For Americans, there's July 4th, there's New Years Eve - and then there's the Super Bowl. Between the game and the grub, this annual showdown between football's best has become what amounts to a national celebration for football fanatics and novices alike.

Forget the Florida trip. Forget the Big 5. Forget Loyola. Forget North Carolina. The real season starts today. And it's a late start, to be sure. Harvard's trip to the Palestra tonight will mark the first time that the Quakers (5-12, 0-0) have ever opened their Ivy League season in February.

Mayor Michael Nutter's decision last week to revoke SugarHouse's casino license for its proposed 5,500-slot parlor provided a new setback for casino developers interested in coming to Philadelphia. Nutter revoked the license in order to more completely evaluate whether the proposed casino is the best use for the land at the Fishtown site.

In addition to playing Jetman, competing in Food Friendzy to win CampusFood Cash and posting bumper stickers on friends' walls, users of the social-networking site Facebook.com have been improving their vocabulary skills. But the almost 600,000 thousand Facebook users who play Scrabulous - a free, online version of the board game Scrabble-- - every day, may have to find a new hobby.

This may be the year for Yale to polish off those dancing shoes. While they may be horribly out-of-style by now (the last time the team went to the NCAA tournament was 1962), with four seniors returning and a seemingly wide-open Ivy League, the question is, why not Yale? Led by captain and first-team All-Ivy guard Eric Flato, the Bulldogs have one of the more experienced teams in the Ancient Eight.

As Penn's Faculty Senate debates whether or not to require prospective professors to self-disclose criminal backgrounds, it's important to remember that a little precaution goes a long way. To that end, we encourage the Faculty Senate to go a step further in its efforts to reform the University's hiring practices, by requiring criminal background checks on prospective professors.

Daniel Schwartz is a College sophomore from Decatur, Ga. His e-mail address is schwartz@dailypennsylvanian.com.

Less than a month into his first season with Harvard, coach Tommy Amaker was feeling good. After a 62-51 win over Michigan on Dec. 1, Amaker had not only stuck it to his former team, he had also pulled the Crimson's record up to .500 in the tough early going of the non-conference season.

An AlliedBarton security guard has been arrested and charged with theft and receiving stolen property, according to Deputy Chief of Investigations Mike Morrin of the Penn Police. The incident marks the second time since November that an on-campus AlliedBarton guard has been arrested.

When Penn women's tennis coach Mike Dowd arrived in Philadelphia in December 1996 at the ripe age of 24, he was starving. He was looking for tennis players who wanted to sit down at the table with him and dig in. "We wanted to find hungry tennis players, players that are still getting better and wanted to prove themselves when they got to college," Dowd said of his plan to reinvent the program.

Sleep. Exercise. Fling. These are all things being recommended to students this year. "Fling: Ask Us Why" was revealed by the Social Planning and Events Committee last Friday to be the theme of this year's Spring Fling, which will take place on Friday, April 11 and Saturday, April 12.

Last week, the Daily Pennsylvanian ran an editorial advocating the expansion of need-blind admissions to international students. In other words, it argued that Penn shouldn't factor a foreign student's ability to pay in the admissions process. I'm in favor of diversity, but I beg to differ.

Saint Joseph's Nick Tuxen raised both his sweaty palms to the sky as if asking for help from the Hawk itself. But the only thing that came from the heavens was a blistering serve from Penn's Eric Riley. Tuxen was overwhelmed, and any hope that was still lingering was dashed.

The ashes of Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro will be interred at Churchill Downs, where the Derby is run every year, his owners, Roy and Gretchen Jackson, announced yesterday, according to The Associated Press. Barbaro, who was injured during the 2006 Preakness Stakes, was treated for over eight months at Penn's New Bolton Center in Kennett Square, Pa.

Across the country, 1,100 schools are heating up for Focus the Nation, a teach-in about global warming solutions. The Fox Leadership Program and the student group Campus Progress and the Penn Environmental Group are making an effort to join the discussion with an all-day conference today in Houston Hall.

Carbon Trading 101. It isn't listed in the spring course timetable - yet. In a few years, however, that may be a different story. In a speech yesterday presented by Penn's Institute for Environmental Studies, adjunct professor Andrew Huemmler discussed what he believes to be the next frontier in U.