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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.

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.

One little loss to Northwestern can change everything. Iowa looked like the team to beat in the Big Ten title race, but now that it has fallen to the Wildcats and Ohio State has beaten Penn State, all the momentum has moved back to Columbus. Technically, both the Hawkeyes and Buckeyes control their own destiny. Whichever team wins Saturday's game is the presumptive conference champion.

Now go try to figure the odds that Iowa can win in the Horseshoe with a redshirt freshman quarterback making his first career start with no run support to speak of.

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.

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?

Every Thursday, Pickin' On the Big Ten tries to make sense out of the upcoming weekend's games.

It was not supposed to be like this for Mark Dantonio and the Michigan State Spartans. Sure, they lost in the Capital One Bowl last season, but not by much, which is why many people tagged them as the Big Ten's third-best team going into this year. It was going to be hard to replace Brian Hoyer and Javon Ringer, but at long last things were looking up for Sparty.

Now, after a heart-shattering 1-3 start, things are still looking up, if only because "up" is the only direction left. Now it's time to pull the wreckage of this season out of the ditch to see what can be salvaged.

If you don't read NFL FanHouse, you don't know me (and that's OK). I'll spare you the introduction, other than to say you can click on this link to see who I am and what I do with this particular series (The Zebra Report). The reason I'm jumping into College Football FanHouse is to examine a controversial play from Saturday afternoon involving my alma mater, Indiana. As the Hoosiers got the ball back following Tate Forcier's late touchdown pass, Indiana needed a field goal to tie or a touchdown to win -- and they had just over two minutes to do so. On the first play from scrimmage, though, Ben Chappell threw an interception to Donovan Warren. Or did he?

You can watch the play in question by clicking on this link and watching closely at the 1:39 mark.