Aside from about 23 seconds of the Utah-AF game by accident Thursday night, I’m back watching my first college football since BG left that steamer on the blue rug in Boise. Don’t know that this will be a full liveblog like the past couple weeks, but with Michigan playing the biggest of the next three straight “big games” (MSU is big because it is, Minnesota is big because I think Laurence Maroney could run for 250 and three scores on the Great Wall of China…on the good side!) tonight against Wisconsin, I can see this becoming a “rapidly increasing series of notes preceded by a timestamp”. Actually, that sounds better than “liveblog”, so maybe I’ll go with that. Look for a RISONPBAT later this afternoon. (On second thought isn’t the “Rison P Bat” what made that TLC chick go nutty and burn his house down? I digress.)

4:19pm
-Put Kentucky on the list of teams that shouldn’t be allowed to play D-1 football. You’d think a 41-0 win would pull Pittsburgh off the list, right? Not for doing it over a 1-AA school. Oh, and Illinois, you’ve been warned.

-Pathetic football aside, even with it’s late-game efforts at sucky-ness, Purdue-Minnesota turned out to be a hell of a finish (as most OT games usually are). On the other hand, flipping over just after Northwestern outsucked Penn State, the only way I could tell Michael Robinson had just led his team to a comeback win was by the people around him smiling and patting him on the back. Maybe realizing you’re average at best and 31 years old playing college football takes away your will to crack a smile?

-Notre Dame and Washington are playing a fun little game….

Total points at the end of the game doesn’t win, it’s whoever has the lowest average length of field goals made. Let’s hear it for red zone offense!

5:53pm
-Stupid me. First, I thought the Michigan game was at 6pm local time. Try Eastern time. Then, when I saw it was in progress, I was waiting for the ND-UW game to get over on ABC. Michigan-(the other) UW is on ESPN2. Fortunately, I haven’t missed much. Which is good from the “STOP BRIAN CALHOUN!” side of things, and the “I don’t want to miss a score” side of things, but bad from the “I really wanted to watch this game” side of things.

And is it wrong that everytime I hear Brandon Englemon’s name, I think of Engleberg from “Bad News Bears”?

-What was a halftime laugher in Kentucky is now a fourth quarter laugher that has become increasingly fun to watch. Knowing that the lead is most likely safe, it’s been great watching Mrs. Meyer’s Husband stew on the sidelines as Kentucky marches all over the joint on his backups.

6:38pm
-What strings did Mississippi State pull to get Peter Jacobsen to referee their game this weekend?

-Michigan is still doing a decent job, though from the little I’ve seen and what I’ve read at MGoBlog, Chad Henne continues to be Chad Henne. And that’s only a good thing about a third of the time, or if someone named “Braylon” is on the field.

7:49pm
-For all the love ESPN likes to give the Wisconsin student section for “Jump Around” before the fourth quarter, it would be fun if one time they’d highlight the obscenity laced chants that come out of those sections the rest of the time. Or the fact that “Jump Around” is really just another one of their “jukebox favorites” played during the game, rather than letting the band play, as they should at college events.

(That said, “Jump Around” is still pretty damn cool to watch in person.)

7:58pm
-While THIS is the Michigan team we’ve become familiar with (well, except for EMU… they’re familiar with another side of Michigan), I’m still wondering what year Sean McDonough graduated from Wisconsin. Either that or he got his broadcasting degree through the mail from the Brent Musberger “Always Cheer For The Team With Momentum” Correspondence School.

9:11pm
-What a fitting time for an entry. Michigan ran one down their leg in a very winnable game. Now the debate is which is more embarrassing? The BG loss at Boise this week, where a win might have been considered a mild upset (though a blowout loss is certainly embarrassing), or Michigan controlling most of the game and then pissing it away? Close call.

-While Michigan won’t be making an appearance on my BlogPoll ballot this week, I don’t know if Wisconsin will, either. Instead, I think I’m going to put Brian Calhoun at #20 or so, and let the rest of UW catch up. (Although for the second game where they had to, their defense made huge halftime adjustments and took over the third quarter and beyond.

-USC has survived a first half scare in Eugene, which takes another “just missed” team off the list. And while I’m hesitant to move Michigan State up too far after abusing hapless Illi-Zook, I’m starting to think they may earn a jump next week with whatever they want to do to Michigan at home. (Michigan is notorious for taking a week off after the first conference loss, though playing a rival on the road might be enough to wake them up. If not, they might not have far to drive for their bowl game this year.)