weather

Due to the limited 8 week conference schedule in the Big Ten, every year, one team is dropped off the conference schedule. There they stay for a two year conference hiatus, before returning for the next 18 years or otherwise depending on things working out in your hypothetical expansion rumor of the week.

This year, it's Michigan State's turn to rotate off the conference regular season slate. To keep the rivalry fresh, the two teams will tango in a mid-week home-and-home series opening Tuesday in East Lansing.

The Spartans had quite high hopes coming out of the first two seasons, even being a fringe ranked team, but they have suffered a near humiliating collapse over the last two weeks, falling from first place in conference to last. They're still a dangerous team, especially if Michigan were to face them on the weekend, but like any other team in the mid-week, nothing is a sure bet.

This series is absolutely meaningless from a conference tournament point of view, but no game against the Spartans will ever be taken lightly in these parts. So with that, we'll move to the slightly abbreviated team preview after the jump.

The Hawkeyes come to Ann Arbor this weekend to close out the first half of Big Ten play. The Hawkeyes started the year with an inflated RPI by losing almost every game they had to some of the best teams in the nation, but since returning north, they've struggled offensively and fallen to #169 of 301 (Boyd's Pseudo RPI).

Full preview after the jump:

Check this out:
http://www.weather.com/outlook/events/college-football/weather/48109?eve...

In addition to the forecast for the games, they provide stats on teams' performances in various weather conditions. They only have data since 2008, so its fairly insignificant but still pretty interesting. I usually stay away from the weather channel (too many ads/general aptitude failure) but I think this is a great feature, and could (maybe) prove to be a legitimate metric for answering questions related to our performance in X conditions, once there's more data.

There has been a lot of discussion on the added noise level created by the stadium additions (which, even as an old-fogie fan I love, by the way!). However, After watching the first two 3:30 games on TV, I've really been struck by the shadows and how quickly it gets dark inside the stadium. I'm starting to wonder what effect this will have on the temperature in say...mid-November. I can certainly recall being at games in the past and freezing my ass off and praying for the sun to come out. Did anyone go to games last year (such as Northwestern) and notice a big difference?

(sorry if this was already discussed last year, I'm still relatively new to the MGoBlog family)

Weather report calls for partly cloudy with light winds and 74 degrees. It sounds like an amazingly perfect day for football, pretty much the exact opposite of last year's monsoon.

I envy all you glorious basterds who will be there.

Not much of a post, just had to knock that Patrick Omameh BS post off the ticker.

Actually, is seems that we have had uncooperative weather for several recruiting weekends this year. What's up with that?