Better Watch It, Bret Bielema--Pretty Soon [Maybe Already] People Will Be Saying You Can't Win the Big One; But Nice Going, Dantonio, MSU & Cowboys

Wisconsin football coach [and former Iowa player] Bret Bielema lost his second straight Rose Bowl football game Monday night. Last season it was Texas Christian that beat Bielema's Badgers, 21-19, at Pasadena; this time Oregon stuck it to Wisconsin, 45-38. Bielema [a very modest 2-4 in sll bowls at Wisconsin] is pictured at the right. Meanwhile, Mark Dantonio's Michigan State team saved the Big Ten from embarrassment in Monday's bowl games against the Southeastern Conference. The Spartans rallied to beat Georgia, 33-30, in three overtimes at the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Fla. Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany [left] is breathing a little easier now. By the way, despite anything you hear from ESPN announcer Brent Musburger and anything you read in the Des Moines Register, the Big Ten has won two bowl games, not one, in this postseason. People seem to be forgetting that Purdue beat Western Michigan, 37-32, in something called the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl. As far as I know, the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl in Detroit is still a major-college bowl. I mean, it used to be called the Motor City Bowl, but at least it's a bowl. So the Big Ten has won two [repeat 2] bowl games in this postseason.

*

Getting back to Bielema for a minute. Michael Hunt, a sports columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, didn't let poor Bret up for air. Here's the way Hunt began his post-Rose Bowl column:

"You could almost see Wisconsin giving up 621 yards to Oregon. Swallowing entire football fields in a single bill-full is what the Ducks do.

"You could certainly forgive a kid like Jared Abbrederis for putting the football on the ground near the end of the game. For what he did Monday - 320 total receiving and return yards - and all year long for that matter, well, those things happen.

"But for Wisconsin to blow a second consecutive Rose Bowl in basically the same freakish way it dropped two games in a 2011 season that now seems completely wasted in the aftermath of the 45-38 loss to Oregon, that is hard to forgive or forget.

"Bad things don't happen to talented teams like UW on sheer randomness. They happen because of a lack of preparation and poor coaching decisions.

"Only Bret Bielema, it seems, could have an 11-3 record and a good number of the Badgers' fandom prepared to gather torches and pitchforks at the gate.

"There is ample reason for this.

"At Wisconsin, it is no longer enough just to show up under the purple mountains majesty that is the Rose Bowl. Losing back to back to TCU and Oregon is no way to carry on the legacy.

"Then there were the hair-yanking blunders against the Ducks, followed by another excruciating loss. Those kind of things seem to dog the Wisconsin coach a little too often for any of this to be a coincidence.

"Bielema got emotional on the postgame podium. I'd feel bad, too, if I felt like I contributed to another silly loss in the one year the Badgers had a shot to go for it all with their first real quarterback in ages..."

[RON MALY'S COMMENT: Sure, and you thought football was just a game.]

*

Getting back to more pleasant things: Was that 41-38 Oklahoma State victory over Stanford in overtime [photo at the top of the column courtesy of the Daily Oklahoman.com] late Monday night a dandy game or what?