Big Ten football Misery Index: Michigan football, Michigan State weather winds of change

The winds of change blew through Big Ten football on Saturday.

Well, not change, we guess: Michigan football and Ohio State are still on track for a College Football Playoff playoff at the end of November, Northwestern is still awful and Michigan State football is still confounding — though not as confounding as the Big Ten West.

But winds? Oh yeah, there was some wind. And some rain. And just some cruddy weather overall. (And also about five minutes of celebrational stadium-light flickering during the Wolverines’ game in Piscataway that, should Rutgers ever develop an offense, could get really annoying.)

But oh, did Mother Nature take a swing at inducing some misery into the conference.

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In Evanston, the Buckeyes almost saw their CFP hopes dashed — or at least dinged — by the blustery weather.

"I've never been around conditions like this," OSU coach Ryan Day said. "It must have been 30-mile-an-hour winds. And if you've ever tried to golf in 30-mile-an-hour winds, it's hard to get off the tee, (let alone) throw a football. We saw this coming, so we had a plan. ... There were times I was concerned about the snap coming back."

Then again, that provided some good cover for quarterback C.J. Stroud’s passing issues, as he completed just 10 passes (on 26 attempts) for 76 yards. (Then again, maybe he was just giving us a preview of his time next season in Honolulu Blue and Silver.)

Stroud’s ailing aerials were actually surpassed by Northwestern sophomore QB Brendan Sullivan, who also completed 10 passes (on 14 attempts) — but for 79 yards. (Tough luck, Lions fans; the Davison, Michigan, alumnus isn’t eligible for the NFL draft for another year.)

Continuing around Lake Michigan, the wet and windy weather in Madison also placed a premium on the run game, as Badgers interim head coach Jim Leonhard noted.

"If you were going to try to throw it much over 10 yards, the ball was going to be affected in a big way," Leonhard said.

Did somebody mention passes under 10 yards? That’s Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz’s cue, chiming in from gusty West Lafayette …

“Offensively, I would not have predicted all our points would happen going into (the wind),” Ferentz said. “But I’m glad they did. I think some of that’s mental toughness. Our guys just didn’t let that bother them.”

Based on most of the Hawkeyes’ games this season, we would not have predicted any of Iowa’s points on offense, actually.

Back in Madison, the Badgers seemed to have issues with a burst of nice weather, too: A sudden cloudbreak in the third quarter prompted cheers from the Camp Randall Stadium crowd — and a false start penalty for Wisconsin.

The Terps, facing the Badgers, didn’t adjust quite as well to the weather, according to head coach Mike Locksley.

"It didn't seem as though they were as affected by the elements as we were," Locksley said. "That starts with me as the head coach."

We think it might actually start with terrapins being reptiles, rather than amphibians equally at home on land or in water, but while we, ahem, dive into some zoology — and maybe study up on tiebreakers, with Purdue just a game up on FOUR West Division teams with three games to play — let’s run through the Big Ten misery index, from least miserable to most in Week 10:

14.Iowa: W, 24-3, over Purdue

Record: 5-4, 3-3. Last week’s ranking: 10.

Wind gusts of 21 mph are a lot easier to deal with when you have a running back like Kaleb Johnson, who needed just 22 carries to pick up 200 yards — in just the 18^th 200-yard game in Hawkeyes history — in his ninth career game.

13. Penn State: W, 45-14, over Indiana

Record: 7-2, 4-2. Last week: 7.

Freshmen, you say? Running backs Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton and quarterback Drew Allar accounted for 245 of Penn State’s 483 yards on offense. The Nittany Lions got most of the rest from 12^th-year QB Sean Clifford.

12. Michigan State: W, 23-15, over Illinois

Record: 4-5. 2-4. Last week: 1.

It’s not a Misery Index without a punter update: former Illini punter Bryce Baringer booted a 68-yarder late in the first quarter, topping the combined yards (63) by current Illini punter Hugh Robertson. (And that wasn’t even Baringer’s nicest kick; he angled a 62-yarder out at Illinois’ 1 early in the fourth.)

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11. Michigan: W, 52-17, over Rutgers

Record: 9-0, 6-0. Last week: 13.

The Scarlet Knights gave up three touchdowns (a 14-yard pass to Donovan Edwards, a 2-yard rush by Blake Corum and a 31-yard pick-six by Michael Barrett, in case you were in the bathroom for all three) in 102 seconds in the second half — even Tony Soprano got a longer sendoff than Rutgers’ chances of upsetting the Wolverines.

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10. Wisconsin: W, 23-10, over Maryland

Record: 5-4, 3-3. Last week: 11

The Badgers’ tradition of playing House of Pain’s “Jump Around” between the third and fourth quarters at Camp Randall Stadium had a special guest star Saturday: The group’s lead singer, Everlast, introduced the song 30 years and six months to the day from its release. Who needs a national title to dial up the wayback machine, eh?

9. Northwestern: L, 21-7, to Ohio State

Record: 1-8, 1-5. Last week: 2.

The Wildcats opened conference play with 31 points against Nebraska in Ireland and have 58 in five Big Ten games since. Maybe they should check Customs again for their offense. (The last time something struggled this hard leaving Europe, they called it “Brexit.”)

8. Rutgers: L, 52-17, to Michigan

Record: 4-5. 1-5. Last week: 3.

The Scarlet Knights’ TD off a blocked punt was scored on a 7-yard scoop-and-score by Timmy Ward, who suffered through Hodgkin’s lymphoma and a torn ACL in high school and started as an equipment manager at Rutgers before walking-on as a receiver and then a defensive back.

7. Minnesota: W, 20-13, over Nebraska

Record: 6-3, 3-3. Last week: 14.

The Golden Row-The-Boaters are bowl-eligible after a rally from a 10-0 first-quarter deficit, thanks to their adherence to the five D’s of dodgeball: “We had to grit, grind, fight, scratch, claw, especially when a lot of things weren't going our way," coach P.J. Fleck said. Well, maybe they play dodgeball different in Gopher-land.

6. Indiana: L, 45-14, to Penn State

Record: 3-6, 1-5. Last week: T-5.

Indiana had the ball for just 24:07 on Saturday, which was weird; usually you only see Hoosiers on defense for 36 minutes in a basketball game or a discussion of Bobby Knight.

5. Maryland: L, 23-10, to Wisconsin

Record: 6-3, 3-3. Last week: 9.

Look, I grew up in the rainy Pacific Northwest and I don’t feel half as prepared for bad weather as Terps coach Mike Locksley was: “We had wind, we had rain, we practiced and had a wet ball day on Monday, which we've studied the weather all week long and it's not like it was a surprise to us, but we did not handle it as well as we thought we should.”

4. Ohio State: W, 21-7, over Northwestern

Record: 9-0, 6-0. Last week: 8.

What’s that old saying? “Never wrestle with a Wildcat in the rain. You’ll both get wet — and the Wildcat likes it. …”

3. Nebraska: L, 20-13, to Minnesota

Record: 3-6, 2-4. Last week: 4.

Barring a miraculous win this week over Michigan and only slightly less-miraculous wins over Wisconsin and Iowa in the final two weeks, the Huskers of Corn will miss out on a bowl for the sixth straight season. It’s the longest bowl drought for Nebraska since snapping a seven-season drought in 1962 with a spot in the Gotham Bowl. How long ago was that? The Huskers of Corn played Miami of Florida in front of 6,166 paid-for seats (with maybe 1,000 fans actually in attendance) at Yankee Stadium in New York. A week later, Houston played Miami of Ohio in the Tangerine Bowl in front of 7,500 fans in Orlando. Yeah, it’s “Miami of Ohio outdrawing Miami of Florida in a bowl” long ago.

2. Illinois: L, 23-15, to Michigan State

Record: 7-2. 4-2. Last week: 12.

Starting to understand why Illini coach Bret Bielema attempted to convert six fourth downs (with just one success): “"I told the guys in the locker room, 'This is the definition of how to lose a game,' " Bielema told reporters. "Statistically, they did a really good job in certain things. But statistics are exactly what they are on their own stat sheet — they don't count.”

1. Purdue: L, 24-3, to Iowa

Record: 5-4. 3-3. Last week: T-5.

It’s been a rough couple of seasons for the Boilermakers and semi-inanimate objects: Last season, they couldn’t get their giant drum into Notre Dame Stadium, and on Saturday, their Boilermaker Special — and this is your yearly reminder that the train is the official mascot, not “Purdue Pete” — broke down before the game and had to be pushed off the field by more than a dozen folks.

Come to think of it, “trouble with semi-inanimate objects” pretty much sums up the Boilermakers’ issues stopping Iowa’s offense on Saturday, too.

2022 BIG TEN MISERY INDEX

WEEK 0:Michigan puts off the pain at least till Week 3

WEEK 1:The gospel of Michigan QB requirements

WEEK 2:Michigan football, Michigan State prove savvy shoppers

WEEK 3:Dog-eat-dog games for Michigan football, MSU

WEEK 4:Paying tribute to past coaches

WEEK 5:Who's afraid of ghosts? Not Michigan football

WEEK 6:Michigan State football still working on its reinvention

WEEK 7:Michigan and MSU's Heisman contenders aren't who you think

WEEK 8:Taylor Swift sounds off on Michigan's state of rivalry

WEEK 9:It's time for Michigan football, OSU to play the CFP feud

Contact Ryan Ford at rford@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @theford.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Big Ten football Misery Index: Michigan football, MSU weather winds