B5Q Blogopean Union: read this while you recover from the long weekend

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.

• The new volleyball rankings are out and Wisconsin moved up one spot to No. 4, ahead of their home opener on Thursday. Rock’s preview post is coming up later this morning, but here is coach Kelly Sheffield’s press conference from Monday morning to tide you over.

• An excellent post written by Jonathan Taylor. Jonathan, if you are reading this...I will fire Tyler and hire you if you want the job. NOBODY TELL TYLER!

• The men’s hockey team is heading home after a successful trip to British Columbia. They won both of their exhibition games and nobody got hurt. Win, win!

• If you think you’re going to run the ball against the B1G, you’d better thing again, based solely on these not at all small sample sizes.

• These figures were apparently reported to Forbes and a couple of other outlets but I will not be bothered to look that up and instead will just note that Wisconsin men’s basketball is more valuable than UNC and MSU men’s basketball.

• Melvin Gordon ain’t playing in Week 1 so he’s been spending a lot of time on Twitter. He’s a funny and engaging follow on there and I hope he finds the right team for himself.

• Our girl Rose Lavelle is the greatest Badgers soccer player in school history.

• A quick Central Michigan primer from one of their beat writers.

As they release their depth chart and injury report we’ll have that for y’all too.

• Hustle Belt, our MAC cousins here at SB Nation, ranked CMU as No. 9 in the conference after Week 1.
• Illinois running back Mike Epstein is out for the year with an ACL injury. This is the third straight year he’s suffered a season ending injury. Here’s hoping for a speedy recovery.

• Nebraska press conference roundup where Scott Frost makes up a new word!
• Northwestern continues their master plan of losing all their non-conference games only to win the B1G West. It’s genius, really.
• Jim Harbaugh isn’t calling the plays at Michigan anymore, but he is happy with the guy who is.
• Indiana men’s soccer is looking like one of the top teams in the conference again.
• Maryland men’s soccer, ranked No. 1 in the country, fell to No. 12 UVa by a dominant 2-0 score on Monday afternoon.
• Not a whole lot going on around the conference’s blogs due to the holiday, but business will ramp back up heading into Week 2 of football.