The Team

Rick Telander has written about his old Northwestern teammates and the head/brain injuries they suffered years ago while playing.  Part 3 of 9 has been published in today's SunTimes.  Link to http://www.suntimes.com/ , and be sure to go back and catch up with parts 1 and 2, it is well worth your time.

The Team

"The Team: What football did for us and ... what football did to us" is a nine-part series by Sun-Times' award-winning columnist Rick Telander about the 1968-1970 Northwestern Wildcats, a team for which he played. This story begins at a brain research lab in Massachusetts, and it will end there, too. But on the way it moves about the country as Telander visits with old teammates and talks about the sport they played together years ago, the one that shaped them, rewarded them and wounded them.

I Digress

There's not much going on in NCAA football about which I care to rhapsodize.  I offer you instead a historical digression which is oriented to the game of baseball, which I follow, but which is still generally the most boring athletic activity this side of nil-nil for everybody but the USA version of football. 

Click here for the show!

Seeing Red

I'm going to wait until the dust settles a bit to try to figure out what all the realignments add up to, and I need to do more studying on USC's punishment.  The newsiest thing in the midwest right now is that everyone is seeing red right now, and they're going to see a lot more of it.  Nebraska is coming to the Big Ten, said 10 having been 11 for a number of years now and shortly to be 12...until the next 2 come sidling into the corral.

So, Big Ten fans, take a look here at what's coming to a gridiron near you.

Mean Green Means a Lot of Green

35 minutes north of Dallas is a fine university with a bit less of a reputation on the football field.  The fine folks who run this fine institute of advanced learning have a fine idea on how to improve their autumnal athletic fortunes.

Click here for all the finery.

If you build it, they will come.