Big Ten Potpourri: Huskers-Iowa is Huskers-Purdue?

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Michigan and Ohio State scoop up the Big Ten's best football recruits.

Saturday, Michigan got a verbal commitment from the player considered the third-best in the 2015 class, and the top wide receiver. Those are ESPN's rankings. How they are arrived at, who knows?

But his name is George Campbell, a throwback name. That sounds more like an insurance salesman or farmer or Average George to me, not a superstar-in-waiting. He is from Tarpon Springs, Fla. He is 6-foot-3 and runs a 4.37 40-yard dash.

So that's 2015. Next year, the Wolverines are bringing in cornerback Jabrill Peppers of Paramus, N.J., the No. 2 prospect in the country according to someone or another.

Urban Meyer, yadda yadda yadda, got more attention than anyone at Big Ten's media days. But Meyer has the quarterback most are calling the Big Ten's best, Brandon Meyer.

Here's a Sports On Earth piece on Miller, Meyer, and how the coach's system made the player special. An excerpt:

Miller's mechanics were flawed; his passes often sailed long; he was not trusted with full command of the passing game; his receiving corps lacked depth. But the coaching staff effectively managed him and limited his mistakes, and, more importantly, turned him loose as a runner.

That's where Miller became a star, and that's where Meyer's system came in with designed runs that allowed him to rush for 1,271 yards and 13 touchdowns.

The New York Post's Phil Mushnick never pulls a punch, and offered these thoughts on Meyer in Sunday's edition:

Does it ever strike ex-Florida and current Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer he has a career knack for chasing after and signing young criminals?

If such a disturbing inclination doesn't strike Meyer, does it not strike the college athletic directors, presidents and trustees who chase after Meyer - and those like him - while waving multi-million-dollar deals to recruit young criminals to their campuses as full-scholarship student-athletes?

Michigan State Coach Mark Dantonio has over 11,000 Twitter followers, but seldom gets in dialogues with them unless they're recruits or colleagues.

“I very rarely go into that area and see what people are saying,” he said. “There's some haters out there.”

Ain't it the truth?

Tom Shatel of the Omaha World-Herald writes good columns. He got home from last week's Big Ten shindig in Chicago and drew this conclusion among others:

This isn't the Big Ten that Harvey Perlman signed me up for.

Three years ago, this move looked like a hoot. Games with Michigan and Ohio State. A white-hot rivalry with Iowa.

But the collateral damage of realignment was divisional scheduling glitches. After this season, the Huskers won't play Michigan in the regular season until at least 2018. No Ohio State until 2016.

Meanwhile, the Hawkeyes are in the dumper. The Iowa series has been a dud so far. Some Hawks have squawked about the Black Friday date. A Big Ten official admitted in Chicago that the Iowa-Nebraska series could be moved off Black Friday beginning in 2018.

Until Kirk Ferentz can jump-start his program, this might as well be Nebraska-Purdue.

What's funny to me is that 2018 is a long time off. By then, Iowa could be King Football. Or Nebraska could be a football jester. Or a meteorite could have rendered all of this moot.

Meanwhile, Alabama's football players have access to a smoothie bar and much more. Maybe I'll rethink the stipends thing ... in their case.

This isn't Big Ten, either, but everything's connected. Oklahoma has a residence hall that is fully funded by its athletic department, and it's a "game-changer."