B5Q Blogopean Union: Don’t read this on your phone

Good morning! This is going to be a daily(ish) post that discusses the goings on of the rest of the Big Ten Conference, and the country as needed. Much like the European Union, the Big Ten is a loosely confederated group of entities that sometimes have the same goals (like free movement of people between countries or not winning national titles in football or basketball) and sometimes accept new members that they later regret (Estonia or Rutgers).

We hope that you will use this post to comment on things happening around the conference and also as a sort of daily open thread to discuss breaking news or argue about Spotted Cow.

• I wonder if Khalil Iverson’s friend thinks if the dollar sign is in front of the number you have to say “dollars five” instead of “five dollars”?

• I can’t imagine this will be the last Watt on this list.

• Former Badgers TE Austin Traylor signed with the Detroit Lions on Monday!

I guess technically that’s still an NFL job.

• Get well soon, Three Sack Jack!

• A whole bunch of Badgers will be participating in the World Junior Summer Showcase this year. This is the tryout for the actual World Junior Championship in 2020.

• Imagine being good at sports AND school!

• Jesse Temple of The Athletic takes a look at the state of the Wisconsin basketball program ($).
• Oh yeah! Wisconsin got their 12th commitment for their 2020 football recruiting class on Monday! Max Lofy, a Colorado Springs cornerback with strong ties to the state of Wisconsin, announced on Twitter that he had verballed to UW.
• NASCAR driver Ryan Newman has been banned from West Lafayette and stripped of his Purdue degree.
• There was a hubbub on the ol’ Tweet box on Monday because Pat “Stats Are For Losers” Fitzgerald said, at B1G Media Days, that cell phones were the reason attendance was down at Northwestern. First of all, loooooooool. Cell phones are not the reason no one wants to go to Evanston, Ill. and sit in your high school ass stadium and freeze to death from the wind off Lake Michigan while you trade field goals with Iowa in November.

This fall, for the first time since 2003, outside of one year post graduation that I couldn’t afford them, I will not have season football tickets to the Badgers. A large reason for this is having two small children who wouldn’t sit through the ride from State Street to Camp Randall let alone a football game once we got there, but I also prefer the at-home experience of watching college football way more than the in-person experience.

That has nothing to do with owning an iPhone, but price of tickets, price of parking, sight lines from my seats, crowded seating once it’s a little bit cold and everyone is wearing a jacket, not selling beer or decent food at the stadium, constant TV timeouts where I just sit in my seat looking around like an idiot and playing Illinois every other year certainly did have something to do with it.

I love Madison on football Saturdays and I will be attending one game this year, but that seems like the right number of games for me. I’d rather tailgate and then retire to a bar with multiple TVs or my buddy’s basement which also has multiple TVs and that has nothing to do with, and I can’t stress this enough, my cell phone.

Pat Fitzgerald, you incredible dunce.

• Former Illinois guard Brandon Paul joins Ethan Happ in Greece.
• The Atlanta Falcons couldn’t find literally anyone else to come in and help with training camp? I hope DJ Durkin gets stuck in traffic trying to get to a Braves game in Cobb County and never makes it out.