carriage fights

A note on ads. Unfortunately, the ads on the sidebar are items I don't have a lot of control over. If I did I'd axe the increasingly booby Evony ads for a multitude of reasons. One is that the site is run by a Chinese gold farming company and does malware things to your computer. Don't click the Evony ads.

A note on diaries. We're pretty lax around here about the quality required to start a thread on the message board once you get to the magic 20 points. Diaries have no such restrictions because a lot of people who have never posted email me stuff that I say they should post as a diary, and that content is usually very good. The tradeoff is that some low-quality stuff ends up there. As the season kicks off and diary frequency increases, low quality ones will get bumped off the front page or deleted wholesale. FWIW. Note that any diary complaining about the fact that people around here don't like you is by definition low quality.

Photos! Paul took  bunch of media day photos. Enjoy:

Fred Jackson watches a lot of ESPN. Yesterday this space noted Fred Jackson's tendency to say Player X is the MOST EVER SOMETHING when he followed up his McGuffie most evers with some directed at Denard Robinson*, noting that when someone is always going for the superlative it reduces the high. Ask Don Gately.

But Fred Jackson isn't done:

Jackson said he never has had a speedier group of tailbacks while at Michigan, and he never has had a more physical back than senior Brandon Minor. … "I've coached a lot of tough guys, but I'm going to say right now, (Minor's) probably the toughest back I've ever coached physically," Jackson said.

Fred Jackson uses the most mosts of anyone I've ever read a lot of quotes from, and I've been doing this for years. He would be outstanding on one of those shows where wizened old sports columnists yell inanities at each other.

This is the part where I talk about the content of the article but does it need to be said that Fred Jackson has nigh ludicrous praise for his charges?

"In this group right here, if you miss Carlos Brown on the 1-yard line, he'll go 99 yards; if you miss Shaw, he'll get it around the 20," Jackson said, trying to explain how to gauge their speed. "If you miss Vince, he'll get up to the other team's 40."

I would have pegged Shaw to get a bit farther, but maybe there are still lingering hernia effects.

(BONUS: Is Jackson imbibing blog terminology?

Jackson said he has a "play-selection type thing in my mind" and said specific backs will be used in certain situations.

Inquiring minds!)

*(Weird flow of information note: apparently Media Day was the official start time for Denard Robinson shoelace mania, despite the fact that people have known about this thing since he was an uncommitted recruit. All I want to know is "how do the shoes stay on?")

HA! Awwwww, hamburgers. Quick, enjoy a brief moment of schadenfreude that Comcast is having a nasty carriage fight with DirectTV over the status of Versus. DirectTV is talking tough about dropping it. Now stop as you remember where Stanford 24, USC 23 was broadcast. (Also hockey, Tour de France, and uh… rodeo?). Anything that removes the possibility you'll be able to see a ridiculous upset is bad, even if that ridiculous upset is broadcast by evil.

These things always sound worse than they are, though. Before the Big Ten Network came to an agreement with Comcast the two sides' rhetoric could have been confused with Ohio State fans talking about that guy who hit Tyler Moeller. It might not be so grim underneath the posturing.

Etc.: I have some quibbles with Wojo's latest—Rodriguez didn't exactly "drive away" Mallett or Mitchell or Ciulla—but it's a fair assessment of where Michigan stands and accurately diagnoses the subtext of "All In For Michigan." He's the Detroit area's best columnist. Also, FA interviews baseball/volleyball SID Matt Fancett for anyone interested in the PR side of things.