Mid-week musings

- The Beatles library was released recently on i-Tunes and, within a day, two of the band's albums reached the top 10 on the online music retailer's charts. I report this as I sit and watch a Beatles retrospective on The History Channel. In sum, it's been a good week for The Beatles.

- Rivals.com released its list of predicted bowl match-ups and believes that Missouri will play Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl, a rematch of the two teams' match-up in that bowl in 2008.

- Okay, I really don't like the new Target holiday retail work. What started out as a head-scratcher has turned into flat-out dislike. The character of the woman who can't wait until Target opens after Thanksgiving is very irritating and a stereotype of the Black Friday shopper.

- Color me surprised...not! The publicist hired to be Kanye West's media trainer quit after three days on the job. The publicist gave up after West's interview with Today Show host Matt Lauer where the rapper clearly became frustrated and, ultimately, visibly angry.

- In case you missed it, Ohio State University president Gordon Gee strongly suggested that TCU and Boise State were not deserving of a spot in a BCS National Championship game. Gee continues to support the BCS and bowl system, saying that he's worried about a national playoff leading to increased professionalism in college football. Why? He's worried about the pressure on "student athletes." What Gee did not reference is why football is the only Division 1 sport without a playoff, and why the lower divisions in college football can support a playoff, even though it clearly means more games for the "student athletes" of whom he expresses so much concern.

- After looking dominant against the likes of Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Valparaiso and North Texas, the Kansas Jayhawks hoops squad now dials up the competition meter with upcoming games against Ohio and Arizona in Las Vegas, UCLA, Memphis in New York, Colorado State (Sprint Center, Kansas City, MO), USC and at California.

- That team who many predicted would be "the best team in Kansas" lost against top-ranked Duke last night at the CBE tournament in Kansas City. Kansas State is good but needs help at point guard, the spot vacated by Denis Clemente. Jacob Pullen is an off-guard and running the offense doesn't allow Pullen to easily move without the ball to create scoring opportunities. The Wildcats will figure it out, which is why early season games against teams like Duke will pay dividends in March.

- People magazine recently named Ryan Reynolds as the "World's Most Sexiest Man." Meanwhile, Esquire magazine crowned Minka Kelly as "Sexiest Woman" in its "Woman We Love" edition. Kelly starred on Friday Night Lights and is the main squeeze of New York Yankee star Derek Jeter.

- Apparently much of America was intrigued as to whether Bristol Palin would pull an upset in this season's Dancing With the Stars. The series had its highest final episode viewership since 2007 with over 26 million tuning in on Tuesday night.

- It looks like Tom Cruise is out should the Mission Impossible franchise continue past the fourth movie, currently in production. Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) is rumored to be the guy who will take over should there by an MI 5. Renner has a supporting role in the fourth installment of the Mission Impossible series.

- On Tuesday, the Kansas mens basketball team won its 63rd straight game at Allen Fieldhouse. That consecutive streak pales, though, in comparison to the one Oprah Winfrey is overseeing. Winfrey's daytime talk show remained the most watched talk show in syndication for the 602nd week in a row!

- Has this ever happened before!? The New York Times and The Washington Post, long competitors on stories as major as Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, usually do everything possible to avoid having similar content on their front pages. Yesterday, the two newspapers ran the same photo--of the deadly stampede in Cambodia--in roughly the same size and in the same spot on their page ones.