Hey, hey, where you been, but I talk is about to begin, hey, hey, hey, come on in, welcome back to the big Wednesday book I talk

Doug Lineries, Nathan Baird, Stephen Means, time to unveil the winners of our preseason Cleveland.com big 10 survey 34 writers, media members from around the big 10 participated this year as tracked down by Nathan Baird. I am a jerk about this, but we deserve to be jerks about this again as I mentioned before one time somebody from the big 10 mentioned it to me that every time I bring up this poll, I say how the big 10 is a bunch of

chickens, and they're scared of hurting people's feelings, and they abandoned doing their own survey 11 years ago now. This is the 11th year of the Cleveland.com poll, but they are a bunch of frickin chickens, and if it wasn't for this, nobody would know who's supposed to win the big 10. So this is like the best one of the best things we do.

I'm always going to claim credit for it on behalf of Cleveland.com, and this is the frickin deal. So thanks to everybody who votes, but this is our thing. And you as a loyal buck, I talk listener man, like you got in with the right crew, because we do this. So we are going to reveal who was who is the big 10 favorite, who are the teams picked to win the East and the West.

We have our rankings, the preseason offensive player of the year, the preseason defensive player of the year, and then we did an additional thing this year with who are the best coaches in the big 10. That's not preseason coach of the year or anything.

That's not really a vote. It's more just like, hey, we're curious how people think of these guys. So we added that in. And Nathan, you know, I remember when you were a voter in this, some guy in a list that I was sending stuff out to, I mean, this is, this is great that we do this. I like it. I want us to take a little victory lap here, because you spend a bunch of time. You basically were in Hawaii. You got remarried, not remarried married again.

And then you came back and started adding up votes, like this takes some work, but somebody's got to do it and we're happy to be the ones to do it.

It definitely feels like the unofficial start to the preseason, at least for me, like the day that I have to sit down and tabulate everything.

But I also come out of it. I feel like with information, I come out of it with a new perspective on how the big 10, how the collectively, how the big 10 media looks at the conference and maybe makes me reevaluate some things and look at things from a new perspective.

And also sometimes makes me question why some people cover the big 10. So I'm sure they think the same thing about me sometimes. So we'll see how this goes.

Steven, you listen, I'm not expecting a bunch of individual team writers in the big 10. And that's not just that Phil Steele's one of the voters in our survey. There's some other people in there.

But listen, when you cover your team, you're an expert on your team, but I'm not expecting people to be experts on the other 13 teams. So a lot of this is perception.

But that's all this preseason stuff is they're not, you know, you're sending something to an Iowa writer and they did not break down film to decide, you know, whether Maryland or Rutgers is going to finish 5th or 6th in the east, right?

I know that it's just perception, but it's interesting to get of read on what the perception is. And usually the perception, not usually the perception, the big 10 centers around Ohio State every year.

So I'm assuming, oh, I mean, of course, Ohio State could be picked to win other unanimous. What was their support? Who are the challengers? It's only perception Steven, but I think perception is useful at this time of year.

Perception is basically what we're really asking is, do you think Ohio State is going to win a big 10 again? Yes, yes or no? And if so, who are they going to face? Is it going to be a new opponent or is it going to be Wisconsin or Northwestern?

That's been for the past couple of years here. And then after that, how does everybody else fall in line on any given year? Do you think Penn State's going to get back to being the Penn State we all know and love?

Or does Indiana really have a shot here to claim it's spot as a second best team in the big 10 east?

So I think perhaps the most interesting discussion for us is going to be who won preseason Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year was at Chris Olavi or Garrett Wilson.

And what's the vote on that? So we'll get to that. I would start with that except like if you're listening to this podcast from information, that's not the most important thing.

You want to know what the vote was for the big 10 champ. So we will start with that, but know that's coming offensive player of the year.

Who is it? And then defensive player of the year, the same thing. And then we'll get into that vote on who the best coach in the big 10 is Nathan. Is it okay with you if we guess a little bit on how the vote went down with some of these?

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