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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 22 2009, 3:51 PM | Topic: Campus chatter |
| Overall it was a tough week for the Big Ten. The last chance to prove they're a great league by beating other conferences until bowl season. And though the argument can be made that Michigan State was three inches short on a last-minute pass to a wide open Larry Caper wide open in the end zone away from winning … and that the Gophers were tied with a Top 10 team halfway through the fourth quarter … and Northwestern lost on a last-second kick… and that Purdue barely lost despite fighting a shorter week due to a late West Coast game last week … but still. The bottom line is all four of them lost. And two, maybe three of them are games they should have won. However, two star players grabbed my attention last week. As we should have seen, Tate Forcier came back down to earth. He completed just seven of 13 passes for 68 yards against Eastern Michigan. To be fair, I think a large part of the praise for him was how he played in the clutch against Notre Dame, and not just that his numbers were good. And in facing the Eagles, he didn't have a great opportunity to throw the ball all that much. After all, the Wolverines did win by 28 points. The other guy is Eric Decker. Is Decker the least talked about star in college football? He may be. He just broke the Gophers' all-time mark for catches and still has nine, maybe 10 games left! The fact that he hung onto the ball after his helmet-to-helmet mid-air collision hovering over the end zone was astounding. I mean, they had to replace his jersey since it had so much blood on it from that smack! He needed stitches from the hit, and he said later that he doesn't even remember the hit. But he held onto the ball. I asked my old pal and NFL draft expert Todd McShay if he thought Decker was a first-round NFL pick as of right now. He said no, that he was still behind Arrelious Benn, Dez Bryant and company, but that he should be a second- or third-round pick. McShay declined to comment on Decker's potential to become an NFL QB even though the Gophers star threw a touchdown pass in the third quarter. As for this week, it's the week of "Remember last time?" Do you remember the last time …
"Tailgate" should be fun this week at our new time of Friday nights at 11 p.m. ET. Charissa Thompson joins Jordan and me in the studio for the show. We're heading to Evanston on Wednesdays to do the "Alumni Interview" with arguably the greatest defensive player in the history of NU football. And you might remember last year in the "Teammate Game" when Brendan Smith and Mike Kafka won thanks to an overtime thriller! They're back to defend their crown. FINAL NUGGETS: Stats to know in the Penn State vs. Iowa match-up. I put them in my personal descending order of fascination even though I find all of them interesting... A) The Hawkeyes have won six of the last seven in the series. B) Penn State leads the all-time series but only by a count of 11-10. C) Hawkeye Tyler Sash has six interceptions in the last four games. D) This will only be the third time they've officially done a Beaver Stadium-wide whiteout, or as they call it, 'making a Whitehouse.' The only other times were 2008 vs. Illinois and 2007 vs. Notre Dame. E) Iowa has only five overtime games in school history but two of them against the Nittany Lions in Beaver Stadium. Iowa won both. F) Iowa's seven-game winning streak is tied for fourth longest in the country |
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