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ncaa: the hypocrisy and how to fix it

Unverified Voracity Punches A Police Horse, Probably

By Brian — February 5th, 2018 at 2:11 PM — 118 comments
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Sponsor note. Hey, if you happen to be in Philadelphia and punched a police horse last night, you need a lawyer. Please don't call Richard Hoeg, who does not handle that kind of law at all.

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But if you had the idea for a company that sells football helmets for police horses, then you would call Richard Hoeg, who does do that kind of law: contracts, LLCs, S corps, and the like, for entrepreneurial sorts who can survey the urban chaos our Super Bowl inflicts on local communities and finds a way to make it slightly better. For horses. Or people, I guess. If you have a company that helps people, Hoeg Law will also help you. I've never heard Richard say "we only handle horse companies." And that's the sort of thing that I think you'd bring up. Right?

Brandon Graham Michigan

The Gang Wins The Super Bowl,  thanks to Brandon Graham. Obligatory Philly chaos:

Congratulations to Brandon Graham, who was one of the few bright spots on the whole dang team when he was an upperclassman. I remember doing the UFRs for his senior year and pleading with anyone to listen to me that dude was an All-American. Nobody did except maybe Matt Hinton(?). Graham worked his ass off despite the very Rich Rod carnage all around him and was deservedly drafted in the first round; took him a minute to find his footing but that'll do. Everyone who's met him also thinks he's the best dude ever.

In other Super Bowl takes, this article from SBN was extremely prescient after watching that Big 12-ass game:

Last September, Sonny Dykes sat to watch the NFL’s season-opening game between the Chiefs and Patriots. Dykes, recently the head coach at Cal and then an offensive analyst at TCU, has coached college football since he was a graduate assistant at Kentucky in 1997. He noticed something about the pro game he was watching.

“Watching that game, I remember thinking, ‘This looks like a college football game,’” Dykes tells SB Nation. “They were both playing kind of college offenses, were really diverse in what they were doing, were using a lot of misdirection, were using some quarterback run, both teams. I thought, ‘Wow, this is kind of fun to watch.’”

The Chiefs used a series of misdirection and option plays that have long been common in the college game. They conned New England’s defense all night and scored 42 points in a surprising win. The Chiefs were near the tip of a spear that now includes pretty much the whole league, including the team they beat that night and the Eagles team the Patriots will play in Super Bowl 52.

“Ten years ago or maybe eight years ago, even, everybody in the NFL ran the same offense,” Dykes, now SMU’s head coach, says. “It was all kind of an I-formation, under center, you know; everybody ran the same stuff. All of a sudden, you started seeing a little bit of the college game proliferate a little bit in the NFL.”

New England didn't punt, gained 600 yards, and lost. Oh and there were multiple missed extra points. Big 12? Big 12.

The other thing that jumped out at me as I watched the second of two NFL games I consume annually: holy hell that catch rule. Philly's winning touchdown saw the WR catch the ball, get two feet down, and then take a full step to the endzone before he hit the ground. Both Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth were absolutely convinced it was not a catch.

Which is nuts, because... uh, that's nuts. I will repeat my previous assertion: once you get foot #3 down by taking a step you're a runner and have caught the ball. That's a catch, and the Pittsburgh play earlier isn't.

Also, in the fourth quarter of a tight, all offense Super Bowl, Cris Collinsworth marveled that the football game he was watching could possibly live up to the halftime show. This was after several hundred plain old play action passes were dubbed "RPOs," like—just hypothetically—a two year old who had just discovered the word "wine" at Thanksgiving and may have repeated it at maximum volume for the sheer delight several hundred times.

I just dunno man.

Sample size! I have maybe been googling David DeJulius's free throw stats, for no reason, really. This is what I have found.

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Hooray! Also, here's this from that Orr game when he blew up:

DeJulius continued his strong play in the second half and was extremely efficient, finishing with 49 points on 13-of-19, including 9-of-11 from deep range in the 92-82 victory. He also converted 14-of-15 free throws and had seven assists and three turnovers.

I get nervous when they show him shooting just one free throw in the highlight videos but apparently that's just because free throws are boring. May they again be boring.

Also in high school stat news, Colin Castleton might be able to continue Michigan's stretch five offense...

Miller said he runs a motion offense and moves Castleton around the court to try and make it harder for teams to focus on him. "We let him back screen, we get him on the perimeter and let him flare and curl to the basket," Miller said. "We're perfectly fine with him shooting 3s." In fact, Castleton is his team's best 3-point shooter at 38 percent.

...after a year of eating nothing but meatballs.

Also also:

No word on his free throws though.

Boiled up. Purdue AD Mitch Daniels writes an op-ed for the Washington Post about the one-and-done rule being bad and dumb, and while he's necessarily compromised by being the head of an organization that doesn't actually pay its most important labor, he still brings more heat at the NCAA than I've seen from someone inside the sausage factory:

When the FBI revealed its findings about the corrupt connections among shoe companies, agents, a few big-time college programs and coaches, and the Amateur Athletic Union or AAU (the first “A” increasingly looks like a misnomer), no one near the sport was shocked. The existence of this part of the cesspool has been in plain view for years. Those in a position to stop the scandals spawned by the “one-and-done” era — in which many top-tier players were required to enroll in college for one year before bolting for the NBA — have been either powerless to do so or actively interested in perpetuating the status quo.

When it was discovered that, at what we’ve always considered an academically admirable school, championships had been won by teams loaded with players who took completely phony classes, most of us were sincerely shocked. We were stunned again when, after years of cogitation, the NCAA delivered a penalty of . . . nothing. It was a final confession of futility, confirming the necessity of this special commission, if any meaningful change is going to happen from the collegiate end.

Unfortunately none of his policy solutions—removing freshman eligibility, leaving early entry scholarships filled for four years, or adopting the college baseball zero-or-three model—are, like, good. Or even implementable, in the baseball case. I still fail to see how one-and-done stands up legally since the collective bargaining of the NBAPA is taking away rights from people who aren't members; IANAL but I'm surprised one-and-done hasn't been sued into oblivion by some Lavar Ball sort.

Etc.: ESPN's Paula Lavigne on the OTL investigation of MSU. PSDs no longer tax deductible. Cooper Marody executes some jock jams.

Unverified Voracity Is Now Just A Series Of David DeJulius Embeds

By Brian — January 17th, 2018 at 2:49 PM — 111 comments
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Keith Jackson remembered by several people. At SBN:

That training meant calling everything ABC threw at him, but college football was different. One of Jackson’s gifts that made him so, so good at college football games was to make the viewer feel at home wherever the game might be. Ann Arbor became the Big House, Nebraska became the friendliest town in the world, and even beneath “the broad shoulders of the San Gabriel Mountains” you could feel at home, because ... well Keith did, didn’t he? Nowhere wasn’t home on a Saturday if Keith was calling it, because he had a map with a single line connecting everything.

This was all part of a whole to him. The things with names had definite pronunciations only Keith could nail; the things without names would be given them in time. The language of this sport — right down to the love for the great, the ugly, the undersized, the local, and the brutal — is his.

By Bob Griese:

"That big smiling face, and just the thrill and the love he had for doing college football," Bob Griese told SportsCenter when asked what he'd remember about Jackson, his longtime broadcast partner whom he started working with in 1985.

"He did it for a long, long time. ... He never intruded on the game. It was always about the kids on the field. Never, never shining the light on himself. And that was one of the things that I most admired about him."

By Andy Staples:

It was probably on some lazy Saturday afternoon or evening in 1990 when the sound burned itself into my memory. I was in seventh grade, and a Notre Dame linebacker with a previously checkered career was in the midst of an All-America season. He must have been playing on the road, because if he’d been in South Bend, Brent Musburger would have been the one saying his name. Instead, Keith Jackson was calling the game, and when that linebacker made a tackle, Jackson said…

Miiichael Stooooonebreaker.

And there it was.

From that point forward, the quintessence of college football in my mind was Keith Jackson saying the name Michael Stonebreaker as a drumline pounds out a beat between plays. I can’t think of the sport without hearing those two words uttered by that voice. I cover college football for a living, so I think about college football a lot. Consequently, my brain frequently serves up the memory of Keith Jackson identifying a 225-pound middle linebacker from Louisiana playing for a Catholic university in Indiana.

"I can't get them any more open than that." You may have had some similar frustrations midway through the Maryland game:

Bi-weekly David DeJulius hamblasting video. This one features nine(!) threes in a 49-point performance against Chicago Orr:

Sounds like fun. Next year's schedule is kind of a doozy:

@ ND, @ OSU, @ MSU plus crossover games against a couple ten win teams in Wisconsin and Northwestern will do that.

Priority one: don't pay anyone. This would be an insane way to defuse the increasing media heat on the NCAA for restricting player mobility:

The grad transfer rule already sucks out loud for lower-level schools. Creating open season on every all-conference football and basketball player turns the MAC into a collection of JUCOs, essentially. It's far worse for competitive balance than paying kids would be, because you get to swoop in on anyone you missed and yoink them. You're also inviting kids to leave whatever degree program they're in for sports, damaging your hoary claims to academic integrity.

But it would eliminate a set of arguments against amateurism, so full speed ahead. Because keeping the money is all they care about.

Frank Ragnow on Ben Herbert. Strong, detailed praise for Michigan's new S&C guy:

"He's probably one of the most detail-oriented people I've ever met," Ragnow said. He then paused. "Actually, he is the most detail-oriented person I've ever been around. The first thing he's going to do with his players is a thorough individual evaluation of them. He'll learn their tendencies, strengths and weaknesses and try to get a feel for how their body reacts to different movements and different processes. Nutrition-wise, I'm guessing the Michigan players are going to learn a lot. Coach Herb is always finding new ways to gain an edge on the nutrition side of things and it was probably the one part of how he did things that I learned and took the most out of."

In addition to being good at S&C stuff, Ragnow "wouldn't let" Steve Lorenz hang up until he'd expressed what an excellent dude he was as well.

Exit various Irish. In addition to a few NFL departures, Brian Kelly booted four dudes. Three are offensive skill guys and will be relevant for Michigan's upcoming series against the Irish:

Stepherson was arguably Notre Dame’s most explosive receiver last season, finishing with 19 catches for 359 yards and five touchdowns. However, he was held out of the season’s first four games for a suspension that Notre Dame never publicly acknowledged.

The departures of McIntosh and Holmes come after a single public rules violation and seriously dent Notre Dame’s running back depth chart. With Josh Adams off to the NFL Draft, the Irish will likely open spring ball with just three scholarship running backs in Dexter Williams, Tony Jones Jr. and early enrollee Jahmir Smith.

The fourth is a DL who wasn't going to be in the rotation anyway.

Etc.: Andrew Ebbett and Chad Kolarik make the Canadian and American Olympic hockey teams, respectively. Francis Atuahene set to go high in the MLS Superdraft. Trey Burke reunited with THJ. Minnesota reporter suggests that there should be a Red Berenson trophy. I'm in.

Unverified Voracity Is Just Trolling Me Now

By Brian — July 18th, 2017 at 12:40 PM — 57 comments
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AFC wins! Congratulations to AFC Ann Arbor, the NPSL Great Lakes conference champions. Also a cow!

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This is actually the Milk Cup, a trophy for the best Michigan team in the NPSL that is somehow not sponsored by Jim Harbaugh. AFC went 12-1-1 to capture the top seed in the Midwest playoffs and will attempt to make the NPSL Final Four next weekend.

Crootin, 1980. Via Dr. Sap:

Spielman sues! Chris Spielman saw this banner and was like aw hell no:

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He's suing and trying to get a class of OSU athletes certified to take this wider. The mindblowing thing is that this only comes after eight months of negotiations broke down:

Spielman told Dispatch reporter Bill Rabinowitz that it pains him to sue Ohio State, but “players have a right. If somebody wanted to endorse you, don’t you think you have a right to say yes or no, or to negotiate?”

Yes, I do. Apparently, so does Griffin, the two-time Heisman Trophy winner and former president and CEO of the OSU Alumni Association who supports Spielman’s efforts to gain recompense from universities and corporations that benefit from the use of players’ names and likenesses.

Ohio State takes a different tack, which explains why negotiations between Spielman’s attorney, Brian K. Duncan, and the university dragged over the past eight months without any compensatory agreement being reached.

Never forget that Gene Smith is the dim bulb who chose to go to the Gator Bowl instead of not taking a bowl ban for Urban Meyer's first year. OSU's athletic department sounds like a very Brandon place:

“It’s not the money part of it so much, but (Ohio State’s) attitude toward how they run their operation — with an iron fist, and they smash anyone they can,” Stillwagon said. “But then when you come at them, they say it’s all about giving scholarships. I’ve had dealings with that (OSU) marketing group and they’re abusive.”

Stillwagon loves Ohio State. He and his Buckeyes brethren simply want OSU to love them back by spreading the wealth.

“This (licensing compensation) is just a correction that needs to be done. This is the way it is now,” Stillwagon said. “Coaching is about money. Where you get to sit in the stadium is all about money. But they don’t want to talk about that. Funny, it’s against the mother nation, you know?”

You'd think this should be a slam dunk given the outcome of the Ed O'Bannon case. SI legal guy Michael McCann points out that this is in a different circuit—6th instead of 9th—and that an outcome that conflicts with the O'Bannon precedent would give the Supreme Court a much better chance of reviewing the case.

What Michigan should do. Michigan Licensing, Inc. Avoid these lawsuits and give everyone graduating from the program a healthy chunk of change. It's like bagmen, except explicitly endorsed by the US government?

Rutger can be good. Not that Rutger, Rutger Reitmaier. Michigan pursued Reitmaier pretty hard late in last year's recruiting cycle but he decided to stick it out with Oregon despite a coaching change. That did not last:

Michigan was expected to be his pick for a minute there because his family was gung-ho about Harbaugh; Sam Webb says Michigan will kick the tires but a longstanding relationship with Brady Hoke will probably point him to Tennessee. Michigan does have the room after Corey Malone-Hatcher's retirement, and the DL they brought in are flexible enough to make it work.

Basketball scheduling items. Michigan draws LSU in the first round of the Maui Invitational. LSU was horrendous last year, going 10-21 and finishing 172nd in Kenpom. They should be better since they'll return everyone they don't run off and add a decent recruiting class featuring top-50 PG Tremont Waters; Michigan should still expect to beat them easily. LSU was 327th in eFG defense a year ago. Beilein will carve them up.

It would greatly behoove Michigan not to lose that game because Chaminade almost certainly awaits the LSU-Michigan loser. Notre Dame, a 26-10 ACC team that got a 5 seed last year and potential good win, is the alternative. Other than Maui, games against UNC, UCLA, and Texas round out the meaningful bits of the schedule.

The rest of the nonconference schedule is the usual:

  • North Florida (#255 Kenpom, #221 RPI last year), CMU (#229/218), and Southern Miss (#325/331) are the first three games after the D-II exhibition against Grant Valley.
  • No similar excuses for UC Riverside (#311/330), Alabama A&M (#351/351), and Jacksonville (#275/305).  Alabama A&M was 2-27 last year and dead last in Kenpom.
  • A game against Detroit (#302/289) at New Joe Louis that is vaguely more acceptable than the other six because it's a local thing.

When you're looking at some other Big Ten team's resume and wondering how in the hell they got a better seed than Michigan, those seven games against awful, awful competition are going to be why. This nonconference schedule has a lot of games that are going to be very hard to win and zero easy wins against decent lower level teams except maybe CMU, which is losing their entire O. I give up.

Meanwhile in Big Ten scheduling, this is one of those years when Michigan plays MSU and Wisconsin just once because Rutgers exists. Thanks, Jim Delany.

Okay then. Andrew Dakich is transferring to Ohio State because they have nine scholarship players, just three of them guards. I do not think this one is likely to lead to a Big Ten championship, as the Max Bielfeldt and Spike Albrecht transfers did for Indiana and Purdue.

Etc.: NCAA basketball to emphasize road wins more. Gary and Hurst show up on NFL.com's list of DL to watch this season. Everything's coming up Milhouse! Toys R Us is struggling. Man says thing. Man soccers with Soccer Stars. Basketball gets a PWO.

Unverified Voracity Remembers Cajun Brady Hoke

By Brian — June 20th, 2017 at 2:42 PM — 64 comments
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[Bryan Fuller]

Naturally. If Harbaugh can't do camps he's going to do something:

Jim Harbaugh takes on clerk role in Genesee Probate Court

This will result in lawyers dorkin' out:

Flint Attorney Rick Hetherington, who appeared on a child support motion, on the way out asked: "Excuse me judge, but for clarification, I was wondering ... who has it better than us?"

Before the judge could respond, Harbaugh replied,

"I know the answer to that...Nobody!"

There's a 50% chance that guy has a username.

On the Go Blue Guarantee. Michigan has declared that instate students with family incomes of less than 65k a year will no longer pay tuition. This is a good thing. Maybe it's less of a "whoah" moment than it first appears since Michigan was already paying the bulk of costs for students in this income bracket, but taking it to zero means something. It also drops out a bunch of paperwork:

"The 'Go Blue Guarantee' cuts through the complexities of financial aid to help us reach talented students from all communities in our state. I have always believed that talent is ubiquitous in our society, but opportunity most certainly is not. The 'Go Blue Guarantee' helps us ensure wider opportunity."

I have Read The Comments on this, unfortunately, and one of the most common attempted gotchas is weeping for the family making 66k. They're not exactly boned by this move:

Tuition slides up gradually as income increases. As it would in any non-insane system. Concerns about families making twice the state median having problems shouldering their burden should be mitigated by the existence of 529 plans, which allow folks who have money to invest—ie, 120k-per-year households—to grow that money tax-free. You have to have a plan, but you can afford to have one at that point.

As state appropriations have shrunk as a portion of Michigan's budget, Michigan has responded by continually increasing costs for the wealthy. They've also tried to up their appeal to that segment of the population. If anything it's worked too well; Michigan's ability to enroll lower-income students has fallen off a cliff. This will help. It is unlikely to have a huge impact since ability to meet admissions standards is highly correlated with family income.

There's not much of a sports angle here unless Michigan starts covering large chunks of living costs as well. Those are estimated at about 15k annually and are covered by an athletic scholarship elsewhere. Since the sort of families covered by the guarantee are also the ones for whom 15k is a huge deal, this does not get Michigan a bunch of free scholarships for instate kids. If Michigan manages to extend this to room and board, then you might see a notably improved class of walk-on. Until then hold your birdman dot gifs about gaming the system.

Athletic budget notes. Michigan continues to live in the black after late Brandon shenanigans, projecting a two million dollar surplus this year. Athletic department budgets being what they are, a tiny profit is all that will ever be allowed. This helps schools cry poor when amateurism is questioned. Michigan can't quite disguise why a good year for the AD is always a 1% profit margin, because the way they make this happen is a PR boon:

Included in the department's projections is an increase in transfers to the university from $3.825 million in FY17 to $7.875 million in FY18.

Does the athletic department need to double the amount of money they transfer back to the general fund? No. Does the general fund need a four million dollar drop in a swimming pool of funding? No.

Michigan's also setting aside four million dollars into its deferred maintenance fund. They need to do this for major renovations—they cannot soak taxpayers by issuing bonds like pro teams—but that is also money that exits that they expensed away with some handwaving. Michigan expects to make at least 14 million dollars profit in 17-18.

That's due in no small part to this:

Conference distributions are projected to increase to $51.1 million in FY18 from $36.3 million in FY17 due mostly to a new conference media rights agreement.

You might be able to pay the players now instead of coming up with increasingly transparent ways of laundering the money.

Get hype for Gary. Peppers kind of talk about Mr. Gary from Don Brown:

Brown was asked Saturday after Michigan’s high school football camps how good Gary, a defensive end, can be.

“Best I’ve ever seen,” Brown said. “Best I’ve ever seen combining speed, strength, change of direction, and the mental curve. He’s unbelievable. The sky is the limit.

“The good thing is I think he understands that there’s a lot on his shoulders.”

It is rare to hear that kind of thing from a coach, and it portends good things.

Other minor roster notes from recent coach availabilities: Grant Perry won't play until his court issue is resolved and Grant Newsome is still expected to redshirt.

It's a contract. The NCPA, an NCAA union with the minor problem of not having any officially-designated employees to unionize, is doing what it can in the current regulatory environment. They've introduced a binding contract that they say is kosher with the NCAA that covers various aspects of the player-school relationship not covered by the LOI. Highlights:

According to the contract document obtained by CBS Sports, the CAP Agreement can be used instead of the National Letter of Intent or with the NLI. Either way, it would cover several areas the letter of intent doesn't. …

A school could be bound to an all-encompassing transfer release for a prospect before enrollment. The document asks if an institution "agrees"  or "does not agree" "to comply with any request for transfer" and "to not restrict the ability" of a player to transfer to any other school. …

A school could not "cancel, reduce or fail to renew financial aid … due to injury or athletic performance." …

A player could negotiate the cost of a remaining scholarship to complete a degree at some point in the future should he/she leave early for a professional draft.

These things rarely get off the ground, unfortunately. High level players are deciding between competing under-the-table offers that supersede the relatively minor concerns this contract can cover, especially in basketball.

(Also, since I just rolled my eyes at Dennis Dodd I should point out that this is a good and interesting piece he got first.)

Da Coach D. I forgot that LSU hired Cajun Brady Hoke after running Les Miles out of town, and have been momentarily boggled by this once again. LSU has all the money in the world, and they hired an interim coach whose previous experience was crashing and burning at Ole Miss. Anyway, Orgeron is using the NCAA's new camp rules to shut the rest of the country out of Louisiana. Michigan canceled a scheduled camp of their own, but that pales in comparison to the hoops Texas has been trying to jump through:

This marks the third announced camp in Louisiana that Texas was scheduled to take part in. And it’s the third camp that LSU has worked hard behind the scenes to prevent from happening. In a phone interview earlier on Tuesday, the local high school coach who initially helped facilitate the field for the Baton Rouge camp expressed pessimism about it happening. “We're in LSU's backyard,” said Mike Roach, the coach at Madison Prep in Baton Rouge and the father of Texas player Malcolm Roach. “Louisiana home cooking may have played a part in it.”​ Roach, who initially tried to help facilitate the camp, declined to go into details on what LSU may have done to attempt to prevent the camp from being held at Memorial Stadium. But his comments proved to be prescient.

After camps affiliated with Texas got canceled at Louisiana College and Southeastern Louisiana in the past few weeks, Mumme acknowledged on Tuesday afternoon there was still a chance LSU or political officials in the state would attempt to thwart Texas’s presence. “Oh yeah,” Mumme said. “But it’s only a day away now. I don’t think there’s a lot they can do. The only thing that can kill it is if it rains.”

He was wrong.

A silly waste of time on their part, and one that does nothing to help anyone. It sucks most of all for the mid-level kids who might catch on at Cornell or Belhaven or wherever if they can just get in front of some coaches; top-level guys don't need and rarely work out at these satellite camps.

But Orgeron's mostly notable for being unintelligible, so that fits.

Somebody did it for me. Many thanks to the Crimson Quarry, which donned its fisking hat in response to this:

This saves me a couple hours of brow-furrowed typing. For real:

[Politi:] Big Ten rival Michigan

[CQ]: Ahh of course, that famous Rutger rival Michigan, against whom the games are always close.

This is a thing a person said and was paid for.

I do have assorted comments about the Rutgers thing three years in that will not reference the Politi column:

  • The huge uptick in dough raked in by the league is approximately zero percent Rutgers's doing. Rutgers was useful to Delany as he attempted to expand the Big Ten Network's footprint. The 15-million-dollar uplift this year is because of the Big Ten's new national contracts with FOX and ESPN. The Michigan-OSU game, which is on FOX for the first time this year, is a bigger reason for the uplift than every game Rutgers plays in every sport.
  • Rutgers is probably worth it in this brief window when they don't get a a full share and cable cutting has not been epidemic, which is all Jim Delany cares about since he's old and will never have any legacy other than dollar bills.
  • We should kick Rutgers out the instant they're supposed to get a full share.

Matt Brown addresses the elephant in the room for fans: we get zilch from the Big Ten's constant dollar chasing. We get less than that.

Does the difference between $51 million in conference payouts and $43 million in conference payouts change the fan experience, or even the trajectory of football or basketball programs in a meaningful way? It’s very hard to argue it does, especially if you’re a fan of an already rich program, like say, Ohio State.

Nobody gets a bowl invitation because they got the biggest conference check. There is no trophy for it. It’s a meaningless thing to brag about.

But the addition of Rutgers does impact the fan experience and day to day performance of football and basketball programs. It means fewer games between traditional opponents for your favorite teams. It means an RPI anchor in basketball and baseball. It means an expensive road trip. And it means a lot of unwatchable games.

Again, we should kick 'em out in three years just for the fun of it.

Oh okay. Sympathy for John Calipari is still reading zero:

"They need more inventory for their own network so you just play more league games and then you have more inventory for your network to put on," Calipari said via teleconference Tuesday. "Hopefully in our case in this league (the Southeastern Conference) we stay where we are and if we don't, we'll make it work."

"What you do is, you take away some of those kind of games that have been good to us," Calipari said. "North Carolina, for example: If they go to 20 games we won't have any more series with North Carolina, so I'm not for it."

Calipari cancelled the UK-Indiana rivalry because Indiana refused to play at a neutral site. He can pound rocks.

Some hockey recruiting stuff. Bob MacKenzie's annual poll of NHL scouts and GMs in the run-up to the draft is out. Incoming freshman Josh Norris is a late first round pick at #23; rising sophomore Luke Martin is #69, nicely slotted into the early third round. Michigan also picked up its first new commit of the Pearson era when Phillipe Lapointe jumped on board a couple days ago. Phillipe is former Red Wing Martin Lapointe's son

Etc.: Muckalt hire official. Hooray for (potential) (slight) changes in municipal bonds that would (hypothetically) make it tougher for billionaires to get public money for stadiums. All hail the double team.  Second string OSU TE out for season.

Oklahoma State's mascot is stranger than fiction. As college and NFL OL play diverges, busts become more common. Should be sent to all linemen considering M. Paris, London, and Normandy Beach on the docket next year. Obamas invited to be honorary captains. DJ made a good decision.

Unverified Voracity Borks The Cup

By Brian — June 12th, 2017 at 3:56 PM — 74 comments
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Bork! Last night Carl Hagelin had a case of deja vu when a ref blew the play dead despite a very loose puck in the crease. Luckily for him, the grave miscarriage of justice happened to the other team this time. Result:

Hagelin had the empty-netter to seal it, and that's Carl Hagelin: the guy you put on the ice with a minute left when you're up 1-0 in game six of the Stanley Cup finals. Congrats to the Penguins and their veritable horde of college hockey alums; nuts to all the people who call Sidney Crosby "Cindy."

Better than perfect. I don't know how Michigan is claiming a 1006 APR for one year, but they are indeed:

This is a much better thing to try to figure out than "what score do they need to not get nailed?"

Amateurism is bad and dumb, part 300. UCF has a kicker. You probably did not know this but could extrapolate it from facts. It is a certainty that no one wants to give this kicker money for playing college football. He plays for Central Florida. He is a kicker. He has zero career field goals. But he's also a minor Youtube star with 52,000 subscribers. Fly, meet nuclear bomb:

On Saturday, June 10, De La Haye uploaded a new YouTube video titled, “Quit college sports or quit YouTube?”. In the video, the kicker showed up to a meeting at the football offices exclaiming he felt like it was Judgement Day.

“Everything’s going to go well,” he said in the video. “We’re just going to talk about ways that I can keep doing what I’m doing and follow the rules.”

It’s unclear who the meeting was with, but upon returning, De La Haye said he was basically given an ultimatum of choosing between football or YouTube videos.

“The meeting went well, but it didn’t go well at the same time,” he said. “Basically, I’m not allowed to make any money off of my YouTube videos. I’m working hard basically as a job — filming, editing and things of that sort, and I’m not allowed to make any money. If I do, then bad things happen for me. I feel like they’re making me pick between my passion for what I love to do shooting videos and entertaining and my other passion, playing football.”

This isn't an anomaly. This is the ruthless logic of amateurism as practiced by the NCAA: not only will we not give you any money, but nobody else can give it to you either. Even if it has nothing to do with sports. Even if you are so obscure that you're not even an AAC school's primary kicker.

Lavall Jordan moving on up? Jordan just took over UWM but there's an opening at Butler and he almost got the job once before:

Jordan will certainly be a person of interest when Beilein decides to hang 'em up, and Butler would be a fine platform via which to confirm or dis-confirm the idea that he should be the successor.

What is even going on in Oxford. The Ole Miss saga—I can call it a saga because it involves men in helmets bellowing nonsense and ends with an axe going through someone's forehead—takes an odd twist:

A business in Oxford, Miss., has filed a civil complaint alleging defamation that could reverberate through the University of Mississippi’s ongoing NCAA case. Rebel Rags LLC, an Oxford-based clothing company, filed the complaint Friday in Lafayette County Circuit Court.

The suit alleges defamation in the NCAA testimony of two Mississippi State football players, Leo Lewis and Kobe Jones, and also Lindsey Miller, the estranged stepfather of former Rebel star Laremy Tunsil. In Ole Miss’s response to the NCAA’s notice of allegations last week, it attempts to deny the allegations that two recruits and the family member of a recruit—Lewis, Jones and Miller—received a total of $2,800 in gear from Rebel Rags.

The store in question is named as a booster and if disassociated will lose its ability to sell Ole Miss gear. This is a slight problem for a store that only sells Ole Miss gear. Therefore this, which cannot be good for Ole Miss. Either the NCAA will pause for the outcome of a court case, lengthening the recruiting purgatory that caused Hugh Freeze to refer to his 2017 class as a penalty, or it will do whatever it's going to do anyway. The general thought is that the NCAA will do the latter, leaving this defamation lawsuit as an attempt to exact some revenge on the folks who set the Ole Miss program on fire.

What is even going on in East Lansing. Another gent who won't be playing for MSU this year:

Former Michigan State lineman Cassius Peat says he felt "blindsided" earlier this week when coaches told him he didn't have a spot on the team less than a week from when he was supposed to report to East Lansing.

Peat told the Detroit Free Press that Michigan State coaches informed him Wednesday that he shouldn't return to campus for summer workouts.

"I have respect for them, and I understand it's a business," Peat told the Free Press. "But morally, man, as a 20-year-old kid with a family, for them to do that is -- I can't even put it into words, to be honest."

Peat was the ultra-rare JUCO guy who was set to return to his original school. Since he is an ambulatory person large enough to play DL and Michigan State looks set to have two walk-ons on their DE depth chart, this could not have been voluntary on MSU's part. Peat must have failed to get by the Clearinghouse.

The number of players MSU has lost to offseason attrition is truly prodigious:

  • OL Thiyo Lukusa: quits team, says he's giving up football, ends up at JUCO.
  • S Drake Martinez: probably a playing time transfer
  • DE Donovan Winter: dropped after armed burglary charge
  • LB Jon Reshcke: dropped N-bomb on teammate
  • WR Donnie Corley: charged with criminal sexual conduct
  • DE Josh King: charged with criminal sexual conduct
  • S Demetric Vance: charged with criminal sexual conduct
  • DE Auston Robertson, charged with criminal sexual conduct
  • DT Cassius Peat: probably not qualified?
  • CB Kaleel Gaines: JUCO transfer, academics related?
  • S Kenney Lyke: another JUCO transfer, academics related?

That might not be it, either. MSU's Scout site reported that CB Vayante Copeland and DE Robert Bowers were gone as well; Dantonio directly refuted that report but when insider sites report negative news there's almost always something to it. If those guys do end up gone MSU will be down almost an entire recruiting class of guys they expected to be on the team this fall. Add in the dismal finish to MSU's 2017 class and they're going to go into this season with a roster as depleted as a sanctioned PSU program was a few years back.

This is an amazing carousel. Via Get The Picture, an amazing thing about Florida:

Transfer quarterbacks are nothing new for Florida, which has seen six of its own quarterbacks transfer since 2010 and had signal-callers Luke Del Rio and Austin Appleby transfer in to the program. So far, the players coming in haven’t done much more than the players going out, and Zaire is hoping that all changes with him.

That's a transfer out per year. Since you usually recruit one quarterback a year… carry the two… some long division… take the cosine… that's bad.

Not bad enough for Florida to stop winning the SEC East, apparently.

Etc.: DJ Wilson #16 on the SBN mock draft. State theater renovations underway; end result will be four small theaters. Bruce Arena helped the US scratch out a draw at Azteca yesterday because he's not a goof pretending to be a coach. CMU to be a bodybag game for basketball this fall. This would be a good fix for illegal men downfield being hard to call. It's Harbaugh's job to find the loopholes though. Harbaugh goes to Washington. Wagner up to 245.

Unverified Voracity Is A Mythical Creature

By Brian — March 29th, 2017 at 1:14 PM — 81 comments
Filed under:

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"Access to the legal system requires money; also that was holding." [Fuller]

The most interesting man in the world. Jim Harbaugh is (probably) the only football coach in history to land a Politico interview and come off more educated on the topic of said interview than most elected officials:

Politico: What was the response to the tweet when you sent it out?

Harbaugh: Mostly positive, varying to some degree of people’s awareness. There's issues that people just don't understand. One of the biggest issues that got me most fired up is how fines and fees are being used to punish the poor. I've learned how the devastating effect it can have on lives of low income Americans. I mean across the country 48 states have increased civil court fees since 2010 and they're using those fees to pay for government services and not just courts but roads and generating millions and in some states billions of dollars.

But basically the crux of it is when people can't afford to pay a fine or a fee for things like a speeding ticket or municipal violation then they get additional fees. Late fees can start piling up and these fees can double, triple, quadruple the total amount due and if somebody has an inability to pay that fine that can quickly snowball into a driver's license suspension or driver time. People aren't even able to go to work. So you can't pay a fine or a fee and then you lose your driver's license. You're not able to get to a job, and a lot of people, I mean, they’ve got to work.

Also Harbaugh quotes the Federalist Papers in this interview. It is quite an object, the interview.

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Bamba (center) yukking it up with fellow BOYCOTT THIS COMPANY

A version of reality including this guy would be nice. Brendan Quinn hits up the [Boycott This Company Until There Is At Least One Ugly Person In Any Of Their Commercials Ever] All-American Game, to focus on the guy Michigan is recruiting: Mo Bamba. Nobody thinks Michigan is actually going to get this dude but MAYBE:

"There's a significant difference between greed and hunger," he said. "When you're greedy, you just want things. That's your only need. But when you're hungry for things, it's a mixture of need and want, which is more logical to me."

Bamba is a different cat, it appears, and hopefully that will take him to Michigan instead of the one-and-done factories down south. I mean, it's not going to. But maybe! But no.

If he did do the thing he isn't going to do that would be kind of good though?

With my own eyes, I saw Bamba grab a rebound near the shot clock during Tuesday's practice. I mean, I think I saw it. Watching Bamba can sometimes feel like bearing witness to Paul Bunyan swing an ax. The facial expressions of the NBA scouts sitting baseline told the story of this young man's mythology. After watching Bamba stretch, a veteran sportswriter covering the event approached me to say: "He's got joints I don't have."

Bamba sees himself as a stretch four and if there's anyone on the planet who can effectively sell his development of enormous inside-outside guys it's John Beilein. Dude has two 6'10"+ potential first round picks* collectively shooting 38% from three on his roster. Neither was as highly recruited as Bamba, to say the least.

Yes, this section has been a waste of time. Unless! But no.

*[2018 please]

Chris Collins might not be nice, but it's the system that rewards him. It wouldn't be worth mentioning except for the fact that so many people went to Medill and enjoyed telling us about pristine Northwestern being everything that's right with college athletics, usually two seconds after they slammed Jim Harbaugh. But since they exist and they did:

On February 3, 2015, the Northwestern men's basketball team somberly walked to the visiting locker room of the Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Nebraska, after a 16-point loss to the Cornhuskers.

The team, now 1-8 in the Big Ten, sat down to meet, as it always does after games. Coach Chris Collins, then in his second season at Northwestern, turned to freshman point guard Johnnie Vassar.

According to Vassar and another person who was present, Collins yelled, "Johnnie, you fucking suck."

By any reasonable standard, Vassar had little to do with Northwestern's struggles. A seldom-used reserve, he had played one garbage-time minute against the Huskers. Yet, according to Vassar and another person who was present, Collins continued to berate the backup guard.

That's VICE's Kevin Trahan at the beginning of a lengthy article describing the lengths Collins took to get Vassar off his team, which took some doing in the era of four-year guaranteed scholarships but was nonetheless accomplished. It was accomplished by forcing Vassar into a demeaning "internship" that was mostly janitorial work and then juking timecards to boot him. One catch, via a D-I compliance officer:

"You can't push them off to another obligation," the official said. "There's nowhere in the NCAA manual that says anything about that. If they say, 'you need to do 40 community service hours,' no, you don't. It doesn't say anything about that." Another NCAA Division I school compliance official confirmed that analysis to VICE Sports.

Northwestern booted Vassar off the team after a year and then did whatever they had to in order to get his scholarship available again. Chris Collins seems like an incredible dick in the process. And not even a competent one:

One card spells Vassar's name wong; one has only another person's name on it (with that person's name crossed out); one says "Johnnie V" and has another crossed-out name; one is blank; and three have Vassar's name spelled correctly, but in handwriting that appears to be different than Vassar's.

None of this is news; what is news is that Vassar refused to suck it up and go quietly despite it being much, much easier to take the hint and move on. I admire that bullheadedness. Someone's gotta be Curt Flood.

The Vassar story once again exposes how the NCAA's terrible incentives force players and coaches into adversarial relationships annually. You should not be surprised if dicks like Chris Collins do well in a system that is set up to reward dick behavior. It forced John Beilein into similar last year when he no doubt encouraged Aubrey Dawkins and Ricky Doyle to find greener pastures.

A solution to Vassar's problem should be easy: allow him to keep his scholarship without impacting how many scholarship kids Northwestern can recruit. That costs money, and that's historically been a stumbling block because the SWAC and Colonial type schools without any outnumber those in power conferences; with autonomy there should be nothing stopping the Power 5 from allowing someone cut from a team to continue on scholarship, medical hardship or no.

Speaking of non-Bamba options and transfers. Per Some Guy, Michigan is on Washington PF Noah Dickerson's list of potential destinations as he transfers away from Washington.

Dickerson doesn't look like a great fit: he's not a stretch four in any way—he is 1/10 on threes in his career and his 68% FT rate last year does not suggest he's a butterfly waiting inside a pupa—and would likely have to play the 5 at Michigan, where he'd join Teske and Davis as 5-only contemporaries.

OTOH, he drew a buttload of fouls and was an excellent rebounder and interior scorer. The most fun thing about him is wondering how you have the #1 pick in the NBA draft and a dude with an 115 ORTG on average usage who pulls down rebounds at an 11%/23% rate and go 9-22. Lorenzo Romar, man.

Exit Melo Trimble. The Maryland guard is headed for the NBA draft and will hire an agent, figuring that another year under Mark Turgeon isn't going to get him solidly in the first round. The locals are a little cheesed off:

With 1,658 career points to his name, he would've had a chance to chase the No. 1 spot on the school's career scoring list next season, but he'll pursue a professional career rather than local immortality.

He probably figures that when you lose in the first round as a six seed in the NBA nobody gets on your case.

Etc.: Where Peppers fits in the NFL. Charges coming for MSU higher ups because of Larry Nassar? Don't click here unless you know karate.

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