Big Ten tries to get back to football this weekend
Traumatic doesn’t even begin to describe the week in Big Ten football.
The details hardly need repeating. Former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged with molesting 8 boys over a 15-year span, with some of the alleged abuse taking place in campus facilities. Iconic head coach Joe Paterno was unceremoniously fired on Wednesday evening, and three other high-ranking school officials have been dismissed as well.
And now … it’s time to take the field.
The atmosphere in State College, Pa., will be particularly awkward when Penn State hosts Nebraska. Paterno, 84, missed a few games during his long career, but the last time the Nittany Lions took the field without Paterno as a member of the coaching staff was Nov. 19, 1949, a 19-0 loss at Pittsburgh.
Interim coach Tom Bradley has the unenviable task of replacing the Nittany Lion legend on short notice. Paterno’s last game, a 10-7 victory over Illinois two weeks ago, gave him 409 career wins, passing Grambling’s Eddie Robinson for the most among major college coaches.
“I think we’ve got to understand that this team has put in a lot of hard work,” Bradley said at his introductory news conference. “Saturday will be Senior Day for many of (the players). They deserve to have this day. That’s what they’ve worked for this entire year. My job is to make sure that it happens.”
At the moment, Penn State is the highest-ranked Big Ten team at No. 12 and holds a two-game lead in the Leaders Division. But the Lions faced a treacherous ending even before the shocking scandal swept over campus. After hosting Nebraska today, Penn State finishes with road games at Ohio State and Wisconsin.
“My job is to make sure they stay focused,” Bradley added. “Obviously, they have had a tremendous amount of distractions over the past week. It is a very resilient group. They will come to play on Saturday.”
Of course, more than one game will be played in the Big Ten. As a whole, the league’s first season with 12 teams and two divisions has probably been more competitive than anyone expected.
If Penn State loses its final three games, there’s a possibility the Leaders Division could finish in a five-way tie between Penn State, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Illinois and Purdue.
That scenario would require Illinois to beat Michigan and Wisconsin at home the next two weeks, while Purdue would need to win home games against Ohio State and Iowa.
“I know if we control what we can control, we have a chance,” OSU coach Luke Fickell said this week.
The Legends Division could conceivably feature a four-way tie at the end of the day if Iowa beats Michigan State. For perspective, the Spartans haven’t won in Iowa City since 1989 and lost there last year 37-6.
Nebraska, still smarting from last week’s home loss to Northwestern, and Michigan are still in the Legends Division hunt.
“I don’t think anybody in here can tell you what’s going to happen a minute from now, let alone four weeks from now,” first-year Michigan coach Brady Hoke said. “I asked our guys, ‘Did anybody think Northwestern would go into Lincoln and win?’ Only one guy said, yeah, they picked it.”
So with three weeks left in the regular season, there are roughly 20 possible combinations for the inaugural Big Ten title game on Dec. 3 in Indianapolis. A special computer program would be needed to sort out all the tiebreaker scenarios.
“Now I guess I’m not the smartest guy in the world, but I’ve noticed there’s twice as much competition,” Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz said of the two divisions. “ I’ll predict this: It’s probably going to go down to the last week like it pretty much has every year, or maybe next to last week.
“At the end of the day, it’s good to win, it’s bad to lose, and that’s really how it is in college football.”