chris barnett

Chris Barnett has tweeted that he is out:

No longer at the university of Michigan

A couple of commenters wondered if that might be a joke. It is not. I've heard from multiple sources that Barnett was not in practice and was considering leaving or actually had left the team. Now it's (all but) official. That's the third member of the incoming class to flame out before the first game. At least in this instance I'd forgotten to write a recruiting profile for him. I did fret about his association with Baron Flenory.

Barnett probably wasn't going to play this year after suffering an injury late in his high school season and showing up pushing 280 pounds. Like Posada, his departure is more of a big deal next year when Koger and Watson graduate. At that point the only non-freshman tight end on the roster will be Brandon Moore, who hasn't played a lick thus far in his Michigan career.

Michigan might have to delay this manball thing even longer than they wanted simply because they don't have the personnel to put a tight end on the field much.

UPDATE: There's also Ricardo Miller at TE, though he needs to spend the next year eating nothing but bacon grease if he's going to get up to a reasonable weight.

It's a useless tradition around here to look at the roster and see who's grown to massive size and who is lean destructive sinew because All Weight Changes Are Positive.

Presenting weight changes that are all positive. I bolded things I find interesting:

Items!

• Where is the addition of beef? I highlighted the starting offensive line above. They gained a total of 11 pounds between them, or one pound more than David Molk did last year, when he was the least inflated OL on the team. If Michigan's running power with these guys it might not go so well.
• Where is the addition of beef: answer. It's in the outside-linebackery parts of the defense. Craig Roh's added 18 additional pounds; now up 31 from his arrival at Michigan he is legitimately DL sized. The projected starters at SLB and WLB both put on around 15 pound.
• The subtraction of beef. Is where you'd expect it: the tubby tubs on the interior of the DL. Will Campbell, Quinton Washington, and Richard Ash are all relatively svelte now.
• Maybe Wilkins is eventually plausible. I was shocked to see Wilkins came in at 270 and is now 280. He got blown up in the Spring Game but in a couple years he could be a reasonable option at three-tech.
• All weight gain is good! Michael Shaw is eight pounds heavier and better able to take the pounding of the Big Ten.
• All weight loss is good! Vincent Smith lost eight pounds and will return to the jackrabbit ways he flashed as a freshman.
• BEEFCAKE. I hope Ricardo Miller loves protein shakes, because he's added 17 pounds and is still ridiculously small at tight end.

Notable freshmen:

• Tony Posada and Chris Bryant. Good lord: both enter at essentially 340. They should form a tag team themed around natural disasters. Neither can be in any shape to play right now and unless Posada sheds a ton of weight he is a guard all the way at 6'4". Also monstrous: walk-on Gary Yerden at 6'5", 333.
• Antonio Poole. With Kellen Jones gone he's got a major opportunity to play right away and at 212 he's not much slimmer than Jones. Big difference between that and the 195 he was reputed to be.
• Greg Brown. While the rest of the freshman defensive backs enter at a willowy 176 or less Brown is packing 192. Good or bad… eh, probably not so good. But he did play well in spring.
• Chris Rock. Enters at 267. Will be a three-tech by WMU.
• Chris Barnett. Enters at 278. Redshirt coming with the knee and all; will be interesting to see if that goes down next year.
• Thomas Rawls. 5'10", 219 is pretty compact. Hayes is listed at the same height and a cornerback-like 176.

Weight gains or losses are the key to domination. We has them. Get out of our ways.

The second-worst game ever. Wolverine Historian has digitized the 1995 Purdue game, which was played in miserable conditions and ended 5-0 to the Wolverines:

so I herd you like mudkips

It's not 2008 Northwestern because the team didn't finish 3-9 and won that game, but it's probably the second-worst game of the last twenty years to attend. I didn't; I was playing Quiz Bowl in high school.

A man after Lloyd's own heart. Don't bother asking incoming freshman OL Jack Miller any uncomfortable questions. His presser-fu is unassailable:

"On the Buckeyes, they're a great program and they will be resilient. But we need to take this opportunity as a team to move forward and keep getting better."

Rich Rodriguez: call this man for pointers.

Heavens to Betsy. Maryland hit with violations essentially identical to those of Michigan:

Maryland self-reported the violations and recommended penalties — which the NCAA has accepted — that will include the loss of 2 ½ hours of the normal 20 hours a week maximum for practices and games. The penalties will be enforced during the 2011 season. Maryland officials confirmed details Friday in response to inquiries. …

"Specifically, 30 minutes of meeting sessions and 30 minutes of practice on Mondays and one hour of weightlifting on Wednesdays were not accurately reported," Maryland said in a May 5 letter to Chris Strobel, NCAA director of enforcement for secondary violations. "During the review it was apparent that the coaches and staff at the time believed those activities were voluntary in nature; however, when reviewed in detail, the institution determined the activities to be mandatory."

Yeah, you read that right: secondary violations. I'm not sure why these are secondary. It seems Michigan got hit with a major violation because its problems were persistent, not isolated, and that that was enough to trigger all the stuff Michigan dealt with the last two offseasons. Here Maryland did almost exactly the same thing and gets almost exactly the same punishment but doesn't get the black mark.

It's mostly important for semantics, but goddamn if the NCAA had hit Michigan with the exact penalties they did but only secondary violations that would have been epic win for the internet in Internet vs. Free Press. Maybe the sensational nature of the original article caused the NCAA investigation and prevented Michigan from self-reporting the results of the audit they'd already done.

Oregon stuff. So… yeah, that thing about the NCAA having to make an inference a fourth-grader could make and this being an important thing for them to do: nevermind all that. Unusually for a dude who received a big check for acting as a "street agent," Lyles has taken the opportunity presented by an NCAA investigation to launch a media blitz.

You know about the Yahoo article. That in and of itself isn't unusual. What's unusual is what happened the next day: instead of recanting after people threatened to burn him at the stake (or offered him dollars) Lyles said more stuff. He called up a local columnist who had called him "scum" and a "slimeball" and offered an extensive interview with quotes like this:

Lyles said he’s willing to fully cooperate with NCAA investigators. Said Lyles: “What did coach Kelly say to the NCAA? What did he say to the administration? That’s going to be a key piece of information for them. I keep things. I don’t throw things away. It bodes well in this circumstance.”

He also did an interview with the Register-Guard and was on The Morning Jones this morning. He is very talkative for a street-agent-type-guy.

His defense isn't totally unbelievable insofar as it doesn't seem like Lyles is a terrible guy. He's inserted himself as a middleman in a market created because of NCAA restrictions and got some football players to go to some colleges, for which he got paid. If not for NCAA regulations he'd just be a guy doing a job.

But those NCAA regulations do exist and Oregon paid 25k to a representative of their athletic interests who got to act outside said regulations, so they've got to suffer. How much will be fascinating. This isn't an extra benefits case so the USC benchmark doesn't apply.

Throwdown. YELLING IS WARRANTED

Tim Hardaway is fifth on the USA U19s in scoring; they're 5-1 in pool play after avenging a blowout loss to these same Lithuanians in a tourney tuneup. They just lost to Croatia today. Two more games until the quarterfinals.

This is what it sounds like when no one has any idea of anything. If this whole hockey superconference-insofar-as-you-can-call-an-eight-team-conference-that thing comes to fruition and some CCHA teams fold and everyone blames the Big Ten that's going to be annoying. Nebraska fans feel me on this after being blamed for the Big 12's dissolution when there was going to be a Pac-16.

But it might happen. North Dakota is the latest school sporting the initials ND to make noises about it:

UND is having formal discussions about pulling out of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association and joining several other schools in creating a new power hockey league, multiple sources have told the Herald. … It is believed that eight teams are involved in the talks to some degree.

UNO, Miami, Notre Dame, and Western Michigan(!) are specifically mentioned in the article. Add UND, CC, DU, and Fortunate Minnesota Team Pretty Much Indistinguishable From The Ones Left Behind and that's an eight-team conference that has a lot of traditional or nouveau powers, no geographical sense at all, no home base, and some chance of keeping pace with the Big Ten.

You've also got flailing WCHA and CCHA remnants trying to figure out how to survive. The WCHA schools might be able to grab Air Force* for an eighth team; the shattered rump of the CCHA would probably grab a handful of Atlantic Hockey schools who want to offer maximum scholarships. The financial viability of the WCHA schools isn't much in question—most have just put a lot of money into infrastructure and hockey is king in Minnesota. The CCHA would be in some trouble, though.

If I was Michigan I'd be rattling my saber at anyone eyeing this new superconference, promising to play any local nonconference games against the teams who don't get raptured up into the Engelstad Conference.

Ugh—I just realized we have two more years of this before the Big Ten even exists.

*["Might" because the conventional wisdom in the hockey community is that priority #1 for AF is being in the same conference as Army and Atlantic Hockey's scholarship restrictions and general lack of behemoths makes them more competitive.]

Barnett shelved. TX TE Chris Barnett was one of Brady Hoke's biggest recruits in the brief window he had to acquire dudes before Signing Day, and he plays a position of desperate need now that Michigan's going all pro-style and stuff. Unfortunately, this does not sound like a guy who is going to be ready to play this fall:

I tore my ACL in early October, and I didn't have surgery for it until December, because like I said, me and my mom, we struggle. We don't have a whole bunch of money. So the injury thing wasn't to the point where I could go get surgery. But I've been working out really hard...I came up on the spring game, and I was 295 [lbs]. Right now, I'm 272. Coach wants me to be 280 -- no [not any] more than 280. But at the same time, I'm getting stronger. I'm crisp [while] running. My knee that I had surgery on still isn't 100%, so I go about 80/85%. But talking to Coach, I still have 2 months [before the season starts] to rehab with them

That sucks in four different ways. Hopefully he makes it back but December surgery plus generally being a freshman seems like a recipe for a redshirt.

Etc.: Bill Connolly reminisces about the 2000 Northwestern game (yes, the 54-51 one). Shorter Andy Staples: watch The Wire, college football coaches. OH DE commit Tom Strobel tells twitter he'll play strongside defensive end and hopes to get up to "at least 270"—if that's by the time he hits campus, whoah. Also, paging Matt Godin to aisle defensive tackle.

This Northwestern-ish blog is updated about every three months but has the most fantastic blog name ever: Bring Your Champions, They're Our Meat. Nik Stauskas is finally loose on the AAU circuit and is impressing with more than his three-ball.

How do you list a home with a waterfall and not include a picture of said waterfall? Boo, Edward Surovell retailers. Boo.

So this has been floating out there for a few days, hanging out in the area of my tabs where stuff I mean to get to but don't lives. It's about Chris Barnett, the Texan tight end who decommitted from Arkansas and signed with Michigan on Signing Day. It's also about one of the guys Oregon is in hot water over.

This is our concern, Dude:

But while Flenory refused to reveal that advice [about where to go to school], Barnett has transferred high schools five times, attended four different high schools and twice broke commitments to colleges. The bizarre recruiting odyssey of the 6-foot-6, 245-pounder is a window into Flenory’s influence among top recruits whom he befriended while working as a Dallas-based recruiting analyst for Scout.com.

“It all makes sense if you understand how dysfunctional (expletive) is,” [father] Elzie Barnett said of his son’s recruitment. “But it doesn’t make sense to a layman. He’d be like, ‘What the hell?’”

What the hell, indeed. Thayer Evans, who you might remember from such stories as "Ladies Romancing Each Other" and such titles as Most Hated Man In Austin, posted an investigative piece on what happened with Chris Barnett's recruitment. As per usual with Evans pieces it's overheated—these days decommiting twice is unusual but hardly unprecedented, especially when the Oklahoma commitment may have been to an offer-type substance, not an actual we-want-you-here offer. Despite that it provides some insight into how love gets made on the recruiting trail, and maybe causes you to place a finger under your collar and tug nervously.

In summary: Barnett is an itinerant high school player who lives with various relatives for short durations and starts listing Baron Flenory—apropos name, that—as his role model instead of his father at some point midway through his career. He commits to Oklahoma briefly, then decommits for Arkansas. Arkansas offensive coordinator Garrick McGee flirts with the head coaching job at Tulsa, causing Barnett to look around. This is where Michigan enters the story:

Flenory said he told Barnett that he didn’t know about those schools [Barnett was interested in after he decided to look around], but did know that Michigan was looking for a tight end. He said he asked Barnett if he wanted to look at the Wolverines.

Once Barnett told him yes, Flenory said he called a Michigan coach, whom he declined to identify. “That’s irrelevant,” Flenory said.

Michigan visits Barnett and his uncle but never touches base with his father, which pisses the father off. For his part, Barnett says he wasn't unhappy with Arkansas at all:

Although Flenory said he talked to Barnett about Michigan, Barnett said he was never unhappy about his commitment to Arkansas and doesn’t know what prompted the Wolverines to start recruiting him. “I really don’t,” Barnett said. “I guess they heard that I was being able to take visits.”

(Barnett hopped on Facebook a couple days ago to issue an all-caps apology, FWIW.) There's more about his dad being pissed and how he thinks he should have gone to Arkansas so he can play in the SEC and in a pro-style offense, but the core of the unease is above.

In segments:

1. This Flenory guy runs camps and has many close relationships with high school kids.
2. He is part of the reason the NCAA is squinting in Oregon's general direction.
3. He apparently called Michigan out of the blue to push Barnett on Michigan's new, tight-end-needy regime.
4. He won't say who he called.
5. One of Flenory's Badger Sports camps is at Michigan this year so there's kind of an obvious quid pro quo available.

This is classic Evans; the piece has just the barest suggestion that funny business must have occurred but is constructed to invite the reader to connect those dots. There is a lot of sea to part before we can walk from the above to the NCAA squinting at Michigan again, especially if there's no Oregon-esque money trail. Since there basically can't be since Michigan's new staff was in place for like a week, I'd file this under how the sausage gets made until someone other than Evans picks it up—about as likely as Texas getting in trouble for ladies romancing each other.

That said, the piece does paint a picture of the increasing influence of summer camps as people like Flenory take advantage of NCAA restrictions to act as middle-men between player and coach. This is a problem partially of the NCAA's own making.

[insert item about what people would say if Rodriguez acquired this Barnett kid here.]

Michigan has gained a commitment from TX TE Chris Barnett.

INFORMATIVE PORTION