worst state ever

We need to make space in the warehouse for the HTTV books and new t-shirts, so we're cleaning out some of the older shirts and stuff before they go stale. Flows, twosies, brunettes, Lloyd Brady, Tremendous, Ermahgerd, Winningest, even a Worst State Ever, are knocked down to $5.00. Also if you want last year's HTTV, we're gonna try to clear those out too.

Click on each for a link to the item. If the link goes dead, we sold out.

Two dolla:

Five dolla:

(!!!)

Five dolla:

Ten dolla for American Apparel version of it. For onesie, Five dolla:

Five dolla:

Five dolla:

Fiiiiiive dolla:

Five dolla.

Brady Hoke's Pet Viking mgoshirt? Yes, at the WTKA Mott Takeover.

be like Steve Everitt without killing a moose with your bare hands

Steve Everitt forever.

Also, Everitt described bounties surfacing during his long NFL career.

Super-regional ho. Congratulations to the softball team, which dramatically came from behind in their tournament opener, then shut the door on top seed Louisville to win their first road regional in a long, long time. The dramatic finisher in Michigan's second consecutive walk-off win… a hit by pitch. The win that finished the weekend off was a more comfortable 4-0 affair.

They'll initiate what appears to be a series of Michigan-Alabama bragging rights contests in a super-regional in Tuscaloosa next weekend. Winner hits the WCWS.

Yes. Do you believe in improbable sporting outcomes. Go. Go. USA. Pam Ward, deadener of Big Ten noon games since time began, is no longer doing college football on ESPN. This will result in marginal improvement, and probably fewer nasty comments about injured players.

Since ESPN started shoehorning Beth Mowins into college football games she didn't seem to know much about last year, the emphasis is on marginal. Insanely fun things were happening in the Northwestern-Illinois game last year and she busted out "it's a Persa party in Champaign!" I'm pretty sure this is not plain ol' misogyny and I have good reason to think both of the female announcers put on Big Ten games are not so good.

He's pretty fast. That would be Jehu Chesson, the lanky 6'3" wide receiver from Missouri who signed in February. The main knock on Chesson was his speed, something his recent track exploits are bringing into question. Chesson won the 300M hurdles (37.73), 110M hurdles (14.55), and 100M dash (10.79) at his sectionals. As mentioned, he also wears cool sunglasses doing this.

According to the recruiting rankings, Michigan hasn't done as well at wide receiver as they have at just about every other spot on the field, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was not a problem during the careers of Chesson and Amarah Darboh.

Yes, do it. The plausible deniability that saw Butch Davis emerge from the UNC NCAA scandal without a show-cause penalty despite the fact that one of his assistant coaches was operating as a runner for an agent may go away in the near future:

Under the current NCAA bylaw, a head coach is "presumed" to have knowledge of what is occurring in his program and "can be responsible" for the actions of his assistants.

The proposed change would do away with presumption. It would make the head coach responsible for his assistants' actions regardless of his knowledge of them. The penalties would range from 5 to 100 percent of competition in a season.

The NCAA included in the discussion material some examples of behavior for which a head coach would be held accountable, such as in-person, off-campus contacts with a recruit during a dead period, providing team gear to a recruit, or multiple phone calls or contacts when they are not allowed.

This is part of a larger overhaul mentioned a few months ago in this space that could see penalties become predictable and massive, but right now that's a long, long way from becoming reality. It's in the "special committee" stage—ie, a spitballing group throwing stuff at the wall without considering how feasible passing it is.

Not enough data, so everyone makes big. Ex-NFL players are dying at a rate half that of the general population after they retire and are 59 percent less likely to commit suicide. May want to slow down on the concussion panic. Small sample size disclaimers apply to that study, but they apply just as much to the panic side of the equation:

We don't need the CDC numbers to tell us that the national debate over head trauma and suicide has long since outpaced the scientific evidence. Just a handful of cases so far support the notion that repeated head injuries (concussive or otherwise) can lead to drug abuse, aggression, and self-harm. No one knows the baseline rate of chronic traumatic encephalopathy among athletes, let alone the general population. No one knows whether the pathological signs of CTE—microscopic spots in the brain, found after death—relate to behavioral symptoms like dementia and depression. And no one can explain how repeated knocks to the head might produce CTE, or how CTE might produce suicidal thoughts. Yet in spite of our near-total ignorance, a moral panic has taken hold: Elaborate explanations are concocted when simple ones will do. Faced with the regrettable facts—a troubled man dies a lonely death—we resort to hocus-pocus theorizing about tau proteins and fibrillary tangles. It's a form of denial: By obsessing over hidden trauma, we ignore what's right in front of us. Many ex-NFL players have sad and difficult lives.

The concern over concussions is taking the usual route of a moral panic, where some stuff happens and some tenuous data connects things to stuff so things are condemned because stuff is bad. Then some more people look at other data and say things might not be that connected to stuff after all, and everyone moves on to the next thing. See: alar, fat people, etc. This is the phase where the noise overtakes the signal and Something Is Done that may or may not affect a problem that may or may not exist.

BONUS: ex-NFL players are really good at not getting tuberculosis.

We have a second challenger. Patrick Vint of Black Heart Gold Pants takes a swing at defending the Big Ten's retreat from home playoff sites. The argument boils down to "remember the last time we all taunted Jim Delany?"

Everything Jim Delany has done as commissioner of the Big Ten -- especially since the summer of 2007 -- has been in pursuit of long-term advantage to the conference as a whole, and its individual teams only by way of that. The Big Ten Network was supposed to be a money-losing catastrophe that nobody would watch and even fewer would pay to see. After a year and a half of publicly negotiating/ridiculing/screaming at Comcast and Mediacom, Delany had transformed it into a massive cash cow, making the Big Ten schools richer than those in the SEC, the Big 12, the Pac-10, and every other conference. When the SEC responded by signing a big new TV deal with ESPN, it still didn't make the Southern schools as much money as their Northern rivals.

Delany used his newfound financial leverage, and a not-so-subtle call for expanding the conference, to bring the biggest collegiate sports programs in the country to his door. He damn near disemboweled the Big 12 in the process, causing an insurrection that fired Dan Beebe and landed Nebraska within his conference's ranks, all while we were all losing our minds over Rutgers and Pitt. When the Nebraska regents voted unanimously to cut ties with 100 years of tradition because the financial pull of Big Ten membership was too great to deny, Delany was there, emerging from behind the curtain and shaking hands with Osborne and Perlman like Hollywood Hogan joining the Outsiders. A year later, Delany's SEC rival was picking up Big Ten reject Missouri to fill out his own expansion process, an expansion that made his conference exactly zero more dollars and done solely because the Big Ten had done it first.

It's a good point. Vint also notes that the difference here is four Big Ten home games since the inception of the BCS, which is not a big huge deal.

Where he loses me is with the assertion that the Big 12-SEC Never Happening Bowl is the revelation of the master plan:

Delany gave up on four home games in fourteen years, but what he got was hard to understand -- we already had the Rose Bowl, after all -- until the SEC and Big 12 announced their own end-of-season bowl game Friday. With that, Delany's plan became evident. With the conferences poised to create a four-team tournament (as Delany and his athletic directors repeatedly stated this week, the four-team maximum is a deal-breaker) within the confines of the bowl system, Delany, Slive, Larry Scott, and whoever's running the Big 12 now, as heads of the four premiere football conferences, had just effectively locked themselves into the final four. More importantly, Delany had locked out the ACC and Big East (and Notre Dame, for that matter), the other two BCS bowl games, and the distinct possibility of two teams from the same conference making the tournament. There will be four champions in the playoffs, and with the two semifinal bowls effectively set as the Rose and (presumably) SEC-Big 12 Sugar, Delany has ensured that a Big Ten champ will be one of them. That's fourteen spots in fourteen years, with none of them in an opponent's stadium (unless UCLA makes it to the Rose Bowl) (LOL).

Um. The Big 12-SEC game is specifically around in the event that the champions of those conferences aren't in the playoff. There is no bracketed final four that cuts out the ACC or Big East. So… what we're left with is the Big Ten giving up the idea because the… because it's… because the Rose Bowl. There is no way the BCS cuts out smaller conferences, because they'll get sued. Virginia Tech, Miami, and Florida State? Forget it. Notre Dame, if Notre Dame is ever relevant again? Come on.

Protecting the Rose Bowl at all costs is just another example of why the Big Ten finds itself where it is relative to other conferences: richer, but unable to leverage that wealth into on-field success.

Etc.: Get the Picture notes that the Ed O'Bannon lawsuit survived a motion to dismiss and seemingly got some support from the judge for the larger trial in the process. Expect more Gardner this fall. Other Big Ten ADs think playing at home is a good idea. Rob Bolden may finally be exiting Penn State.

Shane, Dennis. Dennis, Shane. Shane Morris isn't just getting to know unsigned recruits. He evidently showed at Detroit King's latest basketball game looking… not from around here:

Detnews

Slice o' life, that. This was apparently part of a thing where the De La Salle kids showed up looking like farmers and chanted the usual private school things at a public school. This was uncomfortable because in this case they're all black and the other kids are all white. Commence newspaper hand-wringing.

It's been a long time. Wolverine Historian posts video of the last Michigan basketball team to win the Big Ten. There's no three point line.

Also the shorts being worn are hip-huggers. It's been a long time.

Just don't even try. Cleveland alt-weekly explores the fetid underbelly of American sports fandom that is the Bucknut. Spencer Hall is tapped for a take:

It was in January of 2008 that sports blogger Spencer Hall found himself sitting amid a thicket of OSU fans at the BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans, with No. 1 Ohio State squaring off against No. 2 Louisiana State. In the first half, LSU's All-American safety Craig Steltz went down with a shoulder injury. About ten OSU fans surrounding Hall stood up in unison, with their index and middle fingers bent together into a mushed "O" shape.

Hall figured he knew what was up, but he asked what the gesture meant anyway. A nearby fan grabbed his fingers together into the shape.

"Pussy," he said.

The pussies went on to win, 38-24.

"It's really hard to get over the anecdotal evidence," Hall says today. He writes about college football for SB Nation, a gig that lets him see up close each big program's fan base — and the stereotypes rivals throw at one another. He's mocked up a vivid profile of the Buckeye Everyman.

"It's everything negative and easily mockable about the Midwest compressed in a single entity," he deadpans. And it's more than just a vibe. The classic Bucknut has a defining set of traits all his own.

"The stereotype is angry, probably has a goatee, probably watches MMA and wrestling on the side, may live with his mother — may. And also, he's perpetually defensive about Ohio State's struggles.

"They wear jerseys," he adds. "People don't wear the jersey in the SEC. It's not something adults do.

The men who poop in coolers, or tackle handicapped dudes, or make Grant Bowman's mom have a close personal understanding of the men at the Alamo, or… like… are the president and athletic director and local newspaper. Apparently the Dispatch published Kirk Herbstreit's address and a map to his home in 2009. Well done, pretend newspaper.

The article is long and ruthless. Read it.

Denard plans on being a quarterback. Good to know. Borges on how Denard needs to improve:

"We should see it with the timing of his throws and him having a better grasp of route structures, audibles and protection checks," Borges said. "He'll also improve with decision-making, knowing when to throw it away and when not to run. And if he can get better with his footwork issues in the pocket, it should reduce interceptions and increase his completion percentage."

Also the not chucking it to double-covered guys. Also that.

Just like everything else. Shaw Lane Spartans analyzes Rivals rankings and finds that the everyone's-a-winner mentality is beginning to pervade them as well:

The quality of the “average” Big Ten prospect increased from an average of 2.80 in 2002 to 3.04 in 2012. Since NO ONE who gets a scholarship offer and gets signed before the rankings are done gets a zero star ranking, I derived the 30 percent number above as (1.04-.8). Even without that, the increase from 2.8 to 3.04 is still a nine percent increase. Meaning on average according to the star rankings, the average Big Ten player is 9 to 30 percent better than they were in 2002.

The gradual nature of the move suggests it's not a philosophical change, and it certainly doesn't seem like the conference is bringing in more and more high-level recruits relative to the rest of the country. In fact, the entire Big Ten fanbase on Rivals spent last year complaining that no one in the region was ranked because the company wasn't even bothering to employ a Midwest analyst. Only two Big Ten schools cracked the Rivals top 25—the obvious ones—as Penn State saw its class implode. If anything last year was probably the worst year for Big Ten recruiting in the sample; it saw the highest-rated kids.

Rivals four-stars jumped from 244 in 2004 to 320 last year; three stars more than doubled from 660 to 1513. Increasingly Rivals is abdicating on making calls at the lower end of things and just throwing everyone in the same three-star bin.

North Carolina bit. They got a slightly inflated OSU penalty: one year postseason ban, fifteen scholarships over five years. So much for this new era of tough NCAA sanctions. USC's complaints that the NCAA was just "jealous" look less and less ridiculous with every passing case.

Andy Staples lays out the case that for people who don't care about the ethical implications of following the NCAA amateurism guidelines, the cost-benefit analysis is easy:

A program can spit all over the NCAA rule book in an effort to reach or remain at the highest echelon of college football, and as long as that program cooperates with the NCAA during the investigation of its alleged "crimes," the Committee on Infractions will respond with a suite of penalties that contain far more bark than bite. …

For a case that involved academic fraud and players taking money and goodies from agents, North Carolina will lose 15 scholarships over three years and will be banned from postseason play for the 2012 season. Former assistant coach John Blake, who was accused of steering players to agent Gary Wichard in exchange for payment, was given a three-year show-cause order that bans him from recruiting. That essentially renders Blake unemployable at the college level.

Meanwhile, former UNC safety Deunta Williams flat-out accused the SEC of paying people. If he can prove it, someone's getting a one-year bowl ban. This is why people use the #smh hashtag. I understand now.

Carrick: undervalued. 2012 hockey D commit Connor Carrick is not high on draft boards. Scouts still say things like this about him consistently, though:

The scout also mentioned that little heralded and often overlooked defensemen Connor Carrick and Matthew Grzlecyk are deserving of late-round picks.

On Carrick: “He’ll probably be a late pick. He’s thick, he moves the puck well, he has offensive instincts, he can shoot it. He has some holes away from the puck.” The scout also said he thinks another year of development in college (he’s committed to Michigan) could go a long way, but feels Carrick’s the type of guy that can step in and contribute immediately on a college team.

Think a bigger version of Langlais, something the team really needs on the power play. Depending on how NHL signings go he could be a third pairing luxury or a guy Michigan really needs to step up immediately. Michigan could really use a big step forward from Serville over the offseason.

Etc.: Shaw Lane Spartans examines MSU's weird unbalanced thing they tried with minimal success last year. Parts three and four of Phil Birnbaum's analysis of David Berri's work. Conclusion: David Berri does not know what sample size is. Hokefluff from Orlando. Burke is a second-team All American to CBS Sports. The CCHA named him third-team All Crisler Arena. Big Ten matchups today.

Worst State Ever goes national. On cable, but still:

You, too, can own this piece of History Channel-famous clothing. If you already own one, your Grandma needs one.

Why the hell? This is apparently the reason the Big 12 did not fall apart:

No FSN deal has been signed, and nothing is expected for several weeks at the earliest. But sources say FSN has told Big 12 officials that it would increase its annual payout to as much as $130-$140M per year. It currently pays $19.5M per year for the cable TV rights, a deal that ends following the '11-12 season

How in the flaming hell is that a good business decision for FSN? You're increasing your payout 600% for games that are on average less interesting without Nebraska—the Big 12 was recently reassured that ESPN would not demand a "rebate" on their existing contrat.

Sports Business Daily says that along with that payout will come "third tier rights" that include radio, stadium signage, local media, and third-tier TV rights. I'm not exactly sure what the value of that stuff is but since IMG is involved I imagine they're similar to the rights deals M and OSU have with IMG that amount to something like 8-10 million annually, with teams like Purdue getting maybe half of that. Ballpark those at 4 million per school (which is a complete guess*) and Fox is only… uh… more than doubling its commitment to the Big 12 after it lost a good bit of reach and interest.

We may see a system where more rights devolve to the league itself, thus artificially boosting the conference distribution without actually boosting the revenue much. It'll be like a heavily back-loaded NFL contract that's more show than substance. I'm sure the Big 12 will increase its payouts in a real sense, but the demographic realities that almost saw the conference implode aren't going away. I agree with this guy who is cited by USA Today as an expert:

However, he called the projected average annual TV splits of $20 million for Texas, Oklahoma and Texas A&M, with the other schools getting $14 million-$17 million each, "too high, just not realistic."

"Now, who knows? Maybe they can break the mold and come up with a model nobody's seen."

More likely they'll just dress it up real purty to save face. Doctor Saturday has more.

*(But I think it's the right range since schools will be able to hold onto whatever other rights they require to start their own networks.)

Appeal not so much. The #1 must-read piece on USC's sanctions comes from the Bylaw Blog, which delves deep into the record-length document to reach some conclusions no one else has the expertise or care to. The main takeaway:

In that detailed account, the Committee on Infractions lays out the case that USC took in two student-athletes with no regard for the amateurism rules, and then failed to notice when they began accept benefits and enter into agreements in violation of the rules. The overall gist of the NCAA’s stance was summed up by one quote from Paul Dee, the chair of the Committee on Infractions during the teleconference discussing the report:

High profile players demand high profile compliance.

IE: no more see/hear/speak no evil for Carroll and Friends. Compliance Guy also provides a heartening opinion on why the document is so long and took so long: the NCAA lacks a true smoking gun and instead laid out its case meticulously in anticipation of a USC appeal. The top priority was making the penalties stand.

At this point a USC appeal would probably damage the school more than help it, as the penalties would just be delayed. So, go ahead, USC. Appeal.

Seriously pissed off, you guys. The hockey committee dropped a couple of major rules changes on college hockey:

1. Icing always counts even if you're killing a penalty.
2. Hits to the head are an automatic five and a game.

The second is just another version of the committee's temporary freakout about hits from behind after North Dakota's Robbie Bina was seriously injured by a dangerous check from behind by Geoff Paukovich. The NCAA decided to combat incompetent refereeing by making all hits from behind five and a game, leading to a brief period when every hit along the boards was accompanied by a nervous glance at the ref just in case he decided to toss your guy from the game. Refs started calling boarding instead and a few years later we're back to square one when it comes to hits from behind: still illegal. We'll have an annoying period where routine minors are wildly overreacted to, refs will start calling roughing, and everything will go back to the way it was.

The icing change promises to greatly increase the efficacy of power plays and has been met with fuming, largely because the coaches voted against it… unanimously:

“I think it’s just a crime,” Bemidji State coach Tom Serratore said. “I’ve been in college hockey for 18 years and I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. It was almost unanimous for the entire coaching body. How can the committee overturn the entire coaching body? I think it’s sad, the lack of respect that the committee had for the coaching body.

“We didn’t spend any time even talking about it because it was so radical. We just voted 12-0 and moved on.”

Coaches are also irritated by a change to delayed penalties where a team that scores on the delay still gets the power play, but that hardly ever happens so at worst it's a minor annoyance.

Other changes:

• Goaltenders now change ends in overtime. This might be a direct response to what happened at the Fort Wayne regional, when Michigan got stuck with the long change for four out of five periods in the double-OT game against Miami. It's not a rule change that will have an impact anywhere else, but it's a good one anyway.
• Icing modifications. The "obtainable pass" rule where a player who attempted to pass to a teammate who just missed it saw his icing waved off is gone, which I don't like. On the other hand, if an offensive player is clearly going to beat the defender to the puck they will wave it off. Net impact is about neutral, I guess.

The half-shield proposal was tabled so that more studies about injury could take place.

The rules proposals aren't final—they have to be addressed by the "Playing Rules Oversight Committe" in July. One dollar says the icing rule is dropped and never discussed again.

BONUS: That last article suggests the CCHA will drop the shootout. I actually didn't mind it once they went to a system where all games were worth the same number of points.

Etc.: Bacon goes way back to cover Michigan's brief withdrawal from the Big Ten around the turn of the 20th century. All of the CU/NU penalty fees will go to OU, Texas, and A&M. NHL.com profiles Carl Hagelin. Contrasting Michigan's response to the NCAA with USC's.