You thought you could hide, didn't you JJ? You thought that just because you wrote for a college paper called The Maneater that you could get away with this. I can't totally blame you, it was probably a fair assumption. I mean, to put it bluntly, (d'oh!) WTF is the University of Missouri - Columbia? Know this, though: even though your paper is unrecognizable to the layman, the power of Google News Feeder knows no bounds.
It's time for the FJM treatment.
With all apologies to Illinois and Indiana, Big Ten football is awful. The games are boring, the talent isn't as good as in other conferences and they have many teams that are pretty easy to dislike - namely, Ohio State and Michigan.
Why are you apologizing to Indiana, one of the more consistent losers in the conference? This article should explicitly call out the Hoosiers, not make them feel better about themselves. Also, having hatable teams usually makes people more interested, not less. See: New York Yankees, Notre Dame.
And, yet, Big Ten football gets shoved down our throats every weekend, thanks to the worldwide leader in sports. Last weekend, viewers were treated to Ohio vs. Ohio State and Miami (Ohio) vs. Michigan. Fact is, neither of these games were good matchups, but the Big Ten found a way to make them exciting with bad offense that allowed lesser opponents to stay in both of the games into the fourth quarter.
If the games were so exciting, what is the problem? Not only do you sound like you watched both games, but you were actually treated to relatively close scores. Besides that, your other options at noon last Saturday were all equally terrible matchups.
Yes, there are some fun teams to watch in the Big Ten - once again, Illinois and Indiana - but, for the most part and in terms of piquing my interest, Big Ten football is just not up to par with the rest of college football.
Now I want to pretend that you simply think, as a matter of taste, that Illinois and Indiana football are more fun to watch. I want to pretend that you don't actually think they are the two best teams in the league. I want this badly. However, this is the second time you have excluded these two schools from broad comments about how awfully below par the rest of the conference is.
I'd like to see nothing more than Ohio State getting completely dominated by USC this weekend. And it's not just because USC is my favorite of the "powerhouse" programs in college football....Losing to USC hopefully would prove that, team for team, the Big Ten cannot compete with other power conferences (Well, except the ACC, which is equally as weak.).
This looks like fun, let me try: I'd like to see Penn State completely ruin Syracuse this weekend, and it's not just because Penn State is my favorite of the "under par" programs in college football...beating Syracuse hopefully would prove (yes, prove!) that every single team in the Big East is weak, and cannot compete with power high school divisions like the Pennsylvania AAAA (Well, except for 7-on-7 football on Ohio, which is equally as weak).
The Big Ten is a lot like this year's Yankees.
An entire conference, eleven college football teams, a lot like a professional baseball team. Please explain.
They're good, but not that good, and yet they still get a lot more attention than they deserve.
Then stop paying attention to the Big Ten with these random stories! You = media.
[Ohio State has] cheated America out of what could have been a great BCS National Championship Game last year (either Georgia or USC taking on LSU).
Ohio State, who was vote #1 by the coaches, the media represented in the AP and Harris polls, as well as the computers, "cheated America" out of a game between SEC champ LSU and their conference counterpart Georgia? America cheated themselves by voting OSU #1 in the polls.
Enough already.
Let's review:
-The Big Ten is awful.
-The Big Ten is good, but not great.
-The Big Ten is the Yankees.
-The Big Ten gets shoved down our throats, but the games are exciting.
-The Big Ten is boring, except for games involving Illinois and Indiana.
This is the 2,342,456th time this story has been written, and with losable games being played by Ohio State, Wisconsin and Purdue, we are probably in for thousands more. God save us.