Backpacking through SB Nation

College football's opening Saturday -- it's only weekend alone in the gridirion spotlight -- was overwhelming and at the same time left you thirsting for more. You couldn't possibly have captured all that happened this weekend, could you?

That's where this column comes in. B5Q wants to be your guide to a tour of this burgeoning SB Nation of ours. And because we're backpacking, we'll be budget (time) conscious. In what we hope will be a weekly affair, we present three links to noteworthy, remarkable, and/or humorous content from other college sites on the network to broaden your horizons.

B1G Football Stock Trading Game! (Off-Tackle Empire)
If you like gambling legally on the stock market, this is a must read. Spend imaginary Delaney Dollars on snap valuations of B1G teams based on Week 1. I tried to diversify with a UW-Iowa-PSU-Mich-IU portfolio. At 3.5 DD, does OTE recommend Wisconsin as a buy?

Make no mistake, these Northern Iowa Panthers are a very good team but a I-AA team never the less. A trip to the Beaver state is up this week to face Oregon State. This is probably a low as you will be able to get the Badgers all season.

Hell yes, they do -- buy! Buy! BUY!

First Impressions of the Pac-12 Networks (Building The Dam)
Remember when the fledgling Big Ten Network was stuck in cable provider disputes and grasping for content? It's no different for the new Pac-12 network alliance according to our friends bitter rivals at Oregon State. If this doesn't make you recite the Barbasol theme song from memory, I don't know what will. Plus, they're trying something I haven't seen on BTN that sounds, well ... awful:

Fan Interviews During Pac-12 Classics - It's unnecessary. I don't need someone who was at the game to tell me how excited the stadium was, or what happened on the play. For one, it's a classic game. Of course the stadium is going to be excited. And two, we can tell what happened on the play. We don't need you to retell it. Leave that to the players and coaches, who were actually involved.

Paul Chryst loses to FCS Youngstown State in Debut (Cardiac Hill)
Chryst may have stolen large chunks of the UW coaching staff, but he forgot to take WINNING with him. Panther fans are understandably trying to move on, but I like backtracking to read the frustrated thoughts from folks who are on their fourth coach in three years. Here's the money quote from commenter PantherHollow:

I’m not anti-Chryst, in fact, I like the guy. But over the past year, with hiring and recruiting, he seems like he doesn’t give a rat’s ass. The only thing he’s been pro active about so far has been suspensions. His attitude is catching, because I can’t think of a season when I have been less interested than this one.

Not surprising to those who've heard Chryst's interviews. He's a different cat.

And because we're a big happy family at SB Nation, here's a bonus link for this maiden voyage:

Recruiting and Player Development (The Only Colors)
Bucky rocks at raw player development. This MSU-focused analysis of performance-compared-to-star-rating is based on All-Big Ten selections over the past decade or so. Sure, these selections have some bias, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Wisconsin: The best. Highest performance at the top (most 1st team players), best depth (most players overall) and doing it all with what Rivals and Scout think are the 4th best classes out of these 11 teams. Between this performance and their on-field success there's little reason to believe they will be seeing much drop off.