Unverified Voracity Cries Uncle

Uncle. The thing with the massive season previews that are a summer trademark of MGoBlog is this: they take a buttload of time. This is the point. They're supposed to be the bar-none definitive preview, relatively error-free and more penetrating than your generic "X starters return" item. But I sunk two months into the new site this summer instead of, like, anything else, and have two previews up three weeks before the season starts. The rest are obviously not going to get done, and this is a Michigan blog at a time when Michigan is entering a new era of its program. So, like, screw the rest of the league.

The deal:

• Purdue and Penn State are done.
• Michigan State is already half-done so I'll finish that one.
• I'll try to do Wisconsin and Illinois since they're interesting.
• Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Northwestern and Ohio State will get vague overviews, but not the full treatment. (Four meh-ish teams, two of whom are off the schedule... and Ohio State? Well, what is there to say about OSU that's interesting? Obvious favorite in the league, potential issues at DT and QB. End.)
• Michigan gets the usual.

A stranger could have loved that town. File under "Only In Ohio":

A teenage employee celebrated his birthday by taking a bath in the utility sink at the Burger King in Xenia. Greene County Health Commissioner Mark McDonnell was emailed the video that appeared on MySpace.com and is now using it as evidence. ...

In the video, the employee dumps water on himself using a bucket marked with the words, "sanitary solution." But McDonnell said the sink is used to clean utensils and there is nothing sanitary about what the teenager did.

Video? Video.

If you're in the Xenia Burger King you've already died and are in hell, so feel free to eat whatever you want.

If you missed it, I wrote a Deadspin-ish preview of Michigan for Deadspin. The commenters were unimpressed because they are Deadspin commenters and if they were to actually enjoy anything that wasn't a dick joke they would burst into flame. This inscrutable comment was my favorite:

Was this article turned down by Slate?

Is that compliment? I like Slate. What does it mean to be an article turned down by it?

Rings and stuff. I've gotten a couple requests for Olympics coverage. This is not happening. As mentioned I'm kind of all like "F*** ITS THREE WEEKS TO FOOTBALL" -- which is a weird feeling, let me tell you -- and the Olympics... well... meh. I enjoyed the 56kg weightlifting competition because watching tiny men lift Charlie Weis-equivalents is always fun, and seeing Middle Kingdom on national TV was pretty surreal, and Bela Karoyli says things like this:

"they're on the better place than to be in the first place right now. they are under UMBRELLA. UMBRELLA of PROTECTION -- PROTECTIVE UMBRELLA."

And that is awesome. But I'm not going to cover it. I suggest checking out MGoSwim for all your Michigan-related swim Olympics stuff.

We will use it for good. Lake The Posts highlights an particularly relevant section of an SI article on the spread offense:

...there was a great nugget in the piece on the fact RichRod and Walker were good friends. RichRod taught Walker the spread and as RichRod claims in the article, we took it and ran with it without even changing the signals.

This is particularly relevant because of the delightful table I constructed in the process of writing the "Holy Hand Grenade" article for Hail To The Victors 2008 that showed Northwestern smoking Michigan in YPC until Walker's death a couple years ago. Here it is, live in memorex:

I've seen a lot of Northwestern's offense over the years and was confident it was similar to the Rodriguez spread 'n' shred; I didn't think it was the exact same thing.

That sounds like a battle tested guy. The AP inadvertantly summarizes everything about how Jimmy Clausen was the platonic ideal of an overrated recruit:

Jimmy Clausen figures he got hit a total of five times while his teams went 42-0 in high school. At Notre Dame, he was sacked six times in his first start and was so beat up after seven games he missed the next two.

A smallish quarterback two years older than his competion playing for a small-school power surrounded by major D-I talent who never so much as saw a rusher or, like, coverage is not "the Lebron James of football," as he was dubbed.

Just what they needed. Adam Rittenberg's Big Ten blog on ESPN has been invaluable in my previewing, but I wonder which Michigan State he's been watching the past thirty or so years:

"All the time," linebacker Adam Decker said when asked how much the players discuss Michigan. "Coach Dantonio came in here and made that game a point of emphasis. As a player, that's great because I'm from the state of Michigan [Rochester Hills]. As a Michigan State player, you want to beat Michigan. It's emphasized every day."

This is thought to be a good thing despite Rittenberg noting that the "sleeping giant" Michigan State program has a history of October collapses. Until recently, the annual October collapse was always because they'd shot their wad against Michigan and felt free to descend into an orgy of incompetence.

Etc.: The thing that is not Michigan Replay debuts August 28th; the huddle is on the way out(?).