Big 10 Calculus (with Quiz!)

Greatest "Third-Best QB in America" of All Time?

12: TD passes for Northwestern's Brett Basanez
1: INTs.

• Nobody else in a Big Conference is remotely close. Way back here, two laps down, in second place is Brian Boehm at Louisville (14 TDs, 3 INTs) or the absurdly-inflated Drew Olsen at UCLA (21-3).
  

311: Basanez's yds/game, 2nd among all major-conference QBs, which is really the same as FIRST among all such QBs cuz Texas Tech's QB is going to actually lead that category, hell or high water, every year so why even count them? (and, to be fair, Basanez is slightly behind ND's Brady Quinn, who's not in a conference).
5: Basanez Rushing TDs
38.8: Basanez rushing yards per game, 5th among major-team QBs.
62: Vince Young rushing yards per game.
50: Percent of Northwestern Big 10 games (2-of-4) in which Basanez has put up 49 points.
99: Points in NU's win over co-Big 10 leader Wisconsin, 51-48.
3: Consecutive wins over once-ranked teams (Ok, that includes Purdue..)

I love Basanez. Classic Warrior QB - never blinks, never misses, never panics. His team has failed him at key moments, but not vica versa. And the Index is delighted to gloat a bit over it's previous notices of Basanez.

Big 10 Calculus (with decimals!)

• (assumption: the following Big 10 'contenders' each "win out" against non-contenders)

1: Magic Number, Penn State - must beat Wisco and it's over - Penn State owns
head-to-head tiebreaks with the other contenders.

1.3: Magic Number, Wisconsin - must beat Penn State, and it's probably over; does not play
Ohio State, so needs EITHER an Ohio State loss (see below) OR to win conference tie-break (that's 3 scenerios, 2 of which UW wins, 1 they don't - +.3)
(Mandatory Index Disclosure: Wisconsin played Temple. Cowards)

2.6: Ohio State - must beat Northwestern (and Michigan(+.3 for difficulty)),
need Penn State to lose and EITHER Wisconsin to lose or win conference
tiebreak (another +.3).

2 - Northwestern - just beat Ohio State and get PSU to lose - simple!

Quiz - Who are these guys?

Kai Ryssdal ("Riz-Dahl")
Scott Jagow
J.J. Yore
John Dimsdale

Is that....
A) The 2005 All Big 10 first team linebackers.
B) The male crew of NPR's Marketplace.

What the Media's not telling you today:

Just How Bad Tennessee Sucks

What that doesn't say - and it's irresponsible not to - is that if the
levees had held, Tennesse would be 2-4, with a bad loss at LSU. Any chance LSU physically
falls apart in the second half of their game if they hadn't spent the
two previous weeks emptying furniture from their apartments so homeless families could sleep on the floors?
Think maybe they missed a few protien shakes?
Think maybe that caught up with the D-line with a field temp of 98 degrees?