Unverified Voracity Constructs Analogies

That punt rule kind of scares me. I do not want the Emperor to be injured (if that is possible, we'll see.)

my problem with GBMW all along has been, and forever will be, the ball-less hedging of their bets on "insider" info that has me utterly convinced they have zero insider info.

hey, guys, sources tell me the sun might come up tomorrow. maybe not though, just in case it doesn't. see, i said both outcomes, so we're right either way. no sugarcoat.

but the original backlash against GBMW wasn't that "Justin Turner didn't walk at graduation." Their original post was along the lines of "we heard someone's in trouble but we're not going to tell you so you have no way to check up on us." Only after Turner's name got out did they amend. It's that initial post that was absurd.

Good insight into what a kid in his situation has to think about when a new coach comes in. Regardless of whether you agree with his prediction of his usefulness in RR's system, this interview reminds you that he has to at least MAKE that prediction -- he's got only a narrow window of opportunity to make his mark, and can't just sit back and "hope for the best" under the new regime.

Has anyone heard how he is doing?

Fitz and Gallon are my biggest concerns.

over how a guy who's supposedly academically qualified to take classes at Michigan can fail to pass a standardized statewide exam. Something ain't adding up.

down your hot wife, you have issues."

Brian, that is a pretty significant accomplishment, have you seen her? Don't sell that short. Also he is getting paid AGAIN, another accomplishment. He's starting to look like a genius to me.

Nice of Woodson to get all dressed up. Was he unaware that there would be cameras?

any word on how Tousssaint is doing?

the dominat team instate. Not much of a peep about sparty. CMU got more mention than sparty.

However I do respect Dontanio's coaching...making the instate rivarly even more bitter on the field and off the field.

However his childish remarks about MN20,were just that...childish.

I was in high school when they started the Michigan High-School Proficiency Test, and all I remember about it is that it was an even bigger joke than Governor Engler.

My group of friends at the time were a who's who of the honor roll (and included probably the best 3 decks of Magic: The Gathering in the school -- p.s. I didn't have one). The lowliest school any of us went to was Michigan State, and that on a full academic scholarship. My (not quite 1400) SAT score set the bottom of the curve.

I say this because half of this self-styled 'brain trust' failed the first MHSPT. Nobody took it seriously, especially those of us for whom high school was just an annoying prelude to the real education. It was a test designed not to measure aptitude of the students so much as to prove the ineptitude of their teachers, the justification arm of a two-pronged Engler-era effort to break the teachers' unions.

The only way to get the answers right would be if your teacher taught you that answer. If your (Boomer) English teacher had you read The Grapes of Wrath or Catch 22 or The Catcher in the Rye instead of A Tale of Two Cities, you wouldn't know which novel begins with "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."

The test still had no reflection whatsoever on the aptitude of a single student taking it -- it was a test to see if Specific, state-mandated lessons were being passed on to the students. Or more specifically, when you got those answers wrong, it was the basis behind quotes stating that "60 percent of our state's high school students couldn't identify Hamlet as a character from Shakespeare." To previous generations, this was mortal sin. Follow it up with a news report of high school students being assigned Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and PRESTO: that most wonderful catalyst for political gain: Outraged Parents.

I don't care if you think it was a good thing or bad thing to do this. The point is, to the students taking it, it had no teeth. It was given the last week of May, at a time when anyone who cared about grades was putting time into end-of-year projects, studying for finals, and having dreams about a perfectly bodied female with the head of Abraham Lincoln.

The first-year results reflected the mass indifference from the state's better students (e.g. a guy who ended up in Harvard Law and a dude on his way to Lloyd's at Michigan drew matching pics of Mario and Luigi with the fill-in circles). So for the next class, the state made it pass/fail, with failure keeping your degree from you. But even that was more to teach the Super Mario Brothers et al. a lesson.

That's what high school aptitude tests are for.

I would imagine the Ohio Aptitude Test is a similar thing. We all got the idea from Wisconsin, after all.

It's been 11 years since then, so I'd like to hear from more recent crops of Michigan-bound students: are High School Proficiency Tests, to someone already accepted to the University of Michigan, as much of a joke today as they were in my time? How about those in Ohio?

OK, I re-registered here because I hate when people, including Brian, distort my point:

First, lets be clear:

GBMW did not report that "Turner didn't walk." Nor did they report that "Turner didn't graduate". They reported that he failed his Ohio State exam. One of these (whether he walked) is publicly observable. The other is private record. I realize that GBMW didn't uncover this information, and was merely passing it on. That doesn't mean the information should be in the public domain. We don't publish unreleased academic information (unless we're Jim Carty), because it's illegal Period.

Second, my point was this:

GBMW writes that Kelvin Grady had "family values issues" because of an overheard conversation they won't convey from a person they won't reveal. In another, they communicate private, unreleased information about a high school kid. In another, they say that RR and Martin have a disagreement. They back up NONE of these things.

THEN, in a 4th post, they say that kids shouldn't be sensitive to online criticism. Communicating Turner's private information isn't "criticism". Making up that RR and Martin may have a conflict isn't "critcism". So their defense post didn't actually defend any of what they did. They can criticize a kid's pad level or tackling ability all they want, but essentially writing that Kelvin Grady is an asshole because they eavesdropped a comment they won't tell us uttered by a person they won't tell us is bullshit. That's all.

Toney Clemons, Ryan Mallett, and all those other transfers are people to watch. No matter how one may feel about them, at any level of their overall character, if they do well and overachieve it will be used as a negative on all levels in recruiting talks against Michigan. Or Michigan 2.0 in its current state. The real worry is alumni in the NFL draft year to year. Ok, because USC, whether one feels they are legal or not...puts guys at a good rate in the NFL. Michigan fans can look back and feel good about it all. But the future past this year, speculatively speaking, is kinda sketchy. The other thing is that USC still plays old Michigan football. And or Pro Style Offenses and 4-3 defenses. Pete Carroll was an NFL coach and runs running plays and passing plays like Lloyd and Bo did. He and whomever is is his offensive coordinator seem to be on the same page. Even if that Offensive Coordinator goes on to be a Head Coach and blows, under USC, they do not. And so you look at the NFL and then how that relates to high school recruiting. You factor in what Clemons said about values, family and a program and you see that MI has many things to wrap up. Michigan Football needs a superficially good season of W's. But Michigan, as a university, has never been satisfied with just that. It wants to win on every level and all of those levels matter. Otherwise it would not attract the type of student and athlete it regularly does. Damage control usually happens from the inside and goes out into the elements. It's strange when old elements, ghosts of old who are outside now are hinting at a vacuous middle. Here's to sliding down the surface of things and spread based W's!

What is going on with these guys, I haven't heard anything about them lately.