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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The “Lost In The Big Ten” tour is rounding its final turn and pointing back home to Omaha, and here's what I've found after seeing five schools in five days: Iowa, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Michigan and Purdue.

Nebraska's campus holds its own. NU athletic facilities, thus far, probably take the cake — especially in baseball. And Husker fans of several sports will love hitting these quirky destinations over the next decade, discovering a new landmark or food dive each time they do.

While there's more to come in Monday's edition about Purdue and Illinois, here's a recap of the journey to this point.

Five Highlights

• Iowa's Kinnick Stadium is an excellent setting for college football. It's not as big as Michigan's or Wisconsin's offerings, but it's equal to their presence. And the 20-foot Nile Kinnick statue stands for more than just winning a national title. The Hawkeyes have a definite home-field advantage.

• Wisconsin will quickly become a Husker fan favorite destination. Madison is full of quirks, good food and energy like Austin, Texas, without any of the latent guilt that goes along with enjoying anything connected to the University of Texas. And Husker fans can respect the way the Badgers play football and basketball. It's the Midwest with a good twist. I liked, too, the confidence of UW head coach Bret Bielema. He's personable, but there's an edge there, too. I'm intrigued to see how the Badgers' season plays out.

• Purdue was a pleasant surprise. You'll read more about it on Monday. An eye-pleasing, cohesive campus with football facilities that rival Nebraska's. And Purdue boasts the best golf courses on the Big Ten tour, too. The best of them, Kampen Course, was designed by Pete Dye and hosted the 2008 men's NCAA Championships.

• Michigan's Yost Ice Arena. On a campus with nice-but-sterile athletic facilities — including Michigan Stadium — Yost has memorable character. Hockey lags behind football, basketball and baseball among major American sports, but it gets so many of the little details right: uniforms, arenas, equipment. The University of Nebraska at Omaha needs a more intimate — albeit newer — setting like this.

• Northwestern does well with considerably less; its weight room is a mere sliver of Nebraska's Ndamukong Suh-fueled palace. The basketball arena barely has a concourse. Most of the football and basketball facilities are separate from campus, located in a neighborhood.

If university officials could go in a time machine and rethink the building plan, they would have put the football stadium near Lake Michigan and turned it into a tailgating paradise. In lieu of that is the most ambitious athletics master plan in the school's history. What Northwestern looks like now could be quite different from what it looks like in a decade. Combine that campus, the value of its degree and some decent facilities, and the Wildcats can open some big recruiting doors.

Nine Oddities

• A llama ranch outside Sawyer, Mich.

• A hunger strike at Madison's State Capitol building.

• Sunbathers on the front lawn of the Badgers' basketball arena, the Kohl Center. Something you'd never see at the Bob in Lincoln.

• Northwestern's colors are purple and black, but many of the campus “Northwestern University” signs are brown, wooden planks with gold letters etched into them.

• A sign for Sandhill Crane Vineyards. In Michigan. Maybe the owner was inspired by the annual, extraordinary migration of cranes that makes a pit stop near Grand Island.

• The fire hydrants on Michigan's campus are painted like the team's helmets. Taxicabs, too.

• More “Michiganity”: Most parking meters on campus are linked to kiosks found on every street. You pay there with a credit card and it tracks your time. Maybe that's why the only ticket I got on the trip was in Ann Arbor.

• Meijer, a regional “supercenter” chain based in Michigan. Think Walmart crossed with Baker's. They were all over up there. Not so much odd as one of those things you stumble upon that you never knew about.

• The founder of Purdue University, John Purdue, is buried on campus. So is David Ross, one of two names in Ross-Ade football stadium.

More thoughts:

Renovation Central: Basketball arenas at Michigan, Purdue and Iowa were getting major facelifts. All three had been essentially gutted. Northwestern plans to do something with its small throwback arena, while Wisconsin's Kohl Center is one of the hoops gems of the Big Ten.

Best Campus: Northwestern. Make the effort to wind your way through Evanston and find it. Purdue was No. 2 for me. Others would love Michigan. I found it too cramped and tree-stuffed for my taste.

Best Drive: Iowa City to Madison. A lovely three-hour stretch, mostly on U.S. Highway 151, which runs through Dubuque, Iowa, one of the prettier towns in the Midwest. After you cross the Mississippi River, the drive in Wisconsin becomes a series of long, swooping descents and climbs through hilly farmland.

Worst Drive: Southern Michigan is one long, monotonous line of trees — it made me more appreciate the plain open roads of Nebraska — but nothing's more irritating than working your way through the toll roads of Chicago. Because Evanston — home of Northwestern University — is way on the north side, I got the distinct displeasure of the entire Chicago driving experience. If only Lake Shore Drive stretched from Wisconsin to Indiana.

Overall, the trip reiterated to me that, while I complain about driving in Nebraska, I shouldn't. Nebraska doesn't have frontage roads or weird mid-island merge lanes or 45-mile-an-hour speed limits on six-lane Interstates that nobody bothers to mind because it's too dangerous to go that slow. You try going 45 on what amounts to an airport runway. The road rules in and around Chicago are bewildering and pointless.

Best Food: Madison. Bratwursts, good cheese and freshwater fried fish. And a lot of local brews for people with a taste for that.

Best FM Station: 107.1 WKQL Ann Arbor. Arcade Fire, Springsteen and Fitz and the Tantrums in one hour? That'll play.

Best AM Station: 720 WGN Chicago. The Cubs on summer nights with smoke-cured voices recounting the day's mayhem, traffic snarls and corruption. The dismal tide with a dose of honey. There's still something about news radio.

Best football facilities: Of the five schools I've visited so far, Purdue edges out Michigan. The Boilers have a full-size indoor facility and two outdoor fields, just like Nebraska. All of it is a single stairway from Ross-Ade Stadium.

Best basketball facilities: Wisconsin, for now. Purdue seems to be upgrading Mackey Arena considerably. Michigan is doing the same with Crisler, but Mackey has more character.

Best baseball facilities: Michigan. The rest aren't much better than high school fields. Purdue more or less has a high school field, complete with gravel parking lot.

Best single venue: UM's Yost Ice Arena and Northwestern's lacrosse field tie for first.

Best statue/sculpture: It's a tie, and both are at Purdue: The Engineering Fountain and the Boilermaker statue between Ross-Ade Stadium and Mackey Arena.

Contact the writer:

402-202-9766, sam.mckewon@owh.com

twitter.com/swmckewonOWH

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