coaching changes

Roy Manning has broken news that Roy Manning is the Jerry Montgomery replacement guy on his twitter:

Let's check that most recent tweet.

Wow this cat on American Idol just killed it..

Excellent.

Manning's brief history as a position coach was covered in Friday's UV. He was a backup who emerged into as starting role as a senior, played well enough to get drafted late and have a brief practice-squad NFL career, and then turned to coaching. After a GA stop at Michigan, Manning headed to Cincinnati in the same capacity, got hired as defensive position coach the next year, was left behind when Butch Jones went to Tennessee, and was hired at Northern Illinois as a running backs coach.

Montgomery was the Beyonce of this staff and Manning seems to fill a similar role as the young energetic dude who does not love Hall and Oates. That goes double when a team wants to hire you to be the RB coach, which is usually where "guy who just recruits his ass off" goes on any staff. Triple when you have absolutely no history as a RB coach.

Note that Manning's coming in as an OLB coach. That indicates a bit of a shift from the previous setup with the three DL coaches. I presume this means Hoke will continue with the nose tackles, Mattison will take the SDEs and 3techs, and Manning will be in charge of both the SAMs and WDEs. That's more of an even distribution than before.

Roy Manning return? With Jerry Montgomery gone to Oklahoma, Michigan needs to fill a spot on their coaching staff. No, it will not be Mike Hart or Ty Wheatley. It'll be a defensive guy. But there is another dude floating out there who is a young former Michigan player: Roy Manning.

Manning was a little-regarded recruit who came seemingly out of nowhere to start as a senior and did well enough to get drafted and have a few years in the NFL. Like Montgomery, he's become a hot name hopping to and fro. He was hired at Cincinnati in February, got a standing ovation for doing so, and had just landed at NIU after Jones took the Tennessee job. Fluff bits:

He's got a Ron English basso going on.

Home ice and the future. Michigan finishes its regular season this weekend with a home and home against Ferris State needing a sweep and some help to secure a first-round home series in the playoffs. If they don't acquire the requisite points, Michigan's last home game in front of the students will have been the February 1st matchup with Michigan State. Which… wow. Just another way in which this season has been bizarre and disappointing.

It's senior day for the, uh, seniors, and it looks like a pretty manageable class to replace:

• Lee Moffie: Michigan's #4 or #5 defenseman in the unlikely event everyone is healthy.
• AJ Treais: Tied for second in scoring with 11-12-23; had excellent start to the year and tailed off as guys like Sinelli and Copp moved onto his wing because they did that skating hard stuff. Copp has actually produced decently, but not having a reliable offensive option on the other wing has hampered production from him.
• Kevin Lynch: I have no idea what line he's on; ideally would have become a Rust-like shutdown center. Instead is anonymous middle-of-lineup guy with 6-13-19.
• Lindsay Sparks: diminutive winger will go down as Craig Murray 2010 for me, a player on the third line who I liked more than is rational and spent four years expecting a breakout from that never came. 4-4-8 in 16 games this year.
• Jeff Rohrkemper: fourth line jack of all trades.

The key, of course, is what happens with Michigan's offseason defections. There are a ton of guys who are departure threats, starting with the dream D pairing of Merrill and Trouba and extending to Nieves, Guptill, Bennett, and Di Giuseppe. While none of those extended guys seems NHL-ready, Guptill was left at home for a series this year and is a third-rounder. He seems like a candidate for the Chris Brown "really?" departure.

A goalie will be scoured for, of course.

Welcome to the team. Here is pack of raving dingoes. Enjoy. From ESPN's exit interview series comes this nugget from Mike Kwiatkowski($):

My lowest moment of my career was probably be my first year, [Rich Rodriguez'] last season, when I was playing scout team left guard. I had thought about if this decision was right for me. I wasn’t playing my position and going against Mike Martin all the time.

Despite being a freshman walk-on tight end, he did not die. I'm using Mike Kwiatkowski as a bomb shelter in the event we teleport back to 1980 and there is a nuclear war on.

No more flyovers? Step A in any debate about cutting spending is to go right to the stuff that people notice no matter how small. Like flyovers:

Federal budget cuts would end flyovers at sports events

Of course, they have to fly the planes at some point—can't have a war with a bunch of crop dusters flying F-16s unless you can start cloning Randy Quaid—so the net additional cost of having some of those flights buzz stadiums is, um…

“It’s no additional cost to the government for support of any public events. Typically, if you see a unit fly over a football game, that is 90 seconds out of a several hour training sortie that they’re flying.”

Zero? Here is someone's attempt to explain why this is a thing:

"We just have a reduced number of those training hours, and so everything is being dedicated to just preparing for that overseas deployment and for flying that's actually happening overseas," Varhegyi said.

Not very good. Later they mention that Army/Navy/Air Force sports could get hit despite 95% of Navy's funding coming from sources other than the government. Filed under scare tactic—dollars to donuts the flyovers continue.

Something that is not true at all. Drew Henson talks about his brief baseball career in a non-bylined article that prevents me from hammering whatever intern wrote this:

But he always had his sights set on baseball — simply, he said it was more fun — and even signed with the Yankees after they made him a third-round pick in 1998. They agreed to let him finish his college football career, and he played summer ball in the Yankees system while still at U-M.

John Navarre would not be a divisive figure if this was true. Oh, and Michigan probably would have been awesome in 2001. Also that article is based on another article, which it links right at the end of the piece in a non-underlined URL link. Bad intern.

Etc.: Derrick Walton is a Mr. Basketball finalist, puts up 31 on Taylor Truman for senior day. WTKA afternoon show is kaput. Recruits' 40s are lies. Does the recruiting deregulation need to be salvaged? If so, suggestions to do so.

Running a route. That is the takeaway from the Outback Bowl practice video: a ball thrown downfield to Denard Robinson, who is playing wide receiver.

Hopefully that did not six takes to get right.

Also they took the uniform mannequin to the Outback Steakhouse on Ann Arbor-Saline, because he was getting sick of staring out the window of Schembechler Hall. Good to see him get some air.

Jersey followup. Sap breaks it down at MVictors:

The matte finish is a first for the U-M headgear.  Back in the 70s and 80s there was no gloss finish on the Michigan helmets.  Much like their coach, there was no flashiness to them – they were maize and blue and that was that.  You’d be surprised at how basic and crude those old helmets look compared to the newer ones of today.  From 1977:

If you wanted the old ones to look shiny, you would have to rub some car wax on them!

The yellows on the new jersey definitely do not match the helmet, which is a very Sparty thing to do.

Tom From AA rounded up reactions on Facebook and found that most people bothering to insert a comment are opposed:

I went through and tallied 665 of the comments. That's not all of them, but after a while the percentages stayed the same, so I'm saying this is a SCIENTIFICALLY SOUND representation of the FB page's population. It took far too long to go through 650+ so I decided not to keep going through the now 3000 comments. Like I said, the percentages started holding pretty strong around n=300, so should be representative. I ignored trolls and unrelated posts.

Like	102	15.3%
Dislike	378	56.8%
Helmets: Yes! Uniforms: No!	154	23.1%
Meh	13	1.9%
Helmets: No! Uniforms: Yes!	18	2.7%

I had other categories as well, such as "Sarcasm" and "slappy." The former of which generally disliked the jerseys, the later of which said "anything Blue wears is good" so I did not include them in the "Like" category.

People in favor seem—how to put this gently—brain damaged.

Representative "Like" Comment

SWAGG! Matt finish to the helmets!! And the jersey is to fly!

You have brain damage and/or are 14, sir. Some responders in the comments here note that incensed people are much more likely to leave a comment than people mildly in favor, and that's true. Whenever a Picture Pages post has 100 comments around here, 80% of them will be complaints. So take it with a grain of salt. Except don't because if you do like the jerseys your brain is probably melting as we speak.

Hmm. Not that it's a surprise, but Taylor Lewan doesn't sound like a guy who's planning on a return:

Even though the Wolverines face replacing a good portion of the offensive line next season, Lewan said he's confident things will work out.

"I don't think Michigan will have a big problem with the offensive line next year," he said.

Maybe that's reading between the lines too finely. No one thinks he'll be back, though.

In other NFL news, Illinois's Akeem Spence declares. Michigan wasn't going to play them next year anyway.

It's gotta go somewhere. The coffers overflow, and the latest beneficiaries:

Clemson’s assistants — at a combined total of more than $4.2 million, including outside income — are the highest-paid group among the 102 public schools for which USA TODAY Sports could obtain 2012 pay information for at least eight of the nine assistants generally allowed by NCAA rules. There are 124 FBS schools.

LSU’s assistants also are collecting more than $4 million. Seven other schools have assistants totaling more than $3 million in compensation: Texas, Alabama, Auburn, Ohio State, Oregon, Florida State and Oklahoma State.

Last year, six schools had $3 million assistant-coaching staffs. In 2009, there was one: Tennessee’s, at $3.3 million.

I'm surprised Michigan isn't on that list with both coordinators now pushing into the upper six figures.

Also, um.

The pictured coaches are Chad Morris, Clemson's $1.3 million offensive coordinator and… I'm not sure but some guy at USC. This is a very silly graphic.

[HT: Get The Picture.]

A good hire? After some confusion it does appear that Wisconsin's new coach is Gary Andersen, lately of Utah State. Andersen doesn't have massively more experience than the latest fliers the conference has taken on MAC coaches, but in four years he turned Utah State from a national doormat into an 11-2 outfit that lost its two games to Wisconsin by two and BYU by three. They took out a BCS team in Utah and annihilated Toledo for a bowl win. The last two years of Idaho Potato bowls were the first winning seasons in the I-A history of the program. That's a pretty solid resume.

The reaction of his players on twitter is also a good sign—various takes on "The only man I want to play for." You never know, but it seems like this has a decent chance of working out as long as the offensive transition isn't too harsh. Utah State is a spread 'n' shred type outfit.

Despite that, tentative thumbs up for a Big Ten hire. Strange days.

Last night in Big Ten hoops sponsored by Barbasol. Close shaves abounded. Both Michigan State and Ohio State were dead even with BGSU and Winthrop for about 30 minutes before pulling away late, and Nebraska managed to turn a 15 point lead against Jacksonville State with seven minutes left into a tight contest. Close shave, (terrible parts of) America (and Nebraska)!

Here's an MSU fan freakout from the first 30 minutes of last night's game against BGSU. I don't think it should impact how you interpret MSU in the league, unfortunately. By the end, Kenpom was eerily close on the score (it was a road game). It feels better to leap out to that ten point lead early and play most of the game comfortably ahead, but all the possessions are worth the same.

Transition efficiency. Dylan gets some stats from Synergy sports and notes a massive improvement in Michigan's transition offense:

According to statistics from Synergy Sports, Michigan is scoring 1.31 points per transition possession – a dramatic improvement from the 1.09 points per possession that the Wolverines netted on transition possessions last season. That number ranks in the 96th percentile nationally and compares favorably to the rest of the conference.

Team	% of Poss. in Transition	Points Per Transition Poss.
Minnesota	15.3%	1.35
Michigan	17.2%	1.31
Ohio State	18.2%	1.30
Indiana	20.4%	1.19
Wisconsin	7.0%	1.16
Purdue	11.3%	1.15
Illinois	13.0%	1.01
Michigan State	20.2%	0.98
Iowa	16.6%	0.96
Penn State	13.1%	0.94
Nebraska	8.1%	0.94
Northwestern	8.8%	0.82

Source: Synergy Sports

Good things happen when Michigan pushes the ball in transition. Obviously there are more easy opportunities in transition (the Wolverines average .96 PPP in half court sets – a very good figure in its own right) but the Wolverines have maximized their transition effectiveness.

Northwestern's transition offense is much worse than their half-court sets, which is kind of amazing. Meanwhile, Michigan's boost this year does not appear to be about schedule strength—most teams haven't played a schedule as good as Michigan's.

Dylan credits Burke and that's obviously a big part of it. Another is the fact that if you lose Stauskas in transition he will put a three on your face. In your face. Speaking of, I found this:

And now I wonder why it took so long to happen.

Etc.: Missouri safety gets the boot for having a small amount of pot, but really I just want to note that his name is "Ka'ra," which sounds like an ancient Egyptian god from a Saturday morning cartoon. Horford's painful looking injury is a dislocated kneecap, which is a very good thing since he should be able to return in a few weeks. Derrick Walton is doing good things. Quinton Washington profiled by his hometown newspaper.

Several months ago Brian left a few whacky meatball surgeons in charge of the B.L.O.G. 4077th unit while he did the wedding/honeymoon thing. In need of good filler we duly turned over content control to the enlisted, then didn't use any of their ideas. Then TrapperVH and Major Tim Burns left the show and we forgot 'em, but this query from a non emu:

… When Hoke was hired, Brandon alluded to some research that he had done on correlation between the background of a new head coach and his winning percentage. He basically said that coaches who had previously coached in the conference, played, or recruited  in the catchment area of a B10 school was much more likely to be successful than a complete outsider, and this was one of the reasons that made Hoke a more compelling candidate. …

…resulted in an excel spreadsheet (Google doc) that I've been tinkering with ever since.

We may call this the Gary Moeller effect since he is the epitome of a guy with longstanding Big Ten experience before he took his marquee Big Ten head coaching job. Mo started working for Bo at Miami (NTM) and after '69 the only years he wasn't coordinating something for Michigan were three spent as the head coach of Illinois. But he's also the antithesis for the Illini years, when Moeller went 3-18-3 in the Big Ten, way worse than before him.

At Michigan, Moeller became the most successful Big Ten coach in the last 40 years (ties counted for 0.5 each, records through 2010):

(Penn State is excised because when JoePa took over every team was in the Pangaea Conference. Bo Pelini too, for the same reason: not with the conference when they became HC).

Defining success isn't that straightforward. John Cooper* and Earl Bruce won a lot of Big Ten games at OSU but both were -9.5% in conf. winning % versus the 10 years preceding them while Hayden Fry (+32%), Joe Tiller (+25%), and Gary Barnett (+21%) dramatically improved moribund programs. When I compared every coach over the last 40 years to the 10 years before he arrived, I got this for best and worst:**

But then the W% method is really unfair to coaches who took over great teams. Lloyd Carr is a hall of fame coach who won around 78% of his Big Ten games over 13 years in a tough conference environment, but versus '85 to '94 he's –2.36%, good for about average. John Pont made the Top 10 for getting Indiana from 18% to 37%. Pont later reappears just outside the loser's bracket for taking over a 40% Northwestern team and winning just 25% of his conf. games. Using both metrics however can give us a list of dudes worth discussing from the last 20 years:

(after the jump):

Both Adam Rittenberg of ESPN via Chris Mortensen and perpetual bearer of hate news Michael Rosenberg are reporting that if Harbaugh does not take an NFL job he will not leave Stanford:

Brandon's seemingly obvious move with Michigan football -- to fire coach Rich Rodriguez and hire Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh -- appears to be off the board. Colleague Chris Mortensen reports that Harbaugh is more likely to remain at Stanford or take an NFL job than return to his alma mater.

Because of course he is. Rosenberg is even more direct:

Jim Harbaugh is highly unlikely to accept the Michigan football coaching job if it becomes available, a person with direct knowledge of Harbaugh's thinking told the Free Press.

Harbaugh plans to decide this week whether he wants to take a job in the NFL. If he stays in college coaching, he has decided he will stay at Stanford, where he has built a potential powerhouse. It would take an extreme change of heart for Harbaugh to end up in Ann Arbor, according to the person, who did not want to be identified because Rich Rodriguez is still U-M's coach.

Hopefully that's as accurate as the rest of his reporting about the Michigan program but with a second confirming source it looks grim. Somehow Michigan has managed to screw this up, too. If the athletic department had a two-inch putt lined up they would whack it into a communications satellite. Seriously, what the hell, Harbaugh?

I'm not sure what value all this has since none of it is anything more than fourth-hand whispers that happen to end up on a verified twitter account or—ugh—random sports talk radio, but the thing to do at the moment appears to be "collect and relate various Harbaugh related items," so here are various Harbaugh-related items.

We have the wobbly Schefter report and the all but certainly worthless Big Lead post already mentioned. Also:

Positive: NFL Network reporter (and OSU alum who irritatingly uses "the") Albert Breer has a couple tweets indicating the supposed Ballke hire would be bad for the 49ers in their pursuit of Harbaugh:

Hearing front-office structure/GM is vital to landing Jim Harbaugh for NFL teams. And that could put Baalke's candidacy in peril with 49ers. Basically, if the Niners really want Harbaugh, might have to pass on Baalke. We'll see. Either way, who the GM is, is very important to JH.

All that said, Michigan's still a very viable option for Harbaugh. I don't think there are many NFL jobs better than that one.

Negative: Schefter tweets…

Worth noting: Jim Harbaugh does not have blind loyalty to Michigan. He still remembers being bypassed for Mich QB coaching job in 2002.

…wait, what? Because Lloyd Carr didn't hire Harbaugh in 2002 he wouldn't be the head coach, thereby getting the ultimate-I'm-nailing-your-ex revenge on Carr? There was a different AD, different coaching staff, and now the current guy is a former teammate of his who escorted Carr out the door earlier this year. If Brandon asks, the fact that someone else didn't want him to be QB coach doesn't seem like it would play a factor.

Bah.

Schefter also expanded on that NFL feeling from the twitters on the four letter, and it was transcribed by the News:

"Now, there is a real feeling around the league he would prefer be in the NFL, but it will have to be a situation and an organization that is aligned in a way Jim Harbaugh wants it to be, and if that's the case then maybe he makes the jump to go to San Francisco, but Michigan is clearly interested and is making his decision difficult."

Schefter believes Harbaugh's decision could come as early as the middle of the week. Stanford is scheduled to return to Palo Alto, Calif., by 8 p.m. Detroit time on Tuesday.

"I would say sometime 24 hours after that we should be able to get a decision on whether Jim Harbaugh will be leaving Stanford to go to the NFL or whether Jim Harbaugh will be going to Michigan," Schefter said. "All along, we've said Michigan is in play and it would be up to an NFL team to convince him not to go to Ann Arbor and make it worth his while to prevent him from going to the college ranks, and that's exactly what's going to happen.

"If there's an NFL team out there, a la, the 49ers that can come with a compelling enough offer and make it worth his while, then he's going to the NFL."

Kirk Herbstreit said the opposite as the college and NFL guys displayed their biases. A "feeling around the league" is about as worthwhile as a feeling from Ann Arbor, because NFL guys can't think of anything else they'd rather do up to and including see their children.

Positive: On 97.1 this afternoon, Doug Karsch asserted that "two very connected sources" within the athletic department said that if offered the job, Harbaugh would come and that if he doesn't it's because Michigan didn't offer the job, something no one believes will happen. This is the Ann Arbor version of "feeling around the league."