Bring your flaming knives, kid. I bring forth this earth-shattering news: Michigan's going to have a male twirler next year. His name's Nathan Maygar and he's matriculating this fall after an intensive career with the Saline Twirlettes. I'm pretty sure he's the tall one in this picture.

Also, the male one. The Twirlettes' web page notes Maygar will be the first male twirler in a while; hopefully he goes on a retreat with the guy who shows up at homecoming every year with, like, knives and flaming batons and stuff. There he will be called "grasshopper" and learn the ancient secrets of entertaining homecoming crowds.

We used to win these? Wolverine Historian brings you the 1990 Ohio State game:

Gary Moeller, a center with his entire name written on his jersey, and what sounds like be Dick Vermeil doing color.

Okay, I don't get it. I just don't get why anyone thinks the new clock rules are going to signficantly affect the game. Here's Mark Richt:

"Seven years ago, I would have been thrilled about it," Richt said. "My ambition was to play as fast as we could possibly play and run the no-huddle and get to the line of scrimmage as fast as possible and get the ball snapped in a hurry and run as many plays as possible. We were not allowed to do that.

"In my opinion, the officials in this league were more deliberate than in any league I had been. The SEC, to me, was grinding it to a halt. Now, all of a sudden, you can play as fast as you want to play."

I've seen countless references to this; only Bret Bielema dismissed the clock rules as not particularly significant.

Why does anyone think the clock rules are going to be some radical change? Under the previous rule you had to wait until the referee blew his whistle and signaled the ball ready for play before you could snap the ball. Under the current rule... you have to wait until the referee blows his whistle and signals the ball ready for play before you can snap the ball. There is no difference in how fast you can get plays off. The only difference is that you might have 28 or 24 or 21 seconds when the play is whistled ready instead of 25. Am I crazy here?

Update: Ron Zook: ""And you better be ready to run plays. No doubt, offenses that play at a quicker pace will have an advantage." WTF?

Men overboard. Penn State's booted a couple players:

Two days after ESPN ran a stinging Outside The Lines feature highlighting the recent rash of off-field problems with the Penn State football program, some housecleaning has apparently begun in Happy Valley.

Sources close to the team report to FightOnState.com that during a squad meeting Tuesday, head coach Joe Paterno announced defensive tackles Chris Baker and Phillip Taylor had been dismissed earlier in the day. According to the sources, Paterno said the dismissals were permanent.

Baker was talented and prone to beating people up in mass melees -- the only player to get an assault conviction for the infamous posse incident -- and Taylor was a participant in Penn State's football's second mass beating spree. Both were part-time starters last year, but Penn State still returns Ollie Ogbu, Jared Odrick, and Abe Koroma at the position and should be fine. RUTS, now a part of Black Shoe Diaries, is peeved.

Diaries combover. Chitownblue gets more comments than any of my posts have picked up by questioning the "Rodriguez does more with less" meme, pointing out that West Virginia recruiting is at least on par with the rest of the Big East and maybe better:

None of this means that I believe the staff will be unsuccessful. What it DOES mean is that WVU wasn't doing "more with less" than the rest of the Big East - they were doing what they should have with more talent. Luckily, Michigan generally has excellent talent levels. If that is maintained - and it appears that's not a problem - then we should have continued success.

There is a listing of four-star recruits acquired by the various Big East teams: WVU has 16(?!) four-star or better players, comparable to Louisville and Pitt and significantly better than the rest of the conference.

I'm not sure I agree with Chitownblue's police work here. This was significantly higher than my tally when I tackled Rodriguez's WVU recruiting; I came up with 12 four star or better recruits, eight of those in the past two classes. Rodriguez obviously got no use from the 2008 class, and the only player from 2007 to see significant time was Noel Devine. The four guys from previous years all bombed out. Net effect: Rodriguez actually got to use one four-star or better player during his entire tenure at West Virginia. Also, West Virginia was a good Big East team even when Virginia Tech, Miami, and Boston College were around -- a commenter points out that the Big East's recruiting looks a bit less grim when those teams are considered.

WVU obviously had better talent than the rest of the conference at a couple of key positions named "wherever Pat White is" and "wherever Steve Slaton is," but the recruiting and NFL draft record doesn't indicate that WVU had better top-to-bottom talent. This was the Big East, so he wasn't exactly doing more with "less" but he was doing more with "about the same." At Michigan, he will have to do more with "more, except against Ohio State and maybe one other team a year." This is a situation I feel okay about.

Meanwhile: Blue Seoul has an excellent near-UFR of the infamous Pitt game, and Chrisgocomment points out the weirdness of the "Bryant Scholarship" Alabama has. (FTR: contains no flaming.) We should get a Bo-Mo-Llo scholarship going.