Years of obsessive Internet information extraction has given me a largely useless skill: I can generally discern what's crap and what isn't when it comes to message board rumors, so, hell, I'll report some interesting stuff about recruits I've run across that passes my BS meters.

First, at yappi.com (<-- site dedicated to Ohio high school sports) there's a some comparison between the very-probably-soon-to-commit Cobrani Mixon and Buckeye commit Ross Homan, both Ohio linebackers. Honor & Glory, who I've mentioned before, is both a Colerain and Buckeye partisan, so bias is pulling him both ways:

In all objectivity, Mixon would be a much higher prospect if he had not hurt his knee last year. That injury, alone, is what delayed several schools (OSU and Michigan) from offering him in Feb. Mixon ran a 4.6 at Michigan camp last week and he still says his knee is only about 80% of where he was before he was hurt and running 4.5...

Mixon's frame is unbelievable. He is going to wind up in the 6-3 245 lbs range...every 'measurable' that you want to compare Mixon to Homan...Mixon wins. Also, keep in mind that the numbers Mixon put up last year were done so with one leg and he missed like six games.

Honestly, I can't put my finger on it...the Buckeye boards love Homan...I am a buckeye fan to the death....but Mixon is better and I'd rather have him.

I really don't want to sound disparaging towards Homan, because that is not what this forum is about...But I just don't see the comparrison between the two. Mixon is just that much better with better size potential for his frame.

Don Flamenco is a guy with connections who is just the Buckeye half of Honor & Glory's partisan sandwich, and he says:

[Homan] ran a 4.91 40 when I saw him at the MLS combine and athletically he just isnt even close to being on the same level as Mixon and Gibson. I was just not overly impressed with him. I'd say he's a D-1 prospect but definitely not on the AJ Hawk level like some seem to think. ... Mixon is Quicker, Faster, Bigger, and played against much much better competition.

Other Buckeye guys in the thread are pumping Homan up (and I'm sure that a 4.91 is not a realistic 40 for him) but Don and H&G bring more Internet Authorita(!) to the table. Mixon's knee injury may keep him out of top 100 lists not littered with excessive Ohioans but the buzz here is very good. mgoblog is pretty happy with the linebacker class as it stands.

Meanwhile, this lupp2 fellow--a track coach at Myron Rolle's prep school--who I mentioned before popped up again and started talking. In a nutshell, he thinks that it's PSU, Michigan, and Miami for Rolle and that Oklahoma is too far away for him to end up here. That's extremely encouraging... I fully expect to read some bad news about him tomorrow. I have more information on Rolle than any recruit in memory and I have no idea where he wants to go to school.

On the Darrin Walls front, Pitt commitment Jason Pinkston told ESPN radio and the Pitt Scout guru that Walls is down to Michigan and... Pitt? No offense to Pitt fans and their monumental Western PA commitment streak, but that sounds like very good news to me if true, since just recently Walls said that Pitt would be fifth on his list. It would take a lot of overtaking to get a commitment from Walls.

Update 6/27: Added CA S Jonas Mouton based on this article. Linked to another Myron Rolle article and added VA RB Brandon Minor and FL WR Greg Mathews. Removed several commitments to other schools: PA DT Jason Pinkston, MN CB Kim Royston, PA QB Kevan Smith. Linked to Byron Isom profile indicating that UF and SCar lead for him. Changed Dedrick Epps' status--mgoblog called him a possible camp commit, which obviously didn't happen. Added Scout 100 members and adjusted some partial star ratings thusly. Moved Quintin Patilla and David Cone to committed.

Editorial Opinion: A fuller review of the Scout 100 confirms earlier suspicious: the Ohio rankings are out of control. There are 13(!) Ohio players on the list. Knowledgable Ohioans find that questionable. I would regard the Scout rankings with some suspicion at the moment. It will be interesting to see ESPN's rankings, which will be compiled by Scouts, Inc., the same company who does their NFL draft coverage. I don't think those will come out until the end of the summer at the earliest. Personally doubt any of the added players actually end up at Michigan but whatever. Completeness is desired.

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Three yards and a cloud of dust... gone. I've been assembling the remaining eight season previews of Big Ten teams and one thing has jumped out: I am constantly talking about spread this, slot that, blah blah blah. The Big Ten has suddenly gone to a spread-crazy conference (no doubt a shamefully unsophisticated spread crazy conference, but here in the Midwest we can't handle the trooth).

Examine the following:

• Full spread teams (5): Purdue, Michigan State, Northwestern, Illinois, Indiana
• Elements of the spread (2): Ohio State, Penn State
• Spread this (4): Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa

By spread I mean the shotgun quick-routes QB-running thing. Spread mania has, uh, spread: fully five teams will employ some variant of the spread this year as their base offense, and both Ohio State and Penn State will adopt it at least occasionally to take advantage of their athletic quarterbacks. Seven of eleven teams. Last year it was three plus Penn State attempting to convince people they were clever.

That's sort of depressing. One of the things about college football I'm terribly fond of is the whacked out variety of offenses nationwide. (And right, right, all those offenses are vastly different in ways that make them markedly inferior to "sophisticated" ones, but we're talking aesthetics here.) I have a lingering antipathy for Nebraska stemming from the whole 1997 thing, but I was appalled when they abandoned their wonderful, anomalous option offense in favor of a 70-10 asskicking at the hands of Texas Tech. I am now actively rooting for Bill Callahan to fail miserably so that the Cornhuskers revert to their pitch-crazy ways. Tom Osborne is governor or something, right? Can't he do something about this? It is filthy and wrong to see the ugly red N helmets tossing the ball around like the last sixty years actually happened. Now the last outposts of a crushing, line-you-up-and-kick-your-ass ground game are scattered about the non-BCS conferences. There's no weird national title contender, and I miss it. The NCAA should institute a rule where if you line up in the shotgun 90% of the time viewers get to punch you after the game.

Agim Shabaj, the guy with the highest ratio of trash talk to actual performance in Big Ten history, failed to make the grade. First Kellen Winslow, Jr., and now this? Why does God do bad things to good people? It is the mystery.

The RCMB sums it up wonderfully:

we just lost the best east-west runner that i have ever seen.

BALLS. Check the latest hot news: "Will Attend Milford Academy." Milford Academy is not Michigan. This means that ACT score was not sufficient. As mentioned, balls.

This shouldn't have a huge impact on next year. Watson, Massey, Branch, Johnson, Taylor, and maybe Walton still looks like a very nice DT depth chart. The thing is now Slocum's LOI is invalidated and he can go anywhere he wants. I have no doubt that Michigan will attempt to sign him again next year but it's not a sure thing. Thus the balls.

(HT: reader Aaron Hill.)

Update: FWIW, PA Sportwire reports that Slocum "intends on honoring his commitment to Michigan."