Mountains Made Low

West Virginia won. Actually, they crushed UConn. It had to be ugly.

Mizzou is winning. In the 4th quarter.

May be a no-brainer at this point, but I’m saying the following when the new BCS standings come out:

1. West Virginia (on style points over UConn)
2. Missouri
3. Ohio State
4. Georgia
5. Kansas
6. Virginia Tech
7. Oklahoma
8. USC
9. LSU
10. Florida

I’m just guessing like everyone else, right now. And these are my guesses, not how I’d vote if I could. That list, 1-5, would be:
1. Ohio State
2. West Virginia
3. Missouri
4. Georgia
5. Virginia Tech

OSU and WVa #1 & #2 because they’re just the best two teams going right now. OSU over WVa because good defense beats good offense any day.

The only other thing I have to say (though it pains me a little bit) is: Go Sooners!

In case you’ve been living in a cave, the Buckeyes beat Michigan last week. Well and good—they did their part. And, so far, other teams have been quite obliging in doing theirs. (But we won’t talk about adding an “I” link to the chain on the Oaken Bucket….)

Last week, in NCAA football, two teams in the top 5 fell. Oklahoma and Oregon both stumbled in Week 12, and fell to the bottom of the top ten, leaving only LSU, West Virginia, and two Big 12 representatives ahead of the now #5 Bucks. Now, in Week 13, #1 LSU has been wildly upset by unranked Arkansas, the Big 12 kids—Missouri and Kansas—are playing each other, and WVa has a ranked UConn team to get past.

While the Mountaineers and Huskies are tangling for the Big East championship, today, it’s the other pieces of that last sentence that are the most important. LSU has lost. Either Missouri or Kansas will lose. Unless the pollsters want to show their anti-Big Ten, anti-Ohio State bias in a HUGE way, the Buckeyes should be no worse than #3 when the polls come out tomorrow—behind the Kansas-Mizzou winner and West Virginia…if WVa wins. A Mountaineers loss should propel the Bucks to #2 and a berth in the BCS Championship game.

And the Mountaineers might just lose. UConn can clinch the outright Big East Championship today; WVa can clinch only a tie. So though West Virginia is ranked #3 and Connecticut #20, in the Big East, right now, UConn is the better team.

Regardless of the outcome in Morgantown, though, the Bucks should be back in the Top 3 come Monday. And though next weekend looks easy for West Virginia if they get past the Huskies today, the Kansas-Missouri winner (likely #1 when the dust settles), must play Oklahoma for the Big 12 championship. No matter what happens above them this week the Sooners can’t hope to enter the conference championship game much better than #7 or so, and stand little chance of getting back into the BCS even reeling off wins this week and next. And no matter what happens around them, over the next two weeks, the Buckeyes cannot lose. They’re 11-1 now, they will be tomorrow, and they will be on December 2.

I really don’t care what happens with West Virginia—I’d really just as soon see them win out, and let the Big 12 do this year what the Big Ten does every year: beat each other up so routinely, especially at the end of the season, that they can’t go to the BCS Championship. Let today’s winner in Kansas City get beat by the Sooners next week, and let’s see Ohio State and West Virginia play for all the marbles in January.

It’s the final week of the NCAA football season—if you’re a fan of any Big Ten team, that is. And in the Big Ten, the last week of the season is reserved for the long-standing rivalry games: it’s do or die, in the eyes of your fans, today. The battles for Paul Bunyon’s ax and the Old Oaken Bucket will be waged today, along with that granddaddy of all college football rivalries, that game with no name and with no prize but pride, Ohio State-Michigan.

What’s most amazing this year is that going into week 12 of their seasons, facing their final regular season opponents, ten of the Big Ten’s eleven teams are bowl eligible, having won six or more games. Only Minnesota (today facing Wisconsin for the storied ax) is under .500 on the season, and they’re way under at 1-10. Everyone else is above, 6-5 or better, going into this last chance—even Northwestern and Indiana.

Many Big Ten fans look at this set up and lament the lack of a 12th team—ignoring the fact that the Big Ten would be increasingly misnamed—and a conference championship game. They hear the pundits on TV who seem to take seriously only the Big 12 and SEC, where the eventual champ has to not only play well in the season, but also survive one additional onslaught in a “playoff atmosphere.” And maybe the fans are right to lament; after all, the people making noise about Kansas’s performance in the Big 12 and LSU’s in the SEC are the people who voted Ohio State down to #7 after their first loss of the season in Week 11 and who have kept Michigan, tied for first in the conference, out of the BCS Top 20, while three Big 12 teams sit at #3, #4, and #5 in the BCS standings— two of these (Oklahoma and Missouri) with worse records (9-1) than Ohio State (10-1).

Yes, maybe these fans are right.

But, on the whole, I think not. It’s not the question of whom we might add. That’s almost a no-brainer. We’re a geographically focused conference, and it would be easy to stay that way: Notre Dame (1-9 this year, but how unusual is that?), West Virginia, and Rutgers—farther afield, but not really all that far from State College, PA—would all be solid choices. No, it’s not about who.

It’s about why. Why does the Big Ten need a conference championship game when the last weekend of the season is often replete with matchups with conference championship implications? The Wisconsin-Minnesota game almost always means something—one or both teams generally being in the hunt. The Purdue-Indiana game is less important—unless you’re interested in the football bragging rights in a state better known for basketball, or unless you’re an alumnus of one of the schools (Go Boilers!).

But OSU-Michigan? C’mon. How often is this game not, in effect, a conference championship game? As it is today, by the way. The winner of this game will be the outright Big Ten champion, with a 7-1 record in the conference. And it really doesn’t get much bigger than this. Going into last week, both of these Titans were undefeated in the Big Ten, and in Week 11, they both suffered upset losses.

Ohio State’s loss to Illinois, last week, was an upset that could be called “stunning,” until you stop to think that with OSU and Michigan tied at the top of the table, Illinois has quietly amassed a record that puts them one step behind the “Big Two.” Michigan’s upset by Wisconsin was of the more run-of-the-mill variety—unexpected, but not unbelievable. And following last week’s action, these four teams at the top of the Big Ten standings are all ranked in the BCS Top 25. And the Wolverines and Buckeyes will do battle today for a guaranteed trip to the 2008 Rose Bowl.

But wait, there’s more! Should OSU win this game today, there’s every chance that they’ll find their way back in to the Top 5, after #2 Oregon fell apart on Thursday night against a very weak Arizona State team. Granted, that’ll take a loss today by one of the other top teams, but that’s not unlikely—three of the top five play in the Big 12, and the Big 12 is almost as notorious as the Big Ten for beating each other up. Texas Tech’s offense could prove too much for Oklahoma to handle. Or Iowa State’s tenacity could bring down Kansas. Not to mention what Kansas State might do to Missouri. Add to all of that the fact that West Virginia is playing a ranked opponent (#22 Cincinnati), and it looks as though #1 LSU is the only team that it’s completely safe to slate for a win today.

And with regular season games still to play in the Big 12, and a conference championship game still to come, the way the schedule is shaping up, two of those Big 12 teams ranked ahead of the Buckeyes will have to lose before the end of the season. And LSU will have to play a championship game, too—they can’t just ride out the season rolling over the Mississippis of the world.

But all of this is moot if OSU doesn’t get past Michigan. A Wolverines win will send the 9-3 Maize and Blue to Passadena and a 10-2 Buckeye club to some also-ran bowl. It’s still an uphill slog for OSU to the BCS title game, and they don’t come anywhere near to completely controlling their own destiny. But in terms of the Rose Bowl and the Big Ten Championship, they do.

And here’s the last thing to consider. Regardless of the outcome in today’s game in Ann Arbor, one of these two teams will be in first place in the Big Ten and the other will be no worse than tied for second. If there were a Big Ten championship game on December 1, who would play it? Some combination of Ohio State, Michigan, and Illinois, most likely (depending on whether the Illini can defeat Northwestern today). Imagine OSU defeating Michigan today and having to face them again in two weeks for a championship game. The BCS voters didn’t like that possibility last year, when Michigan had, if not a legitimate claim, at least a legitimate argument for a #2 ranking going into the bowl season. We in the Big Ten shouldn’t like it, either. And it works the same way if you want to see the Wolverines win today: would you like to see them play the Bucks again in a fortnight? Maybe this time in Columbus? I didn’t really think so.

Big Ten Rivalry week almost always settles everything that needs settling, and the game in Ann Arbor today, and in Columbus in alternate years, almost always has championship implications. And in this year, as in so many others, it is the Big Ten Championship Game.

All right, boys and girls. I would like to point out that though Battlestar Season 4 is not happening until January, there is a movie/mini event happening on November 24—Battlestar Galactica: Razor. I’ll admit, I haven’t been watching the promos, because that would mean watching Flash Gordon (another refiguring of 70s sci-fi, which SciFi couldn’t pull off like they did the Battlestar thing). But the event is not to be missed (or at least it’s to be TiVoed, for later viewing—Thanksgiving weekend and all): it tells the story of Bill Adama’s younger years, as well as the history of the Pegasus, her crew, and Admiral Cain from the beginning of the new series.

And, in case you still aren’t on board with the new Battlestar, can’t stand any refiguring of retro sci-fi, and think the changes are just plain wrong, I offer this (from YouTube):

I went to the Faculty Senate meeting on campus yesterday. It ran long as it always does (scheduled from 2:00-3:30, we got out, in a rush at 3:50). It was a good meeting, though; the president was there and gave us an update on the college’s financial situation and took a lot of time to answer questions from the floor. He’s an excellent communicator, and I think many people who had questions left with their misgivings at least somewhat assuaged.

But the business of the meeting isn’t what has really stuck with me. Before the meeting really started, I was sitting with a number of my division colleagues at one of the tables, and a member of the performing arts faculty walked by, on her way to their cliquish little table (the faculty here are funny that way—we all pretty much get along across divisions, but in large groups, we sort ourselves pretty successfully, too…). Anyway, this particular PA person and I have “bonded” over the fact that—though she’s a couple of years younger than I am—we grew up in the same township in eastern Wayne County, Ohio. In fact, we’re trying to find time to schedule coffee so that we can further discuss the wonders of growing up in Amish Country. (The funniest part of this is that I think, at one point, we lived about a mile apart…we’ll find out for sure when we get that coffee, sometime between now and Thanksgiving.)

Wow, I’m really digressing this morning.

At any rate, this PA person, Danielle, teaches one of the First-Year Experience (FYE) sections paired with one of my Rhetoric 101 sections (all of the students have these two classes together). And the deal is, in students’ first year, their FYE instructor is also their academic adviser—they’ll get an adviser in their major later on. So Danielle is the adviser to my 10:30 MWF RHE 101 students—all of them.

As she walked past me, yesterday, she put her hand on my shoulder to get my attention and said something along the lines of, “You must be doing something right: all of our students want to take your RHE 102 course in the spring.” Which I knew. I’ve been tracking my enrollments for the spring on line, and talking to my 101 students in class. My 102 sections for the spring are full—I’ve already had to sign one student in (an athletics/scheduling issue where the student and her adviser camped out near my office to ask me—what was I going to say?), but, in my two 102 sections in the spring, I’ve got a great many of my 101 students re-enrolled. Not a bad deal, and possible by random chance on such a small campus, to be sure.

Taking random chance out of it, however, here’s my question. Is Danielle right? Am I “doing something right”? Or is my students’ desire to take another course from me more an issue of sticking with the devil they know? I mean, most times I think I’m a pretty good teacher, and I think my students pretty much like me and like my classes, but…other times…I feel like I can’t be sure it’s good teaching they’re looking for.

Are they coming back for the cookies? Or the PopCulture illustrations of concepts? Or the fact that they think they’ve got me “figured out”? Or the fact that I’m pretty laid back (maybe too laid back) about certain things in the classroom?

Or do all of these things constitute “doing something right”?

Sometimes I wonder.

So, I looked through my caller ids on the home phone, yesterday, as I often do when I get home, and saw that I had a call from eye doctor’s office, which meant that my new contacts were in. Knowing that they’d called and what they (probably, at least) wanted, I ignored the “you’ve got voice mail” weirdness in the dial tone all night last night (I only made one call, anyway).

Today, there weren’t any new calls on the caller id that screamed “worthwhile,” but I thought I’d make sure that the message from the eye doc was that I can pick up my lenses (I’ll probably go after work tomorrow). That’s what it was. But I had three messages, not one.

Message #3 was a hang up from earlier today.

And then there was message #2. It was a call I ignored at about 7:30 last night, from an Unknown Caller. (Usually, the unknown callers are hang ups, too, which means they’re telemarketers and I’m doing the right thing by ignoring them.)

This one, though, left a message. It was:

Hello, Michael Kapper. I just wanted to tell you that you have a hot voice—a very, very hot voice. Have a Happy Halloween. You never know who might be calling….

I shit you not. And the part after the dash, above, was delivered in a breathy, “sexy” (read: creepy) tone. I have no idea who it was. There was a lot of background noise, like a telemarketing center or a bar.

I think that’s a little presumptuous of a telemarketer. I think it’s a little weird for someone I don’t know (or, at least, who won’t tell me who they are). I know I’m an easy google, but c’mon…. If you’re reading this, and you know anything, let me know—I can take a joke, but this is just creepy! Über-creepy!

If it’s a joke played, or put in motion, by someone I know, I’ll laugh. Really. But if not….

Ewww.