A couple of hours til Northwestern tips off its basketball season - let's look at some stuff.

Mark it up, or down, or I'm running out of Venric Mark puns: LTP took a nice - and accurate - look at how great a season Venric Mark is having. BTW, he's on the Paul Hornung watch list so, WATCH OUT, PAUL HORNUNG HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU. Anyway, we really should applaud Venric daily. It's a bummer we just realized how maniacal he is this season. Also, this:

Is Venric Mark likely to play? "No, I'm going to play. That's a given." #Northwestern

— Chris Emma (@CEmmaFOX) November 13, 2012

That's big. Now we just need Nick VanHoose.

Dirty south: Inside NU - which by the way, pretty much has something interesting and well-researched to read every day, unlike, you know, some blogs whose names rhyme with "drippin' John Furple" - has a breakdown of just how egregious Texas Southern's NCAA violations have been. Luckily, the NCAA is a just organization that makes sure cash-strapped HBCU's spend money on important things instead of providing scholarships to talented students when it's against the rules, so the system is working.

More the system is working: The BCS revenue will now reward teams for having good academics by not giving revenue to teams that don't hit APR benchmarks. Never mind that it won't ultra-reward teams for having THE BEST ACADEMICS, this is good for Northwestern!

"It's about time." —Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald on BCS revenue distribution being tied to academic performance

— Steve Greenberg (@SN_Greenberg) November 13, 2012

Yeah! Of course, this will probably just lead to teams doing even creepier stuff to dodge it, but then again, I'm just an old stodgy cynic who hates newfangled things like wait I'm 22 and none of this makes sense in the first place .

Division names that make sense, except they don't: The Big East did something crazy, and divided its conference into teams from the eastern side and the western side, and gave them names that make sense aren't based on weird ideals of sportmanship that just make eventual screw-ups ironic. Unfortunately, now they're stuck with the Big East East and Big East West. You win some, you confuse some.