Indiana. Ohio State. The Big Ten Championship and the #1 overall CFP seed on the line.
Each week, the incomparable RockyMtnBlue messages me at some point around 8pm CT on Thursday, hallucinating that he somehow owes me an apology for finishing all this work to bring y’all the weekly picks.
Each week, I am nowhere near ready to start making these picks and this article look all pretty, because I either have bar trivia until 9pm-ish or am so dog-ass tired from the week that I’m just not getting to it until, like tonight, it’s 11pm or later.
But for some reason, this week, in addition to thanking RMB profusely like I always do—because I used to do DWT;WT and Picks on back-to-back days and that nearly killed me—I promised him I would “gussy up” the picks article.
To “gussy” something—just dress it up fancy-like—is a word that I could not explain the reason it is in my vocabulary. I’ve racked my brain for the “older” books I read as a kid: was it in Little House on the Prairie? The Boxcar Children? Hardy Boys? I genuinely can’t remember.
What I also can’t remember, though, is what I read in between those books and, well, my adult life, which is just basically reading books in American politics and history. (Next up: Brown and Mettler’s Rural Versus Urban and/or a biography of Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich. Can’t wait.)
Was there something I missed? Was I supposed to dive deeper on some of the “classics” that I got assigned for AP Literature—should I have read more Twain, more Faulkner, more Cather or Fitzgerald or Lewis? (I loved Frankenstein and East of Eden, laughed at the absurdity of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead—RIP—and Waiting for Godot, and today would appreciated Beloved a lot more than I did in 2008.) I guess I hit a couple other classics: the dystopian novels like Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World—the latter the most chilling and poignant ending to a book I remember from my adolescence—and the oddly-moving parts of The Glass Menagerie and the trauma of The Things They Carried.
I haven’t touched a book like that in years. The last two I can think of are Sherman Alexie’s Flight and, for some reason, Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit. Hell is, indeed, other people.
I guess it’s marginally better, in this world of enshittification and Google Zero and—/looks outside—all the other horrors of this world, to be trapped in here with you. Marginal, mind you, in the sense that I’m fairly sure half of you were put here specifically to torture me.
There, RMB. Did I gussy this up enough?
Oh well, let’s continue…
*Must have picked at least half the games to qualify. We’re ignore the CCG because it’s all red and can’t affect the order of finish anyway.
- Congrats to MNWildcat! He takes the trophy for the second straight season.
- It wasn’t Thump’s best work ATS, but he did the impossible in straight-up picking: He beat the unbeatable BigRedTwice, finishing first at .839. (BRT was second at .830)
- Lord we suck. Only 3 of 12 pickers eligible for the title finished .500 or better. The worst we’ve done as a group since I’ve been running this series.
- I know it looks like BRT and I tied in the middle of the pack. In fact she edged me out .46698 – .46694. Who says Nebraska can’t win the close ones?
Oh yeah. There’s a game this week*.
*if you’re into that sort of thing
THE gametime CST, but only because I’m not in charge around here.
(2) Indiana Hoosiers @ (1) Ohio State Buckeyes
7PM | FOX | Ohio State -4.5 | O/U 48
Straight Up: (fuck) Ohio State 7-4
Against the Spread: (fuck) Ohio State 7-4
Good lord that’s a disgusting amount of red.
BRT: I picked OSU because evil pretty much always wins. But GO HOOSIERS!!!
HoustonBoiler: OSU is the better team, but Indiana will give them a game and perhaps cover or even win outright. That said, I’m picking OSU to win and cover.
DeadRead: It is better to be the hunter than the hunted. Beating OSU would be a major milestone for IU, while OSU might feel that beating IU is simply the natural order of things. Hubris can be a fatal flaw, a flaw to which young men are particularly susceptible. I have seen highly rated teams succumb to challengers with chips on their shoulders (I am a Nebby fan, so I have encountered this many times over the decades). I will take the Hoosiers, partly out of pattern recognition, partly out of wishful thinking.
Both teams are already in the CFP. Forgive me, but I think a B1G championship win would “just mean more” to the pitchfork people. What’s more is they have the players, scheme, and coaching to pull it off.
misdreavus79: Ohio State hasn’t been to the title game in four seasons, which is wild to think about, so they’re going to be fairly motivated here. I just don’t see how Indiana can win this. Ohio State 34, Indiana 27
Larry31: This is a huge game. Two undefeated teams to get the No. 1 seed in the CFP. So, I picked the team whose QB will shine under the bright lights. Indiana and Mendoza.
MNW: I also took Ohio State to cover, though I was late. Neither 2018 nor 2020 Northwestern was anywhere near the pace or the skill of 2025 Indiana; however, I will die on the hill of “It’s Ohio State’s title until proven otherwise.”
That’s not a fun admission, mind you.
But it’s also one borne out in the little hitches that Indiana and Mendoza showed over the last month. Death Star Jr. is frightening, and I hope that Curt Cignetti puts all the Ohio State picks on a bulletin board and then breaks the bulletin board over my head.
I was going to make a comment here about Cathy Ames and pushpins, and I thought better of it. This whole analogy got away from me. Point is: Ohio State 27, Indiana 21.
Brian: While Ohio State is focused on repeating as national champs, not having won the Big Ten the last four years will surely motivate them to take this game seriously and approach it as more than just an exhibition game.
RockyMtnBlue: So here’s the thing. OSU always has a talent advantage. In the past, you could hope OSU would either just forget to show up (2017 Iowa), or that Ryan Day would do stupid shit to show how great his offensive mind is or how tough his team is or whatever (2024 Michigan). This year, Day has been content to just win the game. He’s suddenly ok with not being the sexy offense or the WE’RE TOUGH offense. Now he’s coaching like a grown-up. And he still has an entire NFL team worth of talent. Ohio State 28-10
