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THE HYBRID: LET US INTO THE LOCKER ROOM, KIRK! (WEEK 7 PREVIEW)

Homecoming weekend in Iowa City, RichRod is the greatest, Mikey Dudek setting records, SEC madness, and Katy Perry enters our world.

By Bobby Loesch
Reese Strickland-USA TODAY Sports

The Hybrid is a weekly preview of every Big Ten game, plus relevant or whimsy games from the national slate.

"Iowa had a bye week, then one of the greatest college football Saturdays of all-time happened -- coincidence?"

I don't know, what do we think? I'm feeling optimistic this week, so I'm saying no. The universe can be cool on its own without us having to drag it down all by ourselves.

And though we don't physically play on the team, don't you feel straight up reinvigorated by that off week? Iowa was coming off a road win, so we got to relish and relax and objectively take in a weekend that beyond lived up to the waterfalls of hype we heaped.

We've got Homecoming weekend, Indiana coming in, Iowa favored by 3 points (dead even!). And for the first time all year, all the Big Ten teams are playing each other. That's got to have everyone pretty geeked. Because if there's one thing I learned from the poll last week, it's that y'all prefer good-to-great Big Ten games over completely great SEC or Pac 12 games. So if that's your bag, I can't knock it. Hell, I'm happy for you.

Yeezy, let's get this started.

THE HYBRID

Thursday

BYU at UCF: BYU? HE GONE. You hate to see a team's season end with a marquee QB injury, but it does ease the blow when you'd thought they'd lost said season three weeks ago.

Friday Night Lights

Washington State at Stanford (25): Hoo-wee, this was a lot earlier in the column than I'd expected. Usually it's at the very end.

/sigh

Man.

Aright. Aright, I think I'm ready.

Did Connor "The Limiter" Halliday limit his interceptions to one or two a game? He did. He, of course, did.
How many interceptions did he throw? Zero. Not one. In fact, not only was he mistake free with the picks, The Limiter threw for an NCAA single game record of 734 yards. Homeboy had 6 TDs to go along with it.
Who did Washington State lose to? You really think they lost despite a performance like that? Well, you're right. They lost. To Cal. 60-59. ON A MISSED 19-YARD FIELD GOAL TO END THE GAME WHY CAN'T I HAVE GOOD THINGS WHY. WHY. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

* * *

I shouldn't say that. Stanford lost last week to Notre Dame in the battle of evils. Such a choke. QB Kevin Hogan's line? 0 TDs, 2 INTs, 18/36, 158 yards (4.4 avg), annnnnd a rushing touchdown. This is the QB The Limiter is probably gonna lose to this week. This freaking sport.

Saturday

Florida State (1) at Syracuse: How much longer is FSU gonna do the "no good games" thing? Is that, like, a rest of the season deal?

As for 'Cuse... well, at least it's not ISIS.

Texas vs. Oklahoma (11): The Red River SHOOTOUT Rivalry! I dunno, do we still care about this game? We don't, do we?

Also, this Texas fan is great.

I want to watch football with him.

Georgia (13) at Missouri (23): Eh don't care.

Cincinnati at Miami (FL): You know, if you're not gonna win the national title or a conference championship, you might as well break bodies.

Illinois at Wisconsin: When you're only the fourth WR in the history of Illinois to hit 200 yards in a game, and one year prior, you were still playing high school football, I bring back the banner:

Mikey Mania

Salute. Also: Biletnikoff watch list! (even I'm not that crazy).

Mikey Dudek will have to pursue his Biletnikoff without starting QB West Lunt, who, like, fractured his leg last week. Riley O'Toole, Big Ten nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

* * *

As for Sconnie, wow. What the hell happened against Northwestern? Didn't Melvin Gordon have, like, 9 yards a carry and a million yards? I was going to watch highlights for an actual breakdown, but I'm blindly assuming we can look up the box score and pin this all on horrendous QB play.

/looks up the box score

WOW. Somehow worse than expected. Tanner and Joel (we're probably just gonna go with first names for the rest of the season) combined for 12/29, 114 yards (/facepalm), 1 TD... and 4 INTs. Blech.

West Virginia at Texas Tech: WEST FRECH BREAD VIRGINIA.

Indiana at Iowa: Mothers, lock up your daughters; fathers, hide the Templeton -- I'm coming to IC for the game this weekend. Unclear if we're going downtown or to the game (looking like downtown), but we're taking a bus from Davenport and tailgating at Finkbine, and I am damn excited. Just like I'm excited to make fun of KF for his quotes about media access to locker room post-game speeches.

"I think it is mandated in the NFL ... If it’s mandated, we’ll do it," Ferentz said. "Otherwise, to me, not everything in life has to be public. That is probably one of the reasons I don’t tweet or whatever else they do. I don’t think everything has to be public. Football is a pretty intimate deal, activity. So that’s what makes it fun."

I come from the Bill Belichick school of injury disclosure and access prevention, so I was completely on board with the quote until word "intimate" was used. I mean, come on. Football is thee least intimate sport of any played on a college campus. The rosters are huge, the coaching staffs are huge... like, do you even think most coaches could tell you the first and last names of every player in their locker room (I'm including walk-ons, too). Not intimate. Plus, if Belichick can handle media for a 90 second post-game speech, surely Ferentz has the capacity to budge.

Ferentz expanding on his Twitter thoughts? Sure.

"If somebody convinces me we have to do it to recruit," Ferentz said, "I’ll probably retire."

Well, that's one way around the buyout.

* * *

Lastly, Iowa fans: how do we feel about Ole Miss fans infringing on our "doing ridiculous things with goal posts" specialty? That's right, I'm embeddin' the Minnesota vid!

Northwestern at Minnesota: Well, this is our third straight Big Ten game featuring two unranked teams.

As annoying as I sometimes find Northwestern, love when early season narratives are completely defied by flailing, random crap.

Oh, and hi again, Minnesota.

Duke at Georgia Tech (22): Were you aware Georgia Tech is undefeated? Or do you still not respect them because of the Iowa Orange Bowl domination? I mean, that's fair if it's that.

Auburn (2) at Mississippi State (3): Game of the Week. Holy shit, we really get this game this week? Tremendous! The stakes here are obviously high, and to me, it all starts with the coaching.

Dan Mullen is in an interesting spot. A week ago, he was a hot-ish coaching candidate, but the Texas A&M win has turned that up a few notches. He beats Auburn, and all of a sudden, he's shooting flames out of his eyes.

Gus Malzahn. Longtime readers know I'm a massive fan of this dude. If I ever foray into the sweater vest game at any point in my life (FU TRESSEL), it will be because of him. I really do think he's an offensive genius, and that's why I feel pretty good about Auburn in this one.

Plus the Mississippi State QB wears No. 15 because of Tebow. Unforgivable.

* * *

Lastly: awwwww, Bun B.

TCU (9) at Baylor (5): Oh man, TCU got into the Top 10? That's just great. A perfect silver medal game to the SEC one. And finally, the Baylor Bears get the shine of the spotlight.

North Carolina at Notre Dame (6): ??? What a weird game.

Michigan State (8) at Purdue: Sadler!!!

Oregon (12) at UCLA (18): Poor FOX. They couldn't even get one of these two unscathed after last week.

You know, Oregon/Marcus, if it was gonna end, I'm glad it was at the hands of a guy named Scooby. Because it allowed this to happen:

Haha.

Penn State at Michigan: Seems like every week, Michigan plays a team that's hapless in its own right, and M finds a way to be like "nah, your season isn't that bad -- check out THIS!!!" as they just puke all over the floor. We're in Week 7, and Michigan still does not have a passing touchdown against a Power 5 opponent. Can't even make stats like these up. Just like you can't make up Rutgers rushing the field after beating one of the unarguable worst teams in the conference. We'll give it a bitter silver lining real quick:

Perfect.

And we'll end this section with our weekly "Dave Brandon: Killing Me Softly" link dump...

- Michigan AD Dave Brandon said the protests calling for his job were "hurtful" to himself *and* his family. Because a Michigan Man is too civil to process your unrest.

- Yeah, why not:

- Brandon, on why he left Hoke hanging out to dry and took so long to respond publicly following the Shane Morris concussion scandal: "I've been busy doing things that I think are, frankly, more important, and that's probably not what you want to hear."

H8 u forever/SMD.

Alabama (7) at Arkansas: My 'Bama coworker is worried about this game. I guess Arkansas played A&M pretty tough earlier this year. He also made a good point: no one is going undefeated in the SEC West this year. It's not happening. Unless Auburn. Maybe. But he's probably onto something. No contender in the SEC West can fairly say their season is over quite yet. So you downtrodden, little-engine-that-could Tide fans can cheer up as it pertains to your team's immediate future.

* * *

As for last week's loss, however?

While the dude approaching Saban who got taken out was pretty good...

...and the 'Bama fan throwing trash who got taken out was even better...

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Oxford PD - 1 Alabama Fan - 0 This guy had been throwing things at fans leaving the field. #hottytoddy #beatalabama #oxfordpd #takedown #fightclub #collegegameday #espn @creevesbrown @liltaybrown @pigeontoedninja @austin_gunter770 @a_brown52

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...this Phyllis from Mulga call is one of my favorite things to ever happen. The arrogance mixed with self-evaluating fear mixed with insecure bravado is downright impeccable. I want to outsource my emotion to her after Iowa losses.

The Week 6 misery for 'Bama doesn't end there. We even had a Katy Perry tweet:

BEASTIN'.

* * *

One final TROLL TIDE note: Arkansas is planning on celebrating the 1964 title team at this specific game. The same year Alabama claims one of their national titles. Bielema just has no shame.

Ole Miss (3) at Texas A&M (14): How is Ole Miss possibly gonna win this game after the emotional high of last week? It just does not seem possible. Unless they want to go back to the Killing Everyone gameplan they deployed against 'Bama:

* * *

If they do win, will we get the Katy Perry Party Part 2?

Or Ground Make Out During Total Madness Part 3?

(Giving the Vancouver Riot credit for Ground Make Out Part 1.)

* * *

Not to say Texas A&M head coach Kevin Sumlin doesn't do some partying of his own -- Rick Ross in Miami style:

"Kevin was like, 'Yo man, I'm a big fan of you guys, MMG. I'm a big fan of Ross,'" Stalley said. "He was having a good time. We was all having a good time."

How good of a time?

"On a scale of 1-10, I would say a 15," Stalley said. "(Sumlin) was pretty much the life of the party actually for me. He was the one that made me be like, ‘OK, it’s time to turn up in here.’"

We should all want our sons to play for Kevin Sumlin.

USC at Arizona (10): ...

ZEEEEE!!! That's right, KLV. Welcome back to your well deserved place of prominence, RichRod. Seriously, somebody slap me.

867244473.0.gif

(via @cjzero)

Also, close your eyes, Kirk Feretnz -- we got a RichRod post-game speech!!!!

"YOU THINK THEY AIN'T PARTYIN' IN TUSCON, ARIZONA?!"

I mean... counting off the points they scored, swerving from one seemingly random chant to the next, the wily smile. These are the reasons I want to spend holidays at his house.

Even better, Rodriguez talked somewhat candidly about his experience coaching stuffy, shitty Michigan.

"There was a lot of stuff [at Michigan] that people don't know went on that we didn't even know was going on -- some BS, some non-football related stuff. It became more about the drama than it did about football, which is the opposite of what you'd think you'd get at Michigan. Had Bo Schembechler been there, I probably wouldn't have had to deal with some of it."

I know y'all likely (and mercifully) aren't as up on the Wolverines as I am, so I'll translate the "BS" part of RichRod's statement in all-caps: LLOYD CARR IS A MIDDLING, SABOTAGING PRICK.

Arizona is a home underdog to USC this week.

Wrapping It Up...

What IC bar should we watch the game at?

Bobby Loesch is a weekly contributor to Black Heart Gold Pants. Follow him on Twitter @bobbystompy or e-mail at bobbyloesch [at] gmail.com.

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