SID's JOTTINGS

• Look for the Big Ten to go to a 10-game conference schedule in football down the road. The conference is set to go to a nine-game schedule in 2016, but a 10-game schedule would, among other things, provide the opportunity to telecast more attractive games on the Big Ten Network, which would result in more revenue from sponsors.

• The new Gophers academic building will be built on the site of the current outdoor track stadium next to the Bierman Building. A new outdoor track will be built somewhere on the St. Paul campus on a site that hasn't been selected.

• Former Timberwolves point guard Stephon Marbury has been playing in China since 2010, and he led his Beijing Ducks team to two championships. According to the New York Times, Marbury, 37, will debut "I Am Stephon Marbury," a musical about his life in China, this fall in his adopted home of Beijing, and Marbury will play himself.

• One player on the Twins roster who certainly would stand to benefit from winter ball is Aaron Hicks after his second rough season in a row, but the outfielder said he might not do it. Twins General Manager Terry Ryan said: "If Hicks was asking my opinion, I would encourage him to go for many reasons. He's had a tough year, a couple of tough years, actually. There's no downside to him playing winter ball, in our opinion."

• Flip Saunders was asked if there was anything to the rumors that guards Kevin Martin and J.J. Barea would not be on the Timberwolves roster this season. "Right now everyone is coming," said the Wolves president and coach. "There was some speculation about some of our guys being traded, and a lot of those guys we never really talked about trading, but there was from a national perspective because of the [Kevin] Love situation."