Jim Delaney probably has the sorest rear end this side of the Mason-Dixon Line.

The Big Ten commissioner, in the past four weeks, has done little else but watch his conference, often considered the best in the land, get its collective rump kicked early and often by the Pac-10, Conference USA and at least one independent.

Michigan found itself on the seat of its pants last week, losing 23-20 to UCLA.

Notre Dame sent Purdue flying with a 23-21 victory.

And it took Wisconsin overtime to dismantle Cincinnati, 28-25.

Of course, there's also the Mid-American Conference, the perennial airbag that supposedly used to pad the schedules of the Big Ten contingent.

"Yeah, I was," Minnesota coach Glen Mason said when asked if he was surprised about the early losses, 12 in all.

"And some of those games, I didn't even think they were going to be close," Mason said.

Hmmm. . . Penn State, Toledo? Maybe he spoke of his own Golden Gophers, losing to Ohio University.

Or maybe, was he referring to those Nittany Lions again, losers to Big East powerhouse Pittsburgh last weekend?

This week, however, it's redemption time. And since the Big Ten teams don't have time to take it out on anyone else anymore, they'll have to take it out on each other for the rest of the season instead.

The beleaguered Lions will try to turn around a 1-3 season against Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio at noon.

Ten minutes later, Northwestern will open at Wisconsin and Minnesota will play at Purdue.

Michigan will travel to Illinois later that evening in an attempt to rectify the 35-29 upset the Fighting Illini pulled last year in Ann Arbor.

Rocky road

When asked if posters of Illnois tailback Rocky Harvey, who scored the game-winning touchdown against the Wolverines last year, were hanging around Michigan's locker room, Wolverines coach Lloyd Carr grumbled.

"I'm not going to get into that," Carr said about the Illini runner.

Foot in the mouth

Last week, Purdue coach Joe Tiller said, in no uncertain terms, that the pass will remain the Boilermakers' main offensive threat as long as he runs the system he does.

Yet, Saturday in the loss to Notre Dame, the Boilers ran 43 times and passed just 24 times.

"The run was there, and when you're having success running the football, you continue to run it," Tiller said.

"And field position wise, we didn't feel like we had good field position all day long, and we didn't want to turn the ball over on our side of the field.

"Of course, if you were watching, we did turn the ball over once on our side of the field.

"And it didn't turn out good for us because they ended up marching down and scoring a field goal against us," the Purdue coach said.

Oops.

QB, or not QB?

The Michigan schools have quarterbacking issues.

For instance, in Ann Arbor, Wolverines phenom Drew Henson might miss yet another game.

We're not going to know anything until later in the week," Michigan coach Lloyd Carr said.

"We'll just have to see how he practices. He'll still practice, but the question is, can he practice enough to get ready to play during the weekend?"

If not, John Navarre should look to start for the fourth consecutive week.

Against UCLA last week, Navarre went 8-for-28.

Hmmm . . . Carr played quarterback once before.

In East Lansing, Michigan State coach Bobby Williams was a bit more optimistic about returning Ryan Van Dyke to the starting lineup.

In the meantime, true freshman Jeff Smoker has stepped in, played well and helped the Spartans get off to their early 2-0 record.

"Ryan practiced a little bit yesterday, a lot better than he was last week," Williams said. "I'll suspect he'll be ready to go Saturday, but it's going to be a day to day thing. We'll probably make a definite announcement later in the week."

Quote of the week:

"We're going from the frying pan to the fryer."

— Northwestern coach Randy Walker, on facing Wisconsin Saturday after losing to Texas Christian last weekend