Soft Pretzel Logic

Sorry it took me so long to get to this; I've been working on a couple of big projects all week. There's some good stuff in both papers today that I don't have time to link to but check the headlines feed at right.

34. Penn State (29) - home loss vs. Ohio State (2)
42. Rutgers (28) - home loss vs. West Virginia (5)
72. Delaware (98) - road win at Navy (78)
96. Villanova (111) - home win vs. Hofstra (102)
129. Temple (117) - off
140. Delaware State (146) - road win at South Carolina State (153)
151. Lehigh (161) - road win at Georgetown (231)
190. Lafayette (187) - road loss at Colgate (154)
201. Penn (186) - road loss vs. Brown (184)
242. La Salle (242) - home loss vs. Assumption (n/a)

What a huge win that was for Delaware. It's no coincidence that on yesterday's ESPN college football podcast, Mel Kiper pronounced Blue Hens quarterback Joe Flacco and stud running back Omar Cuff to be legit NFL prospects.

And the First State's other representative here got a shoutout from Mike Kern as the local team of the week in his column this past Monday.

Now for the Top 10 chart:

That's some difference between the computers and the humans. Who do you believe?

FD asks:

Does Saint Joe's really have the talent and experience this year to jump into the rankings?

If they beat Syracuse and Gonzaga, I think there's a decent chance. Ahmad Nivins is that good and opposing coaches will quickly see what the NBA scouts at the Pan Am Games trials saw over the symmer.

The Syracuse game is of particular importance, maybe more than it deserves. In part because it's against Syracuse, and any game against the Orange -- especially at the Carrier Dome -- gets a lot of attention from the national media.

(Yes, that's a euphemism for the many Syracuse grads at ESPN and elsewhere.)

And in part because if the Hawks win that game they get two national TV (also ESPN, naturally) games at Madison Square Garden. So that will be even more exposure for pol voters elsewhere in the country.

Jack tried to figure out the Philly Classic, and seemingly couldn't:

They could not have possibly made this tournament any more confusing. So the preliminary round games are meaningless in the scheme of the tournament? And are the Libery Bracket and Independence Bracket two rounds of competition rather than two separate brackets? I don't understand the terminology. Do they get it down to two teams (the winners of the 2:00 game and the 9:00 game Saturday) and then not play a final?

Basically, yes. I think to call it a "tournament" per se would not be correct. I don't know this for sure but I figure It's thought of as a "tournament" for counting how many games you play, and which ones are considered "exempt."

It's basically rigged. Each team gets a certain number of home games, then the knockout-ish games on the neutral court are set up to give us some kind of glamor game with just a little suspense beforehand. The Philly Classic's such game is Virginia-Seton Hall.

The best comparison is the Las Vegas Invitational, which is the event that got Kansas to play Florida last season. Both teams played a couple of meaningless games on their floors, then came to Vegas, beat another less-than-stellar team, and made us all think they actually had to work to get to the championship.

This year, the glamor teams in that event are North Carolina and Louisville. They aren't "officially" playing each other. But the idea is that they will.

I've had more than a hunch for a little while now that Villanova is better than some people outside our region think. It's fair to say that Georgetown and Louisville stand out above the rest of the big east, but I'm willing to put the Wildcats a little higher than others in that big pack below the Hoyas and Cardinals.

Then again, I've also thought that this young Wildcats team would be will served to not have too much attention thrown at it earlier in the season, the better to surprise folks later on (though you can be sure that the other coaches in the conference won't be surprised one bit).

But it looks like the secret's out, and that the coaches opened the door. Villanova is ranked No. 25 in the first ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll of the season, one of five Big East teams in the poll.

The Pac-10 has the most ranked teams with six. The ACC, SEC and Big 12 all have three, and the Big Ten has two.

And it's notable that St. Joe's got two votes. I have a suspicion that number goes up early in the season, even if it's too obvious to say it would jump in a hurry with a win at Syracuse.

Xavier led the A-10 with 38 votes.

In the CAA, Virginia Commonwealth had five votes, Old Dominion three and George Mason two. Keep an eye on Mason, folks. They were picked No. 1 in the conference and have a strong non-conference slate.

Finally, North Carolina is ranked No. 1, and while I usually put more stock in the AP poll, wouldn't it be nice if the Tar Heels are still No. 1 when they come here?

Fred asked a few questions about the Philly Classic tournament over Thanksgiving in the comments. The big ones were about who's sponsoring it and who's organizing it.

I dug around a bit -- including on the tournament's website, which is here -- and found two sponsors: the Inn at Penn and Reebok. The organizers are the Hoop Group, which runs a bunch of high school tournaments.

The guy on their masthead whose name you'll recognize is Rob Kennedy. He's the president of the company and the lead color guy for college basketball -- especially Big 5 games -- on CN8.

ATLANTIC CITY -- I fixed the bugs in the files I had posted earlier, so go back and listen to them and they should be fine.

The last interview I'm posting today is with Temple's Fran Dunphy. The dean of the Big 5's coaches has a monster non-conference schedule, including games at Tennessee, against Florida in Miami, and a three-game tournament in Puerto Rico that includes Arkansas and Providence.

This clip includes Dunphy talking about the schedule and about what kind of load his two star offensive players, Dionte Christmas and Mark Tyndale, will have to shoulder this season.

Click here to listen to it.

The full interview will air on the College HoopsCast, as will my interview with Phil Martelli. You won't want to miss them.

That's it from here in Atlantic City. Thanks for following along, and for putting up with all the technical issues I've run into over the last two days.

Enjoy Matt Ryan's big-stage game at Virginia Tech tonight.

ATLANTIC CITY -- It should not surprise you at all to read that Rick Majerus had the biggest crowd of reporters around him today. The former Utah coach and ESPN analyst is returning to coaching this year at Saint Louis, which will definitely help raise the Atlantic 10's profile.

When I saw the size of the crowd, I knew I had to put everything else aside and record what Majerus said. I wasn't disappointed. He didn't take that many questions, but he didn't have to. When Mike Kern of the Daily News asked Majerus what it meant to return to coaching, he went on a five-minute riff that was more stream-of-consciousness than a straight answer.

But it was great stuff, ranging from what it means to be at practice to how he felt when he found out his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.

To listen to that, his views on large conferences and more (including an expletive -- heads up if you don't like that stuff), click here.

Oh, and the part when his cell phone rang is also quite funny.

I'm working on it.

ATLANTIC CITY -- I have to say, I was surprised to see St. Joe's picked third in this year's A-10 coaches poll. No disrespect to Rhode Island, which returns four starters from the team that made last year's tournament final, but that's how highly I think of the Hawks.

And it seems the coaches think pretty highly of Phil Martelli's team as well, because St. Joe's got seven first-place votes to Rhode Island's five.

(The math does work in the end...)

Anyway, how far the Hawks fly will definitely be a function of how well Ahmad Nivins does. Martelli said at his team's Midnight Madness that if Nivins lives up to his own expectations, he'll be the conference player of the year.

I asked Nivins about that and his views on the rest of the conference. Click here to listen.

ATLANTIC CITY -- Given how successful the Temple women's team has been in recent years, it surprised me to see that the Owls were picked to finish fourth in the A-10 this season.

George Washington was picked first, with Xavier and UNC-Charlotte tied in second.

But Staley has a way of dealing with that scenario that the three schools above Temple definitely do not: senior center Lady Comfort, who was selected to the preseason all-conference first team.

Listen to Staley discuss the preseason poll, Comfort, and Temple's rough non-conference schedule by clicking here.

ATLANTIC CITY -- And if you've read the blog for a while, you know the answer.

Who's the all-time leading scorer in Philadelphia high school basketball history?

That would be George Washington's Maureece Rice, who broke Wilt Chaimberlain's old record while at Lutheran Christian.

He's going to be one of the leaders of this year's Colonials squad, which lost a lot of big players from the team that surged to the A-10 title here last March.

Click here to listen to my interview with him.

ATLANTIC CITY -- They've got hiiiiiiigh hopes, they've got hiiiiiiigh hopes

But in Giannini's case, maybe not high-apple-pie-in-the-sky hopes. His might be a bit more realistic.

La Salle was picked to finish 13th in the Atlantic 10 this year, which would put them out of the conference tournament for the second year in a row. But Giannini draws inspiration from other teams across the country who've made big jumps after bad seasons.

Then again, I'm not sure those teams had freshmen and sophomores accounting for eight of 11 players on their rosters.

Listen to some of what Giannini had to say today by clicking here. Then check back next week for the full-length interview on the College HoopsCast.

ATLANTIC CITY -- Wonder of wonders, I got on the wireless network here. So this time, I'll be able to bring you the highlights from here at Boardwalk Hall as they happen.

We're in the Adrian Phillips Ballroom, to be precise, overlooking a quite miserable day on the ocean. Windy and rainy, and not a hint of sun to be found.

Each team has their own table, and reporters are free to pick and choose among them as they wish. All of the men's coaches are here, as well as some players, but there are only four women's teams -- Temple, George Washington, UNC-Charlotte and Xavier. It's no coincidence that they are predicted to be the top teams in the league this year.

I'll be back later -- really, I will be -- to bring you the highlights.

NEW YORK -- Okay, I have to admit that I saved the best thing for last.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a big fan of Bill Raftery. He has a great broadcasting style, and of course some of the best one-liners anywhere in sports.

So I couldn't pass up the chance to talk to him today. The main questions were about Villanova and the Big East. But Raftery being a La Salle alum, I had to ask him a few Big 5 questions as well.

We talked about his role in the documentary movie about the Palestra that came out over the summer and the Big 5's reputation on the national college basketball scene.

And he let it slip that he'll be calling the North Carolina-Penn game in December.

Click here to listen.

That's going to wrap it up from here. Sorry about all the technical difficulties earlier.

I'll be back tomorrow from Atlantic City.

NEW YORK -- There are a lot of really smart people in the Big East. But Len Elmore stood above them all today.

That's in part because he's really, really tall. But he's also got a degree from Harvard Law School. Oh, and he's one of the best TV analysts in college basketball.

Which is why a lot of people wanted to talk to him today. I was one of them, and he was nice enough to give me a few minutes of his time.

We started out talking about the coming Big East season and Villanova's prospects in it. And because Elmore is one of the few analysts out there with a really deep knowledge of the Big East and ACC, my big question to him was about the quasi-rivalry that exists between the two conferences.

Click here to listen.

NEW YORK -- It's pretty clear when you start talking to UConn coach Jim Calhoun that he's a New England guy. But the branches of the coaching tree that he's spawned come straight through Philadelphia.

Penn coach Glen Miller and Virginia coach Dave Leitao, whose Cavaliers will come to the Palestra next month (and whose star players, Sean Singletary, is a Philadephia native), both used to be assistants to Calhoun.

And while the Huskies didn't make it to the NCAA Tournament last season, Miller and Leitao did -- along two other former Calhoun assistants, George Washington's Karl Hobbs and Southern Connecticut State's Howie Dickerman.

Calhoun was happy to talk about them all when I asked him. He also spoke at length about scheduling games in the Big East, why football will keep the conference from shedding any of its teams, and the youth of this year's UConn squad.

Click here to listen.

NEW YORK -- It won't surprise you to hear that Georgetown coach John Thompson III was very much in demand today. My offhand guess is that he tied Connecticut's Jim Calhoun in terms of the number of reporters that hovered over his desk, barely trailed Louisville's Rick Pitino, and might have actually beaten Syracuse's Jim Boeheim.

That's how big a deal this year's Hoyas club could be. They were picked first in the preseason poll and center Roy Hibbert was selected as the preseason player of the year.

But Thompson is renowned for his cool temperament, so it was no surprise to hear him talk today about managing expectations, and trying to get his team to not think that it's in the Top 10 in the country (to say the least). Hibbert was much the same.

They also talked about the Hoyas' frontcourt depth and what impact their highly-touted freshman class will have this year.

Click here to listen to Thompson and here to listen to Hibbert.

And yes, you'll notice that Thompson has a pretty dry wit... and that he aimed it rather squarely at me.

NEW YORK -- Jim Boeheim walked down the short flight of steps to where the print reporters were waiting, flashing his trademark wry smile and looking every bit the part of a guy who didn't have to leave the state to get here today.

That's just the way he is, I guess. But he's a Hall of Fame coach for a reason.

And he had plenty to say. He held forth on the youth of this year's Orange squad and the new rules on coaches' decorum on the bench -- including a nice little shot at Connecticut's Jim Calhoun -- and gave his thoughts on Mike Tranghese's earlier remarks about last year.

He also talked about what roles two of his big-time incoming freshmen, Philadephia natives Rick Jackson and Antonio Jardine, will play this season.

Click here to listen.

NEW YORK -- Even though Pittsburgh is one of the Big East's powerhouses, it's hard to not root for Panthers coach Jamie Dixon.

He's been through a heck of a lot of rough water in recent years, and admitted today that he's still recovering from the death of his sister, former Army coach Maggie Dixon.

Jamie talked today about what he learned from his sister, how he'll replace star center Aaron Gray, and the Big East's expansion to 18 conference games.

Listen to it by clicking here.

NEW YORK -- This was the day when it became clear that the last generation of great Villanova players is gone once and for all.

The three players that accompanied Jay Wright on the mini-dais were Shane Clark, Dante Cunningham and Scottie Reynolds.

No Curtis Sumpter, no Mike Nardi, no Randy Foye. Clark and Cunningham were freshmen on that 2005-06 team that came so close to the Final Four.

In fact, there are no seniors at all on the roster listed in the conference media guide handed out today.

If you needed any more evidence of why Villanova is looking for new team leaders, there it is.

Wright addressed the subject at some length today. He also talked about how Scottie Reynolds' time with the Pan Am Games team will help him this season, the depth in the Big East this year, and the scheduling problems he faces with an 18-game conference slate.

Finding time for Big 5 games is indeed one of those problems.

Read the story I wrote for the main Philly.com site here, then listen to Wright's remarks in full here.

NEW YORK -- Just to whet your appetite, here's what's coming once I can get to a place with a connection fast enough to upload all the audio:

-- Jay Wright, of course

-- Syracuse's Jim Boeheim

-- Pittsburgh's Jamie Dixon

-- Georgetown's John Thompson III and Roy Hibbert

-- An exclusive interview with Len Elmore

-- An exclusive interview with Bill Raftery

Stay tuned.

NEW YORK -- It didn't take long for Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese to get right to his biggest point of the day.

Even seven months after it happened, he was still quite annoyed about Syracuse's exclusion from the NCAA Tournament this past March.

“I’ve studied it, I’ve looked at it, I’ve tried to be objective about it – at the end of the day, I can’t tell you why they didn’t get in,” Tranghese said. “I don’t want our league being taken for granted because we’re 16 teams . . . I have coaches in this room who feel that we’re being arbitrated against.”

To hear Tranghese's remarks in full, click here.

NEW YORK -- Yikes.

I literally couldn't get a decent wireless signal the entire time I was in Madison Square Garden.

But rest assured that I am here, and have a lot of audio to share with you from this morning's Big East Media Day. So stay tuned.

Get ready for a few big days here on the blog.

With all the football writing I've done, it seems amazing even to me that basketball season really is almost upon us.

But just under 12 hours from now I'll be in the Theater at Madison Square Garden to liveblog Big East Media Day. Then on Thursday, I'm headed to Boardwalk Hall Atlantic City to liveblog Atlantic 10 Media Day.

There will be multimedia elements and interviews with as many coaches from the two conferences as I can get a hold of.

It's all the prelude to a week's worth of season preview podcasts that will kick off the new College HoopsCast series and lead up to the start of the 2007-08 season of city rivalry games, Nov. 9 at the Palestra when Penn hosts Drexel.

So be sure to swing by here often tomorrow, and if there's a question you want asked post a comment or email me and let me know.

I hate to move on from the first post on here ever to get nine comments, but we do have some other stuff to discuss.

Literally a day before Centre County issued a gag order against everyone involved in the Austin Scott rape case, Dana Pennett O'Neil of the Daily News got an exclusive interview with Scott. The first part ran today.

There's better news in State College, though, as attention turns to Saturday's prime-time showdown with No. 1 Ohio State. That attention will include College GameDay, as well it should.

We move to I-AA ball, as Mike Jensen looks at the football-playing Savage family of Springfield, Delaware County. The older brother, Bryan, started at Wisconsin but transferred to Hofstra, which visits Villanova this coming weekend. The younger brother, Tom, is a pretty big-time recruit at Cardinal O'Hara.

On the basketball scene, Joe Juliano was at the Barnes and Noble in Rittenhouse Square a few nights ago as Phil Martelli held forth on his new book.

Which reminds to point you all towards the exclusive video interview Philly.com got with Martelli over the weekend, as well as video highlights of Midnight Madness on Hawk Hill.

Down I-76, Drexel and Penn both got frontcourt recruits.

And is what you see below going to become the new summer home for this blog? If the state funding is approved, this will be the stadium for Philadelphia's Major League Soccer team.

After the jump, Crunchy Numbers.

Fred asks:

What are your sources saying over at Penn about the play calling in Triple OT?

From what I read down 6 from the 1/2 yard line, the coach calls a slow-developing halfback option resulting in an offensive lineman downfield before the ball was thrown.

Why in the world was that play called?

How about something a little more conventional and higher percentage?

Well, you do have to admit that Al Bagnoli ran the ball on the first three downs. And it shouldn't have come to fourth down in the first place -- you really do have to punch it in from there. Especially given that Penn's offensive line had basically moved Yale's entire defense backwards, rugby scrum-style, to get Bryan Walker a first-down scramble in the third quarter.

Having said that, the runs on that final weren't really straight up the middle, and I certainly would have run it again on fourth down.

But it is worth remembering that Nick Cisler caught that pass, and that the same play got Penn its only touchdown of regulation.

And while Al Bagnoli's offensive philosophy is valid cannon fodder for another day, I would like to take a look at whether that penalty should have even been called. You Temple fans, who at least have the benefit of replay, tell me what you think of the rules governing ineligible receivers...

I went online to the NCAA Football 2007 Rules and Interpretations book -- and it should not surprise you to hear that I just about crashed my computer downloading it. On page 106 (of 256, which is also no surprise) it says:

No originally ineligible receiver shall be or have been beyond the neutral zone until a legal forward pass that crosses the neutral zone has been thrown.

On page 49, the neutral zone is defined as:

The neutral zone is the space between the two lines of scrimmage extended to the sidelines and is the length of the ball. The neutral zone is established when the ball is ready for play and is resting on the ground with its long axis at right angles to the scrimmage line and parallel to the sidelines.

Back to page 106, where we not surprisingly find two exceptions to the ineligible receiver rule:

When, after the snap, a Team A ineligible receiver immediately charges and contacts an opponent at a point not more than one yard beyond the neutral zone and does not continue the contact more than three yards beyond the neutral zone.

and

When contact that has driven an opponent no more than three yards from the neutral zone is lost by a player who was ineligible at the snap, he must remain stationary at that spot until the pass is thrown.

I guess the ref would argue that any lineman who goes more three yards into the end zone is committing a neutral zone infraction. I didn't see any Penn linemen go nearly that far. I've talked to people who were even closer to the play than I was and they aren't sure.

So given the lack of hash marks in the end zone I have no idea how you enforce that penalty unless it's really flagrant.

Therefore, I will be polite and say I question the call. Feel free to tell me why the call was right, though.

Maybe that's why I'm neither a football ref nor an NCAA employee. But I think that's a good thing.

Between Temple going for its third straight win against Miami (Ohio) and Penn hosting first-place Yale, this looks to be one of the better weekends of local college football we've seen in a while.

Naturally, I'm not going to be in town for it.

So talk among yourselves, and before I go here are today's headlines:

Recaps from Rich Fisher and Mike Kern of Rutgers' win over South Florida. More BCS chaos is always a good thing, though I'd like to know from you whether South Florida losing helps or hinders the not-as-famous schools' cause.

Mike Jensen's interview with Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese, who's looking pretty good right now given the state of his football teams. Plus the latest Heisman Watch.

Bernard Fernandez's Nittany Line column about offensive lineman Rich Ohrnberger.

Jeff McLane on how Indiana is remembering their late coach Terry Hoeppner.

Kevin Tatum's preview of Miami-Temple, which will be on Channel 17.

USC's plane hit some serious turbulence landing in South Bend today.

And a basketball story: Zach Berman talks to former Neumann-Goretti stars Rick Jackson and Scoop Jardine, who are trying to repeat their act at Syracuse.

Over to you. Back Monday.

Breaking news this afternoon that La Salle recruit Jameson Keefe, who would have been the school's tallest player ever (and one of the Big 5's tallest ever), is leaving the program. He wants to play closer to his hometown of Troy, N.Y.

The story is here.

There's been a lot of good stuff out there the last few days, so I thought I'd try to bring it all together this morning.

We begin in State College, where the word of the week is "Grump."

Rich Hofmann would like Joe Paterno to get off his, and say something about the Austin Scott case. Even if it's just saying that he won't say anything more about the case.

Bob Ford goes with the adjective form of the word in this week's Riffing with the Writers video, wondering if JoePa is "getting too grumpy to run the team."

We then move across the Turnpike and across the Delaware to Rutgers, which looks to upset South Florida and screw up the BCS even more tonight. For that reason alone, let us hope they do.

Ford tried to figure out exactly what South Florida is, and it seems like he did so. He took the question up with Phil Sheridan in another Riffing With the Writers segment, noting along the way that the Big East is "a big football conference because they were too big for Temple."

Writing for washingtonpost.com, John Feinstein fires a few good broadsides at the BCS, the NCAA and Myles Brand. Shocking, I know, but it's good stuff. Such as explaining why Brand won't move for a football playoff:

He and his cohorts in Indianapolis are too busy changing the names of division 1-A and division 1-AA and passing rules to make sure basketball coaches stay inside coaching boxes.

It being Thursday, we have Mike Kern's college football column. He leads with Temple trying to manage expectations after winning two in a row, which doesn't exactly happen often. He also previews Miami (Ohio) vs. Temple and Yale vs. Penn.

We also have Joe Juliano's notebook from the local football coaches' luncheon.

We move basketball, and reports from CAA media day in Washington yesterday. Drexel was picked to finish fifth, and George Mason to finish first.

Kevin Tatum writes that Bruiser Flint has made his peace with last year, while Mel Greenberg writes that the Dragons' women's team will stick their projected eighth-place finish on the bulletin board.

There's better news at the DAC, though: the men picked up a recruit, while the women will take inspiration from Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor Nicole Hester.

And finally, a scary prospect for Penn fans. Princeton's athletic director, Gary Walters, has made a statement you might actually agree with. As reported by (Princeton alumnus) Frank DeFord of NPR and Sports Illustrated:

"Is it time," [Walters] asks, "for the educational-athletic experience on our playing fields be accorded the same ... academic respect as the arts?"

I know that for most of us, this isn't even a question because of the value of sports in bringing together the campus community at all of the schools in the City Six.

But DeFord and Walters nail the point that there are still some schools out there are full of people who see sports as a lowbrow, mass-culture thing not worthy of their upturned noses. Including quite a few that play Princeton on a regular basis.

Your thoughts?

Last week it was Arizona Diamondbacks fans chucking bottles onto the field in Game 1 of the NLCS.

This week, we thank the residents of Oxford, Miss., for making Philadelphia sports look good.

And we thank the Forde Yard Dash for reporting it:

If the goal is to ensure the safety of the players, then surely that should extend to protecting them from trash, bottles and flying high heels (2).

Those were among the garage sale of projectiles fired onto the field Saturday at Mississippi (3) after officials overturned a call that could have given the Rebels a chance to tie or win against Alabama (4).

I certainly would not want to be hit upside the head with a high heel. Getting stepped on is bad enough (which I know from experience).

But hey, in a stadium whose name includes the word Hemingway, I guess it would have to be fancy dress clothes flying out of the stands.

Fred asks some very good questions in a comment attached to the last post. It's a long comment, so I don't want to paste it here. But read it, then come back for my answer...

I definitely agree about the bad attendances at Franklin Field. It doesn't help in terms of creating buzz that they haven't won a league title since 2003, but that shouldn't be an excuse. And it certainly isn't an excuse for the many people who sleep in past the kickoff, throw their toast and go home.

I think part of it is that so many people focus on basketball first, and at this point, by some distance. Which is probably the case at most of the schools in the region, and that's to be expected given that our basketball teams are far more relevant on the national stage than football.

Having said that, I think Villanova football draws well enough -- an average of 9,520 fans per game, which is 76 percent of capacity. I have to think that goes up with Hofstra and Delaware as the last two home games.

Penn's average in two home games is 10,273, but having been at both of those I have a bit of a hard time believing it. And obviously, the percent capacity comparison doesn't work with Franklin Field.

I also think Temple is drawing better than it used to from its fan base. I phrase it that way because the Owls used to play big teams at home and get lots of visiting fans, and that doesn't even include what Penn State will bring next month. I was impressed by the turnout at the Navy game, though, and I will be very interested to see what the attendance at the Linc is this Saturday, though. I would hope it's big.

Anyway, your greater point of why bother doing this is also a good one, and I do have an answer for it. It goes back to 2003 when Villanova beat Temple at the Linc. It got me to thinking about exactly what the best football team in the region is.

Now that I have the blog, I figured that I could try to find some statistical way of answering the question and bridging that gap between the lower end of I-A and the upper end of I-AA. As Sagarin includes both divisions, I figured that would be a good thing to try. It obviously isn't perfect, and maybe I'll be able to find a different method for next season.

More after the jump, because this thing is getting long...

We begin with breaking news from the Daily News that Penn State defensive end Jerome Hayes will miss the rest of the season with a torn ACL.

Elsewhere in the People Paper, Bernard Fernandez recaps the Wisconsin-Penn State and interviews some alums who aren't too concerned about the various controversies this season.

On the national scene, Mike Kern breaks down how Ohio State and South Florida rose to the top of the BCS standings, and writes his usual Monday wrap of all the big local and national action.

In the Inquirer, Frank Fitzpatrick writes the second part of his series on college athletics fundraising. It takes a hard look at controversial Oklahoma State booster T. Boone Pickens, as well as a few glances at big money that has come to Penn State and Temple recently.

Jeff McLane writes about Penn State's big uglies in the trenches, and their big role in the Wisconsin win, and wonders whether College GameDay will show up for the Ohio State game. It wouldn't surprise me; it also wouldn't surprise me if the show goes to Columbus this week.

And speaking of the Nittany Lions, Mel Greenberg looks at the women's hoops squad's first season under new coach Coquese Washington.

Now for the local Sagarin chart:

24. Penn State (28) - home win vs. Wisconsin (44)
38. Rutgers (39) - road win vs. Syracuse (115)
109. Delaware (99) - home win vs. Northeastern (165)
111. Villanova (113) - road loss vs. Massachusetts (82)
124. Temple (141) - road win vs. Akron (94)
148. Lehigh (141) - road loss at Yale (90)
155. Delaware State (161) - road win at North Carolina A&T (239)
175. Lafayette (164) - road loss at Harvard (146)
187. Penn (184) - road win at Columbia (224)
242. La Salle (242) - road loss at Marist (236)

If you're a Temple fan, you're ecstatic that your team beat a Top 100 team on the road and got the kind of jump it deserves for it. And maybe you can start to dream of jumping Villanova with another win or two if the Wildcats don't run the table.

If you're a Villanova fan, you're hopefully satisfied with how your team played, not least because UMass is the fifth-highest I-AA team in Sagarin. You're also probably really looking forward to that Delaware game at the end of the season, and perhaps wondering if a playoff berth might be at stake that night if you do run the table.

If you're a Penn fan, you're even more scared of Yale running back Mike McLeod than you already were, because he's the biggest reason why the Ivy League has a Top 100 team in a pretty bad year overall for the league. And you're even more aware of just how bad Columbia is when your team wins a road game but falls two spots in the ranking.

If you're anyone else, you see how hard it is to move up if all you do is beat a bad team. And if you're me, you're an idiot, but you've been called worse plenty of times before.

After the jump, the national Top 10 table.

Having taken my lumps on Texas and Connecticut, and betting there's more to come, I'll gladly yield to the fans of those schools.

(Though having been in Dallas for the NCAA Tournament a year ago, there sure seemed to me to be a lot more interest in UT sports than other schools. Hopefully, I'll get there during football season some day.)

But I'm at least glad it stirred you all up. I feel like I'm only talking to tumbleweeds half the time.

Anyway, let's use my mea culpa as an excuse to look at today's headlines.

Speaking of big-time schools, Frank Fitzpatrick writes a truly outstanding story on the front page of today's Inquirer about the fundraising arms race in college sports.

Fitzpatrick has written about this stuff before and will surely do so again, and he really knows his stuff when it comes to this subject. So please read the story and feel free to comment on it here.

As for yesterday's games, pride of place has to go to -- believe it or not -- Temple. The Owls rallied from 17 points down in the fourth quarter to win at Akron, thanks to three fourth-quarter touchdown passes from Adam DiMichele. You Owls fans tell me whether that was more impressive than the fact that it's Temple's second win in a row.

Penn State was very impressive in its 38-7 win over Wisconsin, spurred on by a nice bit of motivation from JoePa. The win certainly moved the spotlight off the Austin Scott situation for a little while.

Rutgers also scored 38 points in beating Syracuse, with Ray Rice once again the center of attention. Before waxing nostalgic about winning a state high school championship at the Carrier Dome, Rice ran for 196 yards and three touchdowns.

Elsewhere in New York, Penn running back Joe Sandberg beat Rice's tally by a yard and a touchdown as Penn put up 59 points on Columbia.

(Fair warning, though: I have heard that the writer of that story isn't very good...)

In Massachusetts, Villanova took a very good UMass team to overtime, but the Minutemen were just too much after that.

And finally on the local scene, I would nominate Delaware's Omar Cuff as the best I-AA player in our region. I wanted to call him the best player in the region at any level, but if you include Penn State and Rutgers that isn't the case. It is if you only include Temple from I-A, though.

Cuff ran for 200 yards and three touchdowns and scored another from a screen pass yesterday. That's 24 of Delaware's 30-point total against Northeastern. Cuff's totals so far this season: 5.1 yards per carry, 20 touchdowns and an average of 123.3 rushing yards per game.

And one basketball story: Joe Juliano surveys St. Joe's at their first practice of the year.

After the jump, the national news.

NEW YORK -- If you don't mind, I'd like to have a small rant for a moment...

This might well be the worst big city in the country to be in during college football season.

Yes, the TV networks do their studio shows here, and the split-national feeds usually get the biggest games of the week nationwide. But this city itself doesn't really have much to offer the college football landscape in the way that other big cities do, nor does it have really deep ties to a nearby program.

Think about it. Boston has Boston College; Chicago has Northwestern and Illinois; Los Angeles has USC and UCLA; San Francisco has Cal and Stanford; Miami has, well, Miami; Dallas and Houston have Texas, Texas A&M and a wide range of lesser I-A teams.

In Philadelphia, we have strong ties to Penn State even if it's far away, as well as Temple and some high-level I-AA programs in Lehigh, Delaware and Villanova.

It seems to me that New York has really only attached itself to Rutgers, New Jersey's state school, as the Scarlet Knights have risen to national prominence in recent years; similarly, Syracuse and Connecticut have links here that have varied in strength over time but have never been really strong.

And of course, there's Notre Dame, which has perhaps had deeper ties to the five boroughs historically than any of the above schools.

But when you get down to it, all New York really has are three I-AA schools, two of which are pretty bad. Hofstra's doing well this year, but Fordham and Columbia perennially occupy the lower ends of the Patriot and Ivy Leagues.

I'm at the latter's football stadium to cover Penn's trip here, over 100 blocks away from Columbia's actual campus and a pretty long subway ride from just about anything else in Manhattan.

It's a very picturesque setting on the Harlem River, but it makes Philadelphia's college football landscape look a lot better from afar.

Now, on to the headlines...

Penn State's latest scandal dominates the coverage in the Inquirer and Daily News today. Phil Sheridan writes a column at the top of the Inquirer's front page about the impact of the rape allegations against Austin Scott on the school's clean image.

Jeff McLane provides the news angle, and between the two stories it's worth remembering that Scott does have to be proven guilty in court no matter what we say about all this. The Daily News' Bernard Fernandez talks to Scott's mother, who says she thinks her son will be proven innocent.

There's also the matter of a pretty big football game today between the Nittany Lions and No. 19 Wisconsin at Beaver Stadium.

In his College Football Report, Mike Jensen leads with LSU's five-for-five performance on fourth down last week and wonders what today's big upsets will be. Games of the Week leads with Purdue at Michigan and LSU at Kentucky.

The local college preview boxes include Rutgers at Syracuse, Villanova at Massachusetts, Temple at Akron and Penn at Columbia.

We have some basketball stories as well, including the big news that St. Joe's guard D.J. Rivera will not play this semester for academic reasons. It was one thing to lose Jawan Carter on a transfer, but to now be down two guards is a different story. Still having Rivera for A-10 play should keep the Hawks in the hunt for a league title.

Villanova will have four co-captains this year: Scottie Reynolds, Dante Cunningham, Shane Clark and Dwayne Anderson. None are seniors, which isn't something you see too often.

And finally, Mel Greenberg looks at the Temple women's team, which made sure Dawn Staley wouldn't leave for brighter lights this past offseason.

UPDATE: It just crossed the AP wire that Nittany Lions running back Austin Scott has been accused of raping a woman at her on-campus apartment.

It's not quite the kind of holiday we'll have on the blog next month when the season starts, but the start of basketball practice is nonetheless a pretty big deal.

The biggest party tonight looks to be out on the Main Line, where Villanova has reloaded its backcourt and is looking to charge to a fourth straight NCAA Tournament bid. And given that 50 Cent showed up on this day at the Pavilion last year, who knows what'll happen this time.

We begin today's roundup with Dick Jerardi in the Daily News, who tries to figure out what we know so far and figures there isn't much. He's got an eye on Temple as well as the Wildcats, writing that the Owls "might be the most fascinating" team in the City 6 at the moment.

The Inquirer gives October Madness the info box treatment, and we end up with a nice little clip-n'-save version of all the big games this year. I'm already trying to figure out what our citywide doubleheader days will be, and I'll let you know as soon as I can.

We have a bit of news on the Temple front: 6-foot-10 Owls freshman Michael Eric has been declared ineligible by the NCAA Clearinghouse. Fran Dunphy is not happy, to say the least.

On the women's side, Mel Greenberg turns the spotlight on Rutgers as the Scarlet Knights begin their first season after the Final Four berth... and Imus. He also takes a quick look around the local scene.

Now to football, and the big local news is that Villanova quarterback Antwon Young's season is over thanks to a torn ACL.

Temple plays at Akron tomorrow, and both teams are coming off dramatic wins. But Akron's shouldn't have happened, according to MAC officials -- hey, does this sound familiar? -- and you can see video of why here.

Penn State hosts Wisconsin tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. on Channel 6 in what might pass for the biggest game of the weekend on any of the Disney networks.

Bernard Fernandez writes that Anthony Morelli's teammates are standing up for him. Jeff McLane writes about defensive end Maurice Evans, a big talker who's backing it up with his play.

And we have the latest on the Joe Paterno road rage controversy. He addressed the subject on his radio show last night, and you have to love this line from JoePa:

"I pointed my finger at [the woman driver]," Paterno said. "I did not give her the middle finger, even if I knew what that meant."

Props to Inquirer restaurant newshound Mike Klein, who reports on his new blog Food and Drinq that the old Independence Brewpub at 11th and Filbert Street (across from Reading Terminal Market and under the Convention Center's big hall) will become The Field House.

I'm sure the St. Joe's fans like the sound of that.

Mike reports there will be 35 50-inch plasma screens and the kinds of video games you find at ESPN Zone.

It's scheduled to open in December. My wallet is cowering already...

... this thing you all are reading right now is a blog.

(A cheap way of getting hits, I realize, but I did all the production work on that video and I know a lot of you are Eagles fans.)

Anyway, there's a lot of good stuff in the local papers today. Start with Joe Juliano's On Local College Football notebook, which has details of Penn and Villanova's injury problems at quarterback.

Mike Kern's Thursday column leads with Missouri's trip to Oklahoma, which is the College GameDay roadshow this week even though the game isn't on any of the ESPNs, ABC, CBS, Versus (which has Cal-Oregon State) or even CSTV.

It's a national broadcast on Fox Sports Net, which has the Big 12 cable contract. So in theory it would be on Comcast SportsNet here, but because the game kicks off at 6 p.m. and the Flyers play at 7, I don't think we're getting the game at all. Such is life.

Given that I've taken a couple shots at Florida State on here, it's only fair that I highlight a Seminole who actually gets it right: sophomore Myron Rolle, a South Jersey native who attended the Hun School.

And Jeff McLane offers a midseason Penn State report card. No grade inflation here, believe me.

Nothing like having all hell break loose, is there?

This week, I've also listed who each team played this past weekend, how they fared, and what the opponent's current rank is.

I would like to chart each team's movement at the end of the season, just to see what it looks like. So that's one of the reasons for me to keep this up.

28. Penn State (48) - home win vs. Iowa (70)
39. Rutgers (38) - home loss vs. Cincinnati (11)
99. Delaware (89) - road loss vs. New Hampshire (110)
108. Villanova (113) - home win vs. William & Mary (148)
147. Lehigh (131) - road loss vs. Fordham (176)
141. Temple (151) - home win vs. Northern Illinois (130)
161. Delaware State (156) - home win vs. Bethune-Cookman (219)
164. Lafayette (167) - home win vs. Columbia (214)
185. Penn (181) - home win vs. Georgetown (227)
242. La Salle (242) - home loss vs. Iona (222)

Penn State makes the biggest jump, as well they should have. I'm surprised that Rutgers only fell one spot, but then again I'm genuinely shocked that Cincinnati is ranked that high. The Bearcats are higher than Boston College, South Carolina and Kentucky.

Temple also makes a big jump. It tells you a lot about just how good former Northern Illinois running back Garrett Wolfe was that the Huskies are ranked as low as they are this year.

(I bet the last of those three makes folks in southern Ohio quite happy. People I know who live there tell me they hate Kentucky because they consider that area theirs. UK has a big alumni base in Cincinnati, and and Wildcats games are broadcast there on the radio.)

Penn and Villanova get screwed by not having margin of victory factored into the system, though it says something about just how bad Georgetown is that Penn beat them and fell anyway.

(And yes, Georgetown is that bad.)

The worst loss of the week prize goes to Lehigh even if it was on the road. Let's see whether they're still higher-ranked than Lafayette come the end of the season.

After the jump, the Top 10 comparison...

This would be a good thing.

Her reputation is gone and now so are Marion Jones' Olympic medals. Jones gave back the five medals she won at the Sydney Olympics on Monday and agreed to forfeit all other results dating back to Sept. 1, 2000, further punishment for her admission that she was a drug cheat.

Also not related to college sports, I hosted the last PhilliesCast of the season today. Go listen to it if you have a few minutes.

Two and a half weeks until A-10 and Big East media days get the College HoopsCast started.

Is it just me, or has the University of California at Berkeley's football program just received the biggest gift in its history... from Stanford?

Forget about Appalachian State beating Michigan. Stanford beating USC at the Coliseum has to be the biggest upset of the year in college football.

I just got off the phone with a friend of mine in Palo Alto who says that they actually lit a bonfire. At Stanford. Where they don't really care about football.

Of course, the cops had to put it out and shoo everyone away. But, this being northern California, they were apparently nice about it.

You try lighting a bonfire in North Philly tonight after Temple got its first win of the season... and no, I don't actually mean you should do that.

I forgot to mention this in the previous post, but then again, maybe it deserves its own place on here.

You all know that in addition to college football and college basketball, the Penn Relays are an important piece of what I do here on the blog. So I want you to think back with me to the Saturday of the 2004 Relays.

Perfect sunshine, a huge crowd, and an atmosphere with the kind of buzz the USA vs. the World event deserved in an Olympic year. As the public address announcer read the lineup for the the USA's 4x100-meter team, he came to the anchor leg:

"... Marion Jones!"

The crowd let out a short, sharp, deafening roar that remains one of the loudest I've ever heard at Franklin Field.

But they might not have seen that morning's New York Times, which contained the first story linking Jones to the BALCO steroid scandal.

Ever since that day, and that cheer, Jones has run away from years of allegations that her dazzling performance at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 was steroid-enhanced.

Yesterday, as Frank Fitzpatrick writes on the front page of this morning's Inquirer, Jones finally admitted the truth.

Today, the career of one of the most celebrated sprinters in American history lies in ruins. Like Justin Gatlin, another star of the Franklin Field track who received our collective presumption of innocence, we once again have to consider the integrity of what we've seen with our own eyes.

Marion Jones betrayed her sport. And in so doing, she betrayed us -- and I mean us in the literal sense, right here in Philadelphia -- as well.

Back in 2002, Villanova played its Big 5 game against Penn at the Wachovia Center. Seated in the upper deck, the Penn student section brought rollouts that said "We're High" and "What's the score down there?"

I mention this because I'm currently sitting in the press box on top of the upper deck at Franklin Field, covering the Georgetown-Penn football game for the print edition of the Inquirer. I've done this before, but it had been a while since I last made the trek all the way up the steps... and as many of you probably know, there are a lot of steps.

Anyway, while I'm waiting for the game to start, let's have a look around the media this morning on a day of college football that has some intriguing games.

We start with Mike Jensen's College Football Report, which leads by asking how close we are to BCS chaos. I hope we get it, because then we might get a playoff, and I happen to think the college presidents are full of it when they say a playoff would hurt the student-athletes. But not as full as the university coffers after a bowl trip filled with money and free stuff.

Games of the Week leads with Wisconsin at Illinois and an intriguing I-AA showdown between Delaware and New Hampshire.

Jeff McLane previews today's Iowa-Penn State game, in which both teams have a lot in common.

Props to TCNJ for beating Rowan on a last-second field goal, but no props to Louisville for losing at home yet again.

Nationally, pride of place goes to Florida-LSU tonight at 8 p.m. on Channel 3. The Atlanta Journal Constitution's Tony Barnhart (who's also a CBS pundit) picks Florida to upset Mike VI and the rest of the Tigers.

But since he wants people to call him crazy, I'll do so (politely -- he does know what he's talking about) and say LSU wins. Tiger Stadium at night is the toughest place to play in college football, and I think the home team rides that energy to a win and another big step on the way to the national championship game.

All is not well in Gainesville, as Gators safety Tony Joyner has been in trouble with the law of late. He was reinstated for tonight's game, but Florida Times-Union columnist Gene Frenette thinks Urban Meyer didn't do so out of principle. "[T]he truth is a key player had a classic entitlement moment and chose to break the law," Frenette writes, further wondering "if Joiner would make the trip if the opponent was Western Kentucky."

I'll let you take that one up among yourselves.

The Red River Rivalry game between Texas and Oklahoma had national title implications until last weekend, when both teams lost games they probably shouldn't have. But the game could still affect the Big 12 title game, and the Dallas Morning News' Chuck Carlton says that's enough to get both teams up for the trip to Dallas.

No, I won't include the sponsor of that game in this post, or anywhere else on the blog. But I will note that for the second week in a row, we don't get the best 3:30 ABC regional game of the week. Such is life.

The game here is underway -- Penn just went up 14-0, in fact -- so I think I should get back to watching it.

Phil Martelli was on WHYY's Radio Times today. If you didn't hear it live, you can download the show in MP3 format by clicking here (heads up: that link will launch the file itself, and it's pretty big).

I haven't listened to the show yet but will later tonight. And yes, when I say later tonight I know what time it is already.

I figure, if I'm going to do this every week, I have to actually do it every week. So here it is while I have a few minutes, and then I'm swamped by the Phillies for the rest of the week.

38. Rutgers (21)
48. Penn State (47)
89. Delaware (89)
113. Villanova (106)
131. Lehigh (127)
151. Temple (161)
156. Delaware State (185)
167. Lafayette (162)
181. Penn (175)
242. La Salle (242)

You lose at home to a mediocre (though not bad) ACC team, you drop 17 spots. You lose on the road to a bad Big Ten team, you fall one point. There's your home-road Sagarin formula in a nutshell, folks.

Temple jumps 10 spots after losing to Army, which I find interesting, but I can't put a finger on how that one happen. Nor can I figure out how Delaware State jumped 29 spots in a week, except to pray it wasn't 158 last week and I typed it wrong. But I'm pretty sure I got it right.

My bet with the Hornets is a road loss at Kent State, whose schedule so far includes Iowa State and Kentucky, has something to do with it.

Anyway, here's the Top 10 comparison table.

Okay, this is pretty interesting. You've probably heard by now about the criticism the AP poll voters have taken this week (and as the AP loves to say, its writers don't have any votes in the polls, it just puts the poll together). But I am just not sold on Ohio State being No. 4, nor am I sold on South Florida being at No. 6.

No. 9, where the Bulls are in the coaches' poll, seems a bit fairer, but a home win over West Virginia isn't the be-all-and-end-all. Boston College deserves its spot, as does Kentucky, and it's good to see Auburn's win at Florida count as much as it did.

The SEC is so strong that even the bad teams are pretty good. Seriously. I know Auburn's been whacked around quite a bit this year, but they're still a very strong squad.

Arizona State's place in Sagarin is really interesting. I've got a good friend who follows the Pac-10 very closely who tells me the Sun Devils are flying under the radar and deserve to be mentioned along with the elite teams in the conference.

But what I think this week tells us is this: if a Top 10 team loses to another good team, the polls tend to knock the loser out of the Top 10 just for the sake of doing so. Maybe, given the way things are going this year, that shouldn't happen anymore.

Your thoughts?

I'm closing up shop for a few days, for fairly obvious reasons.

I'll hopefully be back at some point this week, but enjoy this ride. As great as March Madness is, to have this Phillies team in the baseball playoffs is pretty special.

(Hat tip to Philadelphia Will Do. And of course, the St. Joe's grad is Jamie Moyer.)