#Pat Fitzgerald

LINCOLN - One more offseason. One more preseason. One more football season. And one more postseason. All with a new commissioner, and an eye toward a larger future in the league. One more trip around the sun with this iteration of Big Ten football. And one more year with divisional schedules. One more year, for certain, of a Big Ten title game. The…

If you're the glass half-full type, it was another season of stellar defense in the Big Ten. Of the top 10 teams nationally in scoring defense, 5 were from the B1G. Glass half-empty types will point out that the ineptitude of Big Ten offenses could be a factor in this. But it's more of a chicken-and-egg scenario. Do Big Ten offenses struggle…

Once upon a time, Russell Wilson was an All-ACC quarterback at N.C. State. He also happened to be a fine college baseball player, which his football coach, Tom O'Brien, didn't exactly love. Why? Spring football. If your QB1 is on the diamond, he can't be in the huddle for important offseason practices. Eventually, after three often-marvelous…

Here are early win/loss predictions totals for Big Ten tams, including Michigan and Ohio State. The Big Ten should have several outstanding teams, like Michigan and Ohio State, as well as several truly awful squads this upcoming college football season. Outside of the SEC, the Big Ten is the best college football conference we got, and we should…

John Cooper is not a name that gets brought up often anymore in college football, but he represents a very specific period in history that many younger fans don't remember and cannot conceive. Cooper coached the Ohio State Buckeyes for 13 seasons, an undeniably long run in which he won three Big Ten titles, posted five top-10 finishes and twice…

The First (Annual?) Gary Patterson Bowl goes down in Austin. Two questions will define No. 4 TCU at No. 18 Texas, one far more important than the other. First, who will be more satisfied in victory: TCU, moving to 10-0 with a team comprised of largely the same pieces of the 2021 Patterson-led team that went 5-7 with a win over Gary Patterson, or…

For the only time in a regular season that features eight home games and only four road games, Ohio State will play back-to-back road games as it heads to Evanston, Illinois, this weekend to play Northwestern one week after traveling to Penn State. On paper, this game shouldn't be near the challenge last week's game in State College was. The…

The high-powered Ohio State Buckeyes will attempt to keep their momentum going Saturday when they face the struggling Northwestern Wildcats in a Big Ten college football showdown. Kickoff is set for noon ET from Ryan Field. The Buckeyes (8-0, 5-0) were just awarded the No. 2 spot in the first release of the College Football Playoff Rankings for the…

The Ohio State Buckeyes enter a new a month that just may feel like a new season now that Tuesday's first batch of College Football Playoff rankings were revealed. The Buckeyes will enter the final stretch of the regular season ranked No. 2 in the CFP poll, right behind Tennessee (with whom they are tied with at No. 2 in the AP rankings) and in…

Another week of Big Ten football is in the books and it remains the same at the top. Penn State was able to get back on track, proving that it is at the top of the second tier in the conference. Michigan was on a bye and Ohio State picked up a big victory. Was it a statement win? Iowa is not as strong as in the past but the Buckeyes laid 54 points…

Where: Beaver Stadium (106572). TV: ESPN (Bob Wischusen play-by-play, Dan Orlovsky color, Kris Budden sideline). 2022 records: Penn State 4-0, 1-0 Big Ten, Northwestern 1-3, 1-0 Big Ten. 2021 records: Penn State 7-6, Northwestern 3-9. Last week: Penn State beat Central Michigan 33-14. Northwestern lost to Miami (Ohio) 17-14. Series and last…

Remember last week when I sat here and said "It's Minnesota's division to lose?" Good times! After last week's results, every team except Wisconsin is in a tie for first in the West. The preseason favorites, of course, sit alone at seventh in the division, sitting at 0-2 in conference play. This, and other assorted reasons, led to Paul Chryst being…

Two weeks ago was a not fun 2-3 as I spent the day soaking up one of three available to us on Sanibel Island* before heading to the Iowa watch party in Ft. Myers. It was a blast, relatively speaking. But that was 2 Hawkeye offensive touchdowns ago and the time I normally spend punching out this column last week was used shepherding a 2-year-old…

Tough one for my Buccaneers last night after a 28-14 loss to hated UMass-Dartmouth. If you watched the 12-9 Colts-Broncos win last night and thought "That's the pinnacle of football," well...boy, we've got a few games for you this week in the Big Ten. HIT IT, RockyMtnBlue! (all times CT) Straight-Up: jNebby 10-4 Against the Spread:…

It's that special time of year. The calm before the storm. The fun starts this weekend, with another glorious college football betting season officially on the horizon with Week 0. Alabama is the favorite to win it all with+175 odds at top online sportsbooks after losing to Georgia in the national championship a year ago. Ohio State is+300 while…

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WRRB) -- We are three days from posting our weekly Against The Spread numbers for Week 6 of the college football season. I have three prop bets that could not wait until Friday: Wager No. 1: Over/under on the percentage of head coaches at the 64 FBS Power 5 schools who have been on the job-less than two full seasons? I'll put the…

Another win for Penn State has the Nittany Lions sitting just outside the top-10 in the AP Rankings and are the No. 20 team according to the Action Network's Power Ratings. In all likelihood, the Nittany Lions will be a top-10 team in the country after this weekend as they are a 25.5-point favorite against Northwestern on Saturday afternoon. This…

In Week 4, there was bad, and there was worse. All five of our pickers were below.500 in the nine games we selected last week. Aaron McMann and Andrew Kahn were the best at 4-5. Our Michigan State beat, meanwhile, both went 2-7 (yours truly picked two lone wolves in Maryland and Iowa…and went 0-5 in the other five games). Visit MLive's Betting…

Penn State needs to execute one more transaction to set up the Big Ten's first marquee matchup of the season. So when can we begin talking about Penn State vs. Michigan on Oct. 15? The No. 11 Lions host Northwestern looking for their third 5-0 start in the past four seasons. They're huge favorites over a team that has yet to win in the U.S. and is…

Penn State opens October with its second Big Ten foe of the season on Saturday. The Lions are a massive favorite over Northwestern. The Wildcats will be visiting State College for the first time since 2014. They are currently listed as a 26.5-point underdog. "Obviously at home," Penn State head coach James Franklin said. "It'll be a challenge.…

Last week ATS: 7-11 (5-7 B1G, 2-4 National) Season ATS: 28-29-2 (15-16-1 B1G, 13-13-1 National) (All lines courtesy of Draftkings Sportsbook.) Maryland v. No. 4 Michigan (-17) - 12:00 p.m. - FOX We should find out a little bit about Michigan in this game, since we haven't really been able to learn much about the Wolverines in their first three…

It may only be Week 0, but there are already some college football betting favorites being put on upset alert. All three of this week's upset picks come in with greater than+200 odds to win outright. Read on for our college football Week 0 upset picks. The 2022 college football season is upon us, and not a moment too soon. Week 0 features seven…

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Welcome back to Betting The Buckeyes, your weekly dose of college football from a betting perspective that accompanies the Friday episode of the Buckeye Talk podcast where Doug Lesmerises and I make our five power conference picks of the week and I give my best bets of the college football slate. On the season, my personal bets…

We are three (and a zero) weeks in, and the picture is starting to get clear! Michigan and Ohio State have been viewed as the class of the Big Ten so far, but its performance against Auburn on the road has placed Penn State squarely in the conversation. On the other side of the conference, Minnesota remains the lone undefeated team in the West, and…

We're less than one month into the 2022 college footbal l campaign and we've already witnessed a pair of high-profile coaching firings. Nebraska relieved Scott Frost of his duties following a 1-2 start that included three-point defeats to Northwestern and Georgia Southern, the latter of which was an unexpected result. Frost was overseeing a toxic…

Welcome to Week 4 of the college football season. Each week, our VSiN experts will combine to give their best bets on select games. It was a 6-6 showing for Week 3, but we're dusting ourselves off and we're back at it for Week 4. Odds are from DraftKings (unless noted) as of Wednesday night. Thursday, 7:30 p.m. ET Adam Burke: We started to see some…

It was another wild week of upsets in Week 3 of the college football season as Arizona State, Kansas State and Northwestern were among the teams stunned. Sometimes, one big upset is all it takes to get fired and in college football, we've seen that phenomenon in consecutive weeks. Last week, Nebraska football fired its head coach, Scott Frost, .…

Week 1 ATS: 7-8-1 (2-5-1 B1G, 5-3 National) Season ATS: 11-11-1 (4-5-1 B1G, 7-6 National) Going nearly.500 in the first week of the college football season isn't all that bad. What makes it sting so much is we were so close to a number of underdog upsets. West Virginia, Purdue, and Illinois were all leading in the last five minutes of their games.…

Hopefully, you were one of the many readers of the 2022 College Football Betting Guide, or alternatively, have been a VSiN subscriber for a while now. If so, you're probably familiar with my methodology for college football Stability Scores heading into each season. If not, in a nutshell, these scores provide a quantitative way to determine each…

IOWA CITY - All anyone wanted to discuss after Northwestern's Big Ten football season-opening win against Nebraska was why-in-the-world Scott Frost tried an onside kick up 11 points early in Saturday's third quarter. And at last check, folks are still talking about that Dublin decision that undoubtedly contributed to the Cornhuskers' implosion in…

It's officially time to get excited because it's a game week for the Ohio State football team. And not just any game, mind you, but a massive top-five matchup with Notre Dame in the'Shoe at night - on national television. It's sure to be an unbelievable atmosphere in the grand old Horseshoe on the banks of the Olentangy, and one that will go a long…