Slate Article

[ToddPacker]

I imagine many of us here can agree with many of the sentiments in this article posted on the "other" board.  http://www.slate.com/id/2186858/

Here's the excerpt:

University of Wisconsin, Big Ten Conference, No. 3 in Midwest Region
Everyone bags on Big Ten football, and appropriately so, but the Midwestern brand of pigskin is easy on the eyes compared with Big Ten hoops: a raft of mediocre teams, plenty of flow-restricting physicality, and, all-too-often, Brent Musberger, looking live from Champaign or Iowa City. The most painful Big Ten team to endure is the Badgers, a team that combines brutishness and blandness into an unwatchable goulash.

I blame Bo Ryan, the coach who has created a top program in Madison by installing all manner of defensive tactics while forgetting the game is supposed to be entertainment. To use a soccer analogy, the Badgers always appear to be playing for a draw but manage to get enough muscled-in offensive rebounds from the likes of Brian Butch to get past the league's weak competition. Wisconsin will muck along in the tournament until it runs into a team that knows how to execute a crossover dribble. Until then, I'll be singing my own version of the Badgers' fight song every time they clog up my TV: "Off, Wisconsin!"

[Coobeys Oil Depot]

Might be a little much to pin it all on Ryan but that's still not a bad summation of what's happened recently to the Big Ten conference.