unverified voracity

Cone deficiency. The news that Conelius Jones will not be with the program this fall is not exactly news today, but permit me a day to recover from my World Cup hangover. This is the reason:

According to Brown, Jones went through a rough stretch with personal issues over the winter. Although he graduated with the rest of his class and maintained a 2.5 grade-point average, the 6-foot-2, 190-pound Jones struggled with the SAT, which kept him from qualifying.

That must have been a rough stretch with grades almost at rock bottom, since Jones claimed he had a 3.7 GPA and offers from Wake Forest, Duke, and Stanford when he committed to Michigan. A decline that steep probably means the initial GPA report was a bit inflated.

Unlike Dorsey and his immediate enrollment at Louisville, Jones will head to Fork Union in an effort to get qualified, at which point he'd come in as a mid-year enrollee. This means he's honestly just a hair away from qualifying—the NCAA severely restricted how much grade magic prep schools could work a couple of years ago—and has a decent chance of getting in in January. Michigan has taken kids from prep schools, although not particularly successfully: Marques Slocum spent a semester at Milford and Arizona CB Quinton McCoy spent a prep year before ending up on campus. Neither lasted two years.

As far as the 2010 team goes, Jones's absence creates a distressing lack of Cone in the hairy depths of the quarterback depth chart, and that's about all.

I don't think Dorsey's situation is at all related to Jones and Kinard. Dorsey was qualified; the other two guys are headed to prep school. That doesn't have anything to do with hypothetical anti-Rodriguez forces executing their dastardly master plan. And even if the academic side of things is cracking down, they have a very good reason to do so: Michigan's latest transfer-saddled APR score is ugly, and Michigan is going to have to put up a major improvement lest they fall below the 925 line of doom.

Meanwhile, the other blame meme floating around is that Rodriguez is bringing in a lot more kids at academic risk. That may or may not be true but unless Jones's transcripts and offers were just totally fictional this doesn't seem like an example. It's one thing to take a guy who has a lot of work to do, and another to take a guy well above the minimums only to watch him collapse.

What happened with Cissoko? In other happy news about never-were kids, Boubacar Cissoko pled guilty to four separate counts of robbery and faces sentencing that won't be 45 years but hypothetically could. The News takes an in-depth look at what happened to a high school kid no one thought would have problems until he got out of this protected environment:

He was intentionally protected, growing up on Rosa Parks Boulevard in Detroit, a neighborhood that was rough-and-tough 40 years before Cissoko got there.

"He came from a sheltered background," Willis said. "By 10:30 he was in, home. He was driven to school, driven home. We are a close-knit family, we were tight on him."

Even the history of the riots which began along what was then known as 12th Street was kept from Cissoko, by the family.

"He's a good kid," Willis said. "When he left, he was praying five times a day."

Isn't there a show about Amish kids who head out into the world for a year or two and go totally nuts? In this case it seems that protecting Cissoko from negative influences left him unprepared to deal with them. He was unvaccinated. Bonus points to the News for deploying one of those beautifully dry newspaper sentences that radiate detached authority:

Less than worldly, he was suddenly thrust into a scene in Ann Arbor in which young adults believe they have achieved a level of sophistication that they may well never attain in life.

Oh, snap.

Another oddity: court documents show Cissoko's age is actually two years older than Michigan (and Cass Tech) listed him, which might explain why he didn't live up to the recruiting hype.

Burn the regionals down. It takes some doing to make me livid about something that won't happen until 2012 and involves a committee making a decision, but holy aarrgh I want to punch a wall:

First, the announcing of four more regionals means we won't be seeing the slightly less moronic proposed tournament format, which at least included one playoff round that made some sense.

The second problem is the hosts themselves.  The hosts will be Minnesota, Michigan Tech, Holy Cross, and Fairfield/Yale. If it feels like a repeat, it's because it pretty much is. The two eastern ones aren't that big of a deal. They're sure to be boring, empty arenas for critically important games, but there aren't really any better options. Plus, with now-defunct Fairfield helping host in Bridgeport, you get the joy of the 17 people in attendance saying, "What the hell is that deer doing in here?"

Tech is hosting in Green Bay, which is WCHA territory. This will be the fourth consecutive year that Minnesota hosts something. They were awarded regionals in 2009 and 2010, get the Frozen Four in 2011, and now have another regional in 2012. WCH points out that over that time span the entire CCHA gets to host three events.

It is ludicrous that the next two years will see zero regionals in CCHA territory. I hope the St. Louis regional is attended by five people. Are any CCHA teams even bidding for these things? Why hasn't Michigan put in a bid using the new rink in Toledo? I'm not sure where the breakdown is, but something's got to change.

Solar domination. The American Solar Challenge is Michigan's. If you don't think this is a big deal, look at the size of the trophy:

It's a big deal. From the looks of it, it's about three times as big a deal as the World Cup. This is Michigan's third straight national title. Seriously: Directors Cup this event, yo.

An actual loss on the tubes. EDSBS found 40 minutes of youtubery not posted by WolverineHistorian. It's the 1988 Michigan-Miami game that Michigan ended up losing 31-30. Though it is depressing, the pants are very tight and Al Trautwig's doing his very best Data impression:

Draft disappointment. We knew that Michigan's 2010 hockey class had collectively slipped in the eyes of NHL evaluators, but the extent to which they did still surprises:

• Jon Merrill fell into the early second round, going #38 to New Jersey.
• Alex Guptill went in the third round to Dallas.
• Luke Moffatt and Lee Moffie were both seventh-rounders.
• Clare, Fallon, and Deblois did not go.

That's disappointing from a talent standpoint. At least Merrill and Guptill went to generally patient, NCAA-friendly organizations. Michigan might get an extra year out of Merrill and stands a good chance of hanging on to Guptill.

Etc.: Nebraska fans are preparing for Big Ten hate. Michigan is not featured. Woo 8-16!

More yes, please. Given the current state of college football scheduling, where you have to have one real nonconference game and then you can schedule anything that will show up at your stadium down to the Albanian cricket circus, I've been in favor of expanding the conference schedule for years. So Adam Rittenberg's post on the possibility comes with some welcome quotes:

There are certainly pros and cons to increasing the number of league games, and Big Ten athletic directors expect to debate them in August during their next scheduled meeting in Chicago.

"Unless you’re really hot, fans are finding that some of the preseason games, they just don’t appreciate," Purdue athletic director Morgan Burke said. "They’d rather see you play every Big Ten opponent. If you went to nine games, you’d be bringing in one more Big Ten opponent, which would make your season-ticket package more attractive."

By radically increasing the amount of money people are expected to play with PSLs and mandatory donations and whatnot, schools have increased the pressure to have home schedules actually worth buying. Burke's actually in favor of ten(!) conference games, which will never happen.

The article also quotes Barry Alvarez in support and we know that Michigan has been pushing for more conference games for a few years now, so there's at least some chance the league will add another game. Another bonus of the extra conference game: if the Big Ten does go away from pure geography and creates a division that's Michigan-OSU-Alamo Party*, additional conference games will reduce the impact of any disparity. It also makes cross-division protected games (which I don't like) less necessary since you'll be playing two-thirds of the opposite division instead of half.

*(Which seems to have something of a consensus building around it. TOC threw in the towel, and once the blogs are united nothing can stand against them. If Penn State had a vote that might be a problem, but lol Penn State suffrage.)

If NASCAR counts as a sport… then solar car competitions, where you actually build the thing yourself, is like a double sport. Also Michigan's solar car team is consistently awesome. They're running the American Solar Challenge right now and, though it's fuzzy if they're actually winning, they think they're doing well:

After being tight with Minnesota this morning and afternoon, they had to pull off the road for what is rumored to be battery problems.  We don't know the current location of any other teams, but we believe we are at least 15 minutes ahead of everyone but Stanford.

That was yesterday. They learned last night that Minnesota is now 40 minutes back and Missouri S&T, which is apparently big in solar cars, is 10 minutes back. The previous stage saw Infinium finish almost an hour in front of their nearest challenger. We should totally try to get this thing in the Director's Cup.

Goodbye, almost everyone. One of the tangential discussions that's entered the public consciousness after the QC/stretching violations at Michigan is "dang, there are a lot of dudes getting paid to not coach football." The NCAA is within its rights to reel these guys in somewhat, but this seems drastic:

Back in April when the Athletics Personnel and Recruiting Cabinet began seriously discussing legislation to curb the growing football and basketball staffs, there were two big questions: exactly how many noncoaching staff members would the teams be allowed and how would the legislation deal with attempts to build new offices in the athletic department?

The cabinet gave an emphatic answer to the former question, with a somewhat weaker answer to the latter. Bowl Subdivision Football would be limited to just four noncoaching staff members, while men’s and women’s basketball would be reduced to just one. In the Football Championship Subdivision, the limit would be two.

That's not four grad assistants, it's four staff members, period. The Bylaw Blog suggests this would see athletic departments devolve the many other roles undertaken by specific sport-specific staff into department-wide organizations that avoid this new regulation. The money is always going to flow somewhere. At some point the NCAA should get serious about booting I-A teams  that can't manage 20,000 paid attendance per game into I-AA. The real problem here is that teams like Michigan and Eastern Michigan are being addressed by the same sets of laws when they have zero resemblance to each other.

The elusive and wonderful. Six Zero's regular series profiling some of the characters who hang out around here has an exclusive look at youtube hero Wolverine Historian. Most surprising to me was WH's age: 

Wangler to Carter.  Hello Heisman.  Bo singing the Victors.  In your expert opinion, what is the single most iconic video clip of Michigan football?
      There have been many, many memorable moments over the years.  But I think Wangler to Carter from Homecoming 1979 is probably the most iconic video clip of Michigan football.  I was born 4 months after that game was played so I obviously have no personal memories of it.  But the video speaks for itself.  One last play, Carter dancing into the end zone, the crowd going insane, Bo jumping up and down, Bob Ufer screaming, “Oh my GOD!!!  Carter scored!!!” and Lee Corso having a stroke on the Indiana sideline.

Given the vast breadth of WH's tape collection, I would have ballparked his date of birth sometime around 1817. Instead he is younger than me.

Merrill watch. Not in the scary way. The first round of the NHL draft is tonight and should see defenseman Jon Merrill taken. There will also be a goalie taken, and this will be lame. But back to Merrill:

"I honestly want to get drafted, but it's not that big of a deal," Merrill said in a phone interview Tuesday. "It's tough not to hear about (mock drafts) or see things, but I really don't care that much about it.

"First pick or the last pick, you have the same opportunity to play in the NHL."

For the paranoid, there's no hint in of a Merrill defection anywhere in the article. The remainder of the draft will be more interesting as far as the composition of the team goes: CCHL forward Alex Guptill is eligible and has made some comments about deciding what he wants to do after he talks with the team who drafts him. He could spend a year in the USHL, possibly with fellow 2011 commit Lucas Lessio, or defect if the Kings or some other team run by paleolithic folk grabs him. He should go somewhere in the middle rounds.

The final word on SEC vs Big Ten. Sure, they may have won a zillion national titles but this is the Big Ten's position on vuvuzelas:

The Big Ten has specific policies that do not allow irritants or noisemakers, so vuvuzelas would not be allowed. Below is the specific language from our football game management manual.

This is the SEC's:

This instrument, no matter how irritating to some, will not be banned from SEC games this upcoming season, according to the SEC. The instrument of choice in South Africa, which may or may not catch on here in the states, can be brought into stadiums across the league.

Big Ten wins forever. Not that I imagine there will be a ton of vuvuzelas at SEC games. There will be three incidents where vuvuzelas are brought into the stadium, then gingerly extracted from parts of the anatomy plastic horns were not meant to tread, before everyone gets the idea.

Not technically World Cup content. This is about soccer but the larger point is excellent:

One of the hard things about forming an outlook on the World Cup is that when an event gets this much attention, the flow of commentary is so fast and broad that every possible angle is exhausted and trivial positions develop a kind of insubstantial politics. Conventional wisdom starts to seem like an ideology, and if you’re not careful, your own feelings about what happens will be dictated by where you want to stand in relation to that ideology rather than by what you actually think. There’s a pundit position, a cognoscenti backlash, an uber-cognoscenti counter-backlash, and so on till after midnight. Your heart and the stadium get farther and farther apart.

Case in point: two opinions that put you on roughly the same line of anti-pundit knowingness would be “the first round of games was actually great” and “Switzerland weren’t that exciting yesterday; Spain were just terrible.” Maybe you really feel those things, or have numbers to back them up. But in most cases, I’d guess that the attraction of these stances has a lot to do with the fact that they put some space between you and the thousand-mile pandemonium of cliches blasting out of the TV studios and the pages of your favorite newspaper. It’s not only that they make you sound like you know what you’re talking about, although there’s no discounting the lure of savvy disaffectedness. They also just turn down the volume.

That sort of contrarianism for the sake of saying something new is a constant temptation for anyone tasked with writing something people will find interesting. Sometimes it's right. Sometimes it's David Berri running a regression and declaring Dennis Rodman more valuable than Michael Jordan or that NBA coaches don't understand who their best players are. If you're trying to  combat the conventional wisdom, you should regard it a tricky, wily foe that requires something more than a blunt-force blow.

Etc.: Citi dumps its Rose Bowl sponsorship.

No Kinard. This has been in the wind for a couple weeks now, but it is now official:

Jeff Whittaker, the coach at Youngstown (Ohio) Liberty, said Sunday that linebacker Antonio Kinard is weighing three options for this fall, playing football at prep schools Fork Union or Hargrave military academies, or signing with a junior college in Kansas.

"He’s looking at it like it’ll be his redshirt year," Whittaker said. "It just won’t be at the university and then he’ll be able to get it in order and finish this test and get back on track coming up."

Kinard still wants to come to Michigan and will attempt to do so after a prep year. If he goes to a JUCO, he's probably out, but Michigan's taken military academy kids before, with Chris Perry the most prominent. Demar Dorsey, meanwhile, has frustratingly signed with Louisville and will be on a college campus this fall.

For what it's worth, this does leave Michigan with a couple of open scholarships if they want to get in on any USC players who might like to transfer. Rodriguez didn't make it seem likely, though:

“You got to have scholarships first to give out, and there’s got to be mutual interest and all that,” Rodriguez said. “So we’ve been concentrating on our guys. And guys that have been on campus and taking summer classes and the freshmen that we expect to come on the 26th, that’s had most of our attention.”

With USC's appeal likely to delay their penalties to the 2011 season, seniors will get their bowl game. Juniors will be told that the NCAA will repent, repeal everything, and give USC ice cream, and will buy this for reasons unknown.

The read option. Having gotten sick of the poor quality, I haven't bought NCAA in a few years now.  But after Madden's sales collapsed, EA switched focus from awful new features that add nothing but sound impressive in the gaming press to an effort to actually make a playable, realistic football game. Result: increase in sales.

I'm probably not going to get it this year, either, but this actually looks sort of like a read option:

Sure, the middle linebacker took off for the other side of the field, but the blocking on the line actually looks extant and readable, which is more progress in a few months than the series has made during its entire time on this generation's consoles. They've added a lot of RR's offense to this edition and it might actually work. I follow a couple blogs that look at EA games with a jaundiced eye; if they say it's worth getting I might take the plunge.

Budget stuff. The University has submitted its annual budget to the Regents. While we'll have to wait for a real journalist to FOIA the exact details, the overall picture is unsurprising for anyone not on the "Save the Big House" organizing committee:

Total revenues for FY 2011 are budgeted to be $105.0 million and total operating expenses are budgeted at $100.3 million. The athletic department is a self-supporting unit that does not receive financial support from the University's General Fund.

With the revenues derived from the Michigan Stadium expansion, the U-M Athletic Department will realize an additional $11.0 million, taking revenues over the $100 million mark for the first time. …

"The athletic department projects a $16.1 million operating surplus for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010, and will start fiscal year 2011 with $35 million of unrestricted operating reserves," said U-M Athletic Department Chief Financial Officer Jason Winters.

Successful businessman with extensive capital and under-utilized resource creates bonus revenue. News… this is not news. Cat videos at 11.

Meanwhile, this enormous pile of money may have actual payoffs for the people providing it:

“We’re looking at some updates and enhancements to Yost ­- bleachers, the concession areas, the circulation space, lighting,” Brandon said. “And we’re looking at some real interesting things as it relates to the scoreboard and technology in all of our venues, including the football stadium.

“We’re in a situation where one of the things we have to attend to at some point in the future would be update the technology because there’s HD technology, bigger screens and higher resolution that our fans would really enjoy.”

Though Munn Ice Arena is a sterile environment easily raided, they do have a sweet replay board. Yost has no capability outside of cartoonish GO FIGHT WIN screens.

Penn State hockey? This seems like your usual off-the-cuff mental doodling from a newspaper columnist who just likes sayin' stuff, but this is more evidence that a Big Ten team might add hockey than has ever existed before:

There's a rumor afoot I cannot yet confirm that Penn State is looking into retrofitting the Bryce Jordan Center for hockey. I left a message for Tim Curley on Wednesday but heard nothing back. I've been told by PSU sources it would easily be an 8-figure undertaking, involving the dismantlement of the arena floor, demolition of some seats and the installation of a cooling system for the ice. That's a lot of coin.

Apparently there's a Penn State alum who just sold some acreage to Shell for a ridiculous amount of money who "has been a youth hockey coach." So this is definitely happening and is not something that Penn State's AD will privately laugh at.

Is this… fluff? Angelique Chengelis dropped an article a few days ago that is your typical slice of profile fluff wherein someone who is involved with sports does something nice for someone else. The only surprise is who got the treatment:

On April 16, a Friday and a day before Michigan's spring football game, the team's final practice before August camp, Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez and his wife, Rita, were at Mott Children's Hospital visiting sick children, as they often do. Michigan offensive linemen Perry Dorrestein and John Ferrara also were there that day.

Rodriguez was running late for practice, as he walked through the hallway of the pediatric intensive care unit.

Dave Page was wheeling his wife to their baby's room to say goodbye. David III was dying, his organs failing, and it was only a matter of hours before he would lose his battle.

Page passed Rodriguez, who was in the middle of a conversation, in the hallway of the intensive care unit.

"All I could think to say was, 'Go, Blue' because I had my mind on other things," Page said. "And (Rodriguez) stopped, had a big ol' smile and said, 'Go, Blue.' "

It goes on from there in a fashion that's only unusual in that it's typical of these sorts of articles. Even the arrogant and unpleasant Charlie Weis got regular praise for his charity dedicated to autistic kids. (His daughter is affected.) When people end up having a lot of money they try to do nice things for other people who are less fortunate. It's not a surprise, or at least shouldn't be without two years of relentlessly negative media coverage that painted Rodriguez as a demon hick with the temerity to attempt to negotiate a buyout down.

Etc.: Hammer and Rails previews a common opponent: Notre Dame. The hockey schedule is out. MGoUser willywill9 has a conversation with a former WVU player in which Rodriguez is described as the "best coach in the country," something that happens about every three months: former WVU player flags down a guy wearing Michigan gear and praises Rodriguez apropos of nothing.

Worst State Ever goes national. On cable, but still:

You, too, can own this piece of History Channel-famous clothing. If you already own one, your Grandma needs one.

Why the hell? This is apparently the reason the Big 12 did not fall apart:

No FSN deal has been signed, and nothing is expected for several weeks at the earliest. But sources say FSN has told Big 12 officials that it would increase its annual payout to as much as $130-$140M per year. It currently pays $19.5M per year for the cable TV rights, a deal that ends following the '11-12 season

How in the flaming hell is that a good business decision for FSN? You're increasing your payout 600% for games that are on average less interesting without Nebraska—the Big 12 was recently reassured that ESPN would not demand a "rebate" on their existing contrat.

Sports Business Daily says that along with that payout will come "third tier rights" that include radio, stadium signage, local media, and third-tier TV rights. I'm not exactly sure what the value of that stuff is but since IMG is involved I imagine they're similar to the rights deals M and OSU have with IMG that amount to something like 8-10 million annually, with teams like Purdue getting maybe half of that. Ballpark those at 4 million per school (which is a complete guess*) and Fox is only… uh… more than doubling its commitment to the Big 12 after it lost a good bit of reach and interest.

We may see a system where more rights devolve to the league itself, thus artificially boosting the conference distribution without actually boosting the revenue much. It'll be like a heavily back-loaded NFL contract that's more show than substance. I'm sure the Big 12 will increase its payouts in a real sense, but the demographic realities that almost saw the conference implode aren't going away. I agree with this guy who is cited by USA Today as an expert:

However, he called the projected average annual TV splits of $20 million for Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M, with the other schools getting $14 million-$17 million each, "too high, just not realistic."

"Now, who knows? Maybe they can break the mold and come up with a model nobody's seen."

More likely they'll just dress it up real purty to save face. Doctor Saturday has more.

*(But I think it's the right range since schools will be able to hold onto whatever other rights they require to start their own networks.)

Appeal not so much. The #1 must-read piece on USC's sanctions comes from the Bylaw Blog, which delves deep into the record-length document to reach some conclusions no one else has the expertise or care to. The main takeaway:

In that detailed account, the Committee on Infractions lays out the case that USC took in two student-athletes with no regard for the amateurism rules, and then failed to notice when they began accept benefits and enter into agreements in violation of the rules. The overall gist of the NCAA’s stance was summed up by one quote from Paul Dee, the chair of the Committee on Infractions during the teleconference discussing the report:

High profile players demand high profile compliance.

IE: no more see/hear/speak no evil for Carroll and Friends. Compliance Guy also provides a heartening opinion on why the document is so long and took so long: the NCAA lacks a true smoking gun and instead laid out its case meticulously in anticipation of a USC appeal. The top priority was making the penalties stand.

At this point a USC appeal would probably damage the school more than help it, as the penalties would just be delayed. So, go ahead, USC. Appeal.

Seriously pissed off, you guys. The hockey committee dropped a couple of major rules changes on college hockey:

1. Icing always counts even if you're killing a penalty.
2. Hits to the head are an automatic five and a game.

The second is just another version of the committee's temporary freakout about hits from behind after North Dakota's Robbie Bina was seriously injured by a dangerous check from behind by Geoff Paukovich. The NCAA decided to combat incompetent refereeing by making all hits from behind five and a game, leading to a brief period when every hit along the boards was accompanied by a nervous glance at the ref just in case he decided to toss your guy from the game. Refs started calling boarding instead and a few years later we're back to square one when it comes to hits from behind: still illegal. We'll have an annoying period where routine minors are wildly overreacted to, refs will start calling roughing, and everything will go back to the way it was.

The icing change promises to greatly increase the efficacy of power plays and has been met with fuming, largely because the coaches voted against it… unanimously:

“I think it’s just a crime,” Bemidji State coach Tom Serratore said. “I’ve been in college hockey for 18 years and I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It was almost unanimous for the entire coaching body. How can the committee overturn the entire coaching body? I think it’s sad, the lack of respect that the committee had for the coaching body.

“We didn’t spend any time even talking about it because it was so radical. We just voted 12-0 and moved on.”

Coaches are also irritated by a change to delayed penalties where a team that scores on the delay still gets the power play, but that hardly ever happens so at worst it's a minor annoyance.

Other changes:

• Goaltenders now change ends in overtime. This might be a direct response to what happened at the Fort Wayne regional, when Michigan got stuck with the long change for four out of five periods in the double-OT game against Miami. It's not a rule change that will have an impact anywhere else, but it's a good one anyway.
• Icing modifications. The "obtainable pass" rule where a player who attempted to pass to a teammate who just missed it saw his icing waved off is gone, which I don't like. On the other hand, if an offensive player is clearly going to beat the defender to the puck they will wave it off. Net impact is about neutral, I guess.

The half-shield proposal was tabled so that more studies about injury could take place.

The rules proposals aren't final—they have to be addressed by the "Playing Rules Oversight Committe" in July. One dollar says the icing rule is dropped and never discussed again.

BONUS: That last article suggests the CCHA will drop the shootout. I actually didn't mind it once they went to a system where all games were worth the same number of points.

Etc.: Bacon goes way back to cover Michigan's brief withdrawal from the Big Ten around the turn of the 20th century. All of the CU/NU penalty fees will go to OU, Texas, and A&M. NHL.com profiles Carl Hagelin. Contrasting Michigan's response to the NCAA with USC's.

Signed stuff by the bucket. Note for memorabilia-seekers: The From The Heart charity auction is up and going and has a ton of stuff for the man with an empty basement. As per usual, proceed go to charity.

this guy. 

Bombed, but not enough. USC has gotten a severe punishment, with two-year bowl ban and serious scholarship penalties. Woo! Question, though: how does the basketball program get off with nothing more than the self-imposed penalties they've already taken when the USC compliance department explicitly told Tim Floyd to drop OJ Mayo because there was a 100% chance he was on the take. I think they got the football punishments about right—they should have voided all of USCs LOIs and dumped transfer restrictions for the duration of the probation—but their basketball program should have gotten the same treatment.

And then… man. As MGoShoe points out, the current athletic director actually said this:

“As I read the decision by the NCAA, all I could get out of all of this was … I read between the lines and there was nothing but a lot of envy, and they wish they all were Trojans,” Garrett said to cheers Thursday night at the San Francisco Airport Marriott.

Comparing and contrasting USC's response with Michigan's is too obvious to even undertake. The NCAA should retroactively give them the death penalty, and then do it again. How much do you think it would cost to hire a private investigator to go after USC full-time? Surely there are enough people in the country willing to chip in that we could get this done for five bucks each, right?

And don't get me started on women's tennis.

UPDATE: It is officially open season on USC juniors and seniors:

Juniors and seniors to-be on the USC Trojans' football team, hit with a two-year postseason ban among other punishments, will be allowed to transfer to other FBS programs without having to sit out a season, the NCAA clarified to ESPN on Friday.

"The second school would have to submit a waiver asking to waive the year in residence, but NCAA rules allow for this waiver to be granted if a student-athlete's first school has a postseason ban in their sport," NCAA spokeswoman Stacey Osburn said in an e-mail to ESPN's Joe Schad.

A glance at the roster reveals that four of USC's top five corners are eligible to GTFO. I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'. We are down one corner, after all.

Izzout? After Tom Izzo spent 9.5 hours in Cleveland yesterday—far more time than anyone who is not Serious About Cleveland would spend—the tenor of the Izzo chatter in East Lansing is trending towards grim resignation. Jim Comparoni, the nut who runs Michigan State's Rivals site and in my experience has never once said anything remotely negative about anything related to State, says it is a "very bad sign" that Izzo's scheduled golf appearance has been canceled and that football coaches say it "doesn't look good." There may be a 4PM press conference coming up today. There may not.

At The Only Colors they're simultaneously convincing themselves that Izzo's statement is not bad news and evaluating the coaching tree for possible replacements. Insert your preferred Kubler-Ross interpretation here.

Don the tinfoil hats. If Dave Brandon is willing to bluntly state that he had nothing to do with Dorsey's failure to be admitted, I believe him:

"This is a decision that is owned by the admissions department, our admissions office," Brandon said. "It's always been owned by the admissions office. It is not unusual for a letter of intent to be signed with a prospective student-athlete where there's far more that needs to be done for the student-athlete to be admitted. It involves course work, it involves test scores, and a variety of criteria some of which is fact-based and where and how they went about improving their test scores."

You'd have to be foolhardy to make such a statement in a FOIA-laden environment, and Brandon doesn't seem foolhardy. As discussed yesterday, this had everything to do with grades.

Expansion-o-rama again. The to-date accurate Chip Brown has declared the interest level between Texas and A&M to be "NONE!!!!!!" which doesn't make a ton of sense given the very real benefits available to Texas and A&M if they were to join the CIC—financial benefits that dwarf the amount of money athletics makes, causing the Big Ten partisans in the expansion game to declare him a useful stooge for athletic directors wishing to get a message out, which kind of does make sense.

Meanwhile a report that OU is headed to the SEC has been quickly and widely repudiated. I guess we'll find out.

World Cup linkage. One: GOLAZO! More footie strategy at Zonal Marking, which has tackled the US side "good, but need tactical tweaks" the Slovenians, a typical hardworking, honest, boring 4-4-2, and the Algerians, who were mainly 3-5-2  but are apparently going 4-4-2 for the WC, possibly because of a run of poor recent results. The Algerian goaltender is described as "very, very dodgy," something that takes doing at the African Cup of Nations.

The view from admissions. There is virtually nothing that can convince me that not taking Demar Dorsey is a good idea as long as the university makes a good-faith effort to educate him once he arrives. What you do with the poor black kid after he shows up is what reflects the character of the institution. Admissions obviously feels differently, and the feeling that Michigan is about to embark on a Notre Dame-like wander in the wilderness only gets stronger today.

Our Helmets Have Wings, a recruiting-focused M blog, snagged an interview with a former admissions employee. Unless something has changed, this is purely about academics:

Q: Did the Admissions Office examine potential students who had legal troubles differently than other students?

A: Like all applicants, potential incoming athletes with legal troubles are required to disclose most types of possible run-ins with the law.  This is not only for the purposes of safety on campus, but also to help the university maintain its tradition of selecting students of a particular academic AND moral caliber for admission.  That being said, varsity athletes, ESPECIALLY potential scholarship recipients present special cases that are most definitely looked at differently than normal applicants, but in this realm and in regards to academics.  Again, the behavioral issues tend to fall to the discretion of the athletic department.  If they say the athlete is a good ship, or at least one that can be and will be during his time at UM, the admissions office will defer to that decision regarding said athletic applicant. I do not know, personally, of any decision that was contested by the admissions office when the athletic dept. approved.

If this is about "LifeSkills," the AD should have known about it since Dorsey enrolled there in October. I'm not entirely sure but I don't think that means he stopped going to Boyd Anderson; he probably did the LifeSkills curriculum in addition to his senior year classes at Boyd, using the alternative school credits to replace poor grades from his sophomore and junior years.

Given the nature of the problem here the university can stonewall any FOIA requests by referencing FERPA, a federal student privacy law. We will never know exactly what went down, but if Dorsey ends up at Tennessee or USC or another BCS school we'll have plain evidence that Michigan's is operating with a self-inflicted disadvantage, and negative recruiters will have a field day. There is literally no way the recruitment of a kid who never even enrolled at Michigan could have been more damaging. Now any happy ending to the media firestorm has to happen somewhere else. Thanks, admissions.

Bills update. Poster Raback Omaba reports that Jon Bills's surgery to repair broken vertebrae went well and the "prognosis for a full recovery remains high." He can move his extremities. Bills is obviously done with football, but hopefully he'll make a full recovery.

Hello: Nebraska? Multiple Big 12 ADs suggest Nebraska will be in the Big Ten by Friday. I would care a lot more about this if this Dorsey thing hadn't happened. At least their basketball team will suck.

Ethics follow-up. I posted a transcript of the tense interaction at the end of the ethics panel a couple days ago, and yesterday appeared on Dan Levy's On The DL podcast to elaborate on the opinion I'd shouted in the middle of everything. Again, totally meta, but something that's important.

World Cup content. If you're one of the many people who's been frustrated with the lack of a quality USMNT blog, I think you (and I) may have a new favorite place for the next month. It's Stars and Gripes, a just-launched Nats blog with an inclination towards strategy and a soccer version of Picture Pages:

Rooney makes his run, Johnson puts in a perfect ball, and Rooney puts in his second.

The constant switching from side to side often leaves the middle of the pitch exposed, where Lampard and Barry can move from the back and put themselves in dangerous spots just outside the box. 

Anyone willing to draw a big circle with an arrow on a still of the England-Andorra game is a champion. Read it all.

If you're the sort of soccer fan who doesn't know why everyone wants to drop Jonathan Bornstein out of the team plane (with a parachute; we're not monsters), War Blog Eagle has an excellent primer for you.

An actual number. Almost a month ago, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch deployed the FOIA to finally provide the real hard numbers on how much Big Ten schools are pulling in from TV. Somehow, no one noticed. Here's an attempt to do so. The numbers:

* Includes money from TV, bowl games, NCAA Tournament.

These are less extraordinary than the rapturous articles about Super Genius/Villain Jim Delany have claimed, but they still greatly outstrip everyone save the SEC, which they meaningfully outstrip. Meanwhile, the SEC is locked into an ESPN contract worth 12.5 million per team per year for 15 years and the Big Ten will see BTN revenue grow yearly.

Another note: SNL Kagan analyst Derek Baine says the BTN is getting 88 cents per subscriber in the footprint, which is about a dime short of what they were asking for and more than triple what the Comcast guy told me they valued the BTN at during the year-long standoff between the two. Cable companies did not win.

(Apologies to whoever linked this; unfortunately I've lost it. If you think it's you ask me for a HT.)

Mmmm. Wavery. Michigan's 2011 class is a bit thin so far, with just two forwards coming in in a year when Michigan willl require at least another player at F, D, and G. Lucas Lessio made an appearance at the Oshawa Generals' camp, but is expected to keep his commitment to Michigan. And now the other guy in the class, Ontario forward Alex Guptill, sounds like he's not a lock either:

Already committed to play for the University of Michigan in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) either this year or in 2011, Guptill said his immediate future, including where he might play come winter, will become more clear at the end of June.

“It is all up to — if a (NHL) team takes me — what their stance is and then Michigan’s,” Guptill said. “It will go from there.”

IE: hope the Kings stay away. Guptill and Lessio were both drafted by the USHL's Waterloo Blackhawks and the Blackhawks believe they'll have them next year.

There is some good news: Guptill was the recipient of the Ontario Hockey Association's "Top Prospect Award," something that's been bestowed on former Wolverines Mike Cammalleri and Andrew Cogliano plus an array of other NHL players like Jeff Carter and Rob Schremp. The OHA covers Ontario's Junior A and B leagues.

Etc.: The Daily puts out another huge article, this on the evolution of Yost from an empty, silent place to the raucous place it is today. I'm pretty sure this "shimmy down" tackling technique is the same that GERG is employing in practice. The idea is to focus on the approach more than anything else because most players can get a guy down if they're in the right spot. This may sound boring, but the words "they want to get pecker to pecker with the guy" appear.