lolblogs

Arkansas blog believes there is a 55% chance Patterson, Gundy, or Petersen is the next guy in Fayetteville, which lol

The full Hebner. If you've got a Scout account I highly recommend their latest video of Kyle Kalis($). It has many examples of Kalis burying some poor high school kid, sure, but the main attraction is a ref bump worthy of Wrestlemania:

At this point in the film I was expecting Luke Fickell to rush in from behind and deliver a low blow, then roll Kalis up for a pin.

In other news, holy crap Kyle Kalis hates people. Molk will be proud.

Will Campbell tackled Thomas Gordon after his INT.

Q: "Did he say anything do you?"
A: "Get off me."

My name is Boris. Michigan let Pryor golf partner and all-around weirdo Dennis Talbott in, but he was calling himself "Tennis Dalbott" and could not be identified:

"I actually spoke to him and told him he would no longer be credentialed," Dave Ablauf, Michigan senior associate athletic director for media and public relations, told ESPN.com. "He came in under a different name than what we were familiar with. Had the name I knew popped up, I wouldn't have credentialed him."

He's been booted, as has the organization he was working with. So… have a free spot on the sideline, do you, Michigan? #callme

Welcome to our pit of shame and despair. Amongst Eleven Warriors' constantly shifting cast of writers is a man named Danny. Danny seems new. Danny seems untouched by trouble, a happy-go-lucky fellow just raring for another bite at life's apple. This is going to last another two months, tops:

In a recent B1G conference power ranking by Adam Rittenberg of ESPN, the Buckeyes are listed at number six in the conference behind Wisconsin, Nebraska, Illinois, Michigan, and Michigan State.

I expect these numbers to change in OSU's favor by the time B1G play opens up against Michigan State on Oct. 1. Yes, Ohio State had a major meltdown against Miami, but this team will get better if the offense can gain some consistency coming out of this week's game against Colorado.

Rittenberg's rankings are pretty reasonable with the way the Buckeyes have played up to this point, but I expect to see OSU ahead of at least Illinois, Michigan and Michigan State later this season. Ohio State has endured much hardship stemming from last December, but this team is much better than sixth in the conference and time will prove that.

That's right: despite barely cracking 200 yards and only eclipsing 13 passing yards because of two pity throws allowed Braxton Miller at the end of the Miami game, OSU is "at least" better than Illinois, MSU, and Michigan. Danny's not sold on this Wisconsin business, and Nebraska's passing game? Eh… a little shaky.

He may actually be right about Michigan but when The Game is played for that all-important eighth win this guy is going to be a mite peeved, and by "a mite peeved" I mean "catatonic on the floor of a 7-11 in Euclid." At least he's not the guy who thinks a 9-3 projection is "worst case."

The 'freude! You like it this week, too. On Bauserman:

I got 3 lil boys all who can kick his ass and get nothing since they got clean records. honestly I bet someone on campus is going to kick his ass.if I knew where he lived he would take a ass whipping for laughing during that gm and f--- all u lil bitches who got somethin to say on here supporting him

Luke Fickell doesn't understand how time works. He doesn't think you can save timeouts, but he does think that he is going to run off as much time as a team trying to kill the clock:

“We still knew we were going to need two scores. Our thought was if we’re going to need two scores, we’re going to need to have the ability to stop the clock offensively,” Fickell said. “They were running (the clock) out.

“If we look back in hindsight, the very last (third down), maybe it would have saved us 30 seconds in our minds and maybe we could have got a little bit of a breather (for the defense, which) is something that I always look back at. Our thought was, ‘Hey, we’re going to do the best we can to try to make sure we have a couple (of timeouts) to score twice.’ ”

This is a breathtakingly stupid thought. Hire this man, OSU. (HT: DocSat)

ND pregame. We missed an impressively overwritten Tom Rinaldi intro for the Michigan-ND game never got aired because the SEC game went late. Bonus bits include full pregame festivities and Brent Musberger rambling semi-coherently despite no one watching him.

I bet Musberger does this on planes. YOU ARE LOOKING LIVE at a half-ounce packet of peanuts.

Road trips. An Ole Miss fan did the wise thing a couple weeks ago and hit up Ann Arbor instead of watching the Fighting Ackbars go at it one week before they'd feature in Vandy's biggest SEC win in 40 years. Overall gist:

Aside from being an incredibly exciting football game punctuated by a tense, high-flying fourth quarter which featured the Wolverines coming back from a 17-point deficit on the back of Denard Robinson's heroics, this number made the trip itself worth it. 114,804 is the largest attendance number ever recorded in the history of NCAA football. I'm sure that, in time, that record will be broken, but until that happens I will be able to proudly boast that I was a part of the largest crowd to ever watch a college football game. That's cool, dammit.

Bell's is enjoyed. He did us the service of getting a good shot of the U MAD Kelly sign:

Also, Orson hit up the LSU-Mississippi State game and reports back with what's left of his cowbell-shattered sanity.

You think we're wafer thin? I'll show you wafer thin. Michigan State's offensive line was a sore spot going into the season and has just been poked by Notre Dame to the tune of 27 rushing yards. That ain't good. The injury situation is worse:

A day after Michigan State announced starting right tackle Skyler Burkland will miss the rest of the season following left ankle surgery, Dantonio said starting center Blake Treadwell and backup tackle Jared McGaha will be sidelined with knee sprains.

Both of the latter are questionable for the M-MSU game on the 15th of October; MSU does get center Travis Jackson back this weekend. Dantonio got his customary shot in at Michigan about it, but if I had to pick between OL situations for that game it's a slam dunk for M, which has two solid backups and a complement of experienced starters. Michigan State just flopped a third defensive tackle—one who was seeing playing time!—to offense in less than eight months.

Michigan's situation. With Toussaint and Barnum's apparently healthy returns the injury situation for Michigan is not bad at the moment. Cam Gordon's has been out but is expected to play against SDSU, as is Brandon Herron. Then you've got Woolfolk's array of comically obvious minor injuries and… that's about it. Knock on wood.

Unfortunately shoddy. I was about to be all about Nate Silver's stab in the dark at the relative sizes of college football fanbases because the Big Ten made out like gangbusters and the M-OSU-PSU troika finished 1-2-3, but a little deeper poke into the numbers reveals they fail some basic sanity checks. Braves & Birds:

I love Silver's writing on politics and baseball, but you can tell from his post that he is not a college football fan. If he were, then he would know that he needs to go back to the drawing board when his methodology produces a conclusion that Georgia Tech has 1,664,088 fans, while Georgia has only 1,098,957 fans. Anyone who follows college football in this market …immediately knows that this number is wrong. Georgia sells out every game in a 90,000 seat venue, regardless of opponent. Georgia Tech struggles to fill a 50,000 seat stadium unless the opponent brings fans. Georgia has a fan base that will make massive donations in order to have the right to buy tickets; Georgia Tech has to offer ticket packages to get casual fans in the door.

That highlights a major bias towards 1) metro areas and 2) nerds, and while we joke about Ohio State's fanbase most of the counties in that state do have power. Can't say the same for a lot of places college football is popular.

There's also this:

When your data includes a note that it is "highly inaccurate" and your results defy common sense it's back to the salt mines.

A ridiculous picture of Ron English for no reason.

Via Philly.com. EMU is at Penn State this weekend.

Etc.: Big East folks are just bombing everything around them. Jim Boeheim more than anyone. On The Banks is in full Kelly mode, except they're seemingly justified because their ham-handed attempt to force Villanova football into the Big East blew it all up. My favorite part is Jack Swarbrick complaining about people doing things that have "very negative consequences" for other schools. Notre Dame has long been known for its teamwork and spirit of share and share alike, which is why they voted down a big rights increase for Big East football.

Jamiemac tries to say nice things about the Big Ten. A couple of cool counter plays Texas ran against UCLA. SEC expansion remains stupid. Craig James media awards are extra spicy this week. Silver featured.

INSPIRATIONAL COUNTDOWN IMAGE: 25.

I liked the koala, wallaby, and I chilled with a kangaroo a bit. There was a wombat that I quite enjoyed also.
Todd Barry

The floor is not on fire and we need water desperately. Crisler's new floor:

I like it, and not just because there's a charge circle.

Soon to be us. Penn State fans on their version of Special K:

Penn State has been saying for years now that the piped-in commercial music has not compromised in any way the Blue Band's ability or chances to play music in the stands. I'm calling bullshit on that. Since Penn State football became The Greatest Show of Great Shows of Not-Just-JoePa in College Football or something they keep renaming to something worse, piped-in public address music has become more prominent within the gameday experience at Beaver Stadium. They are no longer just snippets of music, or pre-game warmups music when the band isn't even done with Tailgreat. Nope, Penn State now plays full songs over the PA. You know, those raucous, adrenaline-pumping classics like... Sweet Caroline?

And the poll:

Penn State fans are not down with the sickness. Ah ah ah ah ah.

Dirty. Boo Nieves did this in an international tournament against Russia: :

Dang. Nieves is consistently criticized for being a "perimeter player," FWIW, which probably means he tries stuff like this all the time instead of bulling his way to the net.

Practice highlight type substances. From Rivals and strictly FWIW since there's no pads:

Rerank. ESPN's latest 2012 re-rank sees Glenn Robinson III at #53 (up from #60) and Nick Stauskas at #85 (from #99). Their profiles don't show any updates, though—wonder if they still think Stauskas is a low-athleticism guy who can't create his own shot or whether this AAU season has changed that. The highlight videos suggest he can get to the hoop.

Mitch McGary is #3, BTW. Come on, Mitch McGary. Daddy needs a new pair of shoes.

Also rerank. Scout redid its Midwest state rankings. Your instate top 10:

If O'Brien commits that's seven of the top ten with two of the others guys who wanted to commit but got slow-played because of grades (Burbridge) or undisclosed "things to clear up" (Thompson). They really should have taken Burbridge just to make Dantonio's head explode.

Braden's moved up and threatens to get a fourth star if he performs this fall. Only one That Guy complaint: Matt Godin is #15, which seems low for a guy with his size and offers. He's behind a CMU commit, for one, and Thompson appears to be picking between Syracuse, Indiana, and a late offer from Illinois.

Etc.: Michigan soccer enters this season ranked ninth, which is a vote of confidence in the program after they lost Justin Meram and Soony Saad—AKA all the goals—in the offseason. Hopefully that holds up. Hoke's entire opening presser. Two toned pants: ack.

no reason at all. also not stupid.

Stupid random statistic. ESPN put together an Outside the Lines piece on whether college athletes should be paid—for some reason the appointment of Mark Emmert to the top job has spurred even more chatter on this topic than there is usually—that revolves around one stupid statistic. The NCAA says this:

That number (14) comes from the NCAA's most recent analysis of athletic department finances at member institutions, based on data supplied by schools for the 2008-09 school year. The NCAA notes that 25 schools in each of the prior two years generated more revenue than expenses, before the nation's economic recession took hold.

ESPN says this:

But the NCAA understates the amount of revenue that flows into athletic departments.

Why do they say this?

The organization arrives at its lower number of 14 schools in the black by not counting what it calls "allocated revenue," which it considers direct and indirect support provided by the university, student fees and direct government support.

Because the NCAA does not count subsidies that keep money-losing programs afloat. This is not exactly "whoops, the Pirates are wildly profitable." The Bylaw Blog's pithy summation: "ESPN shows athletic departments that are making money. NCAA shows university that are making money on athletics."

Why anyone would care about the former is unclear, but ESPN charges off with their revised number of schools breaking even once you count funding grudgingly handed over to make sure they break even. Surprise: it's fairly large.

Stupid Fab Five reacts. They are legion, from complaints that a documentary called Fab Five was almost entirely about the Fab Five to Duke players writing New York Times op-eds that haven't even been published yet [UPDATE: now published.] but seem to confirm everything that was said about them* merely by their existence. Also Whitlock wrote something that no doubt accused people of "bojangling."

There was even a stupid Fab Five pre-act by Ramzy at 11 Warriors, who went out of his way to point out they didn't actually win anything, as if that wasn't possibly the main selling point or something anyone needed to be reminded of. The most compelling part of the entire thing was watching Webber walk down the tunnel after the timeout, then explain to the brutally persistent media that losing the national championship game for a second consecutive year felt "the same… exactly the same." Braves and Birds compares them to teams like Holland's Clockwork Orange two-time-runners up, and that's right—in soccer there's a rich tradition of teams that couldn't quite grasp the brass ring but are remembered for their style, and so the Fab Five.

However, nothing tops this, possibly dating back to cuneiform:

The same folks who are clamoring for a public mea culpa from Webber are the same people who wrote racist letters, calling Webber and teammates the "N" word.

That's the News's Vincent Goodwill successful trolling his way onto the "most read" list. Congratulations, Mr. Goodwill. Unless you actually believe that, in which case I am deeply sorry someone else has to dress you every morning.

Most of the letter-writers are dead now since they were already watching Matlock 20 years ago, but you don't have to be in the KKK to think Webber's actions badly hurt the program. Exploited or not, all Webber had to do was suck it up a little while before he was insanely rich. He didn't and even super-conflicted me would like an explanation, at least, if not an apology.

*[And in any case, when Rose was discussing Grant Hill he was obviously talking about a feeling he'd had in the past. Seventeen-year-old Rose didn't think "I don't like Grant Hill because his athlete father is in his life." He thought "I hate this bitch." Rose's explanation is necessarily him figuring out why he was so pissed off at Hill.

Also, Christian Laettner was relatively sanguine about everything, so there's that.]

Stupid apology. Tressel says "I'm sorry," then starts repeating things he heard from his robot-in-a-suit:

I apologize for the fact I wasn’t able to find the ones to partner with to handle our difficult and complex situation.

I agree. Ohio State should have synergized its core competencies and then attacked the Asian market. Or they could have difficultly and complexly asked the players involved if they had exchanged memorabilia for goods and services. However, this would have involved talking to them in some sort of office setting and was clearly impossible. The Asian market is where it's at.

Stupid bracket react. It never fails: whenever a major conference team is left out of the field of 60-something, people complain. This year there were actual complaints that small conference teams were somehow gaming the system. Joe Sheehan blows this up:

Maybe the biggest problem in college basketball is that teams in the mid-tier conferences can't get games against the ones in the top six, and they absolutely can't get home games. Mid-majors have been screaming at the top of their lungs for years about wanting to play up, and the better those teams have gotten, the less access to games they've been able to get. Teams in the BCS leagues refuse, out-and-out refuse to play road games at teams in the #7-#18 conferences.

In fact, the RPI gimmickry cited by Phelps and Davis is actually the purview of the power leagues, who have taken to playing road games against bottom-100 teams in an effort to gain "road win" points in the new version of the RPI. (They understand that there's a concept in play, but don't quite grok the details.) The ACC played as many road games at Elon (2) and UNC-Greensboro (4) as they did against mid-major schools in the top 200 (6), and one of the latter games was in an exempt event hosted by one. Miami played at Florida Gulf Coast. Florida State played at FIU. Wake played at UNC Wilmington. You think Conference USA is trying to game the system? Really?

I'm actually happy with the way this year's play-in games fell out: both feature a major-conference team against a mid-major. If you look at the two at-large play-ins as the committee throwing its hands up and saying "I don't know, play for it" this makes perfect sense. We don't have much information about how the good teams in small leagues compare with meh teams in big leagues so you can just have 'em settle it on the court. I'm sure that's just a coincidence but I wouldn't mind that being a yearly occurrence.

Another '95. Michigan has picked up another 2013 hockey commit. Evan Allen is also playing for Honeybaked and is their leading scorer with one point more than fellow commit Tyler Motte. There's not much out there other than a couple of Select 14/15 reports from USHR and the usual hyperventilating from sketchy pay sites, but Yost Built rounds it up all the same. Allen, like Motte and JT Compher, is competing for a spot on the NTDP right now.

Michigan now has something like five or six forwards in the 2013 class already (depending on whether Max Shuart is 2012 or 2013), all of them from the midget circuit centered around Michigan that is a heavy feeder to the NTDP and USHL, four of them Honeybaked teammates. They'll be replacing kids who are currently sophomores, of which there are six (Brown, Lynch, Treais, Sparks, Moffie and Rohrkemper). Unfortunately, one  is a defenseman and two are probably not on scholarship.

They must be anticipating some of these kids ending up in major junior or having to fill holes when players leave early/don't show up at all. That's veering close to Wisconsin/SEC territory, but 1) having to take an extra year of junior is just something that happens in hockey and 2) Michigan cannot sign any of these players to LOIs they can't fulfill—remember when Brandon Burlon couldn't sign until Kevin Quick got booted?—so anyone who is discontent with that arrangement can just go elsewhere.

Chances are the winnowing will be on the players', not the program's, end.

Dense bones. Jon Horford's been conspicuously absent of late without anyone really knowing why. Injury was suspected and is the case, but this bit from Rothstein's latest notes column makes the ears perk up:

Beilein spent 30 minutes with him Monday to help develop him further for next year. The Grand Ledge native, Beilein said, is already much stronger than when he started and is up to 242 pounds — the same weight as starting forward Jordan Morgan.

“There’s not any extra fat in there,” Beilein said. “Really, his body is developing.”

Really? Horford weighs as much as Morgan now? This is stunning.

He's healthy, BTW, and we could see him in the tourney.

Etc.: Destroy One Shining Moment, also Jim Nantz. Lloyd Carr marginalia. Vote for the documentary to come after Willis Ward. Eight seeds… not so good for advancement purposes.

I hate IPAs but good lord, man.

Newsbits of importance from Tom. Dark I'm-not-saying-I'm-just-saying rumors about Craig Roh and Demetrius Hart have been flying around the internets this week. Tom clarifies. On Craig Roh:

My source told me that Craig has been concerned with his position switch to linebacker, and believes he is much more effective as a defensive end.

Craig actually vocalized his concern about his position to the coaches after the Penn State game, and my source says that he has been playing much more on the defensive line during practice this week.

Roh's apparently been handed to Bruce Tall and will no longer be mostly a linebacker. This is both good and another instance of players coaching themselves. Meanwhile, Demetrius Hart decommit rumors are false:

There was a slight mix up with Demetrius' enrollment with Michigan, but it has been cleared up. That was the issue, it wasn't that anyone was recruiting him harder, or anything along those lines. Everything has been straightened out, and his mom says Demetrius will be at Michigan in January.

Insert the usual CYA boilerplate about how anything can happen, but you can focus your panic elsewhere.

Crowded. JT Floyd is officially out for the year with "freak" ligament damage in his ankle. Hooray.

The Never Forget banner guy has updated it, and if any further members of the secondary wish to make themselves unavailable they'd advised to do it quickly because we're running out of room:

New additions are Michael Williams (concussions), JT Floyd (ligament damage), Jared Van Slyke (leg injury), and Vlad Emilien (transfer). Available locations are limited to that patch of maize underneath the crying wolverine. Given the state of the secondary this is getting considerably more RR-fault-ridden as the year goes along. Justin Turner and Vlad Emilien's transfers are big deals with the free safety depth chart reading "Ray Vinopal" and the corner depth chart reading "Random Three Star Freshman Projects and James Rogers."

At least the Floyd injury has been a productive one for the legions of Michigan photoshoppers:

So we've got that going for us. Courtney Avery will draw into the lineup for Floyd.

Okay, a final final final word or two. It's unfortunate that Anchorman references are vastly overused because sometimes there's nothing you can say except…

…I'm not even mad, I'm impressed. That is amazing. I'm sitting on this pile of ninja corpses, covered in blood. As the sun rises over a scene of indescribable gore I laugh, because what else is there to do?

Probably not in the special section about how naughty Michigan's been:

the committee wrote that "though serious," the overage was "far less extensive than originally reported and that no student-athletes were substantially harmed."

Though this was obvious as soon as the smoke cleared last August because the piece was so shoddily written, it is now official. Hurrah for pyrrhic victories.

Watch this. The House Rock Built's "Stuffing The Passer" series is the best thing going in the CFB blogosphere right now:

If "Shit My Dad Says" is being made into a sitcom, Stuffing The Passer can't be far behind.

Elsewhere in coach grumbling. You've probably seen this but Brandon Graham has some depressing quotes that point towards the Those Meddling Kids theory:

I’m surprised they didn’t stick with what Coach Robinson was running,” Graham said of the 3-4 the team deployed in 2009, its first year under Robinson. … “Let Coach Robinson play his defense,” Graham said. “Let him do what he knows. He was thrown off, I would say. I know the 3-3-5 is what he (Rodriguez) has been doing for so long. He’s just got to adjust to the Big Ten.”

Michigan ran a 4-3 under last year but that's beside the point. Those quotes from a guy who was in the program last year indicate that no one who doesn't know a 3-3-5 like the back of his hand is ever going to be comfortable as a defensive coordinator at Michigan as long as the WVU guys are around saying things like "hey it's a bye week, I've got this great idea."

While everyone says "scheme is overrated," Michigan's offense puts the lie to that. It's not necessarily the 3-3-5 itself—this is not a BLANK can't work in the Big Ten argument—but attempting to run an exotic niche defense with a guy who doesn't know it (and evidence suggests is a terrible coach anyway).

I'm pretty sure this is as close as we'll get to an opinion from Angelique Chengelis, if that's actually what it is:

Hope for next year?

Much has been made about Michigan's defense, which is near the bottom of several national categories, including total defense. Illinois was in a similar spot last year, but has made strides under new defensive coordinator Vic Koenning:

Scoring defense: 30.2 (96th) in 2009, 16.8 (12th) in 2010

Total defense: 403.3 (91st) in 2009, 301.4 (15th) in 2010

Pass defense: 248.8 (100th) in 2009, 183.9 (19th) in 2010

Rush defense: 154.4 (76th) in 2009, 117.5 (26th) in 2010

That certainly reads like a "hint, hint."

Defensive antidote. Via Wolverine Historian:

Penn State jerkos. As an internet fanbase, Penn State has a remarkable knack for accusing others of pathologies they're displaying literally within the accusation itself. The latest example is a piece at Black Shoe Diaries the author probably thinks is Swiftian satire that takes a sentence from the game recap, some random comment I don't recognize and didn't make about the Terrence Talbott whiffed PBU that turned into 40 yards, a somewhat maudlin paragraph from Maize and Brew supporting Rodriguez, and a random quote from pissed off David Molk. It combines these to show how self-centered Michigan fans are… in a post whining that Michigan fans didn't give Penn State its proper respect.

BSD can talk about self-centered behavior when they do this:

Indiana has a legitimately very good pass offense. They had 41 opportunities to make catches and made 40. Chappell almost never went to the wrong guy and missed on maybe five of his 65 attempts. Their receivers are tall and fast and shifty. One dollar they're the most productive pass offense in the conference at the end of the year.

And this:

Michigan State has somehow acquired the without-question best stable of tailbacks in the league; Iowa's Adam Robinson isn't bad but he's not the equivalent of Baker/Bell/Caper, and there's only one of him.

Indiana imploded and Michigan State's run game is pretty mediocre. We tried the credit-the-opponent bit and then all of the opponents turned out to be much worse on offense than Michigan made them look. Doing it now against your gritty moxie ginger neckbeard quarterback would be delusional. Penn State sucks and Michigan is worse. But I said Ogbu is a beast, so your pathetic insecurities can be a tiny bit less pathetic. Let's hold hands.

Now go talk about how arrogant we are as you caress each other's soft places while whispering "what if Michigan never comes back" and we discuss whether we should keep Rich Rodriguez and worry about falling into a Notre Dame-like fallow period. Tim was right to describe BSD as a place utterly incapable of recognizing irony.

Etc.: Craig Roh's eyebrows, and the rest of Craig Roh, are attractive to some guy who ranks him the #13 "hottie" of the year in CFB. Yost Built has ten things to know about Alaska. Amani Toomer is running marathons now.