WTKA Roundtable 6/3/2021: The Magic of Detroit Day
Things discussed:
- Detroit Day: rename the BBQ at the Big House—they’re letting Detroit know they’re a priority post-Brown.
- Craig: Local players have a stronger connection to the program.
- Gattis extension: Can’t recruit on a short contract. What if Michigan needs out?
- Hunter Dickinson draft: Like Livers last year, he’s probably just getting an evaluation, but it does start the clock that he’s probably leaving after 2021-‘22.
- Break Talk: Red Wings are cursed, NHL never has a problem getting other franchises the first overall pick.
- Owen Power first overall? Seth: how many years did the Wings get to the trade deadline needing a solid defenseman, and Power is that as a floor.
- Which NHL teams will leave our players in college? Which guys are we keeping?
- Michigan baseball: bit by the good pitching, last year’s run was good pitching too. They’re in a really tough regional: host Notre Dame might be the worst team.
- Naomi Osaka and the role of press conferences.
[Hit the JUMP for the player, and video and stuff]
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream.
Segment two is available here. You can also watch the video here:
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Both teams played hard.
I would only worry about the Gattis extension if/when Harbaugh is confirmed for the long haul after this season. If Harbaugh is let go after this year, I imagine the regime change will include most everyone, including Gattis as a casualty.
I like how football coaches need longer contracts to guarantee stability / recruiting and yet the odds of a player having the same position coach, coordinator, and head coach all 4 years in college is pretty small.
If stable staffs were the key to recruiting, Northwestern would win the Big Ten every year.
Renaming the BBQ is an interesting angle. But, since we recruit nationally in most respects, how much does it really add value?
I somewhat agree.
If all the recruits and commits are from Michigan and maybe nearby cities (Indy, Toledo, Cleveland, maybe Chicago) I can see that working as a marketing strategy or cache. But it might take a long while before a kid from say LA or Atlanta associates "Detroit Day" with a UM Recruiting weekend. And there's that whole thing of the actual city of Detroit being 45 miles away from the Big House...
It’s always important to keep a good relationship with the players and coaches at your local high schools. Those connections and relationships continue to pay dividends for years down the road. So it adds value in the fact that it helps establish/maintain those relationships as our new staff gets familiar and gets introduced to some local players.
The guys who aren’t top targets right now could be fall-back options if our top targets go elsewhere. So that another sense where getting those guys on campus, getting to know the facilities, getting to know the staff and spending that time in the Michigan football environment can keep those doors open at a later date.
Re the role of press conferences:
"In both of my reporting careers, sports and politics, I have dealt with the phenomena of mass press conferences, and I can state with some authority that 90 percent of them are completely useless. The idea that they advance the coverage of anything is purely fantastical...These exercises are an excuse for the athlete or politician to say nothing, and for reporters to preen for the cameras and their colleagues. You couldn’t find actual news at one with an electron microscope."
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a36595415/naomi-osaka-french-open-press-conference/
On the other hand, I've made a very nice career covering my favorite sports team by filling the giant spaces left by legacy media abandoning writer-generated content. While the work is double, I enjoy doing this far, far more than the trade magazine industry, which I hear isn't doing as well.
This is especially true of press conferences at the Slams. So many of the reporters there don't really know anything about tennis but convinced their publisher to expense their trip to Paris or London. So you get a lot of questions about really basic tactics or extraneous fluff.
The question of how well journos do their jobs, whether they or the press are only corporate handmaidens of a corporatized sports establishment. . . is only tangentially related to whether Naomi Osaka needs to submit to the ritualized strictures of press conferences as they've come to be carried out. She should--pretty obviously--exercise some control.
What ever happened to civility and respect for your fellow human being? How about this, politely ask Ms. Osaka if she would like to answer a few questions. If she says, “no,” respect her decision and move on. The alternative is getting press conferences with people who obviously don’t want to be there and give non-answers accordingly.
Is the first bullet implying Brown was anti Detroit?
I'm down for some Notre Dame bashing, but this seems a tad off:
They’re in a really tough regional: host Notre Dame might be the worst team.
I mean, they won all of their games by double digits. Nobody else did that. Texas came close (winning games by 11, 7, and 10). Otherwise...nobody was even close.
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