I love it when I get to point at someone else's content and claim it as my own. Valley Hawk over at Hawkeye Hoops has posted an interesting (if somewhat unattractive) graph of the Big Ten's various teams' offensive and defensive efficiency ratings. In a word... ugh. Michigan occupies a spot best described as about halfway between Penn State and Northwestern, which is somewhere you do not want to be in college basketball.

The graph also makes a decent case for Iowa improving next year in the win column, which will make Michigan's attempt to climb over them more difficult.

Let's tuck this graph away and compare about midway through the conference season next year. Michigan will have to be improved in offensive efficiency. It is inconcievable that they won't be. But the defensive efficiency number is extremely disturbing. Michigan had far less cause to suck on defense than offense this year. Was it due to turnovers? Walk-ons being as inelegant on the defensive side of the ball as they clearly were on the offensive side of the ball? Or was it just crap defense? I think the answer to the above is a little of all three.

This Detroit News article covers one of the major stories of the spring: Gutierrez is back and looking like he always did, except with significantly reduced arm strength. He is expected to recover the latter by the fall. If he does Michigan fans should breathe a sigh of relief, as the huge question mark at backup quarterback will be resolved.

Might Gutz turn the period representing the starting spot in to a similar question mark? That's mighty unlikely and would probably only happen should Henne struggle significantly, something Michigan fans obviously don't want to see. But there are mutterings by people watching on a regular basis that Gutz has absolute command of the offense.

Might Lloyd go with... two quarterbacks? Well, not if he's learned his damn lesson, he won't. At least not in games against stiff competition. But mgoblog is going to bet that Gutz gets significant work against the MAC opponents and maybe a meaningful series or two against Notre Dame, just in case Henne gets hit by a bus.

The basketball recruit mgoblog has its all-seeing, Sauron-like eye on, Canadian Jevohn Shepherd, played well in the grandiosely titled "Nike Hoop Summit" over the weekend, displaying excellent athleticism and, as they say, the ability to get to the rack. Booyah. Shepherd scored 14 points on 6 of 15 shooting and grabbed 7 rebounds in 25 minutes.

Chad Ford gave Shep a thumbs up in his article on the game, stating that

Canada's Jevon[sic] Shepard[sic, come on Ford] looked like the
best player on the team during the practices and had a nice game for the
international squad. He already has NBA athleticism and a good body, but he's
going to have to work on his perimeter game.

mgoblog suggests that if you are going to imagine Shepherd (platonically, please), you should imagine a raw version of Bernard Robinson, Jr. that doesn't turn the ball over quite as much.

Oh, yeah, Tory Jackson! Bill Martin says that he and Amaker are "joined at the hip," so I wouldn't worry about TA's job security too much. You might worry about his freakish siamese-twin condition, but you can't have everything.

mgoblog is a reasonable blog... except when it's watching sports. Then everything that is good is WONDERFUL!!! and everything that is bad is THE WORST THING EVER!!! and referees are all threatened with castration.

Usually post-game everything settles down and mgoblog immediately regrets the things he said and thought and assaulted. This worked out great before the whole blog thing. Now the muttered or screamed impreciations against God and fate are preserved in Internet formaldehyde, so the only thing to do? Point 'em out!

June 9, 2005 -- Softball National Championship
June 6, 2005 -- Softball Championship Series Game 1/Pistons-Heat Game 7
April 23 2005 -- NFL Draft/Pistons-Sixers
January 15, 2005 -- Basketball @ PSU
January 8, 2005 -- Hockey @ WMU

Does anyone wise in the ways of CSS know why mgoblog displays wrong on Firefox? I wish to fix this but am stumped. Drop me a line at left if so.

It's not a word. I don't care. But Mitch Albom got in some hot water for Jayson Blairing a recent column by referring to the nonexistent Final Four attendance of Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson as if it was, in fact, a fact. Now he gives the mea culpa.

mgoblog... sides with Mitch? What? Is that right?

Apparently it is. The column is indeed pretty embarrassing after the fact--Mitch refers to the attendance of the duo in the past tense several times and weaves a magical tapestry of nostalgia and triple rah rah rah from the amazing dedication of the Spartan pros. However, it can be safely filed under 'harmless.' It's a little sloppy, but I think Detroit gave up on the idea of "Mitch Albom, Sportswriter" long ago. He's now "Mitch Albom, Dispenser of Mediocre But Comforting Ideas About the Afterlife." Occasionally he deigns to descend from his Scrooge McDuck-like mountain of money to pen some misty human interest story when MSU is in the Final Four or the Pistons are in the Finals or Michigan is in the Rose Bowl or the Lions... well, he doesn't write about the Lions. He didn't uphold rigorous journalistic standards in his latest column but, uh... who cares? That's not his job. It's isn't really any sportswriter's job.

Because, fundamentally, holding up rigorous journalistic standards is about being trustworthy. It's about knowing what the hell you're talking about. It's about being taken seriously as an authority on the subject you're talking about, be it foreign policy, home repair, or sports. Unfortunately, It appears that 'trustworthy' is about as useful as 'willing to eat bugs' when it comes to getting a sportswriting job (note: I haven't ever looked for one, nor do I want one. I have a job in an entirely different field that I like). Who do I trust and believe when it comes to sports opinions? Uh. Lem Pasquarelli, Dr. Z, Bill Simmons, and John Hollinger. That's it. The rest of 'em I'm indifferent to or actively loathe, because its obvious that there's absolutely no thought put into 90% of today's sportswriting. I don't know whether it's a lack of time, intelligence, or motivation, but when's the last time you read something from the MSM and really learned something? When's the last time you read a really incisive, interesting article on any major sport?

mgoblog is beginning to come to grips with some terrible truths about sportswriting. It's hard, for starters. Even this half-assed no-revision embarassingly-typo-ridden version I purvey on a mostly daily basis is hard, and I am accountable to absolutely no one. I have this irresistable urge to pontificate knowingly on subjects I am completely ignorant about. I have come to grips with the fact that my knowledge is extremely limited... I know a ton about anything Michigan and a decent amount about anything regional, but nationally? I don't have the time or the desire to appropriately inform you, the reader, about what to expect in even the slightest way. That's why this is "mgoblog" and not "nationalcollegefootballgoblog."

And the thing is... my coverage of Michigan isn't absolutely comprehensive and knowledgable. It just isn't, and believe me, I spend a far greater portion of my life collecting and disseminating Michigan-related info than any sportswriter in the country spends on any particular team, beatwriters excluded. If I spent eight hours a day doing nothing but collecting information about one nationally popular sport, I would still be largely ignorant. I think this is a fundamental issue with sports writing, the mgoblog Sportswriting Uncertainty Principle: You can have either very deep knowledge about a narrow area or shallow knowledge of a wide one, but not both. Its collorary: Anyone who attempts to talk about everything is usually talking nonsense.

Even if the sportswriters of the country had mystically bestowed absolute knowledge they'd still be largely unreadable, though. Grantland Rice is dead and gone and there's no one to replace him. I mean, the nation's iconic sportswriter is... Mike Lupica? Woody Guthrie or whatever from Denver? Bob Ryan? Stephen A. Freaking Smith? No, no, no, and Jesus God no. I think the closest thing there is to National Sportswriter Laureate is none other than Bill Simmons, who, due to a fortunate confluence of sports pop culture drift, historic redemption in the Boston sports scene, and, you know, actually being a likeable normal guy instead of some bitter weirdo (guilty), has been a must read for myself and most people I know for the past few years.

Why? Well, MSM guys don't seem to give a damn what happens. If 'we' win, they write florid drippy tributes. If 'we' lose they write scathing calls for accountability. The check is the same size no matter what. I have a hard time believing that someone like Sharp or Guthrie or Lupica sits in front of the television actively rooting for a team. It shows in their writing, which is not anguished and suffering in bad times and is not genuine in good times. They just want somone to, in the immortal words of Rasheed Wallace, CTC. Cut the check.

In contrast, read Simmons. Who does he remind you of more... Sharp, Albom, Parker, Lupica, Ryan, Smith, et al, or, say, Big Ten Wonk, MidMajority, Yoni Cohen, and the burgeoning horde of unabashed fan bloggers that finally seems to be taking root? Anyone who lumped Simmons in with the first group, please slap yourselves. Simmons remains first and foremost a Boston sports fan... anyone reading his bizarrely hopeful and poignant column about the return of Antoine Walker, of all people, to the Celtics can't deny that Simmons bleeds and dies with his teams. The pure joy that leapt from the page during last year's World Series was not the broad, bland "hurray college" type stuff recently displayed by Albom or sportswriters in general when they're trying to pretend that they're not hardened cynics--it was deeply personal, about his dad, his friends, his city, his entire life. He's suffered with his teams and celebrated with him, and I can respect that.

That's what separates him from the rest of the MSM pack. He has a nigh-spiritual connection with the Celtics, Red Sox, and Patriots that drives him to pound out 2,500 words on Antoine Walker or 50,000 on the Red Sox World Series. He loves his teams. Sharp loves nothing except flagrantly disgusting hentai porn (if you are a Free Press lawyer, I am joking). Albom loves nothing except Morrie. Morrie and his pile of money. Simmons was and is... a blogger, an obsessive nut who writes for no other reason than to write, and that's why he's the man, man. The fact that he gets paid? Well, it's good to be the man.

Holy crap! Where did that come from? I guess I have a deep festering discontent with the assumption by newspapers and television networks that because I like sports that I can only understand the basest simplifications. And that it helps if the person giving me these simplifications YELLS REALLY LOUD. And then I was reading Big Ten Wonk's farewell week and it just struck me how mindbogglingly good it was, especially when compared to the tepid MSM stuff he links to with frequency. Who is John Gasaway? Where does he come from? Who cares? He is a dedicated fan, a hell of a writer, and funny as all git out. If you read nothing but Big Ten Wonk you will be better informed about the state of Big Ten basketball than if you were to read everything else. Period.

A salute to you, mysterious bloggerman! Return vengeful and unsated in the fall.

Fie to y
ou, cynical and uncaring mainstream mediaites! Fie and woe!