Big Ten Football Morning Coffee: No More Columbus Workhorses?

Rise and shine, friends. Here's what's going down in the Big Ten today.

The school that brought us workhorses like Archie Griffin, Keith Byars, and Eddie George isn't likely to continue that tradition under Urban Meyer, writes Rob Oller of the Columbus Dispatch. Winning's much more important than continuing traditions, but you can't exactly blame OSU fans if they read this and have nightmares about That Former Coach Up North and his ill-fated dalliances with the spread.

Dave Nichols, a retired Penn State professor and one member of the PSU coaching search committee, spoke up about the process of hiring Dave O'Brien. No other coaches' names were mentioned, but when Nichols mentions that some applicants were merely paying lip service to academic goals, we can only assume that they were interviewing John Calipari to coach football for some reason.

Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini is being mentioned as a potential replacement for Bobby Petrino at Arkansas, per Omaha.com. Let me save Arkansas a little time on this one: nooooooooooooope.

Wisconsin is toying with putting James White and Montee Ball in the backfield at the same time. From a versatility standpoint it's fantastic, but unless you're going to use either White or Ball to lead-block for the other (which seems like a sensational misuse of talent), the straight-forward running game's probably going to suffer.

Marc Morehouse says there's competition everywhere at wide receiver for Iowa—including for the No. 1 spot, which is either bad news for Keenan Davis or very good news for Kevonte Martin-Manley.