SomethIng’s MIssIng. (FightingIllini.com)

By Holly Anderson

This marks the second time this offseason we are writing about Illinois football T-shirts, which is twice more than we ever thought we’d be writing about Illinois football T-shirts. Spring is full of unexpected surprises.

To the matter at hand: Illinois recently held a T-shirt slogan contest. The winning incantation has been placed on several T-shirt designs, which will themselves be voted on to produce one perfectly crowdsourced shirt. The work on display here is largely light-years ahead of the graphic flops we’ve seen from certain other higher-profile design contests of late.

However: As products of an SEC education we cannot be sure, but we are almost positive the letter “I” appears three times in Illinois. As a public service, we have created this helpful reverse shirt image, to be placed on the opposite side of the winning T-shirt design in order to help ward off any further confusion:

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Here is Greg Blair, expressing his feelings about getting to play in or watch another excellent Belk Bowl. (Getty Images)

By Holly Anderson

While you were out living your human lives this weekend, we were licking our Internet thumbs and using them to pick up stray crumbs of tangentially football-related news for your Monday leisure reading. Enjoy?

1. Make a Belkful noise, my soul. In the most crucial offseason development in what has been an already newsy offseason, the 2013 date for America’s sweetheart of the postseason has been set. This year’s Belk Bowl will kick off at 3:20 p.m. on December 28. Start priming your punning engines now, brothers and sisters: We have a lot to live up to.

2. In second place only because we are sad Frosty no longer strolls among us. Legendary Pacific Lutheran football coach Frosty Westering, 85, passed away on Friday. Chuck Culpepper’s remembrance of Westering’s life is mandatory reading. Bonus Frosty D-I trivia: One of his granddaughters, former Kansas State basketball player Shalin Spani, is married to one Collin Klein, whom some of you may have heard of.

3. The Nick Saban, Creative Writing Lecturer Hoax. We would pay so much money to sit in on this class if it were a real thing, which, sadly, it is not. (Duh.)

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A felicitous March Madness to all! The NCAA round of 64 commences today, and we’ll gladly cede the floor to hoopyball for its duration. While there is much we do not understand about basketball, including but not limited to its history, rules, strategies, players and coaches, the tournament does come along at a dreadful lull in the calendar for our beautiful game, and it gives us something to watch on television that is not the Cakes And Skanks Channel.

We harbor a particular fondness for the first day of March Madness, for it was on this date five years ago that we first journeyed to Las Vegas to take in the massive multi-day basketball betting spectacle, and it was there on March 21, 2008, that we spied an Illinois fan wearing a commemorative Rose Bowl shirt in public:

At the time this photo was taken, less than three months’ time had elapsed since Illinois faced utter obliteration at the hands of USC, falling 49-17 to the Trojans in Pasadena. This anonymous gentlemen is the bravest football fan we have ever met, and without college basketball, we’d never have known he existed. For this we give thanks.

Five-star defensive end recruit Dee Liner has made a beeline away from Auburn. (Icon SMI)

• IMPORTANT DEE LINER, D-LINER NEWS. We did promise you at the end of the season that we wouldn’t get mired too deep in recruiting antics, not being super interested in prospects until they actually take the field in August, but exceptions will always be made for defensive ends named Dee Liner. Liner, a five-star prospect from Muscle Shoals who’s ranked by Rivals as the second-best overall recruit at his position, has decommitted from Auburn, citing the loss of his relationships with Gene Chizik and Trooper Taylor. This has been a public service announcement to remind you all that there is a defensive prospect out there named Dee Liner. Thank you.

• Coach-hirin’ follies! Coordinators snapped up by new schools since we last typed in this here box: Bill Cubit (OC) at Illinois, Josh Conklin (DC) at FIU, David Gibbs (DC) at Houston and — reportedly — Scot Loeffler at Virginia Tech.

• Roster blotter. Roster moves and non-moves since we last typed in this here box: Notre Dame’s Cierre Wood intends to turn pro; Oklahoma’s Aaron Colvin will return; Houston’s Charles Sims is staying a Cougar for one more year; and Nebraska’s Sean Fisher is forgoing a possible sixth season of eligibility in favor of medical school, the little scamp.

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And we’re back! Items of interest you may have missed whilst holidaying:

• Start ‘em early. The Palm Beach Post‘s Jason Lieser works to instill a proper reverence for prep work in our nation’s youth:

We made some flashcards to teach our 1-year-old about our upcoming trip to the Sugar Bowl. twitter.com/PBPjasonlieser…

— Jason Lieser (@PBPjasonlieser) December 24, 2012

• Roster blotter. And now, a whole bunch of players who are being held out of bowl games for assorted reasons: Stanford’s Terrence Stephens (secondary NCAA violation), Oregon’s Nick Cody and Axel McQuaw (academics), Minnesota’s Andre McDonald (the ever-popular-and-mysterious Violation Of Team Rules), Texas Tech’s Cornelius Douglas, Chris Payne and Leon Mackey (VOTR), UCLA’s Tevin McDonald (VOTR), Syracuse’s Adonis Ameen-Moore and Max Beaulieu (VOTR) and Marquis Spruill and Steven Rene (partial suspensions only) … Illinois’ Akeem Spence has declared for the draft …  Duron Carter has dropped out of FAU … Cody Vaz will start at quarterback in the Alamo Bowl … Oklahoma’s Stacy McGee was arrested Monday.

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Wisconsin’s Barry Alvarez hasn’t coached a game since 2006 Capital One Bowl. (Doug Benc/Getty Images)

• The spins of the silly season. Barry Alvarez will indeed be making a return to the sidelines of Pasadena, for one very special performance: The former Badgers coach and current AD announced on Thursday morning that he intends to coach Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl … Darrell Hazell will remain with Kent State through the GoDaddy.com Bowl … in that same game, defensive coordinator John Thompson will serve as interim head coach for Arkansas State … Ellis Johnson is back in the FBS already, signing on with Gus Malzahn at Auburn … what did become of that one FIU recruit? … and Tennessee’s players have some thoughts on who their next head coach should be.

• Still sillier seasons to come.  Press release from Illinois: “As part of the new Illini marketing campaign, the University of Illinois has begun placing University of Illinois billboards in popular areas around the state. The goal is to further the new branding initiative, with the slogan “ILLINOIS. OUR STATE. OUR TEAM.” in order to foster a sense of state pride among Illinois students, fans and alumni.” Illinois finished the 2012 season 2-10; Northwestern went 9-3; Northern Illinois is 12-1 and bound for the Orange Bowl. We are pretty excited to see these billboards.

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Bacarri Rambo had a fumble recovery and a pick in Georgia’s rout of Georgia Tech. (Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)

Snap Judgments from the Week 13 early slate. For more, check out Friday Snaps, Saturday’s midday Snaps, Saturday’s late Snaps, our recaps of Michigan-Ohio State, Florida-Florida State and Notre Dame-USC and our complete Top 25 review.

• No. 3 Georgia 42, Georgia Tech 10. Looky here, it’s two teams headed to major conference championship games next week! Don’t be too hard on Tech; the Jackets and their coach have battled the flu all week, were operating without the services of leading rusher Orwin Smith and still managed to pile up 458 yards in Sanford Stadium. It was scoring that posed the problem; Tech didn’t even attempt a punt in the first half but had three drives snuffed out by a fumble, a failed fourth-down attempt and an interception, respectively. Its second-half drives fared little better, ending in two punts, one touchdown and three more unsuccessful fourth-down conversions. Georgia’s first seven drives, by contrast: touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, punt, touchdown, touchdown, touchdown. Mark Richt, in his postgame press conference: “Our goal was to win every phase of the game, for every unit to win. I think we may have done that.” Seems like a solid take, coach.

The result is the biggest margin of victory for the Dawgs in their year-end rivalry game since 2002. And speaking of records: With Saturday’s scoreboard assault, the 2012 Bulldogs are officially the highest-scoring squad in program history. That same 2002 team scored 450 points in 14 games; with 12 games down and two to go, this year’s squad is already at 456. Safety Bacarri Rambo tied Jake Scott’s school record for career interceptions at 16. And Aaron Murray is now the first SEC quarterback to put up three consecutive 3,000-yard seasons.

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Assorted bests and worsts from college football’s weekend that was:

• Best Gameday surprise. This is a category that rolls deep every year, but we have yet to see much on television or in real life that tops the South Carolina mascot (the live one) being offered a glass of Steve Spurrier-branded wine. I mean:

Did Sir Big Spur sample the Steve Spurrier wine? twitter.com/gogamecocks/st…

— GoGamecocks.com (@gogamecocks) October 6, 2012

We live in the greatest country on earth, and don’t you ever forget it.

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• Bleep, bloop, Buckeyes. Ohio State’s marching band did a video game-themed halftime show, and if you haven’t seen it yet, be reassured: Your Monday is made.

If your heart doesn’t skip a beat at their Tetris formations, we cannot be friends. Sorry. [Via.]

• To the business at hand. The polls are out! What to do when three top-five teams get knocked out in the space of a single Saturday, including No. 4 LSU? Rank early Tigers opponent Washington No.13, among other atrocities, if you’re Glenn Guilbeau. Full AP Top 25 is here; the Biased And/Or Willfully Disinterested SIDs’ Poll can be found here.

• Injury report story hour. Missouri’s James Franklin will miss the Alabama game with an MCL injury, which is good news for James Franklin’s limbs and less good for his teammates.

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Kind of like preseason awards for the upcoming weekend of football, and just as binding. For additional preview content heading into Week 5, check out Andy Staples’ Walkthrough.

• POINTIEST POINTSPLOSION: No. 25 Baylor @ No. 9 West Virginia. We need this. “We,” in this case, stands for “America.” We were blessed with one of the finer shootouts in recent memory last Friday night, when Louisiana-Monroe and Baylor damned the very notion of defense and just lobbed bombs at each other for 60 minutes. It is the Bears’ sovereign duty to motor into Morgantown tomorrow morning with the same agenda in mind, and the Mountaineers’ to be gracious and accommodating hosts in this respect. The over/under for this game currently hovers in the low 80s, and we think that’s insufficient. We hope it’s insufficient. By the time this thing is over all fans should be too wrung out from touchdown celebrations to even consider burning the nearest piece of upholstered furniture.

We will be spiritually satisfied with nothing less than those 30 seconds at the end of a fireworks show sustained for three to four hours. We regret only that this is a noon game, which will make the smoke emanating from the scoreboard by the end of the first half more difficult to Instagram. College football trickster gods, hear our prayer.

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