The Sweep, Week 10: Perfunctory Mailed-In Edition

It has been A Week so I apologize for the flimsy nature of this week's column. If you are dissatisfied, I'll give you your money back.

Rutgers at Illinois (11 am, NBC/Peacock): Hey, I'll actually be at this game in person! Look for me! I'll be the middle-aged white dude wearing blue and orange!

(is handed a note)

Well, one of them, anyway.

I predicted, before the season, that Illinois would take a step back from its excellent 2024 run due having had a soffffffft schedule last season. So far that has proven right. The team isn't any worse, it might even be a bit better, but it's not showing up in the record. Still the Illini have an estimable offense, they're fun to watch, and it's not like anybody else has looked good against Indiana.

(is handed another note)

Except for Iowa.

As for Rutgers, I wonder how many more seasons it will take for them to figure out that Greg Schiano isn't going to get them back to where he once had them. Illinois 34, Rutgers 23.

Michigan State at Minnesota (2:30 pm, BTN): Ah, the cruelties of November. Minnesota sits at 4-3 with its typical 6-6/7-5 season well within grasp. They will go bowling. Any team that needs to beat two out of Michigan State, Northwestern, and Wisconsin to make the postseason can be sure of that. Sparty, meanwhile, is 3-5, winless in conference play, has only one more loss until every game is a fight against elimination, and is almost certainly not going to go 3-1 against its remaining schedule (this game, Penn State, at Iowa, Maryland), so it might as well get the next two losses over with. Though it will be hilarious for Sparty and Penn State to both be fighting for their first conference win of the season on the second Saturday of November next week. Minnesota 27, Sparty 17.

No. 23 USC at Nebraska: You are right. This would have been a much better game twenty-five years ago. As it stands now, it's the close match it would have been back then, but it's a close match of Big Ten also-rans. It's conceivable that Nebraska wins this game then wins at UCLA and at Penn State to come into the Heartland Trophy game 9-2, but USC has been improving just enough over the season that I think it can win in Lincoln. USC 30, Nebraska 24.

Photo credit: “mailbox-mail-cluster.jpg” by r. nial bradshaw, CC BY 2.0

The Drop, Week 9: Seems Like A Skills Issue

We take note this week, because it is impossible not to, that Brian Kelly's tenure at LSU has come to an ignoble end. That in and of itself is not shocking; there's more than one reason Baton Rouge is referred to as "Death Valley," and it sure isn't because of a climate that is hot and dry.

Kelly was probably destined to fail there. I've long thought that success in the SEC requires a particular set of coaching skills that simply cannot be picked up anywhere else. Mind you, I don't know what those skills are. Otherwise I'd be packaging them into a $1,399 online seminar, and I would probably sell that seminar out. There are coaches who have failed in the SEC but gone on to succeed elsewhere, and there are coaches who have succeeded elsewhere but failed in the SEC. (But enough about Bret Bielema.) That's what leads me to believe that, while it might not be strictly necessary to cut one's teeth as an SEC assistant if one's ultimate goal is to head up an SEC program, it dang sure isn't going to hurt a coach any.

I trust I don't need to tell you how much prior SEC experience Brian Kelly had.

Still, I can't help but think there is one circumstance that might have gotten Kelly another year or two, at least. That's if Nick Saban were still coaching.

It might have seemed to outsiders like Saban's retirement led the other SEC coaches to breathe a sigh of relief, but I'll bet it was the other way around. So long as Saban was there, the pressure to win the conference was off, because you just weren't going to win it. But once he was gone? And once it was clear Kalen DeBoer wasn't just going to pick up where Saban left off? Well, how come we're not winning more games, Coach? You can beat Alabama now!

I mean, that's how it was in the Big Ten when the only preseason question was whether this was a Michigan year or an Ohio State year. There was no shame in finishing third to those teams. Then Hayden Fry's Hawkeyes won the league in 1981 and suddenly, the dog caught the car. Now what?

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The Sweep, Week 9: The News from Lake WoB1Gon

Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake WoB1Gon, my hometown, where the first cold front that makes a person stand up and take notice swept through town about mid-morning Tuesday while Frank Krebsbach was at the convenience store getting a cup of coffee. He hadn't really felt comfortable there ever since they put in one of those new coffee machines, a touch-screen affair that grinds the beans to order and then brews your cup. This is a great improvement to most people but not to eighty-five-year-old men like Frank who had spent a lifetime varnishing their livers with endless cups of a beverage that had been cooking itself on a too-hot burner for a few hours. Fresh coffee is almost an affront to such a man whose very identity is based on drinking the undrinkable, after all.

But this is just the way of the world now, and as Frank stared at the screen asking him which kind of coffee he wanted he noticed a new option, the "Floyd of Rosedale" blend. He asked Jenny behind the counter, "What's this Floyd of Rosedale stuff?"

"Oh, you know, the pig that Iowa and Minnesota play football for every year," she said. "It's just the regular Mahtomedi Blend, they only changed the name because the game's on Saturday. Come back Sunday morning, it'll be Mahtomedi Blend again."

Frank made his coffee, paid for it, and slowly drove his 2007 Chevy Impala back to Krebsbach Chevrolet, the Chevy garage his father Florian had founded, making a living selling cars to his fellow Catholics. But neither the church, nor the Chevrolet Impala, nor Lake WoB1Gon itself were what they had been back in the Sixties and Seventies; today, a guy needed more than just a common religion and a nice Gunmetal Grey four-door Celebrity Eurosport to make a sale. Business wasn't good and it was getting worse every year. The lot was full of SUVs that Frank couldn't sell, but it was a small matter when his mechanics didn't know how to fix them anyway. 

Then it dawned on him that the perfect customer for Krebsbach Chev was one from the Cities, a family that would come here to buy a car but never, ever return to have it serviced, because it was just too far to drive for an oil change. Frank had known this for a long time but he had never quite been able to figure out how to let them know that Krebsbach Chevrolet was willing to deal.

But something different struck him this morning. He had a little vision of a pig trophy. A trophy called Floyd of Krebsbach Chevrolet. He wondered how much it would cost to get the name switched. Then he had an idea: he would just drive down to the Twin Cities, walk into Rosedale Center, and ask them how much they paid to get their name on the trophy. Then, he'd offer the trophy people a little more money -- maybe $50, $100 at the very most -- and Floyd of Krebsbach Chevrolet would become a reality. But he needed to hurry if the game was this week.

As soon as he got back to his office he told his daughter Debbie about his plan. 

"Oh, you're not going to drive yourself, are you, Dad?" she asked. "You'd better get someone to take you. And you'd better be careful, I heard that on Facebook Antifa said they're going to loot Rosedale right after they get done looting the Walmart in Sauk Centre."

Debbie figured this would be enough to dissuade her father. He had the typical attitude of a WoB1Gonian man: Death, even a cold, ignoble, highly preventable death, was preferable to asking someone for help, and she knew that, like a disturbing number of WoB1Gonians, he was convinced that Antifa was a highly-organized, well-funded and elite paramilitary with global reach rather than the loose, barely coherent linguistic designation it actually was.

Unfortunately, her plan didn't work. Within fifteen minutes Frank had convinced Derek Larson, the young mechanic with the long Duck Dynasty beard that Frank was forever worried would get caught in the fan belt of a running engine, leading to a very expensive Worker's Compensation claim, to drive him to Rosedale Center in the parts truck, and to leave right now.

No. 23 Illinois at Washington (2:30 pm, BTN): The Krebsbach Chevrolet parts truck was a '93 model, the last new service vehicle his father Florian had approved before he retired, and Frank was loath to get rid of it. Change is not easy for rural Minnesotans, after all, and anyway the S10 only had 53,000 miles on it, all of them between Lake WoB1Gon and St. Cloud. But unlike the trucks of today, the sky-high, leather-lined crew cab luxury liners that could have paid a whole year's light bill at the dealership if only there were anyone in Lake WoB1Gon who could be talked into financing $80,000 over eight years to buy one, the parts truck was so small that if you wanted to change your mind, you had to open the window first. 

Now, Frank is not a small man, and neither is Derek, and they barely fit, the two of them, side by side inside the truck. As they made their way towards Interstate 94 neither man was happy or even comfortable, but in typical Minnesota fashion neither wanted to be the first one to complain either. So onward they drove, eventually figuring out that as long as they sat perfectly still and took turns breathing, their hips would never touch. And as the miles passed by, they were both missing the old-shoe familiarity of Lake WoB1Gon, but also both embracing the slightly giddy feeling of being away from there and, for a change, completely unknown. That feeling lasted almost all the way to Monticello. Then the GPS on Derek's phone told them there was a crash on 94 ahead, and suggested they get off onto Highway 10 instead. 

"No! Anoka is full of speed traps!" Frank said, but the GPS wasn't listening. That was the problem with technology, old men couldn't argue with it about speeding tickets from 2006.

Illinois 24, Washington 18.

Northwestern at Nebraska (11 am, FS1): Eventually they arrived at Rosedale Center, where it took Derek a while to find a parking spot close enough to the door for his elderly boss to waddle inside from. They wound up entering the mall via JC Penney, which prompted a blizzard of loud, inappropriate anecdotes from Frank about the lingerie section of the old Penney's catalog, stories which made Derek ever so glad he had grown up in the Internet Age. 

"Let's find the office and get out of here before Antifa shows up," said Frank, a little too loudly.

So they wandered the corridors conspicuously, wondering why they couldn't find the mall office, which a person would think would be fairly easy to find, and it would have been, if either of them had bothered to consult the mall directory they had walked past three or four times, but that would have been dangerously close to asking for help. Frank was beginning to despair and honestly beginning to give up when he spotted something that took his breath away. Not the mall office, but a small group of young adults, in their very late teens or very early twenties. There were three girls and one boy -- they were three women and a man, but in the WoB1Gonian mind anyone under forty is still a kid, unless they've been charged with a crime -- and they all had brightly colored hair, no two of them the same shade.

"There they are!" said Frank, pointing right at them. "That's Antifa! I recognize them from TV!"

"Mr. Krebsbach ... I don't think they're actually Antifa, I think they're just, you know, people," said an exasperated Derek. 

"Don't sass me! I saw them on the news, all the Antifas have colored hair! We've got to warn somebody before they start looting!"

Nebraska 31, Northwestern 13.

Wisconsin at No. 6 Oregon (6 pm, FS1): Suddenly Frank and Derek were confronted by a uniformed individual, a young woman whose ethnicity they could not quite place, except to say that she was definitely neither German like Frank nor Norwegian/Danish like Derek. 

"Thank goodness!" Frank said when he realized she was a security guard. "I think Antifa is down that hallway, by Von Maur! You'd better shoot them before they start looting!" 

The guard, who had seen the dyed-haired "mob" of four people and knew them to be perfectly harmless community college students, instantly knew she was dealing with someone from out in Greater Minnesota. "We're keeping an eye on them," she said. "If they start any trouble, the Roseville Police will be here right away."

There was an uncomfortable pause. "You should shoot them anyway," Frank said. 

The guard made eye contact with Derek, who had a look on his face that clearly communicated Do not listen to this crazy old man. That way lies madness. "Is this your first time at Rosedale Center?" she asked. "Are you looking for a particular store?"

"No, no, I want to talk to the manager," Frank said.

"Sir, if Antifa causes any trouble, we will handle it," she said, thinking she had read him correctly, but not yet realizing that trying to read Frank Krebsbach was like trying to read a can of alphabet soup without opening it.

"It isn't that," Frank said. "My name is Frank Krebsbach, from Krebsbach Chevrolet in Lake WoB1Gon, and I want to talk about a business deal."

The guard heaved a sigh of relief, one of those sighs that was about ninety-three percent inward, but just outward enough to be audible. "I'd be glad to take you to the mall director's office," she said. "Would you like that?"

"Yes, very much," said Frank, and they walked down the long corridors together. Frank and Derek learned that her name was Marci, she lived in St. Paul, and she had never even heard of Lake WoB1Gon. "It's not on the map," Frank told her, and then proceeded to tell the story of why it was not on the map, which did not fascinate her.

They reached the mall office, which was in a side corridor, way down past the restrooms. Frank had expected a bustling, prosperous place with many people working in it, but it was just a sad, ignored-looking office with a dropped ceiling and buzzing fluorescent lights.

Marci led them to an office at the back, where a fortysomething woman was staring at a spreadsheet on her computer monitor. "This is Ms. Peterson, the director of Rosedale Center. Ms. Peterson, this is Frank, and this is Derek, and they have a business deal to discuss with you." Marci had opened her eyes very widely when she said the words "business deal," in hopes that she could warn Ms. Peterson that she was about to deal with the ravings of a crazy old man.

But that warning was unnecessary. Before Ms. Peterson could even get up from her desk to shake their hands, Frank blurted out "How much do you pay for the pig?"

"I'm sorry?" she asked, genuinely confused.

"The pig, the Rosedale pig, that they use for the football game."

Marci looked at Ms. Peterson again, a look that said "These guys don't really belong here."

Oregon 47, Wisconsin 0.

Minnesota at Iowa (2:30 pm, CBS/Paramount+): "The pig?" said Ms. Peterson. "That's not our ... pig. We don't really have anything to do with it."

"Oh," said Frank. "So how come it has your name? You see, I'm Frank Krebsbach, from Krebsbach Chevrolet, up in Lake WoB1Gon, and I thought maybe we could work out something where I'd pay you some money and the pig could be Floyd of Rosedale and Krebsbach Chevrolet. I mean, it's an even better deal for you if you're getting all that advertising for free."

In that moment the mall director realized something important about Frank Krebsbach. Sometimes when a person gets old we talk about how their brain has gone soft, but she realized Frank's brain had gone hard, like a cinnamon roll left uncovered on the counter overnight, and she also realized, in that moment, how impossible it was for Frank to consider that he was simply wrong. His delusion that the Rosedale from which Floyd came had to be the mall was merely a product of living in a world so small it didn't extend any further than the Twin Cities. There simply couldn't be another Rosedale. This was the one he knew. And she pitied him, though not nearly as much as she pitied Derek.

"Oh ... well, our marketing person is out of the office today," she said. "I can take your phone number and he can call you tomorrow, if you would like. But I'm afraid I can't get the name of the pig changed before the game this weekend. You see, we've ... we've already paid for this year, and we can't get our money back."

Now, if there is anything a small-town Minnesota man understands, it is that once you can't get your money back, there is nothing more to be done. Whatever it is, you're stuck with it.

"Oh. Okay, yes, that would be very nice," Frank said, and he gave her the number for Krebsbach Chevrolet, because his cell phone number was a secret guarded more carefully than the nuclear codes, since Frank lived in fear of an irate customer calling him during a Twins game.

"Is .. there anything else I can do for you?" she asked.

"No, no, I look forward to hearing from him. Thank you," he said, and he and Derek began the long, slow shuffle back to the parts truck.

The mall director waited until they were just out of sight before tossing Krebsbach Chevrolet's number into the wastepaper backet. 

Frank and Derek oozed out onto Snelling Avenue, thence onto 694, and pointed themselves back towards Lake WoB1Gon, neither one speaking a word.

Somewhere just beyond Maple Grove, Frank ventured a thought.

"I bet the security guard was Antifa too," he said.

Iowa 31, Minnesota 27.

Well, that's the news from Lake WoB1Gon, where all the mascots are strong, all the bands are good-looking, and the teams are all above average.

Photo credits: “The news from Lake Wobegon” by Alan Kotok, CC BY 2.0; GM Publicity Photo via Consumer Guide; Wikimedia Commons; public domain.

Thanx and a Tip O' The Hat to Adam Jacobi for the Lake WoB1Gon idea!

The Drop, Week 8: An All Too Familiar Feeling

It's impossible to be a fan of the Iowa Hawkeyes -- or any other very-good-but-not-quite-great football program -- without eventually making peace with the feeling of existential dread. Certainly Saturday's game against Penn State felt like the old feeling of chronic impending disaster creeping back into our collective psyche. Yet, in the end, the offense didn't screw it up (uncharacteristically, it was the special teams that drug the Hawks down) and the Hawks held the lead at the only point it mattered, the final whistle. It was a nice, fitting end to one of two games that I had marked as "a certain loss" before the season began. The other one is Oregon, and I'm sticking with that one. Maybe. Did you notice that no team has played Indiana any closer than Iowa did? Or that the Hawkeyes held the Hoosiers to their lowest point total of the season? 

Or did you let the creeping sense of doom move into your attic, causing you to write off an unranked team that nearly beat this season's college football It Girl the week after that same It Girl blew the doors off a ranked Illinois team? I don't know where this all ends this season but it looks like Ferentz has held it together pretty well despite Gronowski's early season struggles. But what do I know? I've only been doing this for 23 seasons, after all.

TIRED: Matt Rhule's 2025 season will get him the Penn State job.

WIRED: Matt Rhule's 2025 season will keep him from getting the Penn State job.

The Hidden Game of Football, Part 1: UAB 31, (formerly) No. 22 Memphis 24. As with UCLA, sometimes firing the coach midseason turns out to be a good move.

The Hidden Game of Football, Part 2: UCLA 20, Maryland 17. Both teams in this game prove the point I made above. Maryland hasn't fired Mike Locksley, but if he was going to do anything else in College Park, he'd have done it by now.

And finally ... Like me, Floyd of Rosedale is a Fort Dodge native. The pig belongs to Iowa. Let's keep him home. I don't want to see anything that even looks like a fair catch signal.

The Sweep, Week 8: Badgerdammerung

It's been a week for yours truly, so if you're hoping for a clever introduction, there isn't one. I put it all into the picks. Which means they're probably all wrong, but I digress.

Penn State at Iowa (6 pm, Peacock): Appropriate that, like an NBC sitcom from the early 2000s that only six people remember, this game is only available on streaming. As sure as I'm sitting here, I have no idea how to pick this game. James Franklin is gone and Drew Allar is out for the season and I'm sure the Nittany Lions are pissed off but they also lost to UCLA which doesn't seem so bad but they also also lost to Northwestern and that is pretty sad for a team that was ranked at any point in 2025. Meanwhile we're all waiting for the Gronowski we thought we were getting to actually show up but with every game he seems more like Jim McMahon during his stint on the Vikings. Penn State is theoretically better than it looked over the past ... okay, we're enough weeks into the season that I can say they were never good, just hyped and only an idiot believes a poll before October 1. Then again, UCLA got a lot better after it fired DeShaun Foster, so ... wait, they lost their first game under Tim Skipper. To Northwestern. So all we're missing is the inevitable hiring of Pat Fitzgerald in Happy Valley and a crossover with Mad About You for Green Week. Hawks, ugly. Iowa 17, Penn State 13.

No. 25 Nebraska at Minnesota (Friday, 7 pm, Fox): College football on a Friday night is an abomination. Matt Rhule has not had a great week, fighting off rumors of Penn State, but at least they distracted from the not-dominant performance last week against Michigan State. And PJ Fleck is still very much PJ Fleck, meaning he's getting a gift-wrapped dot-com bubble of an opponent at home on a national stage, and he's not going to be able to do anything with it. Nebraska 38, Minnesota 20.

No. 1 Ohio State at Wisconsin (2:30 pm, CBS/Paramount+): 

 (I got a weakness for the classics.) Ohio State 66, Wisconsin i.

This week brings us 2 bonus games, since Nebraska and Minnesota are playing each other and Illinois has the week off:

Washington at Michigan (11 am, Fox): I mean, one of these teams has to be good, right? Or at least better than the other team? Go Blue. I guess. Michigan 27, Washington 22.

Temple at Charlotte (1:30 pm, ESPN+): This game is of no particular interest. I am only including it because it's the cheapest ticket on StubHub this weekend ($1.20, less than a pack of Fruit Stripe gum) and because I thought of a clever way to express my belief that Temple will beat the sad-sack Charlotte 49ers. Owls 41, Bowels 10.

(Note: the image leading off this column is AI-generated. I don't care, so save your electrons.)

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.