meta

On Monday I tweeted there would be some interesting Meta announcements on here. The first: indie HTTV shall return, depending on how that looks----------------------->

The second is we're finally having an in-person event that's not in the middle of July:

On Mount Blogmore the beards are made of bacon

When? The Michigan Spring Game event will be at 12:30 at Michigan Stadium. Whenever that's over, wander your way over to R.U.B. We'll be wandering at the same pace so probably won't really be underway until an hour or so after the game ends.

Where? Make your way to R.U.B. BBQ Pub at that corner (State & Packard) that was the Packard Pub, or the Artisan Bistro, or the Southside Grill, or the Atlanta Bread Company, or the Delta Restaurant, or Espresso Royale, or somebody's farm, depending on when you were last in Ann Arbor.

Who? You know, the guys. Brian Cook. Ace Anbender. Heiko Yang after Borges says he can leave the presser. Eric Upchurch. A two-time All-American defensive back. Tacopants. That tubby yutz with a beard…

Wait, you said… Marlin Jackson will be there to join our Q&A session, and will also talk a little about his Fight for Life Foundation, which sponsors programs to give kids some of the opportunities that Marlin himself didn't have in Sharon, Pa. I'll let him explain:

I had to fight against never knowing my father, having a drug addicted mother, being neglected, moving from home to home, and not having any positive role models.  I had to fight for my life, the life that I wanted, the life that was just above the horizon of the ghetto that I could not see. The more I experienced beyond the confines of my childhood, the more I became encouraged to fight for all that is right and just in the world. My hope is to give kids who grow up as I did a fighting chance to make it in the world and to let them know that their environment does not have to dictate who they are in a negative way.

Some of the programs he runs are Field of Dreams, which provides incentives for kids to "gain yards" through scholastic achievement and community service; Seal the Deal football camps; and R.A.P. which uses music and the arts to help kids stabilize their lives.

How? This was all made possible thanks to Jared of Sports Power Weekends, who's so good at putting stuff together he does it for a living (he's the guy who organizes those hotel+bus+ticket+tailgate+tshirt trips to away games). Jared will be there for you to thank in person, or if you want to sign up for his packages. At the moment he's planning trips to Iowa on 11/23, Northwestern on 11/16, and for out-of-towners, some  in-Ann Arbor programs for Notre Dame and Michigan State.

Need help with this? Yeah. We're going to have some computers set up so we can liveblog the event for those who can't be in Ann Arbor, and kinda help us field questions and whatnot. Moderators: that's the ticket! We need mods. Live mods. Mod mods.

dramatization.

Cost? No cover or anything. We'll order when we get there and split the bill, though a few people offered to get some rounds. If you feel especially privileged to be there and want to put money somewhere, Marlin's Foundation has a Kickstarter-like system of donation levels via paypal.

Why R.U.B. The consensus was that we like beer and ribs. A lought.

RSVP? In the comments I guess. Just trying to get an estimate within +/-15 to give Omar, who's kindly letting us use his place.

Wait no Dear Diary? Where's my Moment of Zen?

Drkboarder provides:

Fruits of the photoshop thread

The weekend respite from blasé hockey brought back a sorely missed tradition: goal-by-goal analysis. MGoBlueline picked up where Center Ice left off, and collects the Diarist of the Week; 200 points to Gryffindor. A sampling:

Copp makes a truly spectacular pass through Guptill that ends up right on the tape of Lynch's stick. Lynch is now all alone in the high slot facing a goaltender who is going to have to move side-to-side to stop a shot.

Lynch doesn't hesitate, roofing a shot over the goaltender's glove that makes his Gatorade bottle jump.

By now, yes, everybody knows that Ferris got a free breakaway when they put a 7th man on the ice and nobody noticed. I remind you that the Penguins once spent over 90 important seconds of an NHL Finals elimination game with too many men on the ice and didn't get flagged. I can only surmise that this is legal to do against teams I root for.

LSAClassof2000 has continued to put together short stats-based diaries with cats at the bottom. This week he went into Big Ten scoring offense since 2000. Since so many different coaches and systems have come through during this time, I'm not sure what aggregating by school really does—scoring offense is probably the most 'duh' statistic available to fans, and having Nebraska in a percent of total calculation is just fruitless. Break it up by seasons and tempo-free stats and we're talking—I'd like to know how good, say, 2010 was compared to 2012 Ohio State.

The Blockhams this week tried a little genetic experiment, which as an amateur evolutionary biologist I should warn you that you'd better isolate a lot of genes or else you're as likely to get a too-small, powerless, nerve-pinch-susceptible swimmer with the power to make Tennessee fans deranged by mere mention of his name.

Etc. A sense of entitlement fails you at Penn State and undersells beating MSU, however I caution not to underrate the benefits of that feeling like you can just trust your team will win because that is a low simmering awesome feeling that can make entire weeks happy, and expecting too little will just make you numb. THE LAST FINAL REMAINING SCHEDULES FINAL FINAL by GOLBOGM. Wallpaper by jonvalk.

Best of the Board

IT’S ALMOST LIKE THE SEC CAN ONLY WIN WHEN THEY BLATANTLY CHEAT

A decade ago ESPN realized the power of fan polls to drive passions and traffic when its Page 2 ran a sports-wide uniform contest. One by one the greats—Red Wings red, Tigers white, and finally the maize and blue went down to the ugliest Broncos uniform in history. How? Some fans found a way to game the system. Now a guy whose claim to fame is he’s the Heisman winner’s favorite receiver is doing the same through the college ranks, and again Michigan ends up the finalist they’re trying to screw. Video of how they do it? Actually yeah.

Credit mgouser dmoo4u for uncovering the plot in time. It seems if you create a new group that group gets to vote again. Much of this was going on in the wee hours of last night. I suspect they’ve been doing this all the way up the ranks.

FOOTBAWWWWWWWWW?

Spring football at least but we are starving fans and we’ll take that. Before there was the Brian article on things to look for this spring, there was the thread of things to look for this spring. Eyes are on, in order, the offensive line, the receivers after Gallon, and the young defensive ends. Ojemudia gif appears:

While on the subject of the foosballs YoBoMoLloRoHo (name complaint: I get that Kipke, Crisler and Bump don’t have easily accessible o’s but what’s your excuse for leaving out Oosterbaan?) takes us down to Georgia to see how they’re developing football talent. I appreciate the effort but having followed high school football in the State of Michigan for some time, I think you’re overrating the difference. I felt that certain schools in the past didn’t do what they could to get their players into BCS programs, but year-long S&C training happens here and on better equipment. Take a tour of Farmington Hills Harrison’s program sometime. The biggest difference between the north and the south in the programs themselves is coach longevity, and I don’t see how that’s a bonus. The biggest difference between Midwest HS football and the South is they have more talent there.

STAUSKAS VS LEVERT:

Bryan Fuller | MGoBlog

Following the Penn State disaster the board starting asking whether a Stauskas who isn’t shooting 80% from behind the arc (and wasn’t defending so well) really ought to be starting over the LeVert sensation. Then we immediately got a chance to put this theory to the test when Stauskas was knocked out against MSU. Minutes in the last five games:

LeVert played well, Michigan beat its rival at home, and successful message recipient Stauskas’s defense was much better against Purdue. He drew Byrd and I don’t think that guy made a field goal until finally getting in on the parade of preposterous treys late. Competition is good. If LeVert establishes himself as a guy worth 15 minutes a game and the sum effect is to get Stauskas to play better I take. We’ll be watching what they do against Oladipo and Indiana.

The other question being mulled is whether B1G teams other than Michigan might struggle in the NCAAs when they don’t have Valentine et al. and the conference’s notoriously poop-flavored whistles protecting them. The theory goes that when Aaron Craft can’t mug people and MSU can’t send man-beasts with active elbows into the paint and Wisconsin can’t Wisconsin that those teams will lose a big part of their winning strategies. Answer 1: The rest of the NCAA isn’t the NBA. Answer 2: I don’t give a damn, because B1G officiating is a huge disadvantage for a team like Michigan, which hardly ever fouls and which often has a quicker undersized guy taking non-called charges. Michigan State has been going to Final Fours for over a decade with teams just like the one they have this year. Getting away from awful Big Ten refs won’t matter nearly as much as getting away from ridiculous Big Ten home court advantages.

BASKETBALL RECRUITING: LADIES EDITION

This would be a diary if it wasn’t for a demand by the OP that it remain on the board. Raoul put together an epic review of current recruiting targets for women’s basketball in the 2014, 2015, and yes even 2016. As in current high school freshmen. I’ve mentioned before that it’s quite common for the non-main sports to fill their classes years in advance (they have full and partial scholarships to give out so the athletes race to grab the few full rides available), so there’s a lot of pressure on the kids to commit before they can, you know, drive cars.

META: HELLO NEW MODS, NOT LIKE THE OLD MODS

Profitgoblue is stepping down from his longtime moderator chair in order to pursue his lifelong dream of getting a newborn to sleep through the night. Stepping into his place is LSAClassof2000. Better have some good, minable data in your posts from now on.

YOU MIGHT BE A THING IF YOU GET TAKEN IN BY THAT THING’S YOU MIGHT BE… LISTS

Buzzfeed is to Reddit as Flounder is to a group of fraternity brothers playing cards. That said, when Michigan fandom comes in for the “You might be a _____ if…” treatment anywhere, we bite. Here’s all the things from the Buzzfeed list you need to care about:

• Chipatis. Pizza House takes all the credit but Pizza Bob invented the thing, which makes sense when you consider the whole trick is to make the salad on a paper plate first and then stuff it into a pita, and Bob’s is the place that 1) serves everything on paper plates, and 2) uses pita dough for its pizzas because it’s cheaper.
• Not a Blimpy virgin. If you haven’t heard, it’s not going to be there much longer.
• “Constant Buzz” and Casa Dominicks.

I guess you need to at least have taken the orientation tour to know not to step on the M on the Diag, that the UGLI exists, and the stacks are for scandalous trysts (I only ever went there to do research and found other people doing research). The other 29 things are generic, stupid, or things you would discover if you’re from Los Angeles and Googled “Things to do in Ann Arbor.” DON’T BE TAKEN IN BY STUPID BUZZFEED LISTS.

The comments at least mentioned the first day of spring, when the North Face jackets disappear and everyone is outside in shorts throwing frisbees because it’s blessedly 49 degrees. And while the Fishbowl is known to all, the c. 2001 Fishbowl RIsing movement and the Brabbs for Heisman campaign that originated there shall ne’er be forgot.

ETC. Softball has Wagner back. Also back: mercies. Possibly leaked Illinois alternate helmet that doesn’t seem to jive with the school’s attempts to get away from 1950s-‘how, white man’ Native American imagery [insert my usual spiel about how this is peanuts when there’s pro teams called Redskins and Indians].

Your Moment of Zen:

Vote Denard!

Within minutes of posting the Rapture Guy gif last week, a friend alerted me that she did, in fact, know Rapture Guy, and could set me up with an interview—that is, as soon as Rapture Guy returned from Mardi Gras. Clearly, this would be an interesting interview, and on Wednesday evening I got the chance to sit down and chat with the star of the latest MGoMeme.

Rapture Guy has chosen to remain anonymous, and given whose opinion he sought on the matter, I think we can all respect that decision.

"Lloyd Brady is actually a friend of mine, so I know his real name," Rapture Guy told me. "When someone posted on my Facebook wall, 'you’re the new Lloyd Brady,' I was like, ohhhhhh god. I said to him, 'you did it right. I’m going to follow that idea. I don’t want my name out there.'"

He was kind enough to give us a few background details anyway. The man you see above is a junior at the Ford School of Public Policy, as well as a Chinese minor, and he hails from New Jersey—that's where the instinctive fist-pumping comes from, he says.

After the jump, you can find the entire transcript of our interview—in it, he finds a higher power, compares the Ohio State game to Mardi Gras, explains the magical qualities of his banana suit, and by chance runs into his counter-MGoMeme in New Orleans.

[ASSOC. EDITOR'S NOTE: After discussion with the author, this article has been edited materially from its original form in order to remove parts that could have been damaging to someone's reputation based only on hearsay and a grainy gif, and which took attention away from rapture guy. I want to thank the readers who argued with me and turned me around on this--Ace asked both Brian and me to approve the original--and I apologize for having to kill off their comments in order to follow their wisdom.]

[HIT THE JUMP]

Concentrate follow up. I accidentally get in an EPIC COACH QUOTE at the end.

Somewhere in Ohio right now is a printer watching helplessly as thousands of beaming Denards drain their most expensive ink pots. They are Buckeyes, and acted like total Buckeyes at times, probably because to a Buckeye a few months of going to bed with this image on your mind is excruciating:

You are not a Buckeye, and therefore to you it is beautiful. It is Hail to the Victors 2012. It's 8 1/2 inches wide, 10 3/4 inches tall (a good bit larger than HTTVs of yesteryear), and 128 pages long. It is a production of MGoBlog. MGoBlog staffers wrote it, edited it, produced it, published it, and took most of the photos in it. Our regular apparel partner, Underground Printing, is the one distributing it. More importantly, MGoBlog readers supported it through an astoundingly generous response to our KickStarter campaign. There are no ads in it (this time), just a sponsor page at the end to recognize the folks most responsible for this book existing longer than the company that used to publish it.

You can have it. It's $12.50 plus shipping (I think that's $3.00 EDIT: S&H is $4.99 and tax is $1.05, so $18.54 total to get it mailed) and will be put in mailboxes starting June 30. There are plenty to go around. Consume!

Here's how it happened: By about last August last year, frustrated that the old publishers still hadn't paid us or the rest of the contributors for the 2011 book, I approached Brian with the concept of taking HTTV indie. I've been in the publishing business and Brian never lost the contacts that made HTTV a flagship series since 2007. We figured how many copies we sold in years previous, what it would cost to produce it ourselves, and whether we could, at minimum, afford to cover our expenses plus pay back last year's contributors for last year. That concept became deadly serious when it turned out the reason the old publisher wasn't paying anybody was because they were folding.

The Kickstarter was Brian's idea. It took some time for us to come up with a number, finally settling on $20,000, a little less than half of our projected expenses ($44k – which turned out to be close enough), figuring if we have enough to cover up-front expenses we can sell enough to make up the rest; if we raised less, oh well it wasn't going to happen. The kickstart was finally posted in late March. This is when the thing went from omigod I hope our wives are cool with five-figure debt, to omigod you guys! You guys, who committed to your copies so fast if I didn't know better I'd think Mattison was telling you it'll make you a Baltimore Raven. In a day we met our funding goal. In two days we'd doubled it. In a week we had broken even on the whole thing. In the end you did this:

…!

I'll save you the details of what came next, except to say captioning is like trying to write the great American novel using Twitter, and there was a point when we realized every article was 25% too short because our page size had changed. Also there are two typos that will haunt me forever, and a few Easter eggs for longtime MGoReaders to find.

Here's what you bought yourself, by which I mean here's a preview of what we put in this actual physical book which you can own and put on the coffee table or bathroom rack or read on planes and other places cheap Internet cannot travel:

SECTIONS:

• LETTER FROM THE EDITOR by Brian Cook. Non-randomly selected words/phrases from the last sentence of each paragraph: Real Talk, fergodsakes, millennium, dysfunctional, song.
• THE TEAM, THE TEAM, THE TEAM, by Brian. A 30-page, position-by-position look at the 133rd Michigan Football squad, with depth charts, last year's stats, predictions, and a few record books that might be rewritten this year.
• RECRUITS TO KNOW, by Brian. Doesn't include some of the guys who made it into the position previews. Ojemudia's laser eyes are tame when compared to those of RJS. It was short on space so if you don't like anything from Ringer to Houma, that was me.
• THE ENEMY, THE ENEMY, THE ENEMY, by Jerry Hinnen of CBS Sports, and MGoBlog's Ace Anbender (Notre Dame) and Heiko Yang (Ohio State). This is a 24-page, team-by-team preview of the 2012 schedule, with extra pages devoted to rivals (not you, Minnesota) and other big games (not you, Illinois). For OSU I enlisted editing assistance from Ramzy Nasrallah of Eleven Warriors, who set us straight on a few things and was ignored on others. Unfortunately Brian's intro page had to be cut from this so maybe we'll post that later.

FEATURES:

• TULIPS, REAL ESTATE … SEASON TICKETS, by Michael Elkon of Braves & Birds looks at Michigan's rising ticket prices and donation demands versus a home spate that sees every directional MAC school more often than Wisconsin or Penn State, and poses the obvious: where does the bubble burst?
• SOME OF PART OF THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STORY, SORT OF, by Craig Ross is a response to John Bacon's Three and Out and the closest we'll probably ever come to a Lloyd-angle view of those events.
• THOSE WHO STOOD, by Seth Fisher, is my saccharine retelling of the careers of Team 132's most prominent seniors while assessing their ultimate place in Michigan history.
• CONFIDENCE MAN, by Chris Brown of Smart Football and Grantland takes us into the mind of a Mattison to discover how, over the course of one season, he managed to turn Michigan's defense into a Michigan defense (TM), by focusing on playing Michigan's defense.
• PREDICTING PERFORMACE by The Mathlete of MGoBlog uses the best predictors known to stats to guess at the performance of M's 2012 offense, defense, and overall difficulty of the entire schedule.
• FOURTH DOWN AND NOWHERE TO GO by jamiemac of Just Cover Blog is a discussion on the astounding level of play Michigan got last year on its 3rd and 4th and short situations, how this was secretly just as important as turnovers in how the season went, and whether it's repeatable for 2012.
• HARRY WHO AND '32 by Greg Dooley of MVictors takes us back to Gerald Ford's sophomore season, a time when the NCAA made as much sense as the Big Ten's postseason priorities, and an athletic little quarterback named Harry Newman led the Wolverines to a National Championship.
• THE HUMAN HURRICANE: FIELDING YOST is a long excerpt from John Kryk's next book. The book is on the Point-a-Minute dynasty; the article is the part about how Yost got to be the man who made it.

ETC:

• HAIL TO THE ROUNDTABLE between Cook, Fisher, Ross, and Dooley discusses the current staff, the defensive turnaround, breakout players, Hokeisms, fusion cuisine, and 2012 predictions.
• COMIC SECTION: CHARLIE'S FIRST MICHIGAN GAME by Six Zero of The Blockhams

Plus the roster that was sent to print before I could confirm Gardner's # change was the real deal, and a cover and back cover and section images designed by MonuMental, and a table of contents that I wrote and sent off before I realized we could add 4 more pages and thus which erroneously says the Sponsors Page is on the inside back cover when it's actually just the last right-side page of the book. And the Sponsor Page. About that…

SPONSORS:

Upchurch | Because they bent over backwards, get it?

The following appear in the back of the book (not on the inside back cover like it says in the table of contents) for going far beyond a pre-order and a t-shirt during the HTTV Kickstarter. If you know any of these folk you should walk up to them at a socially awkward moment and sing Muppets in celebration of them (don't do this):

Temptation Level:

Hawaiian War Chant Level (they gave more, and thus get quotes):

Arthur: Harbaugh, you owe my brother $25.00.
Jeff Baiocchi: Go Blue!
Michael A Barton: F--- the bigger boat! Get more ice and rye, a lot of rye, Drapers coming over.
Matt Candler: Go Blue!
Dahman Law: Dahman Law, unabashedly supporting the legal and blogging interests of Wolverines all across enemy territory, and soon in Michigan. Check us out at dahmanlaw.com.
Jonathan Gaines: “Dad, is it weird that I pity Sparty more than I hate Ohio?”-teenage daughter after 2011 Big Ten Football Championship game. -WFBlue
Michael Hacker: Hacker Bros. BBQ. You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.
Don Hubbard: Go Blue!
Scott Jacobs: S. Jacobs LSA ‘92
Bob Kennedy: Go Blue!
Jerome Lim: Go Blue!
Jamie MacMillian: JustCoverBlog.Com, providing college and pro football commentary, breakdowns and analysis since 2009. Your 2012 football season wont
be the same without us on your reading list
Jonathan McDonald: I firmly believe this publication will equip Michigan fans with an unprecedented decided schematic advantage. Go Blue!
JP: JP Gaztambide... Puerto Rico en la casa. VAMOS BLUE!!!
Steve Reynolds: Keep that UM fandom growing, Angela!!

Some additional names need to be mentioned here. Courtney Fathers of CorkBoards, our art monkey who held out hope of actually sleeping in the month of May way longer than we thought she would. Eric Upchurch, who provided most of the photographs for the book, and who blew most of what we paid him on special equipment he believes can capture the entirety of a Denard smile without the glare. To other contributing photographers in order of appearance: Drew Hoover of Bama's student newspaper, the Crimson White, Communications Specialist 1st Class Chad McNeeley of the U.S. Air Force, the University of Notre Dame Athletics Department, Shotgun Spratling of Neon Tommy, Daryl Quintaig of Illinois student newspaper The Daily Illini, Mark Boomgaard of Spartannation.com, Derek Tam of NU Intel, "Proud Buckeye" James D. DeCamp, and the University of Michigan Bentley Library. And a special thank you to the players, coaches, staff and fans of 133 Michigan football teams for remaining steadfastly worthy of so much ink.

We're going to try again next year, probably with another Kickstarter, wholesale distribution, interior ads, and I expect 1,000% more Devin Gardner.

Bo. Via MGoVideo:

Playoff bits. So now the Big Ten is saying "screw playoffs altogether." Jim Delany is advocating for the four best teams in any playoff that does occur, and everyone hates the system of voting we have in place now. Delany:

“Everybody recognizes that the present poll system is not a good proxy,” he said. “It’s flawed, it’s not transparent, it has people who have a stake in the outcome voting, it measures teams before they play a game.”

I hope Bill Hancock has a fainting couch.

At this point it's clear that most fans don't have the same priorities in mind as the people in charge of the leagues they're fans of—see SEC expansion—and arguing with them on the internet is pointless. It's like trying to communicate with sentient mushrooms. Their desires are so alien that attempting to comprehend them leads to you shooting railguns at a distant planet for no reason other than fear.

Whatever happens, we can be assured that everyone was in favor of it at some point. Even the generally sober folks employed by actual newsgathering organizations are getting peeved at this point. Adam Rittenberg:

"A computer doesn't have an eye," Delany said. "So an eye test is missing if there is an injury" or other issues with a contender. Delany also said the impetus for change is that the BCS "has been battered and criticized" and treated "like a piñata" for the past 15 years. So to reiterate: The Big Ten's No. 1 preference would be to keep a current system that everybody hates and which uses a totally bankrupt formula to select its teams. Gotcha.

Sentient mushrooms, man.

IRONY EXPLODE. Dave Brandon, one of the Big Ten's most prominent complainers about a playoff:

"Every change I have ever proposed has been met with resistance," Brandon told the crowd… "I don't care what it is, any change that's been proposed, this has been a culture that wants to resist it, because we all want to go back to the way it was when we were there because that's friendly and that's comfortable."

Notice how he switches back to "I" from "we" when he's talking about all the great stuff he does and not the fact that six different uniforms in a season may have been a tiny bit excessive.

No move. UConn's AD has restated that the Huskies will not move their return game scheduled for next year from their home field. That's fine by me but now the UConn bloggers are looking at the $2 million buyout clause and wondering if the game will ever be played. I'd guess it will since there's not a whole lot of time to find a suitable replacement, but Brandon's had occasional grumbles about the indignity of playing at such a place since he arrived.

UConn's ace in the hole may be their athletic director. They hired Michigan alum Warde Manuel away from Buffalo, so Michigan may be more willing to go through with things.

via Jamie Owens and UMHoops

Incoming pointage. Those Indiana junior/senior All-Star scrimmages have kicked off and the first one featured a lot of the above-pictured activities. Glenn Robinson III was 9 of 10 from the field en route to leading his team in scoring. He also added seven rebounds in 22 minutes. Junior rep Zak Irvin was his team's leading scorer as well, though he didn't shoot as well as GRIII.

Pee and flee. A couple of OSU players are suspended indefinitely—or at least until they pick up their whatever misdemeanor plea bargains—for urinating on the side of a building, then taking off when the cops arrived:

Police in Shawnee Hills, Ohio, a Columbus suburb, spotted the two players and a third man not connected to the football team early Saturday urinating outside a restaurant near Stoneburner’s house, located just off the course at Muirfield Village Golf Club.

Collins said the men dashed away when they saw a spotlight, unknowing it belonged to police. He said Mewhort and Stoneburner stopped about 40 yards away from the restaurant and did not attempt to hide.

This is not interesting—it's no defensive tackle Dukes of Hazzard attempt. I just wanted to call it "pee and flee." BONUS: these guys were peeing on the side of a building mere feet from a thicket dense enough to hide in. Sounds like they need to take OSU's Andy Katzenmoyer Memorial Drunken Decisionmaking 101.

Kind of good. A re-rank of the top 100 basketball prospects from last year finds Trey Burke in rarefied air:

Elite

5. Trey Burke, Michigan (84)
Along with Cody Zeller, Burke was named Big Ten Freshman of the Year and second team All-Conference. He and Zeller are also, comfortably, the top two freshmen returning to school this fall. Burke came out of nowhere (or, at least, the "obscurity" of the non-McDonald's All-American section of the ESPNU Top 100) to be a superstar do-it-all point guard for an NCAA tournament No. 4 seed. He scored often, he scored efficiently, he passed, and he took care of the basketball. The Wolverines' round of 64 loss to Ohio shouldn't alter the fact that Burke had a fabulous season. Michigan returns their three key players from 2012 and adds a pair of recruits capable of making an immediate impact. There's a reason expectations for 2013 are high.

Cody Zeller is the only guy higher than him who will be in college next year.

Like Coke, but fast. Drake Johnson tells a delightfully weird story about Fred Jackson to Kyle Meinke:

"I'm sitting in his office, and there was a fridge right over there, and he's like, 'You hungry?'" Johnson said. "I'm like, 'No man, I'm not hungry.' So he's like, 'OK, I'm going to grab myself a Coke.' So he grabs himself a Coke and he sits down.

"He takes maybe two sips, and he's like, 'Hey Drake, you want something to drink?' And I'm like, 'No, I'm still good.' He's like, 'I think I'm going to get myself an orange juice.' I'm like, 'Dude, you have a Coke in front of you.' He says, 'It's fine.'

"So I'm sitting there, and maybe two minutes later, he's like, 'I think I'm going to get myself a drink,' and I'm like, 'Coach, you already got two drinks in front of you, man! Your thirst can be quenched by what's in front of you.'

"He says, 'I'm just going to grab myself some water. You want some water?' And I'm like, "Nooo, I have Gatorade in my hand, guy. It's fine.'"

My thirst cannot be quenched by what's in front of me, Drake. What is satiation? THE MOMENT BEFORE YOU'RE THIRSTY AGAIN. Now let me tell you about how you are a taller, quicker version of Jim Brown. /dondraper'd

Suggestion box. Cover It Live has decided to charge out the nose for use of its product. Running Signing Day liveblog alone would now cost $300. It would have cost the site almost a thousand dollars last November. All this for a moderated chat system. This is clearly not a good use of funds, so I'll be looking for alternatives. Let me know if you know of any.

Etc.: Will Campbell's hood-crumpling registers in the Fulmer Cup. Pro Combat uniforms for Northwestern. More on Big Ten baseball's tough spot. NHL draft roundup from MHN. Holdin' The Rope on the Denard play. The first one. You know, that one. We need a nickname for it. Shoelace in the dirt or something. Mark Donnal invited to the NBPA camp. Can we stop giving credit to Jim Delany's amazing foresight when the conference he's piloting has won two national titles in fifty years?

Please don't take offense at clearly manufactured Queensbury-style smack-talk emanating from real journalists at ESPN. None of the journalists cares one whit about anything that is not the relevance of the serial comma in today's fast-paced society.