Sorry this post is a bit late. For full instructions on-em contest works, click here.

Steve and my picks are listed verbatim in this week’s Touchdown Times. The only disagreement we had to settle was the Notre Dame vs. Michigan State game, and we are taking MSU.

Illinois @ Indiana
MSU @ Notre Dame
Penn State @ Michigan
Iowa @ Wisconsin
Purdue @ Minnesota
Northwestern @ Ohio State

Good luck!

Props to Minnesota and Indiana last week for barely beating mid-major teams and thwarting our perfect week. But anyway, here’s our predictions for this week’s Illini Media Company sponsored Big Ten Pick’em Contest. If you need refreshing on what this contest is about, here it is: In Friday’s edition of the Daily Illini, you’ll find an ad in the Sports section with the following weeks Big Ten games. You’ll have until the next Thursday to hand in those picks for the weekends Big Ten games to the Illini Media Building located between Fifth and Sixth Streets on Green Street. Then on Friday, David Just and Steve Contorno, the Daily Illini Sports Editors, will make thier picks as well and post them on the DI Sports Wrap-up blog. If your picks beat ours, then you’ll be put in a drawing to win free tickets to the next home game. Got it? Ok here we go.

Remember, the following picks are for this weekend’s games, but you needed to get the entry form from last Friday’s DI and submit it by yesterday to be included in this week’s contests. If you want to be in next week’s contest, go find a Daily Illini on Campus somewhere and search for the entry form with the games listed for the weekend of September 22.

Here’s the Sports Desk’s picks, Big Ten teams in caps, the winners in bold.

Season record: 9-2

ILLINOIS at Syracuse
Akron at INDIANA
IOWA at Iowa State
Notre Dame at MICHIGAN
Pittsburgh at MICHIGAN STATE
MINNESOTA at Florida Atlantic
Duke at NORTHWESTERN
OHIO STATE at Washington
Buffalo at PENN STATE
Central Michigan at PURDUE
The Citadel at WISCONSIN

Good luck!

Alright sports fans, here’s the deal. Every week Illini Media Company will be giving away football tickets to the lucky contestant who can out pick The Daily Illini sports desk. All you have to do is Beat the Blogger. Each week, we’ll run an ad in Friday’s sports section with a list of the Big Ten games. Readers have until Thursday to bring their entries in to a drop box in the lobby. The sports bloggers will also predict winners for that set of games that will be posted on the website Friday in the DI Sports Wrap Up Blog. Readers who have beat the predictions of the sports bloggers will be entered in a drawing for tickets to the next HOME game. We’ll run the contest even on weeks when the next game is away, the winners will just come from a bigger pool of contestants.

Now, I’m not sure how the marketing works for this, so week one might just be a test run. We’ll let you know. You can also post your predictions on the blog for fun, but they don’t count unless you actually bring your selections to the Illini Media Building (the home of The Daily Illini, located between Fifth and Sixth on Green Street).

Like I said, no guarentees this week. We haven’t nailed out all the kinks yet.

But here’s our picks for each of this week’s Big Ten games, winners are bolded:

Akron @ Ohio State

Nevada @ Northwestern

Bowling Green @ Michigan State

Eastern Illinois @ Purdue

Miami (OH) @ Minnesota

Oregon @ Michigan

Notre Dame @ Penn State

Western Illinois @ Illinois

Syracuse @ Iowa

Indiana @ Western Michigan

Wisconsin @ UNLV