eeee i'm a little girl for mike barwis

Note: MGoBlog did not manage to get on the right lists in time to be notified what was going down with the first practice and presser and whatnot and thus missed it. We should be set now and better able to act as a primary source on these things. For now we round up what other people saw.

I can haz secondary? Three items of personnel interest:

• Jason Forcier has a locker but didn't practice. Michigan kind of thinks he might be eligible, then. He's not on the roster, though.
• Marell Evans did practice. There were rumors he was briefly off the roster and may be flirting with a departure
• Justin Turner and Adrian Witty did not practice, but remain on the roster and have lockers. Rodriguez thinks both will get cleared:

Still, Rodriguez remains hopeful both will be cleared to practice soon. He kept spots open for both on Michigan’s 105-man reporting roster, and both have stalls waiting in Michigan’s new locker room.

“I’m pretty optimistic and hopefully (Turner’s) will be quicker,” Rodriguez said. “But wait and see.”

Speaking of said lockers, the Daily has a photoset from the day featuring Michigan's swanky new digs. But, uh, what doesn't belong in this picture?

Flat screen TV… beautiful wood paneling… futuristic labels… chairs you wouldn't seat your grandmother on even if you didn't like her, you cad. Someone get some Aeron in there.

Throwin'. AnnArbor.com got some footage of the QBs throwing, though it was apparently taken by Michael J Fox:

Forcier's throws, unsurprisingly, look the sharpest. Despite that, uh, this was written by the Daily's Ryan Kartje:

-Nick Sheridan probably looked the most comfortable and well-refined on the field, compared to Denard and Tate. But no one is matching Tate's enthusiasm which had him jumping up and down for a good portion of the drills.

Dude, man, even if that's true I want you to lie to me. This is what I want to hear:

I won’t make any bold predictions one practice into fall camp, but after watching Michigan work out for about an hour Monday without pads, I’d give Tate Forcier the easy edge in the battle to become the Wolverines starting quarterback.

The media was allowed to watch five periods of individual work Monday, and Forcier was much crisper in passing drills than fellow freshman Denard Robinson.

Kartje also reports that Robinson is fast but rusty and tends to throw screens way too high; Birkett says the quarterbacks are small, which uh yeah they are.

Eeeeeeee. Will Campbell at the Army game…

…Will Campbell in spring…

…and Will Campbell minus an average-sized fifth grader at practice:

Campbell has taken step one away from Gabe Watson-style disappointment*.

*(Not that Watson was exactly a disappointment: two-time All Conference and a solid NFL player. But he could have been All-American.)

Er? Is there a name in the wrong spot on this list?

The rough Day 1 depth chart at receiver: Greg Matthews went ahead of Junior Hemmingway in drills at one outside spot, and LaTerryal Savoy drilled ahead of James Rogers and Darryl Stonum at the other. At the slot, Martavious Odoms was first up in drills followed by Roy Roundtree and Terrence Robinson.

"Laterryal Savoy drilled ahead of Darryl Stonum" is only explicable if they did the order by numbers of Rs, Ys, and Ls in your first name. Other reports had Stonum dropping a lot of balls, which is not good if Michigan is going to have a deep threat this year.

They're going down in a blaze of glory. Michael Rothstein's come over to AnnArbor.com from his beat covering Notre Dame football at the Fort Wayne Gazette, so his viewpoint of the two programs will be an interesting one. Like for instance here:

At Notre Dame, the only music I ever remember hearing was on Thursdays, and that was a Charlie Weis-inspired playlist of Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen with a little bit of Crank Me Up worked in last year. At Michigan, music was going throughout a bunch of the practice that the media observed, everything from Soulja Boy to some old school rock. Definitely a variety for both the players and coaches.

No wonder ND can't run the ball.

Hopefully more zany Michigan-related stories come up. LSUFreek on the Armanti Edwards lawnmower incident:

It's the kittens that make it.

Meanwhile, Justin Feagin's planned transfer to Appalachian State is off. App St cites "academic concerns" and, you know, an attempted cocaine deal as reasons. Hopefully the academic concerns are just "you blew a scholarship because tried to broker a cocaine deal for a few hundred bucks and therefore can't be the sharpest tool in the shed" instead of an 0-for-2 APR departure.

UFER. It's less than a month before the season and I haven't heard a grown man lose his mind yet. Lame. Also fixed:

That comes complete with a frighteningly accurate reproduction of the play in NCAA that I thought would be lame going in but turned out to be dorkily impressive. Let's reproduce the :01 Manningham touchdown next.

Somewhere, Lloyd cackles over a snifter of brandy. Braylon Edwards has imbibed some terminology:

"The Browns and I are on the same page, and my team is on the same page," Edwards said. "I've never made any contract [demands], so I don't know where that would come from. That's just more rumors and hearsay to spark up more controversy."

It is very important to be on the same page, which Braylon Edwards is. Also he had one of the worst "catch percentages" in the league last year, which will surprise no one who watched Braylon on a regular basis but also includes passes to Tacopants and given the Browns' QB situation might not be his fault after all.

Aerials. Basketball? Why not?

That is a scatter plot comparing minutes returning to last year's Pomeroy ranking and is used as a rough estimate via which to predict the Big Ten by The Only Colors.  Limitations are acknowledged. For one: the chart doesn't take the fact that the vast majority of Michigan's lost minutes are two walk-ons and one guy buried on the bench when the season ended, or that OSU's recruiting class this year does not exist.

A couple of takeaways despite that: holy god Iowa is going to be bad, and if Robbie Hummel's back cooperates Purdue is your tentative conference favorite.

Back from the old testament. When Carcajous Attack(!) channels the departed spirit of Autumn Thunder with some charmingly horrible photoshop:

That's Dan Mozes, four-year WVU starter, Rimington award winner, and newest Barwis acolyte, as Moses, prophet of the Israelites. Mozes on Barwis:

"Mike gave me the fundamentals to get bigger and stronger," said Mozes. "He gave me the strength to do all that stuff. Coming out of high school nobody wanted me, and I had that chip on my shoulder. That's really the first thing you need to have. People always want to throw in external motivation, pep talks and stuff like that, but you have to be motivated from your own heart. That's one thing I had. Mike gave me the tools."

Barwis on Mozes:

"He's a tremendous strength coach. He has a great ability to show kids how to do things and explain why we do things and how it relates to football. He's a high-energy, explosive and passionate guy, and his work ethic is outstanding. Dan Mozes is what Dan Mozes is, and he's going to be that way in any job that he chooses. If he wanted to be a typist, he'd be the best damn typist around, because he goes as hard as he can."

We can add this to the pile of former Rodriguez players who don't hate the warped beings they were tricked into becoming, yes?

Slipup? This is old, but it sat in my inbox for a while and no one else mentioned it, so here's Rich Rodriguez talking about a year two turnaround:

"But it’s a different scenario," Rodriguez said. "The biggest difference is I had a quarterback that was my starter the first year, Rasheed Marshall, who had gotten hurt but he had at least started some games and he came back and was very talented and fit the system."

Is this a giveaway as to Nick Sheridan's chances at the starting job? Rodriguez does have a quarterback who was a starter his first year. You can parse that statement many ways, but most of them point towards freshmen. That's not exactly a surprise, of course, but FWIW.

Etc.: Wolverines come in #1 on a list of "Animal Mascots Ranked by Uniqueness, Cage-Fighting Skills, and Eco-Friendliness," which is pretty much awesome. Yrs truly is e-nterviewed about Michigan's upcoming season on Blog Ten. The O-Zone's Michigan preview comes in at 5-7 but seems more positive than that through the bulk of it.

The doorbell rang and now I'm sitting outside here with no one to talk to except a burning bag of what I'm sure is poop. How are you doing, poop? Well? That's nice to hear. Would you like to spend the next four years lifting until you explode? Oh. Ok then.

Fun day to be out of pocket, as I missed another offensive lineman burning his bridges on his way out the door:

"I really didn't get along with the new coaches," Wermers said. "They were bringing in a lot of different kids that were not my kind of crowd. Coach Carr's staff was a whole different ballgame. It was like a family. But when Rodriguez came in it was a whole different feeling. It was more of a business.

"I figured I'd get out while I could."

I especially like the last sentence, which conjures up images of a daring midnight escape from Barwis wolves. Elliot Mealer stumbles fatally, falling a step behind. From the shadows, a flash. Mealer finds himself pinned to the ground, left to think about what awaits him…

…"Save yourself," Mealer cries weakly. "Get out while you can." In the dusky background, there is the shimmer of metal and a faint cackling. The last thing Wermers sees before tearing into the night is Mealer being hooked to a squat rack; both men's eyes fill with tears.

Passing through the thick foliage, Wermers vows revenge. I'm going to find someone from the Northwest Indiana Times, he thinks. And then we'll see what the score is.

But seriously folks: there were hints of this on the premium message boards when Wermers' departure was announced. One of Wermers' uncles, who had provided updates on his recruitment and was therefore established, posted a long thing about how Wermers felt the program was too hard and wouldn't let him do what he wanted to academically and that this was very bad. That went over about as well as you might expect.

The overall theme from "it's more of a business" and the uncle-based complaints: the program asked too much from Wermers, especially if he wasn't going to be on the two-deep, and he'd rather boot to a MAC team where he can see the field and enjoy Ball State's fine programs in broadcast journalism or whatever.

And, really, okay. If the program's too high a bar for some guys who signed up for a different coaching staff, that's fine. The academic complain is hard to reconcile with Patrick Omameh, engineer and future starting tackle. The "not my kind of crowd" reference is pure red meat for rivals, but can we like, you know, wait for any of these supposedly bad kids to rack up a single Fulmer Cup point before we run screaming from them? Yes, their dreadlocks are very scary. No, that doesn't mean they're evil. And I have heard Ohio State recruits cite "it's more of a business" as a reason they picked OSU.

I understand some bitterness is natural when you end up in a program you didn't really sign up for and don't like the new guys. But you'll have to do better than some references to Those People and veiled complaints that things are too hard to impress at this point. I will start getting concerned if players Rodriguez recruited start leaving the program or Michigan makes anything more than the tiniest one-point dent in the Fulmer Cup.

Amateur Barwis Porn. MGoBoard denizens are ahead of the curve on this, but Jeremy Gallon has a number of videos up that document parts of his Michigan official visit, and they're pretty cool. Here's the legendary "you can't do this" Barwis pushup we've heard so much about:

JG trying to push up hard lol

There's also Rodriguez envisioning the tunnel run and explaining "hold the rope." Pretty sure the taller guy with the dreads in that video is Je'Ron Stokes.

Not that you didn't know this already. Michael Spath talked to Red about the ficky-ficking against Ohio State on Saturday:

He also took about five minutes to rip the hell out of the replay system and the CCHA officials. He's very aware of what the two games (ND and OSU) could end up costing his team in the long run. But while he wants to see wholesale changes to the replay system he doesn't know that it will change because enough programs (ones that don't get TV often) probably wouldn't benefit from introducing new technology.

The other main topic of Red's press conference was the availability of Mark Mitera. Michigan's captain appears to be a go this weekend:

"I'm expecting that he'll play this weekend, but we're going to go day-to-day now that we're down to the last week," Berenson said after practice. "I'm looking at it as if he'll play. Gonna put him in a defensive rotation (Tuesday), and we'll see how he looks as the week goes on."

Also, Brian Lebler was injured Saturday—it's a shoulder thing—but is practicing and is day-to-day for the Ferris series.

A pairwise note. the Hoover Street Rag caught something I didn't when I surveyed the situation:

Miami has a better record, but since they haven't reached the 10-win threshold (when the head-to-head series is taken out) it isn't counted. This weekend, they play OSU. A team under consideration. If they sweep, they win the category and the comparison, even if we sweep Ferris State.

Michigan would have an opportunity to take the comparison back by doing better than Miami in the CCHA tournament, as unless Michigan and Miami are upset they're schedule to meet in the semifinal.

Er, really? The topic of a ninth Big Ten game will not die:

"That was a discussion that may move forward," Alvarez said. "We've discussed nine games. That will be something we'll probably take to the coaches."

The ADs are aware that 9 X 11 = 99 and 99 can't be divided by two; one team would only play eight Big Ten games. This would be absolute chaos if one of those teams was locked into the Big Ten title race, though. If one team is 8-0 and the other is 9-0, who's the champ? If one team is 8-1 and the other is 7-1, who's the champ? I just can't see that working out.

My best effort to a workable system: All league schedules are set just like they are now with the exception of one particular week. This week is kept clear until the previous season ends. The last place team in the league gets matched with a pre-arranged MAC opponent. They probably wouldn't mind, as they would have an easier path to bowl eligibility.

At this point you have ten teams in two groups:

• 2 teams not scheduled to play the last-place team.
• 8 teams with the last place team on the schedule.

The group of two have one and only one available option for their ninth game and get matched up with that option. The other six (or eight) teams get randomly matched up with one of the two teams they miss, with an emphasis on 1) variety and 2) fairly balancing home and away. I don't think it would work out exactly right every year, but the differences would be pretty small.

You are then hoping there are no worst-to-first miracle seasons, or you're putting in some sort of emergency championship game in the event that happens, or you're actually counting this MAC game in the conference standings, or you're just fine with making a mockery of the championship. I'd love to see a ninth conference game—I'd love to see anything other than Wisconsin-Cal Poly, really—but it just doesn't work.

(HT: DocSat.)

Jihad part II. The offseason saw the return of Barwis Porn, much to everyone's relief. Now another old friend is back:

Barwis' final employment agreement with WVU, drafted in July 2005, said Barwis is to pay WVU a $50,000 buyout for terminating his contract without cause by the university. Sources said university officials are now looking to collect, but a lawsuit is not presently in the works.

That's right: West Virginia Buyout Wrangling with its sidekick, Accompanying Hysteria. I can't wait for the newspaper column describing the vast damage this upcoming dispute will do to the university's reputation.

(HT: Big House Blog.)

Close but no dice. One of the common anti-playoff arguments is basically "The Cardinals." IE: one of the costs of a playoff is that sometimes it throws away the much more reliable results gathered from a regular season of 16 or 162 games and gives you the Cardinals, be they the 9-7 variety from Phoenix slated to participate in the upcoming Super Bowl or the 83-78 variety from St. Louis that won the 2006 World Series.

Such champions are not particularly fulfilling, and they throw the whole playoffs thing into doubt. Get The Picture applies this to college football:

Make the postseason pool big enough and you’ll get your Cinderellas every year, in one form or fashion.  Statistical anomalies mean more in the postseason.  But some of that success, while inspiring in the short term, often winds up being little more than a mirage.  That’s a helluva tradeoff for a diminished regular season.

This is an accurate complaint when leveled at the 12th best team in a league of 32 clawing to the championship or a system which throws away 162 games in which you're doing stunningly well to win 62.5% of them in favor of brief, near-random playoff series. It is not when applied to college football, for the following reasons:

1. Any playoff field would be dramatically more restricted than that of most professional leagues. There are about 120 D-I college football teams, and even if you toss out 50 or so as not serious contenders (ie, most of the MAC, CUSA, Sun Belt, WAC, and Mountain West) an eight-team playoff contains approximately the same percentage of teams as a four-team NFL bracket would. The Cardinals problem does not occur in a world where the entire bracket is Pittsburgh, Tennessee, New York, and Carolina.
2. Any reasonably-constructed CFB playoff champion has, basically by definition, the most impressive resume. College football programs play so much creampuff and have so few opportunities to play real teams from any other conference that a three-game win streak over elite competition—coupled with losses from the rest of that elite competition—would render the playoff result un-controversial. IE: even if the playoff was mere exhibition with no official bearing on who gets a crystal football, the playoff winner would virtually always be voted #1 anyway, especially if lower-seeded teams have to play on the road, auto-bids are not handed out to weak conferences, and the field is constructed with byes.

As an example of #2, put together any reasonable pre-bowl eight team field from this year (1 Oklahoma, 2 Florida, 3 USC, 4 Texas, 5 Penn State, 6 Utah, 7 Alabama) take your worst-case #8, which this year would be Cincinnati (other contenders: OSU, Boise, Texas Tech) and give that worst-case scenario road wins over any three of the above teams. You've assembled the best resume in college football.

The Cardinals issue does not apply to college football. It, perhaps alone amongst American sports, would have a much more legitimate champion every year if it had a playoff.

(BTW: European soccer has a great compromise where there are no playoffs—except for the last promotion slot in lower leagues—but there are, simultaneous to the regular season, a number of single-elimination knockout competitions of varying prestige.)

Basketballin'. I'm late on this, but, yes, the regents gave preliminary approval to a 23 million dollar basketball practice facility to be built adjacent to Crisler. Beilein boilerplate:

"Having our coaches' offices, strength training, video theatre, training room and practice court all connected to Crisler Arena will only enhance student-athletes' development and our efficiency as a staff," Beilein said. "Having consistent practice times will assist players academically in terms of scheduling their classes and allowing them to choose any major of interest to them. We are obviously thrilled with the positives this new facility will bring, and appreciate the support of President Mary Sue Coleman, and the hard work of Bill Martin and Mike Stevenson in making this project become a reality."

Martin's forging ahead with the project despite not having a major donor:

"We want to get this done, so we're getting the word out that we're going for it," Martin said, saying a practice facility is overdue. "I couldn't wait any longer. We don't have a major donor for this project, but the regents all understand the value. I'm pleased we're able to move on this."

That's a commitment to the basketball program, and yet another chunk of Martin's legacy salted away. When he steps down as athletic director he'll have quite a list of accomplishments to point to, especially if (when) Beilein and Rodriguez work out.

It's like a laser. Smart Football considers Curtis Painter and Purdue's notable inability to do anything against actually good teams in the waning years of the Tiller administration, and in doing so reiterates a theory from 2006:

The offense has arguably become the opposite of an equalizer, it has become an amplifier: if you are talented you can really rack up the points because no one can cover Vince Young, Ted Ginn or the like one-on-one, but if you're not, you just get sacked and no one gets open.

Extremely prescient, and you're already replacing Vince Young with Nick Sheridan in your head and possibly trembling. In this we might have a general theory about why the first year of Rich Rodriguez has been such a disaster every time: it's not like Dantonio's caveman offense that shortens games and, even when bad, isn't bad quickly. The spread, when bad, is bad fast, allowing more time for the opponent to implode your head.

Well, we could be. For some reason, Varsity Blue just tackled Dan Wetzel's column comparing Michigan and Alabama from October. They attempt to tamp down expectations, which is good. Because for Michigan to be "this year's Alabama" they would have to improve their record by 4.5 games, which would get them from 3-9 all the way to 8-5.

Suffice it to say this would probably not be met with the hosannas Nick Saban has received in his second season.  Also, Alabama QB: senior multi-year starter. Michigan QB: either sophomore Steven Threet or a true freshman. Or a suicidal kitten.

Getting out of this hole is going to take some digging.

Etc.: The NYT finally has their ombudsman tackle the ridiculous Jamarcus McFarland article. Texas blogs, as you might expect, are not impressed.

On ignorance. Due to a personal obligation or two I missed most of this weekend's action, and since the only thing I did catch was the Friday night hockey game wherein Michigan was Bowling Green first CCHA win in seven attempts I rather wish I had missed the whole thing.

So I can't offer much other than a "WTF?" about said hockey game, which was just horrible to watch. No matter what happens the rest of the way out, Michigan is going to look back at this game and that 2-1 loss against Western ruefully. Yost Built has a recap of the Saturday game.

Meanwhile, the basketball team had a two point lead when I checked in with the internet and then proceeded to score once more before the game was totally out of hand, dropping M to 3-3 in the league and reviving panicked talk about the NIT. The Ace of Sports and UMHoops have a glimpse at what went down.

Also, I'm about to be in a car for an extended period of time so this and the TomVH interview I'll frontpage shortly are the sum of the day's content. On and popping, as the kids say, tomorrow, with Tuesday Recruitin' and all that jazz.

Return of the mack. The advent of the season had many, many deleterious effects on morale around these parts. One of the more underrated ones the discontinuation of articles about Mike Barwis making you vomit and then turning you into Teen Wolf. I guess the media decided to focus on things like "humiliating losses" and "the second worst season in eighty years" instead, because they hate Michigan.

It's now the offseason, though. What better time for a reprise?

One thing they’re not used to … Barwis Beach, a new sand pit in Oosterbaan Field House. They like it now, said Barwis, adding they won’t when they find out throwing up in sand is just as unpleasant as vomiting on a hard surface.

“It’s utilized for speed and explosive training,” said Barwis. “Forces dissipate more on sand than they do on a hard surface, a rigorous surface, so by doing explosive drills in there with extension we can make sure we really get triple extension from the ankle to the knee and hip to allow for the body to be its most effective running position. Doing acceleration drills in sand will allow them to do more things they can’t do on hard surfaces.”

Vomit, Teen Wolf, extremely reassuring mumbo-jumbo about explosive triple extension acceleration: it's good to have you back, Barwis Porn. I missed you.

Tangentially related. Rodriguez was invited to speak at the high school coaching convention and spent a lot of time attempting to explain that he's not Satan McRecruitsOnlyFlorida. The Battle Creek Enquirer has a brief story on and some video of the event—no embed possible, sorry—if you're interested.

This is the tangent: at the end of it, Rodriguez has finished his speech and is answering a couple questions from a reporter as someone else speaks to the coaches in the background. Someone very loud. Someone very distracting. Someone who sounds like he's gargling gravel. So I'm listening to this and getting sort of annoyed that it's hard to hear Rodriguez when I have an epiphany: holy pants, that's Barwis.

Meetings of doom(!). The NCAA's having one of their many annual meetings in which various ways to shorten football games without enraging the public are discussed. Other topics of interest this year include academics:

Two committees are looking into potentially startling remedies — a fifth year of playing eligibility, a non-playing "year of readiness" for junior college transfers and others with academic deficiencies, scheduling constraints in basketball — and will brief the Division I board of directors during the four-day gathering that ends Saturday.

Another, more radical measure being weighed by the football academic enhancement panel headed by Oklahoma athletics director Joe Castiglione: earmarking a portion of revenues from non-conference "guarantee games" to cover summer school costs, add academic staff or provide other academic support. "We're certainly not trying to make institutional decisions," Castiglione says. "But we think people have to move away from the excuse of not having the necessary academic resources.

…and what to do with the coaches poll, including this horrible idea:

As for possibly going back to having every vote anonymous, Teaff said professional pollsters have told the AFCA there will be a more honest vote if the balloting is done without being attached to a name, as the final December vote is that helps determine the teams who play in the BCS title game. He said coaches might feel pressure to cover themselves with their conference teams.

The only thing worse than having a group of people suffused with naked self-interest vote on who should be in the national championship game is having that group of people do so anonymously. The coaches poll shouldn't be allowed to participate in the selection process unless it's willing to publicize their ballots, period. If that causes coaches to cover themselves with conference mates, the issue is not the open ballot, it's having vast conflicts of interest in your pollsters.

If Mack Brown or any other coach is serious about killing the BCS as quickly as possible he'll take the opportunity provided by the final ballot of the year and, for example, vote Texas #1 and not vote for Oklahoma at all. Coaches poll = dead. BCS = some wack computer rankings and a bunch of ancient men who don't even watch football.

As for the academic stuff: the fifth year of eligibility is academic reform? We have a situation now where a lot of schools are shuffling marginal players onto medical scholarships or encouraging them to transfer or outright cutting them (in Ray Ray McElrathbey's case) so they can cram more guys aboard the SS Sketchy; adding a fifth year of eligibility will only exacerbate this trend.

If you want real academic reform, remove the motivation to ever have a kid leave the program: once a player is signed or enrolled, his scholarship counts against your total for four years even if he fails out or transfers or shoots up a Dairy Queen or is lost to injury. Naturally, you'll have to increase the number of scholarships available to account for average attrition. This will never happen, obviously, but I'd encourage any portion of it: a two or three year commitment from a school for signing a LOI would be a step in the right direction, too.

Missed one. I mentioned the midterm Central Scouting rankings from the NHL last week, hitting on the whole of the 2009 class but missing one of Michigan's 2010 recruits: Mac Bennett. Bennett is a defenseman from Rhode Island ranked #63—third or fourth round—by Central Scouting. Also his hockey coach might have literary ambitions:

"I first saw Mac as an eighth grader competing in a bantam tournament at the Berkshire School and you could tell right away that he was the smartest player on the ice," White told NHL.com. "He had terrific vision, could pass the puck very well and made very good decisions. He's a tough kid in the sense that he never shies away. He's not afraid to go into the corner with anybody; he's comfortable in dark places."

That's part of an extensive article on Bennett from NHL.com. Michigan beat out Boston College for Bennett's services and he should be a fixture on the blueline upon arrival.

Cowherd: still stupid. Not that anyone needed confirmation of this, but to set the record straight on the Great Cowherd Douchebaggery of 2007:

Earlier this week Colin Cowherd was talking about the necessary separation of communication between fans and folks like owners and the media. The ESPN radio host discussed his own experience and loosely mentions the incident years back between he and the now defunct M Zone. He tells his listeners, “that guy, at the M Zone, is the reason you guys can send me emails all day and I can’t send them back.”

This is a warped version of reality. When you are an ESPN "personality" and you respond to a curt but basically correct email with this:

WE WERE SENT IT....WE HAD NO IDEA..BUT THE INCESSANT WHINING...MEANS I WON'T GIVE YOU CREDIT NOW..GET OVER IT
CC

The reason you can't send emails to your readers is because you're a douchebag.

Etc.: This Bill James essay is 20 years old but remarkably prescient about "insiders" and "outsiders." MVictors has an interview with Pete Tiernan of bracketscience.com. Rumeal Robinson is not a fan of Steve Fisher. College hockey realignment seems to be coming, but UNO won't be a part of it.