Thursday Morning Brews: Disintegration

Happy Thursday, folks. Welcome to Morning Brews. In case you missed it, late yesterday afternoon the Big Ten Conference handed Michigan State their second L of last weekend for their on-field performance. Whatever words they say, it appears that the conference is laying blame on the Spartans for last weekend’s pre-game incident.

As usual, there is a song referenced in this morning’s article. There are at least two clues. Clues may be words, phrases, or photos, and may reference lyrics, the artist, or the album. If you think you know this morning’s song, fire away down in the comments.

Let’s get to it:

Men’s soccer ties Michigan State. The Wolverines tied the No. 12 Spartans Tuesday evening, 1-1. Michigan State opened the scoring in the 53rd minute before Michigan equalized in the 73rd minute. The two sides then played a scoreless remainder of regulation and first and second overtime periods. The tie moves the Wolverines to 9-4-2 (3-2-2) on the season. They’ll conclude their regular season against Maryland this Sunday. That game will start at 4:00 p.m. and will be televised on BTN.

Jordan Poole is a cool dude. “I know,” may be your response to this statement, but I mean that he’s cool, calm, and collected. After the much-publicized buzzer beater to send the Wolverines to the Sweet Sixteen, Poole became very popular very quickly. Rather than let it go to his head, he closed it all out. Poole recently said, “We just wanted to buckle down and stay locked in and stay focused on ourselves and I feel like that’s what I did this summer all the way up until now.” For the full story about how Poole handled his newfound fame, check out the article linked above.

Michigan plans to take advantage of the bye week. You may wonder what teams do on a bye week in the college game. Well, Jim Harbaugh is here to tell you. He recently said, “We call it an improvement week, and we’ll set out to do that. We still got a long way to go. A lot of big games ahead. I also want to practice some of our younger players -- the ones that have really been on the verge of getting playing time, having some playing time.” For all that Michigan plans to get out of this week off, check out the article above from Aaron McMann.

Nebraska isn’t as bad as their 1-6 record. I may be alone in enjoying the multi-week schadenfreude that has been Scott Frost’s start to the season as the new head coach at Nebraska, but I doubt it. With that being said, I do have every hope that he turns it around and returns Nebraska to being a national power. The conference will be better for having another high-quality team to represent the Big Ten. Plus, steel sharpens steel and all that. For why Nebraska may not be as far off the winning path as their record suggests, check out the latest from Bill Connelly above.

Playing off last week’s article where Connelly identified the most overrated teams in college football (one of which was Michigan State), this week SB Nation’s resident stat master is taking a look at the most underrated teams. Among the teams that aren’t getting the respect they deserve are the new Kings of Columbus, the Purdue Boilermakers. Connelly points to a rough 0-3 start to the season as the chief reason why Purdue is currently unranked, even though they’re ranked as having the 14th best resume in the S&P+. Also included is Appalachian State, who—seriously—is ranked No. 9 in the S&P+ right now.

The CFP rankings won’t come out for another five days (Oct. 30), but the mothership’s college football site has taken it upon themselves to project the rankings these past few weeks. In this week’s installment, there is a battle for the fourth slot between LSU and Michigan. We can talk about who really deserves the fourth slot, whether the committee would really leave out the Big Ten, and all that, but honestly this situation will likely resolve itself after this weekend when LSU plays No. 1 Alabama. If the Tigers drop that game, expect to see the Wolverines in the No. 4 slot come Tuesday night.