Football

Things Discussed:

• LSU is out of NIL money? They got outbid for an MSU DT and Brian Kelly says "We don't buy players." That'll be news to Bryce Underwood; hope his checks clear.
• Spartans getting in their feelings about Jaden Mangham possibly transferring to Michigan (or Ohio State or Minnesota). Want to prevent him from graduating. There's an intrastate program that allows you to finish your MSU degree at Michigan. Why can't this work for other guys? It's a formal in-state program. The reason academic programs like this don't associate with athletic transfers that much is schools other than Michigan are good at making exceptions for athletes. Michigan should have done so for Terrence Shannon; they probably were right to turn down Caleb Love.
• Brian: Good time to be a Michigan fan; long-term prognoses for OSU and MSU not great.
• Dusty May's presser: Best first presser ever? He's a great communicator/teacher who gave us a lot of information, addressed exact questions. He was watching OSU games for fun? Seth: He was probably watching OSU games because he thought he'd be coaching them.
• Dusty's offense: two point guards, wants all of his players to be facilitators so the ball can't get stuck, can't get trapped. All of these guys have an out: good passers or at worst they can shoot it over anybody. Kinda like Beilein's where the PG with a 64-bit decision tree. Dusty May wants lots of guys with 16-bit decision trees. Tough part: lots of teaching to get it down.
• Rubin Jones perfect glue guy. I'm calling this now: I'm the #1 Rubin Jones fan around here. No takesies.
• Competition in the Big Ten? Oregon and UCLA will be decent, MSU standing pat with a bubble team, OSU is new coaching, Purdue graduated everybody. Michigan will probably be…top 4, 6-seed? Expect them to lose some games early as they learn to play with each other.
• Roster May built is ideal but for a star. I call it the Dayenu roster because everybody's one flaw from being in the NBA. Craig: May wants to be fun as well as good. Seth: Sounds like he's one of us.
• Football in the break: Texas CB Terrance Brooks?. Watched him vs Washington last year, when he was getting burned because he was in man all day. He's..Vincent Gray? Technically solid, smart, big, good ball skills, not a burner. Need to give him help; Michigan would be a good fit because they use so much poach coverage to take away the post. Texas was terrible because they were playing so much press quarters with no help on the double post and fade. Michigan takes that away.
• Schools cutting sports because of paying athletes? They'll say that, but they shouldn't. They're paying just 10% of their budget to players; pro leagues pay 55%. Will happen at the mid-major level because their conferences don't make sense and football is already a massive expenditure that they finance with student fees. Brian: that's a marketing fee; they can just cut back on marketing.
• What we want to see from Congress: your cap is based on how many scholarships you give out.

[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]

Michigan Football recently picked up a commitment from Birmingham Groves OL Avery Gach, the second commitment since Sherrone Moore took over as head coach. Today we give him the proper Hello: 

GURU RATINGS 

Gach is a consensus four star, ranked just inside the top 250 of the On3 Consensus and the 247 composite. Rivals and 247 are the highest on Gach, putting him inside their top 200 and ranking him among the top 15 IOL prospects nationally. ESPN is a bit lower, just inside the top 300, but all three of those sites consider him a top three prospect in the state of Michigan. On3 is the rather bizarre outlier (something that their own EJ Holland heavily disagrees with in his pieces), ranking Gach as an irrelevant three star and 7th in the state of Michigan. According to Seth's five star scale, Gach overall grades out as a solid four and in the middle of the pack among all IOL prospects that Michigan has gotten commitments from since 1990. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: what the scouts say]

Things Discussed:

• Draft Takeaways: Nice that Saban kept being like "I love this dude!" Brian: Michigan and Iowa are the best two teams at developing talent; Michigan also recruits in an area where you win a national title if you outperform like that.
• Seth: Harbaugh recruited at the same level as previous Michigan coaches but where they were getting 20% to 33% of their players to the NFL, Harbaugh is putting *60 Percent* of his players in the League:
• JJ McCarthy: Threw as many passes in the first three Qs as the other guys. Would I trade Goff for JJ, Neil? Can't break up a team on a Super Bowl run, but JJ is more valuable than Goff by far; he's gonna be under team control for a long time.
• Junior Colson: Sam shares that Minter told him to go pro after the championship because he and Harbaugh were going to the league and they're gonna come get him.
• Amorion Walker: If he'd stayed at receiver he'd be the breakout player of the year, but he burned his redshirts both years and then was at cornerback and Ole Miss—that is a hard position to play, and it's probably gonna need to be next year before he's a breakout player.
• CJ Charleston: He's here to be a veteran presence. Sinagosa brought him over from YSU. Tough sell getting receivers.
• DT? Looks like PT wasn't there for their top prospect CJ West so they're moving on to the GVSU guy (Suggs).
• Jaden Mangham? Seth: YES TAKE ALL THE FALCONS! Brian: I don't want anybody who thought it was a good idea to play for Mel Tucker. He's also against taking anyone from Belleville.
• Break: Basketball recruits.
• Post-break: NCAA has an opportunity with House negotiations to sit across the table from *somebody* and create a sustainable future. Brian: Pendulum swung too far, single transfer rule was correct. Seth: Best thing would be to create an incentive formula that gets small schools out of a huge tax bill and makes players want to stay put.

[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]