Thoughts: 20-September-2009

Penn State defeated Temple 31-6, pretty close to my prediction in the last blog. Next Saturday they take on Iowa in their first Big Ten match up this season. Last year, Iowa beat Penn State by a point which was their only loss during the season, not counting the loss to USC in the Rose Bowl. It will be a night game which gives it a good chance to be televised here in CT.

Sporting News Today (free online daily sports report) picks the Patriots to beat the Jets. I think that this will be a good game and the Patriots will be playing a lot better than they did against the Bills.

I watched the season finale of Dark Blue (TNT) and this series has really go downhill since its start. The undercover unit seems to kill most of criminals that they are after and when the few who get arrested go to trial, I don't see how the cops can continue to go undercover if they have to testify at those trials. And why the criminal underworld not figure out that these guys are cops after going undercover all the time, does not make a lot of sense to me. The season finale had Carter kill a dirty DEA agent who just happens to be with his ex wife and is the father of her new born baby. Carter's defense is that the guy attacked him and it was self defense but he did not want his ex to know that he was a crook so he faked a crime scene that some unknown guy attacked them while meeting and Carter accidentally killed the guy. His team backs him up. So, they kill most of the criminals they go after and fake crime scenes, yeah right. This show gets a C for the season.

Season finale of Eureka (SyFy) was much better and a bit sad. Two characters are leaving the show, Tess (Carter's love interest who I liked a lot) and Zoe (Carter's daughter off to Harvard). Tess takes a job in Australia and invites Carter to join her, which would allow Jo to become the sheriff which is her dream. With his daughter in college, what would keep Carter in Eureka? Interesting twist and I look forward to see how it is resolved. Show gets an A for the season.

A new feature for my blog that I want to try out, is occasionally raising a question and giving my answer to it. Her goes the first one.

Question: When will the Big Ten Conference add a twelfth team?

When Penn State joined the Big Ten, this gave the conference 11 teams. A twelfth team would allow the Big Ten to create two divisions of 6 teams a piece and have a season ending conference championship game. This has proved to be very lucrative for the SEC, Big 12, and the ACC.

Joe Paterno, Penn State's head football coach, has long advocated that Pittsburgh should get an invitation to join the Big Ten. This would bring Penn State into a better geographical association with the other Big Ten schools, right now they are kind of an outlier with the Big Ten. Unfortunately, there still is some lingering resentment that Penn State was let into the Big Ten, a decision that was made by the university presidents without any consultation from athletic directors or coaches. So Pittsburgh has not been a popular choice for team number 12.

Notre Dame has long been the favorite to be a Big Ten member. As a football independent, they make tons of money from a tv contract with NBC, so they don't need the revenue. Their basketball program is in the Big East, which gives that conference hope that one day Notre Dame may join them. As long as Notre Dame can be competitive for the national championship without membership in a conference, they will remain independent.

What needs to happen, is that a Division 1 playoff scheme needs to be created requiring conference membership, e.g. conference champions go into a playoff to determine a national championship. When this happens, Notre Dame will not have any choice but to join a conference, Big Ten most likely getting the call.

As long as there is a chance that Notre Dame will join the Big Ten as a twelfth member, no other team has a chance. If Notre Dame chooses to join another conference, than I would see the Big Ten quickly adding a twelfth team. And that is my thoughts on that question.

Oh well.