The easy solution to this conference name issue is to formally change the name to "The Big X." This gives the nod to tradition, by using the Roman numeral for ten, but avoids any concerns about adding (or deleting) teams in the future.

The tv station becomes the BXN, rather than BTN.

With the official pronunciation changed to "Big Ex," there will no longer be the burden of figuring out some complicated logo that needs to explain the weird name.

Assuming his math is close to complete and correct, Stewart Mandel at Sports Illustrated makes a pretty solid case against the Big Ten expansion...

Continue reading this post »

Update Dec 3: Dell's dad and Cunningham's mom (both of whom come across as exceptionally level-headed parents, FWIW) are talking to the Freep. Mostly, this fills in details that largely support the general outlines of what Ferguson was claiming last night (see original post below.)

The new article is a four page story, but the interesting new twists on what reality may have been are these:

Continue reading this post »

The NFL should not remove the Thanksgiving Day game from the Detroit Lions. By all means, take it away from the Cowboys, but not the Lions.  It's too important to Michigan and too important for America.

Continue reading this post »

As Notre Dame teeters on the brink of being eligible for the Midwest's great Holiday tradition - the Pizza Bowl at the home of the Detroit Lions - it is again time to consider whether the Irish should just bite the bullet and join a conference.

Continue reading this post »

[Bumped for being interesting.  --LVS.]

Here's a radical yet simple solution to the BCS vs. playoff debate: Require that every team in contention for a spot in a BCS bowl game play 13 regular season football games, even if they are not in a conference that has a title game.

Unlike the many proposals that float around this time of year, what I am suggesting doesn't require elaborate bracketology, re-jiggering teams around into different conferences, or even forcing conferences to have title games. It only requires that we have four additional and very important football games to watch on the last weekend of the regular season.

Here's how to get there...

Continue reading this post »

I have several times, to varying degrees of success in getting people to listen to me, attempted to write a regular college football blog. Usually, life intrudes and I can't keep it going.

This time, I'm going to try again. But I'm going to keep it short and limited (mostly) to the three programs that I know a lot about: Michigan State, Michigan and Notre Dame.

So, with that, here's the pre-season analysis and week one predictions all rolled into one...

Continue reading this post »

The “lazy sportswriter” award for this year’s AP pre-season Top-25 college football poll goes to anyone who voted Penn State into the top ten, and anybody who voted for Notre Dame… at all.

Continue reading this post »

A friend saw this story about the Tour de France and speculates that Johnny Spirit may have a German uncle:

...

Didi is Deiter Senft, a 56-year old German who modeled himself as "El Diablo" after hearing of an archaic cycling term used by television announcers:

"They always called the final kilometre of a criterium [stage] the red devil's lap. I never saw a red devil, so I became one."

(The only time the phrase "red devil's lap" appears in the Lexis-Nexis perdiocials database is when it's used to reference to Didi's story, so take that for what it's worth.)

 

via a323.yahoofs.com