Hlist Week 12: Rutgers not Big Ten-ready

There were two major-college men's basketball games played in Iowa this weekend, but no major-college football games. We're talking Nov. 16-17. Does that seem right to you?

1. Rutgers Rut: Things change in college football, then change again, and again. So to assume Rutgers will be a steaming pile of badness in the Big Ten for years to come is unreasonable.

But, the Scarlet Knights don't appeared headed into the Big Ten with anything resembling a full head of steam. The Knights fell to 5-4 this season and 2-3 in the American Athletic Confernce with their 52-17 home loss to Cincinnati Saturday. Three weeks earlier, they lost at home to Houston, 49-14.

Uh, Cincinnati and Houston aren't bad, but what happens when Rutgers starts playing in the same division with Ohio State and Michigan State?

Cincinnati passed for 507 yards, the most passing yards Rutgers has ever surrendered. And the Knights played in the first college football game ever, a 6-4 triumph over Princeton in 1869. There wasn't much passing then, though.

If it wasn't a bad enough week for Rutgers football, former Knights defensive back Jevon Tyree and his parents sought disciplinary action against defensive coordinator Dave Cohen, alleging Cohen called him things I won't reprint here, and threatened to head-butt him.

Quite a year at Rutgers, with the national scandal about former men's basketball coach Mike Rice bullying his players, and Julie Hermann getting hired as the school's athletic director 16 years after she resigned as Tennessee's volleyball coach after players from the 1996 team signed a letter that accused her of physically and verbally abusing them.

As for the football team, five recruits who had given Kyle Flood's program a verbal commitment have de-committed.

Steve Politi of the Newark Star-Ledger wrote this about Flood's squad:

His team not only looked unprepared for a home game despite a bye week, but appeared to give up hope before intermission. It is one thing to have a bad pass defense. It is another to be totally noncompetitive to a league opponent for the second time in three home games. ...

Stand in the crowd for even a few minutes at halftime and it is clear that the fan base is furious, and it is directing its anger at the man in charge.

The attendance at the Cincinnati-Rutgers game was 40,870. That's your New Jersey-New York market yawning.

2. One in a Row: Kansas snuffed its 27-game losing streak in the Big 12 by beating West Virginia in Lawrence, 31-19.

Whew! The Jayhawks were two losses from tying Baylor's league-mark.

“It was a big party in there,” KU defensive end Kevin Young said about the locker room scene. “A lot of cheering and chanting, a lot of high emotions flying in there.”

West Virginia beat Oklahoma State in late September. Think about that for a moment. You beat Oklahoma State, you lose to Kansas. That, by the way, deprived America of having Saturday's Baylor-Oklahoma State game be a battle of unbeatens.

Kansas students, meanwhile, tore down a goal post and marched it out of Memorial Stadium and to Potter's Lake on campus, where it was deposited into the water.

“Taking the goal post down, I never even imagined that could happen,” Jayhawk linebacker Ben Goodman said. “That was crazy.”

3. Where's the Love for Wisconsin?: How can Wisconsin be just No. 19 in the Associated Press Top 25? The 8-2 Badgers' losses were at Ohio State by one touchdown and at No. 17 Arizona State by an officiating bad joke.

What makes two-loss South Carolina deserve to be eight spots higher than the Badgers? The Gamecocks lost at Tennessee!

What makes two-loss Texas A&M deserve to be seven spots higher than the Badgers? The Aggies are very good, obviously, but they haven't beaten a ranked team.

Having unbeatens Fresno State and Northern Illinois and once-beaten UCF ahead of Wisconsin is just political correctness. The Hlist loves and respects those three teams, and hopes they win out. The Hlist would love to see Fresno State in a BCS bowl to make mischief with that organization in its final year. But none of the three would beat the Badgers on a neutral field.

Wisconsin is way better than the 19th-best team in the nation.

4. More Poll Madness: AP moved Baylor past Ohio State this week. The Bears went from fifth to third, while the Buckeyes stayed at No. 4. Ohio State "only" beat Illinois, 60-35.

Look, Baylor should have been ahead of OSU all along with the way it has destroyed everything in its path. But the Buckeyes allowing 35 points to Illinois is the reason some pollsters switched things up. That's terrible. Ohio State won that game handily.

It probably doesn't matter. Baylor will have a very hard time winning at Oklahoma State Saturday.

5. Lose Some, Win a Big One: Alabama is 10-0. Florida State is 10-0. Baylor is 10-0. Ohio State is 10-0.

After a 28-21 overtime loss to San Diego State in Honolulu Saturday, Hawaii fell to 0-10. But the Rainbow Warriors live in Hawaii, not Tuscaloosa or Tallahassee or Waco or Columbus.

So who wins?

6. Dynasty of Dynasties: Mount Union beat John Carroll, 42-34, in a battle of Division III unbeatens in Ohio. The win assured Mount Union its 22nd-consecutive Ohio Athletic Conference title.

That's kind of monotonous.

Last week, John Carroll students sold “Mount Who?” T-shirts at their team's final home game. On sale at the entrance to Mount Union Stadium on Saturday were “Business As Usual” shirts. It was business as usual, yet it wasn't. Because Mount Union got pushed hard. The Purple Raiders have won 83 straight regular-season games, and few have been as hard-fought as their win over the Blue Streaks on Saturday.

Purple Raiders and Blue Streaks. Love it.

The crowd at Mount Union Stadium was 8,104. The stadium seats 5,500.

They like football in Ohio. They're good at it, too.