uniforms

"but the kids love 'em"

Not dog grooming. Good news! It seems like they're shelving "In The Big House" for something else. That would seem to be this from a couple of walk-ons:

According to the facebook, anyway. It's… not dog grooming. Horrible thought: this may have no impact on dog grooming. Let's move on to happier thoughts.

Vintage Fred Jackson. Man I just don't know how does this even:

"He's got Mike Hart kind of feet, but a lot faster than Mike."

That's about Thomas Rawls, and it goes in the Fred Jackson hyperbole hall of fame. Jackson also got this quote off:

"Usually a guy with good vision is a little bit taller," Jackson said. "Thomas is probably, maybe, 5-8. He tells me he's 5-11 and I'm 6-2, I think, and I look down on him and eat soup off his head."

Why are you eating soup off of someone's head, Fred Jackson? Why is there soup there anyway? What kind of soup? Does Thomas Rawls have a circular depression in the top of his head? Doesn't that seem unsafe for a football player? Are you #$*#$ing serious about this Hart thing? Do you remember Mike Hart? Fred Jackson I am confused.

BONUS I JUST DON'T EVEN HOW DOES I DON'T MAN: Rawls has a "bete noire" tattoo for this reason:

He says it's French for "accomplish your hopes and dreams."

I do not think your tattoo means what you think it means.

BONUS BONUS FRED JACKSON JACKSON:

Jackson said Rawls also reminds him of another former Flint star, Mark Ingram, the 2009 Heisman Trophy winner at Alabama. Ingram (5-10, 215 pounds) and Rawls are similar in build.

"They were almost identical high school backs," said Jackson. "Obviously, Mark Ingram had a great (offensive) line at Alabama that helped him along, but Thomas is a lot faster than Mark, (and) has the same type of ability. I'm not trying to compare them in any way but when you watched them in high school, they were very similar running backs."

BONUS BONUS BONUS FRED JACKSON JACKSON JACKSON:

"Norfleet is as quick as any kid at Michigan since I've been here," said Jackson, in his 21st season. "I've not seen a guy that quick…."

But what about senior quarterback Denard Robinson? Is Norfleet faster?

"No, I don't think (anybody) is faster than Denard," Jackson said. "(Norfleet's) got the quickness that will put him in the same positions Denard gets in quicker than Denard will get in them."

Facial hair watch. Ace points out that walk-on and competitor at left guard Joey Burzynski has the makings of something special on his face:

With careful grooming and time, this man could be a facial hair All-American. This would give Michigan two, since Elliott Mealer either needs an acoustic guitar or a hammer fashioned by Odin to do justice to his face… thing:

STEP YOUR FACE HAIR GAME UP, KYLE KALIS WOOOOO

BONUS: Mustaches for Michigan, where have you gone?

They might do it. Brady Hoke's old defensive coordinator Rocky Long, now the head guy at San Diego State, has heard of Pulaski High School—the Arkansas outfit that never ever punts—and is thinking about doing it:

After reading articles about an idiosyncratic Arkansas high school coach who never punts, always onside kicks, and has tremendous success doing it, Long is toying with the idea for his Aztecs of no punts or field goal attempts once they’ve driven inside an opponent’s 50-yard line.

Conceivably, San Diego State would go for the first down whether it needed a couple of inches or 10 yards.

And yes, Long — who apparently hasn’t yet tried it all in his 40 years of coaching — is serious about this.

“It makes sense,” he said, seeming almost giddy in talking about the possibilities.

“Additional plays would allow you to score a lot more points,” he said. “It also puts a whole lot of pressure on the defense.”

It's not a sure thing yet, but I can't think of any better way to memorialize the WAC. Do it. You'd look so cool.

Oh my gawd. Please CBS, call this show "Boss Hog and the Zooker" and make it a crime procedural:

CBS Sports Network announces Houston Nutt will serve as studio analyst this year. He'll be joined by Ron Zook.

If college football does not take me up on my extremely reasonable plan to have JLS coach a different team on an interim basis every year, he could join up in 2013, and then our piss would indeed be hot.

Are these different? The M-Den says the basketball jerseys are different. I can't really tell:

I can still complain about it, right?

Jolly good show, catching me. I am quite elusive, you know. Fitzgerald Toussaint's OWI hearing is four days before the Alabama game. He's probably still getting suspended, but at least he's nicer than the average DUI recipient:

"He was extremely cooperative and gave us no problems at all," Saline Police Department Det. Don Lupi said Monday. "He was even more pleasant than the average drunk-driving arrestee. He was friendly and easy to deal with, unlike a lot of arrest situations."

"I say, you bobbies are really on your game."

Yes, imaginary Fitzgerald Toussaint is British. Because obviously.

The Fort. Man, running through my feeds and seeing open scrimmage reports from Arkansas and Ole Miss and Iowa plus A Lion Eye chastising himself for not checking out who the holders were at Illinois camp is a little depressing. Michigan's attitude towards this stuff is "please die, kthx." At media day it's clear the players were instructed to not answer questions about any freshmen:

I remember asking Jeremy Gallon how the freshmen receivers were coming along and his reaction was one along the lines of almost trying to keep things hush. He paused for a minute and then told me to talk to the coaches about it.

Will Campbell did the same thing on an interview I caught on WTKA.

Opening some stuff up is not just for mid-level programs (and Ole Miss), either: this space has noted some really cool access provided by Ohio State. Even Alabama, led by hater of all media Nick Saban, lets the media in to see some stuff. If Michigan's access is worse that Alabama's it's got to be the worst in the country, right?

I guess I get it since when Rodriguez was around the Free Press used the opportunity to talk to a couple freshmen to get them to issue misleading statements about how much time they were putting in, thus proving all long-held suspicions about the lizardmedia true. It's still frustrating that the hardest-hitting stuff we get is "what is your favorite Olympic event?" Not a 'wow' experience here. Someone put some pasta in a bread bowl or something.

It's on the up and up. The OHL came down harshly on Windsor for paying players under the table, which obviously never happens. My favorite part of all this is remembering the OHL's crocodile tears for their players when the NCAA was revamping their foreign player rules and hockey got an exception to keep CHL players out. They claimed it was just a shame that their entirely amateur league league was banned. Ugh. These guys are worse than the NCAA honchos.

Anyone want to bet a dollar that a pissed off Jack Campbell was a major source here? The WOTS about how these investigations came about fits Campbell's experience:

The league is choosing not to reveal names, though most believe some of the high-profile American players who played in Windsor could be responsible for the information leading to the sanctions. Some of those players were eventually traded, and it’s been suggested the trade could leave them feeling bitter and more prone to talk about their former team during an investigation.

But at least he's in the NHL already.

Etc.: More and more people are like WTF Emmert about this North Carolina thing. More photos from youth day, including a guy wearing an old old Rich Robots shirt. MVictors on achievable Michigan records. The Tigers are having a "Wolverines In The D" event next Friday—22 bucks gets you in, a shirt, and five bucks of it goes to the Pat Maloy Scholarship Fund.

Programming note/briefly. No Friday Recruitin' today since Ace is in Chicago covering Big Ten media days. Here's an abbreviated version:

Ohio State dropped VA RB Derrick Green, who is either the top back in his class (Rivals) or like #5 or so and a guy you can line up in the I-form—mixed feelings ho—and pound away with. So he's changed his plans to spend more time at Michigan instead of hitting up OSU's Friday Night Lights camp. With Clemson also out of the picture since they filled up at running back, Green is now looking like far more of a possibility than he was just a couple weeks ago.

IL WR LaQuon Treadwell: still visiting Oklahoma State. Still probably thinking about officials. Trieu: "I still think Michigan is very much in the lead with him."

FL S Leon McQuay's dad clarified that the younger McQuay had not dropped Michigan but confirmed that Florida State had replaced M in his top three.

No one else exists.

Bo talks Joe. WH posts the Big Ten Ticket segment from before the '98 PSU game:

Hey, kids! Get on my lawn! Jump up and down and smoke the pot! Have a woodstock! Northwestern just debuted new uniforms that are unique and awesome:

These aren't alternates, either, they're the thing they're going to wear all the time now. I'm not sure about the brickwork frippery on the numbers when you get real close but if you can't see it at all in the above shots it's probably not too bad.

Why do I like these when Michigan's parade of changes are annoying at best and horrifying at worst?

1. This is a new overall identity for Northwestern, one in which the "Northwestern stripe" is being reclaimed for all their sports. It is not a one-off flibbertyjibber that only confuses things.
2. It is a One Big Idea jersey minus the fooferrah that made Remember Bo's parody of the direction Michigan is headed in the thing I front-paged hardest last year. I front-paged that so hard. Michigan keeps adding block Ms all over the place and patches and numbers and all this stuff when they have already acquired the One Big Idea—the winged helmet.
3. They are unique across college football and give you the start of a tradition. I feel like I should have a ridiculous carnival noun in here.

Anyway. Steve Spurrier needs to be involved with this.

mgotrivia: named primary Rock Band band "OBC and the Click Clacks"

BONUS: Man, Under Armor likes misters.

Meanwhile, more detail on our bit. The Alabama jerseys in a 30 second video:

Those gloves will come in handy if any of those guys ever have a test on what the lyrics to the fight song are.

I know you're literally coming off the worst scandal in the history of college athletics, but doesn't this seem extreme? Penn State is considering something drastic:

An issue that generated just as much buzz Thursday was the possibility that coach Bill O'Brien plans to change Penn State's traditional, basic blue and white uniforms. The coach mentioned that possibility during a conference call with players' parents Wednesday night, according to the Reading Eagle.

O'Brien has had discussions with Nike about changing the uniforms, which he has said repeatedly that he would not do since taking the PSU job in January.

"I reserve the right to change my mind," O'Brien said Thursday when asked what led to his decision.

Neither O'Brien nor the Penn State players would give any indication as to what the uniform changes might include, but there has been widespread speculation that it would be names on the jerseys.

The fans are already lying on the ground after a thorough kicking so I guess now's the time to do this. I suggest taking everyone's mind off the terrible things that happened by changing the school's mascot to a rainbow unicorn.

Try to be sad now! Pretty hard, right?

Also in lack of sadness. PSU adds an unrated 2012 LB named Brennan Franklin who had been ticketed for Eastern Arizona Junior College. Had "interest" from Toledo. Franklin on his commitment: "If I went to New Mexico or New Mexico State or Indiana, they wouldn’t be going to a bowl game anyway."

Oy. I'm not happy about this at all. I can only imagine what it's like to be a Penn State fan. What's the Michigan equivalent of this? Bo helped plan 9/11 and the Rodriguez era lasts 15 years. I would not wish the equivalent on my worst enemy*.

*[False. I would wish it on many people, but only bad ones. Like the people who came up with the Buffalo Wild Wings commercials.]

Boooooooooo. Boooooooo. Booooooooo. PEOPLE ARE JERKS AND STUFF:

Don't expect to see a nine-game Big Ten schedule any time soon.

Commissioner Jim Delany said at Big Ten media days Thursday that league schools are "of a unanimous mind to stay at eight games" in the conference schedule.

Guh. The Pac-12 is already there, the Big 12 and ACC are going to nine, and it's only the teams with the sappiest saps sticking with four nonconference games: the Big Ten and the SEC. And maybe the Big East, but no one bothers mentioning them any more.

This is especially bad for Michigan since its primary foes for the division title play Indiana, Penn State, and Purdue on an annual basis while Michigan gets Ohio State. Anything that softened that disparity helps. Hopefully it won't matter much if Hoke keeps the recruiting train going like he is, but the least the league could have done was make the conference record of your crossover opponents the first tiebreaker. If two teams finish tied at 7-1 and one of them took on OSU and UW while the other didn't, head to head can get bent.

Rebranded. Fan day is now Youth Day, for whatever reason. It's August 12th at 2. Anyone over 19 trying to enter the stadium will be chased through a cornfield by a giant red-eyed monster and eaten.

Yes. Michael Weinreb should take over PR for the Paterno family, because he's able to express the tricky concepts about moving forward as a Penn State fan in a way that sounds right:

There is no way to make up for what has been lost. All we can do is start over again. If it takes Penn State fielding a team full of walk-ons and castaways in the years to come, if it takes losses to Temple and to the dregs of the Mid-American Conference to reinforce the horror of what took place, then I will accept that. What I want now is for my alma mater to become what we’d always imagined it to be, an agent of change in a sport that desperately seeks it. If failure equals success, the punishment will be justified.

I don't know about you, but next year's game in Happy Valley has become a must-attend for me. Not to gloat, just to see what it's like and maybe stare at a place a statue used to stand and think about what is or is not pretty much the same band of RV-possessing friendly people I experienced in 2006.

And so it came to pass that Wisconsin fans bought all the tickets. The Big Ten has added this "TeamTix" system in which you gamble ten bucks on your team making the title game and then can buy a face value ticket if your team gets there. Which may be a hideously overpriced one if it's, say, Michigan State-Wisconsin. Events with Michigan in them may be another matter but I'd probably want to see how the secondary market shapes up this year. You might be able to get a suite for ten bucks.

Walton stuff. UMHoops talks to his AAU coach:

Can you talk about the progression in his game, especially within the last few months?
“He’s gotten tremendously better. He works hard every day, getting his shots up, working on his step back, working on how to finish in the mid-range because he knows that he’s going to run into 7-footers, and 6-foot-9 and so forth, so we try to make sure he’s got a little floater coming and a higher arching jump shot. So he knows what’s to come.”

Taken by the will of the wisp. Will Campbell gets probation, has to pay fines and court costs and restitution, etc. The judge gets it, man:

Judge Chris Easthope said he believed Campbell didn’t have any kind of malicious intent and was rather “caught up in the moment.”

Chris Easthope has been there, man. On the hood of a car at two AM.

Etc.: Brian Phillips on rhythmic gymnastics. Anthony Zettel stays put. Jordan Morgan expectations. Gasaway on the Emmert penalty shotgun. He's in favor. Suspended Wolverines' are called team cancers by teammates. Alabama's NT benches 600 pounds. Yay.

Can somebody with a uniqname go to the Music Library and get them a better soundtrack?

From time to time people from the less-heralded sports/activities at Michigan provide detailed diaries of their teams and their exploits. Sometimes they actually succeed in making us turn our heads and get into something other than the big five of hoops, hockey, football, football (teams we play), and football (Penn State).

This week we witnessed the Other Sports Diary to End All Other Sports Diaries by Bronco648, a running, day-by-day recap of their week-long race with a national title on the line, kicked off with a entire media guide that includes photos/profiles of each team member. Example:

Feight was raised by a family of wild Spartans then imprisoned by a mad skiing coach before discovering his mutant meteorological powers could help him escape to Ann Arbor.

It's like NASCAR except with clean energy and electrical engineering and a team meteorologist, so of course Michigan is awesome at it. The car's name is Quantum (who voted against Dilithium?) and it built a strong lead in the early going before the team got caught using Denard Robinson's smile to boost the radiant flux, a 90-minute penalty. To discover the ending, read the thing, or else find a freshman WLB or CRex family member to translate this for you:

2012 전국 챔피언을만 세!!!

Family members of CRex? Like another recent epic tale about a ring, the latest installment of CRex's great adventure begins with a flashback, where we discover how two Chinese gangsters and a deity named Guan Yu (go blue?) brought about the fall of the Sweatervest Lord. The action then shifts stateside, where Little Sister has gone from heartbreaking debutante to Warcraft addict to Marmot Rambo to Ricky Bobby in the span of two weeks. Q: How is it that vampires and obnoxious people from New Jersey have so many TV shows but this guy doesn't? A: Because CRex Family Hour's target audience would skip it anytime they can instead watch…

Footbawwwwwwww. Thank hart20 for diving into reams of stats to come back with data on how much production is returning from each of our opponents. Part the First puts all that data into tables that say things like 15 percent of MSU's receiving yards are returning, and 100% of Justin Siller isn't(!). Then the rubber hits the chart in Part II which you must read because we are going to quote from it all year. Sample? Sample.

II. Rushing Offense

The formula that I used to calculate the total returning percent for each team’s rushing offense was to give a 33.3% weight to each of returning carries, returning rushing yards, and returning rushing TDs.

Hart20 is your Diarist of the Week, plus 200 "Hero" points (I just made those up).

Great Scott, our freshmen are heavy. Just in before press time, LSAClassof2000 has put the weights and heights of Big Ten players into a spreadsheet. Included is a comparison of our freshmen versus the conference's mean, where we find our WRs, TEs, DTs, DEs, and DBs are already larger than the average B1G (which averages presumably include walk-ons). MSU is the heaviest in our division by a large (ha!) margin; Nebraska is the shortest, though they rate highest in the conference in returning rushing punch, which was quite the punch.

Quite the punch? Then why do I remember it more like an 8-year-old girl? Well, sonny, you just sit down right there and let Uncle BlueSeoul tell you about the greatest all-around performance by Michigan since 1997 Penn State. It (the diary) got bumped, and not just because somebody whose name rhymes with "Eyeco" left a pic of Urban Meyer bicep flexing on top of the front page all weekend. Actually these always get bumped, but you may not remember that because BlueSeoul hadn't done a GW(WPs!) since the middle of last season. The most anticipated MGoArticle you'd completely given up on not named "Upon Further Review: Virginia Tech" is finally available. And yes, m'boy, a man DID once force a pitch from the back side.

Geography. After I had already put last week's DD to bed TSS posted his next Michigan-Alabama Roster analysis and this one is just so cool: a chart of distance from campus for players on M/Bama's rosters.

The difference really highlights the regional strength of the South. Whereas Michigan recruits a bunch of guys from really close by and then a bunch of guys from all over the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, Alabama's players are primarily regional. If the mass you see at about 230 miles from Tuscaloosa is Atlanta and Mobile, and the cluster 200 miles from Ann Arbor is W-Mich and the Ohioans, then the big difference between us and them is their Floridians (cluster around 600 mark) are closer to home than ours (1200 to 1300 cluster).

Football (Penn State). NCAA's nuclear bunker-buster fell upon Happy Beaver State College Valley Whatever this week. Fallout diaries include jmblue suggesting a realignment of Big~Ten divisions, a "don't you get it?" message to PSU fans that probably qualifies under the definition of rant, and oakapple describes the path that will lead the nittany lion-beavers back to five/six stars of program strength.

Travel guide for Dallas. Eat BBQ, skip everything else. Dallas sucks. And America hates all of your teams.

Etc. Michigan Stadium brought to you by McDonArby's Dunkin' Save Mart Lanes and Shredder. Brian is entranced by David Brandon playing golf. Blazefire puts the 2012 season and Jerry Sandusky to Hotel California, though not sure I liked the result. The Blockhams visit football's Valhalla. This is one of my favorites so far, though I waited in vain for Fielding Yost to tap Bo on the shoulder and (with Bob Ufer standing behind him), say "you still haven't thanked me for AC and Indiana!"

Best of the Board

A REENACTMENT OF THE BUMBLEBEE MURDERS OF 2011

This is a reenactment of WH responding to an Adidas promo video of (Devin Gardner?) jumping around in the latest Michigan uniform that isn't as good as the regular uniform:

Michigan was always up there with schools like USC and Penn State (though I hate mentioning anything PSU now) as being football uniforms you don't screw with.

I know this is a fad in college football that I'm just going to have to get used to. But I always liked the whole, "If it's not broke, don't fix it," thing.

Fonts are Akka, Flynn, SuperMario256, and Shrek; if you don't get some of these references that's because a future created only lasts as long as the marketing campaign for it. If that is Gardner (can anyone tell?) in the video, it's at least no more ridiculous than the show he put on in the last ones.

SHANE MORRIS PHOTOSHOPPING

By the time he steps on campus he'll have more content on here than any 4-year player on the roster. Still, photoshop thread is insta-linked:

PAT'S GONNA PUT YOU IN THE MOVIES

Pre-Gaming With guy is shooting at 1p.m. on Sunday on the Diag if you want to be in the "I Love You Denard" music video. I do not believe he is accepting lyric suggestions.

Your moment of zen:

Yay ticket arrivals! If you're signed up to get the emails/texts/FB/twitter from MGoBlue, you can order individual tickets for AF/UMass/NW/Iowa ($75 each), plus the UMass family pack thing, starting about 8:30 this morning.

This was inevitable, I guess. Jib your sail and batten your hats:

I am filled with a moderate distaste, so these are probably good as far as alternate uniforms go. I rank them above the infamous MSU bumblebee jerseys. So we've got that going for us unless the gloves…

…look like that. That brings out the uniformz tag.

Upside: no helmet frippery. No numbers, either, but oddly the announcement says the Alabama uniforms will have them. It's just the rest of the season that won't:

Last season's practice of placing the player numbers on the famed winged helmet will be suspended after the season opener in Dallas.

Aaaand:

Michigan will wear its traditional home and road uniforms for the remainder of the regular season.

No six uniform changes this year, though the "regular season" leaves the door open for Commemorative Bowl Things.

BONUS: They're adding an American flag to the back of the helmet just to clear up any confusion about Michigan football's patriotism.

of all the things I don't understand, alternate soccer jerseys that are the wrong color entirely are amongst the most baffling