This week Autzen Zoo joined Clinton Boring and Ryan Satoviac of "Inside the Pylon" for a Big Ten Roundtable along with special guest Jeff Buch of the "Eyes on Big Ten podcast."
Clinton opened the show with a shout-out to his lovely wife, a two-time cancer survivor who just received another clear scan, four years cancer-free.
Ryan addressed playoff expansion. "The Big 10 officially bullied the SEC into going full nine conference game schedule. And I love the caveat in the release that felt like a shot across the bow at Indiana saying and all of our member institutions will be required to play one game against a quality power four conference opponent as well. So we're going to level bit of a level playing field. So this is going to be kind of interesting to see how this kind of impacts playoff expansion."
The panel agreed that this was the year of new quarterbacks in the conference, while identifying the offensive line as the chief concern for both Washington and the Ducks. They discussed risers and pretenders and the pitfalls on each team's schedule.
"Jeffrey the Greek" noted that all of the new quarterbacks will be tested early, beginning with Ohio State's Julian Sayin (12 career passes) hosting No. 1 Texas in Week 1.
"Dante Moore at Oregon has three or four fairly manageable games and then he ends up going to Penn State to face a senior and Drew Allar. So that's the biggest the first thing I wanted to see is how well these guys adjust and how well they handle the pressure of being the guy at a school with big expectations."
Quarterback play is indeed pivotal, and all over the conference there are new quarterbacks or quarterbacks in new places. One of the most intriguing is Mark Gronowski taking over at Iowa, a two-time FCS champion at South Dakota State who passed for 10,330 yards and 93 touchdowns in four seasons with the Jackrabbits, rushing for 1,767 and 37 touchdowns.