Bravo to our fearless leader, Michael Crow. The University president earned a top spot in Times’s “10 Best College Presidents” ranking. Crow was honored for his efforts in creating the New American University. With him at the helm (or dare we say “Crow’s” nest), ASU has seen rising numbers of National Merit Scholars, low-income students and research spending. While he is often the butt of students’ jokes, Crow really does deserve the accolade. Not only are his efforts making our degrees more valuable, he’s also putting ASU on lists whose titles don’t include “party” or “alcohol.”

Boo to Blackboard Inc.’s monopoly on our college lives. The online course-management system brought in more than $98 million during its third quarter and has an 85 percent monopoly on the industry. The system is workable but, as any student who has logged on knows, it is also full of faults, potentially because it is not built for student use. Since the company has such a strong hold on the market, students are unlikely to see any innovation coming anytime soon. It’s disheartening to see so many cool online companies failing while Blackboard reigns supreme. And it’s not even a real blackboard. How lame is that?

Bravo, make that hooray, for hoops. The hardwood season kicks off Friday when the ASU men’s basketball team hosts Summit League foe Western Illinois. The Sun Devils are anxious to get away on the court and away from a barrage of questions concerning life without NBA draft picks James Harden and Jeff Pendergraph. On Sunday, the new-look women’s team, carrying a No. 16 national ranking into the season, will get things started at home against South Dakota State. While there is plenty of turnover on the roster, coach Charli Turner Thorne is developing the Sun Devils into an elite national power.

Boo to this week’s fashion freak show of a football opponent, Oregon. The Ducks might be a formidable foe on the gridiron, but on the runway, they just don’t cut it. The athletic department that Nike built (for those who don’t know, the founder of Nike is an Oregon grad who has become the university’s largest donor) has 384 possible uniform combinations, including a set with a bizarre metal grating pattern and another with unsightly wings on the shoulders. That’s 384 options for a 13-game season. We’ll be looking forward to seeing what hideous ensemble Oregon rolls out this Saturday — if only because it gives us something else to throw up about other than an inability to put the ball in the end zone.

Bravo to being in the home stretch. There are only 15 more regular school days we have to wake up for — isn’t it wonderful? Soon, our weekdays will no longer be bogged down with classes, and we won’t even have to feel guilty about not going. Yes, we are purposefully trying to ignore the fact that with these 15 days of school come weekends and late nights of busting out papers and projects we’ve put off all semester. Still, we think 15 more days of school is doable, and it’s definitely a reason to celebrate.