brandon graham

Yes please. Google is going to turn some city into the future by hooking them up with crazy gigabit fiber lines. That is one gigabit per second. That is 100 times faster than current high speed lines. You want this. The city and university have put together a fiber site that you can hit up and take action if you'd like to download wholesome educational programs at incredible speeds. Join the facebook page, submit your desperate plea to Google—if you're an orphan this is mandatory—and maybe hold a prayer session.

I will mention this again.

Delegation and goodbyes. So Tim is out of town this week and I think it's more productive to look up every last word written about Ray Vinopal than preview a Minnesota game that may make or break Michigan's NIT chances. UMHoops has its typically excellent preview if you are hankering. [ED: Ha ha! Tim just told me he's put up a preview. What part of vacation he doesn't understand, hat hat hat.]

It is senior night, and a word on DeShawn Sims: last year I thought Sims would escape the Lavell Blanchard limbo. Blanchard was a pretty good player on a series of lousy teams in the midst of Michigan's long period of raketastic basketball.

RAKE! I SAID RAKE!

He did and he didn't. He was singlehandedly responsible for burying Iowa in the Big Ten Tournament game that was Michigan's last chance to blow its first tourney bid since the Pyramids were built, and for that we thank him. He could not do enough to turn this season away from its head-on course with more rakes, and for that we feel sorry for him. He'll have a long professional career (probably in Europe) and come back in a while to a standing ovation he'll deserve.

As for Anthony Wright, who will not return for a fifth year: thanks for keeping us in that Oklahoma game. There are worse things than being remembered as the guy who inexplicably exploded in a second-round NCAA game. Zack Gibson: I thought they should have played him more, except when they did.

Emo Cold War details. Big Chill details have dropped. Bullets of interest:

• Hockey season ticket holders get the first crack at primo seats.
• Football season ticket holders get the rest of the primo seats.
• MSU's section is sizeable and pretty decent.
• Students are where students go.
• Sideline seats are $25, endzone seats $15. Seems a bit more expensive than I would have gone with.

Chart? Chart.

If they put the MSU students… nevermind. MSU students don't go to hockey games. If, hypothetically, there were going to be any MSU students at the game and they got put in that overhang in sections 3 and 2 they will stand up and there will be crankiness similar to the first Cold War. Suggestion: don't do this.

More Graham. Brandon Graham tweaked his hamstring at the combine but put up an impressive bench and a 4.69 40, further solidifying his status as a first-round pick. He may be a high, high first-rounder:

Graham often gets knocked for his lack of height, but I saw him standing next to TCU’s Jerry Hughes, a very similar player, and Graham’s shoulders were visibly higher and wider than Hughes’. Graham also had better 10 second splits than Hughes, who is universally lauded for his explosiveness. If Graham had a neck he’d be at least an inch and a half taller, and then nobody would question his top 10 draft status. I know the Seahawks, who pick at #6, were paying real close attention.

There's also an approving mention from a Buccaneers site.

Brabbs update. Cancer-striken Husky slayer Phil Brabbs is done with chemo and now preparing for a bone marrow transplant from one of his many sisters. AnnArbor.com catches up and gets the latest.

Etc.: Interesting News article on the divergent financial situations at Michigan and Michigan State. M is one of the few elite school still hiring and is thus getting their top picks just about everywhere; State is cutting almost a sixth of their undergraduate programs. Donations, endowments, and Michigan's high percentage of out-of-state undergrads are the difference. Will Leitch writes on Roger Ebert. Every time this happens it is a reminder of why Deadspin used to be something better than TMZSports. Rutgers fans know how we're feeling about the media.

Iowa. Asian pop bands. A love that is forever. Via the message board, another inexplicable Asian pop song in which the Hawkeyes feature prominently. This one is less pedobear and more 120 Minutes.

One correction to the MGoBoard poster: Girls' Generation is totally not obscure. "Gee" was the longest-running #1 song on KBS's Music Bank, I will have you know.

Enter the Schnell. Michigan will play Howard Schnellenberger University, also known as Florida Atlantic, in 2012:

It appears the Owls will play at Michigan in 2012 barring any snags in the final negotiations.

"It looks like both sides are amenable to it," said FAU AD Craig Angelos.

I don't really care who Michigan brings in as a random tomato can, but do have a preference for local schools. I guess the FAU game is a vague attempt to increase Michigan's profile in the state, or something. Rod Payne is a coach there and Grant Debenedictis an athletic department employee, FWIW.

"Hey, in my kit back there where I've got all my dope." I hit up NCAA.org today in search of APR information to update last summer's post about what will certainly be a dip in Michigan's numbers this year—more on that later—and the top headline is the fourth item in a series about Division II reform. This would normally rank low on my list of things to bring you, but here's the topic:

Hourly limits to be evaluated in Phase II review

Among the areas of review in Phase II of the Life in the Balance initiative is the nebulous “20/8-hour rule,” which regulates athletically related activities in and out of season.

Given that it’s difficult to understand and even harder to track (the rule trips up Division I institutions, too), it’s probably going to be tough for the Division II Legislation Committee to develop recommendations for modifying it.

The NCAA's official website just called the in- and out-of-season hourly limits "nebulous," "difficult to understand," and "even harder to track." So there you go.

Well… yeah. Add this to the pile of former Michigan players asked about Rich Rodriguez who all basically say the same thing in different ways. It's Brandon Graham's turn:

“After the season, we said that, ‘you can’t be up for so long, eventually you have to pay taxes,’ ” Graham said on Saturday. “That’s how we look at it until we get it back up. That’s what we’re going to do. I hope them boys get right next year. Because coach (Rich Rodriguez has) only got one more year — if they don’t do (anything). Because of the allegations, and then, if you have a bad year, then you’ve got to get someone new.”

Again, this is just a different version of the same opinion heard in all of these quotes. They don't say anything about Rodriguez, really. They say something about the guy offering the quote. Brandon Graham, as per usual, is win.

Another version of same. Doctor Saturday evaluates Michigan in his "road to recovery" series and comes to basically the same conclusion as the rest of the planet:

Target date for reacquisition of mojo. … If you mean "enough for Rich Rodriguez to keep his job," there is no patience for those questions to work themselves out; it's 2010 or never. The Wolverines need seven regular season wins to ward off the inevitable mob clamoring for Rodriguez's head, which probably means breaking even in Big Ten play, which means winning more conference games this season (four) than the 2008-09 teams won in the last two combined (three).

That's a dramatically lowered bar relative to anything Michigan has considered a reasonable standard in 40 years. At this point, though, beggars can't be choosers: Every energy this fall has to go to getting back above .500, finding something to hang a helmet on and setting higher goals from there.

Yeah, basically.

A theory put to the test. My swanky blogging program has an auto-link capacity that I've used to link to my Bleacher Report hating (hey, there it goes) since I published it. In that post is this assertion:

The mere fact that people can't immediately tell the difference between the dreck on the Bleacher Report and your average MSM columnist is perhaps the most damning criticism you can offer of MSM columnists.

Now we'll get an opportunity to test that out in practice. A few newspapers desperate for free content have signed one of them content-sharing agreements. Congratulations to newspaper subscribers in Houston, San Antonio, San Francisco, and Seattle: you are the vanguard. Someone who works for a newspaper said this:

“Bleacher Report’s publishing platform provides a powerful way to serve our readers quality, original content that complements our own coverage,” Stephen Weis, executive vice president of the Houston Chronicle and general manager of Chron.com, said in a statement. “Working with Bleacher Report, we’re able to reach out to local fans and add a variety of viewpoints on each of the day’s sports stories that matters most to our readers in their home markets.”

Sporting News colleague Dan Levy says "there's something missing" in his BR critique on the Sporting Blog. This is because Dan Levy is a very nice man. I have many theories as to what the missing thing is that are not very nice. I do eagerly anticipate the day when either the Free Press or the LA Times hops on board and people can't tell the difference between Plaschke, Sharp, and a 14-year-old whose main interests are Tony Hawk and imagining what it would be like to touch a boob. Dress them up in Official Journalist trappings and give them once-over from a copy editor and it'll be hard to distinguish.

Etc.: Tom Harmon goes to work.

Training day. AnnArbor.com talks with Brandon Graham about his prep for the NFL combine. Includes interview segments with Graham and a look inside what Barwis's program is like. Graham also makes a huge array of pained faces:

Graham's running 4.58 40s and doing linebacker drills. I feel a RBUAS piece referencing this video in the future.

In other NFL draft news, Zoltan Mesko is interviewed by the Boston Herald and references a name from the past you might be surprised is hanging around the program again:

“I thought he [Pats special teams coach Scott O'Brien] was very knowledgeable in the special teams game,” Mesko continued. “I know we have our own Michigan guy that takes special teams really seriously, Pierre Woods, and basically, I never knew… When Pierre came back this past month, he’s training up at Michigan again to stay in shape, the amount of knowledge he’s picked up from the special teams coach there is unbelievable. You can really make or break yourself as a linebacker… you’re going to play special teams at that level.”

Woods got in some trouble after a breakout sophomore year and barely hung on with the program after that; many people believe that's where Michigan's rift with the Glenville program that pumps out players year after year started.

Hunwick! After last night's hockey game I bet my friend a dollar that Shawn Hunwick would get the first star despite not facing much in the way of scoring chances, or even shots, from Notre Dame. Lo, it was so. That capped what was probably the best game at Yost all year, a 4-0 win over Notre Dame that saw loveable tiny walk-on get (split) a shutout and two of the four seniors score. Carl Hagelin even added the sort of pretty goals that have been sorely lacking all year when he danced around an ND defenseman and set up Matt Rust for a slam-dunk on a two on one.

The downer:

Hogan, who has made 41 straight starts in net, is listed as doubtful for Saturday's regular-season finale at Notre Dame.

I know I've been pretty down on Hogan of late—so has Red—but Hunwick's a 5'7" walk-on. That's a major blow.

Michigan is now sixth in the league. Four and five are done with conference play and Michigan can pass them with a win Saturday. If Northern gets five points or more out of their weekend (ie: win both nights and win one in regulation) against Lake State, they'll pass Michigan. Anything less and M will sneak into the fourth spot and grab the first-round bye that comes with it.

Will it matter? Eh… probably not. Unless MSU or Ferris State is upset, Michigan would reach the Joe as the lowest remaining seed and have to take out #1 Miami, a team that's lost all of two conference games this year. Doing that full strength is difficult enough, and now with Hogan questionable it's even more doubtful.

Side note: excellent work by whoever slid this game to Thursday night. I assume it was to make sure the students were present for senior day, something that's been exceedingly rare for a long time. Usually the students are on break and senior night is a flat affair.

Recruiting cavalcade. This didn't get mentioned in Thursday Recruitin'—which we promise will return to Wednesday when things are less insane—but this weekend Michigan is hosting a massive "Showcase" for high school recruits at Oosterbaan and Newsterbaan. They're not officially involved because they can't be, but having what seems like half of the Midwest's big recruits take an unofficial visit to Michigan's shiny new practice facility can't hurt.

Scout has a couple lists of all the folk coming in. Prepare for the begats. Notable names include MI RB Justice Hayes, MI WR DeAnthony Arnett, commit Shawn Conway, OH WR AJ Jordan, MI LB Lawrence Thomas, OH LB Antonio Poole, 2012 MI LB James Ross, commit Greg Brown, commit Delonte Hollowell, MI WR Valdez Showers, MI OL Anthony Zettel, OH OL Chris Carter, OH OL Aundrey Walker, IL OL Chris Bryant, and many others. It's like a super-massive junior day on Michigan's campus, the equivalent of getting a NIKE camp. The difference: NIKE camps are rare appearances and this is going to happen every year.

I'll be most interested to see how the current Michigan commits do. Zettel's already torn up a lineman camp and seems like he'll be an easy four-star, but Hollowell, Brown, and Conway haven't been to a senior camp yet IIRC and this will be a first read on where they'll end up in the rankings.

Expansion dampening? Yes, another Big Ten expansion article. This one has a couple of interesting quotes about the issue of buying into the Big Ten Network. New members are probably going to have to operate at a lower revenue level to start:

"You just don't jump into the league and get a full share of what everyone else in this league has established over time," Alvarez said. "I think someone has to buy their way into the league."  …

"We've created such an asset in the Big Ten channel," Outgoing Michigan athletic director Bill Martin said, echoing Alvarez. "I cannot see our 11 institutions simply saying we're going to divide our pie up into more pieces from Day 1."

That will dampen enthusiasm from potential additions, but it might not matter. This is the first time I've seen these numbers for the BTN's second year and holy crap:

But according to tax forms the nonprofit conference is required to make public, it generated $217.7 million and paid each school about $18.8 million in 2007, the most recent year for which tax forms are available.

The next year, according to the Sports Business Journal, the new TV network added another $66 million to the pot. That pushed the per-team payout to about $22 million each, a figure officials from several Big Ten schools confirm remains accurate.

The next most prosperous conference, the SEC, paid its member schools about $11 million each in 2007, according to tax documents.

I'm pretty sure that latter distribution is way up since the SEC's blockbuster ESPN contract kicked in, FWIW, but I also think the SEC is going to have a static amount of money for the next 15 years; the Big Ten is half-owner of its network and will see increasing revenue shares over the course of that time.

(HT: Get The Picture.)

Yes that again. The WLA has a piece similar to the one I just posted, but when I said "I cannot emphasize enough" I was not kidding. Money grafs:

They certainly didn’t know their statements were true either. Is strongly asserting something you know could theoretically be true but might also be false a lie? If you don’t offer up any qualifications to your assertions (I didn’t see any), then I say yes, especially in the case of Rosenberg.

I suppose the best we could say about Snyder is he was totally ignorant of the subject on which he was writing and he didn’t know he was uttering falsehoods. So yay for being a dumbass, Mr. Snyder. But with Rosenberg, we know from his opinion column that he disapproves of the job Rodriguez is doing. For him to write falsehoods that also denigrate someone he disapproves of is just a bit too much of a coincidence for me to believe. Rosenberg knew what he was doing, IMO.

They lied. In the days and months to come regarding the story about “Michigan Players Practice A Lot,” let us not forget the fact that Rosenberg and Snyder lied to their readers.

In the diaries, MaizeandBlueWahoo does a 100% fisk of the article that echoes the points already made. Even Ohio State bloggers are sympathetic.

To aid you in your stalking. People tend to like the occasional mentions of my personal life, so they'll love this: my fiancée's food blog. In it you will find out what I have been eating, what food-related conventional wisdom has recently been enraging in my presence, and various other bizarre things that don't have anything to do with me.

Etc.: Delany has our back, I guess.

Moderate ado about nothing. So some guy sued the regents for that "informal" meeting that went down a couple weeks ago that discussed either earth-shaking sanctions or lopping off the heads of the people in compliance who screwed up the logging, depending on which probably-baseless internet speculation you prefer. Many internet lawyers have weighed in on the suit. The consensus appears to agree with this university spokesman:

University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald told the Daily the regents meeting didn't violate any regulations set forth in the Michigan Open Meetings Act.

Fitzgerald said at the time the meeting did not fall under the act because it was an “informal” meeting of the Board of Regents, not a “closed” meeting as set forth in the act.

Additionally, Fitzgerald said the meeting was not even classifiable as a meeting as defined in the act. The Michigan Open Meetings Act defines a meeting as “the convening of a public body at which a quorum is present for the purpose of deliberating toward or rendering a decision on a public policy.”

Fitzgerald said because the meeting was not subject to the act, no meeting minutes were kept.

There's also an interesting thread on the board from a guy who just had an in depth conversation with a newspaper editor who recently filed a similar suit:

a winner in this lawsuit would get access to the information and reimbursement for attorney fees. However, these cases can last months (my contact mentioned legal fees had exceeded $40k for one case) and the reason a singular person may not pursue this for the “freedom of information”. Also, it is possible a judge may not rule in your favor due to opinion on if the procedures where properly followed and you are simply out the money with no access to the meeting minutes. Again, if I have other litigation pending, maybe I take the chance. If not, I would be an idiot since, even if I believe I am 100% right, I risk that a judge does not see my side of the case. I am also either representing myself or have a lawyer doing some pro-bono work since I would not want to bankroll this.

Having just heard a significant amount of information on this type of lawsuit from my newspaper editor contact, I am curious to understand the real motivations here. I struggle with the idea that a random person who reportedly loves the program and is only motivated by that he “…hopes and prays the university officials follow the rules…”.

Even if the suit has merit, the results of the investigation are due to be announced in a month or so, long before the thing could wind its way through the courts, and the only thing it would turn up would be records of the meeting-type object that evidently don't exist.

Folk interested in who this Very Concerned Alum is need only hop in the super-stalky thread on the message board. He's a litigation-happy Granholm political appointee currently mulling a re-election bid. Media reports consistently mention his status as an "alum," but he's not really:

Education: Graduated 1997, Renaissance High School, Detroit; BA in political science, University of Michigan-Dearborn, 2002; nearly two years at Thomas Cooley Law School, Oakland University

No offense to any satellite campus alums out there, but that's like claiming you're an Illinois alum when you went to UIC.

Would this be fake? Dolphins beatwriter Armando Salguero is advocating that Miami snatch Brandon Graham at #12—something that could actually give me an NFL team to root for if Ted Ginn gets deported—and runs a quote or two from BG. This would shatter the FAKE scale if accomplished, even at a combine:

He expects to run in the 4.5s at the Indianapolis Combine next week. And he loves the idea of playing 3-4 outside linebacker.

"Oh yeah, I feel real good," Graham says about dropping in coverage. "I've been working on my hips, working on my drops every day in practice for Michigan ... With a little coaching from the NFL guys, I believe I can get it done."

Stephen Ross now owns the Fins, so if he's as terrible an owner as Daniel Snyder this is definitely happening. In other BG news, New Era scouting says the similarities between Graham and Lamarr Woodley are "almost scary."

Aw, come on now. I like Andy Staples a lot but re-ranking recruiting classes after a few years and trying to pass this off is ridiculous:

2. Boise State

Analysis: Want to know why the Broncos are such a trendy pick to bust into the BCS title game next season? …

So how did the evaluators at Rivals -- and Scout and SI and everywhere else -- so badly underestimate this class? Simple. Boise State doesn't have a huge fan base. There aren't as many potential subscribers, so, from a business perspective, it doesn't make sense to spend as much time evaluating Boise State recruits as Alabama or Texas recruits. That's probably the biggest flaw in recruiting rankings; the teams outside the traditional power structure can be vastly underestimated. Because if you look only at the teams that traditionally finish in the top 15, the rankings are usually pretty accurate.

While I agree that bigger schools get a fudge factor Boise State doesn't*, it's virtually impossible to compare this class of Bronco starters to any other because all it's shown is vast superiority to the rest of the WAC. Boise has played one BCS schools the last two years, and while the Broncos beat pretty good Oregon teams both years that is nowhere near the sort of baseline you'd need to make that sort of assertion. If Cincinnati had played TCU and Boise State played Florida, are we having this conversation?

*(If Jake Ryan had committed to Boise State does he have three stars today? Probably not.)

Going back to the inconsistent and inconveniently-located well? UMHoops and the Wolverine Blog have a two-part basketball recruiting Q&A session that's required reading if you're interested in the future of Michigan basketball. There's a lot of Zeigler talk, and most of it has the same understated foreboding I've got: I don't think he ends up at Michigan. Given that and the lack of an official offer to Jon Horford, I thought this part was the most interesting:

Would Beilein potentially look to dip into Europe for another prospect?

This is an idea that I have seen thrown around. It makes sense because Beilein has looked across the pond for talent before. At West Virginia he brought in German forward Johannes Herber, who started every game in his West Virginia career and graduated with a 4.0 GPA.  A couple years back he tried to bring in Robin Benzing, a 6-foot-10 German wing but he came up one question short on the SAT.

If you were wondering, Benzing is playing well in the professional leagues in Germany and is a member of the senior German national team. His video might make you weep when you imagine him in a Michigan uniform but here’s some additional ESPN draft hype for you masochists.

Seriously: do not look into Robin Benzing if you have a hammer handy. Trust me when I say that after he couldn't get eligible at Michigan, he suffered a series of improbable injuries and is now a librarian. Under no circumstances type his name into Google. If you defy these proclamations, you are required to immediately watch this.

There.

I might be wrong about this, but my recollection of Benzing's recruitment was that the holdup wasn't academics but his amateur standing. Though he himself had not signed a contract, he had played on teams with professionals. At the time this was a no-no in the eyes of the NCAA and a major problem for coaches looking to extract talent from Europe. By August, however, the NCAA will abolish this rule for most sports, including basketball. This will make it a lot easier to grab European kids, and since Europe specializes in 6'10" guys who play like small forwards it's a place where Beilein could make some hay. We might see Horford in limbo until Beilein takes a trip to Europe in early April.

Etc.: Tired of Texas to the Big Ten? What about Texas to the Big Ten?

Red versus the fly. Oilers blogger Lowetide usually kicks off his posts with some old-timey pictures and a comparison between then and now. The latest one is a shot, of all possible things, of Red Berenson taking on the LA Kings:

Appparently their goalie at the time was The Fly. Somehow Red managed to not score here, by the way.

Iowa takes the lead. I'm claiming Demon Bear II for Michigan since he blows up Michigan's three primary rivals. Even so, Iowa has surged back into the lead when it comes to absurd, awesome internet memeage:

(Stanzi the Americanzi was Iowa's first point in this battle.)

Biographical note: when I was in college one of the things we carved out unassailable TV time for was a K-pop video show called "MVH"—for reasons unknown we called it "Mein Video Hitten"—that was a combination of this, ridiculous Korean hip-hop by groups like "Highfive of Teenagers" (or "HOT"), and terrible six-minute ballads in which someone was definitely going to die of a wasting disease. The tension was palpable whenever a new video would come on and we didn't know if it was going to be smokin' chicks in bathtubs or something painfully earnest. I am intensely jealous of Iowa for this. I have definitely not been watching the video most of today.

The sudden relevance of tricorn hats. I wasn't going into Signing Day thinking that musketeers would have any relevance but two separate incidents are taking us back to 1776. One is Bucknell—of the Patriot League—raiding Rutgers for a head coach:

LEWISBURG, Pa. — Bucknell hired Joe Susan to take over as head football coach Wednesday, luring back a former Bison assistant to lead a program coming off three straight losing seasons.

Why do you care? Susan is also the recruiting coordinator for Rutgers and his departure might have an impact on FL S Rashad Knight's final decision. Schiano says it won't impact recruiting but it can't help. Bleed Scarlet thinks he was an important guy, FWIW.

The other is a reminder that recruiting could always be worse:

Now all Bruce Heggie has to do is "seal the deal." Heggie, a 6-foot-6, 240-pound TE/DE at Mount Dora High, was mired in a dilemma since December. He was looking for a place to play college football and kept striking out.

"Last week FAMU backed out of their offer and said there wasn't going to be an official visit this weekend," Heggie said. "There was William & Mary, [ed: of the Colonial Athletic Association!] but other than that there weren't really anymore options."

Heggie's taking a visit to… yes… Notre Dame this weekend. It'll be interesting to see how the recruiting rivalry between Michigan and ND develops now that Weis is gone. Weis flat-out killed Michigan head to head even in the waning days of his administration; about the only folks who had a short list with both schools on it that chose Michigan were Mike Williams and Mike Schofield. Things can only get better for Michigan with Kelly there.

DANCE DANCE DANCE TILL WE RUN THIS TOWN.

More Graham. AnnArbor.com was in on a Todd McShay conference call in which the torrent of Brandon Graham praise continued:

“There wasn’t a guy here this week that hustled more, that had better technique, that picked up schemes and did things as quickly as anyone at the defensive-line position or outside-linebacker position,” McShay said. “He’s just a Bill Belichick-type of guy. He’s going to come in and love playing the game and play it better than his measurables and his skill set would lead you to believe.”

I'm hoping he lands somewhere Michigan-heavy so I can have a proxy NFL team. Also, I think we can exclude Bruce Tall from any diagnoses of what ails Michigan's defense.

Historian. This one is seriously obscure: the 1971 Michigan-OSU game, which wasn't even on TV. No audio, of course, just coaches tapes:

There's also a two-parter on the 1988 Michigan-Ohio State game (part 1, part 2)

Etc.: Weird twitter spat between a couple of reporters about Tommy Amaker. BHGP reviews the Iowa-Michigan series in the aughts.

Obvious but welcome. Brandon Graham is destroying all comers at the Senior Bowl and appears to be the player helping himself the most with his performance. Scout says he's gone from a borderline first rounder to a "lock"($). Another Scout guy says he's the best DL there($), Bruce Feldman tweeted about his ability to get into the backfield, and so on and so forth:

Michigan LB Brandon Graham is just about unblockable with his speed and spin moves. … Michigan DE/OLB Brandon Graham is causing fits for UMass OT/OG Vladimir Ducasse in drills. Graham is the most explosive defender on the field.

Mike Maycock, who previously suggested that Graham might be available for the Lions at the top of the second round because he does not have crazy gorilla arms, now says Graham will be off the board before the first round is over. The Lions would have taken Drew Stanton anyway.

BONUS! Orson on Graham:

Then, there’s Brandon Graham. There he is, saying “Hi, I spent the entire year getting double teamed on a terrible defense and still wrecked shit like my name was Haitian McSichuan Earthquake.”

Word.

Another chart. Here are all the teams that returned ten starters on offense since 2006:

Big Red Network is interested in this because their terrible offense returns ten starters. Michigan does better than anyone except Texas A&M's wildly inconsistent bunch, but the those numbers include the game against Baby Seal U and are probably somewhat optimistic. Also, coming up from 290 yards a game is easy. There's nowhere to go but up, really.

Michigan now returns eight or nine starters, depending on how you define things; it's got to be a rare thing to return eight starters a year after returning ten, yes?

So much for that complaint. DeShawn Sims on that jersey tug:

“Yea, a little bit,” Sims said when asked if he was held on the play. “But this is the Big Ten. If I was the other team, I wouldn’t have wanted them to call that.”

That article's headline has a teeny slant: Sims "says he was held on the final play against Michigan State," it reads despite Sims immediately moving on from that and saying he didn't think it was a call and it wasn't the reason he missed the shot.

Redshirt war ammunition. First, let's kick Stewart Mandel since it's been a long time:

Meanwhile, Michigan fans are hopeful Devin Gardner, Rivals' No. 1 dual-threat quarterback, can provide an immediate spark -- but he may be even rawer than one of last year's Michigan freshman quarterbacks, Denard Robinson.

No, he is not. I don't think this is even possible. Denard Robinson wasn't even a quarterback to most schools; Devin Gardner went to the Elite 11, where Rivals guys named him the top quarterback there. Denard Robinson is perhaps the definition of raw.

Anyway, the actual reason to bring up this article:

"After watching him in Orlando [during Under Armour practices], I think he needs a redshirt," said Newberg.

That's a major step back from the aforementioned Elite 11 performance and what we saw from Gardner early in the season; I read it as evidence for my pet theory that Gardner's mechanics degraded severely over the year as he got away from the coaching he had in the summer and slid back into old habits.

Etc.: Hey Jenny Slater kicks off its list of the 50 most loathsome people in college football. Entertaining, but Paul Johnson doesn't come within a half-mile of the list if anyone other than a Georgia fan is compiling it. Also, Mike Patrick is somehow excluded.