In Any Given Game
The conventional wisdom has always been that in any given game any team can win. But we still do things like rankings and stuff.

Well, the Big Ten is out to prove that any team can win and that rankings mean little. Unless I've missed one, the unranked team playing a ranked team with Big Ten teams has won every time this season. The lower ranked team has beat the higher ranked team. Today was no exception:

Penn State (#16) is now the only undefeated team in the Big Ten conference after defeating Ohio State (#6). It was the same day that Wisconsin (#14) lost to unranked Northwestern and unranked Minnesota beat Michigan (#21).

There is a message in that, of course. And it is right there in that idea that any time can win on any given day. Sure there are underdogs and favorites and most-likely-to-win teams. Sure the odds of one team winning may seem astronomically small. But it can happen.

If it couldn't why play the game? If it couldn't why would we root for the underdog? Why would Rocky and Cinderella Man grab our attention as more than wishful thinking if it weren't a possibility?

There is hope. There is always hope. Look, even God chose the least likely of people millenia ago, not because they were the top-ranked nation, but because they weren't perhaps so that all of us underdogs might know that we are not the losers.