Unverified Voracity Is Basically Tom Brady Comment Count

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This week in limited concessions to SEO. So it turns out Esquire googled AJ Daulerio and found this site's bluntly titled piece on him in the aftermath of the ESPN sex tantrum that outed some woman no one had ever heard of for dating some guy no one had ever heard of. They quoted me, so score. That makes me essentially Tom Brady. If I was not getting married in five months this might have had some utility.

I unsubscribed from Deadspin's feed a while ago when they removed full feeds because there was too much junk to wade through just to get to "Dead Wrestler of the Week" or Tommy Craggs writing something long, so I've lost track of what's going on with athlete dongs. Apparently this is:

The topic turned to a video Deadspin had posted of a drunk girl having sex in a bathroom stall at a sports bar in Bloomington, Indiana.  After a few days of trading emails with the girl, who was begging to have the video taken down, he refused to take it down.  Then the girl's father contacted Daulerio to let him know "You gotta understand, I've just been dealing with watching my daughter get f---ed in a pile of piss for the past two days."

So, awesome. We've moved beyond the thin veneer of "making ESPN acknowledge its sexism" or "Josh Hamilton is a hypocrite" or "Brett Favre is someone you've heard of" and we're just randomly holding up unfortunate young women not connected to sports in any way for internet leers. At least no one's pretending anymore. Except of course Daulerio is, so here's Tom Fornelli ripping him for it.

We'll always have Notre Dame. Tate Forcier transferred, completing his destiny. He used Twitter to make his announcement. It's sad and obviously omits "class" when it talks about the various places he worked hard. In retrospect it's all just so obvious. Homeschooling, yo. It either turns you into Tim Tebow or… not Tim Tebow.

This was cosmically ordained. Now Tate Forcier is the avatar of the Rodriguez era: high expectations, fun here and there, eventual letdown, premature termination. I'll miss the moxie. In memoriam:

 

BONUS INCEST SPECULATION: I wonder if he'll end up at San Diego State? He's from San Diego. He has a redshirt year, and SDSU's QB graduates after 2011. Those Montana rumors from earlier now have a lot of credence, but if he's willing to sit out a year home seems like an attractive option.

This is hard, veteran fluff. Mattison is saying some awfully nice things about Brady Hoke:

"When Brady got the job (at Michigan last Tuesday), I said to myself, 'If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this with Brady,'" Mattison said. "I wouldn't have gone to any other college team. I wouldn't have changed what I was doing for anybody but Brady.

And you can't have a defensive coordinator hire without the magic word:

"You put the best front and the best coverage out there, and the intention is to be aggressive," Mattison said.

Jarrett Irons also says Mattison is a "helluva" recruiter.

Speaking of recruiting, not to be, like, you know but… Michigan has eight coaches. Seven are white and one is Fred Jackson. Most are old, and even the young-ish ones look like old white guys spiritually. This 1) is bad, 2) looks bad, and 3) can be offset if the last two guys are "energetic recruiters" in the same way Zack Novak is "heady."

If Vincent Smith is having problems I'm not sure he's got anyone he can talk to with any clue what it's like to be a poor black kid:

jeff-hecklinskimark-smithal-borges-headshotdarrell-funk
I am sorry to hear your troubles. In these times I always turn to the advice of Robert Goulet.

The only thing separating this staff from your local realtor is Mark Smith's terror at being photographed. For a lot of reasons, we need some people on staff who know who Waka Flocka Flame is. (No points awarded for knowing of the existence of a "Small Wayne.")

I've heard the last two assistants are likely to be guys without ties to Michigan but there's a guy out there who seems like a natural fit: Corwin Brown. He's a secondary coach, and Michigan needs a secondary coach. He's currently with the Patriots but his role one of those assistant (to the) position coach roles the NFL invented to give anyone who gets fired a job. He's probably not making an exorbitant amount of money.

Brown wasn't a good defensive coordinator but ND defensive backs developed pretty well under his guidance and he was a monster recruiter for them. Since I have mentioned him as a plausible candidate there's no way he gets hired, but the fit seems obvious.

The DL coach, meanwhile, can barely know what a defensive line is since Hoke and Mattison are on staff and should only touch down in Ann Arbor to drop off signed LOIs. Beyonce for DL coach?

[Side note on yesterday's post on Mattison: the 12.1 PPG number I cited isn't right. It was around 17 points per game. Oddly, I got this erroneous info from M's own database, which said opponents scored 157 points in '95.]

All tapes have not been erased. If you're wondering, there will not be a Gator Bowl UFR because what's the point? I do have the Utah-SDSU game from this year and I'll do the offense from that game after Signing Day. I might pull some Picture Pages from the defense if I can find something that illuminates the difference between Greg Robinson running a 3-3-5 he doesn't understand and Rocky Long running the D he invented, too.

But anyway someone did bother to look at the tape of Michigan's bowl demolition. Here's Craig Roh playing DT on first and goal:

msu-td

This would be a seven-yard touchdown up the gut. Surprise. That play features errors by Mouton, Demens, and Kovacs and is yet another item to add to the pile of reasons Greg Robinson was a bad idea.

Not a feature. I'm arrogant. I know this for a lot of reasons but there's a statistic to back it up: the Michigan version of quiz bowl (a dynasty, BTW) held intramural tournaments occasionally and my first couple years in college I played in them. They kept extensive stats, and I was in the top five in correct answers. I was number one by a mile in incorrect answers*. Arrogance is not a feature, it's a bug.

There's a response to my post about Will Smith and robots and Michigan's hidebound image of itself on Maize 'n' Brew that "loves" the arrogance of Michigan fandom that I can't disagree more with. Arrogant fans are above all unpleasant to be around, no matter if they're on your side or not. When I was in Chicago for Blogs With Balls there was barhopping wherein I hung out with various Chicago based bloggers. One was Brian Stouffer of House Rock Built. I'm not sure who the other was. Stouffer's a really nice guy. The other guy was ND Nation in the flesh, a guy who actually brought up the African-American grad rate canard in a conversation with a stranger he'd just met. That sort of clueless insecurity is arrogance.

Also, this:

We are an arrogant program, and I am an arrogant fan.  I don't argue with Brian's awareness of the arrogance, but I think there's more to it than that.  He's right - "certain outsiders" can't really teach me, or many of us, anything.  Yes, many of the things rivals say about Michigan are true.  And yes, our bowl game opponents and OOC opponents will say Michigan just "lines up and comes after you" because that's what Michigan does.  Sure, we haven't won a majority of those games (even in the past thirty or so years, Michigan's bowl record isn't fantastic) but the formula works.

Is this:

lemon-of-troy Ned Flanders: Pardon me, neighbourinos. Some of our boys are lost in your town. You wouldn't have happened to see them, by any chance?
Shelbyville Guy #1: Sounds like Springfield's got a discipline problem.
Shelbyville Guy #2: Maybe that's why we beat them at football nearly half the time.

The post is neatly summarized by Shelbyville Guy #2. This is not so good.

*(Which cost five points if offered before the question was over.)

Etc.: Kellen Jones reconfirms commitment, if you missed it in yesterday's recruiting post. Oversigning picks up steam as a media concept. JMFJ on JMFJ. Holdin' the Rope on the early days of Hoke—boy, is that blog name going to be one to explain in a few years.

Comments

jlvanals

January 20th, 2011 at 4:12 PM ^

It all depends on the hire, I guess.  I would be fine with any kind of coach as long as they fit that bill.  All I'm saying is that I've been pleasantly surprised by the staff so far and don't see a reason to worry about the final two hires.  Hoke seems to be doing a great job so far and his ability as a recruiter will go a long way as well.  Either way, you get points for being a UM fan in the belly of the beast!

CSKinCINCINNATI

January 20th, 2011 at 9:10 PM ^

It has been a rough stretch since this losing streak started....    It was great living down hear durring the cooper years, but alas, all good things must come to an end some time.  There is a small resistance forming on this side of Toledo  I know a dozen or so M fans in the Cinci area..

Viva La Resistance!!!  and Go Blue!!!!

jlvanals

January 20th, 2011 at 3:54 PM ^

assuming that white coaches can't relate to black athlete sufficiently is a little presumptuous.  Brady Hoke recruited and coached plenty of black athletes at Michigan in the past and none that I know of complained that Hoke was hard to relate to (in fact all the guys I know that played under him rave about the guy).  Let Hoke pick his staff, play some football games, recruit some athletes and then re-evaluate after year 1 if something isn't right.   Brian's post seems overly nitpicky and searching for fault.. something, as you pointed out, that Brian did not like about all of the admittedly annoying RR haters.    

michgoblue

January 20th, 2011 at 2:06 PM ^

Do you know how many young, troubled minority youths singled out Lloys as having turned around their lives while at Michigan?  In case you don't know, Lloyd is white.  Also, having been involved in college fb for many years, I am sure that these old white dudes that we are hiring have actually been exposed to young black kids and might actually be able to relate to them. 

AAB

January 20th, 2011 at 2:15 PM ^

matters for reasons other than "not looking racist."  

A disproportionately large number of high school football recruits are African-American kids from horrifyingly impoverished backgrounds.  I'm a rich white kid from a suburb of Detroit; one of my biggest concerns growing up was figuring out how to finally hit a decent kick serve.

You don't have to be a bleeding-heart liberal to realize that I'm going to have a hard time relating to the experiences of a kid from Pahokee, and that having someone on the staff who has gone through the same stuff as a kid from Pahokee can be really valuable, both for recruiting purposes and after the players actually show up on campus.  

michgoblue

January 20th, 2011 at 2:27 PM ^

I didn't think that Brian was saying that we should have more diversity so as not to look racist.  I think that Brian was aying that a more diverse staff will better relate to potential recruits and current players.  I think that what Brian was arguing (and I could be misinterpretaing) was that this ability to better identify would be an advantage to us in both recruiting and player guidance.  I was taking issue with that point, for the reasons I listed - i.e. that plenty of older, white coaches are monster recruiters amongst impoverished minority recruits and similarly, plenty of white coaches are great at guiding younger minority players.  I just don't think that the issue is so black and white (no pun intended, but once I realized the pun, I thought it fit).

AAB

January 20th, 2011 at 2:34 PM ^

he's not saying that ONLY young African-American coaches can recruit impoverished black kids.  Yes, there are plenty of older white coaches who are excellent at it.  But just because a number of older white men can recruit and mentor young black kids doesn't change the fact that it would probably be wise for a number of reasons to have a diverse staff that shares experiences with the broadest possible swath of recruits and players.  

It can both be true -- and I think is true -- that a staff full of old white dudes can do a great job recruiting and mentoring young minority players, but that a diverse staff would be even better at it.  

michgoblue

January 20th, 2011 at 2:39 PM ^

I don't think that we are that far apart.  The only part of your post that I take issue with is your statement that "a diverse staff would be even better at" recruiting and mentoring.  Perhaps "could" be better, depending on who the individual student-athlete is, but I think it is too strong to say "would" be better.

MGoBSam

January 20th, 2011 at 2:16 PM ^

In case you don't know, Lloyd is white.

I keep chuckling at this.

Also, you have a good point.  I think that Brian could be correct, but I would assume that the coaches we're hiring are used to working with and helping young guys - regardless of their race.

cp4three2

January 20th, 2011 at 3:29 PM ^

Sure, there are some poor black kids on the team, but it's not like we've got a team filled with guys from unfortunate circumstances.  The point someone made about Michigan having a lot of support groups for those kids is very important.  I think alot of the time we think of these guys as being off on their own when they really aren't.  They are part of the community just like every other poor black kid that gets into Michigan.  

 

All in all, is it good to have a coach that might be better able to relate with some of those kids?  Sure.  But only if he can coach (or is Beyonce).  Plus, you don't have to be black to have been poor and able to relate to these kids.  Just like Fred undoubtedly relates to the white guys on the team.

HHW

January 20th, 2011 at 1:39 PM ^

This answers the question of why exactly Mallet and Boren transfer. The obvious answer is that RR's staff didn't have enough coaches on his staff that understood the trials and tribulations of a middle class white guy. Now we just need to figure out why all the black kids transferred.
<br>This is one of Cook's more ridiculous arguments. I bet Rosenberg is kicking himself for not fabricating a similar argument when RR was hired.

UM Fan NY

January 20th, 2011 at 1:47 PM ^

is a epic douchebag for even bringing up race and age into his jihad against hoke. seriously, are you that much of a fucking tool to stoop to a freep level? get the tuna fish out and go get licked by your cat.

BRIAN SHARP STRIKES AGAIN.

itself

January 20th, 2011 at 1:59 PM ^

so youre one of those "i only like my information with a sugary coating" types...

To put Rosenberg in the same catergory as Brian is ridiculous for reasons I hope would be all too obvious.

HHW

January 20th, 2011 at 2:50 PM ^

I am all in for bad news and criticism; hence my unhealthy dedication to M football over the past three years. Howeva, I like that criticism to be based on some tangible evidence. Such as, "M needs more minority coaches because the last three BCS champions had staffs with at least X% minorities and players have attributed that diversity to their success."
<br>Some blogger making a blanket statement that the staff makeup is detrimental to the players and their future success without charts(!) is MSMish.
<br>If one can't see that Cook has a preconceived opinion on Hoke, that was first displayed in Dec '08, then you haven't been reading his blog long enough. Unfortunately I don't think his opinion will change unless Hoke is raising the BCS crystal next year (one can dream).

victors2000

January 20th, 2011 at 4:02 PM ^

what arguments are you talking about? Why have a 'yes man' blog that panders to popular opinion and not your own, whether popular or no? Brian could of been more tactful with what he said, perhaps he could of said it 'better', but maybe he said it EXACTLY the way he wanted to, to make his statement and generate some noise about a topic he thinks warrants introspection.

burntorangeblue

January 20th, 2011 at 3:02 PM ^

Yeah, I mean it's a pretty pragmatic position that a team filled mostly with young african american kids might benefit from some african american coaches.  If anything, the "race doesn't matter" stance is a little pie in the sky for taste.

AAB

January 20th, 2011 at 1:53 PM ^

his point is that a large part of recruiting is getting players and their families to feel comfortable with a school and a coaching staff, and that having a diverse array of perspectives and backgrounds on a staff is beneficial in that regard.  

BRCE

January 20th, 2011 at 4:54 PM ^

Brian, again, is letting personal sentiment clout opinion.

He LOVED the Pahokee pipeline and referenced "poor black kids" on this blog several times, clearly thinking it was a great new direction for the program and superior to recruiting "kids like the Masseys." 

Dude is nostalgic for Rod already and is looking to pounce on unRod-like developments, even if it means judging a book by its cover.

mgowin

January 20th, 2011 at 1:58 PM ^

I'm not going to get too far into the diversity thing, but I do think we need a Trooper Taylor type guy at UM. And by that I simply mean a youngish guy who can relate to kids and is very animated. Brian is right in noting that our staff does resemble your local Century 21 team. Are there any current national powers that are successful with this staff makeup, or do most teams have that young, hip, energetic guy or guys, ala Trooper Taylor?

readyourguard

January 20th, 2011 at 2:08 PM ^

Back in the 80's, the staff was made up of Bo, Mo, Lloyd, Jerry Meter, Bob Thornbladh, Jerry Hanlon, Alex Agase, Paul Schudel, Elliot Uzelac, Milo Vooletich, and Tirrel Burton.

Things clicked along pretty good despite the pale complexion of the coaching staff (sans Coach Burton).

victors2000

January 20th, 2011 at 3:45 PM ^

older coaching staff with differing cultures has shrank. Back in the 80's the 'information age' was just starting to take off. The world has become a smaller place place since then due to the explosion of computing power and technology; I got a cellphone on my right hip that would put my first computer to shame. Cellphones, facebook, twitter, all these serve to make the world a smaller place and lessen the differences between peoples of differing cultures and socioeconomic status.

Does this sound like a dissertation or what? Anyways, not only has the gap shrunk, but also the culture differences as well; a cloned coaching staff is not such a significant hinderance to recruiting as it was at one time. I will say that diversity is a good thing in and of itself, though, and should be encouraged in all aspects of society.

MI Expat NY

January 20th, 2011 at 3:59 PM ^

I'd say we mostly agree.  However, I think you missed my point.  In the 80's having a mostly or pretty much all white coaching staff probably wasn't a problem in recruiting because recruits weren't likely to have a whole lot of alternatives.  If a poor black kid wanted to play big time college football, he probably was looking at a coaching staff very similar in makeup to Bo's staff, no matter what school he chose to go to.  I'm sure someone can point out a staff or two with more diversity, but considering that the BCA didn't even form until 1987, it's probably safe to say that the coaching fraternity was still predominantly white. 

aaamichfan

January 20th, 2011 at 2:25 PM ^

Unverified Voracity is much better in the offseason.

Brian seems to be more creative when he isn't locked in a basement doing UFR's for 20 hours each week.

TSWC

January 20th, 2011 at 4:27 PM ^

Esquire's got some good stuff, but so does GQ (George Saunders writes for GQ, and that dude is awesome, also Alan Richman who is an institution). They also both have their fair share of interviews of hot women with subtlely (and sometimes not so subtely) sexual statements blown up and bolded for sad sacks to get all excited about. They're both way "better," intellectually, than Maxim or FHM, etc,

Nothsa

January 20th, 2011 at 2:26 PM ^

This gives me some hope for the defense next fall. The two greatest problems that play illustrates are:

1. An anti-Weissian decided schematic disadvantage. Our schemes were so bad all year that on many plays we were basically giving up 5 yards before the ball was snapped. In this instance, it's first and goal against a run-first team, so who are the personnel? The right side of our line consisted of Roh and Fitzgerald. Not exactly the jumbo defense package. MSU pulled a guard, giving them 4 OL on the playside plus an H-back, not counting the center (and Martin was not over center, he was weakside). MSU was getting yardage on this before the snap - with really good defensive play, maybe they only get to the three yard line. That's got to be on the coaching. The scheme was fundamentally unsound, and the players were not in positions to succeed.

 

2. Lack of size and youthful mistakes. Talbott, safety on the play side, was easily blocked out of the play. Fitzgerald and Roh got buried. Demens, who offered some hope for the future of the LB core this fall, left his assignment. Avery got over to make the tackle but was run over/dragged into the end zone. These are all things that can and will be corrected with time in the weight room and decent tutelage.

 

So, both of these things are partially fixable by the end of August. A scheme that maximizes player opportunity, guys getting 8 months to grow, get stronger. Will they be good? Probably not. Will they necessarily be historically bad? I don't think so. Fingers crossed.

BrnAWlrne

January 20th, 2011 at 2:36 PM ^

What in the hell are we doing with Craig Roh playing DT!!!

If there are any kids out there, put on your earmuffs...

Gerg, you #$%$%^($#(%*#  piece of #$*# face!  Why would you !#(*** our defense like that by putting Craig m#*#(*%&*#($* Roh at defensive tackle.  Does he look like a #$M#$)$*#4() defensive tackle...I'm mean look at him...matter a fact--F'it, I'm shooting this damn stuffed beaver in the head and throwing it in the Detroit *$#$$&% River...

(*inaudible) You mother....