Jon

Holy crap on a stick. I just bought 2 tickets near the 50, first row, in the 400 level off ticketmaster!

Wow. Hinrich drains the 3 and just like that, the game is tied!

Sigh. NU down 23-11 at Michigan State. They're shooting 29.4% with 0 FT attempts while Michigan State is shooting 60% and 10 of 14 at the FT line.

The Bulls wake up and trail by just 46-43 at the half.

Ugh. The bulls were up 11-4 with just over 5 minutes to go in the first quarter. They trail 27-18 at the end of the first quarter.

The injury reports are up. McKie and Tillman are listed as questionable, but they are both expected to play. St. Clair and Alex Brown are listed as probable after being the only two to miss practice, although it was due to illness. Hopefully there's nothing going through the locker room. For the Seahawks, Hackett and Trufant are listed as doubtful with ankle injuries and Jackson is listed as questionable.

There's also a single at $120.

If anyone wants to spend $250 a piece for club box seats, there are a pair available on ticketmaster.com.

A bit off topic, but it sounds like after just one year, the NCAA will not allow graduate transfer students to play football or basketball without sitting out a year.

Basketball has a top 25 ranking and a championship game. That's not a fundamental flaw. The rankings are used to determine who gets to play the game, and the game determines who the champ is. A 4-team playoff doesn't eliminate controversy, but it certainly reduces it. If you take the top 4, that eliminates the controversy coming from the top 4. There will be bitching by the 5th/6th ranked teams, but I say too bad. If you didn't play well enough in the regular season to be ranked 4th, that's your own fault. And if you ended undefeated but were not ranked, schedule better opponents. The biggest problem with a large playoff is there is no motivation to schedule meaningful out of conference regular season games. The regular season is still the bread and butter of CFB, and I think it should remain so. I think it will change with a +1 game, then a playoff. The BCS setup was the first step in the gradual transformation away from voting for champs and playing for champs. A 4 or possibly 8 team playoff is the inevitable end. Anything larger than that would be absurd. The basketball top 25 isn't as important during the season and is meaningless once the tournament starts. Not so for college football, where the poll is still seen as important after the season ends. And the basketball poll doesn't fully determine seeding. I don't think it really reduces it. You'll have more teams claiming they deserved a spot in the 4-team playoff. It could be said that such controversy would be better than it is now, but you'll still have more of it. With that said, there's always going to be more controversy in college football than in any other sport.

My random thoughts: -A 4-team playoff doesn't reduce the controversy. It just keeps the controversy while also including probably one team that doesn't belong there. -A larger playoff system creates too large of a recruiting advantage for the big name programs. If recruits think they can get a better chance to play 2 or 3 more games than other schools because that school would be more likely to be invited to the playoffs, that's pretty big. -The fundamental flaw in college football is having both meaningful polls and a championship game. Polls are used to vote for the "best" team. A championship is about winning a title, not about being the best team (that goes for any sport). If you want to keep the polls, what's the point of a championship? If you want a championship game, why have a top-25 ranking?

You don't really find that in the Big Ten. And I'm glad.

It's Fox. What do you expect? 15% of their broadcasts consist of closeups of individuals in the crowd, often sad.

Jason Jones' segment about arming teachers with guns was absolutely hilarious. I couldn't stop laughing. Glad their vacation is over.

And a bogus foul call puts this one away after yet another miss. The Bulls blow another one...

What a horrible decision, Gordon...

Gordon with a terrible shot, but they get the ball back down 2 with 34 seconds left.

Gordon ties it up with 2 minutes to go!

The Bulls offense just hasn't shown up at all. Down 57-51 early 4th.

Well, Ohio State's defense has been questionable the two games prior. Northwestern was moving the ball at will for over a quarter aside from the turnovers and they were lit up by Michigan. I guess I can't be too surprised.

So I see Ohio State hasn't shown up just like Michigan. Nice.

The Bulls held Houston to just 30 first half points. A bogus call wipes out a Nocioni layup with a foul, but they lead 44-35 early 3rd.

Any chance both teams get disqualified?

What happened? I'm stuck at work.

Same here. Sadly...