Round and Round Goes the Wheel of Pain

The recruiting game is a swampy quagmire full of false promises, carnivorous smile-façades, backstabbing, treachery, and Tom Lemming. It's not for children, and it's not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Also, four out of five doctors agree that you should wait at least 30 minutes after eating a meal before reading a recruiting website. That being said, it's a hilarious pageant of the absurd that, taken with enough detachment and acceptance of how much of a sicko you really are, proves to be endlessly entertaining.

Take the drama in the last week that involved a linear chain of backstabbing that starts at the defending national champs and ends with a toddler from suburban Muncie, Indiana:

Behold, the Wheel of Pain!
	Urban Meyer poaches prized defensive end recruit Justin Trattou from Notre Dame commitment.
	Charlie Weis, in turn, extends scholarship to Iowa commit Brian Smith. Kirk Ferentz becomes enraged and pulls Smith's scholarship offer. Smith commits to Notre Dame.
	Kirk Ferentz turns around and offers Ball State linebacker commit Bruce Davis, who decommits from the Cardinals to join Iowa.
	Ball State head coach Brady Hoke tracks down Suzy Kohlmiller, a six year old Muncie native, and steals her tricycle, leaving her in tears on the side of the road.
To Be Continued...

We Now Have Four Smiths in Our Linebacking Corps, All We Need Now is a Morrissey

I came home from school one day in tears with a bloody nose. See, the local bully had demanded my lunch money, and upon refusal to fork over the goods, he clocked me right in the mug and swiped my cash while I was writhing on the ground. After patching me up and drying away my tears, my old man looked me in the eye and told me to suck it up. Real men don't cry when they get bullied around, they pick themselves up, march back onto the playground, and find an even smaller kid and beat the hell out of him and take his lunch money.

A couple days later the police raided our house and took him back to jail after a frantic 48 hour manhunt.

But look at me getting all nostalgic. Anyway, the point of this story is that when Urban Meyer comes into your house and pushes you around, Charlie Weis took it like a man and went nextdoor to Iowa to steal one of their best defensive recruits. Notre Dame scored a verbal commitment from linebacker Brian Smith, who backed out of his prior commitment to the University of Iowa to play ball with the Irish. Smith is a legacy (his father, Chris, was a fullback for Notre Dame back in the day) who apparently has wanted to go to ND since day one, but was just now offered a scholarship. He's got some good natural talent and will add depth to a linebacker position that can use all the talent we can find.

This brings the grand total of Smiths on our defense to four, with linebackers Scott Smith and Toryan Smith on the roster, plus incoming freshman Harrison Smith slated to come next fall. Suffice to say, we're going to have to make an exception to the "Strip naked and sing Neil Diamond" tradition for announcing a new recruit and fire up some Morrissey.

Please, please, please let us get a Defensive Lineman. Lord knows, it would be the first time.

UPDATE: Morrissey-philes, you might find my latest post on The Fanhouse to be right in your wheelhouse.

I'm Pretty Sure This is One of the Five Steps of Grieving

Everybody's pretty wrecked up about this whole Justin Trattou thing. We're in the five stages of grieving, and some people are whipping through them at a more accelerated rate than the others. Dink, for example, has bypassed the Denial and Bargaining and gone straight to Anger. Good on him.

(click image for full-size cartoon)

Urban Meyer Gets Verbal Commitments from Five Notre Dame Fans' Wives

Always known as a sharp tactician and fierce disciplinarian, BCS champion coach Urban Meyer has made huge waves this week on the recruiting trail, reloading his already-talented roster at the University of Florida with a dynamic group of new players that will ensure the long-term success of the program. Mere hours after converting Notre Dame recruit Justin Trattou to Florida, five young brides from across the country gathered in Gainesville today to hold a press conference announcing their intentions to join Urban Meyer for the upcoming season.

The five women, who range in age from 24 to 46 and are all acknowledged as elite targets, all withdrew previous marriage commitments to their Notre Dame fan husbands after being persuaded by in-home visits by Meyer himself.

"It's a devastating break, really, I'm just in shock right now," said one of the husbands, lifelong Notre Dame fan and alumnus Mitchell Fellington, a market analyst from Chicago. "I mean, it just started out with some innocent text messaging... you know, 'How's the weather in Chicago?', 'Hey, did u see that BCS chsp game, LOL?'. I never really thought much of it at the time."

Fellington wasn't the only husband who was overwhelmed by Meyer's unusually cunning recruiting prowess. Anthony Engleman, an IT consultant from suburban Dallas who holds an undergraduate and MBA degree from Notre Dame, was also taken aback by the swiftness with which Meyer worked.

"I really thought I had a solid verbal commitment from Alexandra," he mused, reflecting on his wife of three years. "We were just getting settled in our new house, and we had even began talking about starting a family, you know? That's why I wasn't concerned when I heard she was taking an official visit to Gainesville two weeks ago. What's the harm? She probably just wanted to get a free vacation and take in the sights and sounds in one of Florida's ten most dynamic cities."

But things got quite a bit more serious after that.

"I guess I really started to get a sick feeling in my stomach when was at work and read online that the University of Florida jet had just touched down at the small airfield about a five minute drive from my house. Deep down, I was trying to convince myself that Meyer was just visiting the local high school to scout some juniors. I guess that's what you call denial."

Alexandra Hughley-Engleman was very forthcoming in her press conference about what ultimately led her to make the shocking decommitment.

"It wasn't an easy decision to make. I knew that if I stayed with Anthony, I'd have a guaranteed spot at the top of the depth chart, and there's certainly going to be more competition with Urban, what with him already having a wife and with the four other highly-touted wives he's bringing in this year. But, personally, I have no fear of competition. I'm very confident in my abilities as a wife and think that the competition will only push me to get better, even if it means sitting out for a year and just learning from the other wives."

Some of the other wives had other reasons behind their change of heart.

"There's no doubt, weather played a big factor," remarked Kristen Welsh-Fellington, "I mean, when I took my official visit, my plane was delayed two hours because a huge snowstorm practically shut down O'Hare Airport. Within hours of landing in Gainesville, I was in cut-offs and flip-flops. I was just getting sick and tired of being pasty to the point of translucence during the winter. I think Florida gives me a great opportunity to develop a healthy bronze. I mean, just look at [current Urban Meyer wife] Shelley, and that's after less than two years in the Florida sun. The results really speak for themselves."

Molly Fitzpatrick, a former Notre Dame wife from Somerset, NJ, mentioned two big issues that triggered her defection to the Gators.

"Being close to family is a huge priority for me. I talked it over with my mother, who just moved into a retirement home in Ocala, and really that's what both of us want. The trip from New Jersey was just becoming too much."

Fitzpatrick also cited football-related reasons for the switch.

"I mean, [former husband] Doug's doing well with his job here in Somerset, but because of his obligations and the sheer distance to South Bend, we have to save up all our vacation time to go to one, maybe two Notre Dame games a year and sit in the nosebleed section. While that's tempting, that's not really where I see myself. I've always been a season-ticket, hanging-out-in-the-owner's-box kind of girl, and that's what I prefer. At the end of the day, that makes a big difference."

When contacted by phone, Urban Meyer was candid about the ethical ramifications of his unabashed poaching Notre Dame fans' wives.

"Hey, a verbal commitment before God in a place of worship isn't the last word. I always maintain the lines of communication after a marriage because a lot can change in a year. When you're trying to build the greatest stable of wives in the country, you can't spend time worrying about what has been said in the past, you just have to roll up your sleeves and get down to work."

When asked if this year's class of wives was complete or if he had his eye on any other targets, Meyer dismissed the question, citing NCAA regulations prohibiting him from mentioning any recruit by name before signing day. He did, however, end the conversation with a knowing chuckle, suggesting his work this year is far from done.

Busy Week... Posting to Resume After Weekend

Well, not a whole hell of a lot is happening in football in these dog days of January. You can check out the latest tidbits at the Fanhouse... Charlie Weis going to trial, the Charlie vs. Urban Deathmatch, and Victor Abiamiri's enormous hands, but you've probably heard all that news already.

Me, I've had a minor setback due to a particularly violent game of pickup football in Wicker Park, so I'm taking some doctor-ordered bedrest. Hey, it was fourth down and the game was on the line... sometimes you just have to be a good soldier and make the ultimate sacrifice. Pray for mojo.

It's all about sacrificing everything for victory. Scars heal, glory is forever. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

The Orgeron Takes a Page from the Notre Dame Playbook

Desperate to get his team motivated to play at a higher level, it looks like Coach Orgeron has aped a timeless Notre Dame tradition over at Ole Miss, according to his blog. I don't forsee any type of Texas A&M - Seattle Seahawks pissing match, though, because it looks like he's put enough of a spin on the design to dispel any rumors of plagarism:

Nowda rebahplaya hava PUNCHDIS-SIGN evvertime theys runnout ondafield!

Robert Hughes Makes 19 Commits

After a long recruiting process and a lot of recent rumormongering, star Chicago running back Robert Hughes made it official and picked Notre Dame over Ron Zook's Magical Funhouse-Champaign in a press conference at his high school.

Hughes will be joining an Irish backfield that, based on the huge star potential of the recruits from the last two years, should become a very memorable rushing force in Notre Dame's history. Hughes is a huge, strong, between-the-tackles runner who also has very impressive speed for a man of his proportions (5'11", 230). Coupled with his classmate, the lightning-quick Armando Allen, plus the star-studded offensive line that has been assembled, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Irish running roughshod over the competition with a punishing ground game in a few years.

As an interesting sidenote, it appeared that the Notre Dame alumni club in Chicago had a good feeling about yesterday's announcement, as they sent out a mass-email to Chicago alumni urging everybody to drive out to Hughes' high school and root him on for his decision. Personally, I decided against going completely over the edge and stalking high school kids, although I may not be speaking for my fellow Chicago alumni.

In accordance to a new tradition I just made up, we're going to celebrate every new verbal commitment by stripping down to our underwear and singing Neil Diamond. Party on.

All Hail Western Speed!

Anyone who caught the East-West Shrine Bowl last weekend not only got to spend four more torturous hours of your life with Bob Davie (isn't this supposed to be the offseason? Do we got no reprieve?), but you also got to personally witness the complete exposure of flat-footed Easterners when matched up against Western Speed. The West rolled to a dominating 21-3 win.

If this doesn't prove that the Mississippi River cleanly divides America into a slow, lethargic, and overweight Eastern Half and a supercharged hemicontinent of lightning quick genetic freak athletes in the West, then I'm afraid no amount of specious question-begging sportswriter quasi-argument will ever convince you.

Vote Early, Vote Often for College Football Blogger Awards

College football bloggers spend a frightening amount of time laboring over their online projects and, in doing so, almost certainly do it at the expense of alienating their employers, their loved ones, and that sink full of dirty dishes that each day becomes more and more overrun with botulism cultures. Nonetheless, they persevere and continue writing, almost entirely motivited by some slightly misguided altruism and a passionate dream to entertain, inform, and make jokes about mustaches and farts for their loyal readers who, ironically enough, alienate their employers and loved ones by spending an inordinate amount of time surfing the internet and laughing at jokes about mustaches and farts.

Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to set aside a week or so at the end of the season to be self-indulgent and hold a little awards ceremony to congratulate themselves on the hard work they are doing for free or the random pennies they get from Google Ads. The fine lads at Rocky Top Talk have set up and hosted the poigniantly un-snappily named "2006 College Football Blogger Awards". And while I would prefer a more endearing sobriquet for the award (like, say, the Bloggies or the CoFoBAs), I still value the concept. Furthermore, I think that the actual hardware should look a lot like the 2005 Fiesta Bowl Trophy, as you can see on your right here. Alas, I'm not the boss.

Anyway, the House has made the ballot for two of these lovely awards, so I thought I'd take a minute to plug my viability as a candidate... the people's candidate.

First up is a nomination for Friday Night Lites for Best Podcast/Audio Thingy. FNL was a really fun project to bring together bloggers and talk shop which, unfortunately, came derailed at the end of the season due to massive technological failure (long story short, I had to put down most of my machinery with a shotgun after it became self-aware and tried to kill me in my sleep).

If you want to get a smattering of FNL, you can listen to some sample episodes, like this one, where I interviewed Michigan bloggers, or this one, where I yapped with Jay from Blue-Gray Sky and Orson from EDSBS. And finally, although it wasn't on a normally-scheduled show, I think that Mike Valenti's timeless rant was a staple of the HRB's audio content, so it probably deserves another listening anyway.

Next up is a nomination for Best Big East/Notre Dame Blog. While it's flattering to make it to the finalists, most right-minded readers (including myself) will be casting their lot with Blue Gray Sky, who are (in the words of my sidebar link to them) the "one and only warlords of Notre Dame football".

So get out there and stuff the box. It's an honor to get this recognition and I'd like to thank my loyal readers for their nominations in the initial poll. I'm hitting the campaign trail these next two weeks, so if you see a 79 Chevy Nova painted blue and gold blasting the Notre Dame fight song in your city, come on by and I'll squirt you in the mouth with a super soaker full of Rumpleminze!

Behold, the ultimate campaign weapon!

The House Rock Built Won its Wager... Just Barely

While most of you were lazily flipping around through bowl games on New Years Day, sleeping off your hangover and idly watching some postseason exhibitions, the House Rock Built was riveted to his seat and glued to the Capital One Bowl. You see, I may have shot off my mouth a little bit in my preseason blogpoll roundtable, and ended up promising to photgraph myself in Razorbacks boxers if the Hogs ended the sesason at or above Phil Steele's ridiculous preseason ranking of #13. Well, my last shot came in bowl week, when an scrappy underdog Wisconsin Badgers held off the Hogs in an excruciatingly long defensive slugfest, 17-14.

Lucky me, the 'Backs finished the year ranked #15 and #16, narrowly avoiding massive embarassment on my part. So, my fortunate readers, you will not be subjected to a picture of me in Razorbacks underwear, you lucky bastards. However, if you were really excited about seeing a picture of somebody wearing Hogs boxers, well, here's Scarlett Johannsen.

Don't thank me for the eye candy, thank Bret Bielema

Half a Mill for Bail

Not to be too self-indulgent, but I noticed my counter hit another milestone this weekend, rolling over 500,000 visits. It seems like just yesterday I was celebrating my 200k anniversary, so suffice to say, it's been a great football season for the House Rock Built. Maybe I don't say it enough, but you, the reader, in addition to being the Time Magazine person of the year, are also the House Rock Built's person of the year, so there's another award to hang up in your parents' rec room. All joking aside, it has been a great year and change shooting the straight dookie with you guys about college football, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to do my jam and have loyal readers who are, inexplicably, interested enough to read it while your boss discreetly clears his throat as he looks over your shoulder.

So, let's celebrate! Everyone strip down to your underwear and rock out with me to Jay-Z's 99 Problems.

New Irish Defensive Coordinator Has... Many Talents

When I asked Brian at MGoblog if he had any scoop on future Irish defensive coordinator Corwin Brown, who (sad as it is ) is a Michigan alum, I wasn't expecting the... er... amount of depth that he would answer in. Well, all hail the internet, because Brian was able to rustle up the naked truth about Brown. From his post on the Fanhouse, which he culled from a story made by a commentator at mgo, here's an interesting tidbit on Brown:

Corwin was *always* walking around the halls naked. I think he'd purposefully wait until a parents weekend to go walking down the hall while the parents of the girls had to pass through our hall to get to the girls half of SQ. And believe me, when you're hung like Corwin, you're freakin' **PROUD** to walk down the halls nekked. I can still see him casually lookin' into someones room... "What's up?"..

Naturally, this story should be taken with a grain of salt. Before you get too excited, Irish fans, remember that being the best-hung person at UM isn't actually that much of an accomplishment.

Special Guest Blogger: Nick Saban

I'm taking the afternoon off to get my car out of the impound lot... long story, but my consiglieri advised me it's okay for me to reiterate that all of those spider monkeys in the crates were fully licensed and part of a completely legitimate business arrangement. Anyway, Nick Saban volunteered to guest blog today to keep you savages entertained this lovely Friday morning. Enjoy. -fightinamish

Man Alive, Life is Busy This Time of Year!

Greetings, gentle readers, it's Nick Saban, but you can go ahead and call me Nick, or Nickles, or the Sabe-meister, as all of those are loving sobriquets my dearest of dear friends often use when referring to me in the vocative form. Whatever makes you most comfortable, quite frankly. Fightinamish told me to give you cats a scoop on the life of the Sabe-meister, and I'll be damned if I'm going to hang up the whole mutual enjoyment of it all on formalities surrounding appellations, you hear?

Look at me, I'm getting carried away. You guys really need to let me know if I start carrying on like that, otherwise I'm liable to spend this entire chat session boring you to death with my niceties and the like. So you want to hear about the life of Big Nickles, do you? Well, let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it's a billowing bag of crazy, particularly this time of year, what with my big fancy job change and my new digs coaching at the great University of Alabama, God love 'em. How about I give you a whiff of it by giving you a sneak peek at my dayplanner? It's a rare treat, as the Nickster keeps this baby under lock and key most of the year. So have a gander, will you?



As you can see, there's not a single moment that I have to myself as I busy myself with preparations for the next season. Hell, there's hardly even any room for my signature doodles that help me unwind. See, I'm heading out on a big ole recruiting trip next week and hitting up every high school, chatting with the young men, sizing up some talent, and, of course, enjoying me some lovely home cooking from the charming and fascinating mothers of these young men who will be the future of Alabama football.

Let's see here... the 19th is an interview with the Arizona Cardinals, then it's back onto the duties of the head coaching job at the University of Alabama, which, I might add, is the finest head coaching job in college or professionall football, as I tour around some of the great alumni and booster clubs, shaking hands, talking football, and speaking to all these great supporters of the team about the long and prosperous future of the program under Nick Saban. It's going to be a gas, and it will be a great opportunity to show off my devotion to this University of Alabama football coaching legacy that I am just tickled to be the benefactor of. See, there's been some talk that I'm disloyal, which suffice to say is insulting and damaging to my character. I'm looking forward to talking to these folks face to face so I can put to bed once and for all these outlandish rumors and show them how genuine I am.

A quick jaunt over to Tulsa for some more recruiting and a quick sitdown with the University of Tulsa folks, then I'm off to Costa Rica for some R&R. You know, a chance to cool my jets a little bit and clear my mind. I always find it's easier to design the future of a football team in those peaceful and serene surroundings. Plus, my old friend Wayne Huizenga will be stopping by, so we can chat for a few hours about the recently-vacant head coaching gig for the Miami Dolphins, you know, spitball some ideas back and forth. I don't want to send the wrong impression, no sir, I am Alabama for life. However, I'd be doing myself a disservice (and being rude to my dear friend Wayne Huizenga at the same time) if I refused to sit down for an hour or two and get a good sense of what's out there.

But don't get the wrong impression, it's not all fun & games. No sir, once I'm done with my mini-vacation, it's right back to work for the University of Alabama. I'll be moving into my big new office and getting myself nice and comfortable for a real long career coaching at the finest University in the land. I'm shipping my vintage mahogany desk in (I found it in an antique store in Baton Rogue several years ago... it was hand-crafted by Dutch merchants back in the 16th century... a real one-of-a-kind), interviewing for the Oakland Raiders job, getting my voicemail set up, introducing myself to the support staff, familiarizing myself with campus, sending out a few more resumes, touring the practice facilities, and, at the end of the day, settling down at my trusty phone to keep in contact with all the recruits, both from this class and the class of 2008. Whew! No sleep for the wicked, am I right?

After that, it's basically just day-in and day-out stuff... you know, the not-so-glamorous hard work of the coaching job that you probably didn't even know existed. Some fellas over at Viacom will be stopping by to chat with the Sabermeister about their CEO job, which I guess just opened up. Keep in mind, ole coach Nick is Bama for life, but it's always good to check out other markets and at least get an idea of what else is going on in the world, am I right? Coach Nick is probably going to have to do some research about this "Viacom", at least enough to sound like I know what I'm talking about during the interv-... well, let's just call it a friendly meeting.

Well, my my, look at me. I did it again, rambling on and boring you to death. Didn't I tell you to stop me if I started to do that again? Well, no bother. I should probably get moving along, anyway. I'd better get back to my job... I'm going to have to be on top of everything if I'm going to keep this job for the rest of my life. These folks at Bama sure have high expectations, but I promise you I will spend every last waking hour of my life working round the clock to make sure those big dreams come true. Catch you on the flipside, readers. And thanks for letting me jaw with the readers, fightinamish. Hopefully I didn't do such a good job that your readers will be demanding that I write full-time. But, hey, you know who to call if they do.

Here's a Fun Contest for the Dead Period Between Now and Spring Practice...

Bowl season is over, awards season is over, and recruiting season is more or less winding down, so us diehards are stuck with a few months of disoriented nothingness while we wait for spring practice. Understanding how desperate you are for something to do after you've devoted the last four months of your life to college football, the House Rock Built is hosting a contest that should keep those idle hands busy.

Okay, readers. Here's what you do. Go out to a pet store, a breeder, or the local pound and buy yourself a Jack Russell Terrier. Next, spend the next two months working with your new pooch around the clock, training him (or her... or neither, if you did the responsible thing and threw down $75 to have it fixed) to bark in exact synchronization with the "woofs" on the Baha Men's 2000 classic hit "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

Now, go to the absolure worst part of town in the city you live in and find the dirtiest and most dangerous bar that has karaoke. Take your pooch in there and rock the house while a companion videotapes the entire ordeal.

The first reader to provide a link to a YouTube video of this, pending authentication by an independent judging firm, will receive a free copy of "The University of Notre Dame: Fighting Irish Collector's Edition DVD Set ". Ready? The contest begins..... now!

Blogpoll: Driving our Hearse Through a Screaming Crowd Edition

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Florida	2
2	LSU	2
3	Boise State	4
4	Southern Cal	2
5	Ohio State	4
6	Louisville	1
7	Michigan	5
8	Auburn	--
9	Wisconsin	2
10	West Virginia	3
11	Oklahoma	2
12	Rutgers	5
13	Brigham Young	5
14	California	6
15	Texas	6
16	Notre Dame	6
17	Arkansas	5
18	Wake Forest	4
19	Oregon State	4
20	Hawaii	6
21	Penn State	5
22	Tennessee	7
23	Boston College	3
24	TCU	1
25	Virginia Tech	9
Dropped Out: Texas A&M (#19), Nebraska (#22), UCLA (#24).

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the House Rock Built is back.

I know, I know, I've left all of you hanging for far too long while I took an extended vacation from posting. Quite a few hilarious things have happened in the interim, and the House has been unable to jump in with its conventional snark. Between digging myself out of porn star snowstorms in Denver (don't know what those are? Oh, they're snowstorms that are measured in feet instead of inches) and writing love letter after (tragically unrequited) love letter to the USC Song Girls, I've been plum strapped. But I'm back now.

Allright, Blogpoll. There's a lot of moving and shaking here, which I was trying to avoid. I don't think a one-game exhibition a month after the end of the season should have a drastic influence on the overall judgment of a team's season, but at the same time, the bowl game marked the first challenging game many of these teams have played in a long time. As a result, there were some pretty wild swings as I re-evaluated what teams looked like after they stepped away from the fishbowl of their own conferences. That, and throwing darts randomly helped me fill out the bottom half. Onward!

• Florida is #1. After thinking long and hard, I think this one is kind of obvious. Seriously, what is the deal with Tim Tebow. It says he's only 6'3", 217 pounds... so why does he run like he's nine feet tall and weighs three metric tons? He must have made some freaky deal with the devil that prevents anyone from ever tackling him. He's absolutely filthy. He's going to be a huge asset to the Gators in the future, and while we're on the subject of huge assets, look what I found on the internet...





• Ohio State is Not #2. I know, I know. They only have one loss, and I just said earlier that I don't want to put too much stock in one postseason game, but at the end of the day, I just don't see them as the number two team. Think of it this way... had OSU lost to Florida during the regular season, would they have dropped one spot to #2? Definitely not. They would have had a steeper plunge, largely because their strength of schedule is less formidable than the other teams in the top five. So I bounced them down a bit more.
  
  Rough go of it for Troy Smith, too. The Heisman is turning into a MNC Game curse.





• Boise, USC, LSU, Louisville... the usual suspects. Vengeful dominance in the BCS games really showed everyone who's the boss in football this year.



• Michigan is ranked ahead of Wisconsin. I think this one is pretty obvious, although apparently the AP and Coaches aren't nearly on this wavelength. Okay, Michigan has 2 losses and Wisconsin has 1 loss. But look at the resumes of these conference bretheren. Both have a signature win over a team that is now languishing near the bottom of the top 20 (Arkansas and ND). After that, all of their wins are identical and by pretty similar margins. The Badgers don't have OSU on the schedule, and faced a world-class pantywaist OOC schedule. Oh, and Michigan beat Wisconsin. Convincingly.



• After that, who cares? It's a pick em from there. Is Notre Dame #14 or #19? Answer: Who flipping cares?

So there you have it. Put another season in the books, ladies and gentlemen. It's been quite the roller coaster ride, and September is just around the corner.