You're gonna stay for the fourth quarter of our game against Chattanooga. This is actually not as bad as it sounds at first blush:

Saban, the Alabama football coach, has long been peeved that the student section at Bryant-Denny Stadium empties early. So this season, the university is rewarding students who attend games — and stay until the fourth quarter — with an alluring prize: improved access to tickets to the SEC championship game and to the College Football Playoff semifinals and championship game, which Alabama is trying to reach for the fifth consecutive season.

But to do this, Alabama is taking an extraordinary, Orwellian step: using location-tracking technology from students’ phones to see who skips out and who stays.

This doesn't impact anyone's ability to get student tickets for the regular season, it just sets up some bonus goals for diehards who want post-season tickets and opt-in to this program. Now, a bunch of people have pointed out the obvious flaw in which people just leave their phones with freshman pledges or whoever, but at least the idea is to prioritize attendance and dedication.

Michigan does nothing along these lines and really dumped on the idea of dedication mattering when they re-seated Crisler the instant the program got good. Michigan should have programs that reward attendance—not necessarily for students who leave early, but for people who buy tickets and don't use them.

Michigan has the power to change their relationship with ticket-holders by 1) allowing people to return tickets to the AD and 2) downgrading Victors Club points for people whose tickets don't scan. The AD can then try to sell those tickets with some sort of rush program. This would be particularly good for Crisler, which often has big swathes of empty seats even for reasonably important games.

The AD continues to focus exclusively on a bottom line that is mostly about how much money they can funnel to the water polo coach and platinum-plate their silver-plated facilities while ignoring the idea that a full, raucous stadium will probably do more for Michigan's wins and losses than the next increment of opulence.

[After THE JUMP: stay tuned for quality Illinois content! Seriously!]

The most inexplicably good content on the internet. For some godforsaken reason, Illinois football has a lot of consistently good content about it. This year they've picked up lengthy annotated videos from a gent at @ILLFBBreakdown. The Illinois offense is particularly of note because 1) Michigan plays it later this year and 2) their starting QB is Brandon Peters. It's a fascinating counterfactual:

While I disagree with a few things here and there it's always nice to see detailed layperson-focused takes on other Big Ten teams. I feel like I know things about Illinois now. What a country!

Peters looks pretty good, albeit against a team recovering from having what may be literally the worst defense in FBS history.

At least we sold some shirts. Big ups—are we still saying "big ups" probably not—to Ohio State for trying this absurd thing:

Ohio State University, or as they would like people to say, The Ohio State University, was denied the trademark of the word "the" by the United States Patent & Trademark office, according to Darren Rovell and public documents obtained by the USPTO. Ohio State has six months to respond to the refusal.

The USPTO's document lists says it was refused because "the applied-for mark as used on the specimen of record is merely a decorative or ornamental feature of applicant's clothing and, thus, does not function as a trademark to indicate the source of applicant's clothing and to identify and distinguish applicant's clothing from others."

If you still want a sure-to-be-baffling-two-years-from-now shirt with a giant THE over "worst state ever," we've got you. All about the short-sighted customer service, here at MGoBlog.

Related less mocking OSU content. Student ticket sales dipped by 6500 this year, which is huge drop from 28 to 22k. Michigan's on the road but people are also asserting another major reason for the change:

Diana Sabau, deputy director of Ohio State Athletics, attributes the decrease to the tickets’ change in medium and the lack of a certain game on the schedule.

“[Students] have asked us for probably a year to two years that, ‘How can we not wait in line to pick up our tickets when we get back to school?” Sabau said. “I think having a mobile ticket achieved that. I think that, for whatever reason, that combination and not having Michigan at home give us a little bit larger decline.”

Why would a more convenient ticketing system reduce sales? One dollar says those mobile tickets are non-transferable. Which they should be.

Welcome to the resistance. Uh [checks notes] UnderArmour CEO Kevin Plank?

"But I do think there’s athletes that are driving incredible value for those institutions and frankly they should be fairly compensated," Plank said. "And I’m not sure that’s exactly the case today."

Plank may have some ulterior motive as a relative upstart in the athletic wear field, but I think this is the first time any shoe sponsor has said word one about the parlous state of affairs that is modern-day amateurism.

Not just a Purdue issue, AKA the Great Air Conditioning War Of 2019. Via Get The Picture, Kirby Smart on the state of road locker rooms in the SEC:

Asked about the Texas-LSU air conditioning brouhaha, Kirby Smart thinks the state of visiting locker rooms would be a good story for us: pic.twitter.com/jXs7wzlMIC

— Seth Emerson (@SethWEmerson) September 10, 2019

Wait, what air conditioning brouhahaha? [twitter search]

#LSU Coach O seems to confirm there was no air conditioning in the Tigers' locker room at Texas, something Louisiana Tech warned them about. pic.twitter.com/Llm3lG4csJ

— Jacques Doucet (@JacquesDoucet) September 9, 2019

WTF! That is an entirely different level from Purdue not having AC. That is downright dangerous, if true. This being college football there are now charts showing that the locker room was cool and people strenuously disputing the accuracy of these charts.

I work in BAS, HVAC controls, at UT MD Anderson. These charts are a lie, 1000 cfm is not enough for a locker room, also the pre heat temp is the air temp going back into the AC unit, if it’s over 90 degrees then the area is over 90degrees.

— Ronnie Hedrick (@deucehz) September 13, 2019

This is the content I crave.

Skinner bill updates! It's on the governor's desk after a unanimous reconciliation vote from the state senate. The NCAA sends a ludicrous letter to California governor Gavin Newsome:

The NCAA responded to the California State Assembly's passage of a bill that would allow college athletes to more easily make money off their own name, image and likeness starting Jan. 1, 2023, by sending a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) on Wednesday that says if the bill becomes law, it "would result in (schools) being unable to compete in NCAA competitions" and would be "unconstitutional."

Reference to the bill's legality signals the NCAA's potential willingness to sue California under the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says that only Congress has the power to regulate commerce among states.

I'm not a law-talking guy, but regulating universities within your state isn't regulating interstate commerce and the NCAA's position that California teams wouldn't be able to play in multi-state championships actually is.

Matt Brown with some "what now" takes:

Let’s get one thing straight right now. The NCAA is not going to ban all the California schools

I get why they have to say this now, but this falls under a rich history of empty threats from university administrators, right up there with Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney saying the Big Ten would drop to DIII if they had to share revenues with athletes.

Regardless of what NCAA rules state, lopping off California is a logistical and financial impossibility. Potentially locking themselves out of so many huge TV markets, plus losing so many potential teams for their marquee event, the NCAA Tournament (laugh all you want about the Pac-12, but California also includes regular NCAA participant Saint Mary’s, plus possible conference champions from the WAC, Big West, Big Sky and Mountain West), would make such a harsh penalty a nightmare for the NCAA’s business partners. Not to mention that penalty would also get thrown into the courts on antitrust grounds. USC and UCLA wouldn’t take that lying down.

The courts have been a bit of a bust because the judge who keeps getting assigned to these cases finds in favor of the plaintiffs and then proposes tenth-measures in response. This is a much bigger threat to the NCAA's model, one that dodges Title IX concerns—and really all the "how much should a school pay the backup nose tackle" issues. It brings all the shoe company stuff above table, which is a huge huge win for both the players and Michigan. You should be rooting for this legislation hard.

Also, South Carolina is considering a similar bill.

Etc.: Getting a scholarship: nice. Will be fascinating to see if this ESPN/AT&T dispute actually  goes through with a holdout. I'm guessing no. Iowa's AJ Epenesa profiled. He's gonna be a problem. Michigan-Minnesota makes the list of rivalry games that should resort to non-conference games if required. The aristocrats! Discontent reasons: this one, and only this one.