Finally, the Super Bowl is in the past. The 82-game NBA regular season is in the present, but that only really matters for Cavaliers, Lakers or masochistic Nets fans. And baseball is still in the future, unless pitchers and catchers coming out of hibernation in two weeks spurs you to check Buster Olney’s tweets on a constant basis.

Though college basketball has been playing games for nearly three months, the season will truly start in earnest now — if for no other reason than ESPN has nothing else to fill out SportsCenter with, and their contract with Dick Vitale states he must plug the Jimmy V Foundation once every 36 hours.

There is a bubble watch to burst, Final Four dark horse candidates to shine a light on and Roy Williams jokes to be made.

Sounds like the perfect time for a notes column.

?The Big Ten conference has four schools ranked in the top 15 of the AP poll. The SEC has three teams residing in the top 25, and the ACC finds itself with two programs among the 25 best.

So of course in cyborg logic similar to the wildly successful BCS computers, the Big Ten sits in fifth place in conference RPI rankings while the ACC and SEC rank third and fourth, respectively. Making the situation even more perplexing, the Big Ten managed to knock off the ACC earlier in the year during the Big Ten-ACC Challenge.

So how to explain the Big Ten’s lowly rating?

Basically — and this is going to get complicated so follow along carefully — the Big Ten’s sucky teams suck worse than the other sucky teams in the sucky irrelevant bottom of the ACC and SEC.

Whew.

Penn State (No. 226), Indiana (No. 219) and Iowa (No. 191) are three of the worst power conference schools in the nation according to realtime RPI rankings. The only other school close to them from the ACC or the SEC is LSU coming in at No. 212 and Auburn at No. 149.

So if you are comparing the conferences from the cream of the top to the Brian Zoubek level-bad at the bottom, then yeah, the Big Ten is No. 5 overall. But considering the only time these conferences will face off again is in the NCAA Tournament, it probably makes more sense to compare the upper echelons to one another.

When you do that, here is how the only teams that matter anymore stack up against each other:

The SEC boasts Kentucky, John Wall, DeMarcus Cousins, John Calipari’s hair grease and a ton of booster money being funneled in to the player’s aunts’, uncles’ and girlfriends’ bank accounts.

While the Wildcats are one of the top Final Four candidates, the Tennessee Firearms should scare no one — on the court at least — and Vanderbilt is too irrelevant to even earn a bad joke.

In the ACC, the top two teams have both been beaten by Wisconsin, and Duke appears primed to make its MTV-sponsored Sweet 16-and-done run in the tourney. The conference depth is impressive — no team has a sub-.500 overall record — but the top and bottom of the league are merely separated by a couple of free throws and a turnover here or there.

Blue Devil point guard Jon Scheyer is fantastic, but Kyle Singler has had an off year, and any team that gives 15 minutes a game to Brian Zoubek is not to be trusted. And yes, I am trying to set the record for the most gratuitous Brian Zoubek references in one column. Unathletic 7-foot white guys need press clippings too.

With Michigan State, Purdue, Wisconsin and Ohio State all locks for the Dance at this point, it is pretty obvious the Big Ten will be superior come March.

The Spartans and Purdue are legit Final Four contenders, while the Buckeyes boast Evan Turner, who should be the National Player of the Year. Alas, since this column has run 660 words long already, that argument will be for another time.

And then there is Wisconsin.

The science department here at UW has strong evidence that jinxes are real; so let’s just call Wisconsin a good team to be safe.

Conference RPI is a fun statistic for fans arguing over those ever-important message boards. The argument will end rather quickly come March however.

The previous note is like ones taken by freshmen in Microeconomics. There is depth, research and meticulous attention to detail. The following notes will be similar to a scholarship athlete in a music appreciation class.

?North Carolina’s problems — 13-10 record, 2-6 in ACC play and on the outside looking in for March Madness — have been largely attributed to injuries suffered for the Tar Heels this year. Perhaps the problem has been the career bugaboo for head coach Roy Williams — a lack of toughness on the team.

Williams has always been able to coach offensive basketball, but it took the crazy Tyler Hansbrough and bruiser Sean May to bring Williams his national championships. The Tar Heels are 1-4 in games decided by four points or less and are 1-4 on the road this season.

?For any native or alumnus of Wisconsin, there should always be a good bit of schadenfreude when a Roy Williams coached team struggles. Just ask former Wisconsin — and 2000 Final Four head coach — Dick Bennett what he thinks of good ol’ Roy.

?Brian Zoubek is averaging 5.1 points per game, 6.3 rebounds per game and 3.1 awkward stumbles per minute.

?As sacrilegious it may seem, Badger fans should be rooting for the likes of Duke and Marquette the rest of the way. The better those non-conference wins look to the selection committee, the stronger chance UW has of grabbing a high seed and playing the first round in the virtual home environment of the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

?If Arizona continues on its current path of mediocrity, only Kansas, Duke and Michigan State will have a longer current NCAA Tournament streak than the Badgers. Neither UCLA nor North Carolina are to be seen on that list.

Michael is a senior majoring in journalism. Enjoy his notes when you were supposed to be taking your own in class? Think his RPI rant was off base? Let him know at [email protected].