The Big Ten needs a new commissioner. A couple of weeks after word initially leaked that Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren was a candidate to become the new president of the Chicago Bears, the move became official Thursday morning.
Warren is leaving his post in suburban Chicago and moving to the city where he’ll help the Bears move to suburban Chicago. The Chicago Bears are hoping to build a new stadium in suburban Arlington Heights, one with a roof, unlike the renovated Soldier Field, which looks like an alien spacecraft crashed into the old Soldier Field on the shore of Lake Michigan.
As for his time with the Big Ten, Warren had mixed results. He got off to a rocky start with the people he was working for when he postponed the Big Ten season in 2020 during the COVID pandemic, only to change course after other conferences played without incident. However, he made it up to them by ensuring their athletic department budgets would overflow with cash from the new television rights deal he helped bring to the conference.
Oh, and he convinced USC and UCLA to join the conference, which helped get even more money for the TV deal. So, win some, lose some, I suppose. It will be interesting to see what direction the Big Ten goes from here. Does the league again go “outside the box” and hire someone from outside the collegiate world, or will it make more of an “old-school” hire?
Elsewhere:
All right, you read these picks while I touch up my resume to submit for the open Big Ten commissioner job.
All times Eastern, and all odds via Caesars Sportsbook
🔥 The Hot Ticket
Celtics at Nets, 7:30 p.m. | TV: TNT
Latest Odds:
Under 226
- Key Trend: The under is 5-1 in Brooklyn’s last six games.
- The Pick: Under 226 (-110)
Ah, it’s my favorite time of year: when I have to figure out how to handicap NBA games missing pivotal players. The Brooklyn Nets started to look like a team that could live up to its star power, and then Kevin Durant sprained his MCL and will miss time. The same thing happened last January, and the Nets went 5-16 without him and had an 11-game losing streak during the heart of it.
Needless to say, with the team currently sitting second in the Eastern Conference, they can withstand such a run better than they could last year, and as our James Herbert writes, the Nets are in a better place to deal with Durant’s injury than they were last year. Still, that won’t do much for tonight’s game against the lone team ahead of the Nets in the Eastern Conference.
With Durant, the Nets are favored. Without him, they’re home underdogs to the Celtics, and I’m staying away from the spread. So how does a Brooklyn offense that ranks fifth in efficiency fare without Durant against one of the top defenses in the league? Probably not as well as it would with him, and that could lead to a lower offensive output from the Nets tonight. However, the Nets aren’t exactly slouches on the defensive end themselves, so I can see them flustering the Celtics tonight, even without Durant.
Which is why I believe the better play here tonight is on the total than the spread.
Here’s what SportsLine is saying about the game: It’s safe to say the Projection Model and I are agreeing to disagree on this one.
💰 College Basketball Picks
Minnesota at Ohio State, 6:30 p.m. | TV: FS1
Latest Odds:
Ohio State Buckeyes
-15
The Pick: Ohio State -15 (-110) — The Big Ten remains one of the best conferences in college basketball, but when it comes to power rating entire conferences, it will rate lower this season than usual. That’s because a large anchor is weighing the conference down, and that anchor is named Minnesota.
Seriously, the Gophers are very bad, and not in the typical “worst team in the Big Ten” bad. I mean, this team would be projected to finish seventh or eighth in the Sun Belt, according to KenPom bad. As such, you don’t see spreads like this often in Big Ten conference games, but it’s this large for a reason.
Minnesota’s best win this season has been against Cal Baptist. Five of its eight losses have come by at least 10 points, while a sixth came by nine. Yes, it’s hung around in its last two games, but one was against Wisconsin after Tyler Wahl was hurt in the first half, and the other was against the Big Ten’s next-worst team (though still a ways better than Minnesota), Nebraska. Ohio State has the most efficient offense in the country. Minnesota will be helpless against it.
Coastal Carolina at Old Dominion, 7 p.m. | TV: ESPN+
Latest Odds:
Coastal Carolina Chanticleers
+7
The Pick: Coastal Carolina +7 (-110) — Speaking of the Sun Belt, Coastal Carolina is one of the teams Minnesota would be favored against in the conference right now. Old Dominion is another one, and it is favored over Coastal tonight. However, it shouldn’t be favored this heavily.
The Monarchs move at a plodding pace and don’t shoot well. I have a hard time trusting teams with those traits to cover spreads, particularly when they’re one of the worst free-throw shooting teams in the country.
What’s funny is that Old Dominion is decent from three, shooting 35.4% — but it rarely shoots threes. Only 26% of its field goal attempts are from beyond the arc, which ranks 357th of 363 teams. Anyway, I like Coastal’s chances here because even though Old Dominion is better defensively, it fouls a lot, and the one thing Coastal does well is shoot free throws. It ranks ninth nationally at 79.2%.
🔒 SportsLine Pick of the Day: The Projection Model has only one A-graded play for tonight’s college basketball slate, and it’s in the late-night game between San Diego and Pepperdine.
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