pistons

Grantland is the best. This is great. Read it.

[Ed: light day. Going to Gold Cup game(s). Also is June.]

If reporters looked like this the world would be a different, stranger place. College Football Live called up a local Morgantown reporter to discuss what Doctor Saturday has dubbed "As The Couch Burns." They immediately improved said reporters self-image:

If Mike Casazza woke up today with wolves and a fridge full of chocolate milk this is why.

While we're on ATCB, yes, it has been broached: bring back Rich Rodriguez.

"Mentor." The Dispatch FOIAs Tressel's communications with one Ted Sarniak and comes up with a heavily redacted set of information that invites questions as to who is mentoring who, exactly:

After Tressel received an April 2, 2010, email from a former player warning him of potential NCAA violations, the coach exchanged 77 calls and text messages with and spent a total of 4 1/2 hours talking on the phone with Ted Sarniak, the hometown mentor of quarterback Terrelle Pryor in Jeannette, Pa.

Their longest phone conversation - 18 minutes - happened on Dec. 21, two days before OSU announced Pryor and five others would be suspended for part of the 2011 season for violations.

The two also spoke for three minutes immediately after the Dec. 23 news conference benching Pryor, Daniel Herron, DeVier Posey, Solomon Thomas and Mike Adams for five games and Jordan Whiting for one game.

Tressel and Sarniak exchanged text messages on March 8, the day OSU announced that Tressel had known about the violations for months.

Sarniak will now offer tearful testimony about how Jim Tressel made him into a man. There's still a bunch of stuff that's redacted with OSU claiming it's "personal," but OSU also tried to withhold Chris Cicero's name and a bunch of other things besides that they had no legal ground to do so. That doesn't much matter since the NCAA can ask to see them on pain of pain. (I think, anyway. Lawyer me in the comments if I'm wrong).

"Mistake." Again with the "mistake" language, this time from bow-tie wearing university president and fool Gordon Gee:

"Any time that there is a mistake, or any time that there is an issue that flares up, and we go back through and scrub everything very, very carefully," he said. "We want to make certain that we're asking all the right questions."

It is not a mistake to engage in a months-long cover-up, just like it's not a mistake to give Jim Tressel a gentle massage when you find out he's violated a very serious NCAA bylaw. Nor is it a "mistake" to ignore two separate warnings that you are barely checking on your athlete's cars, or a "mistake" to talk with Terrelle Pryor's shady handler for four and a half hours.

Meanwhile, that article has another insight into OSU's compliance department:

The university's compliance department, however, did warn another university about a former Buckeyes player who has been linked to the NCAA scandal.

In January, former Ohio State running back Jermil Martin enrolled at Ashland University, an NCAA Division II school midway between Columbus and Cleveland.

As required by NCAA rules, Ohio State notified Ashland of problems with Martin's eligibility, Ashland athletic director Bill Goldring said.

Martin was cited in the SI article as a guy with a close relationship with Rife, so the eligibility issues they reported to the DII school should have led to an investigation and so forth and so on. Instead it was all like "whoops, third string fullback, you did bad and have to go and It Is Fortunate you are the only one."

On the other hand, OSU has just updated (in April) its compliance procedures to the satisfaction of the auditing committee. Close that barn door, baby.

Steelebits. Via Get The Picture, Michigan returns a higher percentage of its yards on offense than almost anyone—they're tenth at 93%. And they only graduate one starter on the line. The offense was going to take a step back in terms of FEI and other advanced metrics just by regressing to the mean, but trying to parse out how much of that is going on versus how much the offensive transition is hurting things is going to be difficult.

Actually, it might not be if they just can't run (or throw) out of the I. That'll be something tracked in UFRs. Because it's interesting, not because I am full of hate. Hoke Uber Alles.

Offtopic but wow. Haven't bashed a local columnist in a while and while it's probably not nice to make fun of someone obviously suffering from late-state syphillis… wow:

Pistons need tough leader like Isiah Thomas as coach

If only we had known about this before a dollar of penicillin could have prevented this tragedy. Isaiah Thomas will sexually harass the players, yo, and then he will do what he's done to every NBA team he's ever come in contact with: make them so much worse than you ever thought possible.

Etc.: Mike Hamilton resigns. With OSU on the Volunteer path that means Gene Smith has a couple months before he does the same.

Terry Foster:

Rumors are circulating that the Pistons might break up their starting five by trading Rasheed Wallace to the Chicago Bulls for center Tyson Chandler and forward Andres Nocioni.

ESPN Message Boards:

I have just found out on PistonsTalk.com that this rumor was made up by a 16 year old kid who regularly posts on there...

His name is Jayborne23...

Hilarious...

PistonsTalk.com:

Looks like Jayborne's rumor has come full circle lol.

Some of us should be getting paid by these journalists for the stuff we come up with...they just re-word posts and then print it as coming from a 'league source' :P

More:

Jayborne23 posted on 8/23/2005 9:53:28 PM
HOLY S***, WAS I RIGHT?
Is Sheed for Chandler and Nocioni a real deal? Cause I sincerely made that s*** up. That hoopsworld article mentioned it. WHAT THE F***?

Terry Foster:

wont happen

I just talked to one of my NBA sources. He said the Sheed-Chandler trade has not been discussed by the two teams. It won't happen. Sorry to get you so excited.

PistonsTalk.com:

lol, dumbass

Some Team Mexico Fansite:

Ya fue desmentido, aparentemente fue un rumor iniciado por un pibe de 16 años.

Terry Foster:

Did Anyone Die After Latest Pistons Rumor?

[snip]

Let me see. What harm did writing the rumor cause?
Did someone jump off a building?
Did the Pistons shut down?
Did Rasheed Wallace read the blog and run into hiding?
No. None of this happened. What happened is some of you liked the rumored trade and debated it. And some of you did not.
I hardly think society has been altered.
The good news is this web blog [sic] is getting read. I know it has been quoted in [sic] other web sites, Tigers General Manager Dave Dombrowski is not thrilled with some of the stuff in here and geeks from around the country have used it to peddle female products and medicine to make you more user friendly to your women.
In the future if some of you are too stupid to differentiate between rumor and fact, then just turn the page.
There are some interesting posts on "GetALife.blogspot.com [sic]

Emphasis mine. I think PistonsTalk said it best:

lol, dumbass.