Welcome to the Big Ten!

LGM is now officially a Big Ten blog. I have mixed but mostly negative feelings about the disintegration of the Pac-12 and the transition of Oregon and Washington into the Big 10. Pac-10/12 football has been THE sport for me since I was about twelve years old, and I’m awfully sad to see it pass.

But as much as I hate conference realignment and as bad as it is for the environment, there’s no question that moving Oregon to the Big Ten improves my own situation immensely. Here are some drive times from Lexington:

• Indiana, 3:04
• Ohio State, 3:17
• Purdue, 3:55
• Illinois, 4:40
• Michigan, 5:29
• Northwestern, 6:13
• Michigan State, 6:35
• Penn State, 7:34
• Maryland, 8:01
• Iowa, 8:06
• Wisconsin, 8:10

As compared to when I lived in Eugene:

• Oregon State, :46
• Washington, 4:28
• Washington State, 6:54
• California, 8:06
• Stanford, 8:58

Depending on how the schedule shakes out I could get 1-3 drivable road games per year. And the fact that USC basically blew up the Pac-12 in order to escape Oregon makes for some deep, satisfying humiliation now that the Ducks will join USC in the Big 10. And even at this late date, I certainly have enough hate left in my heart to learn to hate Rutgers.

As for how I feel about Midwesterners infesting the Northwest with their odor of cheap corn and industrial decay, I’ll let Senator Geary take it away:

… I want to squash this shit right now.

spare kids actually trying to get an education from, and teachers trying to teach, the contortions of having to navigate around these moron hulks pretending to be students week-to-week.

If you want to make the absolutely correct point that minor league football should be separated from higher education, please do so without making the abusive and borderline racist claim that football players are dumb. I tutored a lot of football players at UW and while there were certainly some who were not faintly prepared to be in college courses, the vast bulk were smart young men who found it difficult to navigate both a college career and their extremely demanding full time job. The graduate program I teach in at UK has enrolled both recent, highly successful Division I football players (who went on to have successful careers in government) and current starters for the Kentucky Wildcats. Do NOT assume that even elite football players don’t belong on a college campus; many of them are less academically prepared than the median student but most of them are smart and all of them are very hard working.