Unverified Voracity Balances Things Comment Count

Brian

Presidential band. Via MVictors, the Michigan Marching band performing for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan:

Not an endorsement of politics, etc.

Oversigning movement? Braves and Birds's post on the two schools who should be on the warpath about oversigning (Florida and Georgia) has already proven wicked prescient and it continues to do so:

"You've got 20 spaces but you've still signed 25. Well, you can bring them in during the summer, work them and let your strength staff work with them, and decide which ones you like the best. The other five, you can tell them, 'Hey, we know we signed you, we expect you to come in, but we don't have space for you, we're sorry, but you have to leave and come back in January.'"

After a brief pause, Richt gave his feelings on that particular tactic.

"I think that's an awful thing to do," Richt said. "It's nothing that we have ever done since we've been at Georgia."

Get The Picture pulls out another section of that story that suggests Richt believes there's going to be change in the near future:

“Almost every year there have been guys in our class in that gray shirt situation. Normally, we say you don’t have to tell anybody, just sign on Signing Day and the chances of you coming in with your class, no one’s going to know the difference, which I don’t think is dishonest with the way things are,” Richt said. “So we’ve signed guys knowing that the class is full and asked if they could come in January, but every time we’ve done that, there’s been a space and they came in with their class.”

But those rules might be about to change.

According to Richt, the SEC and the NCAA is changing the rules “just as rapidly as they can to keep it from happening in the future.”

The most obvious change you could make is to require the financial aid offered in return for an LOI applicable in fall. You could still grayshirt, but you wouldn't get to use the letter of intent to lock the kid in. If he gets a better offer he can take it. Insert the usual spiel about how the LOI is mostly a one-way street.

Oversigning would be a lot tougher if you couldn't receive a letter of intent without an existing spot. "Extra" players would know where they stood and head elsewhere before they got a dorm room. It wouldn't be perfect but it would be better.

Nine games, si. Via Black Heart Gold Pants an excellent article on why that ninth conference game is important to the conference in general and you, Michigan fan, in particular:

The divisional alignment exuded balance. But the league’s creation of permanent cross-divisional opponents did not. Based on the current eight-game league schedule, some teams have obvious advantages over others. For instance, Michigan State will play Indiana — which had the most losses over the 17-year period — every year and Ohio State four times over 10 years. Michigan, however, will play Ohio State — which had the most wins over the 17-year period — every year and Indiana four times over 10 years. Wisconsin’s cross-divisional rival (Minnesota) hasn’t even tied for a Big Ten title since 1967, while Penn State’s cross-divisional rival (Nebraska) has won three national titles in the last 17.

Meanwhile, Michigan won't play Wisconsin for four years. Incoming freshmen who don't redshirt won't ever have the privilege of staring down a wild boar in a helmet. I know Athletic Director X now has to have seven home games a year because of vastly increased costs that are totally not optional at all or offset by ballooning TV contracts, but long-term thinking should dictate a ninth conference game for competitive equity and various other things.

I'm not sure if I can get behind author Scott Dochterman's suggestion that the ninth game be another protected crossover game that attempts to balance schedules by giving each team a traditionally strong and traditionally crappy protected rival. Michigan would get either Illinois or Indiana on a permanent basis, which means they'd still miss PSU and Wisconsin 50% of the time.

On the other hand, he lays out a conference schedule that looks almost totally balanced. Here's Michigan's:

MICHIGAN

  • Divisional opponents: Iowa, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern
  • Permanent cross-divisional opponent: Ohio State (1)
  • Second permanent cross-divisional opponent: Illinois (2)
  • First cycle: Penn State (1), Indiana (2)
  • Second cycle: Wisconsin (1), Purdue (2)

Everyone else's is about right. Do you want more frequent games against interesting teams or an almost totally fair schedule?

In the meantime the first divisional tiebreaker should be the conference record of your opponents from the other division.

Groan. The usual: recent Michigan alumni say things, people facepalm. Whether it's Brian Griese saying Michigan "lacked effort" under Rodriguez, to which I say…

disasterimage_thumb

…this is a process many were involved in, or Morgan Trent saying Michigan didn't take Michigan State seriously, every time a former player is quoted somewhere I have to delve deeper into the google image search for facepalm. This last one was bad enough that Jerel Worthy blew up on twitter about it and all you can say is, "yeah, pretty much."

Morgan Trent! When the guy who about singlehandedly lost the 2006 OSU game is saying there's a "real program" now the disease has reached its terminal stage.

Further evidence Beilein is scouting ninja. Rivals has put up their first 2012 basketball rankings and Michigan commit Glenn Robinson III, who was relatively unheralded when he committed, comes in 50th. Nick Stauskas is 89th. Rivals puts a ton of emphasis on AAU, which GRIII is currently tearing up and Stauskas sitting out with a knee issue. Another of the raves becoming de riguer:

Glenn Robinson III (2012): I hadn’t seen the 6-6 Robinson since last summer. Wow. He looks a lot different. He has really filled out since last July, adding about 25 pounds of muscle. He still has that nice 15- to 18-foot shot, but his explosiveness getting to the basket has raised his game to another level. Robinson drove the middle of the lane in a game Sunday and dunked over another guard with authority. The quote of the weekend from that player: “If I knew that was Glenn Robinson, I wouldn’t have tried to block it.” From the couple games I saw, Robinson is very deserving talent-wise of his spot as a core player on the Junior All-Star team.

Robinson AAU teammate Mitch McGary is #5(!), and now we've got an open scholarship so that's totally happening. He vaguely mentioned us at Inside The Hall. Happening.

UMHoops has more scouting video of Robinson, BTW.

Borges: win. Do you know what you want your offensive coordinator to sound like? An IT guy:

"What we want to keep, what we want to throw out, what we may want to add," said Borges, who added he probably won't install much more of the playbook during preseason camp in August. "(We're) trouble-shooting the offense and trying to accommodate the personnel, and now we have a little data to do it. Before spring we didn't know what of our offense our kids could run. Now we've got a much better feel."

Unfortunately the spring game implied the answer to "what can our kids run?" is "nothing you want to"; fortunately Borges seems a lot more flexible than Rodriguez or Michigan past. Proof will be in the pudding. The Saturday Pudding.

Open season. Mike Spath has an interesting column at the Wolverine about Mel Pearson's change of heart. Pearson, long thought the heir apparent to Red Berenson, turned down a ton of overtures over the years but has now left for Michigan Tech. Tech is his alma mater, yes, but it's also the most downtrodden program in the country. Others may be worse year in, year out, but none of those teams spend their year getting their face stomped by the WCHA. It's a depressing job.

Why is Pearson taking it? Maybe because that heir apparent thing is no longer very apparent:

"Here is an opportunity, if you want to get head-coaching experience, if you want that on your resume whether you're looking at my job or any job down the road, here's your chance," Berenson said. "I don't know what David Brandon's criteria will be someday but I suspect head-coaching experience is important."

And it is important. How important? Two different sources have said Pearson (or Powers) will face a mountain of an uphill climb if they don't have head-coaching experience on their resume. One of the sources even saying, "No way Brandon hires a guy that has never been responsible for an entire program. Especially with the way he wants to market the hockey team going forward."

Pearson goes from a shoo-in to a longshot, as Spath has been making noises about Michigan hiring literally anyone they want in the college hockey world with a few limited exceptions (program icons like York, Parker, Umile, and that's about it). If Pearson wants the job he's going to have to be a head coach somewhere.

For a relaxing time, make it a contrast between Michigan's direction with its hockey hire and Michigan State's.

Etc.: Former PSU Austin Scott thinks the dismissed rape charge against him was  conspiracy. MSU instate recruiting freakout makes the mainstream media. Never addressed in these sorts of articles is what it means when two schools both go after the same players and they all go to one. Softball is hosting a regional this weekend. First game is Friday at eight against Western. Get there early—it won't last long. Zach Hyman, a big time hockey recruit has decommitted from Princeton in the wake of Guy Gadowsky's hire at Penn State and is looking at Michigan along with a few other schools. He would be a major help next year.

Comments

antidaily

May 16th, 2011 at 4:46 PM ^

It's ok for an engineering grad to sell a shirt that says Bow Down Little Brother. But not ok for a guy who beat State 3 times to talk some smack. Got it.

/flame

GoBlueInNYC

May 16th, 2011 at 4:51 PM ^

I think the issue is more who are they talking smack about. A lot of the comments coming from former players are smack talk about Michigan. Michigan under Rodriguez, granted, but Michigan nonetheless, and that includes a lot of still current players.

Plus, Morgan Trent is just a dick.

jmblue

May 16th, 2011 at 5:19 PM ^

On the schedule, it's remarkable how every bit of evidence suggests that the most logical thing to do was to go with straight geography for the divisions.  Michigan, MSU, OSU, PSU, Indiana and Purdue in the East and the others in the West.  All East teams would be in the Eastern timezone, and all West teams would be in the Central timezone.    There would have been no need whatsoever for protected cross-divisional games under that setup, because all rivalries would have been contained within the divisions.  With no protected cross-division games, you could play three of the other division's teams one year (or two years) and the other three the next year, so no player would ever miss playing a fellow conference school.  And that's without needing to play nine conference games.  

How could the conference not figure this out?  Their stupid attempt at gerrymandering is just making things more unequal, depriving every team the chance to play one of the other 11 teams for four years, and is leading us towards the awkward fit of a ninth game.  

markusr2007

May 17th, 2011 at 12:33 AM ^

12-34 as HC at CMU and then handed a Howitzer of an offense (Michigan 2006-2007) with the switch off safety  to fumble around with - one of Michigan's most experienced and talented ever.  Gee, I wonder whatever could possibly go wrong with a decision like that one?

 

Njia

May 17th, 2011 at 8:33 AM ^

Lloyd evidently preferred Debord as his heir to the Michigan throne, (I appreciate loyalty, Lloyd, but c'mon). I'm just going to suppose that a hypothetical tenure of Mike Debord as Michigan's head coach would not gone any better than RR's.

psychomatt

May 17th, 2011 at 12:47 AM ^

Going from 8 to 9 conference games has three major problems:

First, it will reduce the number of home games for each B10 team by one half game per year. Depending on the program, the loss of revenue will be roughly $1 to $2 million annually. This might not seem like much, but college athletics are expensive and most athletic departments already are barely making ends meet.

Second, notwithstanding BHGP argument that a 9-game conference schedule will be inherently more equitable, it actually will make the schedules even more unbalanced because half the teams will have 5 away conference games while the other half will have 4 away conference games each year.

Third, by converting a non-conference game against a cupcake into a 9th conference game against a superior team, it will make it more difficult for the teams in the bottom half of the conference to reach 6 wins and become bowl eligible each year. This will reduce bowl revenues and, over time, adversely affect the ability of those teams to recruit.

markvo

May 17th, 2011 at 6:56 AM ^

I remember watching that as a kid, we had just lost to Wisconsin int he first game after being a pre-season #1 and the first thing Hope said after the band left the stage was "that's how fast they got out of Wisconsin".