1986

Hi. I would have packed this into yesterday's UV but internet problems + rehab equaled no. So here's the other stuff.

Local news, 1986. Wolverine Historian digs up a gem:

Five dollar parking and the hair, man. The hair. Check out the defector at around 2 minutes. We need a clip of that guy.

Position clarity and dang. In an interview with Touch the Banner, James Ross says he'll start off at the weakside linebacker spot. With Bolden ticketed for the center, I'm guessing Royce Jenkins-Stone is eventually slid to SAM. Where Kaleb Ringer goes is also probably in the middle.

Also:

I played hockey for a long time, and just being in that fast-paced environment helped, being able to see things. Hockey is really fast; you have to be able to move, and I think that really translates well to the football field.

Ross is 6'1", 225, and fast. If he could skate at all he would have been a crunching bodycheck factory had he stuck with the hockey. Video at TTB suggests he could not skate much as of early high school, but leave me to my lethal bodycheck fantasies.

More playoff stuff. I can't find this [freep] anywhere else, nor does this have a direct quote, but um… as far as reason not to have campus playoffs go this is even better than Bill Hancock's:

[Dave] Brandon understands the advantage a Big Ten team would gain from a playoff game on its campus but also realizes it’s not fair for schools across the country to play in the cold weather. Brandon also said he polled U-M players, who said they like to go to warm-weather bowl sites.

It's not fair. My brain stopped working. This is where I say something snarky or something about how this is not a good argument. I can't. Logic has been suspended. Get The Picture:

And just to show you how absurd this gets, rather than stand his ground on the more fan-friendly on-campus sites, Michigan State’s athletic director hopes instead that the NCAA will help families pay for the travel expense of going to an additional postseason game.

I  give up. The rest of this column will be written by my wife's cat.

THE LARGE HAIRY ONE SAYS THIS NEXT. You're probably expecting this to be in hilarious broken English lolcatese. Typical. I quit.

I do say this is next. Cats: cannot get them to do anything. Anyway, blogosphere old timers may remember Vijay, who ran one of the ur-blogs back in the day. He still hangs out on some message boards and put together a picture of the distance traveled by fans to get to bowl sites last year:

Avg distance traveled for the bowl
Big 10: 1261
Pac 10: 775
Big XII: 701
ACC: 667
SEC: 254
Big 10 travels MUCH further than anyone else. SEC travels much less. No surprise.

Avg miles differential (how far a team had to travel, compared to their opponent: + = traveling further)
Big 10: +812
ACC: -15
Big XII: -137
SEC: -399
Pac 10: -470
Big 10 is the only major conference that is generally playing further from home than their opponents.

# of games within 500 miles of home
Big 10: 1/10
ACC: 2/8
Big XII: 3/8
Pac 10: 3/7
SEC: 9/9
EVERY SINGLE SEC TEAM played within 500 miles of home.

Guess which SEC team was the only one to travel further for their bowl than their opponent. Answer below.

Meanwhile, every single Big 10 team traveled further than their opponent. Even Purdue, which got to play in Michigan, ended up playing Western Michigan.

Trivia answer: Alabama, who played LSU in New Orleans.

Use of the word fair in relation to this makes me want to wear around a horse. I'll say "I'm actually a slide rule, call me the King of Albania." I'll wear a sock on my hand I call Prince Knight who speaks only in riddles. His only riddle is "how are these people in charge?"

The cat does not find this amusing. I'm going to shake him until he does.

HELP I'M STUCK IN BLADERUNNER

ALSO BONUS BONUS BONUS BONUS. Uniform hijinks are going to be an annual thing now From the above-linked article.

He discussed the heightened attention on U-M's jerseys, particularly in football. He said the school might have done too much with changing them last season and plans to quiet the speculation this fall by having a single rollout of all the game jerseys they’ll wear throughout the season. He said coaches, players and recruits enjoy variety.

"School" should be read as "Dave Brandon" and "speculation" should be read as "lack of speculation."

So at least there won't be any horrible, horrible surprises this year, and five different outfits seems off the table. Regular alternate whatnots are here to stay. Embrace it. I want wings on the pants. And the jerseys. I want a uniform that's just one giant wing. Like, when the offense lines up the unit should look like one winged helmet. With claws!

A note on something that happened last week. You know that child-porn-havin' OSU-recruit-creepin' twitter guy from last week? One: if you asked me to draw a composite of all OSU fans it would be him. Two: when you are in photos, keep your head straight.

WHY DOESN'T YOUR NECK WORK, MEDIAN OF ALL OHIO STATE FANS EMBODIED?

Seriously, you should get that checked out or something. Also, thank you for existing.

Better at being in photos than OSU median guy. Jehu Chesson on the track:

Head: straight up and down.

Chesson won the 300 M hurdles at a regionals meet and is working on his 110M skills.

Etc.: Smart Football, the book. Highly recommended. TOC on the ill-founded grad-year transfer panic. Michigan made money, then spent money. They will bid out the MNC final.

1986 again. WH continues his flash back to 1986 with a copy of Michigan Replay from M's win over OSU that year. You should at least watch the first 1:35:

Yes, that's the podcast's theme music, kids. Forever will it be so. Also WH posted Bo's first game.

Senior. Spring practice fluffy video contains "senior" underneath Denard's name:

Sinking in slowly that this is the last opportunity to see the guy in a Winged Helmet.

What are you doing? Man, was that Purdue game last night frustrating to watch. The Boilers had it, but then started running clock with two minutes left and a three-point lead. TOC summarizes:

With 1:44 left to go in the Purdue-Kansas game last night, Robbie Hummel secured a defensive rebound with Purdue up by 3.

Of the 104 seconds that remained in the game, Purdue controlled the ball for 90 of them.

Kansas controlled the ball for the remaining 14 seconds.

Kansas scored 6 points in those 14 seconds.

Purdue scored zero points in its 90 seconds.

The risk of giving your opponent an extra 10 seconds to work with is perhaps being overestimated.

I'm beginning to think the best way to win a close college basketball game is to make sure your opponent has the ball with a one-possession lead with between 60 and 120 seconds left in the game.

Purdue held the ball until there were well under ten seconds on the shot clock in their 90 seconds and got horrible shots and turnovers for their trouble. If you had flashbacks to Rocky Harvey and various other late-game indignities foisted upon us by Lloyd Carr's tendency to clam up too early, you were not alone.

Rule: until you get into a range where the opponent is going to have to foul even if they get twos on all their remaining possessions, play as if there's 20 minutes left. With 1:44 you should only start stalling if you're up seven or more.

Side note: man, does Purdue have an unusual number of guards who can't shoot. Their dual Johnsons are both below 50% on free throws this year, and with 108 and 69 attempts that can't be explained away as a Douglass-like tiny sample size. Without Hummel and Ryne Smith the Boilers are going to be relying on DJ Byrd for a huge percentage of their outside shooting unless they've got some sniper freshmen coming in.

Let my people twitter. Brady Hoke thinks Michigan's silly secondary violation for congratulating Mike McCray on his commitment is silly:

When the linebacker picked Michigan earlier this month, Roundtree reached out to congratulate him. No big deal.

Except, he did it on Twitter. And that, according to NCAA rules, is a no-no. In fact, it's considered a secondary violation.

Brady Hoke sees something wrong with that.

"That one’s really silly," he said.

Hoke's in favor of loosening some of these restrictions put in place when media was media instead of everything being media. Despite his Fred Flintstone-like relationship with technology, he'd also like to let the Zooks run free with unlimited text messaging.  The NCAA should deregulate a bunch of this stuff so people can focus on important things instead.

Restatement of previous suggestion: if a kid wants to opt out let them sign a non-binding intent to commit letter that lifts contact restrictions for the school he's committed to, prohibits them from taking official visits or being contacted by other coaches, and can be rescinded at any time by the player.

Hobey Hunwick. The CCHA's second-team goalie is one of two netminders nominated for the Hobey Baker award:

Michigan senior goalie Shawn Hunwick has been named one of 10 finalists for the Hobey Baker Award, given to the nation's top collegiate hockey player. Hunwick, named to the CCHA second team earlier this season, is 23-10-3 this season with a goals against average of 1.96 and a .934 save percentage.

Ferris State's goalie was not nominated for obvious reasons.

Profile season. The Daily covered Chris Brown. Texas? Texas:

Around Ann Arbor, he drives a massive black pick-up truck with Texas license plates slapped on it, a not-so-subtle reminder of the Division-I hockey player’s transplanted background.

And there is the music he listens to before games, so different than the hip-hop and electronic beats that usually flow in the locker rooms of Yost Ice Arena. Chris prefers country artists like Kenny Chesney and The Casey Donahue Band, whose most popular song is called “White Trash Story.”

Do you know how short Kenny Chesney is, though? He's really short.

The article goes in depth about the cross-country odysseys high level prospects have to undergo just to get to a place like Michigan. It's a nomadic existence. The only other athletes with comparable journeys are high-level soccer prospects.

Pro day stuff. Hemingway and Van Bergen showed well; so did Martin but that's no surprise. Gil Thorpe Brandt highlighted those two plus Molk and Woolfolk as risers throughout the draft process. Hemingway:

Junior Hemingway, WR (6-0 7/8, 221) — Hemingway looked very good catching the ball from Bruce Gradkowski, the Bengals QB who was brought in to throw. He’s a sleeper who should surprise on draft day when he’s selected earlier than expected.

It is tough to judge receivers in an offense piloted by Denard Robinson.

Quick exit. Holdin' the Rope on Michigan's exit:

Trying to make sense of the NCAA Tournament is like trying to count the grains of sand on a beach. Once you've made what you believe to be a certain amount of progress--you've counted each and every singular grain in your hand--the tide comes in, obliterating everything, weakening your assertion by introducing something entirely new to your worldview. Upsets happen all the time; it is the ordered disorder of this entire thing, a relatively brief spectacle that can either build upon or utterly destroy the five-month slog that precedes it. How upset you should be after this is a product of your pre-conceived notions of Michigan's abilities relative to college basketball as a whole, the somewhat distorting effect of a shared conference title, and most importantly, to what extent you think Michigan "overachieved."

Etc.: Meyers Leonard is probably gone to the NBA; Shaka Smart is going to have to get a lot more out of Nnanna Egwu if he hopes to make Illinois competitive in year one. Red Line is not a fan of Boo Nieves for unspecific reasons. UMHoops has a state of the blog. Michigan is second on MaxPreps' early 2013 class rankings. OSU is #6, Penn State #7. #tenyearwarII #andintroducingPennState

It's time for death hockey.

CEASE PANIC ONCE MORE. See, I do learn: the most recent twitter panic was a report from Devin Gardner that Denard Robinson had cut off his dreads, and I refrained from having requesting mass panic. MGoUser Raback Omaba stakes his hard-earned Dorsey-commit rep on this report that takes us down from DEFCON 2:

Reports of him shorning them and sporting a "lil boosie fade" were premature. Denard merely trimmed his dreads and styled them differently. However he maintains his trademark Denard Robinson dreadlocks. He did not get a fade, his dreads are still there. Significant amounts of dilithium remains hanging from his head, perhaps more effective than before. Let's worry about football now rather than carry on about hairstyles of future Heisman winners. Move on. Denard still has dreads

He has a fade and dreads? The magic of Denard is ever-expanding.

RESUME PANIC. These aren't happening but the asked-for horrifying new jersey mockups have arrived and are terrible enough to cause you to run around screaming:

These will happen someday, probably when we're flying around in jet cars and pushing a button at our jobs. You know, when Denard Robinson doesn't seem fast.

Jihadexpansion update. Mary Sue Coleman talked to a bunch of alumni at a function in Boston recently that a couple of MGoUsers report back from. Some small amount of detail on the second-to-last event in the NCAA whatnot:

Pres. Coleman stated that UM will be announcing its self-imposed sanctions by the end of the month.  She indicated that there was cross communication between the coaching staff and the compliance people.  The coaching staff thought they'd been given the green light, whereas the compliance people thought that a different question was being asked.  She said that unlike reported in some places, at best the overage amount would amount to roughly 2 hours a week.  She also predicted that many football programs across the US will be dropping compliance people to avoid danger of giving "coaching advice."

A later post in the thread gives the 24th as the date on which Michigan will send back the report and announce whatever they're self-imposing. If it's in line with previous violations of this nature Michigan will have to give back the hour overages two-to-one and may have to forgo the use of a coach for some period of time. Assorted minor items will be tacked on; the guess here is that no scholarship penalties will result except possibly a single one this year that's more symbolic than anything—Michigan won't be able to get up past 84 this year anyway.

An old guarantee. MGoVideo gets in on the WH gig by providing a youtube embed of the 1986 edition of The Game featuring Jim Harbaugh's famous guarantee:

Stick around afterwards for a quarterback comparison that Harbaugh dominates on completion percentage not not looking like Sloth.

Upset machine. Michigan alum Mike Cammalleri is rocking Eastern Conference heavyweights as the Montreal Canadiens go on the NHL's annual Cinderella playoff run, and putting his name amongst some of the sport's all-time greats in the process:

With seven goals in a seven-game series victory over the defending Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins, Cammalleri equaled a team record for tallies in a single playoff series shared by Maurice (Rocket) Richard (1944 and 1958), Jean Beliveau (1956), Bernard (Boom Boom) Geoffrion (1957), Guy Lafleur (1975) and Marcel Bonin (1959)�all of them but Bonin long established members of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

How's that for company?

Impressive, rhetorical question guy. Impressive indeed. Here's Cammalleri's seventh and final goal of the Pens series, the eventual game-winner:

(HT: South Bend Wolverine, who we all feel for deeply.)

After a scary injury last year that saw Bree Evans lie motionless on the ground after a home-plate collision in an exhibition game against State, she's returned to the field hale, hearty, and hitting. She's now batting .365 as a sophomore, second-best on the team. The official site has deployed its feature machine in response:

The softball team is now 44-6, 16-1 in the conference, and is cruising towards another top seed in the NCAA tournament. This weekend's regular season finale at Iowa will be televised live by the BTN at 6 on Friday and 4 on Saturday.

Etc.: MVictors on what went down with Bo and Harwell.