So … have you noticed how the weekend slates of games in the Big Ten have been significantly more mediocre than in years past? Because I have and I figure I'm not alone.

There is a perfectly logical explanation for this. It’s because the league now has 18 teams. It has precisely nothing to do with the fact that three of the four West Coast teams are hovering around .500, thus not providing the competitive upgrade we all hoped for -- and yet it has everything to do with that. I’m in my fifties, which means I remember when the Big Ten only had ten teams.

With an eight-game conference schedule, that meant that every Big Ten team skipped exactly one conference team every season. Back in those days you very much hoped that your designated skip would be Ohio State or Michigan since they totally dominated the conference in the 1970s, while everyone else fought for crumbs. And indeed that worked out sometimes. When Iowa broke the Buckeye/Wolverine hammerlock on the Rose Bowl in the 1981 season, the Hawkeyes beat Michigan and didn’t play Ohio State. (They still needed help to secure the Rose Bowl berth, and they got it when Ohio State upset Michigan on the final Saturday of the season.)

Now there’s a nine-game conference schedule, but eighteen teams, meaning that every season each team skips almost half of the conference. Given the known quantities (like Ohio State and Oregon being really good, year in and year out) and the unknown ones (Indiana catches fire? Michigan and Washington melt into wax?), that introduces a degree of randomness not usually found outside the MAC.

It also means that the typical Big Ten game is either a foregone conclusion or, more commonly, a clash of mediocrities. (College Football News is predicting that eight Big Ten teams will finish with 6-6 records. Thankfully they’re calling on Iowa to win out, finish 8-4, and go to the ReliaQuest Bowl. I wouldn’t blame them if they had “Iowa will finish 8-4 and go to the ReliaQuest Bowl” in their AutoText. I wouldn’t blame them if it’s been there since the days of Windows XP.)

But hey, that makes my job easier! And speaking of that …

UCLA AT WASHINGTON: I said Washington 24, UCLA 23; actual score, Washington 31, UCLA 19

Iowa beat Washington convincingly. Just sayin’.

OHIO STATE VS. NORTHWESTERN: I said Ohio State 44, Northwestern 13; actual score, Ohio State 31, Northwestern 7

Northwestern’s middle relievers fell apart.

MICHIGAN STATE AT ILLINOIS: I said Illinois 30, Michigan State 24; actual score, Illinois 38, Michigan State 16

This was a close game, until it wasn’t.

PENN STATE AT PURDUE: I said Penn State 42, Purdue 6; actual score, Penn State 49, Purdue 10

“Coach Walters? Just wondering if you were planning on listing your home … Oh, no reason …”

NEBRASKA AT USC: I said USC 28, Nebraska 20; actual score, USC 28, Nebraska 20

WELL WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT

RUTGERS AT MARYLAND: I said Rutgers 31, Maryland 27; actual score Rutgers 31, Maryland 17

Now if only somebody cared.

OREGON AT WISCONSIN: I said Oregon 40, Wisconsin 17; actual score Oregon 16, Wisconsin 13

Oregon is very thankful that “ugly” isn’t a column in the standings, because yikes.

That’s a perfect 7-0 for week 12 including, for the second time in the history of this column, a perfect prediction of winner and score! I am now 93-23 (.802) on the year, and I'm pretty sure that means all of this week's picks are going to be way off.

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*: all times in this column are Central, all dates are Gregorian, and all Gaul is divided into three parts.

This game is up against reruns of The Jeffersons and Barney Miller on Antenna TV. Johnny Carson starts at 9, too. Maybe Buddy Hackett will be a guest.

Just sayin’.

Michigan State 28, Purdue 12

This is the Big Ten’s second Game of the Century this season, but I am quite willing to bet that no one not named Curt Cignetti saw this one coming. Cignetti famously called out Ohio State and Michigan when he was introduced to the Indiana faithful. (Half of that wasn’t necessary, as it turns out.) We have heard such bluster before -- Tim Brewster promised to take Gopher Nation to the Rose Bowl at a time when Gopher Nation would have fit comfortably in a diner booth, for instance -- but Indiana has never had a football season like this.

So can he do it? Can he beat Ohio State in Columbus?

The 10-0 Hoosiers have one victory over a team with a winning record, and that’s over Washington, which is 6-5. They did beat Michigan, as Cignetti promised, in Bloomington, but the Wolverines are 5-5 and the final score was 20-15.

Anything else I could type explaining my pick would just be a longer way of saying “No, they can’t beat Ohio State in Columbus; they aren’t that good yet.”

Ohio State 34, Indiana 28

No one will be watching this game, probably not even in Illinois and New Jersey, because, well, you just read why. And that’s kind of a shame because both of these teams are sneakily competent. Not “good,” mind you, but “competent.” It should make for compelling football but, like I said, no one will be watching. So they won’t see that Illinois is just more talented than Rutgers.

Illinois 24, Rutgers 20

Have you kept up with the latest in transmission electron microscope technology? It’s pretty cool. There are now room-sized TEMs with a resolution of less than 50 picometers, meaning that they can easily pick out individual atoms in a sample and can actually be used to observe things like intra-atomic magnetism and electrical activity. If the tech continues to advance we may yet get microscopes that can detect subatomic particles which would be, if you’ll pardon the pun, a quantum leap in particle physics.

Why am I bringing this up? Because if you daisy-chained four or five transmission electron microscopes together, you still wouldn’t be able to find my level of interest in this wretched, unwatchable game.

Michigan 34, Northwestern 18

Moving beyond the clashes of mediocrities, comes now a foregone conclusion. In fact the only thing not foregone around this game is how much longer Minnesota is going to do this to itself until it realizes that P.J. Fleck is just Glen Mason with media training.

Penn State 40, Minnesota 20

Tom Osborne retired from coaching over a quarter century ago, in case you’ve lost all track of time like I have. Given that sobering fact, along with the last twenty-five years of Nebraska football, it’s somewhat of a miracle that Huskers fans still hold the high expectations that they do. I mean, good for them, since low expectations are certainly a form of curse, but if Matt Rhule already felt the need to dump his OC, what messages are getting to him from non-public channels? Did he wake up one morning next to the severed head of a horse?

Of course, Wisconsin just dumped its OC too, and that doesn’t make any sense either. The Badgers gave Oregon all the fight the Ducks could handle, but it availeth not. Now comes the hangover game, and even given the past quarter century, Lincoln is no place to work off a hangover.

Nebraska 24, Wisconsin 17

This is a Big Ten game now. As a Big Ten/Eighteen game it slides nicely into the “clash of mediocrities” side of the ledger. I would not be at all shocked if USC gives up on Lincoln Riley after this season, who is struggling to compete in a real conference and seems to have the Trojans 2-3 years behind the programs that ought to be their peers. But I also wouldn’t be shocked if they kept him, either. Who’s going to take his place, after all?

UCLA fans were down on DeShaun Foster early but the man seems to be finding his way now. Time will tell if he can bring the Bruins back from the brink. I think this will be a good game and, even though USC appears to be favored (I’m going on vibes here, I don’t look at point spreads until after this column is done), I do think that UCLA has a bit more rhythm on offense and would love to spoil those private school kids from across town. (Like UCLA is any easier to get into, but still.)

UCLA 26, USC 24

And, of course …

Iowa fans had a bad case of the Mondays this week with the news that Brendan Sullivan was done for the season and nobody knows who will be Iowa’s starting quarterback. I was there and it was ug-ly.

But since when has Iowa’s success been tied to quarterback play? For the love of Gordy Bohannon, we have twenty-five years of data on Kirk Ferentz! Let me just remind you that Iowa beat Washington 40-16 in a game where Cade McNamara completed a whopping eight passes out of the fourteen he attempted. Does that sound like what a QB-dependent team would do? Let me also remind you that Maryland has the worst passing defense statistics in the entire conference. The Hawkeyes are uncharacteristically not great at pass defense this season either but let’s not act like this game is lost because, oh no, Jackson Stratton is going to play! Ferentzball is set up so that the offense barely matters in the first place.

That’s not to say that the outcome of this game is a foregone conclusion either way. It pains me to admit this is a clash of mediocrities but I have eyes and a brain. This is far from the best Iowa defense we’ve seen recently but they go into the game knowing they’re going to have to be the unit to win it. Can they?

I still believe.

Iowa 17, Maryland 13