It was news even to Tukufu Zuberi, director of the Center for Africana Studies. Diverse, a minority higher-ed magazine, claims that Zuberi first learned about it when a reporter called him up to ask about it.

Informed of the news, Zuberi admitted he doesn't talk to Dyson very much. (Apparently not.) Zuberi, who was instrumental in bringing Dyson to Penn, must have felt a little silly pulling up Dyson's website to confirm for himself: "Dyson is University Professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches Theology, English and African American Studies."

The bizarre story goes on. Dyson had splattered his pending Georgetown professorship on the cover of an advance copy of his new book, Know What I Mean?: Reflection on Hip Hop. That advance copy had been out there since mid-June at least, so even when some media outlets like Diverse were in the loop, Zuberi was still totally oblivious. Even the Georgetown faculty learned about their new colleague only after the decision was made to hire him, according to one professor. (Georgetown's official release came out only a couple of days ago, although Dyson said the move had been in the works for a while.)

Diverse reports that Dyson was supposed to teach a class here in the fall, although I don't see any mention of it on the online course roster anymore. In any event, if you were holding out for another class like 2003's "Western Religious Thinkers: Tupac Shakur" to fulfill that tricky Arts and Letters credit, you may want to start looking elsewhere.

EDIT: The Daily News chimes in this morning. Add departed sociology prof Elijah Anderson to the long list of people who were caught off guard by this.

I just wanted to post about the fun pagentry of commencement and graduation, which is almost as cool as sports uniforms.

First, we have the hoods. All Penn grads get a red and blue-lined hood with another color symbolizing their field of study. The red is pretty close to the new Penn red, which is good.

Now on to the gowns. I think a real fun part is the academic procession, where professors and administrators all march in, wearing the robes and colors of their alma maters.

Of course, Princeton's gown is particulary garish.

Penn's gowns are red and blue, and I think they look kinda nice.

The colored gowns are only for Ph. D's, though, so they're better because they are rarer.

President Amy Gutmann gets her own special presidential robe, trimmed with gold, and has four stripes on her sleeves instead of the usual doctoral three stripes.

She also got to wear this huge medal with the University seal on it.

Added 5 p.m.: Lastly, the fashion statement of the day that I forgot to mention earlier goes to (I'm pretty sure it was him) Sean Estrada of the football team. While I don't have a picture, the guy who I think was Estrada doffed his cap to reveal a San Francisco 49ers logo taped on the top.

Estrada, of course signed with the Niners last week. Kudos to him already wearing the company logo.

All in all, it was a good time and a colorful event. Thanks for putting up with this section of the Buzz and me in general for the last few years.

The last Penn player to play there was Tim Begley two years ago. Hopefully Jaaber can impress enough to get a shot to make an NBA roster over the summer.

Now, for the irrelevant, but good stuff:

Much has been made about Penn's nine-game NCAA Tournament losing streak. Last year, we figured out that Fran Dunphy's eight-game slide is the longest for all coaches. But are the Quakers in possession of the longest slide in history?

Not quite, but they're close. Here are the top 12 losing streaks of all time (with 11 of them happening to be current)...years of the streak are in parentheses:

1- Murray State: 11 -- 1 2nd round, 10 1st round (1988-present)
2t- North Carolina A&T: 9 -- Never won a game, including seven straight years from '82-'88 (1982-present)
2t- Holy Cross: 9 -- 1 Elite 8, 8 1st round (1953-present)
2t- Penn: 9 -- 1 2nd round, 8 1st round (1994-present)
5t- Louisiana-Monroe: 7 -- Never won a game (1982-present)
5t- Eastern Kentucky: 7 -- Ditto. (1953-present)
5t- Davidson: 7 -- 1 Elite 8, 6 1st round (1969-present)
9t- Nebraska: 6 -- Never won a game (1986-present)
9t- BYU: 6 -- 1 2nd round, 5 1st round (1993-present) By the way, BYU has just passed Princeton for the worst record to .500 in NCAA Tournament history, at 11-25. The Tigers are 13-27. Penn, meanwhile, sits in third worst at 13-25.
9t- Northeastern: 6 -- 1 2nd round, 5 1st round (1982-present)
9t- Winthrop: 6 -- Broken this year! 6 1st round (1999-2006)

Next up, we have the title of "Worst Team Ever." Every tournament in all sports, I like to see who is the "worst" team, in that it lost to a team that lost to a team that lost to a team, etc., until the champion. For example, last year's team was Iowa, which lost to Northwestern State, which lost to West Virginia, which lost to Texas, which lost to LSU, which lost to UCLA, which lost to Florida.

Since the NCAA Tournament began in 1939, the team that has done this more than any other, and thus is "The Worst Team Ever," are your Wyoming Cowboys! Here are all the teams to have done this at least twice (Don't worry Penn fans, the Quakers can't do it this year since Texas A&M beat Louisville):

Wyoming, 4: 1941, 1947, 1948, 1953
BYU, 3: 1950, 1957, 1979
Kentucky, 3: 1945, 1955, 1964
Princeton, 3: 1952, 1969, 2001
St. John's, 3: 1978, 1984, 1988
Arkansas, 2: 1949, 1958
Bowling Green, 2: 1959, 1968
Furman, 2: 1973, 1975
Louisville, 2: 1974, 1977
Rhode Island, 2: 1961, 1966
Temple, 2: 1944, 1967

Incidentally, Penn has only done this once, in 1970.

Finally, we have an Anything but Uniform special edition. You may have noticed that Nike decided that four teams needed radically different uniform designs just for the postseason, so they unveiled The "System of Dress" for Syracuse, Arizona, Florida and Ohio State.

I don't normally like to comment on national uniform issues, but when we were in Lexington last week I couldn't resist asking an Ohio State player about it. Also, it doubled as a legitimate excuse to go to the Buckeyes' locker room to see the Man-Child.

So I asked Ivan Harris what he thought of the uniforms, and I got an interesting answer. First, he liked the fact that the OSU unis, as opposed to all the other System of Dress teams, have the LeBron James logo on them. What's funny about that, of course, is that when I say LeBron, I'm sure college basketball is exactly what you think of. But he is from Ohio, and maybe would have been at OSU for a year if the NBA age limit was in effect then. Never mind, it's still ridiculous.

Harris also said he likes the look of the tight jersey and huge baggy shorts.

"It's a nice fit. It's a nice style," he said.

The best thing he said though, was specifically about the tight jerseys.

"Not much to grab, that's good for the jersey," Harris said.

That's a pretty good point, and goes along with football players having tighter and tighter sleeves to reduce holding. It is probably annoying to be constantly getting grabbed when playing. I think all Princeton opponents would benefit from this kind of jersey.

Anyway, that's it for me. Enjoy Bill Raftery.

A&M's uniforms are different than the Elis' because they have an additional color, with the thin stripe being silver instead of the same color as the other one. But come on. These stripes just end in the middle of the back of the leg. They make absolutely no sense. Penn has played against some nice looking outfits in the last two years in Boston College and Texas, but I think this year there is no doubt who the better-looking team is.

The Aggies also were wearing these practice uniforms. As were many other teams around the country yesterday. But the Quakers stuck with their usual practice uniforms -- except Andreas Schreiber, who seems to have lost his, and was wearing a No. 31 jersey from last season (he normally wears 13).

But Penn has won 10 in a row, so you gotta stay with the streak. No new uniforms for that. Although, they do have new sneakers, which seems to be a trend at the last couple Big Dances for the Quakers.

Also worth mentioning is something that was removed from today's Gus Johnson story.

After spending 12 years at FOX, James Brown returned to CBS this year, and he will be calling games in the Tournament as well. Brown, who happens to be a DeMatha High School (same as Steve Danley) and Harvard grad, happens to be the man who called Penn’s last NCAA Tournament win, in 1994 against Nebraska. He left CBS for FOX that summer, and the Quakers are 0-for-their last seven trips since then.

Enjoy the game.

Total automatic bids given out: 9
Teams definitely below Penn: 3 (Belmont, Niagara, Eastern Kentucky)
Teams definitely above Penn: 5 (Winthrop, VCU, Creighton, Davidson, Gonzaga)

So Penn (ESPN RPI of 86) will not be playing in the play-in game, and will need loads of help to move further up then it is now, which is probably around the 13/14 line. Obviously, the Quakers need to win tonight to keep that hope alive.

Here's the rest of tonight's games with the Penn-centric rooting preferences:

Hampton vs. Howard, 6:30 and Bethune-Cookman vs. Coppin St., 9:00 -- these games in the MEAC are irrelevant, because even if top seed Delaware State wins the tournament, it will be seeded below Penn.

Montana vs. Northern Arizona, 7:00 and Portland St. vs. Weber St., 10:00 are also irrelevant, with Weber State, the top seed in the Big Sky, well behind Penn.

Oakland vs. Oral Roberts, 7:00, Mid-Continent final -- Root for Oakland (No. 122) to win, although if ORU (no. 93) wins, it still may not pass Penn, but we'd rather not take any chances.

North Texas vs. Arkansas State, 9:00, Sun Belt final -- Doesn't matter, either team will be well below Penn.

Butler vs. Wright State, 9:00, Horizon League final -- This one is tough. Wright State (no. 81) is ranked just above Penn right now, and Butler is way ahead of the Quakers. I suppose that you should root for WSU because if it gets in, there is a chance that it can be below Penn, while if Butler wins, Wright State's spot is taken by a bubble team that will definitely be above Penn.

Idaho vs. San Jose State, 9:30, WAC 1st round -- This game is irrelevant, as is the WAC tourney, with the winner being above Penn unless it comes from one of the lower four seeds in this nine-team event. More on that tomorrow.

New Mexico vs. TCU, 10:30, Mountain West 1st round -- Penn will be helped if one of the top four seeds doesn't win this tournament. This 8-9 game doesn't matter.

By the end of tonight, there will probably be seven teams in the field below Penn, which with a win against Princeton, can assure itself of no worse than a 14 seed. Therefore, here's some more details about what Zachary was talking about below.

Penn won't be playing one of the top eight teams, and probably not any of the top 10 teams. With the pod system, and the fact that we know who most of those teams are, we can be relatively sure where they will be playing. Unless anything seriously surprising happens, we can be fairly sure that Wisconsin and Kansas will be in Chicago, Florida and Texas A&M will be in New Orleans, Ohio State will be in Lexington, North Carolina will be in Winston-Salem, and UCLA will be in Sacramento.

If Penn doesn't end up playing one of these teams, which I think is unlikely, then that leaves one spot in Lexington (which will be Memphis as a 2 or 3 as long as the Tigers don't lose their first C-USA tourney game, and therfore not likely to play Penn), one spot in Sacramento (probably for Wash. St), two spots in Buffalo (one probably for Pittsburgh), one spot in Winston-Salem (probably for Georgetown), and two spots each in Columbus and Spokane.

As the week continues, we'll try to have some more travel analysis.

Finally, if you've made it this far I won't bore you with more about Princeton's uniforms; you can just look at the first post here. Penn is looking to go 4-1 against this design this season.

One note though -- Penn will be wearing blue tonight, and the Quakers have not lost in that color to Princeton since at least 1998. I went back to 1999 and was able to find Penn's uniform color at Princeton, and the Quakers have gone 3-0 in blue and 3-2 in red since then. In the home whites, Penn is 6-3 since 1999.

I just want to emphasize that it's ridiculous that Yale has a totally different home and road jersey. This kind of thing happens in hockey, -- Pittsburgh Penguins of the 1990s is one example -- the occasional baseball (Yankees or Cubs) but doesn't really happen in hoops. The differences, if any, are usually when a team will put the team name on the home jersey and the city name on the away jersey. Baseball teams do this too, occasionally.

But to have two different styles like Yale does is in my mind, unprecedented for a basketball team. And I'm not talking about third jerseys that look different, either.

Hopefully a large crowd will be there tonight to see the Elis' anomaly.

But some of you had some good observations in the comments section of this post about the manufacturer of Harvard and Dartmouth's uniforms and shoes.

That manufacturer is none other than New Balance.

I called New Balance today to see what other teams they supply, and I was told by spokesperson Amy Vreeland told me that the company had supplied sneakers for many years, but has launched an aggressive team apparel campaign in the last couple years.

Vreeland said that the company works with over 60 men's basketball teams in the NCAA, NAIA, and NJCAA.

What's different about NB is that, Vreeland said, "these are all team sales based-programs - there are no contracts."

She also pointed out that New Balance emphasizes its multiple widths for its sneakers, which probably is important for basketball players.

Interesting to see if New Balance becomes more of a force in the next few years.