So on Saturday, Penn State and Wisconsin will play their final regular game of the 2011 football season, with the winner moving on to the first Big Ten championship game against Michigan State.
I only wish I could generate a tenth of the enthusiasm for that Camp Randall matchup as I did for Penn State becoming part of the Big Ten 21 years ago. But the Penn State scandal is so unimaginable – and hits a little too close to home in a state where the Catholic Church covered up its wrongdoings and Marquette violated the law under different circumstances – that, at least for me, an awfully big game has lost something.