1 BURNING QUESTION for Every Big Ten Team in Fall Camp

1 BURNING QUESTION for Every Big Ten Team in Fall Camp

Yeah. Yeah. Listen, Paul Feinbaum has opened his mouth once again. He’s got a lot to say, Zach. Okay. Paul Feinbaum discussed a big tin media days and what he has called their collective message during his weekly appearance on McElroy and Kubrick in the morning on Monday. Paul said three things that I want to highlight and discuss today. Number one, this one is a little bit longer. The other ones will be shorter than this. But this one is less than a minute long. Zach, let’s listen in to the great words of one Paul Feinbaum. I’m looking back on the four days of the Big Ten. I’m going to tell you right now, it was a bust. It was a bust from the beginning, and it was a bust all the way to the end. And it was a bust because it seems to me that Tony Petitti and his minions, whether it was him directly or indirectly, to hand deliver a specific message that went over terribly. Petitti started it off. Again, this is someone who has been on milk pardons all summer because we haven’t been able to find him. And finally, he comes out and instead of broadening his approach to, which is what Greg Sankey said two weeks ago today, that, you know, I talked to Tony Petitti four or five times last week. I talked to Jim Phillips. I talked to your Mark meeting. I’m trying to work with, within my, my commissioner base. Uh, Petitti was a lone wolf. Oh, Petitti, Petitti is just on an Island by himself, Zach. Apparently that’s the worst crime in college football ever. If you don’t agree with all the other commissioners, uh, you’re just, you’re worst crime ever. What do you think about what Paul Feinbaum had to say? You know, in Charlie Brown, when the principal comes on and it’s wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, that’s what Paul Feinbaum sounds like. Like, there’s nothing of substance there. Honestly, there’s nothing of substance. He’s just mad that Tony Petitti had a different opinion and a logical one, by the way. Here’s the thing he fails to mention. Tony Petitti is addressing the absurdity of what Greg Sankey was talking about the week before. He’s not allowed to offer a counterpoint. He’s not allowed to offer a different point from his competition, his direct competition. Let’s be real here, Paul. This is a legitimate counterpoint to a point that you all slurped up last week, and now you’re just mad. It’s the same thing with Stuart Mandel from last week. There’s no context. They just want to tear down the conference, and it’s ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, if you listen before, and we couldn’t play that long of a clip, otherwise we’d have copyright issues and we played it too long, so we stayed under a minute. But if you listen before that, Paul Feinberg was talking about how much of a success the SEC media days were. And I just… Maybe I’m just completely out of tune with college football, and I don’t know any other fan bases, and I just got Big Ten glasses on, okay? If that’s the case… Sue me. But by the number of likes and retweets and messages I get, I don’t think that’s the case because I get messages from outside the Big Ten and Big Ten fans as well. To act like the SEC had a success for whining for four days straight, essentially trying to tell everybody, puff out their chest and be like, well, we’re the big dogs in town still, but not actually giving anything of substance. You heard multiple Big Ten coaches and Tony Petitti himself lay out the reasons of why this is – this this four four two two one is better for the big ten he didn’t try to get up there and say it’s better for the sec he didn’t try to get up there and say it’s better for the big twelve it’s better he came out there and said listen i’m in charge of the big ten this is what’s better for the big ten right that’s what his job is to do and if you want to say his messaging wasn’t clear and it was a bust then you weren’t listening paul you had no idea what he was actually trying to communicate and what he was actually trying to discuss To that point, I think the Big Ten, and I think we’ve acknowledged, and I know I’ve personally acknowledged, I do not like the four, four, two, two, one model because I don’t like what it does to conferences like the ACC and the Big Twelve. I’m not a fan of it. My counterpoint to that, though, is that it helps them. And I get that. Here’s my point, though, and why I understand it is because we don’t live in an ideal world in college football. The Big Twelve and the ACC are not equals. The SEC recognizes that and the Big Ten recognizes that. And I think the ACC and the Big Twelve recognize that. So here’s what I do like about it, which I think is where you’re getting to, is the Big Ten is offering a model which makes things more objective. Whereas the SEC’s model is all subjectivity. It’s all about who do you think is best versus who actually earned it. And I get people are saying, well, but what about strength of schedule? What about this? What about that? But we just saw this season why what you think should not matter as much as what has actually happened. Like, we saw it on the field. We saw it with the precious Alabama-Michigan game. We saw it with the precious Georgia-Notre Dame game. Like, it doesn’t matter what you think. It matters what is true. that’s the counterpoint what actually happens on the field look i i get i get that people don’t like the four automatic qualifiers we got people in the chat saying they don’t like it i get i don’t either okay but but in the scenario right now because one conference is too weak to play nine conference games that’s the best situation right we don’t have to like what the best situation is, but we do have to acknowledge this is the best situation because right now the big is guaranteed one more loss for every single team. And the big is already behind the sec by one loss, no matter what, because of strength of schedule and other things. So essentially that the sec is getting a two loss lead over, I would say second tier, big teams, right? Over Oregon, Penn state, Ohio state. They don’t always get that, but sometimes they do. Okay. And it’s very, very frustrating to try and play a schedule when maybe it’s not as strong as somebody else’s schedule. I’m not sitting here trying to say the Big Ten has the best schedules in college football. But when you try to play that schedule, and then the other teams in college football are guaranteed one less loss than you. just it’s not a fair playing field right and so that’s why either the big ten needs to go down to eight conference games i don’t know why any big ten fan would want that why would you want less good games right you want every everybody wants to complain about indiana playing three cupcakes you want every team playing three cupcakes makes no sense i’ve heard i’ve heard tons of big ten fans well let’s just go down to eight conference games that’s stupid that is a stupid idea because you’re going to lose games now It’s better than what we have now because it’s fair and it’s the same amount, right? But really the best option here is for the SEC to go to nine conference games and the Big Ten’s flexing their weight. The Big Ten knows we just won the last two national championships. If we’re ever going to get the SEC to go to this, the time is to do it now. Yeah. Well, and I think, again, everybody’s playing checkers and the Big Ten’s playing chess. Because to your point… Their objective is not give us four, four, two, two, one. Their objective is how do we standardize things? And you heard it from multiple coaches. You heard it from Tony Petitti. They talked about standardizing out of conference schedules, everybody going to nine conference games. They are trying to make it more uniform across the slate, which is the right thing to do. But that’s not what was heard because, again, and I know we look at things through a Big Ten lens. We admit that. Paul Feinbaum, I don’t think, admits that at all as he talks about the SEC. Paul Feinbaum has an SEC lens all day, every day. That’s the only way he looks at college football. And he missed the broader message. Or he is, at best, he missed the broader message. At worst, he is deliberately misrepresenting the Big Ten and Tony Petitti and their coaches. Yeah, yeah. Well, he’s got some stuff to say about the coaches. We’ll get to. Steely Matt shared the show that reposted it on Twitter. Steely Matt, we appreciate you doing that. Thank you so much. That does help out the show. If anybody else out there is listening on Twitter and you would like to repost the show, we would very much appreciate it if you did that. All right, here’s Paul Feinbaum on Kurt Sidnetti. Signetti, like him, appreciate what he’s done, appreciate what he’s done in the past, but he made a complete fool out of himself trying to draw a parallel. So did other coaches. I mean, it’s like Brett Bielema came up with the game plan about five weeks ago and handed it out to his coaching buddies, and none of them delivered it well. What did Brett Bielema do at Big Ten Media Days? He was asked a directed question about the SEC, and he didn’t get into it, and he talked about his friends in the SEC and shared a heartfelt story about Mark Stoops and how they used to share a room together. Listen, if Brett Bielema is behind the game plan, then he probably won because that’s what happened in the Outback Bowl, right? Yeah, pretty much. Just absolutely wild to bring up Brett Bielema there. Now, Kirk Sinetti is the ire of all of SEC Nation right now because he’s making good points, right? And before you come out here and say, oh, JR is not seeing the holes in Kirk Sinetti. No, no. Kirk Cennetti is making good points, but like I said, you can call Kirk Cennetti soft because I wish Indiana was scheduling better out-of-conference games. But if you’re going to do that, you have to call the SEC soft too. Because guess what? You have Ole Miss scheduling Wake Forest out-of-conference, right? You have Tennessee scheduling teams like NC State out-of-conference. Like, you have Missouri not even putting anybody on their schedule that’s even worth a note or anything on their conference. Mm-hmm. They are playing three out-of-conference group of five and FCS teams as well. The difference is they put one of those group of five games in November so it hides it better. Everybody at the beginning of the season sees the SEC playing conference games in week three or four, and they’re like, oh, wow, okay, they only have so many games. Well, then they have so many other games that it masks it when Alabama plays Mercer on November eighth. The fact that they are shaken by a second year head coach at Indiana is hilarious. Like, and by the way, I heard this on Kings of the North and I thought it was apt. So I’ll reshare it. This is Doug LaMaurice and Bill Landis who said this, but like Kurt Cignetti has worked his way up. He’s sixty four. He’s like the grandpa who just doesn’t care anymore. Like he doesn’t care what people think. So like, OK, maybe he was off his rocker. and like Paul Feimom, you know, maybe, you know, again, best case scenario, maybe he was off. Maybe he did make a fool out of himself. You know what? Kurt doesn’t care. Like he doesn’t, he like, he has worked his, his butt off to get where he is, became a head coach in his fifties. Like this was not handed to him. Like he’s making Indiana into something. So like, that’s more impressive than what most of the sec coaches have done. Like, I don’t really care what Paul has to say about Kurt. I don’t necessarily fully disagree. Like, I don’t think Kurt was like, I don’t know if Kurt was the right person to say that, but like also good for him. He’s sixty four. He had a great season last year. He’s he’s done everything right up to this point. Like, awesome. He’s, if he wants to take a shot at the SEC, go ahead. I’m all for it. Yeah. Go for it. Like the fact that Paul’s criticizing him, it’s like it’s actually proving the point more. It’s like, yeah. And that’s the thing. Kirk Sinetti has put himself at a point right now where the SEC has to do whatever they can to try and tear Kirk Sinetti down. Because Kirk Sinetti is the number one opponent against the SEC right now. And he’s coaching at Indiana. Indiana is a terrible, historically, a terrible program in college football. Kirk Cincinnati just took that team and took them to the playoffs in its very first year, right? If you can take a Big Ten team from there, from one of the worst programs in all of FBS history, to the playoffs, like, that’s huge for the conference, and that’s a huge level up, right? The SEC wants to talk about how Vanderbilt won six games, okay? Yeah. And they act like, oh, that’s some big thing. No, your worst team in your conference won six games. Congratulations. The worst team historically in our conference just went to the playoffs. And it scares them. So, all right, one last clip here, and then we’ll be done. Go after the SEC. There are places you can attack. But don’t try to attack on the strength of schedule, and don’t try to attack on the non-conference games. Yeah, I mean, that is the holy grail of the SEC. And at the end of the day, Kirk Sinetti made a very good point and made a truthful point. And the SEC knows that right now their white whale of conference supremacy is being torn apart. It does not matter. It is not a thing right now. And PFF put out these rankings today saying, four, four big, ten teams in the top seven and strength of schedule rankings. According to PFF three in the top five, you have Wisconsin at the top followed by Arkansas, UCLA, Florida, Rutgers, Kentucky, Northwestern, Mississippi state, Oklahoma, Syracuse, Oklahoma, and Syracuse at ten. Now you have some sec fans. Well, how we got, we got six teams in the top ten. What are you talking about? You know how many teams that, uh, the big ten has in the top thirty Zach, I’m going to guess ten. Thirteen. Ooh. You know how many the SEC has? I’m going to say not thirteen. Eleven. So BFF, who does not take recruiting rankings into account and just takes into account players and how they played last year coming into the program, taking into account head coaches, taking into account Things like development and working off grades and stuff like that. I get people don’t like PFF grades. I get it. But overall, the PFF is taking into account actual data from how players have actually performed on the field, how coaches have actually coached their teams, not recruiting rankings, not potential. Not hype. They’re taking actual stuff with how players played. They’re implementing it. And the Big Ten has stronger schedules than the SEC does. That’s a very novel concept to actually take how players actually played. Yeah. Can I address a different layer of this that I just think is so ironic? Sure. Sure. Paul is saying don’t go after non-conference schedule. Don’t go after strength of schedule. Dude, did you listen to media days in the SEC? That’s all they talked about was how much harder the schedule was. and how much more they deserved things like yeah they’re trying to control a narrative what do you think the big ten was trying to do they’re trying to control the narrative on their side like this is pr man like you should know and you have did the big ten try to come out there and present a packet with data from fifteen years ago to try and make the media feel better here’s the thing the big ten is operating behind the scenes and paul feinbaum wants to come after tony patiti and everybody else and act like oh they’re weak because they’re not saying anything no tony patiti talked about it on that joel clatt podcast interview right where he said why would we go to the media the media doesn’t decide this stuff the media is not the one deciding what the playoffs are why would we go out to the media and he’s exactly right the only reason you have you have conferences going out to the media and talking about this stuff is because they’re trying to get the media on their side. They’re trying to get bias on their side, right? Now, do I think the Big Ten should try to get some media bias on their side? Probably, yeah. I should probably do that. But I just listened to a show the other day where a media member who is a known SEC guy went off on Tony Petitti on his show, on the show, went off on Tony Petitti because he did not accept an interview with him. In fact, Tony Petitti ghosted him. The guy asked Tony Petitti, sent a message into his office and said, hey, at Big Ten Media Days, will you do an interview with me? And Tony Petitti ghosted him. It’s because Tony Petitti doesn’t value going to media members, number one, especially not media members, number two, who are known SEC apologists. and trying to do interviews with them. The only person he’s done an interview with is Joel Klatt, and you won’t find anybody in the big media who is much more of a Big Ten apologist than Joel Klatt. Well, maybe us, but we’re not nearly as big as Joel Klatt. And Joel, like, it’s smart, right? It’s the old, I’ve said this quote before, but it’s the old Teddy Roosevelt adage of, like, speak softly, carry a big stick. Right. Like, he knows the TV exec game because that’s what he is. and these like paul feinbaum and a lot of these other guys they don’t like it because you know what you didn’t hear from not just from tony patiti but from a lot of these coaches they they did talk big but you know what they were asked about it when they’re asked about it yeah but they also didn’t defend themselves why because they’re not threatened The SEC feels threatened. Like Paul Feinbaum, like this is a media hit by Paul Feinbaum. You want to know why he’s doing it? Because he feels threatened. You know what pays his salary? Like SEC coverage and the SEC being great. Yeah. And that interview, we also talked about how the sec and ESPN don’t need media days and how it’s just something for the local radio and everything that, and it’s like, well, yeah, the sec network doesn’t need big tin media days, but guess what? They sent everybody to sec media days. They sent everybody there and ESPN sent people to big tin media days. So if you don’t need Big Ten Media Days, why are you spending the money to send Heather Dinich to Las Vegas for her to go and ask questions? If you don’t need it, why not give that time to the other ones? So anyway, we’re giving too much time to Paul Feidbaum. What are your closing thoughts, Zach? That’s my best Paul Feinbaum impression. I love it. I love

In this exciting episode of The Big Ten Huddle, hosts JR and Zach Guggenheim preview the 2025 Big Ten football season by discussing one pivotal question for each team as fall camps begin. Recorded on July 30, 2025, the episode captures the anticipation of the season, now less than 30 days away, and celebrates the show’s milestone of reaching 3,000 YouTube subscribers. The hosts engage with their audience, share their excitement for the upcoming season, and provide insightful questions that could define each team’s performance.

Topics Discussed
Introduction and Show Overview: JR introduces the episode, joined by Zach, and highlights the start of Big Ten fall camps, noting their month-long duration (00:00:00 – 00:00:29).

Audience Engagement: The hosts encourage likes, subscriptions, and five-star podcast ratings, humorously requesting negative feedback be sent to JR’s email (jrsrankings@gmail.com) instead of one-star reviews (00:00:29 – 00:01:01).

Big Ten Team Questions:

Indiana (00:05:21 – 00:07:39): Will Fernando Mendoza’s mobility add a new dimension to Indiana’s offense, especially with an improved offensive line and Mike Shanahan’s system?

Rutgers (00:08:32 – 00:10:59): Can the offensive and defensive lines exceed expectations, with new starters and transfers like Blue Eli potentially impacting games against teams like Iowa and Minnesota?

Illinois (00:11:00 – 00:13:23): Who will defensive line coach Terrence Jamison develop as the next standout, with players like Curt Neal and James Thompson Jr. stepping up?

Michigan State (00:13:30 – 00:14:23): Can transfers like Eaton and Martinez solidify the Spartans’ secondary to make it more reliable under Joe Rossi’s defensive scheme?

USC (00:36:47 – 00:37:24): Will quarterback Maiava become more consistent play-to-play, avoiding turnovers to lead the Trojans effectively?

Penn State (00:37:30 – 00:38:55): Can Nolan Rusi live up to his five-star recruiting hype and secure the right tackle position after a strong playoff performance?

Northwestern (00:38:59 – 00:41:27): Will receivers like Griffin Wild and tight end Alex Lyons capitalize on Preston Stone’s big arm, supported by a robust offensive line?

Oregon (00:42:30 – 00:44:14): Who will emerge as Dante Moore’s go-to receiver with Evan Stewart likely out, with candidates like Malik Benson and Justice Lowe in the mix?

Nebraska (00:44:18 – 00:45:08): Can the running backs produce at a Big Ten level, and how will the front seven, with new starters, perform in camp?

Fan Interaction and Questions:
The hosts address fan comments, including a suggestion from Max for an episode on Big Ten streaks (00:03:08 – 00:03:36).

They respond to a super chat from Dave about the Paul Bunyan Axe trophy and membership issues (00:04:17 – 00:05:01).

JR and Zach discuss the possibility of a Big Ten Huddle meetup, potentially at the Big Ten Championship in Indianapolis (00:02:46 – 00:03:03).

Max’s question about Indiana’s 30-game losing streak to Ohio State sparks debate on when it might end, with optimism for Indiana under coach Kirk Cignetti (00:46:00 – 00:49:08).

Closing Remarks: The hosts wrap up with excitement for the season, promising a call-in show in August and thanking listeners for their support (00:49:11 – 00:50:01).

Useful Timestamps
00:00:00 – Introduction to the Big Ten Huddle
00:05:21 – Indiana: Fernando Mendoza’s mobility
00:08:32 – Rutgers: Offensive and defensive line performance
00:11:00 – Illinois: Defensive line development
00:13:30 – Michigan State: Secondary reliability
00:36:47 – USC: Maiava’s consistency
00:37:30 – Penn State: Nolan Rusi’s potential
00:38:59 – Northwestern: Receivers and Preston Stone’s arm
00:42:30 – Oregon: Go-to receiver for Dante Moore
00:44:18 – Nebraska: Running backs and front seven
00:46:00 – Fan question: Indiana’s Ohio State streak
00:49:11 – Closing and call-in show announcement

Additional Notes
The hosts express gratitude to fans like Doreen and Steely for sharing the stream and acknowledge new commenter Joshua Justice (00:41:30).
They humorously discuss avoiding sharing personal addresses online and their love for the Paul Bunyan Axe trophy (00:02:14 – 00:05:01).
Zach shares his plans for smoked buffalo wings for the season opener, adding a fun, personal touch (00:01:54 – 00:02:15).
The episode highlights the growing excitement around Indiana’s program and debates Ohio State’s recruiting dip and schedule challenges (00:46:46 – 00:49:08).

You can also expect videos by JR throughout the week covering news and interesting topics.

*All times are Eastern time

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