Construction work has begun on the George A. Weiss Pavilion, the first tangible product of the Athletic Department's plan to expand its facilities as part of Penn's broader push to the east.

The Weiss Pavilion will sit on Franklin Field's northern facade and is slated to open next spring. It will contain retail space and training facilities, which will expand the Robert A. Fox weight room -- where the football team works out -- to roughly twice its current size, around one-third the size of Pottruck.

The Athletic Department has smartly produced a five-minute video on the construction, which has details on the project's now-completed design phase and where the project goes from here. For more background reading, some of the DP's stories on Eastward Expansion are here, here, here and here.

In honor of the 800th Penn football game a at Franklin Field -- which was a 23-10 Penn win over Dartmouth -- ESPN.com republished a story on Franklin Field that had run before.  But I thought I'd link to it, since it has a few updates and I don't think it has previously appeared on The Buzz.

In the past few weeks, I've had a lot of seemingly random posts, ranging from connections of the Ivy League to the NFL, to Cornell's basketball team as the best ever to Ivy League hoops previews that are two months early.

But starting today, I'm going to try something a little different. From now on, I'll collect these randomly related Ivy League and/or Penn links that aren't time sensitive and post them each Wednesday. And any story with a more direct news link, such as Cornell's Adam Gore tearing his ACL or analysis of the just-released men's basketball schedule, will get posted ASAP.

So without further ado, here's the first couple of links:

1) In honor of Yankee Stadium closing Sunday night, Jim Caple, of ESPN.com's Page 2, ranked "America's 100 most important sports venues." The title is pretty important, because Caple specifically states it's neither the best venues nor his favorites, and it's not just stadiums (ESPN's headquarters comes in at No. 10).

Penn gets on the list twice. The Palestra comes in at No. 34, while Franklin Field makes the cut at No. 71. (The Palestra actually gets one of the few photos.) ESPN praising Penn athletic facilities isn't anything new, but it's still nice to see our stadiums mentioned on the most-read sports website. The only other Ivy venue is the Yale bowl, and Penn is one of just two universities to have both on-campus football and basketball venues listed (Tennessee is the other).

2) This might be a month old, but if you're sad that the Penn football team just lost its fifth overtime game in its last 16 contests, just remember, at least you don't root for Columbia.