The Drop, Week 7: Foster Children

It wasn't supposed to end like this for James Franklin.

It was supposed to end after this coming weekend. I really wanted Kirk Ferentz to be the last person he coached against at Penn State. 

But, in a world if "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em," Penn State ran him off after losing to (snicker) Northwestern. At home. On homecoming weekend.

Firing DeShaun Foster after three games proved to be the right move for UCLA, which has been a legitimately frightening team over the past two weekends. Most of the credit is accruing to Jerry Neuheisel, son of the last UCLA coach who was worth a darn. I've seen his name mentioned so often I thought he was the interim head coach, but it turns out it's former Fresno State player Tim Skipper. Now, Neuheisel the Younger might well be the reason behind the Bruins' reversal of fortune, but I think the optics of him getting all the credit while Skipper gets overlooked are pretty bad. If you don't agree, I'm going to guess you don't know exactly why it's a bad look, so educate yourself.

Elsewhere in Dead Men Walking: Luke Fickell is still employed after (a) giving up 37 points to Iowa in (b) Wisconsin's first shutout loss at home in over forty years. The Badgers host Ohio State this weekend. If he survives this, I'm leaning towards him getting one more year even if he loses out (which is likely). I said in my preview that Barry Alvarez himself couldn't do better than 6-6 against the 2025 Badgers schedule. 

And lastly: Watch the Two Matts (Rhule and Campbell) through the end of the season as both are considered strong candidates to replace James Franklin at Penn State. I know Campbell has said the only place he'd leave for is Ohio State, but that job isn't opening any time soon and it's probably dawning on him that Iowa State has a ceiling. Rhule is optimally positioned to do to Nebraska what he has done to every other college he's coached at: turn a good third season into a much better job somewhere else.

(Photo: “Gov. Wolf Visits Happy Valley; Meets with PSU Coach Franklin and President Barron to Encourage Vaccinations” by Governor Tom Wolf, CC BY 2.0)

Let's Remember A Car: Nissan Stanza

Wikimedia Commons picture.

It's hard to fathom now, but at one time Japanese cars were a niche product in America. If you've never looked into each Japanese automaker's first venture into the American market, you should, because it's hilarious. They understood the American car market of the time about as well as the average non-otaku American understands the Japanese language.

Still, in the parade of literal clown cars that Japanese manufacturers imported during the 1960s and early 1970s, there were quite a few surprise hits. The Toyota Corolla and Celica caught on quickly, as did the Honda Civic (introduced for 1973) and Mazda's innovative rotary-engine models.

Two of the biggest hits came from Nissan, which in its earliest days branded all its cars under the name Datsun. The Datsun 240Z is, of course, iconic, a discounted Corvette wearing a Jaguar's clothes. Less well remembered is the Datsun 510, which car magazines of the day strongly implied was almost as good as a BMW 2002, but at a much lower price.

But the 1970s got labeled as the Malaise Era for a reason. The early 510 (before emissions controls) was sporty and rugged. The later 510 was still rugged, but lost its edge and started to look weird. It was joined by the 610 and 710, which were full-on dorkwagons that nobody misses.

By the late 1970s the game-changing Honda Accord 4-door sedan had redefined what a compact family car could be -- and what American families would pay for such a car. Small wonder that the rest of the auto industry was trying to catch it. Today we consider Nissan's first serious attempt to do so: the Stanza.

The Stanza was introduced in the US for the 1982 model year as a front-wheel-drive four-door sedan, available with or without a hatchback. (I have been unable to determine if the 2-door hatchback was actually sold here. If it was, it certainly didn't sell very well.) The styling was conservative, which was a welcome departure. More importantly, it beat the Toyota Camry and Mazda's front-drive 626 to market by a full year, making it the only serious competition for the Accord.

Nissan couldn't offer Toyota's level of refinement or durability, nor could it offer Honda's top-notch engineering, so it was forced to compete on price. Yet the strength of the yen in the 1980s severely limited its ability to do so. There were only so many corners to cut before the Stanza would start to lose its "importiness." Nissan stuck to making sure the Stanza's interior was comparable to the Camry and Accord while allowing it to lag behind them mechanically. Contemporary reviews of the Stanza practically speak with one voice: it was a nice car that needed more horsepower to be competitive.

Too, the American front-drive compacts were simply cheaper, even if they weren't as good. I'd pick a Stanza over a Ford Tempo 11 times out of 10, but if the question is "Would you rather have a Nissan Stanza or a Ford Tempo and $2,500?" my answer might be different. (Might be.) The Stanza settled into the niche of "clearly not as nice as the Camry and Accord, but you'll save a few hundred bucks" where it was up against the Mazda 626 and, eventually, the Subaru Legacy. That wasn't a great place to be, because those were good cars too. 

The Stanza would be redesigned twice, once for 1987 and once again for 1990. Those dates coincided with new Camrys (1987) and Accords (1990), both of which seemed like a quantum leap beyond the new Stanza. It was trapped in the market between cars for which people would pay a premium, and cars that could be had for significantly less money, with little to recommend it over either of the flanking enemies. The Stanza simply was never going to happen.

For 1993 Nissan dropped the Stanza and replaced it with the first stage of its face-to-heel turn: the Altima. But that's another story, for another day.

Have I ever owned or driven one? Not at all. I drove my dad's 1986 Nissan Sentra a couple times. It wasn't too bad.

The Sweep, Week 7: The Guns of Augtober

“WWI trench warfare French position near Les Éparges” by Thomas Quine, CC BY 2.0

October is the Big Ten's month for trench warfare. The big rivalry games are, naturally, positioned on the season's last weekend. The first month is mostly devoid of actual contested games. October, the mad, leaf-inflected slog of October, is when conference titles are won.

Just, you know, not by any of the five teams that this column covers. But I digress. Let's get to the games.

No. 1 Ohio State at No. 17 Illinois (11 am, Fox): The more I think about it, the madder I get about the Indiana-Illinois game from earlier this season. It doesn't bother me that the Illini lost. I have no dog in that fight. No, my concern is in how thoroughly the Hoosiers laid the spurs to Illinois and how that leaves us all with off-kilter expectations about what every other team might do against Illinois. Is Ohio State better than Indiana? I'm hesitant to say "yes" because yikes on bikes, 63-10, but I don't think the Hoosiers are quite at Ohio State's level yet. So do I predict an even more lopsided result for Ohio State-Illinois? No, because (a) those sort of beatdowns are rare, and (b) this is a home game for Illinois. Still a no-hoper for the Illini, however, and this will be the last ranked team the Buckeyes face before Michigan, unless Penn State recovers quickly. Ohio State 45, Illinois 23.

Purdue at Minnesota (6:30 pm, BTN): I think there's at least a chance the Gophers are looking past the Boilermakers to a rather difficult upcoming sequence (their next four games: Nebraska, at Iowa, Michigan State, at Oregon). That would be unwise, these aren't ... crikey, Barry Odom has turned things around so quickly I've forgotten who he replaced. And yeah, I know they're 2-3, which doesn't seem like a turnaround, but they're actually in the games now. Last year they weren't. I think Purdue can make a game of this, but Minnesota should win. Very important going into a stretch where anything better than 1-3 would be something of a miracle. Minnesota 34, Purdue 27.

Nebraska at Maryland (2:30 pm, BTN): The Huskers are 4-1 and survived a tougher-than-anticipated challenge against Michigan State last week. The Spartans are stuck in the classic Big Ten mode of "we're better than we were last year but the record isn't going to show it." Maryland, meanwhile, almost, almost shook off the old "September Maryland/October Maryland" meme at home against Washington last week, but the Terps couldn't close. I find it very difficult to get a line on this game because I don't believe in Nebraska yet, but I don't really believe in Maryland either. Both teams had too-soft nonconference schedules to get a good read on them. I will go with Maryland, because at the end of it all, I love comedy. Terps 27, Huskers 24.

Iowa at Wisconsin (6 pm, FS1): I am just enough of a cynical Hawkeye fan to believe that, since this looks like a layup on paper for Iowa, it will struggle mightily with the Badgers. I can see Kirk Ferentz giving too much respect to a fleabit opponent here, leading to an absolute infarction of a halftime score and the defense bailing the offense out -- again -- in the second half. How you beat the 2025 Badgers is by putting the spurs to them. That's not gonna happen here. Iowa will win, but it will look 3,746 times more difficult than it should. Hawks 23, Badgers 17.

Northern Iowa at South Dakota State (2 pm, ESPN+): It's Todd Stepsis's first season in Cedar Falls, so he shouldn't be expected to be competitive on the road against a South Dakota State team that looks to make (another) deep run in the FCS playoffs. I would avoid watching this if I were you, or even if I were me, which I am, and I'm not going to watch it. The fact that I don't have ESPN+ makes the decision easier, of course. SDSU 48, UNI 20.

The Drop, Week 6: [stifled laughter]

“Tired and embarrassed” by Quinn Dombrowski, CC BY-SA 2.0

It was a whopping one whole week ago, in the wake of Iowa's much-closer-than-anyone-expected loss to Indiana that I compared the levels of pain between Iowa fans, Georgia fans, and Penn State fans, and asked who you would want to be if you had a choice. My implication was that you wouldn't want to be a Penn State fan, given that the Nits had once again lost a winnable game at home to a ranked team. That has been a pattern under James Franklin.

I trust that this week I don't need to ask. Top ten teams simply do not lose on the first Saturday of October to previously-winless teams that have already fired their head coach.

It's possible Penn State turns it around from this point and finds a way to the playoff, even though it still has to play Ohio State and Indiana and wait a minute they lost to UCLA so I should mention that they still have to play Northwestern and Michigan State too and see, this is why I think James Franklin has hit his ceiling in Happy Valley. Drew Allar won't quite rise to the level of Juice Williams on the "you had this quarterback and what did it get you?" scale, but it will be close.

Let's Remember A Car: Ford Mustang II

“1975 Ford Mustang II Ghia” by Riley, CC BY 2.0

We're sticking with one of Lee Iacocca's metalbabies this week. One of the very first things Iacocca did when he became president of the Ford Motor Division in 1970 was to push for the creation of this very car. So yeah, Ford built this on purpose.

The Mustang II, in the popular imagination, was/is an insult to the proud legacy of the original ponycar. Just a decade after the introduction of the original Mustang, Ford traded its legacy of smart looks and ferocious performance in order for the Mustang to become ... a Pinto in a track suit. Gone were the 390s and Cobra Jets, replaced by a 2.8 liter V-6 and ... the same 4-cylinder engine as the Pinto. You read that correctly: when the Mustang II debuted in 1974, not only couldn't you get a red-hot V-8 motor, you couldn't get a V-8 at all.

Way to trash the legacy of a proud product, Lee. Did someone drop LSD into the executive dining room coffee pot? Who asked for this, and who was going to buy this? We know what a Mustang is supposed to be: a hard-to-handle ferocious beast of a car that can outrun anything not powered by a jet engine. This thing could lose a drag race to a lawn tractor. What is the meaning of this??!? I thought this was America.

(Hey, Siri, is that enough fake outrage to keep the Boomers happy? I don't want to keep them up late, the morning crew at Hardees doesn't need uber-cranky customers.)

Show me a discussion about the worst cars of all time, and I guarantee the Mustang II will show up. I can't say it doesn't belong in that conversation; it really was a Pinto in a track suit, after all. But if you're going to call it a bad idea, you'll first have to reckon with what the car market was like in the mid-1970s -- and how time has blurred memories of what the original Mustang actually was.

The original Ford Mustang was, underneath its nice-looking exterior, a Ford Falcon. The Falcon was a poverty-spec car, and it looked like one. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that. After all, we just talked about the Plymouth Reliant last week. The Falcon competed with the Chevy Corvair and Dodge Dart/Plymouth Valiant twins down at the low end of the American car market.

In 1961 Chevrolet introduced a special version of the compact Corvair called the Monza. It looked like a much sportier version of the regular car, but it was no faster and didn't really handle any better. All show and no go, in other words. But it sold well and got a lot of good press. So naturally Ford wanted in on the action; hence, the original Mustang. While the Stang could be made to be a very fast car, in base form it was ... a Falcon in a track suit.

The muscle car era peaked a few years later and the Mustang evolved to keep up. By 1971 it was made longer and wider to accommodate the 429 Cobra Jet engine, the most ferocious motor Ford made. Then a combination of unleaded gasoline (mandatory after 1974), increased safety standards, emissions controls, and (most of all) rising insurance rates nearly killed the muscle car market entirely. (The Cobra Jet that the 1971 Mustang was designed around wound up only being available in 1971, for example.) This is why 1970s American cars are either Spartan transportation appliances, gaudy discomobiles, or festooned with two-tone paint and vinyl roofs. (One could argue the Mustang II was all three of these.) 

Customers still wanted high performance, but they couldn't afford the insurance. They wanted great fuel economy but the technology was still too primitive. Since Detroit couldn't give its customers the two things they wanted most, it gave them luxury. After all, if it's going to take you 16 seconds to go from 0 to 60 mph, and you're going to get 12-15 MPG while doing it, you might as well have a comfortable seat. And a vinyl roof. And color-keyed door pulls. Or you could make a car look even more sporty without actually increasing its performance. The Mustang II did this with its Stallion, Cobra II, and King Cobra packages, which were all largely (or entirely) cosmetic, and added luxury with its Ghia package, which was entirely cosmetic.

But make no mistake: a significant portion of all previous Mustangs from 1964 through 1973 were also low-performing vehicles for people who just wanted to look cool. (Bill Clinton earned cool points for owning a Mustang convertible until everyone found out it had a 6-cylinder engine.) Starting in 1969, one could even purchase a posh Mustang Grande, filled with luxury bits but requiring no engine or suspension upgrades. Therefore, the Mustang II was not a departure from the original formula. It was a continuation of it, being based on Ford's smallest car, and looking quite a bit cooler, but not necessarily being any faster.

Then there was a gas crisis in 1974, and suddenly nobody wanted V-8 engines. So it shouldn't surprise you to learn that the 1974 Mustang II sold almost three times as well as the 1973 Mustang. And, having actually been there, I can tell you that it was quite a popular car, even before Farrah Fawcett started driving one on Charlie's Angels.

If the dirty little secret of the original Mustang was that only some of them were fast, or even sporty, then the dirty little secret of the Mustang II is that it wasn't really any different from everyone else's little sporty cars in the mid-1970s. Sure, the Camaro and Firebird were still around for those who wanted V-8 thunder, but smaller imported cars like the Datsun 240Z, Toyota Celica, Volkswagen Scirocco, and even the Mercury Capri were rapidly gaining popularity in America. They weren't fast either. They just didn't carry the burden of a legacy, so they haven't become a bad-car punchline.

Also, the Chevy Monza was even worse, because at least Ford's 4-cylinder engine lasted more than 50,000 miles.

Still, some version of the Mustang has to be its low water mark, and it's obviously this one. Second place goes to the bloated transitional 1971-1973 models, but I actually like those.

Have I ever owned or driven one? Nah. We had a Pinto when I was in grade school. I hated that thing and I was so glad it was never our only car.

("Cobra bites man." ad photo: “1978 Ford Mustang II Cobra II Advertisement People Magazine October 17 1977” by SenseiAlan, CC BY 2.0)

The Sweep, Week 6: Look Away, Baby, Look Away

“Autumn Days” by Jochen Abitz, CC BY 2.0

We had a lot of good games last week, didn't we? From the 11 am games straight through till dark, the blowouts were minimal and the competition was fierce. Wouldn't it be great if every week could be like that?

Well, it can't. If you've got yardwork you've been putting off, or if you've promised to take the kids to the apple orchard/pumpkin patch/ice cream shop/corn maze/petting zoo, Saturday looks like a pretty good day, at least as far as we are concerned. But, regardless of all that, we do need to take a look at the games. I guess.

No. 22 Illinois at Purdue (11 am, BTN): Purdue is much improved over its standard of the past few seasons and wow, is that faint praise. The Boilermakers still don't have the juice to take down a ranked team, even at home, and even if that ranked team is Illinois. Maybe they can keep it close at halftime, but the Illini should eventually pull away in this one. Illinois 38, Purdue 24.

Minnesota at No. 1 Ohio State (6:30 pm, NBC/Peacock):

  Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

   Into the valley of Death

   Rode the six hundred.

Ohio State 56, Minnesota 13.

Michigan State at Nebraska (3 pm, FS1): The Nebraska faithful will hate to hear this, but I am already known for telling them things they don't want to hear, so: Unless things get wacky in Washington-Maryland, this is probably as close as you're going to get to a good game in the Big Ten this weekend. . Nebraska is the better team, but it's not as much better as Nebraska fans and the college football hype machine might lead you to believe. Thus, much like a creepy friend at a pool party, this is going to be too close for comfort. Nebraska should win, though. Plant Strippers 28, Overhyped Ancient Soldiers 20.

Wisconsin at No. 20 Michigan (11 am, Fox): This week College Football News published a prediction that Wisconsin will win no more games this season, thus finishing 2-10, which would probably do in Luke Fickell. I was outraged, not for Fickell, but because the thought of 2-10 Wisconsin just seems so unlikely.

Then I looked at the schedule. Yeah, that's probably what's going to happen. Michigan 31, Wisconsin 17.

Because Iowa is off this week -- and needs to be -- we once again look beyond the boundaries of the Big Ten for an intriguing non-SEC matchup. Unlike last week, I don't have to shift down multiple divisions to find it. 

UNLV at Wyoming (7 pm, CBSSN): No, I'm not kidding. You probably haven't been paying attention, but former Mississippi State/Florida head coach Dan Mullen has taken over at UNLV and the Rebels are spitting fire, putting up good offensive numbers against three admittedly lower-division opponents (Sam Houston State, Fake Miami, and UCLA). Meanwhile in Laramie the Cowboys are in their second year under Jay Sawvel, a Jerry Kill disciple. Sawvel would probably like to forget his first season (3-9) but he has Wyoming at a not-horrible 2-2 coming into this one. 

You can find something else to do when Wyoming has the ball; that will be a classic case of "resistible force meets moveable object." The matchup of UNLV's decent offense against Wyoming's stingy D will be worth watching, though. My usual rule applies: competition creates competitors, so I think Wyoming defends its home turf. Wyoming 23, UNLV 20.

The Drop, Week 5: Pain Samples

“Pain Relief” by Kurtis Garbutt, CC BY 2.0

A not-insignificant portion of my readership are Iowa fans, just like me. And we all saw that game on Saturday. Well, you might have seen it; I have a limit to how many streaming services I'm willing to sign up for, and it's fewer than I am already signed up for. If you just discovered over the past few days that a flapjack is not necessarily a pancake, you might feel some of my pain.

Pain is our topic today. How do Iowa fans feel about Iowa losing to Indiana 20-15? Well, this Iowa fan who predicted a final score of Indiana 48, Iowa 7 feels pretty not-too-bad about playing the Hoosiers 48 points closer than Illinois did the week before. I am convinced there are two more losses on the schedule (Penn State and Oregon) but I think the Hawkeye can win every other game left on the schedule, which would have them finishing 8-4, which is exactly what I predicted they would do before the season started.

Still, the Hawkeyes had a chance to win, and that is frustrating. You know who is more frustrated right now? 

Georgia fans. They just got run by an Alabama team that isn't supposed to be good enough to beat the likes of Georgia, though I would guess now that "Kalen DeBoer buyout amount" is a less popular Google search than it was last week at this time. It's not just that the Tide broke their spirits; it's that Kadyn Proctor scored a touchdown against the Bulldogs ... in the first half. That is a bigger insult than Indiana's game-ending intentional safety was, and that was less of a diss than Kirk Ferentz laid on Joe Paterno in the infamous 6-4 game. (Shut up. I'm right. Kirk told JoePa "you won't get in field goal range," and he didn't.) Georgia fans have every right to be as upset as Bama fans are giddy.

They're having a worse week than Iowa fans are, but there's one fanbase that has it worse, and that's Penn State.

Why? Because "it" happened again, a close loss at home against a highly-ranked team in a winnable game, one that clarifies the Nits aren't as high on the Big Ten food chain as they imagined themselves being.

So while you're licking your wounds, Iowa fans, whom would you rather be? Yourselves, Georgia fans, or Penn State fans?