CAREER PATH INTERCEPTED: Yale senior Patrick Witt, previously discussed here, today chose the Harvard game over his Rhodes Scholar interview, in part because he believed he couldn't pursue an NFL career if delayed by time in Oxford.

Harvard impressed them with their prowess, did, winning 45-7 today. Witt went 24-39 for 226y, 1 td and 3 interceptions, and can re-apply for the Rhodes next year.

WHY DO I GET THE FEELING YOU'RE GOING TO BE THE DEATH OF ME? Nerve.com (but it's SFW!) lists five noteworthy contemporary actors whose once-promising careers may have been derailed by the film franchises they chose to join.

TOPOGRAPHIC TORTURE:  Forget about the birds and the pigs and the agricultural undead -- 3 Slices is free, simple, and addictive.

GIVE JOON PAHK A REMATCH:  The Philadelphia Inquirer explains the methodology of this year's Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions winner, someone about whom we've written before.  (You will rarely see a game shift as dramatically as what this competitor pulled in Double Jeopardy in the first part of the finals.)

PENNY CANNED? It's been a bad week for Abed. Not only is Community going on hiatus, but Cougar Town doesn't have a spot on ABC's midseason lineup. Of note:

• Cross-dressing comedy Work It! replaces Man Up! on Tuesdays, with Celebrity Wife Swap filling for Dancing With The Vaguely Famous Results until The River (creepy found footage show from Paranormal Activity creator Oren Peli) takes over the slot in February for a short run.


• Winter Wipeout leads off Thursdays for a while, until it gets replaced with Ashley Judd/Sean Bean thriller Missing.


• GCB (fka Good Christian Belles, fka Good Christian Bitches) replaces Pan Am out of Desperate Housewives, though ABC may return to Pan Am for a second season.

In addition to Cougar Town, no slot yet for Our Friend Shonda's new crisis management show Scandal, which, if I were a betting man, winds up Thursdays at 10, with Private Practice wrapping its season a little early, or takes the slot from Body of Proof on Tuesdays. Also not scheduled--Don't Trust The B***h In Apartment 23, which I'm guessing they're holding if Work It fails or to launch out of Modern Family.

HIS FIRST CLIENT WILL BE JUKT MICRONICS:  A reader points out that for the first time in eleven years, the California Supreme Court will be reviewing a case of whether someone's moral character makes him unfit for the Bar, and that someone is Stephen Glass, whom the New York Bar previously refused to admit on said grounds.

This article reviews the opinions below, which do not otherwise appear available online, with the majority citing character witness testimony in his favor by "two law professors, an owner of TNR, an investigative journalist, four attorneys (including a partner of the firm where Glass is employed), and a founder and CEO of an educational software company who was a Rhodes Scholar," as well as "declarations of five witnesses, including three lawyers, a director at Human Rights Watch, and an International Relations Officer for the U.S. Department of Labor." A dissenting judge noted, however:

Although he provided evidence of some rehabilitation, the Committee proved that five years after his initial public fraud, Glass was not truthful on his application for admission to the New York Bar. In that 2003 application, he expressed remorse for his lies and promised to be honest. Yet, to gain admission to practice law in New York, Glass understated the number of articles he had fabricated and exaggerated his efforts to help the magazines identify those articles. At a time when he should have been scrupulously honest, he presented an inaccurate application because it benefitted him—the same behavior as his earlier misconduct. And as late as 2005, Glass told one psychiatrist that he was still in the process of understanding and accepting his past misconduct. Just two years later, in 2007, he applied for admission to the California bar.

This record does not demonstrate Glass’s complete rehabilitation. If he is admitted to practice law, California courts and others will rely on his word as an officer of the court... Indeed, if Glass were to fabricate evidence in legal matters as readily and effectively as he falsified material for magazine articles, the harm to the public and the profession would be immeasurable. Given the magnitude of his misconduct and his subsequent misrepresentations on his New York Bar application, Glass has not shown proof of reform by a lengthy period of exemplary conduct which ‘we could with confidence lay before the world’ to justify his admission.

[Also per our earlier discussions on this topic, that other author's name still does not appear among those admitted to practice in New York State (though she did pass the bar exam), nor does her name appear on the website of the firm where she is employed.]

JOSE CRUZ WEEPS:  Major League Baseball has confirmed that the Houston Astros will move to the American League West in 2013, joining the Texas Rangers there, and as early as next year (but no later than 2013) there will be a second wild-card team added to each league, with the two wild cards facing in a one-game playoff.

I'm actually fine with the latter, because I like the idea of creating incentives for winning one's division, but a pair of 15-team leagues? Ugh. Interleague play should be a rare midseason treat, not something which occurs every week of the year. From what I've been able to piece together, we're likely instead looking at 18 games against each divisional rival (total 72), 6x each for the other 10 teams in the league (60), and 30 interleague games -- basically, doubling the number of interleague games and inexorably leading us to the destruction of the American and National Leagues as distinct entities and the introduction of the designated hitter into all games. Boo!