superman

Dundidda dundun.

Dundidda dundun.

Dundidda dundun. Daddiddadun-didda dundun. Daddiddadun-didda dun—

Daddidda DUN-DINNA DAH!

So in case the Kryptonian name wasn't a dead giveaway, Michigan is now possessed of an alien ILB granted incredible powers by Earth's yellow sun, at least when you hear Don Brown tell it. Dr. Blitz has had a keen interest in Kal-El since his spaceship escaped his doomed home planet and crash-landed in a seldom-used field (presumably the Boston College endzone) near Milton Academy back in the early 2017s.

BC extended an offer three days later. Since then, Mullings has popped up in Ann Arbor seven times by my count. 

GURU RANKINGS

Rivals	ESPN	24/7	Composite
4*, 5.9, #11 OLB, #2 MA, #106 Ovr	4*, 82, #14 OLB, #32 East, #1 Mass. #202 Ovr	4*, 91, #15 OLB, #1 MA, #186 Ovr	4*, .9388, #9 OLB, #1 MA, #148 Ovr
Seth Rtg: 4.44☆s	4.18☆s	4.17☆s	4.39☆s

More James Ross (or AJ Dillon) than Devin Bush, Mullings played mostly running back in Massachusetts, so you'd think the scouts wouldn't know if they've got a bird or a plane or what. The scores are quite tight, however, bumping Mullings's composite ranking into the top ten at the position for lack of major outliers. The marginal dissenter, Rivals, has him close to a top-100 player. Again, it's a bit of a bummer that 24/7 is a relative downer (albeit one that agrees with ESPN) over a guy in New England.

One thing I do believe is Mullings is here for a reason, and it's not to score touchdowns. It's to stop them. While there's a D-I running back there, there's NFL potential at linebacker, and the sites are willing to gamble on a guy who's game.

They all have him 6'1"/220 but Mullings was a verified 6'1"/227 at The Opening regional in early May and his coach says he was playing around 230 before losing some pounds to get back to that 225 range.

I believe the rankings here are mostly following the offers, which are indeed considerable, and the fact that this is an underager who's been playing varsity since he was a 13-year-old freshman. The other reason I think his rankings are high is he's the opposite of an academic risk. He has already traveled further than most readers of this site, target of Northwestern/Stanford, goes to a school you have to test into, etc.

[After THE JUMP: The scouting that almost makes it worth it to suggest all our prospects give Notre Dame a try.]

Wondering why you are all the wonderful things you are.

Don't tell Danny Hope, but there was more than one hard-G GIF animating the boards this week. The Flying Denard Photoshop thread, as cropped by blue95, was almost as fruitful as the Lewan twosie and worth your visit. Denard can be seen attacking imperial walkers, pulling Santa's sleigh, riding Falcor, and traveling via DeLorean back to 2011 to screw Tommy Rees. Drkboarder wins two internets for that last. More from the board later; first diaries.

They can be a great people, Kal-El, if they wish to be. In case you missed it among the 10/10/2012 post-a-thon, turd fuguson's graphic representation of the B1G 2013 classes is quite helpful so long as you can resist the urge to defrag it:

Why do so many people have to die for the crime of the century? The newest addition to the weeklies is a preview of the opponent's defense, Illinois being the flavor du semaine. This is death by trident, the guy I bumped for his Purdue front 7 preview last week. He followed up with the Purdue secondary after that. The Illinois one covers personnel, stats, and a lot of scheme: You'll recognize some of Ohio State's terminology on this one. He nailed the thing about Supo Sanni. He also brought up the thing about how this is another game Toussaint dominated last year, not that they're all that likely to try the same "force Denard beat us with his legs" gambit that worked so well for Purdue. Diarist of the Week, this. Other weeklies:

ST3: Inside the Box Score was quickly disabused of any notion that the Purdue game was closer than it looked. Revel.

Enjoy Life: Statistics and FEI Prediction is starting to come back to common perception, with Michigan ranked 24th overall. And here's a weird thing that shows just how far we've come: the defense is ranked ahead of the offense. Turnover Analysis shows just one forced fumble all year, which may be keeping the recovery rate depressed.

That's Clark, nice: A program. A wallpaper.

[After THE JUMP, the board produces an NFL depth chart of Wolverines, and we grieve for some heavy losses to the world of sports.]

Dear Diary,

Faster than a speeding bullet,

More powerful than a locomotive,

Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…

Look, up in the sky!

It's a bird!

It's a plane!

It's the reason we'd rather watch college football than do almost anything else in the world.

It's been a week of ebullient celebration in Ann Arbor while Columbus burns but even those outside of The Sacred Brotherhood have started to muse on the actual justice of it all. WatersDemos took the premise of a New Yorker article – "Is college worth it?" and ran with it for college sports. Most prescient, I thought, was goodness of creating a class of "fake" (not his words) students to serve the interests of what's essentially brand marketing.

I'd like to take that further: what's so good about college sports?

(after the jump, it's a job [lowers voice] for Superman.)