radio

Per press release the University of Michigan re-upped with CBS and in the process got at least some Michigan content back on the biggest sports radio station in the State of Michigan's biggest metro area.

DETAILS:

The press release:

CBS RADIO DETROIT

SIGNS A MULTI-YEAR AGREEMENT TO BROADCAST

U OF M FOOTBALL, BASKETBALL AND HOCKEY

DETROIT – CBS RADIO Detroit’s WWJ Newsradio 950 (WWJ-AM), 97.1 The Ticket (WXYT-FM) and CBS Sports Radio 1270 (WXYT-AM) in association with IMG, announced today a long-term alliance to air University of Michigan football, basketball and hockey. The multi-year agreement is an extension of a partnership that began more than twenty years ago.

WWJ-AM is the flagship station for U of M Football and 97.1 The Ticket will simulcast select games.  U of M Basketball will air on WWJ-AM and U of M Hockey will air on Sports Radio 1270.  In addition, 97.1 The Ticket will carry a weekly interview with U of M Football Coach Jim Harbaugh.

…

“We are excited that IMG renewed our great partnership with the CBS RADIO Detroit family. This will continue to provide a consistent flagship home for Michigan football and basketball broadcasts in southeast Michigan and will place our hockey games on a regular channel in the market. We look forward to another multi-year partnership on game broadcasts and coaches radio shows,” said Warde Manuel, Donald R. Shepherd Director of Athletics.

Debbie Kenyon, Senior Vice President/Market Manager, CBS RADIO Detroit said, “WWJ Newsradio 950, CBS Sports Radio 1270 and 97.1 The Ticket are thrilled to renew our partnership with IMG and the University of Michigan. IMG and U of M are truly one of the best sports partners in the business.”

“It’s an honor to continue our relationship with the university and be the flagship station for University of Michigan football and basketball.  It’s a perfect partnership between two traditional organizations WWJ Newsradio 950 and the UM” said Rob Davidek, WWJ Program Director.

Getting Michigan more content back on 97.1 is good news for us metro-Detroiters who've spent the intervening dark years trying to follow the bits of 1050 WTKA's signal that make it here from Ann Arbor. The simulcast on the header stations fixes a Dave Brandonism that had all the good stuff disappearing to the AM station that usually runs basic news and traffic updates (950).

A Short History: Michigan's radio presence in Detroit has been a sore spot since 2005, when Michigan State made a deal with WJR that included dropping Michigan (legend has it a WJR media bus stopped that moment and left Brandstatter et al. stranded on the side of the road). Martin turned to CBS, who squeezed various sports into weird spots across all their stations. If you got in your car in the tri-county area the last 10 years you wouldn't know if Michigan's on AM or FM, the oldies station or the place you listen for traffic updates.

Meanwhile the big local FM station you leave your car tuned to for Tigers/Red Wings/Pistons would have Valenti and Foster exploring the cosmological extremity of take temperature. Brandon signed the last deal in 2011 which put most of the content on 950 AM and none of it on 97.1. Accidents where the driver knocked themselves out by slamming their foreheads on steering wheels increased 84 percent. We rarely got a hockey game, and basketball games were interrupted by other stuff so frequently that my best bet here in West Bloomfield was to tune to 1050 and plan my route to get West toward Ann Arbor as soon as possible.

A few years ago ESPN tried to get into the Detroit sports market with 105.1 and had an opportunity to brand themselves as the M/somewhat-intelligent alternative to the 97.1/astoundingly-dumb-even-for-sports-talk-radio option we were living with. Instead ESPN tried to out-hot-take Terry Foster, and as of last month the station is back to music. Michigan's deal with 97.1 doesn't include any content shifts (97.1 was already airing the Pizza House show as of last year) but it may be a good opportunity to explore the market for listeners who can speak in complete sentences.

Lions games were also on 97.1 through last year, but they are switching to WJR to join what is now basically MSU, Mitch Albom, and, um, "news talk."

Kind of a big deal. As of 9 PM Wednesday, this was SI's college football front page:

That is the lead story—a scathing roundtable from three of SI's main CFB writers—and six of the eleven top stories on the sidebar either about the Morris incident or tangential concerns (the OSU attendance thing).

Excerpts from that lead article:

STAPLES: Did Brandon throw Hoke under the bus, run him over, back up and run him over again? Or did he run him over three times? …

RICKMAN: Everyone in a position of power here is most concerned with protecting themselves, so they're passing blame around. "I didn't see it." "We didn't have enough evidence." Hoke's trying to keep his job. Brandon's trying to keep his job. At the crux of it, this is a person we're talking about. A kid who has his whole life ahead of him. And the best we can get out of an athletic department at one of the most prestigious football programs in the country is, "We should have done better." 

This is awful on all levels. …

SCHNELL: I’m not going to accuse a coach of knowingly putting a player in danger, but I will say this: People in charge do some desperate things when they think they’re close to losing their jobs. As for Brandon’s role, it’s his athletic department, and the buck stops with him. If he’s going to take responsibility, ultimately, then he needs to hold a press conference and allow questions, not email out a few paragraphs long after most people have gone to sleep. That’s a coward’s way out.

I was not kidding about "scathing."

Speaking of scathing. Stewart Mandel:

I was pretty surprised to wake up Monday morning and find that Brady Hoke hasn't been fired yet. The poor performances are bad enough, but the disregard (and flimsy excuses) for player safety should've been grounds for immediate dismissal. Is there any good reason for having him finish the season? The only thing I can think of is recruiting, but come on. Everyone in the nation knows he's gone after this year.

-- William Daniels, Mt. Morris, Michigan

Well then I can only imagine how surprised you were to wake up Tuesday morning and find out that Shane Morriswas diagnosed with a concussion on Sunday but no one thought to inform the head coach by the following day.

The Morris situation has provided a mind-numbing window into the level of dysfunction within the Michigan athletic department. Hoke’s days were already numbered due to the program’s on-field deterioration into a poster for offensive ineptitude. The only way Hoke’s team is going to a bowl game this year is if there aren’t enough eligible 6-6 teams. The Morris story only intensified the level of outrage surrounding Hoke.

Mandel goes on to say the stuff about 5-0 and we're defending the guy, and I mean… come on. If this happens to a successful coach it is a strike but not one that dooms a regime, and a sizeable majority of the anger in the Michigan fanbase right now is directed at the athletic director for the ham-handed mismanagement everyone is citing.

Additionally in scathing. They asked Don Canham's widow what she thought:

“I just think it’s gone way overboard with the crazy music and Beyonce and Eminem and that sort of thing,” Canham-Keeley said. “I guess he’s trying to cater to the students but it’s obviously not working. For me the pageantry of the football game is the band coming out on the field and the tradition of the drum major.”

…

“I’ve narrowed it down to fireworks, flyovers and empty seats,” she said.

“To me it’s become a circus, and that’s not what it should be. I’m born and raised in Ann Arbor. I grew up with Michigan football. That’s not—to me—Michigan football.”

She goes into the Beyonce/Eminem stuff and you're like "oh she's just old" and then she immediately cuts to how the students aren't buying it and you're like that's a fantastic point I forgot you were Don Friggin' Canham's wife.

Yet more in scathing. USA Today's Christine Brennan calls for firing everybody:

…at a Monday news conference, Hoke said Morris did not suffer a concussion. He also said that he and Brandon hadn't discussed it.

But, after midnight early Tuesday morning, Brandon released a statement in which he said that Morris had indeed suffered a "probable, mild concussion," whatever that is.

Brandon also said that he had met with "those who were directly involved" since Sunday, which clearly would include Hoke, who of course said he hadn't talked to Brandon about it.

So the two are either not telling the truth or simply incompetent. Or perhaps both.

Not in scathing. Denard Robinson spoke up for Brady Hoke's character, as did Jordan Kovacs and Elliot Mealer. Former kicker Jay Feely defended Brandon… by attacking the students as whiners.

For Students complaining about $295 season ticket prices, that's about 1/3 price of NFL tickets ... Even bad NFL teams w/ no tradition

They're not just complaining. They're not going. Yelling at them about that doesn't fix the problem. The customer is always right, right? You wanted customers. Now you've got 'em.

The oracle speaks. Detroit media jihadist Jeff Moss likes to get on Wojo for not having strong takes, but the more reasonable you are the more people pay attention to you when you come down from the mountain and say NOPE. Wojo has done so:

Brady Hoke's fate was sealed before Shane Morris wobbled on the field, before the clumsy statements and misstatements, before every media outlet in America leapt on a juicy controversy complete with compelling video.

This is on athletic director Dave Brandon now, and if Hoke should be fired, likely after the season, Brandon should be, too.

That speaks volumes.

Meta-protest. I would like to protest this from Wojo's article, though.

A few hundred fans actually marched onto the lawn of Schlissel's campus house Tuesday night chanting for Brandon's dismissal. There's a mob outrage to this, which is uncomfortable.

It's not a mob until it does something unreasonable. About a thousand people peaceably assembled, talked/shouted at each other, and then dispersed. They wanted to make a point the only way they could, and did.

Actually being there was fun. One guy nearby exclaimed "this is so much better than a home game," and I don't know that he was saying that just because he wasn't watching a football team get its jibblies kicked in at the time. Once a random hero decided to start us all in the direction of the president's house there was more passion on display than these students get to express when Michigan's blasting music at them during every lull.

After, a clearly skeptical media guy came up to me and asked me some nasty questions—"do you think this stunt will hurt Brandon's ability to hire a new coach?" was his leadoff. I was taken aback by "stunt." A stunt is something an organization does for attention. This was the opposite, a movement so grass roots it was literally unorganized.

We want our athletic department back. If it's a mob it's got the most articulated complaints of any mob in history.

Also that guy with a megaphone takes a badass picture. Apparently he's a public policy senior:

Just lookin' at that dude like that is more leadership than Brandon's shown this week. #ThisGuy4AD

I LIKE DAN DAKICH. He had me on his show yesterday after I tweeted something jerky out in frustration at things Mike and Mike and Colin Cowherd were saying, and I appreciate the opportunity for a half hour segment, which you can find here. A couple of clarifications and omissions:

1. Dakich thought some of my other examples of Brandon errors were petty, and they were, but that was the point. The things the hypersensitive Michigan fans have been complaining about for the duration of his tenure have come home to roost in a major way. This is how they handle everything, and there's no reason to expect they'll change.
2. I don't think I said the Dakich-Burke combo was creepy. I said I was "off to patent a system that turns all color commentary into Dan Dakich hitting on Doris Burke" once; a podcast demanded that "this happens over and over again. GET A ROOM! ON MY TELEVISION!" And I think that's it. For the record, she was totally into him.
3. Apparently my level was quite a bit lower than Dakich, so when we talked over each other it was just him. Our conversation felt a lot more even to me on the phone; I thought it was a good back and forth—I've had radio appearances that I thought were unfair (cough **ALBOM** cough); this was not one of them.
4. Dakich really is my favorite color guy other than maybe Jay Bilas right now. The reasons he's good at color can make him come off as abrasive, but I'll take that a thousand times over PRIME TIME PLAYER BAYBEEE blather. I mean, there was one time Michigan was playing K-State where Dakich called one of their post guys out for never passing the ball and he never passed the ball. Every time he got a touch we were on the edge of our seat. That's adding to a broadcast.
5. I didn't much like the part of the interview that slid into the Guys Like Me From Gary Who Are Adults versus You Guys On The Internet Who Are Beta Males. I have a mortgage, man, and 2005-era blogger cracks are so dated.

Anyway, if he's interested I'll gladly go on any time.

Well… that's not good. Bill Connelly's updated projections foresee this:

• 8-4 or better: 2.1%
• Bowl eligible: 35%
• 4-8 or worse: 33%

Michigan is expected to go 5-7 when all possibilities are jammed together.

And half of this is based on the system that was ranking Michigan 19th before last weekend. It's possible that this is a little grim since we'll probably play Gardner the rest of the way but with Utah losing to WSU it's not like we can even claim the Utes are much good.

Upshot: buy a helmet, and put it on top of your existing helmet. Then dig a bunker under your bunker.

SIDE NOTE: The chance the West winner is 4-4 has dropped to 0.1%. Dagnabit.

Offensive line starts are not particularly indicative, unless you don't have any. Buried in a random Barking Carnival post:

While O-line starts does correlate with stronger offensive performance, it’s not everything. Ohio State is the only team with fewer than 30 O-line starts performing above-average, but they’re well above average, and you don’t have to go much higher before the scatterplot becomes a field of white noise and the trendline levels out.

That said, this chart doesn’t take into account that we’re on a new offensive system and we’ve lost our QB, so the fact that we’re not too far below the trendline for our number of O-line starts is an optimistic takeaway. But honestly it’s not much to hang one’s hat on. If we start playing better, it won’t be just because the players are getting more experience – it’ll be because they’re getting more experience in an effective offensive system.

(Horizontal axis: number of O-line starts at the beginning of the year (Texas is adjusted for current personnel); vertical axis: offensive S&P; and I’m using a power law trendline, to reflect that the difference between 0 & 30 starts should be more impactful than the difference between 90 & 120)

Looks like you're good or not good and OL starts are a very minor factor, what with the random scatter of the plot.

Etc.: The MZone has come back with what's undoubtedly the creepiest post I've ever featured in. Hypothetical AD Rich Rodriguez would have handled this better than Brandon did. I am dead serious about this.

This made Inside Higher Ed, which… okay. Are we in Cat Fancy? I think that's the last outlet that hasn't covered this.

Let's all not panic. Uni-watch reports that the piping is dead:

(As per usual, do not be alarmed at the white pants.) I was never a piping fan—too West Virginia—so its removal is welcome.

(HT: the board's JeepinBen.)

WTKA appearance. Part one about the offense and the WMU game. Part two includes a Get Off My Lawn rant about the dog groomers, and discussion of Notre Dame. Good calls this time around.

Quote of win. Patrick Omameh on Denard Robinson speech patterns:

“He just has to do everything fast, and I don’t know why,” Omameh said. “I think we’ve kind of adapted to his … I guess, uh … method of speaking. We say he be speaking Florida.”

Yes, I'm a sucker for ungrammatical uses of "be." Also I find it hard to believe why Omameh thinks Denard Robinson doesn't have to do everything fast. He completed a Rubik's Cube before it was invented. He can't eat eggs. When he gets in a Ferrari the car tries to shift him. He's too fast for eggs! What does that even mean HE'S TOO FAST TO FIND OUT

AAAAH

“It’s just real fast,” Omameh said. “Everything is just super sped up. I’m like, ‘You know, you can slow down a little bit if you want us to run the play right. But, you don’t have to.’"

AAH

AH

Even better quote. Manny Diaz on BYU's fullbacks:

They've got fullbacks that want to block your soul.

That is all.

More McGary. Sam Webb's latest article in the News is on Mitch McGary with more from McGary's (and Glenn Robinson's) tough-talking AAU coach Wayne Brumm:

"The post player is intimately and intricately involved in John Beilein's system," Brumm explained. "I don't know anybody who runs a better offensive system for a post player than Michigan. So I have to say, why not (Michigan as a possible destination)? Everybody else is (analyzing McGary's recruitment) like they're a friggin fan. We're trying to pick a school that is in Mitch's best interest."

Brumm added: "John Beilein can flat-out coach. The people I talk to and the coaches I talk to, I'll flat-out tell you — they are scared of John Beilein. They are worried about the day he starts getting the talent that they've got (at their schools). He's been at a bunch of places that he couldn't recruit high-major talent. Now he's at Michigan and it looks like he is making some headway there. When he starts with an even slate in terms of talent, look out! Look what he did last year. Look what he did with Darius Morris, Timmy Hardaway, and look what he has done with Jordan Morgan. My goodness, isn't anybody paying attention?"

That sounds like a guy who would like McGary to hit up Ann Arbor. On this morning's WTKA recruiting roundup, Webb delivered the "gut feeling" on McGary's top three: Michigan, Maryland, and Florida. No disrespect to those programs but that's a lot less of a mountain to hurdle than UK, UNC, and Duke, the other schools he plans to visit. I'm kind of thinking this is going well. Listen to the roundup—Webb won't say it (specifically disclaims it, actually) but it sounds like he believes this is happening.

Brumm also literally states that Bacari Alexander "gets it." WOO!

Mattison on the trail. Wolverine Nation—how is that URL even available?—has launched. They've put Tom behind a paywall and don't have an RSS feed, but here's this excellent article from Mike Rothstein on Greg Mattison's recruiting style:

"He didn't realize at the time just how expensive they were," former Texas A&M defensive coordinator Bob Davie said. "The business manager brought him in and they could have bought a new car with how much he spent on that mobile phone. I'll never forget that.

"That's just how he does it. He's going to work harder than anybody."

Rothstein hits up Mattison's head coach from back in the day when he was a D-line coach at Northwestern and various players from his Notre Dame days.

The other guy. ND DC Bob Diaco on Denard:

"Unfortunately it just is what it is," defensive coordinator Bob Diaco said. "We need to be perfect, because any little crease and it's over, he's gone. It's not like, somebody hits a crease and he rattles for eight, 10 yards and you get him on the ground. This guy hits the crease and he can punch a hole in the top of the defense like that." …

"It's just a monumental task defending a runner at quarterback in particular, that it almost gives you the feeling like they're playing with 12," Diaco said. "It's a problem."

This game will not only be the first real opportunity to see what Borges does with Denard, it will be a major hype-check on Diaco. After his defense gave up 35 in a humiliating loss to Navy that had option-savvy Middies in disbelief that anyone could be so incompetent:

Navy wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. Kelly and Diaco just have absolutely no clue how the Navy offense works. …

If Diaco and Kelly hadn’t seen it before, then I have no idea what film they’ve been watching, or if they even watched any at all. That isn’t even hyperbole; they thought that Navy’s fullback ran through the A gap. And that was their plan– to send the inside linebackers crashing into the A gap that nobody was running through. That just made those LBs easier to block as either the fullback or quarterback ran right by them and into the secondary. …

What’s almost as incredible as this horrible game plan is the fact that despite Kelly’s assertion to the contrary, Notre Dame never adjusted. Those ILBs kept running into the A gap for the entire game. Once or twice Te’o scraped outside to make a play in the backfield, and I’d think,”OK, now we’ll see something else.” But we didn’t. Notre Dame would go right back to the same old thing on the next play, and the Mids would pick up a big gain.

Diaco appeared clueless in a media interview soon after. The next week his D gave up almost 400 yards and 28 points in a loss to Tulsa and people were screaming for his head. The next four games were all wins in which ND game up 17 or fewer points.

That stretch:

• Three points ceded to Utah, a mediocre offense.
• Three against Army, whatever.
• 16 against USC in a driving rainstorm slopfest in which the Trojans were helmed by Mitch Mustain.
• 17 against Miami in a game where Jacory Harris threw three picks on seven attempts and was yanked for Stephen Morris, who averaged 8.5 YPA but threw a pick of his own.

Last week USF only got 250 yards but BJ Daniels is horrible. Is the improvement real or a mirage? No idea.

I'm like what? Your game programs for ND are going to be electronical:

Each gameday program includes an audio file of "The Catch," Desmond Howard's famous touchdown against Notre Dame twenty years ago.

But it's not just the audio of the call, from the announcers that day — Frank Beckmann for the Michigan Sports Network and Brent Musburger for ABC — it also includes the play call from Michigan's head football coach at the time Gary Moeller and sound from Michigan quarterback Elvis Grbac in the huddle.

That's kind of cool. Fifteen bucks cool? I'll listen to yours.

BONUS: Darren Rovell suggests there is a person in this world whose "dream" was to "embed the audio file of a famous play into a gameday program." Reach for the stars.

Blog content. NKOTB From Hope There Is Glory is not a Notre Dame blog, but a Michigan blog sporting statistical breakdowns of the WMU game. Here's a section:

Etc.: WMU stunt blitz picture pagin' from BWS. Vincent Smith picks it up. MVictors on Michigan's first night game. Jerry Palm projects us in the… Fiesta Bowl? Good lord. Very cool Mike Leach interview from a technically oriented football site. HT: Smart Football.

Sippin on Purple breaks down a That Goddamned Counter Draw the Wildcats ran against BC. Why don't we use this for good? Denard rollout will make this enormously successful.