Former Illinois great Red Grange still is picking up honors.

The three-time All-America halfback, who led Illinois to the 1923 national championship, recently heads the list as one of the top 10 college football players of the century by Sport magazine.

EAST LANSING, Mich. – If the Michigan State players are smart, they'll avoid pregame Penn State talk today at Spartan Stadium.

No lifesize cutouts of Joe Paterno. No "Beat the Nittany Lions" posters. No fretting about LaVar Arrington.

EAST LANSING, Mich. – Illinois coach Ron Turner walked into Spartan Stadium on Friday for the first time in 16 years. He hopes today's game goes as well as the last time he played here.

Turner was the quarterbacks/receivers coach at Northwestern in 1982, when the Wildcats played at Spartan Stadium. Northwestern trailed by three late in the game.

This week's guest: strong safety Bobby Jackson.

The Heisman ballot came this week. The people at the Downtown Athletic Club are spending some money, sending the ballots out by priority mail and asking they be returned the same way.

No problem for The News-Gazette's designated voter.

Put a bunch of sportswriters in a room, ask them to predict the best player or team in a league and watch the picks go splat.

It happened again in the Big Ten.

Three months ago, the people who cover the league were asked to guess the conference champion and offensive and defensive MVPs. They are about to go 0 for 3.

The way Illini fans are responding, daredevil women's basketball coach Theresa Grentz is climbing out on a limb in moving her ranked team from Huff Hall to the Assembly Hall.

Her two exhibition crowds came in around 1,500, and mid-week sales for Sunday's opener against Wagner are at 2,559, a figure topped in advance sales by only two other games all season.

CHAMPAIGN – Purdue showed some interest. So did Iowa.

Dustin Ward hoped for one more call. When Illinois offered the Centennial quarterback a scholarship, he didn't wait long to grab it.