The Worldwide Leader in Eeeeeeeee. ESPN dumped a massive amount of Barwis hype on the internet yesterday. Bruce Feldman:

Barwis is a 190-pound Philly area native with the kind of presence that scares grown men. Football players, many outweighing Barwis by 100 pounds, speak in awe of the guy like he's some sort of Chuck Norris figure. His reputation, which quickly turned him into an internet star among Wolverine fans, is indeed larger than life. "I think he had a freakin' pet wolf at home," says [former WVU RB Kay-Jay] Harris. "Now, c'mon, who has a pet wolf?"

More:

Cobourne, the veteran of the workout group, says he's noticed a dramatic difference in the athletes, using Foote, an established NFL guy, as his prime example.

"I saw Foote come in at the beginning, and he'd try and lollygag a little," says Cobourne. "And Mike's like 'Look, that ain't how we do it here.' Foote wasn't used to it. But now he's going right through it. These guys see what they're getting from it, 'Man, I was never explosive like this before. Wow this is really working for me.'"

Adam Rittenberg, meanwhile, has a two part interview with Chuck Norris of the North; this is the most schwing part:

Who has stood out to you so far in the program?

MB: They're all progressing to great magnitudes. If you're looking for an example, at 287 pounds, Brandon Graham did 315 pounds on the bench press. We cut him all the way down to 250 and then brought him back up to 269. At 269 today, he did 475 for two (repetitions) on the bench. That's pretty good. Everybody's increasing across the board. They've come a tremendously long way from learning exercises in the winter as freshmen, to being incredibly strong and functional with those exercises by the time the summer ends.

1) I can't believe Brandon Graham was nearly 300 pounds last year. 2) Schwing. 3) Three is also "schwing."

Four is probably "schwing," too. There's an article in Hail To The Victors 2008 that's all about defensive coordinator Scott Shafer and his propensity to blitz from sun up to sun down. This is nothing unique: every new defensive coordinator since the dawn of time has been accompanied by a retinue of articles proclaiming the New Era of Aggressive Aggression GRRR AGGRESSION. But in Shafer's case, well...

The defense will have four goals.

1) Stop the Run.
2) Get to the Quarterback, and then hit him in the mouth.
3) Get to the back-up Quarterback.
4. Intercept the football/create turnovers and score if possible.

In Shafer's final year at Western Michigan, the Broncos led the nation in sacks; in year one at Stanford the Cardinal went from 111th to 11th. GBMW's coachBT also says Michigan will deploy a lot of press coverage. It's everybody's defensive coordinator wet dream... hopefully it works.

I'm going down in a fields of glory. This thing is on Hulu. It's a little schlocky, but it's easy to embed.

Um? I linked the Blue Ribbon preview of Notre Dame on mgolicious a couple days ago, but would like to bring it to your attention again so I can highlight this sentence:

The schedule is unusually tame, with only a home game against Michigan and road encounter at USC to end the season standing out as nearly impossible wins.

If only that was true.

Sidenote: this doesn't quite live up to last year's Blue Ribbon ND preview, which was put together by crackheads.

Etc.: The Comcast-BTN deal has been reported as "long term", but how long? Ten years. Meanwhile: commenter Blake theorizes that Michigan was so successful against Penn State because it was playing an older, crankier version of itself; JokishTacopants analyzes the OL with an assist from Phil Steele. Did you know we're 118th in returning OL starts? Probably not. Were you happier before you knew that? Probably.

(BTW, a suggestion to diarists: Use bold somewhat liberally and take advantage of the bulleting options available in the text editor; it'll make your posts easier to read.)