Sponsor note. Well folks, if you're thinking about doing some business you're probably going to need a lawyer to incorporate you, deal with contracts, and dispense advice of the legal variety. Richard Hoeg will do this for you.

Once you have assembled his legal might into a towering edifice of impregnable turrets, buttresses, and whatnot you can proceed with your plans to sell all the locusts to Mars. That's not a good idea. Why do you think that is going to be profitable? There are no people on Mars. How are you going to get all the locusts? Maybe just sell some hand-made knitting or something?

Just because it makes sense and is fair doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. There was much controversy in the sports media about the pending Big Ten championship game, which will now feature Ohio State because we are living in 14-year-old OSU fan's NCAA dynasty. Ah well.

By the rules established prior to this bizarre season, Ohio State is ineligible because they only played five games. Common sense dictates that since Ohio State beat the only other team in the division that is not a trash fire, they should go. The split is between

• people who think that Ohio State should be in the title game and that excluding them is obviously unfair, and
• people who think that Ohio State should be in the title game and that excluding them is extremely funny.

We've already decided that a seven point win over Indiana is apparently a playoff-quality resume as long as you detonate the Nebraskas of the world, so following the rules wouldn't even have cost OSU a berth. Northwestern-Indiana for all* the marbles as an undefeated Ohio State kicks rocks would have been the fitting coda to this stupid season. Alas.

Next up in pipedreams: put Coastal Carolina in over OSU. Coastal beat BYU! Coastal has played twice as many games! Coastal's mascot is Rooster Chad! This is not close!

[After THE JUMP: flange]

Bilas has a point, as per usual. College athletes are getting tested about as frequently as medical professionals:

Jay Bilas had a lot to say on college basketball and COVID on the Duke-Illinois broadcast. A sample of it here:

"These players have essentially been essential workers." pic.twitter.com/XGD0Ved3vo

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 9, 2020

There's going to be an NCAA tournament come hell or high water, and the prospect of no football sent the nation into crazy fits of withdrawal. How much longer can this house of cards stand?

A first? Pitt head coach Jeff Capel came out and said the thing that is obvious but no one says if their paycheck depends on not saying it:

“One of the things that has come about with all of this since everything happened in March when the season was canceled, I don’t think anyone can say anymore that these young men are amateurs,” Capel said. “That’s out the window. They’re not. They absolutely aren’t.”

Capel's at the bottom of the P5 coaching totem pole and isn't making waves with these comments. Hopefully they start percolating upwards.

Iowa: good. Iowa beat UNC in the marquee matchup of the Big Ten-ACC challenge, potentially validating them as a legitimate top five team instead of a repeat of last year. Hoop Vision on the rain of threes that propelled the Hawkeyes:

Even with Luka Garza shooting 6-for-20, Iowa still scored 1.18 ppp against UNC last night. Video on UNC's shaky off-ball defense and the offensive set used by Iowa down the stretch

(sound on ) pic.twitter.com/AXdMmirSTU

— Jordan Sperber (@hoopvision68) December 9, 2020

Jordan Bohannon got off 16(!!!) threes, hitting seven. CJ Fredrick and Joe Wieskamp were both 5/7. Shades of that Sullinger/Diebler OSU team, except Iowa's got three Dieblers. They might just be able to out-offense their defense a la the Stauskas team. 

Austin Davis profiled. Austin Davis is 5% of the biomass of his hometown.

The family hunting ground in Tipton lies on the outskirts of Davis’ hometown of Onsted, a remote village in Lenawee County, 40 miles southwest of Ann Arbor. It’s a small working-class town, home to roughly 900 residents. The downtown — one blinking stop light, a gas station and a restaurant — takes a back seat to the series of farms, lakes and hills that dot the landscape.

A close-knit community, Onsted rallies around its school and athletics, though sports are by no means its strong suit. Athletic careers tend to start and end in Onsted; just 14 basketball players from Lenawee County have gone on to play at the DI level, with Davis being the only to do so in the last 22 years.

Austin Davis is now 6% of the biomass of his hometown.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF BLOGS RESUMES. Erstwhile MGoBlog contributor Alex has moved into a castle in Grand Rapids and started a newsletter blog about the surreal experience of turning an internet bit into reality:

The last display contains the spirit of The Castle. Much of it is occupied by a creased plastic banner of a photograph taken of the side of Neuschwanstein; there’s a painting of flowers and a big, blank TV screen; four ornate swords and four patterned shields are hung up next to a Starry Night print (there’s another across the tunnel in the random artwork display); a suit of armor with a shield and a lance stands sentinel the corner. A replica of the lion on top of the tower stands facing awkwardly sideways, stashed between the glass and the wall. It has a crudely sculpted mane and a concerned, serious expression.

The leasing agent gave us time to examine the displays, then took us across the grim, gray courtyard and up the tower in an elevator that counts to thirteen.

Highly recommended.

Welp. I don't think this reflects on Ed Warinner too much because he had somewhere between two and four starters out for every game except Minnesota, but if you want a pithy summary of how cursed this year was, here are PFF's rankings of all FBS offensive lines:

71. Michigan State
72. Duke
73. Michigan

Some good news about Stueber:

Andrew Stueber flipped from right guard to right tackle in Mayfield’s absence and has actually been better in pass protection. He has an 80.8 pass-block grade on the year and allowed just six pressures (all hurries) on 241 such snaps.

Exits. Seniors leaving qualifies as news this year because everyone's eligible to return. Various guys who will not: Chris Evans, Ben Mason, Nick Eubanks, and Carlo Kemp, who have signed up for the Shrine game.

The only seniors who aren't on that list are Andrew Vastardis, Kwity Paye, Brad Hawkins, Will Hart, and Quinn Nordin. Paye is being projected in the top ten and is extremely unlikely to come back. Could see Vastardis return if he's got a real shot at a job next year, but projecting that is impossible given the current state of flux the program is in.

Etc.: Why does the Knight Commission exist? Has anyone ever done a thing they suggested? Next up: splitting FBS football from the NCAA. Dan Le Batard leaves ESPN, brings former journalist ESPN thing to an end. The origins of the West Quad-South Quad snowball fight. The Daily used to call Woody Hayes "fatboy." You can wash cast iron? With soap?