Nothing But Iron: UnChartered Territory November 20, 2007 by Steven R. Lagman, M.D., C.A.S.W. The Big Ten Network is up and running in the hospital where I work. For once I didn’t mind being on call during the weekend, although I would like BTN a little better if it came with a feature that would allow me to route my pager signal to one of my partners. BTN looks to be worth the money that I will soon pay to get it at home. Not only does the network carry Big Ten games, but like a fledgling ESPN, offers conference-focused in-depth analysis of events with sports news programming like Big Ten Tonight. And like ESPN classic before it, BTN offers replays of vintage match-ups of the past. The game-time commentary is sometimes primitive, but it is adequate, and you can always mute it in favor of the radio calls by Matt Lepay. I have begun researching my BTN options. If my math is right I can switch to Dish Network and actually save money. Currently I pay $165 for the Charter bundle that includes cable, high-speed internet and telephone service. I may keep the internet since it is pretty fast. Charter phone service is O.K., but I will probably dump that with the cable in order to make more of a negative economic impact on my old provider. My brother-in-law told me that tens of thousands of customers have left cable to get BTN, which surprises me, given that most of us are at the mercy of the status quo’s inertial pull. If the rumor of mass defection is true, then I imagine there is a critical mass of lost customers that will finally crush Charter’s resolve. I am happy to have the market drive the decision, and happy that I can help drive the market. More to come on this story. It may be natural, three games into the college basketball season, to suggest that we have yet to see a good team enter the Kohl Center. I argue the contrary. There has been at least one good team there in each of these games. Never mind that the opponent has yet to warrant that distinction, but give it time. Good teams will come. It’s hard to say how much of each lopsided win was due to Wisconsin’s proficiency and how much was due to visitors’ ineptitude, but that won’t prevent me from doing it. On average the results were 77.8% in favor of proficiency. Seriously, you ask? Well, of course not. I just made that up. I do like what I see, and what I see is a better team in the making than the one we had last year. Before you offer me a course of anti-psychotics, hear the rest of my explanation. This is not a prediction of another 30-win season, a deep run into the tourney or a conference title, but I go on record as saying that all of these are plausible. True, Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor are gone and it is equally true that nobody has stepped up to fill those roles. Except for Trey-von, Jay-Bo, Joe, Jon, Michael, Jason, Brian, Greg and Marcus, that is. The Badgers appear ready to exploit an often-ignored rule of basketball: that all five players are allowed to contribute. It really is a team sport. Current indicators suggest this could be Ryan’s most unselfish Badger team yet. If you watched the first-half passing in the Colorado game you get my point. It could be that the team will get to March without having produced a single shining star for pro scouts to salivate over, but I tell you now, it’s going to be fun to watch. Hughes has been the biggest surprise. Unlike predecessors Devin Harris and Taylor, both converted shooting guards, Hughes is a genetically true point guard, with a true point guard’s body and mind. He is not only comfortable handling the ball, but he seems to have grown extra eyes during the off-season. Oh, yeah, he can drain the three too. Pro scouts may salivate soon enough. After Hughes there is quite a drop off at the position, although Flowers and Bohannon can temporize for short periods of time as they did last year. Flowers, at times, seemed a little off in the first two games. I would say that he was pressing a bit, maybe trying to establish himself as a highlight player, but someone would correctly point out that I have no idea what I am talking about. I thought the first half of his game against Colorado was brilliant. I missed the second half because of day-job responsibilities that evening. Freshman Jon Leuer is off to a strong start. He has a smoothness about him that provides sharp contrast with the clunkiness (but endearing nonetheless) of our other bigs. I speak not of Leuer’s skin complexion, but of his touch, body control, basket sense and ability to finish a dunk like he has been doing it since fourth grade. By Big Ten standards, he is a bit skinny, but Wisconsin will make him strong and he will make us happy. If good passing proves to be the character-defining attribute of the 2007-2008 Badgers, then rebounding will run a close second. Landry, Stiemsma, Krabbenhoft, Butch, Kevin Gullikson and to a lesser degree Leuer will win play prominent roles in the rebounding mission. Barring significant injury, which really cannot be barred, Leuer is the only freshman who will see significant minutes. The other two, Keaton Nankivil and Tim Jarmusz, will see mostly mop-up duty, which for Ryan is typically the last 90 seconds of a 30-point win. Nankivil and Jarmusz should have redshirted, but again, what do I know? Bottom line: The underrated Badgers will surprise many of us fans and at least a few opponents in the coming months. Call me effusive–yeah, like you ever use that word–but I recently wrote that I had no idea how the Packers would be able to score this year, and I refuse to go there again. Speaking of the Packers . . . I think it is safe to say they are good. That old comfortable feeling is back–the one where I feel like everything is going to be O.K., even on third and long or starting from their own eight yard line or after a penalty or a turnover or against a sub-.500 team that just shouldn’t be that hard to beat. It is nice not feeling the urge to yell at my television so much. Believing is so much easier on the blood pressure. I suppose we could apologize to Ted Thompson any time now. Sorry, Ted Thompson, that was an O.K. draft after all. Now comes the hard part or a continuation thereof: Season-defining road games against Detroit and Dallas. Whether Green Bay beats the Lions or not, we know that Detroit is beatable. The significance of this game is there will be worthwhile football to watch on Thanksgiving Day, which is exactly how the pilgrims would have wanted it. One way or another, elation or nausea, it will keep us from eating so much. The notion of playing Dallas in Texas Stadium brings back another old feeling, this one not so comfortable. Over the past decade the NFL has managed to rig it so that 94.7% of match-ups with the Cowboys have been played in Dallas where closest thing to frost-bite is the melted ice in a four-minute-old glass of Diet Coke. Consequently the results for Packers fans have been dismal. The significance of the November 29th game is that a Green Bay win will do much to push my dream game to fruition: Dallas at Green Bay for the NFC championship. In January. With a wind chill that is simply unfathomable to folks familiar with the contraction y’all, as in y’all are gonna freeze your nuts off. You can have the Patriots-Endowed Super Bowl, I wish for a couple dozen fresh frozen Cowboys. If I get this, I promise not to ask for anything else for the rest of my sportswriting life. To elaborate, winning an NFC title at home is as good as it gets for the average fan, mostly because the average fan can be there without knowing the governor or the president or the son of the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or an established counterfeiter, or fork-lifting over $10 per minute to buy a ticket from someone who never should have owned it in the first place. The NFC title game is the Super Bowl of the common man. Thankfully such a thing still exists. The end of the college football regular season is upon us. Though confusion reigns supreme, there can be no legitimate controversy in the BSC title race because the system itself is illegitimate. Hawaii should play Kansas. Period. I mean question mark. I mean percent sign. Actually a I offer this match up for no good reason, except that it would be fun for the Hawaiians to get to be the so-called national runners up, and even more fun if they won, analogous to Boise State’s supposed upset win of last year. If undefeated Kansas loses in the next week to Missouri (10-1), which I favor, and the Rainbow Lava Warriors lose to either Boise State (10-1) or Washington, there would be toilet plug of one-loss teams that might possible send BSC computers to blue screen hell, which I also favor. Professional sportswriter Al Teilemans summarized the BCS’s perennial (also perineal) mess in a Sports Illustrated piece called "Bowl Season Chaos." Not once, unless my comprehension is poor, did he mention the obvious solution of a playoff, which makes him either a prostitute (read: sensitive to the needs of BCS sponsors advertising in the same magazine) or a sissy or both. I am quitting SI anyway, as soon as my idol, Rick Reilly, leaves. I will switch to the big magazine published by ESPN, not that the latter will necessarily be any more playoff friendly. I was able to see part of the UW-Minnesota football game on BTN’s delayed telecast Saturday night. The Gophers played inspired football, as if this were their bowl game, which it was. I was pleased to see the Badgers out-punch them. It was an exciting, highlight-filled game. As much as I hate the Metrodome as a sports venue, I admit it would have been fun to be there. Hats off to the Gophers for having the foresight to build a real football stadium. Lastly, thank you to receiver Eric Decker, whose cheap shot and sure handedness may play a role in keeping Jack Ikegwuonu at Wisconsin for his senior year. I am not sure Ike would have been at maximal NFL marketability anyway, but this less-than-dominating performance may have hurt his financial prospects enough to keep him from considering the early jump. The selfish side of me is happy about that. I don’t care that it was against one of the worst defenses in the country; freshman Zach Brown’s 250-yard game was a gem. The kid has speed, balance toughness, moves and his vision is developing. He has positioned himself well to permanently overtake injured PJ Hill and part-time runner Lance Hill in the bowl game and beyond. Where will the Badgers go next, who will they play and when? It just doesn’t matter. Logic and historical precedent dictate that they will go somewhere warm, to play another decent team, some time around New Years day. In absence of vocal lobbying for a playoff system by Bret Bielema one must assume that a warm-weather New Years bowl game is the goal of the program. Goal achieved then. Besides, 9-3 is a very good season. I remember when 3-9 would have been a very good season, and so do you, so we should all stop crying about would could have been or should have been but definitely wasn’t. The bye month (actually six weeks) comes at a very good time, given the number of injuries. If any of the Badgers remember how to play football by then, Wisconsin could ultimately end up being the dominating team we envisioned it to be in July, just in time for the slightly-meaningful season finale. The best news of all, at least according to college presidents, is that the academic interests of the student-football players will be well preserved by the long time off. _____________ Nothing But Iron is an amateur sports column. The author receives no financial support from the Big Ten Network, except that amount of annual savings he may realize by switching over, a savings about which the author is skeptical since there is probably hidden FCC taxes, undisclosed user fees or occult wire insulation insurance charges that will end up costing him a lot more in the long run. It may still be worth it. © 2007. DrTM Enterprises. All rights reserved.