The mothership has launched a nifty new feature where they track who is still alive in the National Title hunt and the good news for UConn fans is that after Week 1 it is still conceivable UConn could be the national champion come January. Not alive? That would be be Pitt. Syracuse, UMass, N.C. State and UMass all check in as barely alive.

If you haven't done so yet make sure to sign up to enter our free Pick'Em contest. Each weekly winner gets a $10 gift certificate to Gameday Depot. The season winner gets a $50 certificate. The league id is 15087 and the password is uconn. Full rules are here.

I answered some UConn questions for UMass blog UMass74. Check it out.

John Silver is a good reporter and he does a fine job covering UConn football. He apparently did such a good job that SNY hired him away to run their official UConn blog. Which they named HuskieBlog. No, I'm not joking. Yes, I wish I was.

Nothing to complain about with that -- especially since UConn is almost exclusively relying on the past 25 years to earn points. We talked about this earlier in the week here.

ESPN has put a mathematical spin on ranking the top college hoops programs and this week it is releasing a list of the best 50 programs in the last 50 years. You can read about the formula in the link above. It is heavily weighted toward postseason success, which helps UConn, but the lack of consistent success by the Huskies before 1985 is going to hurt them. I'd wager that UConn winds up being listed somewhere between 15-10. You can read about teams 50-35 here. The next 15 will be revealed tomorrow and there will be ten teams named on each of Thursday and Friday. Where do you think the Huskies will wind up?

Gene DeFilippo -- the man who bragged about personally blocking UConn's invitation to the ACC -- is retiring on September 31 and the only people more happy than UConn fans are BC fans.

Not really enough out there to get a full round-up going today, but The Hour took a long look at the most interesting (for my money) player on UConn's roster: Andreas Knappe.

News of UConn being included in part of this 16 team mega power tourney is awesome, in light of UConn not being allowed into post season play for 2012-2013. The interesting thing will be how UConn's roster shapes out both from a player and coaching stand point. The practice facility should be up and quite functional by November 2017 too. Too bad for Pitt and Syracuse. The two top dogs in the ACC will forever be Duke and North Carolina.

SB Nation PItt blog Cardiac Hill reached out to us about a month back to preview UConn, unfortunately we missed the e-mail so our friends over at the Hill reached out to the worst possible source for help: BC Interruption. Not that you needed another reason to hate BC, but if you're looking for one there you go.