lolbuckeyes

The new logos are here! The new logos are maize! The new logo's maize will have nothing to do with the color of the athletic uniforms! The logo:

Modification of this in any way is punishable by death. They also invented a new font for this, which is called "Steve." Steve the font.

Watch it before the NSA T3Media finds you. 50 interceptions:

Entrance of the Lambs. Good news for the baseball team, as Jackson Lamb (P/Civil War general) has reportedly turned down a third-round offer from MLB and will matriculate this fall. Lamb eventually went in the 20th round to Texas, so unless Texas ends up with a ton of extra money by not signing their top picks—baseball got serious about their slotting regulations recently—Lamb will anchor Erik Bakich's first recruiting class.

Over the weekend, Lamb led his Bedford team to a regional title. I'll let Ryan Autullo take it from here:

In exhausting both his pitch count and a mouthy opposing lineup, Jackson Lamb lifted the Kicking Mules to a 3-1 regional semifinal win over Taylor Kennedy. …

Lamb encountered control issues for the second game in a row, walking six batters and wracking up a whopping 146 pitches — exactly twice as many as Kuhr’s 73. Nevertheless, he didn’t allow a run until the bottom of the seventh, at which time Bedford was in front 3-0. An antagonistic Kennedy dugout made a point early and often to try to rattle Michigan’s Gatorade player of the year, mocking Lamb’s failure to locate his fastball and breaking into vociferous chatter typically seen in softball.

Well, I never.

Three more recruits went late and shouldn't be a threat to sign, but junior Michael O'Neill (Yes That O'Neill) got drafted by the Yankees in the third and is probably out the door.

If you get in, you see this. Despite featuring lot of non-regulation Ms, this business tugged a heart string or two:

Bring a fan to orientation. Trust me.

This changes nothing. Indiana made the College World Series, marking the first time since Michigan did it that a Big Ten team has made it to Omaha. This is what a cell phone looked like back then:

on the left, probably

It was 1984.

Meanwhile it has been perfect baseball weather in Ann Arbor for much of the past month, and Fisher sits empty when it could be selling me hot dogs and giving the BTN something other than Bret Bielema fishing tips to televise. The history of NCAA baseball has been Southern teams flipping the northern bits of the country off, and since that's never going to change the Big Ten should just play their own game with 25 scholarships and wood bats. Cheese 'em off real good, that would.

I mean, they could use the money cannon for something cool for once.

Ana-what-now? Apparently Trey Burke's pending, minor draft fall is being driven by data-conscious NBA teams:

"Sources say a number of teams that rely heavily on analytics have Carter-Williams rated higher than Burke," Ford wrote. "While both players look good in the various analytical approaches teams employ, Carter-Williams is coming up at No. 1 and No. 2 overall on several teams' reports. For teams that value analytics, that's a big deal.

"Finally, teams are always looking for upside in the lottery. Carter-Williams has extraordinary size for his position. He is a terrific athlete. He sees the floor as well as any point guard in the draft. His weaknesses -- primarily his shaky jumper -- are the only thing holding him back from being a top-5 pick right now."

Those numbers must be pretty advanced to be able to rank Carter-Williams over Burke, who finished second in the kPOY rankings because he was a huge-usage, huge-assist-rate, low-TO, high-eFG guard. IE: he did everything you could do well. Carter-Williams didn't even finish in the top 500(!) in ORtg because there aren't any barns in upstate New York he hasn't flung a ball past, shooting 44%/29% despite putting up only 20% of Syracuse shots while he's on the court.

Can any defensive ability top that massive gap? I get the upside thing—if MCW learns to shoot he will probably be a better NBA player than Burke despite their college numbers—but isn't that a huge leap to make? How many rhetorical questions can I stuff in a single paragraph? Four?

Trey is just like well, like, that's your opinion, man.

Old school, and OLD SCHOOL. Dooley catches up with a guy who uses "aught-three" to mean 1903:

“My dad played football at [M.A.C.] in the class of aught three,” Drake told me.   “It wasn’t intercollegiate football; it was class team football.  They beat each other up without headgear on the banks of the Red Cedar.”

Yeah, he went to State, but he was in town over the weekend for the Fantasy Camp. Here's Gerald Drake meeting Hoke:

Okay, Bleacher Report, okay. Even though you still pop up an exhortation for me to subscribe to your newsletter on literally every misbegotten visit to your website, I will link you for this from Miami commit KC McDermott:

AK: What's the Urban Meyer story?

KM: The Urban Meyer thing was just funny to me. He came to my school a week after I told his assistant that I wasn't even interested in them. I told him no to his face, and it's got to be one of the top five reactions of someone ever. His facial expression was just so funny. My coach was tearing up and had to go in his office to laugh.

AK: Talk more about coach Meyer's face when you told him no. Was he mad, upset?

KM: More like the state of shock where the guy has literally never been told no in his life. It literally looked like a kid the first time you tell him 'no, you can't do something.' It looked like he was a baby about to cry. It was so funny.

If you find a recruit willing to describe Dantonio as "about as personable as a rock, and not a shiny rock you'd find in a river, but like, a boring rock, like some limestone or something" I will link you again, Bleacher Report.

Etc.: My mom would get along with Laura Hoke. The sad status quo for ND-M. Michigan is a dog versus both MSU and OSU early. What Johns Hopkins means for B10 lax. Hype video. Surprise: the Big Ten won't go DIII if O'Bannon wins. Goodbye, Denard.

our latest episode of People In Charge Of Things Are Just In Charge Of Them For No Reaon.

it's true. nefarious designer, I salute you!

Volleyball final four tonight. 7 PM, ESPN 2.

Probably not important but for God's sake we have to at least try. Go here and vote for anything but "Existing Divisions plus one." I like what I'll be calling the Eye Of Sauron Configuration:

Ace with the quick photoshop for the win:

You have the two triangles of hate plus Nebraska's desire to make one of them a parallelogram of hate plus everyone else in the other division. The balance is as fair as possible: M-OSU versus everybody. The straight East-West split is a lot less drivable and places the three teams with the most recruiting muscle in the same division.

They will release results for this on Monday at 6:30, FWIW, and then ignore everything so they can create the JUSTICE and BEATIFIC TOLERANCE divisions while introducing the league's new logo, which is a stained glass window of Jim Delany with a halo.

BONUS: "*Actual Division Names TBD"

Line of the week.  From the MZone:

Thankfully, our pal Surrounded in Columbus is always good for a nugget or four from deep behind enemy lines.  Today he sent the picture below with the following email:

Most people would be disappointed to be 12-0 & staying home.  They're not most people.

No word yet on when Tressel Boned Us But We Still Hoisted Him on Our Shoulders Like Morons Lane is going up.

Ohio State hosts a "celebration of perfection against reason" Tuesday during which Galileo will be burned at the stake and the sun declared to revolve around the earth.

Tell me something I don't know. Maurice Clarett:

He was a hard worker in practice and in games. But off the field, he was living a completely different life. "I took golf, fishing, and softball as classes," Clarett says. "Away from class, anything you can think of I did in my 13 months at Ohio State." Drugs and women were two of the things. Cars were another—he owned three of them at a time, including a brand-new Cadillac and Lexus. "I was living the NFL life in college," he says. "I got paid more in college than I do now in the UFL.

Hey, guys who were interested in Marawatch: now is a high-leverage time for some private investigations of OSU.

Scorched-earth bombing of the week. From Patrick Hruby on the insane levels of subsidy thrown out to nonprofit entities like… the NFL.

In the eyes of the IRS, the National Football League is considered a nonprofit outfit. Just like the United Way. Read that again. The NFL -- a league that makes roughly $9 billion in revenue per season and will collected a guaranteed $27 billion in television money over the next decade -- enjoys the same tax breaks as, say, your local chamber of commerce, because both are classified as 501(c)6 organizations. Under federal law, 501(c)6 organizations -- essentially, business leagues -- are defined as associations of persons having some common business interest, the purpose of which is to promote such common interest and not to engage in a regular business of a kind ordinarily carried on for profit. Does that sound like the NFL to you?

It's been said before but the contrast between socialist NFL and the largely capitalist, competition-driven way European leagues are set up is kind of amazing. I envy soccer fans their league structure in which teams at the bottom are punished, not rewarded, and poor performers drop out of existence. Imagine a world in which the Lions are a fourth-division team and some other Michigan outfit is competing in the NFL. Mmmm. Justice.

Instead, William Clay Ford has been allowed to ruin pro football in Detroit for 50 years. Down with antitrust exemptions for sports.

Speaking of, OH MY GOD. This is from Bylaw Blog proprietor John Infante is… bizarre. Probably unworkable. It has a zero point zero percent chance of actually happening. And it was posted in February, at which point I missed it. But it's kind of amazing to think about:

The College Basketball Champions League (CBBCL) would be the premier college basketball competition. It would consist of the following stages:

• A qualifying stage of up to three rounds;
• A group stage over six weeks;
• A knockout stage of four rounds.

The CBBCL as currently configured would consist of 56–58 teams. All bids to the CBBCL would be automatic bids based on winning or finishing high in your conference. A rating or coefficient system would be used on the conference level, and would be based solely on a conference’s performance in the CBBCL.

Basically, throw over the current model in favor of a Euro soccer model, cups and all. Again, never never happen but thinking about it is pretty cool. No more Binghamton games for top teams as they compete in their conference and the Champions League, just wall-to-wall killer games.

Again, never happen in a million years but it's always fun to think of ways to make revenue by increasing the excitement level of the sport instead of just making fans more and more resentful. One way to do that is to add more silverware. Right now most American sports are structured so that there is one thing to strive for and that thing is determined by fairly random playoff at the end of a regular season.

The February NBA game is the quintessential example of the disease this leads to, and while I find complaints that no one cares about college basketball until the tournament to be unconvincing, people are thinking about goosing the rest of the year:

“Once the reforms to the college football postseason are complete, we have a responsibility to think long and hard about how we can improve the basketball regular season,” said Larry Scott, the commissioner of the Pacific-12 Conference. “The game deserves it.”

Here's an idea: play every nonconference game at the same time on the same court. Yeah! /markhollis'd.

Here's a better idea: expand the preseason tourney exemption to move away from one-weekend events played on neutral courts to a mini-me version of a cup competition in which regular season champions from the previous year square off on randomly-drawn home courts until you get to a final four, which is at MSG or bid out. There are 33, so one play-in game, three weeks of Friday night games, and then a Final Four. Silverware that means something and packs out home floors. HOME FLOORS, people.

Consider your travel plans today. Not those travel plans. Joe Lunardi threw out an updated bracket because ten games into the season's as good a time as any. The bracket has Michigan a one seend(!), bringing forth a question and a statement.

The question: what does Joe Lunardi do nine months out of the year?

The statement: for the first time it looks like the NCAA tournament's decision to break everything into pods and try to get as many top seeds close to home will benefit Michigan, as they're slotted into Auburn Hills in this and any other bracket that bothers to list where people will be.

It will be hard for them to exit that territory since top four seeds usually get priority close to home and there aren't many teams projected to make the top four who would prefer to go to the Palace: MSU, obviously, and then Cincinnati, Notre Dame, and maybe Illinois. With Dayton as another outlet for any of those teams, three or four of them would have to pass Michigan to get that Palace spot. So, yeah.

If Michigan makes the Sweet 16, they'd probably get bumped out of Indianapolis unless they finish above the Hoosiers on the S-Curve. That might not be so bad since they're not playing the regional finals at the basketball arena, but rather the Colts' Stadium. While it will be funny to see Indiana basketball outdraw the Big Ten Championship game significantly, most of those seats are going to be terrible.

Aw man, the other travel plans make you feel baaaad. After hemming and hawing about going to the bowl game I finally did get a flight, and now I feel like a jerk for doing so:

8:54PM EST December 11. 2012 - No bowl game in college football pays more money to one person than the Outback Bowl in Tampa Bay.

His name is Jim McVay, the game's president and chief executive officer.

According to tax forms, the bowl paid McVay $753,946 in fiscal year 2010, $693,212 in 2009 and $808,032 in 2008. His pay has nearly doubled since 2002, when he earned $404,253. This year, his game matches Michigan (8-4) and South Carolina (10-2) on Jan. 1.

"He's done a fabulous job," says Mike Schulze, a spokesman for the game. "It's about being fairly compensated based on what the market dictates."

Dammit. This is why I don't go to bowl games.  McVay made more than the CEO of the American Red Cross, which has revenues of $3.5 billion. The Outback Bowl brought in 10 million, of which they are paying this joker 7.5%. Also:

The median salary for the 15 bosses at the non-profit bowls reviewed by USA TODAY Sports is about three times higher than the $132,739 median for a nonprofit chief executive, according to a study of 3,786 mid-to-large charities in 2010 by Charity Navigator, a charity watchdog.

I mean seriously I feel bad for supporting this in any way.

Q for a non-Rose Bowl rookie: should I just scalp in Tampa? I assume that face value is for suckers, right?

Rutgers lollercoaster. The Big Ten is going to threaten cable companies in the newly expanded Big Ten footprint unless they cut the league the same deal the Midwest does, except this time this is their leverage:

The fact that Maryland and Rutgers are joining the Big Ten Conference doesn’t guarantee that their games will be on the Big Ten Network. In fact, several of their games may not be available locally at all — TV or broadband — when they kick off their Big Ten seasons in 2014.

Maryland and Rutgers face the possibility of having at least two football games and at least 15 basketball games go untelevised locally when they join the conference in a year and a half.

That’s because the Big Ten Conference is looking into a strategy that could keep all Maryland and Rutgers games — encompassing all sports — off of the Big Ten Network unless local distributors place the channel on an expanded basic tier. The Big Ten used that strategy successfully in Nebraska last year when the Cornhuskers joined the conference, and the conference is expected to use it again in 2014 when Maryland and Rutgers join.

I think that'll probably work in DC thanks to Maryland's lacrosse and basketball outfits but if it doesn't it is going to be delightful to see Comcast get into a fight because of the team that plays in the Comcast Center. I cannot wait for that standoff to go down.

I find it difficult to believe many—if any—New York area cable companies are going to look at the threat of not getting two Rutgers football games a year and cave; not having Rutgers basketball is probably a selling point. Here's to a decades-long ban on Rutgers content on the BTN.

Etc.: Get out while you can, Catholic schools! form a sensible 10-12 conference from Milwaukee to DC and watch people like it! Maryland gets money up front to leave the ACC. Chesson and Darboh called out as impressive players early in bowl practice, which yes please. Burke declares M elite. Hardaway's recent shooting is the closest thing Michigan has to a concern right now. Surprise Michigan still doesn't run zone.

900. The video from the boards:

Can we start calling the team Hokemen, Daily?

Speaking of…

We have fewer lame-o wins than anyone! Except Georgia! Pat Forde scours the ten winningest programs in college football history to find the out how many of those wins have been run up against East York Veterinary School. Michigan's docket:

Michigan (19). Total wins: 900. Junk wins: 57 (at least). Percentage of all-time wins that are junk: 6.3. Persistent pigeon: Case Institute of Technology (Ohio), 26-0-1 record. Scheduled junk win that turned into a bad loss: Cleveland AA 8, Michigan 4. What, you were expecting Appalachian State? (Since the game was played in 1891, the AA is not believed to be Alcoholics Anonymous.)

That's actually fewer than anyone in the top ten save Georgia, though Georgia did lose to an empty patch of grass in 1943. The worst offender is USC, with 102 Doris Beautician School beatdowns.

Meanwhile… 8-4, huh? Sounds preview-licious. If only I had known about this Cleveland AA game before Michigan played State.

Is that an axe between your legs or are you just happy to see me? Oh, it's actually an axe.

Via Heiko and his insatiable appetite for panoramic photos. Larger version.

Get there. All weeks are championship weeks:

"Probably just as much as you guys are thinking in your heads," Mealer said. "As much as you guys have been hearing it, we hear it even more. And for you guys, it's probably overbearing and redundant and things like that -- I'm sure, because I can see all the smiles when I brought it up -- but for us, that's why you come to Michigan.

"For us players, it's not redundant, it's not, 'OK we get it.' It's, 'Remember last year? We lost a game here, we lost a game there, and we kept ourselves out of that game.' So we accept the constant reminder of it."

Mealer said there's a picture of the Big Ten championship trophy in the team's Schembechler Hall meeting room. There are roses painted on the walls, a not-so-subtle reminder of the bowl that awaits the league's champion.

This one maybe a little more than most.

I'm not sure I can do this any longer, @umichcompliance. I started following Michigan's compliance feed for some reason. Maybe I needed more dry statements of things I can't do and have never even thought of doing in my life.

It's been a passionate affair so far, but I'm not sure if I can deal with the mindboggle on the regular. To wit:

Michigan Compliance ‏@umichcompliance

The NCAA prohibits the sale of any item with the name, picture or autograph of a currently enrolled student-athlete.

That seems like a pretty reasonable restrict—

!!!

Let's not forget, Dude—that keeping pictures… uh… items with the name, picture, or autograph of a currently enrolled student-athlete… on, uh, your official, you know, website… that ain't legal.

Burkhead may not play. Sounds like Nebraska tailback Rex Burkhead may sit out Saturday after tweaking an ACL sprain last weekend:

Huskers coach Bo Pelini said this aggravation isn't as bad as the one in the Ohio State game, but the repeated issues have him inclined to rest Burkhead for a week. Pelini said Burkhead is day to day and has improved since Saturday.

"He felt really good going into the [Northwestern] game, didn't have any issues in practice," Pelini said. "He's frustrated and obviously disappointed he's had to deal with it. It's been too bad."

Backup/co-starter Ameer Abdullah hasn't ben much of a drop-off: he's averaging almost 6 yards a carry on 86 attempts, with impressive output in the three Big Ten games he's played in—5.5 YPC. He's faster than Burkhead, albeit slighter. Former top 100 recruit Braylon Heard should also get some carries.

Also in Nebraska, reviews of their latest game.

Pitch perfect. The MZone is actually written by Stephen Colbert.

"Nation, I've always been a big fan of Michigan State football coach and scowling man most likely to tell kids to get the hell off his lawn, Mark Dantonio.  His enduring sportsmanship, like getting into public feuds with 21 year old college kids by mocking their height, along with always looking out for the health and best interests of his players, evidenced by holding them out at least two plays when they get an on-field concussion, have made him a role model Spartan fans can be proud of before, during and after the burning of their couches."

Fourth line FTW. The top takeaway from Friday's one-off hockey game against Bentley was the fantastic play of what was nominally the fourth line of Andrew Copp, Zach Hyman, and Justin Selman. They scored twice, dominated play when on the ice, and must have locked themselves into additional playing time as Michigan kicks off their final CCHA campaign against Miami:

The line of Hyman, Copp and Selman has “really given our team a life,” according to Michigan coach Red Berenson.

“He told us what we needed to do to have a good week in practice,” Selman said. “He was making sure every day we were going as hard as we could. We kind of worked off what he was doing and followed in his footsteps.

Copp came from the same lineage as Danny Fardig—the guy on the USA NTDP roster who bounces from the U17s to U18s to fill in on the fourth line and never score—but has shown some soft hands early. Hyman played with a high energy level, as well. I haven't seen Selman enough to really get a read on him yet, but the line's performance speaks for itself.

Clare will return to the lineup against Miami, BTW. Mike Szuma was okay as a sixth defenseman on Friday. Michigan Hockey Net has a Bentley recap.

Siberia also FTW. Preds winger Sergei Kostitsyn is spending the lockout playing in Siberia. This is what Siberia looks like. In May.

Kostitsyn, 25, who joined the Predators from the Montreal Canadiens in June 2010, also said he hated life in North America and labelled Columbus "the gloomiest" city in the States.

Unfortunately, he could not continue ripping on Columbus because Omsk was invaded by thousands of red plastic figures at that very moment.

Thinking alike. BWS picture-paged the zero-yard Denard run that featured as an exemplar of Michigan State going ape on run plays in the just-posted edition on this site. Yeesh:

I think the only deep ball in this game was out of an I-Form to a double-covered Jeremy Jackson. Gotta loosen those guys up—yeah, you might turn the ball over if you bomb it deep but if you're just punting in three plays anyway…

How Purdoed it. Doesn't work as well as "Purdon't," I guess, and is equally dumb. Anyway, Ross Fulton's latest breakdown of the Ohio State offense is even more interesting than normal since it deals with topics often found here in the aftermath of OSU's extensive struggles against the Purdue defense. Purdue loaded up to stop Miller, won a lot of battles on the line of scrimmage, and OSU could not punish Purdue cheating off the slot receivers. This sounds awfully familiar:

The Buckeye passing game was perhaps most successful when OSU could get their hurry-up offense going and catch Purdue in uncertainty. This led to the second Buckeye touchdown. But all too often Ohio State missed available opportunities. For instance, Devin Smith several times had man coverage beat. If Braxton simply leads him to the corner and lets him run under it, it was a potential touchdown.

 

More acutely, Ohio State was not able to punish Purdue for cheating off their slot receivers. It was not simply for a lack of trying. Miller sailed one bubble screen over Corey Brown's head. On the clip above, he held the ball a second too long, allowing the Purdue corner to make a nice play. But other times it appeared clear opportunities were available that OSU did not take advantage of. Traditionally, this has been an automatic check with Meyer and Herman. The offense will continue running the pre-called play but the QB will simply pull and throw the football. Perhaps Meyer & Co have not yet given Miller the ability to do so. But by allowing alley players to cheat into the box, a spread offense quickly loses the numbers advantage it gains from the QB run threat.

That's how you end up with 100 yards at halftime against Purdue. OSU started bashing straight ahead A-gap power from the pistol and running their veer a gap inside the crashing LBs, but Miller's exit cut their response short.

Hey hey!

OSU must find more consistent ways to punish a defense that cheats alley defenders. Whether it is with wide receiver screens or bootlegs, OSU cannot allow a defense that much free rein. OSU must not also let opposing defenses dissuade them from sticking to what they do well. Though this is somewhat counter to the previous point, I believe they work together. The Buckeyes must continue to work to establish their base run game and then use play-action to exploit an opposing defense.

This mindmeld thing is creeping me out.

Etc.: Hero police robot back on duty after 'unstable man' blasts it with shotgun. You will be surprised to know this happened in Nebraska, not Detroit, home of police robots. [HT: Corn Nation.] RAWK HELICOPTER FLYOVER. Mmmmm… Dwayne Bacon. Hundred Level video released. O'Bannon lawsuit update. [HT: Get the Picture.] Getting our mean on at MNB. Nebraska equals points. OSU adds an Oregon home and home to their far future.

Hail Mattison. Tube sock brigade == ND's line in the eyes of a guy who might know, Purdue OC Gary Nord:

Gold and Black: Are you having trouble with your offensive front, and is that affecting your run game?

Nord: "No, I think the offensive line played the best game they've played this year, I really do. They probably protected better than they've ever protected. I think Michigan's defensive line was probably as good as any that we've played. They were very good. They held Notre Dame to about the same number of yards we had and they had five turnovers on them. They played two of the better teams in the country in Alabama and Notre Dame, those two, so their stats were screwed up a little bit going in, but watching them man-for-man and for the four-down guys and two linebackers, they're as good as there is in the country."

Coachspeak? Never. Gary Nord speaks the gospel truth at all times thanks to an ancient curse passed down from Nord father to Nord son that turns them into a walrus if they ever say anything other than the unvarnished facts of a matter.

Danny Hope has it too, and fell from the straight and narrow.

That's so Weis. I mean, seriously.

The US government needs to disguise Weis as an Iranian ayatollah and send him into deep cover. Within weeks the country will collapse in the world's most disorganized civil war.

Yeah, I know about Somalia. I stand by what I said.

Next up: the University of Phoenix Phoenixes. TOC does a thing where they deploy Bradley-Terry ratings for college football* in the service of predicting things. They've got a margin-aware version, too. The West is a sack of cats with Michigan a tiny favorite thanks to not having a conference loss yet; the by-far top two teams in the East are the ineligible ones. BIG TENNNNNN.

Michigan's opponent this weekend… eh… not so good.

Blowout of the Week (Illinois Division): Illinois @ Michigan

Not only has Illinois only won one game against 1-A competition (Western Michigan), last week's 17-point loss to Wisconsin was their closest loss. This will not end well. Michigan is an 80% favorite according to the basic method, 93% (17 points) according to margin-aware.

The Illini have a one in 70,100 chance of winning out, though.

Over at A Lion Eye they're trying to figure out how on earth you fire Ron Zook and get a lot worse:

Our last four losses by 17 or more under Zook:

11/26/11: Minnesota 27, Illinois 7
11/12/11: Michigan 31, Illinois 14
10/16/10: Michigan State 26, Illinois 6
10/03/09: Penn State 35, Illinois 17

So if you’re scoring at home, that’s four 17+ point losses in the last five weeks for Illinois.  And before this season, four 17+ point losses in the last 35 games.  You know what, let’s make this one hurt a little more.  2006 through 2011.  Six seasons, eight losses by 17 points or more.  This season, four of our six games were losses by 17 points or more.

Illinois's run game has fallen off a cliff you already thought it had fallen off, dropping from 11th in 2010 to 41st in 2011 to 94th(!) this year, 94th when three of their opponents have been WMU, Charleston Southern, and Louisiana Tech. Every La Tech opponent has rushed for more yards against the Bulldogs than Illinois.

BONUS: after collecting 41 sacks a year ago, Illinois has nine in six games this time out. They returned everyone but Mercilus. They're 109th at sacks allowed. Illinois: not good.

*[college hockey fans may know this as KRACH]

Another tough injury for State. Dion Sims missed most of the Indiana game with an ankle injury. He's day-to-day-ish:

"I don't know that he'll make it this week," Dantonio said of Sims, "but he may make it next week. We'll have to see how he responds in the next couple days, really."

This week is Iowa, next week Michigan. Sims is MSU's leading receiver with 313 yards, though if you give Aaron Burbridge a minute he'll eclipse that.

Sims's backup is a redshirt freshman, FWIW. If Sims misses the Michigan game the main benefit seems to be a lack of the multi-TE sets State used to spring Ed Baker to a big day last year.

Also in injuryland, OSU MLB Etienne Sabino is out four weeks with a bone fracture in his leg. That prognosis should have him back on the field for Michigan, but seriously you can come back from this sort of thing in four weeks?

Senior linebacker Etienne Sabino has a broken right fibula and will miss at least three weeks, possibly more, for the Ohio State football team.

Sabino was injured in the first half of Saturday’s 63-38 win over Nebraska. He had surgery on Sunday to implant a steel plate into his leg.

Maybe:

“He talked to the team afterwards, and it was an emotional moment,” Meyer said. “The best case is three weeks. The worst case is longer. We hope to get him back.”

I am terrified of football players. Sabino's replacement is true freshman Joshua Perry, but OSU spends a lot of time in a nickel package that he won't feature in.

Willis Ward to be honored. All it took was action from the state legislature:

Oct. 20 (UM vs. MSU) is Willis Ward Day in Michigan. Athletic Department spokesperson said Michigan plans to recognize Willis on that day.

I've always loved "recognize" as a thing that is done by official-type people. "Oh, hey… you're Willis Ward, aren't you? Rad. I suppose this IS a plaque with you on it!"

Yost to host. Hockey drops the puck tonight in an exhibition against Windsor; Yost Built previews the D and goalies. I agree with him that splitting Moffie and Bennett across two pairings makes sense. Something like…

• Trouba-Merrill
• Bennett-Clare
• Moffie-Chiasson

…gives you offensive firepower at all times and a defensive guy who will cover up for the offensive guy when he lets his freak flag fly. I'll also be watching to see what kind of progress Brennan Serville can make. He was pretty bad last year but also very young; he could make a big step forward.

Red says Rutledge, Racine, and Janecyk will all play a period so hopefully that means Rutledge's eye thing is healed is ready to go for the real season opener on… Thursday? Guh.

Someone's got to do something about hockey scheduling. There's a game at Yost on February first this year. You know when the next one is? March. I assume this is just the CCHA screwing with Michigan because it can; hopefully next year they'll be able to move more home games into the back half of the schedule.

BONUS SCHEDULING TIP: The Big Ten should seek out opportunities to have rival weekends where, say, Minnesota football and hockey come to town at the same time. The travel equation changes dramatically when you get a hockey series on top of your football game.

Compher so pretty. JT Compher had another career lined up if hockey didn't work out:

"When I was younger I did toddler modeling and I was on the front of a catalog," Compher told NHL.com. "I got to keep the red scooter that I was modeling. That was pretty cool."

Compher said he can't remember what company the catalog was from, only that he was 3 or 4 years old at the time and got a pretty cool new toy out of the deal.

Okay, okay, this happened. Stop emailing me about it plz:

As I said on the twitter, my favorite part is that he appears to have misspelled his own damn name in his twitter handle.

Etc.: Ramroth Finnegan! I bet he ends up at Cincinnati. Illinois CB Terry Hawthorne was taken off in an ambulance last week but may return Saturday. Weinreb on Penn State remembering this football thing. Tim Hardaway expectation tracker. More numbers displaying that Illinois is bad yo. Denard throws are key.