Sweet fancy Moses.

There's a line-band-thing of the piping on the back. Someone shoot Phil Knight. The official site has an article headlined "New U-M Football Jerseys Blend Tradition, Technology" which means there's an iPod in there somewhere I guess. I'll probably get over this about ten seconds into the NIU game but right now this is an atrocity on the level of... well, not the Holocaust, but something pretty bad.

A couple of readers pointed out that the new away jerseys being sold on the M-Den look like this:

Instead of this:

The home jerseys have changed, too, but the result is not as drastic on the less detailed blues.

Obviously the color on the first one is due to some weird lighting instead of a complete break with Michigan history. (Either that, or I have to raise a robot army to kill whoever's responsible.) I heard about the stitching change for the front numbers a while ago but didn't think they would change the collar, number position, and sleeves. Taken all together it's a pretty noticeable difference. I don't know what I think of it yet... I thought the new hockey jerseys they introduced a few years ago were going to look ridiculous but ended up liking them a lot. So judgment will be reserved.

Wow, that was a lot of free advertising for the M-Den. You can't buy this sort of publicity, mostly because I'm not selling it.

(Thanks to readers Douglas Dillon and Brent Accurso for the heads up.)

Update: Jesus Christ, there's a yellow stripe on those things. Look up at the shoulder... I completely missed it before. New opinion: goddammit.

Bob McKenzie reports on TSN.ca that the Canadian Junior system will be radically revamped. Included in the revamp is apparently going to be some kind of limit on the number of Americans playing for CHL teams located in Canada. I blogged on this topic before and pooh-poohed the idea. Egg on my face? Maybe. We'll see what the limit is set at. If it's one, that's major news. If it's two, that's a minor inconvenience. Anything higher and it's basically a cosmetic gesture. I'm betting the limit is something like four per team.

There are a slew of other changes that were in the works but probably had their skids greased by the overwhelmingly negative reaction of the Canadian press to the OHL's decision to allow 14-year-old John Tavares into the most recent OHL draft. OHL teams will be limited to two 16-year-olds per team--approximately 120 across Canada--and the remainder would play midget AAA. There is also a proposal to block 15 year olds from transferring to the United States like Sydney Crosby and Angelo Esposito have to play at Shattuck.

In summary, the changes basically say: stay and play at home until you are 17 unless you are one of the top 120 16-year-olds in the country. I don't have any OHL numbers that indicate how many kids this will impact, but assuming that it's a significant number the changes proposed are a step in the right direction.

The impact on colleges will probably be minimal unless the CHL really clamps down on the number of Americans allowed, in which case a few players will probably end up in the NCAA instead of the CHL.

It's too bad I can't take NationalChamps.net seriously, because they just declared Michigan's offensive line the best unit in the country. Unfortunately, an Estonian turnip farmer apparently wrote the article. Seriously:

Often, youth movements are also a precursor for more beneficial times, as we will soon see in Ann Arbor, where four of five "hulksters" return for '05.

...oh God. I think I'm going to pass out... can't... breathe... laughing... too hard SPOCK!

Sorry. Sorry. I've composed myself now. Fear the mighty Hulksters of Michigan!

What are you going to do when the Hulksters of Michigan run wild over you?

mgoblog has adopted a new piece of obscure lingo:
Hulkster (n.) - an offensive lineman, esp. one who is suspected of being on steroids and having silly facial hair. Example: Kyle Turley.

Update 5/16:Added note that Michigan leads for KY DT Corey Peters based on post from KY Rivals guru Jeff Drummond. Used header of Scout article to assert that Nebraska leads for CA WR Menelik Holt.

Small update but one with some actual news in it. Rumours that Michigan leads for Corey Peters of Louisville Central have been out there for a while but when the UK site's recruiting honcho says it that qualifies as news. Peters is a solid four star that may inch into the bottom of some top 100 lists by the end of the summer. He played next to James McKinney last year and some observers claimed that he outperformed the Michigan freshman-to-be. Worth keeping an eye on.

If you hit the first iteration of the "OSU did bad" post and have not revisited it you may want to do so now. It got updated with authorita(!), as Cartman might say. Definitely read that Stewart Mandel article, it's right on the money.