Illinois-Wisconsin turned out to be a classic game last night. Brian Cook and Dee Brown shouldering the load for the Illini. Kirk Penney and his cheesy goatee. Bo Ryan and that horrendous “comb-back” hairdo. Lots of screaming cheeseheads. But the real stars of the games were the three guys in striped shirts. And after two and a half months of careful study, I now know why nobody can win on the road in the Big Ten.

I’m not going to say that Illinois got screwed by the refs last night. I’m not going to say that they shouldn’t have called Dee Brown for a foul with 0.4 seconds left. If a guy fouls you on a layup and you can’t get the layup off because of the foul, the ref has to call it.

I’m saying that EVERY Big Ten team gets screwed on the road. Big Ten football officiating was so bad this year they became a running national joke. The basketball officiating is not any better. The reason? The game’s are apparently officiated by a trio of schizophrenics. From one trip down the court to another the game is called completely differently.

Case in point from last night. On one trip, Wisconsin forward Alando Tucker jumps over Roger Powell and tips in a missed jumper. He knocks Powell to the floor. That’s fine. This is the Big Ten. We’re manly men. But on the other end, Powell sneaks under Tucker jumps up and grabs a rebound. Tucker reaches over Powell and grabs the ball. Was it a jump ball? Was it a foul on Tucker? No! It was a foul on Powell.

Second case in point. Kirk Penney gets to use his forearm to create room between him and Deron Williams every time he gets the ball. That’s fine. Except that Penney does it and makes a long two. The next Wisconsin possession, Freddie Owens gets called for doing the same thing.

Here’s my point (finally). Every game in the Big Ten is officiated this way. It’s almost like they change the points of emphasis after every TV time out. Who has the advantage when a game is sloppily officiated? The home team. Bad officials are more prone to be influenced by the crowd than good ones.

It’s the NBA refs conspiracy theory that became popular in the late ’90s. If the NBA wanted the home team to win a key playoff game they sent their bad refs. Let the crowd intimidate them into making calls for the home team. If they wanted the road team to win a key game, they sent the good ones. The game would be officiated more consistently and if the road team were better, they’d likely win. That way you can “fix” the games without ever having to tell anyone to do it. It makes sense.

I’m not saying that the Big Ten “fixed” the Wisconsin-Illinois game. Not at all. Because in order for that to happen, the conference would have needed “good” officials who they decided not to send to the game. The Big Ten has no good officials. This is why home teams win almost every game.

I think a lot of this might come from the main Big 10 office, and a lot of it might be Illinois’ fault.

Coming into this season, the Big Ten announced they were going to “clean up” the physical play. Illinois’ flaming out of the 2001 NCAA Tourney in a flurry of fouls against Arizona, and again in 2002 against pansy Kansas, made some wonder if teams like Illinois and Michigan State were too used to throwing people around and not getting called for it. But since the Big Ten has sent six teams to the Final Four in the past four years, you think they’d know better.

Regardless, I think this mandate has led to some of the oddly inconsistent officiating we’ve seen this year.

And it’s led to screwed up officials.

But I just spent much more space on the refs than I’d intended to.

While it sucks that Illinois didn’t win last night and won’t get their third straight Big Ten title, I’m actually even more optimistic about their NCAA Tourney chances now. The reasons are these:

1) All year long we’ve waited for the “real” Brian Cook to emerge. The one who was so passive in his first three years. Surely, when the going got tough, he’d shrink like a violet. Last night, he poured in 25 points, kept taking big shots and demanded the ball. He has nothing left to prove.

2) Dee Brown finally took over a game. My two favorite college teams have good young point guards. Notre Dame has Chris Thomas and the Illini have Dee. Thomas is bigger, a better scorer and the Big East leader in assists. But if I were building a college basketball team, I’d take Dee. He plays under control an astonishing amount of the time for a freshman. He’s the fastest player in college basketball. I thought TJ Ford was, I’m rethinking it now. Dee is normally concerned with two things, running the fast break and getting the ball to his teammates. Last night, with Illinois down ten with six minutes to go, Dee cranked it up a notch. He made a three. He made a steal and a layup. He took a pass from Deron Williams after a steal for a layup. And down four with a minute to go, he made the Larry Bird steal and pass to Dennis Johnson for a layup all by himself.

3) We all root for teams. We all root for teams with bad coaches who you hope won’t do anything to screw our team up. We all root for teams with average coaches who you don’t really think about much. We all root for teams who have coaches that when the TV camera shows them on the sidelines during a game, you just get this feeling that that guy will figure out a way to win that game. I know for a fact that Duke fans feel that way about Coach K. Until the end, Notre Dame fans felt that way about Lou Holtz. It’s the old, “He’ll take his and beat yours, and he could take yours and beat his,” mentality. I feel that way about Bill Self.

I was reminded of that on Sunday when I watched the Nick Anderson 70-67 Illini win over Indiana in 1989. There was Lou Henson, a man with more than 600 career wins. But you just never felt like in a key moment that the Illini were going to win because Lou would out think the other guy. He most likely did it more than we knew, but we still just never felt that way.

You still have to have the players. And whoever ends up in New Orleans at the end of March will get there as much because of Luke Walton or Brian Cook or Chris Duhon or TJ Ford or Keith Bogans or Dwayne Wade as they did Lute Olson or Bill Self or Mike Kryzewski or Rick Barnes or Tubby Smith or Tom Crean. But it doesn’t hurt to have a little of both, does it?

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I was busy with the events in Madison last night, so I only saw part of the finale of “I’m A Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here”, though I’m sure that Jake can enlighten us.

Chris Judd won? Ex-Mr. J Lo? Who knew? From what I saw he actually seemed like a pretty cool guy. But not the kind of guy I would have thought could motivate America to pick up the phone and vote for him. I was sure that Stuttering John (who proved to be the most likeable person on the show) would win, just because I figured that the Howard Stern listeners across this great land would make enough calls.

I think the most startling revelation of all came from runner-up Melissa Rivers. She revealed she has fake boobs.

My reaction?

What’s the freaking point?

Pardon me for a moment, but that’s like putting a spoiler on a Ford Escort, don’t you think?

Alas, I will admit that “I’m A Celebrity…” was a far more entertaining show than I ever dreamed it would be. Just imagine what it might be like next time, provided they can find some real celebrities to be on it? Maybe Jimmy Kimmel can loan them Cousin Sal for two weeks?

I actually have three celebrities I’m demanding to see on that show next time. I want Kelly Ripa, Jack Osbourne and David Schwimmer. I want Ripa because I find her strangely appealing, Jack because he’d be crying by the end of the first night and Schwimmer because those poisonous snakes need something to snack on.

I have no idea why I just thought of this (maybe because I was trying to cast the whole show and thought of E! hosts for some reason) but I was reminded of my favorite joke in the short history of ESPN’s “Mohr Sports”. Jay had a story about a famous horse being “paid” handsomely on a stud farm. His joke then, was, “Most of you have no idea how noisy is it when horses have sex. But I have an idea. I had an apartment next to Steve Kmetko and Greg Lougainis once.”

I think it should be mandatory that Fox Sports Net bring Jay back next year to save that pre-pregame show. You know your show was bad when people were watching it and pining for the glory days of Billy Ray Smith and Marv Levy.

Not that we don’t love Marv, because we do…

Dee Brown watched the Badger fans party like it’s 1946 and didn’t like it. This is good.

Sometimes, Mike Downey flashes his once daily brilliance. This one here is pretty darn close.

Why doesn’t Phil Rogers just save us the time and just write his headline for tomorrow’s column as, “I hate Sammy Sosa.” There are so many things wrong with his argument that the Cubs suck in Sammy’s contract years that I’m not even going to go into them. I can’t believe the Tribune makes out checks this big for no-talent hacks like Phil. Isn’t there some sort of tractor pull that they could send Chip Caray and Phil go cover?

Jake Plummer said he was “impressed” by John Shoop and then ran out the door and signed with the Broncos. In case you’re wondering, saying you were “impressed” by an NFL coordinator is the equivalent of telling your date that she’s “really neat.”

Don Pierson says that Kordell Stewart’s mission, should he accept it, is to be the QB of the Bears next year. I can’t wait to see him arm wrestle Henry Burris for the right to wear number 10. They should also arm wrestle over who gets to the hold Chris Chandler’s drool cup.

Hee Seop Choi is the biggest thing in Korea since the McDonalds’ over there started offering McDachshund Nuggets.

The curse of Todd Hundley? What does that entail? You drink a six pack for breakfast, forget to button your jersey and strike out swinging three times a game and still find a reason to argue balls and strikes with the ump?

The who has the better rotation in Chicago argument begins and ends with these four hilarious words, “fifth starter Esteban Loiaza.” I had Stevie Loiaza on my fantasy team two years ago and I wanted to kill either him or me.

Bill Cartwright doesn’t think there’s a rift between the players and the coaches. OK, Bill. Whatever. Go back to being an irrational dope.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut and agrees with me about Bill Self and the Illini. I hate when that happens.

Herb Gould’s take on the Illinois-Wisconsin game.

Mark Grudzielanek hates Bengie Molina. But really, who doesn’t?

The Wizard of Roz wonders if the Cubs will ever retire number 10. Who are we retiring it for, Lloyd McClendon or Bruce Kimm? Leon Durham, maybe? Honestly, if they won’t retire number 32 for Hector Villanueva, are they ever going to retire another number?

Rumor has it that David Huh has left the South Bend Tribune and will join the Chicago Tribune to help cover the Bears. You know what that means? I’ll send you all an e-mail from my new office in South Bend.

Can we all agree that Chad Ford is a no-talent hack? How in the world could he and Kelly Dwyer work at the same place and ESPN picks the bad one?

John Donovan looks into his crystal ball and sees…crap.

Kentucky beat the Commodores by 62? How many did Lionel Richie score?

Survivor’s doctor tells the tale of an Amazon catfish who can swim right up a guy’s…uh, you know. Ouch!

One of the “Married By America” contestants is already married. It’s OK, she’s the “bad” Denise, we like the other one, better.

Bubba and the Viagra man are at it again. But does anybody care?

The Drudge Report says that Gee Dub was to have made the decision to invade Iraq by morning.

If you live in San Francisco, you’re paying $2.19 a gallon for gas. Yee-ikes.

In Iowa they’re busy investigating a peanut butter sandwich theft. I’m not making this up.

Speaking of Iowa, intrepid reader David Bohnenkamp passes along this link about a very big Cheeto. Wow, things are pretty exciting over there, huh?

Meanwhile, the world’s greatest newspaper has a story on the most boring man in America (he’s in Kansas, but is willing to relocate to Iowa). He’s looking for a bride.