Badger Bits: Who Should Wisconsin Play on the Last Weekend of the Season?

The ESPN Big Ten blog's most recent mailbag resurfaced the idea of playing traditional rivalry games on the final weekend of the college football season. Under the expected East-West alignment, this would actually work out pretty well. Every team in the conference would have a plausible opponent or two to play within their division. Here's how Rittenberg would split it up:

East

Michigan-Ohio State
Michigan State-Penn State
Maryland-Rutgers

West

Illinois-Northwestern
Iowa-Nebraska
Minnesota-Wisconsin

With the protected crossover game likely to be eliminated, Indiana and Purdue would have to argue for an exemption to play for the Old Oaken Bucket every year, but I'm cool with that.

Pros: Everybody should be happy. Maybe Maryland and Rutgers aren't, but they are the two newest members of the conference and they don't have any real history with anyone, so yeah.

Cons: None, really. For the Badgers, you could make the argument that Minnesota's non-competitiveness will take the sheen off of what should be the most exciting weekend of the regular season. But that's assuming the Gopher will forever be bad, and that's rather uppity, sir, not to mention a massive jinx.

That said, I have a soft spot in my heart for what the Iowa series was before we got hosed in the initial realignment and the Hawkeyes rotated off the schedule. The series stands at 42-42-3 all time. This was the note it left on:

We'll be playing Iowa and Nebraska anyway, but man, it would be fun to do that again in late November.

LINKS

TV info for Badgers vs. River Hawks on Friday.

Tyler Barnes is playing his best at the best possible time.

Mike Taylor had his workout for NFL scouts canceled, which is a bummer in all ways possible. Chances of a late selection appear slim, but if there is anyone that can work his way up from the heap it's Taylor. God speed sir.

Nostalgia trip with the 1993 Badgers, one of college football's great Cinderella stories.

Florida Gulf Coast University football needs to come true.

Whatever you do, don't read this. I bring it to your attention because the headline is "Michigan State team captains' towel tantrum reveals Spartans' chemistry, signs of leadership" and I figured you guys could use another reason to hate Michigan State.

Anthony Adams' retirement was stupendous.

Yep: Brian Kelly's Spotify playlist includes a song about a fake dead girlfriend.