It may be the middle of football season, but we received an email this morning that was far too hilarious to pass up.

Seton Hall is offering lower-level season tickets in a Buy One, Get One Free promotion. That’s right, folks! If you know how to fire a handgun and navigate NJ Transit, you and a friend can enjoy high-flying Pirate basketball at Newark’s Prudential Center for only half-price!

However, if you were dumb enough to already be a SHU season ticket holder, you unfortunately are not eligible to double your displeasure. Only “new” season ticket holders (read: those who missed the Bobby Gonzalez debacle) are eligible for this promotion, and anyone creating new accounts to skirt the rules will LOSE ALL PRIORITY POINTS. That’s a pretty big deterrent against shenanigans, if you ask us. How can you ever expect to reclaim priority over the six other season ticket holders?

For those of you who just can’t contain your excitement, click right here to waste your money make the best $550 investment of your life.

The University of Texas released the non-conference schedule for the men’s basketball team yesterday, and the Longhorns once again have a top-flight list of opponents before Big 12 play. Use the drop-down menu at the top of the page to check out the full season schedule, or simply click this handy-dandy hyperlink.

Texas opens the season with the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament, which culminates in a pair of games at Madison Square Garden against two of the tournament’s other three regional hosts — Illinois, Maryland, and Pittsburgh. The Terrapins and Panthers were both NCAA tournament teams in 2010, and both advanced out of the first round. While the Illini did not make it into the Big Dance, hopes are high for their 2010-11 campaign, and ESPN’s Andy Katz even ranked them 15th in his first preseason poll.

The Longhorns also face a trio of perennial powers in this season’s non-conference slate. Texas first travels to Greensboro, North Carolina to tangle with the Tar Heels on December 18th. As we reported on Twitter last week, the two schools were in talks to move this year’s game to the Bahamas. With this year’s contest staying Stateside, it fulfills North Carolina’s “semi-home” game in the current contract and now leaves the two schools free to revisit the Nassau option in future seasons.

While the Tar Heels were sent reeling following their loss to the Longhorns last December, they seemed to put the pieces together in the post-season and surged to the NIT finals, where they lost to Dayton. With another year under the belts of the young and talented Carolina team — plus the addition of freshman stud Harrison Barnes — the Tar Heels are set for a solid 2010-11 campaign.

Just four days later, Texas heads to East Lansing for an on-campus match-up with Michigan State. The Spartans are coming off their second-straight Final Four, and return all of their key players outside of Raymar Morgan. Although the Longhorns escaped with a victory against MSU in Austin last December, they have historically had trouble with Tom Izzo‘s teams. A true road game against a preseason-Top 5 squad will certainly be a challenge for the Horns.

In early January, Texas hosts Connecticut at the Frank Erwin Center. Like the Tar Heels, the Huskies had an abnormally mediocre season last year. Unlike North Carolina, however, Connecticut managed to knock off the Horns in the midst of their struggles. The Huskies are bringing in a pair of 4-star guards and return Kemba Walker, so expect coach Jim Calhoun to have his team ready for another exciting match-up.

The Longhorns will also face two more major conference opponents in Southern Cal and Arkansas. Texas knocked off both of those teams in 2009-10, and are looking for another clean sweep this year. The Trojans are still embroiled in NCAA drama, as their school’s lawyers are fighting sanctions that were handed down earlier this month. Coach Kevin O’Neill certainly has his hands full rebuilding the program, but his squad matured nicely at the end of last season.

The Razorbacks, meanwhile, will be without star guard Courtney Fortson, who declared for the NBA draft and signed with an agent in April. Arkansas fans are lamenting the decision, as Fortson went unselected in Thursday night’s draft. They can take solace in the fact that sharpshooter Rotnei Clarke will still be on the court for Coach John Pelphrey, though.

In addition to the major names, the Longhorns filled the remainder of their non-conference slate with a slew of mid-major opponents. Navy and Louisiana Tech are Texas’ opening round opponents in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic, while in-state foes Lamar, Rice, and Sam Houston State are all making trips to the Frank Erwin Center. North Florida and Coppin State round out the non-conference sked for the Horns with match-ups in December.

Submitted for your approval, without commentary, this gem from Maryland blog Testudo Times.

Some of you will enjoy this one. There’s a John Calipari impersonator on Facebook, who sent this (100% fake) message to Marquis Teague, the five star point guard and recent commitment to Kentucky.

Teague’s response, though, is 100% honest and true. Which, to me, is hilarious. As fans of one of the last “honest” coaches in the NCAA, I thought some of you would get a kick out of it.

Source: Testudo Times – Some of you will enjoy this one

Finally, a bit of positive news for Texas basketball fans.

ESPN is reporting that Cory Joseph committed to Texas this afternoon, giving Rick Barnes a scoring point guard to compliment the defensive-minded Dogus Bablay. Joseph, tabbed by Rivals as the 3rd-best 2010 PG in the nation, joins his Findlay Prep teammate Tristan Thompson in the Longhorns’ small, but talented recruiting class.

We’ll explore next year’s lineup in more depth once the May 8th early-entry withdrawal deadline has passed.

The question grew rather tiresome throughout the course of the season. “Is this the last year you’ll be making all the games?”

I’d heard it each of the previous two seasons, but this year it came with a bit of assumption tied to that curly question mark. As if my friends and acquaintances simply expected the 2009-10 year to be the big finish.

And why not? When writing about a college team, four years feels like a natural length, a fitting time frame to follow one group of players around the country and document their trials and growths. Throw in the fact that this year was supposed to be magical, that this team could finally be The One……well, you could almost feel like my inquisitors hoped I’d be witness to a storybook ending.

Somewhere along the way, that all went to hell. It was certainly long after the team’s brief stay at No. 1 in the national rankings, but also well before they crashed and burned in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. But while those hopes and dreams were plummeting to Earth, that damned question changed, too. No longer were people asking me if I was going to end things at a natural stopping point. Now people were asking the question as if they thought I needed to be put out of my misery.

It seemed a bit fitting that the season ended with a buzzer-beater loss that left me staring blankly at the court in New Orleans Arena. After all, the third contest in this crazy 150-game journey ended with Kenton Paulino‘s three-pointer at the horn in the 2006 Sweet Sixteen. So while that buzzer-beating win and this buzzer-beating loss weren’t quite perfectly-mirrored bookends to a four-year quest, they were certainly close enough.

Standing in that ugly arena, with absolutely nothing to look forward to, I suddenly started to laugh. I couldn’t help but picture Rick Barnes as a poor, beleaguered soul, helplessly bailing water out of a tiny rowboat that kept springing leaks. For whatever reason, my mind latched on to this image as the metaphor for the season, and the interminable nine-hour drive back to Austin gave me ample opportunity to flesh it out.

Peter Bean of the fabulous Burnt Orange Nation tried pinning down the team’s troubles sometime in mid-February. I remember reading it on a tiny cell phone screen in the wee hours of the morning as I traveled to Missouri, back from Lubbock, or on the way to some other equally-thrilling locale. The details are murky, as this Season of Suck eventually blended together into one bloody mess.

The thrust of that rambling paragraph, however, was supposed to be that Peter tried to chronologically chart the different problems Texas had faced and he couldn’t even make it past November before his fingers fell off. As he tried to document, the Longhorns were simply unable to play two consecutive games without having something go wrong. Fix one issue, and something else would crop up. Remedy that problem, and an older one would enter the picture again.

This constant juggling act was the storyline of the season, and it left fans with little confidence and little optimism. When the team finally started making free throws, the offense was otherwise useless. They would play good defense, and suddenly the team couldn’t rebound. Sometimes, all the issues even came together to make a beautiful disaster like the 732-0 run the Longhorns allowed Kansas to piece together on February 8th.

It’s been nearly impossible for me to sit down and get any words written that have any flow whatsoever. I’d even make the case that this exercise in summation is failing miserably, as well. Now, more than a week since the bitter pill of 2009-10 was finally crammed down our throats for the last time, I still haven’t been able to swallow the damned thing. How can one possibly be expected to encapsulate such a messy, enigmatic season in 1,000 words or less?

The confounding nature of this season has led to hundreds of theories from fans and pundits across the country. Texas fans — always known for bellowing loudly anytime their team isn’t playing for championships — immediately latched on to the “Fire Rick Barnes” bandwagon. Others blamed an overwhelmed freshman class and its alleged “me-first” attitude. Still others laid it at the feet of senior leaders Damion James and Dexter Pittman. The only people who seemed to escape the barbs and vitriol were Shawn Williams and Varez Ward, who spent most of the season in sweatshirts and jumpsuits.

That uncertainty is spilling into the offseason, and it leaves the outlook cloudy and questionable. Which of the freshmen will return to the team? Is Dogus Balbay going back to Turkey after another knee injury? Will Texas actually land point-guard prospect Cory Joseph? Add in the restless fanbase with its itchy trigger finger, and 2010-11 seems like it will be a bellwether year for the Longhorn program.

So that brings us back to The Question. The damned, incessant question that I’ve had to hear for the last three years. And to be quite honest, I still don’t have an answer. I’m planning on making it to L.A. and New York for the games in November and December. I wouldn’t miss another trip to Allen Fieldhouse. And if the road game at the Breslin Center actually happens, it would take an act of God to keep me out of the arena.

But the truth of the matter is that I’m getting older, the bank account is getting smaller, and it gets a little harder each time I see a random Wednesday trip to the middle of a cornfield in Iowa or Nebraska. I’ve got designs on spinning this site into something with a little more national appeal, but funding issues and “real world” concerns are but a few of the hurdles standing in my way.

So, go ahead. Ask me that question one more time. We both know that my heart will always belong in the gym. We’ll just have to see how much longer I travel down this burnt-orange road.