Swanky. Reader Paul Scudieri sends in this freakin' awesome jack-o-lantern:

Dang.

Itchy and Scratchy. The MSU brawl has hit the papers; MSU defenseman AJ Sturges is the kid in the hospital. As for this weekend, this is your operative sentence:

Charges stemming from the fight have not been filed and would not be filed until the end of the week or early next week, Daley said.

Dantonio, meanwhile, on MSU's actions:

He also confirmed that the East Lansing Police investigation of an off-campus fight does involve football players and is "disappointing" to him. The next word on that situation will be when the investigation is complete and a decision is made on charges.

One whole dollar says the investigation manages to stay open until around 7 PM Saturday.

What? Dantonio on last year's game (which, for the record, is over):

No pun intended, but we were up by 10 with seven minutes to go. And you know what? It isn’t over and it still is not over.

What does that even mean? What can it possibly mean? This is the most mystifying thing to come out of Dantonio's mouth so far, and that's saying something. No pun intended.

Tape review. In a terrific piece from Adam Rittenberg at ESPN, he sits down with a couple Northwestern players and goes over game tape with them. The article is especially relevant because the tape they're going over is from the MSU game. Interesting bits:

Sutton also looks for team-wide tendencies when he reviews film. "Last week, we played against Iowa, and their linebackers read the pulling guards, they read the linemen," he said. "These guys center on the running back, so wherever the running back goes, that's where these guys go. They don't green dog a lot. They blitz a lot.

"They're a fast-flow team. As soon as they see run, they're going downhill."

Green dog is when linebackers blitz after recognizing a running back is in pass protection. "We look at D-linemen, too," Sutton said, "and so far, what I've seen from each of them is they just bull-rush. They don't try and spin. It's just to see if you can contain on the bull rush."

That was before the Northwestern game; later in the article the players discuss how MSU broke tendencies (or at least learned to not tip their plays) during that contest. There's also discussion about Michigan State's tendency to nail players after the whistle.

I'm a gunner. Yost Built, in discussing MVictors' extensive Dave Shand interview, provides an awesome story about the incorrigible Dom Ingerson and Tommy Amaker's response. (We've got a swear involved, so beware.)

I was sitting behind the Michigan bench at Crisler and Dom Ingerson jacked a three from about 3 steps behind NBA range, made it, and then celebrated so much that his man beat him down the court and hit a three of his own. Amaker immediately called time-out and got the team in a huddle. He started diagramming a play (no doubt something brilliant like "Pass the ball to LaVell Blanchard and have him dribble out the shot clock and brick a three") or talking to the team or something when, all of a sudden--and keep in mind it was dead silent in the arena at this point--he spins around, points at Ingerson and screams, "FUCK YOU!"

Yes, folks, Brian Ellerbe's recruiting was worse than Amaker's. Considerably worse.