- Washington has pulled out of the Pac-12 football championship game because of COVID-19 issues in the Huskies program, and Oregon will play No. 13 USC for the conference title on Friday instead.
- Northwestern athletic director Jim Phillips will take over as Atlantic Coast Conference commissioner. The former Northwestern athletic director starts the new position in February.
- Gonzaga and Baylor sit atop an unchanged top tier of The Associated Press men’s college basketball poll, while West Virginia and Tennessee have cracked the top 10.
- Vanderbilt is negotiating a deal with Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea to make the former Commodores player its new head coach.
- Illinois is moving onto its fourth football coach since 2011 after firing Lovie Smith. Will AD Josh Whitman place a call to Jeff Monken or Bret Bielema?
- As the condensed Big Ten season nears its conclusion, Jim Harbaugh's future at Michigan, Penn State's resurgence and Northwestern's running game are in the spotlight. And is anyone really thrilled about most of these Champions Week matchups?
- A Northwestern win over Ohio State for the Big Ten title Saturday would be one for the ages. Wildcats coach Pat Fitzgerald said “we have nothing to lose,” which is another way of saying no one besides their fans believes they can win.
- Illinois fired football coach Lovie Smith after five seasons without a winning record. The Illini went 17-39 overall under Smith — the worst winning percentage (.304) of any Illinois football coach since the late 1970s — and 10-33 in Big Ten play.
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- The first top-10 shakeup in more than a month pushed Coastal Carolina to No. 9 in the Associated Press college football poll. Alabama was a unanimous No. 1, followed by Notre Dame, Ohio State, Clemson and Texas A&M for the sixth straight week.
- Florida forward Keyontae Johnson remained in critical but stable condition at a hospital, the team reported Sunday, one day after he collapsed on the court during a game at Florida State.
- Lovie Smith, the former Chicago Bears coach, parted ways with the University of Illinois after 5 seasons as football coach.
- Jimmy Collins, the longtime Illinois men’s basketball assistant who went on to coach at Illinois-Chicago for 14 seasons and led the Flames to three NCAA tournaments, has died. He was 74.
- Illinois junior guard Ayo Dosunmu scored a career-high 36 points Saturday night against Missouri — and the Illini still couldn’t pick up a victory against their basketball rival.
- Spencer Petras threw for 211 yards and two touchdowns to Ihmir Smith-Marsette, leading No. 16 Iowa past Wisconsin 28-7, the Hawkeyes’ sixth win in a row. Iowa beat the Badgers for the first time since 2015 to reclaim the Heartland Trophy.
- Year Five of the Lovie Smith era at Illinois was supposed to be The Year in Champaign. But after Northwestern dominated the Illini 28-10 on Saturday, it's obvious the programs are headed in opposite directions.
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- Northwestern reached the Big Ten title game by overcoming adversity and proving the skeptics wrong. They now face their biggest challenge of the season against Ohio State.
- Valentino Ambrosio kicked the tying field goal at the end of regulation and accounted for the only points in overtime with a 42-yarder to help Rutgers rally past error-prone Maryland 27-24 Saturday.
- Sean Clifford completed 17 of 27 passes for 232 yards and two touchdowns to lead Penn State to a 39-24 win over Michigan State on Saturday.
- A Minnesota team missing nearly three dozen players to COVID-19 protocols or injuries left Memorial Stadium with a stunning 24-17 win over Nebraska on Saturday after being idle three weeks.
- Oklahoma State running back Chuba Hubbard has opted out of the rest of the season and will prepare for the NFL draft.
- Photos from the Big Ten matchup between Northwestern and Illinois at Ryan Field in Evanston on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020.
- A makeup football game between Miami and Georgia Tech has been canceled after the Yellow Jackets said they wouldn’t be able to meet the Atlantic Coast Conference’s COVID-19 guidelines.
- The Chicago Bears hosted the Houston Texans (and quarterback Deshaun Watson) in Week 14 on Dec. 13, 2020, at Soldier Field. The Bears won, 36-7.
- The ACC, Big 12, SEC, American Athletic and Sun Belt championship game matchups are locked in, leaving no drama this weekend in those conferences.
- Emily Kleffman plans to donate to Together We Cope, a Tinley Park-based charity that helps south suburban residents in need.
- Northwestern cornerback Greg Newsome II has not allowed a third down reception by a receiver he has covered this season, something that's been a big part of the Wildcats' success this season.
- Julian Wlodarczyk picked his spot and made an impact on special teams as freshman for national FCS champ North Dakota State.
- MSU announced Oct. 22 the school was cutting its men’s and women’s swimming programs after the end of the 2020-21 season.
- The coronavirus had started to grip the United States, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s board convened an emergency conference call to consider the fate of the organization’s lifeblood: the annual basketball championships that generate hundreds of millions of dollars of the organization’s revenue.
- Rules are made to be broken, especially if those rules are harmful to Ohio State’s chances of fulfilling its destiny.
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