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Mike Hall's Bio: Mike Hall does it all: He anchors "Big Ten Tonight," reports from sidelines during Big Ten games and serves as host of the Friday Night Tailgate. He also blogs right here and posts his very own video reports. |
| Sep 1 2009, 2:42 PM | Topic: Campus chatter |
| So lets look at this 2009 Big Ten season, shall we? Instead of predictions, how about we go through my top ten story lines seven players to watch this season? In no particular order: 1) The powerful week 2: Man, is the second week of the season huge for this conference. Let's go best-case scenario: Michigan gets off the national joke table by beating a highly touted Notre Dame team. Iowa wins a tough road game against rival Iowa State. Minnesota opens up their brand new stadium in prime-time national TV coverage by beating Air Force. Purdue stuns the heavens and upsets Oregon in Eugene. Wisconsin shows they're no fluke against always tough Fresno State. Am I forgetting something? Oh right. Ohio State buys the conference three months of perception-cushion ('til bowl season) by getting revenge on No. 4 USC. That's if everything goes right for the Big Ten. If everything goes wrong, then: Michigan is still rebuilding, neither Iowa nor Minnesota are legitimate conference title threats, Purdue stakes first claim for the bottom of the conference, Wisconsin is now fighting just to be bowl eligible, and the best the conference has to offer still can't beat an AP top 5 team. Summary: Week 2 is huge. 2) Not to overlook week one, however. The saddest sports news I heard this summer was that Illinois and Missouri were not re-signing their contract to play each other after 2010. Such a shame. I talked to the Missouri AD about it, and he said it's just too costly for the schools to give up a home game each year. But there have to be other reasons because my response to that is why wouldn't they do a home and home each year, instead of playing in St. Louis?! It's a huge game for both fan bases. It's one of the best inter-conference rivalries in college sports. And since they play it Week 1, the losing program has plenty of time to rebound. It's too bad its ending. But we do get two more versions of it, and this time is the first time in years that I think Illinois has a chance to beat Missouri. The Tigers have a great running back in Derrick Washington. He will help them bring in their new QB stud Blaine Gabbert. And on defense Sean Witherspoon is an incredible linebacker. He's the Sean Lee of the Big 12. But with Chase Daniel and Jeremy Maclin and Jeff Wolfert (the most accurate kicker in college football history) and 11 other starters gone for the Tigers, Illinois has a great shot at finally starting the year 1-0. 3) Evan Royster's rushing record. Of all the great running backs in PSU history - Curtis Enis, Blair Thomas, KiJana Carter, etc. - Evan Royster last year ran for more yards in his sophomore season than any Nittany Lion sophomore ever. Not just that, he's already run for 1,749 yards in only two years and needs 1,650 more to break the Curt Warner's) all-time school record. Side note: This Royster cat is only a junior. 4) Jay Valai hitting. This Badger is a hitter. He watches a collection of youtube.com clips of massive football hits before Wisconsin games to get him pumped up. This is the same guy who last year knocked the M decal off Minnesota running back Shady Salamon's helmet. Expect more highlight hits all year long. 5) Martez Wilson. Shifted over to middle linebacker. The same thing happened last year with fellow Fighting Illini linebacker Brit Miller, and the year before to J Leman. And all those guys did was each lead the Big Ten in tackles. Wilson was such a highly recruited kid out of high school, and this is his year to prove how good he can be. Plus he's motivated after he was stabbed in december trying to help a former teammate. For extra drive he actually still looks at a medical box from said incident every morning and says he thanks God for giving him a second chance. 6) The Michigan State QB battle. Both Keith Nichol and Kirk Cousins threw for exactly 357 yards and four TDs in the spring game. Seriously, I remember talking to Coach Dantonio after the Capital One Bowl last year and he said even then how much he was looking forward to the QB battle. Looks like Cousins will start week one. Will that continue? 7) Eric Decker is pretty good at football. Decker is 21 catches away from all-time Minnesota record. He has 177, Ron Johnson has 198. He should own that mark before conference play begins. 8) This stat snuck up on me: Adam Weber's started 25 straight games. Huh. Maybe that's one reason why Tim Brewster said "I wouldn't trade our QB for anyone in the country." Probably a tad bit of hyperbole there, said Mssrs Tebow, McCoy and Bradford … but still. 9) How underrated is Pat Fitzgerald? Firstt year? Four wins. Second year? Six wins. Third year? Nine wins (almost 10 were it not for the bowl game loss in OT). But he'll tell ya their next goal? Winning a bowl game for the first time since 1949. 10) Indiana's Bryan Payton. Will he do what he told me he'd do this summer—grow out a mullet all season long? Here's hoping. FINAL NUGGETS: Hope ya enjoyed the "MyCall" segments right here this year. My guess is I just won't have time to keep doing them during pigskin and hoops season. But we're working on finding a way to squeeze the concept of those into our football Saturday pregame show. I'll keep ya posted. Let me walk through the changes at Tailgate this fall. Jordan is no longer on the road, but instead he'll be joining me for segments in studio. And he is very excited about that. You'll learn the first week why he's leaving the road. Bravely, Steve will carry on, picking up the label of "Senior Correspondent." And he has a new travel companion - Tim Baltz. Come learn more about the guys on our Tailgate page. The "Alumni Interview" segment will be back and I just got off the phone with Lloyd Carr who will be our guest the first week. He told me, "humor's not normally my strong suit - at least with the media - but we'll have fun." The "Teammate Game" will also be back. Same goes for our girl Charissa (once she's done interviewing Shaq). But there will be a few new wrinkles to the show scattered throughout. It begins Friday, Sept. 4 at 8:30 ET and airs again at 11 p.m. that same night and we'll do that all season. We'll see ya then. |
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