to beat Ohio State on Saturday. That will keep them alive for the Little Caesar's Pizza! Pizza! Bowl Bowl.

Below, former Buckeye Raymont Harris models the uniforms Ohio State will wear this weekend.
Your eyes don't deceive you. Raymont Harris still exists, and he's modeling the new throwback uniforms the Buckeyes will be wearing for this weekend's game at Michigan. This is where all you coastal and Southern types wonder aloud how anybody can tell if a Big Ten team is wearing a throwback uniform.

Of course, Columbus is the headquarters of Abercrombie and Fitch, Victoria's Secret, The Limited, and a few other fashion-type retailers. You'd expect some swanky threads on the Buckeyes sooner or later. But what else is going on in less fashionable parts of the conference?

Every Thursday, Pickin' on the Big Ten previews the upcoming weekend's games and issues random taunts to overconfident fan bases.

Be careful what you ask for, college football fan. The very same Iowa team that so many of you desperately wanted to see lose lest the Big Ten get another team into the title game is now the only thing standing between Ohio State and the BCS. If the Hawkeyes can't pull off a ginormous upset in Columbus behind a quarterback making his first college start, you're going to get the Scarlet and Grey facing some honked-off Pac 10 team.

With three games left in the conference season, the Big Ten championship is seemingly up for grabs. I say "seemingly" because thus far Iowa has proved to be more resilient than Kevlar, cast iron, and Gary Busey. At this point it almost seems like the Hawkeyes could not even take the field until late in the fourth quarter and still win.

They've looked quite mortal at times, though, so it's worth looking at who still has a shot at the trip to Pasadena. There's even one team you'd think wouldn't be in it based on who they've lost to.

Every Thursday, Pickin' on the Big Ten runs down the weekend's games from inside a chicken coop, at least as far as you know.

Cue the inevitable anti-Iowa backlash. A team that barely got by Arkansas State and Northern Iowa is somehow No. 1 in the nation according to the computer polls the BCS uses. Don't like it? Line forms to the left. Kirk Ferentz even agrees with you.

Shouldn't the computers' top ranked team have at least some sort of offense? Yes, of course. But whose fault is that No. 1 ranking?

Yours, you loudmouth.

While most of the world is still trying to figure out how the Iowa Hawkeyes stole the cheese out of the mousetrap -- again -- the conference title race is beginning to take a little more shape. Since neither Iowa nor Ohio State lost this past weekend, there's no shakeup at the top. Both teams remain equally in control of their respective destinies.

But what about the rest of the league? Is anybody new out of the hunt this week? Who's still alive but barely breathing? And where do things go from here in this crazy conference?

Every Thursday, Pickin' on the Big Ten answers the questions, questions the answers, and looks ahead to Saturday's games.

It's now indisputably late October. The leaves here in Wisconsin went from being Monet-like things of beauty to being a soggy ground-based nuisance in less time than it takes for a new Jim Tressel criticism to appear on the internet. It feels like the season just started but after this weekend it's two-thirds over.

There are so many questions yet to answer, however. I've already explored the various Big Ten title scenarios, so let's look at some of the other burning issues.

The Iowa Hawkeyes are the Big Ten's only undefeated team, both in conference play and overall. Right behind the No. 7 Hawkeyes stand a 5-2 team (Ohio State), a 4-3 team (Michigan State), and a 6-1 team Iowa has already beaten (Penn State).

The Hawks look to be in complete control of the conference race, with those 6-1 Nittany Lions nipping at their heels. But Iowa the only Big Ten team in control of its BCS destiny? No, no they are not. You might be surprised how little help some of the other teams need, too.

Every Thursday, Pickin' on the Big Ten gives you the bottom line on the upcoming weekend's games.

Every team now has six games on the books. Well, Illinois doesn't, which is good news/bad news. Illinois fans have only had to watch five games so far; that's good news. They have seven games left to watch, which is not such good news.

This would be a perfect time for mid-term report cards, but letter grades are so one-dimensional, don't you think? There are more meaningful comparisons to be made. Make the jump and see every Big Ten team compared to ... well, just go and look.

Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten stays late to run the TPS reports on the coming weekend's games.

In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence.

The above statement is better known as the Peter Principle, and if it doesn't make sense to you, join the club. I didn't get it the first 1,378 times I read it. Now I recognize it for what it is. It's an overly intellectual way of saying "People who do a good job keep getting promoted until they wind up in a job they can't do."

So what does this have to do with Illinois, you ask?