Aging rockers get a raw deal. Your fans are old and saggy, the new generation doesn't know your name, and if you get a reunion tour, what you could once do with utmost sincerity -- like wearing a cocksock or eating a bat -- starts to feel like self-parody. It takes a certain kind of unabashedness to keep on keeping on. Some do just fine -- William Shatner leaps to mind. Others (Cheap Trick, Jimmy Buffett) might as well start piling on the dirt.

We're not sure where Simon Kirke fits into all this, but we and perhaps a few hundred dedicated Penn students are about to find out. The former drummer for Free and Bad Company is set to play the halftime show at the Penn-Harvard men's basketball game this weekend. We'll let the press release take it from here:

Kirke, along with the University of Pennsylvania Band, will entertain the crowd at halftime with a medley of Bad Company songs, including "All Right Now!"  Kirke will also be available to sign autographs of his new Drumming DVD: "Lessons from a Legend."

Washed-up nobody or distinguished class act? Hard to tell. But it can't be good that in four short years, Kirke has gone from "Merchants of Cool" (2002) to merchant of low-rent instructional DVDs.

Video, Pennsters! We want video!

People just don't like playing for Princeton men's basketball coach Joe Scott.

Scott, who has the unenviable role of filling the shoes of former coach John Thompson III, has been by all accounts a huge bust for the Tigers. And it's becoming increasingly clear that his personality has something to do with it. Scott, late of the top job at the Air Force academy, tends to start each season by kicking a few players off his team. This year was no exception (although Princeton did issue this hilarious "roster clarification" to make it seem like sophomore Geoff Kestler actually didn't leave the program, which, we're telling you, he did).

But now players are saving Scott the trouble of booting them by fleeing the team themselves. In early January, one the squad's top freshmen, Blake Wilson, announced he would be leaving Scott's program to transfer to St. Joseph's. Senior Max Schafer's minutes were cut so sharply he quit. And last week, recruiting site Scout.com broke news that the team's top recruit -- Jeff Peterson -- would break his commitment to Princeton (despite getting in early decision) and find another school to play for.

Princeton has a decent record overall, but they're 0-2 in Ivy play so far, including a loss to Cornell in which they scored just 35 points, the school's fewest ever in an Ivy game* since the introduction of the shot clock. For audio evidence of how grating Scott is, check out the sound of his voice here. Jesus -- we thought we'd never find another Princetonian as annoying to listen to as this guy.

Everyone knows that when it comes to athletics, the Ivies get steamrolled by state schools. But it's OK, the League tells itself, they can have their fleeting field victories -- in the brains department, we still dominate.

Apparently, that's not true either. The very latest arena of humiliation? Chess. According to a Washington Post piece from December, Ivies are getting rummaged by the likes of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County and the University of Texas at Dallas -- chess powerhouses with massive budgets and more grandmasters than Soviet Russia.

And like their Soviet forbears, they play dirty (we base this analogy entirely on Ivan Drago from Rocky IV). Some of the state teams have recruited foreign grandmasters as old as 40 and had them play for eight years. At least now they've set an age limit and require that students get a decent GPA.

We're looking for the David/Goliath narrative here, but there doesn't seem to be one. It's hard to paint the Ivies as scrappy underdogs, and the staties come off as behemoths with big budgets and questionable ethics. Screw 'em, we're rooting for the computers.

We know that with finals ruining your vision and will to live, the last thing you want is to read more text. So, in the spirit of illiteracy, we give you an (almost) all-YouTube Monday. Close the Islamic Civ reader, switch the brain to "off," and enjoy the pretty colors ...

After Cornell hockey's titanic victory over Harvard, Crimson fans no doubt accused them of everything from bribery to juicing. Little did they know Cornell's secret is far more inventive: a futuristic ice treadmill. Here's the video, via Deadspin:

Last summer, Keenan Jeppesen, Brown's best basketball player, applied to transfer to Penn, and was turned down. Was his GPA too low? Did he have discipline problems? Do they suspect his involvement in a certain kidnapping?

Nope. Penn's president and dean of admissions felt it would make Penn too good at basketball and Brown too bad. From the DP:

"We feel badly about taking students from Brown, a member of our league," [dean Lee Stetson said]. Stetson stressed that the decision had nothing to do with academic standards. Rather, he cited a desire for fairness and a concern for the integrity of a fellow Ivy League institution.

President Amy Gutmann "and I talked, and we just don't think it's fair to take someone from the other Ivies," Stetson said. "It just isn't fair. He is a Brown student, he chose to go to Brown, and we're hoping he flourishes there. He made his choice, and Brown is his place, just like we would not want to have students taken out from underneath of our program at Penn."

Jeppesen -- who, we should probably point out, is a human being and not just a thing that dribbles -- was faced with returning to a school and a team he didn't like. So he's opted to drop out of school.

Jeppesen is by all accounts a great kid, and certainly a terrific athlete. He lost his chance to earn an Ivy League degree because a couple of academics decided to stick their noses in an arena they know very little about. Somebody let us know the next time these two give a speech about "student-athletes" with a straight face.

Despite having pointed out that Dartmouth is the worst team in college basketball, we noted with disapproval the suckers-only 35.5 point line assigned to a recent game at No. 5 Kansas. C'mon, Las Vegas -- that's just mean. That's a punchline, not a point spread. Shame on you.

Um. The Big Green managed to outdo itself, losing by 51. As the AP lede notes,

Teams have been coming into Allen Fieldhouse to play Kansas for more than half a century. Every one of them managed to score more points than helplessly outmanned Dartmouth Tuesday night.

At least no Native Americans were offended, though. That should definitely remain the Dartmouth Athletic Department's No. 1 priority.

Also in embarrassing Ivy sports news: Power-mad Harvard football coach Tim Murphy was re-signed through the 2011 season on Monday -- except he wasn't. According to Harvard Athletic Communications, Murphy was -- anyone else's acid reflux acting up? -- "reappointed." Only in the Ivy League.

We don't know what's worse, the fact that Harvard is trying to use a word that equates Murphy's job (for which he gets paid more than $100,000 a year to coach 10 meaningless games) with that of a dean or department chair, or the fact that the Crimson and Associated Press both took the bait. If he's King Murphy, does that make you his serfs?

Oh, Josie Harper. Your days as Dartmouth's athletic director are normally filled with firing football coaches, forcing basketball coaches to resign, and dealing with the occasional renegade refrigerated mascot. But now you have a bigger problem to deal with -- Indians!

The North Dakota men's hockey team comes to campus in late December for a tournament. What's the problem? UND's mascot is the Fighing Sioux, a name that the NCAA and some Native American groups protest. Last week, Harper published this letter to the editor in The Dartmouth, apologizing for inviting North Dakota. (Funny, and we thought this was going to be the biggest Native American sensitivity controversy in Tuesday's paper.) She says her staff has already met with the Native American Council and that she will soon be divulging a master plan on how her department can better respect Native Americans -- which may include a policy against playing the 14 schools that still use "Indian" names or logos.

Does this mean Dartmouth won't be playing the Cornell Big Red anymore?

Kudos to '79 Princeton grad William C. Powers, now a portfolio manager, who this week donated a whopping $10 million to those kids who are truly in need: Princeton football players.

Now, you can argue that the Tigers don't need the money. They are Ivy League co-champs, and they do play in a beautiful new stadium (to be renamed "Powers Field," naturally). But this team has had just four winning seasons in the last decade. That's almost as bad as the crisis in Darfur.

But before all you readers in the Holy See rush off to start the canonization papers, there's something you should know about Powers. He ... didn't give all he could. No, the bastard held out on us, alloting another $500,000 for the school's financial aid effort.

Son of a bitch. Doesn't he know a half mil could have re-sodded an entire practice field?

The Quaker faithful who showed up in full force for Penn basketball's home opener on Saturday didn't just come for the game. They came for the cheesesteaks.

A fan-favorite promotion holds that everyone in attendance gets free cheesesteaks from local joint Abner's whenever Penn scores 100 points at home -- and when you're playing woeful Division II opponent Florida Gulf Coast, that's a distinct possibility.

Granted, these are the worst cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, but they're free nonetheless. Unfortunately, Florida Gulf Coast's coach, Dave Balza, has also heard about this little promotion -- so with his team down by 23 points late in the game, he decided to run down the clock and prevent Penn from reaching the century mark. Penn's coach, Glen Miller, responded by sending his starters back in to run up the score, but in the end, Penn recorded a measly 97 (a 23-point victory), prompting boos and hisses from the stands.

Also noteworthy from the Red and Blue Crew cheering section: a banner that read "Thank you for making us Penn's 2nd worst opponent -- Dartmouth." Mean! Meaner: it's not true; Dartmouth is actually worse than Florida Gulf Coast. The Big Green are statistically the worst team in college basketball so far this year, losing all three of their games by an average of more than 31 points.