Big Ten Notebook: Buckeyes Back in Control in Title Race

One little loss to Northwestern can change everything. Iowa looked like the team to beat in the Big Ten title race, but now that it has fallen to the Wildcats and Ohio State has beaten Penn State, all the momentum has moved back to Columbus. Technically, both the Hawkeyes and Buckeyes control their own destiny. Whichever team wins Saturday's game is the presumptive conference champion.

Now go try to figure the odds that Iowa can win in the Horseshoe with a redshirt freshman quarterback making his first career start with no run support to speak of.

At any rate, it will be one of those teams that will go to Pasadena. Neither Penn State nor Wisconsin can do anything better than to tie with Ohio State or Iowa. The Nits and the Badgers lost to both those teams, so they'd lose the tiebreaker.

Here's a quick look at what else is going on around the conference.

Illinois has picked a strange time to peak, but then again, all the pressure is off the Illini. With back-to-back wins over Michigan and Minnesota the Illini's bowl hopes are still alive, but barely. They will have to win out to finish 6-6, and that will require beating Fresno State and Cincinnati. If Illinois should win out, then, you could argue that it would be the best 6-6 in the country and possible the best ever.

Indiana travels to Penn State this weekend right after the Nits laid an egg against Ohio State. Joe Paterno's teams usually bounce back hard after a big disappointment, but if IU loses there will be no bowl game for the Hoosiers. It's a shame. Indiana has never beaten Penn State.

Iowa quarterback Ricky Stanzi had surgery on his ankle this week and is out for the last two games of the regular season. He is expected to be available for Iowa's bowl game. James Vandenberg will start in his place. Vandenberg was Iowa's 3A football player of the year in 2007 and holds many of the state's all-division passing records. Vandenberg picked Iowa over Nebraska and Northern Illinois and has probably heard all your Dawson's Creek crackbacks before.

Michigan's retiring athletic director Bill Martin came under fire this week when reports surfaced that he had pushed one student and grabbed the jacket of another during football games at the Big House. Martin refused to show passes to enter VIP areas when the students requested them. This shows just how hard it is for Michigan to get flagged for pass interference at home. It also represents the most contact any Wolverine defender has managed since September.

Michigan State, with 53 underclassmen on the roster, needs the extra practice for a bowl game as much as it needs the bowl game itself. A win at Purdue this Saturday would likely secure at least a bid to the Little Caesar's Pizza Bowl.

Ohio State, believe it or not, has not been to the Rose Bowl in more than a decade.

Wisconsin's former defensive lineman Erasmus James faces felony battery charges for a Nov. 5 incident at a Madison bar in which he punched one of his friends. James was suspended by the NFL in September for undisclosed reasons.