sparty

PSA: For those of you who didn’t kickstart the Basketball/Hockey HTTV because you didn’t want an ebook, this is your friendly reminder that the magic number has been reached. The print version of the publication will be a thing. There is still time to adjust your Kickstarter to pre-purchase a copy, which will be delivered to your place of residence. CONSUME.

This is Getting Ridiculous. Or Awesome. I Can’t Tell.

On the heels of the You’re A Baller phenomenon, things in the recruiting world just keep getting weirder. Take Florida for example. SB Nation has a rundown of some of the more… interesting? yeah, let’s go with interesting… recruiting-related photoshopped pictures they have shared on social media in recent weeks. Among my favorites:

Gatorade may have been slightly less successful had it been originally marketed as Gator Grind Juice

I’ve never seen Harry Potter, so I can’t make a proper joke

Harry Potter? Your best argument is literally “come to Florida because an imaginary guy at in imaginary school was good at an imaginary sport.” [Ed-S: This begs the question: what else can be made cool by adding a halo-Harry Potter to it?]

In fact, based on recent trends, I think I know who the perfect creator of recruiting materials would be: me, at six years old, narrating a battle between my toys:

In recruiting, it’s all about the Barbies

If you’re a recruit, TELL ME you wouldn’t be all over this letter.

And If You Don't Like It You Can GET OUT

The NFL draft kicks off this Thursday evening, and a very small battle is brewing. Over the last couple of years, a combination of ESPN’s coverage and social media have let the air out of the balloon of drama with a distinct flatulent noise. For the last few drafts, we knew whose name Roger Goodell would call before he called it, because (a) ESPN had a live shot of Large Guy in an awesome suit with a terrible tie talking on a cell phone, (b) Chris Berman would start dropping terrible puns involving Large Guy, and (c) everyone in the NFL Twitterverse would dutifully report LARGE GUY TO ________________. A minute or two later, Goodell wandered up to the stage and announced to the couple of hundred remaining people in the world who DIDN’T know: the people at Radio City Music Hall who didn’t have smart phones.

Wait for it…

This year, ESPN and the NFL Network have announced that they will try to bring some drama back to the proceedings by not tipping off any picks before they are announced. From ESPN’s perspective, that’s probably a smart move, because by tipping their hand they were essentially scooping themselves. The same, however, cannot be said for outside forces, such as CBS’s Jason La Canfora, who has announced that whateva, whateva, I do what I want:

I will be trying to get the information out as quickly and accurately as possible. What event is made more for Twitter than the NFL draft? If the teams have the information; if the guys in the production truck have the information; if the commissioner has the information; why wouldn’t passionate football fans want it as well?

His proposed solution? If you don’t want the information, don’t follow him on Twitter. In fact, just stay off Twitter altogether. Others have echoed this idea:

I’m not sure about this one. On the one hand, I get it. Being a reporter means reporting what you get. These guys’ job descriptions don’t include “maintain dramatic tension.” They report what they know when they know it. And some people may not want an advanced peek, but some probably DO, and people who don’t can just not look.  On the other hand, you can’t just say, “unfollow me and you’ll be fine.” That’s not how it works. If it was, Mike Valenti wouldn’t show up on my feed every day. If even ONE person I follow decides to retweet you, that’s the ballgame.

Here’s the question, though: is “you can always stay off Twitter” a legitimate defense? Can you put an entire social media platform essentially off-limits to people who want to use it? After all, there are a number of people (myself included) who would like to both watch the draft and simultaneously read the little factoids and nuggets of info that the internet provides. Besides, you aren’t “breaking stories” here. Your ‘insider info’ is going to become public in like 60 seconds. It’s like if you were watching a game, and you were one of like a dozen people in the world who wasn’t on a 30-second delay.

What say you?

Don’t Strain Yourselves, Fellas

The much-ballyhooed college football playoff enters existence in a couple of years, and we are all SO excited. Instead of only TWO teams competing for a national title, we now get FOUR teams. That’s twice as many teams! 100% more teams! BIG SUCCESS! Of course it’s gonna take until 2015 to roll out, but whatever.

This week, though they held the big roll-out of the shiny new name. And of course they named the college football playoff the College Football Playoff. It reminds me of when the Big Ten Was all, “HEY, CHECK OUT THE NEW LOGO” and this was the new logo:

Mind: BLOWN

And sure, it took them months to roll out a name that was just a description of the, but it’s not easy to choose a logo. Wait, what’s that you say? They didn’t pick? They’re crowdsourcing it? Let’s see what our options are:

Yippee, amirite? On the bright side, though, I think they may have found an exception to the “don’t let people vote on things via social media unless you want Texas A&M to win by billions” rule. That exception is that you can let people vote on things about which no one anywhere gives the slightest crap. It also helps if their options for the thing about which they don’t give the slightest crap are all terrible. Who is going to hack this one so that the gazelle horn logo wins? No one is sending bots out in support of any of these. [Ed-S: WRONG! Vote Golden Vagina!!]   [ED-BiSB: On second viewing, and after consulting six-year-old me from earlier in this article, Seth is correct. ]

They also have a countdown clock that is currently at 615 days. Just thought I’d mention that.

I Do Not Think This Says What You Think It Says

After last week’s odd Sparty Sloopy license plate, eagle-eyed reader @dcesiel sent me this picture of an ill-conceived combination of a Sparty plate and a Sparty phrase:

It Burns When I Fuel Up

[He also pointed out that he took this picture about an hour before kickoff for the Nebraska game in a lot that was pretty close to Spartan Stadium. We aren’t the only ones struggling with home attendance apparently, though I’m not sure that’s the yardstick by which we need to be measuring things.]

Weekly Jose Canseco Updateupdate

Jose is back at the easel. All is right with the world.

The difference between a dragon and a dragondragon? The Adidas stripes on the dragondragon’s neck.

Norm. Points for AJ Daulerio for locating Norm MacDonald's 1998 ESPY monologue, posting it, and making it un-destroyable. It's worth watching just for Ken Griffey Jr.'s reaction, but there is Michigan relevance here: Norm's closer is, as Daulerio says, an epically ruthless joke directed at Heisman winner Charles Woodson.

Personal anecdote: back around this time, Norm put on a show at Hill. At this show, 1) my friends and I started giggling as he walked out on stage, before he had even said a word, 2) he was obviously drunk, 3) at some point he said the words "see this cake here? Yeah, it's my girlfriend. I f---ed it last night." At some point early someone heckled him about his drunkenness and was ruthlessly dispatched of; at some point late he complained he wasn't feeling very good and someone, possibly the same person, shouted out "sobering up?" Norm, busted, had no reply.

For a certain type of person, Norm MacDonald is an American hero*, and I am one of those people. I even watched his sitcom.

*(even though he's Canadian.)

Porch couches shiver in the twilight, alone and flammable. We've established that I don't care whether or not you root for Michigan State tonight. For the record: I'm in the North Carolina camp, but I can understand people who want to see Digger Phelps eat his liver or for some good news in the midst of stories about the implosion of the auto companies and so forth and so on.

Pro- or con-, we can all look forward to the post game. This website will be relevant tonight:

I'm actually betting there's been enough shame beaten into the area that there won't be a riot, thus ending one of Michigan's most well-loved external traditions. But hope yet remains. Come on, Western students. It's not your town, and you don't care. Flip some cars.

Our only hope. Some more detail on what, exactly, Tate Forcier brings to the table:

[QB coach Rod] Smith likes his polished throwing mechanics -- "He's got a tight delivery, quick release, everything is nice and compact, it's out in a hurry and the kid's very accurate" -- and his willingness to study tape and prepare for practices. …

"He just seems to find people," Smith said. "Sometimes, you can't teach that. ... He understands when to step up, understands how to feel pressure, his eyes are always working forward even when he takes off. He's got a good feel, he really does, and that's important for that position."

Sounds like Michigan is going to incorporate a heavy dose of the rollout passes that were so infuriating for the defense a year ago; may they work as well.

Erm… come again? I don't want to alarm anyone, but Mark Snyder, or rather the guy who writes the headlines at the Free Press, has no such compunctions. Sims and Harris were supposed to be holy locks to stay. This is titled "Beilein not definite about Harris, Sims returning"…

Michigan coach John Beilein, interviewed Thursday on WTKA (1050-AM), was asked directly if Harris and Sims are coming back next year, bypassing interest in the NBA.

Beilein's answer was not definitive.

"There's a certain protocol you have to go through to end up doing that," Beilein said. "I can't answer that question just yet. I think it would be premature to answer that question. There are certain things we have to do to understand what happens with this whole thing. So we'll probably be able to give you more news on that in the weeks ahead. That doesn't mean people should start worrying out there, it just means I'm not going to talk about it."

The rest of it is basically Beilein being careful and is nothing to get alarmed about. Don't panic. The deadline to put your name in is April 26th, in case you're concerned.

Ohio, you disappoint but do not surprise. Barkevious Mingo is up for Name of the Year, of course. The site had a poll asking which member of the Mingo's pod would make the sweet 16 and their software has a cool state-by-state breakdown. Mingo was up against a plebian dick joke in the first round that Michigan rejected wholly but Ohio State ate up, as it were:

You can see in the results an obvious bias towards Mingo on the college football-obsessed sections of the country: outside of Louisiana, which is obviously in the tank, Mingo's biggest results are in Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Georgia, and Michigan. (Montana and South Dakota both went 100% for Mingo but that probably represents one vote each.) Michigan has a sparkling 73% pro-Mingo number, of which we can all be proud.