• And whatever you do, please, don't bend it like Beckum. Anyone who caught the brief glimpse of the volleyball swelling inside Travis Beckum's ankle during Wisconsin's win over Illinois Saturday could see this coming: the Badgers' All-American tight end is out for the season with a broken fibula. Let this be a warning to y'all kids: Beckum passed up NFL millions in the latest draft, only to miss the first two games and most of the third with a gimpy hamstring, leave the field a loser in all four games he actually finished, and have his college career ended by a nasty injury that will inevitably cost him next April.

On the bright side for Wisconsin: the Badgers were 3-0 with Beckum out or mostly out, and made its second half surge over the Illini Saturday after he left the game. So maybe he won't be missed, in the cynical, results-based sense.

In other notable injury news: Northwestern running back Tyrell Sutton will require surgery on the wrist he injured in the Wildcats' turnover-heavy loss to Indiana, and the team didn't update the status of quarterback C.J. Bacher, who sat out the final drive with an injured leg. ... X-rays on quarterbacks Tyrod Taylor and Sean Glennon, both injured in Virginia Tech's loss to Florida State, came back negative for major injuries. Both will be in boots through the Hokies' off week and are listed as 'questionable' for next week's Thursday night game against Maryland. ... Pitt quarterback Bill Stull was released from the hospital after a scary-looking concussion that knocked him cold and sent him off on a stretcher during the Panthers' loss to Rutgers. He's iffy for Notre Dame on Saturday. Do not tempt the concussion demons, man.

• Jim Delany don't tolerate. Michigan's Brandon Minor hauled in this pylon-stomping, 19-yard pass on a 3rd-and-11 throw Saturday, deemed out of bounds on the field but reversed to a touchdown on review to tie Michigan State 7-7 in the first quarter:

Problem: by rule, that's not a touchdown. It wasn't exactly a "key play" by the fourth quarter, either, when the Spartans opened up a two-score lead that rendered all disputes moot, but Big Ten commish Jim Delany wasn't in a forgiving mood:

“The people in the replay booth made a mistake,” Delany said at the conference’s basketball media day Sunday. “It wasn’t a mistake of judgment, it was a mistake of an application of the rule. They applied the wrong rule and they applied it improperly.”
[...]
“I expect more from them than that,” Delany said. “You can understand a mistake of judgment on the field, and you can even understand possibly not getting the standard right because we want indisputable video evidence that a play is wrong. But to apply the wrong rule to a situation is not acceptable to me.”

Discipline could follow, vindication for the anger Spartan fans no doubt spewed for the next three quarters before Javon Ringer and Co. quickly wiped it from their memory.

• The seventh loss spells relief. The Syracuse Post-Standard assures beleaguered Orange fans that the end of the Greg Robinson is very, very near, maybe as soon as next week:

Gross is likely looking at the life support machine on a week-to-week basis. He could turn it off with the next loss or let it run its course. Invariably, all signs continue to point toward a humane and inevitable end to the Robinson era.

The Orange is 1-6 overall. A loss to Louisville on Saturday would make the Orange mathematically ineligible for a bowl. That could be the marker Gross uses to pull the plug.

Robinson seems optimistic, publicly, that the toughest part of the Big East schedule -- West Virginia, Pitt, South Florida -- is already behind him. That will only make it harder to take when Louisville, Rutgers, UConn, Notre Dame and Cincinnati do the same thing. No one expects G-Rob to survive that string as anything but an official lame duck.

In the meantime, Randy Edsall's name keeps popping up, for whatever it's worth.

Quickly ... The Rose Bowl is getting a little old for USC. And how in the world did a USC player actually return a punt out of his own end zone? . . . A nice video review of Rutgers' shocking offensive outburst against Pitt. . . . Even after his team beat UCLA by three touchdowns, at least one Cal fan was upset with Rick Neuheisel. . . . North Carolina quarterback T.J. Yates might practice a little this week, but won't play against Georgia Tech. . . . A few Arizona students suffered minor injuries trying to rush the gates to get into the Wildcats' eventual loss to USC. . . . Tennessee is wounded -- literally, they're injured up and down the roster. . . . And when you're an Indiana fan, who wouldn't rather keep on drinkin' than go to the game?