Drew Collins from Chuckoliver.net has teamed up with Bud Elliott from Tomahawknation.com and myself, and we’ve decided to embark on a weekly handicapping podcast for all things college football. And just because there isn’t live football (we do have odds now, though) that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to talk about.

The goal of these podcasts is simple: provide a unique look at college football and offer up analysis on point spreads and/or other odds that could help you cash in at the betting window. Even if you’re not actively involved in any wagers yourself, the tie-ins using off-the-field happenings and on-the-field trends might be something you might find interesting.

First up for us was the Big Ten. We talked quite a bit about Ohio State, how their potential fall could impact the conference, who we like heading into next season, and what to make of the tOSU coaching search. Thanks again to Drew for setting this up, and look for our take on college football’s biggest games and point spreads next week.

The Big Ten appears to have found their title game spot for this year and beyond.

Although it had already been decided that the first-ever Big Ten Championship Game would be played at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on December 3rd of this year, the future venue for this game was still up in the air. On Sunday, however, the Big Ten announced that they had voted unanimously to keep the title game in Indy until at least 2015.

The final two locations lobbying for the event were Lucas Oil and Soldier Field in Chicago. While the thought of playing in Chicago along with the outdoor game excited a lot of Big Ten folks, Indy will have first dibs, at least for the first four years.

A lot has been made about the possibility of having the title game outdoors and in the elements. Delany made it clear, however, that they wanted to be safe with the location choice out of the gate.

“In order to establish ourselves, build a foundation, it was a good idea to be indoors for a period of time, see what we have, and then go from there,” Delany acknowledged. “We wanted to be cautious, conservative, call it what you will. But we wanted to get a great foundation for the game, for our fans, for television, and then after we’ve established that, I think we can make other judgments about whether or not we need or want to go to an outdoor venue in the future.”

A lot has and will continue to be made of playing outdoors and you’re going to hear a variety of unique opinions about the issue. My thoughts: playing at Soldier Field would be cool even though the playing surface is a mess, especially once winter kicks into full swing.

I understand why they’d want to get things going in Indy and having four consecutive years will give them ways to work out the initial kinks and improve on the event going forward. It also gives the B1G something to possibly promote or discuss if they decide that an outdoor, cold-weather game is the direction they’d like to go.

Now, the meat head in all of us wants to clamor for an outdoor game. While I am in no way opposed to this game being played without a roof, I won’t be throwing a fit either. Fact of the matter if most of the college football season is played in manageable temperatures without snow, although their are certainly some exceptions in certain parts of the Midwest.

As a B1G fan, I’m just thrilled to have a title game. The fact that we’re having the debate on where it should be played shows how far we’ve come in a short amount of time.

Now, if we could somehow tackle this whole Legends and Leaders debacle…

Unfortunately for us Big Ten folks, raises hand hoping no one notices, it would appear that Legends and Leaders is still a go at least in 2011 for the B1G.

Jim Delany and company listened to your (well, our) complaints, acknowledged that the overwhelming majority did not like the new division names and/or logo, and have decided to proceed with it anyway.

Although nothing appears to be changing for now, that didn’t stop a handful of talented Photoshoppers from creating what they believe would be a better Big Ten logo. To be honest, many of these are in fact much better efforts than what we saw above, but then again that isn’t saying much.

This unofficial redesign, however, is worth a look for those B1G fans out there who are hoping the new logo will magically go away. It won’t but these aren’t bad, and you can dream for a day where our players are outrunning other players in “faster” conferences and our names and logos don’t embarrass us nationally.