Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The Fansofthebig11 fan networking site is open

You can go to www.fansofthebig11.ning.com to join. It's going to be a fun place to share photos, swap stories with fellow fans and maybe through a jab or two to fans of your rivals.

I will be keeping an eye on the site and removing spammers and inappropriate content so you can enjoy visiting the site!

I forgot about Illinois

The Illini should be commended by scheduling Missouri, a Top 5 team last year and usually a bowl team. The game is away. Granted they play E. Illinois, Louisiana Lafayette and Western Michigan but at least they play one really tough game

Monday, July 28, 2008

Non Conference Schedule Rant

This is becoming a semi-tradition for me; complaining about Big Ten non conference scheduling. One theory is that conference play is so even that you need 3 or 4 creampuffs to ensure a 7 or 8 win season and thus a bowl bid. I guess if you goal is to get a bunch of mediocre teams into a bunch of mediocre bowls, or more likely mediocre teams LOSING to better bowl opponents..then this is a good strategy.

Look our conference isn't the SEC right now in football...every week is NOT a "playoff level game". Each year we have between 2-4 dogs within the conference, 2-3 really good teams and 4 to 7 average teams who might play tough on a given week.

You want to upgrade the conference? You want a better reputation? Do 2 things; schedule better non conference games and win more bowls.

On the first point, examples of this seasons lame schedulers: Minnesota..what else is new they have Syracuse, Ohio U, Duke and Southern Illinois..got tired of losing to Dakota schools I guess. And then the Hoosiers play Western Kentucky, Ball State, Murray State and Central Michigan..well the Chips might be a test for them. Penn State enters the land of LAME this year with COASTAL CAROLINA?, Oregon State, Syracuse and Temple....

Northwesterm, Wisconsin are also lame. Michigan, who normally fairs well in this area is very borderline. They play Utah who was a bowl team, Notre Dame who might be better than last year, Miami of Ohio and Toledo...if this was a more experienced UM team I would say creampuff city!

Buckeyes score points for playing USC on the road. That game on September 13 is the ONLY marquis non conference game of the WHOLE pre Big Ten season. Purdue plays Oregon and Notre Dame..respectable. Michigan State plays at Cal plus Notre Dame. Iowa plays their rival Iowa State plus a surging Pitt.

Here's a formula I would like to see EVERY Big Ten team schedule moving forward. Either you play one perennial powerhouse ((Top 10) team and 3 puffs, or 2 Bowl level teams and 2 puffs. And make a rule no 3-5 conference performance allowed in a Bowl game.

What do you think?

Sunday, July 27, 2008

New season, new Blog lay out

I switched to using Blogger because it's easier to add links to Youtube, Google ads (which help pay the bandwidth bills for the www.fansofthebig11.com website and other cool tools. You can visit last season's posts at the old site .

Football season is around the corner, and I am spending most of my free web time working on a complete upgrade to the site, new logo, new lay out, most importantly new content including updated eSchedules. This year you will be able to download all our schedules and databases without supplying an email address due to popular demand.

Enjoy the upcoming year...lot's of interesting changes in how the Big Ten stacks up