Around the Big Ten

[whodean]

Penn State at #12 is highest B1G team in the BCS...no excellent teams this year.

[Niffla]

Extremely disturbing stuff coming out of Happy Valley. Amazing that it was covered up as long as it was.

Hope Sandusky enjoys the final years of his pitiful existence...

[whodean]

Nationally, the Big 10 reputation is stained by OlieO and now PedoState...

[Rocky Bleier]

Unfortunately, some will include Michigan for StretchGate.

[WM Wolverine]

M got harsher penalties for stretchgate than Auburn for Cam Newton getting 200k. This system is fubar.

[Rocky Bleier]

I hope someone has the foresight to change the name of the trophy given to the winner of the Big Ten Conference.

[whodean]

I don't think any Big 10 fans can get away with proudly (arrogantly?) putting down other conferences as being any more "dirty" anymore.

[WM Wolverine]

B10 never had a gentlemans agreement among coaches not to report each other like the SEC did in the 70's & 80's. SEC in those days were every bit as bad as the SWC without the media getting to know much till the coaches from those days starting retiring and new coaches were brought in, in the 90's.

[hack]

I would have agreed with whoDean until OSU. That exposed, anecdotally, how friggin amazingly clean UM is in a relative sense. As did Bacon's book.

[Jeff Buchanan]

"Clean" is kind of a meaningless term in the 125 year continuum that is CFB.

All sports in this country, to some degree, have been played with a good deal of controversy regarding how clean the game actually is. Gambling, point shaving, throwing a match or a game for a pay-off, purposely injuring an athlete to gain and advantage, steroids to enhance performance, illicit recreational drugs, paying amateurs and collegiate athletes under the table ...... these are just a few of the things that affect the outcome of a contest and none of this addresses the kind of behavior of people like Jerry Sandusky that indicts PSU or jim tressel that indicts osu.

So, lets be honest here. Sports in this country, including college athletics is a dirty business despite the noble intent that is implied in the concept of competition, especially at the college level. I'd also be careful about saying Michigan is clean. What happened at PSU can happen at M. I'm not speaking in the context of child molestation but rather discovery of something awful. Any team is a set of loose lips and a reporter away from catastrophe.

[Jamie H]

When people talk about dirty programs, they are usually talking about teams that cheat in order to field a better football team, not teams that are covering up real-life crimes.

What happened at Penn State is pretty sickening, but I don't think what happened was done in an attempt to field a better football team. It was a horribly misguided attempt to protect the reputation of certain individuals instead of doing the right thing.

I agree with what Hannibal said earlier--this is not really about college football, but about the individuals involved at Penn State.

[entropy]

Nationally, the Big 10 reputation is stained by OlieO and now PedoState...

a joke I've seen on many boards...

When an older women has sex with a younger man, they're called a cougar. When an older man has sex with a younger man, they're called a nitty lion.


Yes, while this is directed at PSU, the collateral damage does hit the rest of the BIG.

[lineygoblue]

It doesn't take long.

[UMStan White]

Nobody has addressed the "image" of the Big Ten. We already have an "image' of an overrated dinosaur approach to the game, left far behind by the SEC (thanks largley to the abysmal showing of OSU in back to back BCS championship games.) The arrogance of the Big Ten is further displayed by the preferential treatment the conference insited upon and received in last year's Sugar Bowl. Now the top three teams in the conference are exposed in three serious NCAA investigations. One can argue that "practicegate" is of no significance in comparison to "Tresslegate" and "Paternogate" (and that"Tresselegate" pales in comparison to Paternogate"), but it is really just an escalation. I don't know how many posters read USA Today's condemnation of the failure of the Big Ten network to candidly address the Penn State situation or the response from the Big Ten Network that it just doesn't feel "comfortable" talking about deviant sexual crimes and hey most of the crap we broadcast is pre-recorded anyway. Delaney has shown that he is the worst whore in the business--refusing to take on the rotting corruption that exists within his conference because it may affect the "bottom line". He may have made a ton of money for his conference but his wards have been in the forefront in lack of integrity, the shopping of Cam Newton and the largess of a Miami booster notwithstanding. This cowardly approach is one of the reasons I have never felt a need to "root root root for the home conference" when playing outsiders.

[UMStan White]

The sickest joke I've seen is that this Saturday's game is a classic struggle between the cornholers and the cornhuskers.