academic bitchin'

"The academic support at Ohio State, there is no way you can fail. Even if you’re giving minimal effort there is no way you can fail.”

-Adolphus Washington

So, the sign.

It caused Ramzy to do some deep musings on what the value of an education is anyway. I'm not here to speak on Michigan's general studies major or clustering, but rather to point out that the sign is a bald-faced lie. It highlights three impressive-sounding fields in which Ohio State has many majors and Michigan has few. You will be unsurprised to find out virtually all of these players are walk-ons.

According to OSU's 11-12 media guide…

BIOLOGY:

• Walk-ons: four.
• Scholarship players: zero.

ENGINEERING*:

• Walk-ons: six.
• Scholarship players: one. DE Darryl Baldwin is an ME.

BUSINESS:

• Walk-ons: five.
• Scholarship players: one. Jordan Whiting. Taylor Graham is listed as one and has transferred. [UPDATE: Whiting is now considering a transfer to Louisville.]

Meanwhile Mark Huyge can make, like, boats and stuff. There's always a tiny number of football players who are superfreak enough to put 40 hours a week into an "extracurricular activity" and still get a serious degree, but they are few, especially at a place like Michigan that won't even admit you to the B-school until you've scored a 3.8+ in your fist two years.

If you're looking to get a scholarship from Ohio State there's a 90% chance you will end up in the usual communications/"sport and leisure"/taco preparation majors. Which is fine. I just went to a coaching clinic—playing football in college is challenging both mentally and physically.

Just don't pretend you're something you're not. Ask Jim Tressel about how that works out in the long run. Enjoy your bowl this year, guys.

[UPDATE: Should clarify that I also excluded kickers and longsnappers for obvious reasons.]

[HT: Michael Scarn's diary.]

Just like Haloi Ngata. Tom points out that Jake Ryan's twitter photo displays the first fruits of hiring Greg Mattison—redshirt freshman Richard Ash's levitating hair:

So we've got that going for us.

Too awesome to don't click here. Irrelevant, but here's three of my favorite things in one thing:

Further position clarification. Just to highlight something from Tim's post:

Cameron Gordon will play outside linebacker, because they want to get the guys into the best position they can to make plays. "And then what's the most upside." He has great ability to grow, and has that upside at OLB. "As compared to being a safety, I think he can do that too, but we have other guys that can do that."

Specifically, Gordon will be the SAM linebacker, which is a spot fairly similar to the "spur" Michigan used last year in their disaster of a 3-3-5. This answers one of the main questions from the Hello Old 4-3 posts. It seems like your starting front seven next year will be:

DL: Van Bergen-Campbell/other three tech-Martin-Roh
LB: C. Gordon/Demens/Winner of massive WLB free for all

Only the WLB spot and three-tech are up in the air.

SPARKZZZZ. A Daily article on Sparks does seem to confirm the only possible reason Lindsay Sparks would mostly hang out in the press box on a team decidedly lacking in… well… spark:

By the time Michigan headed into the stretch run, the offensively-skilled forward had played in just 10 of his team’s 34 games, mainly due to concerns about his defense. … According to Michigan coach Red Berenson, Sparks took his game to another level in practice in recent weeks. It paid off. He took the ice in both games of the final regular-season series.

Sparks picked up an effort-y assist against Northern and flashed near-Hagelin speed against Western. Surely he's a regular next year with all the departures. Prepare for me to badly overrate him.

SNUBZZZZ. Michigan didn't have a whole lot of individual stars this year but it's a somewhere between disappointing an enraging that Shawn Hunwick didn't get even a single vote for All CCHA. Spath has numbers:

Hunwick went 14-6-1 in 21 CCHA games - the coaches are only supposed to consider conference statistics - ranking second in winning percentage (.690) to Notre Dame's Mike Johnson … Hunwick also ranked second in save percentage (.931) and second in goals against average (1.95). He was the lone netminder in the CCHA to rank in the top two in winning percentage, save percentage and goals against. …

Nagle went 12-12-4 for the Bulldogs, ranking seventh in winning percentage (.500) while his .920 save percentage also ranked seventh among conference netminders and his 2.11 goals against average left him fifth. Greenham …. ranked sixth in save percentage (.921) and seventh in goals against average (2.19).

And Hunwick has the CCHA's most entertaining twitter feed. Watch him talk smack to Steve Kampfer:

@SteveKampfer47 If I was in the NHL and playing in boston, I wouldn't be still flying girls in from Ann Arbor. #boom

.010 in save percentage + twitter should be a slam dunk for All CCHA, especially since the team that, you know, won the league only scored two of 12 players. I guess people are still hung up on the fact that he's just two cells pasted together.

Q: what was the last time Michigan had a goalie as good as Hunwick was this year? If you go by the stats, Billy Sauer's junior year is the recent best by a Michigan goalie. (The online database appears to start midway through the Tuco years.) He put up a .924  before his spectacular Frozen Four meltdown. Hunwick's .920 in 27 games is the next approximately qualifying season—if you want to roll his junior year in to get to 38 games that hardly changes the number—and then it's Montoya, Hogan, Montoya, Turco, and Josh Blackburn's four identical .905s.

If you think Sauer's meltdown poisons his whole year this is Michigan's best goaltending since Al Montoya was a sophomore who gave a crap.

Fab Five preview. Dylan got his hands on a promotional copy of Sunday's Fab Five documentary and provides first thoughts:

The brash exuberance of the Fab Five is not just captured through the clips on the court, which are obviously entertaining. A majority of the interviews do a great job of portraying the same energy. Whether it’s listening to the Fab Five describe their feelings on Duke and Christian Laettner – using words like “Uncle Toms” and “soft bitch” – or one of the many hip hop icons of the time explaining their cultural influence.

This is a no punches pulled documentary even without the presence of Chris Webber:

The range of topics discussed spans just about everything that you would expect to see. There are pictures of Jalen chugging beer out of a 40 and he discusses his drug house incident. There are also other ugly sides, such as shots of all of the racial hate mail from Michigan alumni and the inevitable discussion of the NCAA sanctions.

As I said, prepare to be massively conflicted. Sounds like it will be appointment television: 9PM, Sunday, ESPN.

Back to being an insufferable thing. Now that Jim Harbaugh is just another fish in the sea instead of the Chosen One we can resume thinking of him as kind of an asshat. This won't come as a surprise to anyone who perused the Stanford roster in the aftermath of Harbaugh's comments about Michigan funneling kids into easy classes, but—surprise—Stanford funnels its players into easy classes.

Not news, but this is a quote from the quote gods, one every Cal undergrad will be wearing next year:

"(Stanford) accommodates athletes in the manner that they accommodate students with disabilities."

Etc.: Bruce Ciskie has a good take on the brutal hit Max Pacioretty took from Zdeno Chara a couple days ago. UMHoops previews the BTT.

For the duration of his tenure, Joe Tiller was infamously supposed to be the guy behind Tom Dienhart's bitchy anonymous quotes in the Sporting News. So it's good to know that the mustachioed Wilford Brimley impersonator doesn't fall far from the diabeetus commercial:

"We've had about 90 kids on campus all summer and they've been in summer school. We don't have a general studies major at Purdue so they've had to take real classes too."

This, as anyone who remembers the grand tenure of Garrett Bushong can tell you, is hypocritcal bunk. Purdue is an engineering college full of nerds that preserves a small section of itself so it can jam Big Ten athletes onto its campus. This is totally fine by me as long as their head coach doesn't take shots at Michigan for doing the same thing. Presenting the Purdue major breakdown*:

Gimme Shelter

Player	Year	Position	Major
Aristide, Ishmael	RS FR	Safety	organizational leadership and supervision
Cooks, LaSalle	SO	Defensive Tackle	organizational leadership and supervision
Crank, Jared	JR	Fullback	organizational leadership and supervision
Ezenwa, Nnamdi	SO	Linebacker	organizational leadership and supervision
Flood, De'Ron	FR	Tight End	organizational leadership and supervision
Foy, Trevor	RS FR	Offensive Tackle	organizational leadership and supervision
Gooden, Gerald	JR	Defensive End	organizational leadership and supervision
Greaves, DeVarro	JR	Linebacker	organizational leadership and supervision
Holmes, Gabe	FR	Tight End	organizational leadership and supervision
Humphrey, John	RS SR	Linebacker	organizational leadership and supervision
Johnson, Josh	SO	Cornerback	organizational leadership and supervision
Kelly, Dennis	JR	Offensive Tackle	organizational leadership and supervision
Lindsay, Jeff	RS SR	Tight End	organizational leadership and supervision
Lucas, Will	FR	Linebacker	organizational leadership and supervision
Short, Kawann	SO	Defensive Tackle	organizational leadership and supervision
Siller, Justin	JR	QB-RB-WR	organizational leadership and supervision
Smith, Cortez	SR	Wide Receiver	organizational leadership and supervision
Thomas, Tommie	SO	Wide Receiver	organizational leadership and supervision
Werner, Jason	GS	Linebacker	organizational leadership and supervision
Bush, Gary	RS FR	Wide Receiver	organizational leadership and supervision
Carlos, Keith	SR	Running back	organizational leadership and supervision

Count: 21.

I Can Manage And Stuff

Player	Year	Position	Major
Panfil, Jeff	RS SR	Tight End	selling and sales management
Adams, Kyle	RS SR	Tight End	Management
Barry, Dan	JR	Offensive Guard	management
Dierking, Dan	SR	Fullback	management
Carlino, Chris	JR	Linebacker	building construction management technology
Shepherd, James	JR	Offensive Guard	building construction management technology
Wiggs, Carson	JR	Kicker-Punter	building construction management technology

Count: 7.

Basically Kinesiology

Many Purdue players have variants on lifting weights all scientific-like as their majors:

Player	Year	Position	Major
Edison, Antavian	SO	Wide Receiver	health and fitness
Evans, Albert	JR	Safety	health and fitness
Higgs, Antwon	SO	Linebacker	health and fitness
McDaniel, Eric	RS FR	Defensive Tackle	health and fitness
Melton, Xavier	RS FR	Offensive Guard	health and fitness
Pierce, Justin	RS SR	Offensive Guard	health and fitness
Roberts, Gavin	SO	Running Back	health and fitness
Williams, Charlton	JR	Cornerback	health and fitness
Holland, Joe	JR	Linebacker	movement and sport science
Kitchens, Justin	RS FR	Defensive End	movement and sport science
Taylor, Brandon	RS FR	Defensive Tackle	movement and sports science
Ballinger, Kevin	JR	Long Snapper	physical education
Mondek, Nick	JR	Offensive Tackle	physical education
Allen, Ricardo	FR	Cornerback	general health sciences

Count: 14.

Majors That A Lot Of Football Players End Up In Everywhere

Player	Year	Position	Major
McBurse, Al-Terek	SO	Running Back	communication
Mebane, Eric	SO	Defensive End	communication
Pamphile, Kevin	RS FR	Defensive Tackle	communication
Brewer, Andrew	SO	Center	sociology
Davis, Cody	RS FR	Center	sociology
Gravesande, Waynelle	JR	Wide Receiver	sociology
Plue, Ken	JR	Offensive Guard	sociology
TerBush, Caleb	SO	Quarterback	sociology
Eargle, Mike	JR	Cornerback	sociology
Bolden, Ralph	JR	Running Back	law and society
Marve, Robert	JR	Quarterback	law and society
Reese, Xavier	RS FR	Wide Receiver	law and society
Schmeig, Rick	SO	Center-Offensive Guard	law and society
Smith, Keith	RS SR	Wide Receiver	law and society

Count: 14

Possibly Actual Majors

Player	Year	Position	Major
Drey, Peters	SO	Center	industrial engineering
Maci, Robert	SO	Defensive End	industrial engineering
McKey, Colton	JR	Offensive Tackle	industrial technology/distribution
Kerrigan, Ryan	SR	Defensive End	math education
Jackson, Derek	SO	Fullback	computer technology
Prater, Ryan	RS SR	Offensive Tackle	mechanical engineering

Count: 6

The Grand Accounting

Type	Count	Pct
One Specific Fake Football Major	21	34%
Physical Education	14	23%
Standard-Issue Cake Majors	14	23%
You Too Can Supervise A McDonald's	7	11%
Actual Engineering Type Majors	6	10%
Total	62

60% of Purdue's declared majors are either in one specific fake major or physical education. 90% of them are in stuff like the aforementioned, construction, or the usual diet of communications/sociology. Danny Hope should stick to personal grooming tips during his public appearances. That is all.

*(Notes and caveats: Purdue's site was pretty good about picking out walk-ons but some of the guys without bios or at positions like third string kicker or backup longsnapper didn't explicitly mention it. Kickers, punters, long snappers, and anyone without a bio or with a really short bio that didn't mention recruiting rankings is excluded. So are the folk explicitly declared walk-ons. Undecided players and those who "plan on" majoring in something or another are excluded, but the breakdown of the planning stuff was basically more of the same with a greater emphasis on "management.")