kansas

Premature but okay. Joe Lunardi's bracketology is in the way (way) too early phase but yeah okay I'll mention this:

The other 1s are Gonzaga, UCLA, and Kansas. I think way too much is being made of UCLA's tournament run, especially given the possibility Johnny "Contested Twos" Juzang stays in the draft. Other Big Ten teams in this projection: Ohio State (2-seed), Purdue(2), Maryland(3), MSU(5), Illinois(6), Indiana(7), and Iowa(11). Northwestern(!?!?!?) is listed as the first team out, Wisconsin second team out.

The previous sentence makes me doubt the usefulness of linking this at all.

I am skeptical this happened. Dennis Dodd recently asserted on a podcast that Iowa State head coach Matt Campbell turned down an eight year, 68 million dollar contract from the Detroit Lions this offseason. This seems unlikely for one main reason: this is an entirely sensible thing to do if you are the Detroit Lions, and the Lions never do anything sensible. (On the other hand, failing to hire Matt Campbell and turning to some other guy named Campbell, who seems a little deranged, does seem like a Lions thing to do.)

If that did actually happen and Campbell didn't take the job that is a major indicator he's aiming for a terminal college job instead of the NFL. Michigan may be in the market for a coach after this season.

[After THE JUMP: Ol' Murderface returns to the column]

You know what it is. Stream starts at 8 pm ET. You can watch the embed below or head over to twitch.tv/mgoace to participate in the live chat. We're going to attempt to have Brian join me on the commentary again tonight. If we run into technical issues, I'll go solo for the duration.

I still have no idea how this worked out.

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I thought "Dogg" stood for Decorous Owl Gazing Group. I cannot recommend this recent segment from The Michigan Insider on the topic of Isaiah Todd's recent visit to Kansas—which featured a Snoop Dogg performance that seemed like a middle finger to the NCAA—enough:

Kansas won some internet acclaim by leaning into the heel turn, but hurriedly backtracked once it became clear that the Kansas donor class was more of a Steely Dan crowd. AD Jeff Long:

“We apologize to anyone who was offended by the Snoop Dogg performance at Late Night. We made it clear to the entertainers’ managers that we expected a clean version of the show and took additional steps to communicate to our fans, including moving the artist to the final act of the evening, to ensure that no basketball activities would be missed if anyone did not want to stay for his show.

“I take full responsibility for not thoroughly vetting all the details of the performance and offer my personal apology to those who were offended. We strive to create a family atmosphere at Kansas and fell short of that this evening.”

I'm not sure what Kansas expected when several stripper poles were wheeled onto the court, but they are the national leader in not seeing things in front of their own eyes. Bifocals and a history of 90s rap for the entire athletic department.

As Matt wrote earlier in the day, Michigan is trending heavily for Todd. With visits over and a decision set there's not much ammo or time left for Kansas to flip Todd back, and it sounds like the Snoop show backfired with mom. A national Rivals analyst predicting Kansas and then flipping to Michigan seems pretty good.

Michigan's main competition may now be a year overseas; hopefully the lure of playing for a guy who knows the NBA inside and out will overcome the lure of immediate dollars. This is just another reason to hope NIL rights get restored to players, by the way—much easier to convince Todd to stay stateside if he can leverage his name and image with the Michigan fanbase.

[After THE JUMP: NIL bill rolls off the toungue]