military tributes are often self-pleasing

Tonight! Or rather this afternoon. Evening? What is 5PM anyway? Ace is stopping by Tisch Hall to talk about his experience as a history major who made his way in the world. He's "ventured into the real world with remarkable success!" in fact.

Free dinner, too. And some other non-Ace persons you've never heard of like… uh… one of the co-founders of Zingerman's. Wow. Should have done history.

Gardner journey'd. It is bleakly appropriate that they took him to his now-closed high school.

The amazing true story of Gene Keady's combover. This is the best work Gregg Doyel has ever done: [UPDATE: now with link even]

"I had extensions," Keady tells me, at which point I put the phone down and started throwing up. OK, not really. But still. Extensions?

"Well sure," he says. "Men were just starting to get extensions, so why not?"

I've never known a man who had hair extensions.

"Now you do," Keady says.

Keady had twice-weekly appointments to keep is his 'do on the cutting edge of late night hair replacement commercials at $300 a pop. He is willing to admit this in a newspaper, so he is a better, more extended man than I.

Also, Keady's shotgun wedding sounds like it claimed all present, including said combover:

"Kelvin Sampson gave the bride away. The best man was Bruce Weber. He was the flower girl, too."

Neither was ever the same.

This isn't about the here and now. This is about how it all happened. This is John Beilein. http://t.co/t40F3RBAXv pic.twitter.com/YQzpRz4i74

— Brendan F. Quinn (@BFQuinn) November 12, 2014

You can tell it's important because it has a screen-wide picture. Big ol' profile of John Beilein on MLive with most John Beilein thing about a big profile ever:

More than anything, he's one of the best college basketball coaches in America, creating a tug of war between the twilight of his days and the pinnacle of his career.

Here he is.

"So what is the point of all this?" Beilein asks, wondering why anyone would fuss to retrace his steps searching for who he actually is.

"Well, I just don't get it," he says. "I can't imagine why anyone would care."

I don't think we're getting memoir after he's done.

The amazing pfffffffttttt hahahaha. If this was true, Tim Beckman wouldn't have been allowed to coach the Illini at all.

Beckman says academic standards at Illinois are higher than other B1G schools. He says it's the biggest issue in recruiting for Illini.

— Dan Murphy (@DanMurphyESPN) November 11, 2014

"It took me two weeks to figure out how the door to my office works," continued Beckman. "That's how hard the academics are at Illinois."

AN ILLINI FAN VISITS TIM BECKMAN'S OFFICE

a short play in one act

FAN examines DOOR. FAN turns to BECKMAN.

FAN: "This is a normal door."

BECKMAN: "Cleverly disguised as a trick door!"

FAN: "THIS IS A REAL UNIVERSITY. WE INVENTED THE INTERNET BROWSER, YOU KNOW."

BECKMAN: "Real tricky doors, too."

FAN: /burns degree

How you dismantle Michigan State. SBN's Ian Boyd takes a look at a clobberin' MSU hasn't experienced since… well, Oregon. But not for a long time before that. OSU used a similar playbook:

They attacked the Spartan outside linebackers for playing the edge against the run:

The announcers highlighted the route combination but ignored the play action component that made the play a one-on-one matchup, where a missed tackle meant total breakdown. With pop and play-action elements attached to basic run plays, the Buckeyes are able to make the passing game simple for Barrett.

The play of his receivers has been huge as well. He never had to make a read on that throw, staring down his intended target. The sam linebacker is sucked in by the run action, leaving the safety and corner to account for the two receivers without help. The slot receiver runs a post route that the safety follows, which leaves the corner on an island playing press coverage against the outside receiver. Michael Thomas beats the corner with the inside move, and that's all she wrote.

The Buckeyes ended up getting the ball again before halftime and once again dialed up play action off zone slice.

This time, Ohio State caught the Spartans in a blown coverage. MSU uncharacteristically mixed a single-deep safety coverage on a non-blitz, and free safety Kurtis Drummond failed to get over the top in time to stop the deep post to the speedy Devin Smith.

The result of all this was Ohio State gaining 89% of available yards. Against Michigan State. Without Braxton Miller, Carlos Hyde, and four of last year's OL.

Some people are so bad at being people. Like Spaghetti O's tweeting about Pearl Harbor, here comes the most generic trophy ever assembled:

There's not actually a gallery. Don't click unless you enjoy useless activities. Wait… you probably do.

Cloak yourselves in that flag, marketing geniuses. Dan Wetzel manages to say the thing about all this military stuff without touching the third rail:

The Freedom Trophy? What is that? Was there ever any doubt in the freedom of Wisconsin or Nebraska? Has anyone tried to invade either place and establish totalitarian rule – we're looking at you Iowa.

Big Ten marketing person No. 1: This is ham-fisted and meaningless. Fans are going to make fun of us.

Big Ten marketing person No. 2: Call it the Freedom Trophy and say it honors veterans. The trophy will consist of two massive football stadiums merged together with an enormous American flag coming out of it. They can't make fun of that.

You don't like freedom? You don't honor veterans? You don't like big stadiums and big flags? You Pac-12 commie.

A lot of the time it feels like Honoring Our Heroes is done to have some of that military mojo rub off on whoever's doing the honoring. It's a way to signify you're a good person in the safest way possible, and is thus the place please-everyone rubes run to when they don't have any ideas. No coincidence that as people started hating on Dave Brandon more and more that the military tributes became a literally every-game occurrence.

Hooray Denard. Denard Robinson is a legit NFL running back after a difficult first year, and he did it in the Denard way:

Early in the offseason, Robinson knocked on the door of head coach Gus Bradley.

"I don't want to go through another season like that one," he told him. "Tell me what I need to do to get on the field."

Bradley laid out a plan for Robinson. The Jaguars believed Robinson, who weighed 194 pounds when he first reported, had the frame to carry considerably more weight. The diet and training program he embraced resulted in him getting up to 215, his current weight.

Next, they wanted to enable him to make his new muscle functional. In the offseason, Richardson worked with Robinson on running violently. Robinson was naturally elusive. Richardson wanted him to be able to combine elusiveness with violence. "We worked on using a stiff arm or shoulder drop in combination with making cuts," Richardson said. "I call it use of weapons."

It helps to be unreasonably humble at all times.

I guess we'll say he's outspoken. The quotable Larry Foote:

Foote said, "They better change up their recruiting. They better get some eyes in there that can find some NFL talent. Michigan better go back to the hood (recruiting). They've got too many trust fund babies and they look like that when they're playing. They've got guys out there – they're just happy. They're happy they're playing at Michigan. But that's not Michigan football; the attitude has to change."

When Stanford, Notre Dame, and even Duke have significantly outperformed Michgian of late I don't buy that argument. It's about what happens after the recruits get to school, not before.

Backlash backlash backlash backlash. It's turtles all the way down in the Penn State case. I remember being uncomfortable at the time with Penn State's punishment, because having the NCAA step in on such a heinous thing was like giving Charles Manson a traffic ticket.

But they did, and then one of the lawsuits still pending against the NCAA showed that officials were uncertain if they had the power to do the thing that they did. A lot of people went LOL NCAA at this, but I'm with John Gasaway:

You’ll also have to forgive me for not being troubled to find that NCAA staffers questioned whether they were doing the right thing. In fact I would feel far better about the process behind the Freeh Report, for example, if emails surfaced wherein investigators were fretting over whether they were really doing justice to Penn State president Graham Spanier. My worry is precisely that there are no such emails because there were no such qualms.

Whether it was a good idea or not, a bluff or not, Penn State signed the consent decree and took its steadily declining lumps. Was it PR to look like the NCAA doesn't accept the idea of harboring a Sandusky? Or was it the NCAA not accepting the idea of a Sandusky? They're the same thing.

Where are they now: Dave Brandon edition. A Domino's in Saginaw saw a tense standoff between a pissed-off customer and the manager devolve into a shouting match featuring these words from the manager:

Apparently a manager at the helm of this Saginaw, Michigan, Domino'scursed out a customer who confronted him over hanging up on her son. The kid reportedly complained after getting a lightly sauced pie instead of one with "white" sauce. Hence this exchange: "Did you come in for your money back? Because I really don't care about your opinion," the manager says.

I appreciate the fact that Brandon was trying to lessen the financial blow of his buyout by getting outside work, but maybe next time get a job that doesn't involve customer service.

Etc.: Saturday doesn't look any prettier in advanced stats. Jack Kennedy talks to the Big House Report about Saturday and Hoke's status. Sounds reasonable. Les Miles on… economics! Fired Domino's manager says some bad stuff at customer including "I really don't care about your opinion."

MVictors on Willie Heston.