rule changes

If you're invested in ice dancing outcomes, stop. A couple other bullets to space it out.  We have heaping helpings of OH-LOL to do that.

Detroit doesn't even have an NFL team. I mean, this is just an appalling lack of knowledge about geography, professional sports, and the Ford family.

Ohio State versus something called Middlebury versus Ball State, and the questions are apparently Celebrity Jeopardy level. That's a slap in the face to Ball State.

Final Jeopardy: HOW MANY FEET DO YOU HAVE? JUST LOOK DOWN. COUNT 'EM. IT'S NOT HARD.

Answers:

• What is feet
• How are seven
• -IO

Ain't come here to play spell. On the one hand, I'm actually glad that Marcus Hall can leverage his double-bird flip into cold hard cash. I felt strongly positive about that activity. On the other, they're using the split M logo and can't spell:

Spelling gaffe on Marcus Hall's double-bird poster is a true win. "We ain't come here to play school." pic.twitter.com/WTCl5W0nUl HT @BenAxelrod

— Stephen J. Nesbitt (@stephenjnesbitt) February 17, 2014

I mean, if you're going to make bootleg plaques get 'em right. This isn't 'Nam. Hm.

Actually, bootleg plaque-making might be 'Nam. Carry on.

Go Blue gold. Ice dancing couple Charlie White and Meryl Davis are Olympic gold medalists:

Meryl & Charlie's journey to gold: 78.89 short dance, 116.63 free dance, 195.52 total. All world records for the Michigan students in Sochi.

— Stephen J. Nesbitt (@stephenjnesbitt) February 17, 2014

Congratulations, and may the apparently infinite stream of Michigan ice dancing supremacy continue with the Shibutani siblings.

Now. If I had a late night talk show, I would have White and Davis on and ask them if they could put something together for, oh, I don't know, C&C Music Factory. Some variety of 90s hip hop. Just to see them kill that, too.

My other fantastic idea: Jamaican Ice Dance Team. Imagine the possibility. Shabba. Does anyone need a fantastic idea consultant? Because there's my CV. Boom.

It was all a Saban/Bielema plot. Man, the whole ten-seconds thing did not go over well.

Is this real?" one coach texted shortly after the news broke. "I thought it was a joke. No way that passes."

It's not a joke. But it would compel officials to call delay of game on a team for moving too fast.

"It's crazy," said Texas Tech coach Kliff Kingsbury. "College football is the pinnacle of success right now. How do you even mess with that? It would slow the game down. It wouldn't be as fun for the fans."

"The 10-second rule is like asking basketball to take away the shot clock - Boring!" Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy tweeted Thursday. "It's like asking a blitzing linebacker to raise his hand."

Your cynicism level should ramp up even further once you are informed that this is supposed to be a "no change" year and that you can only propose something if it affects player safety.

The proposal is being billed solely as an issue of player safety, and in fact, because this is a "non-rule change" year for the committee, the only way it can put something forward is if it's a tweak to an existing rule (like targeting) or if there's an athlete safety concern.

It's nice to see actual coaches calling out the Think Of The Children reasoning here. Given the blowback, the chances of this thing passing are approximately zero, you'd think.

Oh, please. As part of their institutional mission to try too hard, OSU played some juvenile crap on their scoreboard before their recent ten-point home defeat. As described:

As expected, the video featured Ohio State guard Evan Turner’s 37-foot game-winning 3-pointer at the buzzer of the 2010 Big Ten quarterfinals. It was included among other great Buckeye moments in a rivalry dating back to 1909.

But then there were some added clips, unrelated to Ohio State. One featured Ohio's 65-60 upset of Michigan in the second round of the 2012 NCAA tournament. That's the Ohio Bobcats, not the Ohio State Buckeyes. Another segment highlighted Chris Webber's infamous timeout call in the waning moments of the 1993 national championship game. …

The video wrapped up with an unflattering picture of a Michigan fan, followed by the words, "Pure Michigan," a nod to the state's tourism slogan.

Beilein was asked about it, said he hadn't seen it, and then said

"I hope Michigan never does that," Beilein said. "I don’t want to ever do things like that."

We've blown some of the high ground there with the chicken dance and the skywriting, but there are still many more levels between pure sin-free Domerdom and trying to dredge up painful moments totally unrelated to you 20 years on and making fun of some innocent dude's appearance. (Especially because glass houses, man. Glass houses.) 

But this pissed some OSU fans off because someone from Michigan adding columns in a spreadsheet pisses them off. So when Bacari Alexander tweeted a generic "we are going to beat you" thing, perpetually aggrieved DJ Byrnes at 11W tried to make a big to do about it. If you can't tell the difference between institutionally-authorized "this guy looks dumb lol" and that, you probably think Detroit is in Wisconsin. I look forward to the next time an OSU crowd sings about not giving a damn about the whole state of Michigan unironically.

Whatever, I guess. A ten million dollar gift has induced Michigan to name their head coaching position after the donors. I continually fail to understand why rich people want their name on stuff. If I was rich I would want, like, Zack Novak's name on stuff. Tom Brady. Denard. Dennis Norfleet. What's so great about you, guy? What did you do that was at all relevant?

If I was AD I'd try to crowdfund these things so I could name things after guys who gave the program something.

Etc.: Urban Meyer apparently got in a recruiting battle with South Carolina. Michigan brought in a monster soccer recruiting class. One of the guys is an Ann Arbor native who was on the U17 team and is bigger than Mark Zuckerberg. Burke/Sullinger BFFs again. Bilas interviewed on payin' guys. Saban attempting to adjust to the new world order of spread offenses. See also: wrong side of history.

Don't expect Mitch back.

Heismans past. College Football Live is going state-by-state and, I don't know, talking to people or something. It's the privilege of the internet that I don't have to watch College Football Live and find out about their latest programming initiative. Charles Woodson and Desmond Howard were the featured people when it came to Michigan. Here is their talking:

Reports from people who watched this say it seemed designed to blow a blood vessel in Mark Dantonio's head, BTW.

I do not know how alarmed you should be, but it appears the amount of alarm should, sadly, be nonzero. Incoming mega-recruit Justin Turner did not walk at his graduation because of what appears to be an inability to pass some statewide Ohio standardized test. Here's a really dumb thread on a Massillon message board about it. It's uncertain whether this would prevent him from enrolling at Michigan, as from other reports he's comfortably qualified, and it's also uncertain how an apparently-qualified person could not pass a test on which the questions were probably like so:

water : wet :: water :

A. wet
B. pantaloons
C. noodly appendage
D. I hate Michigan

Unless, that is, he picked A when the right answer was D. Apparently there are further opportunities to take this thing and get it done, if it's an actual barrier to his entry. FWIW, Varsity Blue says Sam Webb says* this is a minor thing unlikely to be an issue:

Webb was not particularly pessimistic about Turner’s ability to still get into school, as he’s a pretty good student who’s already met the NCAA Clearinghouse’s requirements for eligibility, except the no high school diploma thing. There are alternative methods to diploma eligbility, and given Turner’s academic reputation, most don’t foresee him having difficulty there.

It's out there, but I wouldn't get too exercised about it. I'm more concerned about Fitzgerald Toussaint's status.

*(There's been significant backlash against GBMW on this, and while I agree they could use some serious writing lessons, I don't see how reporting something obvious like "Justin Turner didn't walk at graduation" is a big deal. Both premium sites had moderators address the issue before GBMW did and, while they like to hide behind the idea that what's behind the paywall is super secret just-between-us stuff, any information there is instantly transmitted to free message boards across the internet and thereby into the fan consciousness. Also: kid didn't walk at graduation; this is not a secret.)

Buryin'. If there's one lead guaranteed to be buried it's "here's this important rule change," which is inevitably preceded by 300 words about some director of officials who's very sorry about everything but has to ask you to go to hell. And it is so after the Big Ten meetings produced a couple notable changes:

A new rule states that once [rugby] punters are outside the pocket, the defense will not be penalized for running into them or roughing them. The rugby-style punters previously had the advantage of waiting until the last minute to choose whether to punt, run or pass and still draw penalties on the defense. "The defensive team never knew what to do because they didn't want to rough them," Carollo said.

This seems fraught with logistical issues. How is this mystical ability of a punter different from that of a quarterback? Can a punter now roll out, pull up to pass, chuck the ball, and get leveled way late?

Offensive linemen also will be allowed to move up to three yards down the field without being penalized.

I'm somewhat confused here; this sentence follows the previous paragraph immediately and either means 1) a slight change to punting rules or 2) a significant relaxing of prohibitions against linemen downfield. I'm betting it's 1.

Rose Bowlin'. The Rose Bowl is obligated to take a scrub team in the event that 1) A Big Ten or Pac-10 team is yanked into the NC game and 2) a scrub team ends up automatically qualified by finishing in the top 12. That's a somewhat unlikely confluence of events there, and even if it happens it will only happen once:

"It's only going to happen once if it happens at all," Hancock said.

And that's just a totally redundant blockquote but that's life. Totally redundant blockquotes.

Anyway: this places the change even more squarely into the realm of don't-sue-us CYA. The likely effect, if there even is one, is to replace the second-place Pac-10 team with a Utah or a Boise or whatever, which would be a wash in hypothetical opponent strength.

I don't get it, either. Earlier this year I touched on the ongoing Kiffin fiasco, and resolved that this could so either way, with the two ways being "John L Smith" and "Steve Spurrier." A couple months, a couple more inane secondary violations/diarrhea of the mouth incidents, and I've been pushed over the edge: I just think Kiffin is an idiot. I wasn't going to say anything until Get The Picture eloquently summarized the nagging problem I had with the recent spate of MSM articles which had "no, srsly, Lane Kiffin knows what he's doing" as their idiotically contrarian thesis:

If this is such a great approach to resurrecting a national powerhouse, how come the first guy to think of it is a 33-year old whose prior stop as a head coach was a miserable failure?

I just don't buy Kiffin's latest posture. Claiming "no, seriously guys, I meant to do it" is the last refuge of a guy caught with his hand in the idiot jar. True cleverness—see OBC—is apparent. Even if this supposed gambit works in the short run, in the long run Tennessee is going to be seriously hampered by their head coach's lack of intelligence. When the biggest accomplishment you can point to is locking down your hot wife, you have issues.

Oregon State's going to be pissed. So the SEC put an end to this ridiculous oversigning business after Houston Nutt pushed it past its logical extreme, adopting the same policy the Big Ten has by limiting LOIs to 28. They're going to attempt to make this a national policy, and the initial returns are good:

One Big 12 assistant who asked to remain anonymous said he hopes this will push the NCAA to make it a rule throughout Division I football. … "Generally when the SEC makes a push for changes in recruiting, things happen on the NCAA level. So there are a lot of us who believe that this will eventually become something everybody will have to follow, and I think that's a good thing."

Seconded.

Etc.: Daily continues murdering Detroit papers, this time landing an extensive interview with Toney Clemons. Oregon's rushing attack—which you may remember cowering from—in coachy detail. NCAA 10… worth buying? Michigan had "no chance" in '97 according to Corso. Patrick Lucas-Perry is rapidly developing into a major target.