Monday Reading Room -- Georgia Tech has its own rap video

They're the GTGs. Swaff and DBay.

They represent Georgia Tech. And they rap.

Their work is maybe just a tad more polished than Notti Boy's "Hawkeyes" effort. But what Notti lacks in slickness, he makes up for in . . . hey, what do I know about rap?

This song is called "The Ratio." This is a portion of the lyrics before I bring you to the video.

This is a tribute to all you GT ladies

Goes back to '52 when you got into this school

There was forty-four hundred of us and only two of you

twenty-two hundred to one

They were so in love!

I wanna thank you for coming to Tech

Taking a bad situation, making it better, but it's still not the best

Cause you know and I know we got a long ways to go

Until we reach our goal, one to one's that ratio

Georgia Tech's football team has bigger concerns than that ratio. Actually, it has a ratio problem of its own. Namely, 0-for-4 in its last four bowl games.

Fifth-year Tech seniors hope that doesn't reach 0-for-5 in the Orange Bowl against Iowa. From this Atlanta Journal-Constitution story:

"No player wants to go out having played in five bowl games and not won one," guard Cord Howard said. "It's really not a good feeling. Everybody's doing everything in our power to win one."

It's not something any of the players, let alone the seniors, are shying away from. Among the streaks the team has broken this season: first win in Tallahassee, first win in Charlottesville since 1990, first win over a top-5 team at home since 1962, first outright ACC title since 1990.

Now, for some Big Ten expansion jibber-jabber.

Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant has a good piece suggesting Connecticut consider all possibilities, including the Big Ten. He wrote:

UConn should be aggressive. Everything should be on the table. Don't be the potential victim again. Get in early. Be proactive. Force the examination of every possible solution. In another world, a world of high virtue and principle, this may be called disloyalty to the existing Big East. But this is the world of major college athletics, a world of big, bad bid'ness, and if those virtuous folks at Boston College and Miami taught us anything, a bold, brassy vision is a means to preservation.

Hey, maybe the Big Ten taps Mizzou as a 12th team and it's all a false alarm for the Big East. If that's it, fine. Exhale. But the Big Ten, according to the Tribune, will consider 14 or even 16 teams. The Pac-10 is considering expansion. There are a lot of moving pieces. If at a certain point the Big East suffers such dissolution of talent, another league, say the Mountain West, could add Boise State, Fresno State, get to 12 and move in as a BCS automatic league.

UConn should open the door wide with one hand and hold onto its ethics with the other as it talks to everybody.

University of Missouri Chancellor Brady Deaton said his school would listen if the Big Ten approached it about joining.

Now, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon says the school should consider leaving the Big 12 for the Big Ten if the opportunity arises.

“I'm not going to say anything bad about the Big 12, but when you compare Oklahoma State to Northwestern, when you compare Texas Tech to Wisconsin, I mean, you begin looking at educational possibilities that are worth looking at,” Nixon said in an interview with the Associated Press.

At least the governor didn't say anything bad about the Big 12.

Perhaps the best thing written on the topic to date comes from ESPN.com's Jeff MacGregor, who has always put the "writer" in the word "sportswriter." A passage:

Now the rusting industrial Big Ten, like the Midwest economy at large, doesn't know what to do or how to do it. How to remake itself. So in the short term, it will make the same mistake everyone else has made in postwar America: It will try to get bigger rather than better.

Is there a single corner of American life, from housing to Hollywood, coffee shops to shopping malls, left unruined by our compulsive half-century rush to bloat? Or by our obsessive need to profit from our obsessive needs?

American houses: bigger. American mortgages: bigger. American cars: bigger. American movies: bigger. American banks: bigger. American stores: bigger.

Americans: bigger.

How's all that working out for you? . . .

So ask me about the Big Ten and I will tell you that any conference willing to fritter away its own small but honest traditions in favor of the unconsidered quick money and the short con gets exactly what it deserves.

As do we all.

Good stuff. I urge you to read the entire piece.

For something completely different, how about some reactions to what Bob Knight said about Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari at an Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame banquet last week?

"We've gotten into this situation where integrity is really lacking, and that's why I'm glad I'm not coaching, said Knight. "You see, we've got a coach at Kentucky who put two schools on probation, and he's still coaching. I really don't understand that."

First up is Ray Ratto of CBSsports.com.

Knight railed for a simpler time, one when he was a player. He asked questions about the John Calipari syndrome, where wins and losses and revenue generated are the only measuring sticks, when in fact Calipari is only the latest beneficiary of a system that already had whored its soul for decades. Knight raised issues that had been adjudicated long ago.

And in truth, his salary and importance grew like everyone else's through the expansion of the business of college basketball. He may have kept the "student" in "student-athlete" in his shop, but he knew the uselessness of that windmill-tilt when he started.

Next is William Rhoden of the New York Times:

Calipari is allowed to keep coaching for the same reason Knight was allowed to stamp, scream and bully his way through Bloomington from 1971 to 2000. They both win. Cousins of the cloth. . . .

Knight and Calipari became wealthy men utilizing the N.C.A.A.'s plantation system. A system that, at the upper echelons of football and basketball competition, exploits athletes who receive little compensation while coaches rake in hundred of thousands of dollars - millions in many cases.

Coaches receive the praise, in addition to outside endorsements that can run into six and seven figures. They are empowered to scream at, shout at, and assail players who are loath to respond in kind.

The only condition is that they win, and in this Knight and Calipari are linked.

From Kentucky, here's Rick Bozich of the Louisville Courier-Journal:

With his position at ESPN, Knight has one of the most significant platforms in the game. If he has specific issues with Calipari, he has the opportunity to present them in a more reasoned manner than his hit-and-run approach at that Indianapolis speech. We're listening.

This has nothing to do with Knight or Calipari, but Phil Mushnick of the New York Post wrote about how the NFL Network is chock full of self-promotion at all times. But Dallas Clark, the star tight end of the Indianapolis Colts via Iowa, didn't play into the network's game recently.

Next came a live chat with Colts' tight end Dallas Clark. That, too, took a comically desperate turn toward NFLN, which last night had Cowboys-Saints. Clark seems like a nice guy, too nice to be exploited for an NFLN promo, but that seemed to be the intent when studio panelist Steve Mariucci asked Clark which Colt would "host the get-together, Saturday night, to watch the Saints?"

"I'll probably be Christmas shopping," said Clark. Bzzzzz, wrong answer.

I don't know why, precisely, but the line on the Orange Bowl moved Saturday at 10:48 p.m. at the Las Vegas Hilton. Georgia Tech went from being a 3.5-point favorite to a 4-point pick at the casino. The proof is here.

Rob Howe of HawkeyeInsider.com has a good column about the Anthony Tucker/Todd Lickliter situation regarding Iowa basketball. Click here to read it.

And Jon Miller of Hawkeyenation.com lets you pick from his nominees for Iowa's football plays of the decade. I think it's Tate-to-Holloway, but it's definitely open for debate. Click here to see videos of Jon's nominees.

Tech had already been a 4-point pick everywhere else in Vegas.