SELLING THOSE WINS.

The Mid-American Conference established its depressing precedent of weeknight football games with the majority of its teams in action last Thursday. The Big Ten obtained what it paid for, with Northwestern defeating Miami of Ohio 21-3 in the Randy Walker Memorial Game, and Minnesota 44 points better than Kent State. The non-Big Ten teams had to work harder, with Boston College getting out of Mount Pleasant 31-24 and Iowa State requiring three overtimes to defeat Toledo. The Mid-American also has the interesting practice of scheduling some conference games for opening day, with Ball State hosting Eastern Michigan, where a faculty strike is in progress, and prevailing 38-20, and new conference member Temple losing 3-9 in overtime to Buffalo in the Zero Mostel Classic.

The games of interest to Cold Spring Shops were properly on Saturday. First up, Northern Illinois repeated last year's pattern by winning the second half at Ohio State, followed by Bowling Green scoring first against Wisconsin, before the expected Wisconsin running game got rolling. (The powers that be decided that State Line viewers would prefer Utah at UCLA (motto On! Wisconsin!) or Alabama-Birmingham at Oklahoma. But it has nothing to do with money.)

Elsewhere around the Mid-American, Penn State was better than Akron, and Indiana doubled Western Michigan. (The upper division of the Mid-American has some way to go to stay with the expected upper division of the Big Ten.) Ohio appears to have done a bit of win-buying of its own, hosting Tennessee-Martin in a tune-up before traveling to Northern Illinois on the upcoming Saturday.)