Let’s save pessimism for oil changes and professional meetings. Expect to replace the catalytic converter and turn long-established practices on their head. It cushions the blow. Save the optimism for music choices and gambling.

There is magic in the night regardless of the beauty, but there’s also magic in betting the Over for a team’s win total. Something is more fulfilling about projecting success. An unfulfilled prognosis of failure is just a misdirected dream. It’s petty to actively wish for someone’s failure. Wait until the cracks in the facade show, then grab a front row seat, some Thundersticks, and low calorie treats to bask in the misery.

Which means the Big Ten East put me in the unenviable position to project win totals. Unlike its counterparts in the West where wild-eyed optimism permeates, our friends at mybookie.ag nailed it on the numbers. Whether my agreement with them speaks to my gain in knowledge or their professional shortcomings remains to be seen.

It would be great to sleep sound at night, convinced of an Over, and hope upon hope that the wins pile up, but we’re not in the business of feel-good. There are a number of vices for that.

Onto the misery.

The team: Indiana

The number: 6.5 wins

The play: Under -140

The logic: To hit the number Indiana would eclipse six wins for the first time since 2007 when Bill Lynch, the man who shares a name with your local State Farm rep, walked the sidelines. The Hoosiers last beat one of the conference’s big four in 2016 when they defeated Michigan State. That victory represents the lone win since 2014 against the division’s elite. Indiana returns seven starters on offense and eight on defense but experience alone is a small attribute when the Hoosiers play Northwestern, Nebraska, and Purdue as their cross-over games in conference. As the eleventh-ranked defense in conference (in conference I say) last year, is the experience of the group going to amount to an improved opportunity to tighten it up based on a year of growth, or are they going to be more accustomed to giving up large chunks of yardage and familiar in its shortcomings? Pass.

Or run. Teams should be able to do booth against the Hoosiers.

The team: Maryland

The number: 4

The play: Under -105

The logic: A cool national talking point is the adoration of Mike Locksley’s hiring at Maryland. An even cooler national talking point is the evisceration of ghosts and Boogeymen (contrary to popular belief, there’s more than one. How can there not be as we as a nation are criminally congested? ) who supposedly don’t like the hire because of Locksley’s no good, horrible, very bad tenure as head coach at New Mexico.

The program is on solid footing, removed from the wretched period last year when Bonnie Bernstein and others on the university’s Board of Regents took home a cool $650 an hour to mull over D.J. Durkin’s employment before public outcry put that decision on a shrimp boat with Alabama’s most famous kickoff return man.

Maryland corrected the internal unrest with a feel-good hire. Locksley gets to reap the benefits of his roots and opportunity to recruit on a premiere level but grabbing a fourth win looks tough. It looks almost impossible if it’s not locked up by October 26. The Terrapins end the season at Minnesota, home against Michigan, at Ohio State, home against Nebraska, and on the road against Michigan State. Take the Under and give all those phantom critics something to cheer about.

The team: Penn State

The number: 8.5

The play: Under -125

The logic: Prior to the Penn State offense clicking after the Michigan game in 2016, James Franklin walked a fine line on surviving the rest of the season. Then the bountiful loot of Saquon Barkley, Joe Moorhead, and Trace McSorley came together in a beautiful mixture of attributes and decisions that yielded a Big Ten Championship. An even better record followed in 2017, but the end of last season marked the end of that trio’s time in Happy Valley with McSorley’s graduation.

Enter the year of transition. The Nittany Lions own the nation’s sixth-best recruiting class from 2018. The efforts on the recruiting circuit validated Franklin’s efforts to make Penn State elite, but that sort of youth seems one year away from turning the corner on eight wins.

Penn State has the similar feeling that I get from Minnesota, and though I can’t find any early futures on a Minnesota Penn State 2021 Big Ten Championship I like them more next year than this year based on the abundance of productive sophomores on the roster.