I'm still in New York for book editing sessions and am filing this week's mailbag from here.
Sean in Bethesda, Md: I can't help but think that the Big Ten is going to have an excellent, and perhaps unfair, opportunity to put a team in the championship game this year. The Big Ten basically has four decent-to-good teams that are playing a round-robin to go undefeated. The rest of the conference is not very good, there is no conference title game, and the out-of-conference schedule for the entire conference is abysmal. The only decent out-of-conference competition is Oregon and then it's a reach to say that Missouri and Notre Dame are notable. I think this takes away from the college football season and the rest of the teams (not counting the one in Morgantown) that play a competitive season. What are your thoughts on this?
Bruce Feldman: I think you make a great point, and that is one of the big reasons why I see Penn State as a darkhorse title contender. Although if one of those four teams (I'm guessing Michigan, OSU, Wisconsin and Penn State) run the table, that month-plus of run-up time to the title game will be filled with skepticism and much of that has been spawned by the way the Buckeyes and Wolverines got handled in the bowl games last winter.
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Bruce Feldman
