The Red Wings rallied from a 2-0 hole to beat the Blackhawks in overtime. DePaul is now 3-54 lifetime in Big East play. NIU capped a stellar season by winning the GoDaddy.com bowl. more ›

The University of Illinois football team won their first game in 12 weeks when they took down UCLA 20-14 at the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl Game more ›

While many projections had the Cats heading to lesser games like the TicketCity Bowl or Little Caesars Bowl, they will instead head to Houston for the Meineke Car Care Bowl against Texas A&M. more ›

Was it worth the cost of firing Zook? Sure, he lost six straight games, but before that he won six straight games. more ›

University of Illinois football coach Ron Zook is out after seven seasons with the fighting Illini. more ›

Harnish set a school record last night with 519 yards of total offense as the Huskies roared back from a 31-14 to improve to 6-1 in the Mid America Conference. more ›

It's been two years since Northwestern has beaten a top 10 ranked team, and Saturday they broke that drought by fending off the Cornhuskers. more ›

The Blackhawks served up heaping amounts of home cooking in their United Center opener last night. more ›

Illinois had to come back from two deficits to beat an inspired Northwestern squad. Notre Dame steamrolled Purdue and NIU lost another heartbreaker. more ›

The Big Ten announced locations for their conference tournaments and championship games through 2015. Chicago host a number of them. The biggest of prizes -- the Big Ten football championship game. more ›

Do a Youtube search for Jeopardy host Alex Trebek and you'll get videos of varying quality, from Trebek cursing while recording commercial drops to spazzing out during episodes of Jeopardy. Some are gems, some are crap. Here is the creme de la creme. Deadspin posted this yesterday from another website, Solid Verbal, which takes sound bites from Trebek and puts them over highlights from a college football game. If ESPN would hire Trebek to actually do this once, we'd actually watch Sportscenter again more ›

Illinois Rb Mikel LeShoure, who set team single season records for rushing yards (1,697), scoring (122 points), total touchdowns (20), 100-yard rushing games in a season (9) and consecutive 100-yard rushing games (5), will announce his future intentions tomorrow at Champaign Centennial High School. If you're looking for some divining as to whether he'll stay at Illinois or turn pro, consider this: the press conference is being organized by Chicago-based media communications firm Culloton Strategies, not the university. more ›

Since becoming the youngest head coach in NCAA football when he took over Northwestern following Randy Walker's death in 2006, Pat Fitzgerald has helped turn the Wildcats into a legitimate Big Ten team. With three straight bowl appearances, Fitzgerald's name has surfaced in connection with a number of high profile coaching vacancies. Most recently, it's the University of Michigan who inquired about his interest in moving up. With Rich Rodriguez fired following three sub-par years in Ann Arbor, Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon apparently tried to reach out to Fitzgerald but the request to talk was declined. more ›

Texas Bowl more ›

The Big Ten unveiled the names and logos for the new football divisions that will go into effect once Nebraska joins the conference next season. Let's just say the Oprah Winfrey Network logo may have a competitor for sheer "UGH!" Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said that the names of the divisions — "Legends" and "Leaders" — reflect the past and future of the conference. We'd guess that these logos were designed at the T-Shirt Deli, but that store does pretty damn fine work. more ›

The Bulls played the Celtics on Boston's parquet floor. The Blackhawks hosted Vancouver on home ice. And both NIU and Illinois played games that had bowl game implications. How did they fare? Not well. more ›

It was a full day of action yesterday. The Bulls and Blackhawks wrapped up their "circus trips;" Northwestern stood in the way on a Wisconsin trip to the Rose Bowl; Notre Dame resumed its rivalry with Southern Cal; and Illinois basketball is back in full swing. more ›

Benjy will recap yesterday's Allstate Wrigleyville Classic between Illinois and Northwestern tomorrow. In the meantime, here's how the rest of our local teams fared. more ›

If you're attending tomorrow's Allstate Wrigleyville Classic between Illinois and Northwestern or watching it on television and it looks like a game of "losers walk," well, that's by design. more ›

Busy day for sports locally. Let's recap what happened. more ›

It was a banner day in sports for area and state teams. more ›

Full slate of games between major sports yesterday. Here's hwo they turned out: more ›

College Football more ›

Hockey more ›

Purdue 20, Northwestern 17: Poor special teams play sabotaged NU's chance to match its best start in 48 years. The Wildcats actually were ahead 17-13 in the fourth quarter when Purdue defensive tackle Kawann Short blocked Stefan Demos' 41-yard field-goal attempt. The Boilermakers then drove 68 yards for the final score, with fullback Dan Dierking scoring on a 7-yard run with 3:54 remaining. NU quarterback Dan Persa passed for 305 yards in the loss. more ›

White Sox Sweep Double-Header With Red Sox more ›

With the Big Ten expanding to twelve teams in the 2011 season with the addition of Nebraska, there are rumblings about the necessity of a name change for the conference. Crain's Ed Sherman notes that there is a precedence - when the conference rebranded itself the Big Nine after University of Chicago left the conference in the 1930s and became the Big 10 again in 1949 with the addition of Michigan State. Of course, the conference kept the name - even though it altered the logo - once it added Penn State in 1991. So what happens next year when it adds its twelfth team and the Big 12 falls to 10 teams (Colorado is exiting for the Pac-10 which rename itself to the Pac-12)? Sherman talked with a trio of marketing experts including one who said, "In many ways, as patently stupid as its name would sound, keeping it Big Ten and changing the logo, as they did when Penn State joined, might be the best of a number of bad options." So we're guessing that's a no, then? more ›

The other day, we mentioned how an apparent ultimatum issued to a couple of Big 12 schools could bring the issue of Big Ten expansion to a head as soon as this week. As a result, it now appears that the Nebraska Cornhuskers will defect and join the Big Ten. An official invite to the Big Ten and an announcement of Nebraska's intentions might come as soon as Friday. more ›

Reports surfaced Monday afternoon, originating from a Kansas City radio station, that the Big Ten Conference has extended invitations to four schools to join the conference. The Big Ten quickly denied these reports, with commissioner Jim Delany stated that the conference remains committed to the 12-18 month process outlined earlier this year. more ›

Get your tailgating gear ready. All that talk about a Northwestern-Illinois match-up at Wrigley? It's finally coming to fruition. The Chicago Cubs and Northwestern will announce tomorrow that the November 20th game will be played at the Friendly Confines. It'll be the first time football has been played at Wrigley in 40 years (since the Bears moved to Soldier Field). One plus: without the need for a jumbotron, hopefully the views from the rooftops will be clear unlike the kerfuffle over the 2009 NHL Winter Classic (assuming the rooftops are open). more ›