Just Give Me One Real Thing

The realest thing in America is in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Now, before all you Bears fans infarct, please relax. I’m not talking about Lambeau Field or the Packers or anything. You can’t even see Lambeau from the place I’m talking about. But if you’ve ever been there, the minute I tell you what it is, you’ll agree with me.

The realest thing in America is Bay Beach Amusement Park.

Bay Beach looks like it hasn’t changed a lick since the 1940s, largely because it hasn’t for the most part. It is not a theme park. There isn’t a licensed character anywhere. When you wait in line, you wait in line. You are not immersed into a ride experience.

The rides are, for the most part, standard carnival/county fair stuff: a Scrambler, a Tilt-A-Whirl, bumper cars, little airplanes that you can make go up or down while they go around in a circle. There’s a roller coaster. Just one, the Zippin' Pippin. It doesn’t go underground or upside down or anything like that. It’s just a roller coaster. It’s an exact replica of Elvis Presley’s favorite roller coaster, but that’s all it is.

You can get most of the usual amusement park/county fair treats at the snack bar and concession stands, but don’t go looking for anything exotic. Burgers, dogs, chicken strips, ice cream, cotton candy, that’s about it.

Parking is free, unless you want to be right by the front gate. That will cost you $7. Admission is also free, but the rides aren’t. You have to buy tickets for those. Some rides are one ticket, some are two, some are four, and the Zippin' Pippin is six. Worth it? You tell me. The tickets are twenty-five cents each. 

How do they make money? They're not really trying to. Bay Beach is owned by the city of Green Bay, which works as hard as it can to keep the prices down so that families have something reasonably priced to enjoy on a nice summer day. So it’s heavy on the “park” side of “amusement park.” You walk through cookouts and asadas on your way in, and if you get tired of mechanical rides, your kids can just go play on a swingset or walk down right by the waters of Green Bay.

When our girls were little we used to take them to Bay Beach every summer, usually around the Fourth of July. I don’t know that we ever bought more than $20 worth of tickets, and we all did everything we wanted to do, more than once.

All our girls are in their twenties now, but those memories of Bay Beach still carry on, for them and for us. Bay Beach proves that everything doesn’t have to be An Experience. You can have a good time doing perfectly mundane stuff, like sliding down a giant, steep slide while you’re sitting on a burlap potato bag. (That’s a one-ticket ride.) And the memories you make at a bland-sounding amusement park will stick with you as long or longer than the memories you made at a theme park where you had to plan everything you wanted to do weeks, maybe months in advance because that’s what everyone else was doing and if you didn’t join them you wouldn’t get to do any of the fun stuff. You wouldn’t get An Experience, you would get leftovers. Hope you like the Carousel of Progess.

But at Bay Beach, if we didn’t know what else to do, we could always ride the train (again, one ticket) one more time and just enjoy the view. I can honestly say I had more fun spending one day at Bay Beach than I had spending five days at Disney World. Why? Disney is dreams. Disney is engineering memories for your kids and making sure you have enough physical anchors that they can recall them all the time, on into adulthood. Bay Beach is real. You don’t go there to remember the things you did. You go there to have fun and then remember the fun you had.

Why bring this up now, when summer is nearly over and college football has already started?

Because I want just one real thing this season.

I’m not here to grumble about the money in the sport or who gets it. You and I can do Sweet Fanny Adams about that anyway. It’s expensive to go to games. It’s expensive just to watch them. I don’t know how many different streaming services I’ll have to sign up for to watch all the Iowa games because I’m not going to sign up for any of them. I will not spend any of the thirteen Saturdays of the regular season watching football from 11 am until midnight. I’ll probably max out at one game per Saturday.

Nobody ever decides that this team rather than that one will be their team because Ball Park Franks are the official team hot dog. They pick teams because of personal connections, tradition, or because something just touches them about a certain team, a certain coach, stadium, tailgate party, whatever. My Hawkeye fandom comes from my mother (Dad wasn’t a sports person) but it’s tied in with the sounds of Jim Zabel on an AM radio in our car while I’m in the back seat fighting off sleep on our way back from someplace. It’s tied in with our traditional Saturday lunch of chili dogs. It’s tied in with the sound of leaves crunching under my feet, the first morning that you can feel the cold air going into your lungs when you step outside, the dazzling fact that somehow HyVee makes a better cherry Coke than Coca-Cola does. In short, it’s just part of who I am and the things that I hold dear.

I don’t care what team you root for. Some kid, somewhere, is going to have a great ol’ time watching games with the family, either in person or on TV this fall, and all the sponsorships and t-shirt cannons in the world will add exactly nothing to the experience. There is something good, something pure about fandom that simply cannot be monetized, something that lives in a place where no brand can reach.

Sooner or later the thing you love most about your team is not that it’s the best or that it always wins … it’s that it’s yours. Your fandom is one of the most real things in your life.

And the space you leave around that fandom will always be more important than the space you fill with it.

Photo: By Aarongunnar - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30010727

The Sweep, Week 1: We Waited All Summer (Spring, Winter) For This?

 

Aaand hello, welcome to season 2 of The Sweep, where we predict the weekend's games in what should be the Big Ten West, but isn't.

2025 was a fairly "meh" season for our five teams. Even 4-8 Wisconsin managed to beat Washington and put the fear of God into a couple other teams, though something tells me there are at least two reasons that won't happen to the Badgers' Week 1 opponent in 2026.

Elsewhere, in Week 0 (which I continue to loathe), UNC actually beat a team with a pulse and Florida State beat New Mexico State but absolutely did not look good doing so. In the only Big Ten game from Week Nothing, USC roughed up San Jose State in a game that wasn't as close as the score indicated. Mike Norvell and Lincoln Riley are not yet to the "don't buy green bananas" stage of their tenures but the early returns suggest the later returns had better look a whole bunch better.

As for us, let us look at the games of Week 1, such as they are.

Eastern Illinois at Minnesota (Thursday, 7 pm Central, NBCSN/Peacock): I think Minnesota is perfectly happy with the rut PJ Fleck and the Gophers are stuck in: perpetually 6-6 or 7-5, never beating Iowa unless the refs screw up, and going to a bowl game. It's not a bad rut, really. It fills the stands. 

The 2026 Gophers will be expected to evolve on offense and show more power than they've shown in the previous few seasons, when the team has largely been carried by its defense. But, as is typical for these Week 1 games, the opponent will likely provide little challenge. EIU has sent Sean Payton, Tony Romo, and Jimmy ... [Googles] ... Garoppolo to the NFL, but you wouldn't know it by the Panthers' dearth of on-field success. Minnesota 41, EIU 10.

UAB at Illinois (Thursday, 8 pm Central, BTN): Life is too short to attempt to understand UAB football. Alabama is a talent-rich state. The Blazers should be better than they are. But all football in Bama defers to, well, 'Bama. It's easy to think that in this era any school is just a pile of NIL money away from being competitive, but that's probably not the case and, at any rate, UAB can't afford it.

Illinois? Yeah, they can. Sort of. Illinois 38, UAB 13.

By University of Alabama at Birmingham - www.uab.edu, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=149359006

Know Your Non-Conference Tomato Can: University of Alabama at Birmingham

Located on a surprisingly large downtown campus in Alabama's largest city, UAB is a relatively young school that has only existed since the late 1960s. While it is a broad spectrum comprehensive university, health care professions are a particular strength. It has colleges of medicine, dentistry, and optometry. While still essentially a commuter school, those health care programs and the urban location are beginning to draw students from further away. Football success has been a different story, with UAB actually dropping football for a couple years in the mid-2010s. Obvoiusly, however, it's back now. Notable UAB alumni include ... I told you it's a very young university, right?

Ohio at Nebraska (Saturday, 11 am, FS1): Playing for Frank Solich's honor, I suppose. I met him once. Nice guy, Small enough that I can't believe he played fullback.

Nebraska did not dazzle in 2025 but was, at the bare minimum, a competent football team. Things might have ended better if Dylan Raiola hadn't broken his leg three-quarters of the way through the season, but he did, and now he plays for Oregon. UNLV transfer Anthony Colandrea will now take the snaps. Here's hoping he fares better than his former team did in Week Cipher. Nebraska 40, Ohio 20.

Northern Illinois at Iowa (Saturday, 3:15 pm, BTN): Hawkeye fans with long-enough memories certainly recall that Northern Illinois has beaten Iowa before, back in 2013, in .... Week [null]. That NIU team finished 12-0 before eating dirt in the MAC title game and the Poinsettia Bowl. NIU quarterback Jordan Lynch finished third in the Heisman voting that year as well.

So the best-ever NIU football team edged Iowa by a figgie in a week that shouldn't even exist. I am aware of the past. I am not overly concerned, as I do believe Iowa will pick up where it left off last season. No, as of this writing, we don't know the identity of Iowa's starting quarterback. Convince me it matters. Iowa 35, NIU 17.

Notre Dame vs. Wisconsin (at Lambeau Field, Sunday, 6:30 pm, NBC/Peacock): I kind of already covered this game in the Wisconsin preview, where I said that it's highly doubtful Wisconsin can win against the legitimate national title contending Irish, even though Sconnie tends to punch above its weight at Lambeau. I also said the Badgers don't really need to win, they just need to show up on a big stage and give the Irish a fight. That will be enough to show that things are different in Madison this season. And I think Luke Fickell can make that happen.

Low-key, though, I love the thought of the joint Irish/Chicago Bears fandom, which is huge, being forced to watch another game at Lambeau. Take heart; I hear the Bears will be playing in South Bend pretty soon anyways. Notre Dame 34, Wisconsin 18.

Atari Pac-Man image: Wikimedia Commons

2026 Preview: Wisconsin

The Schedule Gods smote the Badgers hard in 2025. Hard enough that Luke Fickell probably still feels it. Last year's opponents included Alabama, Michigan, Ohio State, Oregon, Washington, Indiana, and Illinois. I wrote in last year's preview that I didn't think Barry Alvarez could have done any better than 6-6 against such a slate, so Wisconsin's 4-8 outcome wasn't too surprising.

What was a little surprising is that Wisconsin kept Luke Fickell in spite of the Badgers' regression in 2025. Some of that is probably because the entire athletic department had to know it was going to be a long year on the gridiron. Some of that is probably because it was clear early in the season that this wasn't a great year for a B-tier team to be looking for a new coach. And at least a little has to do with the fact that Wisconsin actually beat Washington and Illinois, proving that the Fickell Era wasn't yet doomed.

(Probably not, at least.)

Then there's the matter of his buyout, but ... details. Fickell, to his credit, refused a one-year extension on his contract after the season was over. That effectively lowers his buyout should the Badgers continue their losing ways this season. But ... 

The Big Question: Is the schedule stacked against them again?

My Guess at the Answer: LOLnope. Exactly none of the opponents listed above appear on the 2026 schedule. After opening against Notre Dame at Lambeau Field, the Badgers will face Johnny-Come-Notly Western Illinois and perennial ne'er-show-ups Eastern Michigan before opening the Big Ten season against three straight teams with first-year head coaches. Those teams are Penn State, Michigan State, and UCLA, and if you know right now how good all three of those teams will be, you're lying. The back half of the season starts off with a visit from USC and a road trip to Kinnick but concludes with four teams a reasonably competent Wisconsin team should be able to beat. 

Key Games:

• Notre Dame, Sept. 6, at Lambeau Field: The Badgers almost certainly won't win this game, and they probably don't need to. If they can show up and give the playoff-fave Irish a good fight, that will go a long ways toward re-establishing Bucky Badger's credibility. Of course, Wisconsin has historically done pretty well at Lambeau ...
• at UCLA, Oct. 17: Who knows how far Bob Chesney can take the Bruins in year one? Certainly not I. So even if I eat these words later, right now, in mid-August, I think Wisconsin has at least a puncher's chance, and a win here would be huge for showing a turnaround.

AI-Generated Joke about the Badgers:

Why do Wisconsin Badgers fans bring extra cheddar to the stadium?

To go with all the whine when they lose a tight game—and because running the ball down your throat for three yards and a cloud of dust takes a lot of fuel!

Ick. If it had just stopped after the "would you like some cheese with your whine?" cliche it would have been trite but mildly funny. Carrying it that far almost seems like an apology. Also I feel like there's a better possible joke about Buc-Ee's suing the university because it has a meatloaf-shaped animal mascot whose name starts with B, and it uses the color red. 1.5/10.

My Prediction: The Badgers claw their way back to respectability and finish 7-5.

2026 Preview: Nebraska

In both of Matt Rhule's previous two coaching stops at the college level, his teams took a great leap forward during his third year, winning ten (Temple in 2016) or eleven (Baylor in 2019) games.

In his third year at Nebraska, the Huskers finished 7-6.

This is, of course, an improvement over his predecessor Scott Frost, the former Nebraska quarterback who looked like a can't-miss choice after leading Central Florida to a perfect 13-0 season, but failed to post a winning record in four and one-third seasons on the Lincoln sidelines. 

A cynic might say that the success Frost and Rhule experienced in the AAC was simply a result of that conference being a random-number generator without a dominant team, leaving the door wide open for a coach to use a lucky season as a stepping stone to a bigger and more lucrative job. But an anti-cynic would point out that Rhule also did the same thing in the Big XII, and are you really going to say that conference is a random-number generator?

Well, it's been a long while since it had a dominant team, so yes, that is what I am saying.

Still, I can't help but notice that the lying media keeps repeating a falsehood about Matt Rhule's tenure at Nebraska; specifically, that he has not beaten a ranked team as the Huskers' head coach. That is demonstrably false. In 2024 the Huskers knocked off the No. 21 team ... in the FCS (Northern Iowa). Otherwise, it's true: Matt Rhule has a whopping two career victories over ranked teams, and both of those wins came while he was at Temple.

However one defines the Big Ten "elite" (I'd say it's Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, Oregon, and USC, with Indiana knocking on the door), Rhule is winless against them.

"But!" comes the cry. "He has played extremely close games against Ohio State and Michigan that he certainly could have won with just one more lucky break in each one!" And that is true, but you'd want to look past the 56-7 curb-stomp Indiana laid on the Huskers the week before Nebraska almost, but not quite, beat Ohio State.

I know this is going to upset some fans of these teams, but: What is the value of almost beating Ohio State and Michigan when you have never beaten Iowa, Minnesota, or Wisconsin?

I almost feel bad for the Husker faithful. The youngest people who could possibly have eyewitness memory of Nebraska as a national power are around 35 years old now. But I am older than that, and I remember the overweening arrogance of Huskers fans during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I'm not sure they've suffered enough yet. Also we all know the sellout streak ended a few years ago.

This all leads into:

The Big Question: Is Matt Rhule just PJ Fleck with a different personality?

My best guess at the answer: No, Rhule is Glen Mason under an assumed name.

Key Games: 

• Maryland, Oct. 3: Yes, I know, October Maryland. Mike Locksley is still coaching the Terps. This game is sandwiched between a road trip to Michigan State and Indiana coming to town, plus, like I said, October Maryland, so there's a very good chance that the Skers and their fans are going to think this will be easy skanking. It's a trap game.
• at Illinois, Nov. 6: I'm sure there are old-school Husker fans who will take this game lightly since honestly the Illini are still kinda wishy-washy. But where have they been for the past 25 seasons? Nebraska can't take anybody lightly. Well, maybe Bowling Green.

AI-Generated Joke About the Huskers:

Why do Nebraska fans love taking long road trips?

Because it’s the only place left where they can still cruise on 1990s nostalgia for eight hours straight! 

You know, this is a pretty good joke too, but I can't give it full marks because honestly eight hours of 1990s nostalgia sounds pretty good to my cold, cynical Gen X heart. 6/10.

Prediction: The Huskers roar out to a 5-0 start, but that's just a point they pass through on their way to a 6-6 finish.

2026 Preview: Minnesota

College football can be such a cruel and confusing sport.

A team can get better year over year in ways that anyone can see, and yet its record can stay the same or even get a little bit worse. You can dig deep into the stats looking for that one thing that might make the difference if you can capitalize on it but listen: it's never just one thing.

For instance, it would be tempting to look at this stat that Pete Fiutak of College Football News highlighted: Last season the Gophers were 5-0 when Drake Lindsey hit at least 65 percent of his passes. So the key is just letting him cook, right? Add some better receivers if you can, give him an extra half-second in the pocket, and that should lift the Gophers from 7 regular-season wins to like 9 or 10, right?

Then you also look at the Gophers' road vs. home record: 7-0 at home, 0-5 on the road. Two completely different teams, it would seem. Lay the first stat over the second and you realize Lindsey couldn't hit the magic 65 percent in any of Minnesota's road games. Would better receivers and another year help? Certainly! But no way is that the only thing keeping the Gophers from getting back to their ten-win, nationally-ranked heights they've reached under PJ Fleck.

Likewise, one reason improvement doesn't always show up in the record is because some of the teams you play change from year to year, and the ones you play every year (for Minnesota, that's Iowa and Wisconsin) also might get better or worse from one year to the next.

So if Minnesota is in a place of 7-5 homeostasis, that's not an indication that the Gophers are bad or that PJ Fleck is a bad coach. (I don't like the guy's persona, but he's a decent coach.) It's just an indication that lots of college football teams are running to stand still.

Why bring all that up? You'll see at the bottom of this preview.

The Big Question: Is ten wins an achievable goal for this or any Gopher team, or has the world turned, leaving the Gophers solidly in the C-Tier of the Big Ten?

My Guess at the answer: No matter how much the passing game continues to improve under PJ Fleck, the Gophers are not going to get back to those heights without improving their performance against ranked teams They are 4-6 in their last ten games against ranked opponents, and Fleck's all-time record against Top Ten foes is 2-10, with both victories coming in the 2019 season. So even if the schedule gods smile sweetly upon Ski-U-Mah -- and boy do they this season -- it's still an uphill fight.

Key Games:

• Mississippi State, Sept.. 12: I don't know that this game is all that important, really. I just think it's cool and surprising that an SEC team is playing a non-conference road game (a) at all, and (b) this far north.
• Michigan, Oct. 3: This will be the game that lets you know if the Gophers have what it takes to get over the hump. Mind you, I think the answer is "no," but regardless, this is the game that will tell us all.

AI-Generated Joke about the Gophers:

Why did the Minnesota Golden Gophers football team start taking GPS devices into the huddle?

To figure out how they managed to lose Paul Bunyan’s Axe in their own back yard!

As bad as the Iowa joke was, that's how good this one is. It makes sense, it's factually correct, and it hits where it counts. I honestly don't know if I could improve it. 9/10.

My Prediction: That undefeated at home/winless on the road split won't hold true this year. The Gophers will be great fun to watch (for a change) but will wind up 7-5.

2026 Preview: Iowa

Last season Iowa landed a moderately high-profile quarterback (Mark Gronowski, Walter Payton Award winner) via the transfer portal, generating lots of excitement over what Iowa might be able to accomplish if its always top-notch defense and special teams were augmented by a credible passing attack. 

In my preview of last season's Hawks I wrote: "I'm just not sure it ever really matters who's playing quarterback for Kirk Ferentz." That wasn't a cynical statement. That's just my observation of the entire Ferentz era. His goal is for victory to never come down to one player's performance across an entire game. That's a lot of what "complementary football" is all about. I'll admit I thought adding a seasoned quarterback was a good move, but I was not sure it was going to be the difference-maker some thought it would be.

I'm not saying I was right ... but Iowa finished the regular season 8-4 like it usually does, so yes, I was right. It really doesn't matter who is playing quarterback for Iowa, because Iowa's offense is designed not to depend on any one person's performance. It's exactly what one might expect from a coach who raised his profile with the mid-Nineties Browns and Ravens and thus once had a QB room with Vinny Testaverde and Eric Zeier in it.

This is not to dismiss Gronowski. He played well enough, improved as the season progressed, helped Iowa start tearing down the legend of Diego Pavia in the Hey Google What Do They Call That Bowl Game In Tampa That Iowa Always Winds Up Playing In? Bowl, was the MVP of the Shrine Game, and is (at least right now) on the Miami Dolphins roster.

But I digress. Experience has taught me that me being spectacularly right about something is just a prelude to me being even more spectacularly wrong about something else. Thus, we move on to ...

The Big Question: Where will the Hawkeyes be at, mentally and physically, on the morning of Saturday, October 10? The season starts with home games against Northern Illinois, Iowa State, and Northern Iowa, a/k/a "the three closest possible opponents to Iowa City." 

Don't @ me about Drake. The last time the Hawkeyes and Bulldogs played was in 1985. Iowa won that game 58-0 and Drake was still awarding football scholarships back then. Also don't @ me about Wisconsin. DeKalb is 16 miles closer to Iowa City than Madison is.

Then Iowa travels to Michigan, hosts Ohio State, and travels to Seattle to face Washington ... on October 9, which is a Friday night. I don't know that I have ever seen a tougher three-game stretch for this team, and I've been following it since 1979.

My guess at the answer: The Hawks will find themselves 3-3 on October 10 and not receiving votes, but they won't be particularly distressed. The back half of the season is not a gimme but it is a lot less difficult.

Key games:

• Iowa State, Sept. 12. This is always a key game for Iowa, but this year with Jimmy Rogers new on the sidelines in Ames, knowing that nothing will get him in Cy's good graces faster than beating Iowa in Kinnick, this game is unusually dangerous, no matter how little respect Rogers and his Cyclones are getting in the presason. And brother/sister/sibling, they aren't getting very much.
• at Michigan, Sept. 26. Of the three-game gauntlet, I think this is the one the Hawkeyes have the best chance of stealing. Normally I'd give the Hawks a slightly better chance of beating Washington, but the Hawks will be playing on a short week, traveling two times zones west, right after a game that I have penciled in as a near-certain defeat. I don't know if Iowa can actually win in the Big House, but this is a team that played Indiana to within five points last season, and the Wolverines aren't the 2025 Hoosiers.

AI-Generated Joke about the Hawkeyes:

Why did the Iowa Hawkeyes bring a stopwatch to the pumpkin patch?

Because they heard they were great at running out the clock with zero offensive output!

When my daughters were little -- real little, like 4 or 5 years old -- they loved to make up jokes and tell them to us. Problem was, while they understood the structure of a joke, and how to deliver one, they had yet to realize that jokes have punchlines. They also didn't realize those punchlines are supposed to be funny. So they'd come up with "jokes" like "Why did the teddy bear fall down? Because his mommy forgot to take the clothes out of the dryer!"

This joke about the Hawkeyes isn't even that good. The only way it makes sense or serves any purpose is as an example of two grammatically correct sentences. I rate it (sawdust)/10.

My Prediction: Y'all, I swear I tried to come up with a different number, but based on my belief that any Iowa team will win one game it shouldn't and lose one game it shouldn't, I come up with ... 8-4.

2026 Preview: Illinois

 

As literally anyone could have predicted, the Illini came back to Earth a little bit last season once the Schedule Gods withdrew some of their love. Still, Bret Bielema managed to finish the regular season at a respectable 8-4 (I am an Iowa fan; I am allowed to call 8-4 "respectable"), adding a victory over Tennessee in the Music City Bowl to finish 9-4. It's really true: Bret Bielema can beat SEC squads so long as he's not coaching one of them himself.

The Illini managed that feet despite having a defense that didn't distinguish itself in any positive way. If that side of the ball doesn't get better ... well, it may not make a whole lot of difference, given the relative dearth of tossups on the slate.

The Big Question: With a significantly more favorable schedule this season that holds only two all-but-guaranteed losses (at Ohio State and hosting Oregon), can the Illini hold serve and get to ten wins with at least a slight chance of making the playoff? In other words, can Bielema finally turn Champaign into Madison South?

My Guess at the Answer: No, because there's a lot of parity in the B-tier Big Ten teams, which is where the Illini find themselves. Also Madison South would be Stoughton, and there aren't enough Norwegians in Champaign to pull off that transition.

AI-Generated Joke about the Illini: 

"Why did the Illini offense cross the road?

They didn't—they got flagged for holding, pushed back five yards, and had to settle for a 50-yard field goal attempt!"

This isn't a terrible joke, given that it's topical and on-point, but it's not a good one either because it's overly detailed. If you have to explain the joke, it didn't work. Would have been much funnier as "Why did the Illini offense cross the road? Actually ... it didn't." 2/10.

My Prediction: The Illini do get to ten wins, but only by sucker-punching another SEC team in a bowl game. They'll finish the regular season 9-3.