Your Week Six Big Ten Preview

We're entering the second week of Big Ten play and while every game at this point has championship implications, there is one above all the others this week.

Ohio State travels to Madison to take on the Badgers. In the last 20 years Wisconsin has had more success than any team in the Big Ten outside of Michigan. Add that Ohio State is traveling to the land of cheese to play a night game with a freshman quarterback and there is a good game brewing. Now we saw Michigan's big slow white QB run for a 58 yarder last week and if UW loses contain against Pryor he is gone. Ohio State has been less than impressive so far this year, but this could be a breakout game for the Bucks.

The other major game in the conference this week is Illinois at Michigan. The Wolverines already handed one conference heavyweight a loss this year and will look for another this week, even though they are inexplicably slight favorites. Illinois' two losses have come against the #3 and #6 teams in the country and Juice Williams has looked good. Michigan's defense has struggled against spread attacks with short timing routes and Illinois has the best athletes they've seen this year. With Michigan's turnover prone offense, I think the Illini get their first big win this year.

Big Ten favorite Penn State travels to Purdue in what I would have called an upset alert a couple weeks ago. But Purdue has looked bad the last couple of weeks, but maybe Tiller has some voodoo tricks for his last season with the Boilers. Probably not.

Michigan State hosts Iowa this week also. Iowa has not looked too good recently, but it's October, so nothing is a given for Sparty. If you're a State fan, I wouldn't worry about losing, but you'd better hope Ringer has less than 40 carries this week.

Indiana travels to Minnesota. 12 people will be watching. Picks?

Picks:

• Ohio State 30 - Wisconsin 20
• Illinois 28 - Michigan 17
• Penn State 40 - Purdue 14
• Iowa 16 - Michigan State 24
• Indiana 21 - Minnesota 24