Detroit Papers. Worth reading the News and the Free Press this week in prep for the game.

Sage Advice. BuckNuts.com – Miscellaneous Thoughts

Look for High Street and Campus to go insane either way. If OSU loses, then the students may riot. If OSU wins, then the students may riot. If I were to hand out a small piece of advice for those driving up to see this contest? Park your vehicle in a garage or field a good ways from the action.

BCS Rankings. They are out and OSU does indeed slip to #2 – the professional prognosticators were right! I have to say it is pretty strange, given that victory margin is not considered, to play and win, and lose ground in the poll to an idle team. Whatever, it doesn’t matter, OSU just needs to focus on Michigan and all will be well.

BCS forecast. Not sure why Brad picks Miami to leapfrog OSU in the standings – ESPN.com: NCF - Inside The BCS – doesn’t make sense to me. OSU can only build on its lead from last week as OSU won while Miami was idle. Sure OSU looked weak but victory margin does not matter to the computers. OSU’s schedule strength can only go up it seems to me…hmm, cnnsi is echoing the ESPN line, projecting OSU’s lead to slip. Maybe I need to go review the BCS math. Can beating a weak team actually hurt a contender more than being idle?

OK I’ve started to dig into the computer components. Of the 4 that have published today, 3 did not change from last week, but 1 – the NY Times poll – did drop OSU to 2 and move Miami to 1. Given that the computers are not permitted to consider margin of victory, this seems like a pretty bad flaw in the NY Times algorithm to me. I just don’t get how playing and winning can be considered more negative than being idle.

Buckeyes 23, Illini 16. Wow, what a stressful game. After beating Purdue on a 4th quarter hail mary last week, I expected the Buckeyes to come out this week charged up to show the world what they were really made of.

Instead, they went for degree of difficulty points. “It’s not enough to win at the last minute in the 4th quarter. Let’s drag this thing into overtime and see if we can still win.”.

But a win is a win. 12-0 is a pretty rare place to be, regardless of how we got there. Early in the season the buckeyes seemed to wear teams down. Their superior size and athleticism and depth would wear teams out midway thru the 3rd. That isn’t happening anymore. I wonder if the long season is taking a toll.

Bring on the wolverines!

BCS Forecast. Well here’s my guess on tomorrow’s BCS poll. OSU and Miami will easily stay 1-2 – no one else is in striking distance, OSU will pick up points despite their weak showing because a) margin of victory doesn’t count, and b) their strength of schedule will improve due to an additional game and Texas Tech’s defeat of Texas (remember, OSU beat Texas Tech the first game of the season).

The question is #3. WSU should easily hold its #3 position. The Texas loss will hurt Oklahoma in the standings as they will lose their -.6 quality win points. And no one else is even close to WSU. Iowa could move up a little but I don’t think much, they didn’t move up an extraordinary amount in the voted polls this am.

Future Vacations. Looking thru Conde Nast Taveler’s latest top 100 lists and dreaming. Around here, the Aerie Resort on Vancouver Island and the King Pacific Lodge up near the Queen Charlottes look very interesting. Also the Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino.

We’ve also heard great things about the Tu Tu’ Tun in Oregon.

Bowl Tours. The OSU Alumni Org is cranking up the bowl tour machinery – OSU Alumni Association Bowl Tour Packages – I hope this doesn’t jinx the Buckeyes…

My next phone. Need to start sizing up my next phone. Probably going to finally move off Nextel as they just don’t have cool phones. The SANYO 5300 looks fun.

Title Bloat. Amazon hires algorithm guru. Chief Algorithm Officer? Wow.

Neuros. Love the FM output so that it can be wirelessly hooked up to existing car stereo, home tuner, etc – John Robb’s Radio Weblog. Now we just need a better wireless connection, one which doesn’t suffer from the range compression and other artifacts of FM.

Geek Fishing. Tong’s new tech blog, focused on wireless toys and ideas – Geek Fishing. OK I am now officially involved with blogs using Radio, Cafelog, and Blogger. Now I want a meta-blogging client that will let me edit and create content, and post it to any and all of my blogs.

Bluetooth pains. Comments from Bob Frankston on Bluetooth. I have also heard that Bluetooth as a PAN is a bit problematic as it puts even more pressure on device batteries and puts even more hi-freq radiation near your skull. I wonder if this is true.

Slighting the Illini. I hope all the OSU Alums show up to fill the empty seats – BallBlog: Listless in Illinois

More College Football Blogs. A nice one by Jeff Potrykus out of Milwaukee. And a Colorado blog. And ballblog is nice.