Tuesday. Must be time to post a shirtless photo of somebody. Nik Stauskas is a larger person.

Hopefully this makes him LeBron James, or at least more capable when it comes time to finish at the rim. Last year he had two modes: 1) Game, blouses dunk. 2) wildly inaccurate layup.

Drink. Nick Baumgardner, or at least his headline guy, gets the season off to a rousing start:

Not just a shooter: Nik Stauskas backs up his teary-eyed Final Four pledge by focusing on defense

Beanpole bros:

"I'm going to get back in the gym as soon as I get back to Ann Arbor," Stauskas said, with tears in his eyes. "I'm going to be a different player next year."

Six months after making a vow to improve himself, Michigan's sharp-shooting Canadian sophomore showed up to media day Thursday looking like a different person.

Literally.

Stauskas added 16 pounds of muscle to his frame, spending most of the summer in Ann Arbor in the weight room with fellow sophomore Caris LeVert.

Michigan loses two first round NBA picks; gets back three or four Sophomore Leap™ candidates, depending on how you look at McGary.

My other three is a lottery pick. Mitch McGary won't play in tonight's exhibition against NAIA Concordia. This is the only thing that prevents me from declaring victory in the great Glenn Robinson III Is A Small Forward Over John Beilein's Dead Body war of the 2013 offseason:

“Spike or Derrick will play at the point, Nik or Caris will play at the two, Glenn or Zak will be at the three, and at the other three it will be Jordan or Glenn. Jon’s played real well, too. Jon’s going to get a great chance.”

"The other three." A door opened, and Michigan became the first team to go 1 2 3 3 5, because it was good PR. In fairness to Beilein, the roles of the 3 and 4 in his system are not particularly different, especially when you've got a guy like Robinson.

Also, please be true:

“Glenn is one of our top assist guys in all the scrimmages thus far. A lot of times we’ll just let them play, and allow them to play to the vision and strengths that they have,” Beilein said. “He’s got an ability to play where he can see open men really quickly. You see a lot of kids who, for some reason, while they’re athletic, don’t have the same feel for the game in crowds.”

Shot creation from Robinson would be enormous. Freshman to sophomore leaps are possible at a couple of different positions from players who were already pretty damn good last time out.

A SHORT LIST OF THINGS TO KEEP AN EYE ON

1. Does Nik Stauskas rip an arm off a Concordia player, use it to shoot a three pointer, and then bite a chunk out of it as he leaves the floor?
2. Is Caris LeVert showing any signs of making the proverbial Jump?
3. Why did Tim Hardaway Jr get taller?
4. That's still Trey Burke, right? I left my contacts out.

By the way, a quarter will get you in the door. If the University's making more money off the unclaimed student tickets, it's not going to be much money.

AT LEAST THEIR HELMETS WERE DUMB

Well, that's not good. By the time I got home from Saturday's hockey game it was halftime in the PSU-OSU game and the score was 42-7. That's some pretty un-swell boding right there. By the end, the Ohio State offense had eviscerated Penn State in unprecedented ways:

• Ohio State racked up 686 yards of total offense against Penn State, a new high for the Buckeyes against a Big Ten defense and a new low for the Nittany Lions in the 127-year history of the program. The final score, 63–14, made it the most lopsided defeat Penn State has endured since Nov. 25, 1899, in a 64–5 loss to the Duquesne Athletic Club, which was also the last time Penn State allowed 60 points. In the intervening 114 years, only two other opponents scored 50 points against Penn State: West Virginia in October 1988, and Navy in October 1944.

I was curious and grabbed a torrent of that event. OSU's line blew that 282 pound defensive tackle who occasionally featured against Michigan off the line regularly, took all manner of perimeter screens when presented the opportunity (including, oddly, a third and one conversion and a second and one conversion), and used Hyde as a punishing alternative to Braxton Miller—the usual. I guess they've kind of struggled in their other league games? Yeah.

Also alarming was Michigan State's Illinois-aided demolition of Illinois:

• Michigan State QB Connor Cook was 15-of-16 for 208 yards and three touchdowns against Illinois, setting a school record for pass efficiency (264.8) in a 42–3 rout. After a slow start, the Spartan offense as a whole converted 14 of 16 third-down attempts – including a kneel-down to end the game – the best single-game rate by any team this season, and scored touchdowns on six consecutive possessions before killing the clock.

One of those touchdown drives featured an Illinois player certain to intercept not only not doing that but batting the ball directly to a Michigan State player for a touchdown. That put MSU up 14-3 in a half featuring that and a goal line stand for MSU at the one, turning a potential tie into a lead insurmountable and eventually a laughable blowout.

On the bright side, Minnesota ran for almost 300 yards in a relatively easy win over Nebraska. Football is weird. That's the hope now, anyway.

At least this is the last year we have to talk about this. Fresno State and Northern Illinois are currently undefeated and on track to finish higher than the champion of the Large America conference, which means whichever finishes higher in the final standings will get the honor of being annihilated in a BCS Game. This is the BCS's own fault, because rough and tough football coaches mewled about how it was mean when that man scored another touchdown:

One of the reasons the Bulldogs and Huskies are in such solid position, surprisingly, is their good standing in the computer polls, where both rank in the top 15 despite the computers' alleged emphasis on strength of schedule. (NIU's best win is over Iowa, by three points; the crown jewel in Fresno's resumé is either a one-point win over Rutgers, in overtime, or a one-point win over Boise State.) In fact, even the machines don't really know what to do with them. In Jeff Sagarin's rankings, for example, his "real" rankings – which include margin of victory – list both NIU and Fresno as mediocrities at No. 51 and No. 52, respectively, nowhere near the threshold for a BCS game; in the version Sagarin submits to the BCS, though, which excludes margin of victory, the same teams come in at No. 3 and No. 14.

The BCS has been one eyerolling compromise after another. Even if the playoff committee was Condoleeza Rice and 14 animals representing the diversity of American agriculture the output would be less of a steaming pile than the soon-to-be late, extraordinarily unlamented BCS.

Math is just a tool, and for two decades the people in charge of college football took the safety off of Richard Billingsley and pointed him at their face, then sawed-off the other computer rankings and pointed them at their family. We're better off without it if it's going to be used like that: by morons.

Etc.: MVictors talks with Jarrod Bunch. Vincent Smith is more than just a guy who Jadeveon Clowney killed. The Guptill penalty-shot goal from Friday's BU game. Andrew Copp profiled.

The origin of "We Are Penn State." Another article on how sports are making people who don't care about sports drop cable at an increasing rate. Alabama getting tough on student-group no-shows.