Unverified Voracity, Fergodsakes Comment Count

Brian

Fergodsakes. Fergodsakes!

Michigan offensive coordinator Al Borges has spent much of the season with his name as candidates for other jobs. First was the head coaching position at New Mexico, which eventually went to Bob Davie. Then, it was a potential replacement for Charlie Weis as Florida's offensive coordinator. On Tuesday, Borges said he isn't interested.

"No," Borges said. "This is Michigan, [fergodsakes]. In the noble words of someone we all know and love.

Fergodsakes.

SHIRT. Shirt.

Print

Shirt.

En route. Six Zero has a treat for you in the new year.

9joaxt[1]

Molk will headbutt you. This is a literal thing if you are Jack Miller.

After each of Michigan's coin tosses this year, senior center David Molk would march to the sideline and find freshman center Jack Miller for his pregame ritual: headbutting.

"I like Jack," Molk said earlier this season. "He doesn't like it. He always says it's OK if he knows it's coming. ... I'll just kind of run up to him and grab him, and slam my head into him."

I hope they're wearing helmets when this transpires but wouldn't bet my life on it. Also, JB Fitzgerald has spent his career at Michigan evangelizing the superiority of shoe polish over eyeblack.

All too easy. Michigan has hired another coach, so it's time for another round of Fisk The Creepy Lech, this time with an assist to some guy at Ball State whose butthurt is exceeded only by his knowledge of identity phenomenologies. Yes, it's time once again for Gregg Easterbrook to complain about literally every college coach who's taken another job:

TMQ Readers Know Too Much: I wrote that Kevin Sumlin has joined the ranks of weasel coaches who walk out on their promises the instant dollar bills are waved; then listed Nick Saban, Rich Rodriguez, Randy Edsall and Bobby Petrino as other prominent weasels.

Justin Bauserman of Indianapolis writes, "Brady Hoke belongs among the ranks of weasel coaches. First he walked out on his own alma mater, Ball State, without even coaching in the 2008 International Bowl after the team's terrific 12-1 season. His walkout essentially doomed his team to a loss in the bowl. Hoke broke his promises to Ball State in order to sign a lucrative five-year contract at San Diego State. When more money was waved by Michigan, Hoke walked out on his SDSU deal after just two seasons. How long before Michigan fans rue the day some NFL team offers him more, and he breaks his promises and bolts again?"

San Diego State must have been shocked when Hoke took the Michigan job. Hoke had gone to great lengths to conceal his ultimate goal.

When Weber interviewed Hoke for the SDSU job in late 2008, Weber said he asked Hoke, “How do you see this position at San Diego State fitting in with the arc of your career?”

“He said the end of that arc was head coach of the University of Michigan,” Weber said. “I don’t think I’d want a coach who didn’t have that kind of aspiration.”

Only his closest confidants had any idea of his ultimate destination.

I don’t pretend to know Brady Hoke very well, but I know that his father was a college teammate of Bo Schembechler at Miami University, and that the Wolverines’ crusty Patron Saint became a mentor during Hoke’s eight-year apprenticeship in Ann Arbor. I know how much the place means to him.

And he made sure that he was going to get paid tons of money.

Hoke has left San Diego State to coach football at Michigan, and his deliberations might not have spanned a nanosecond. He accepted the job before money was mentioned, and later said he would have walked to Ann Arbor as a condition of employment.

Easterbrook's complaints about coaches taking better jobs are always dumb, but going after Hoke is a new bar. In this department, anyway. The whole head-injuries-and-jews thing probably still takes the cake.

[Via the board.]

They're onto us. Arizona's Greg Byrne has adapted to the realities of the internet era:

Fly commercial. I know, who flies commercial with a private jet at his disposal? No way. These days, though, it's just too easy to track the tail numbers of private planes online. In this case, Byrne hopped on a flight that stopped in Denver (Couldn't get a nonstop? Really?) before heading to Detroit. In fact, Byrne was spotted in Denver, and news quickly hit Twitter that he was no doubt there to grab Colorado State's Steve Fairchild after his thrilling 3-9 season in Fort Collins.

By doing this and using Wire-style burners Byrne managed to keep his hire so secret that I'm still not sure who Arizona's head coach is.

General bowl-lol update. West Virginia is struggling to sell its 100 dollar Orange Bowl tickets because Stubhub has comparable seats for 19 bucks. WVU blogs note the bowl is spending some of the money it steals from the schools on a cruise for "40 FBS athletic directors and six conference executives."

The Orange Bowl is a nonprofit.

Elsewhere, Village Voice Media burns the whole system to the ground in an extensively-researched piece that ran in weeklies nationwide:

The ticket scheme alone leaves schools awash in red ink. Virginia Tech lost $400,000 on last year's trip to the Orange Bowl — despite getting $1.2 million from the ACC. Though Auburn claimed last season's BCS crown, financial records show it still lost $600,000 — even after a $2.2 million bailout from the Southeastern Conference.

Some bowls have also found a way to scam schools on hotels. Since the bowls usually arrange lodging, athletic directors assume their "friends" are negotiating the best group deals. But that's not always the case.

Under Junker's rule, the Fiesta Bowl required schools to purchase 3,750 room-nights at about $200 a pop. According to the contract, the schools had to pay whether they used them or not.

But what Junker wasn't telling his "friends" was that he'd arranged a side deal with the Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau. In exchange for funneling teams to Scottsdale resorts, the city's tourism arm agreed to kick the Fiesta Bowl $8.2 million over the 20-year pact, according to a contract discovered by the Arizona Republic.

The whole thing is recommended. It's a comprehensive rundown.

Glass monster. If I asked you to guess who the second-leading defensive rebounder in the Big Ten was, you would not get it right. Via UMHoops:

Calling Smotrycz’’s rebounding numbers a year ago “underwhelming” would be kind. They were disdainful for a player that stands 6-foot-9. The same Evan Smotrycz that rebounded like a guard a season ago is suddenly the second best defensive rebounder in the Big Ten.

Rank Player Team Ht Wt Yr DR%
1 Jared Sullinger Ohio St. 6-9 280 So 33.3
2 Evan Smotrycz Michigan 6-9 235 So 23.4
3 Draymond Green Michigan St. 6-7 230 Sr 23
4 Meyers Leonard Illinois 7-1 245 So 22.9
5 Ryan Evans Wisconsin 6-6 210 Jr 21

*Removed Trevor Mbakwe (knee surgery) from the fifth slot.

You can try to discount that as an artifact of Michigan's style but I don't think the argument works. Michigan has played almost entirely man to man and has reaped benefits from Smotrycz's enormous rebound-pinchers. Opponents are only grabbing 27.6 percent of their misses. The national average is 32.6. Michigan is a good defensive rebounding team and Smotrycz is one of the primary reasons.

He's also shooting better than 50% from three. If he can just stay on the floor…

Etc.: If you're wondering why on Earth Michigan signed up for a home and home with Bradley, it was probably had something to do with Bradley hiring Beilein's son. Angry Iowa Running-Back-Hating God is never sated. OSU react roundup from Rittenberg. Coastal Carolina fired the dogs and cats guy (who was actually a fairly successful coach) to hire a billionaire. Boo, Coastal Carolina. Boo.

Block MST3K continues at the HSR. Bob McKenzie on Jon Merrill's slow path back to the ice.

Comments

Tater

December 21st, 2011 at 4:22 PM ^

Coastal Carolina's hiring of billionaire obscenely wealthy multi-millionaire banker Joe Moglia might work.  He can buy himself a great staff, delegate, and concentrate on looking good, both on the sidelines and in front of the media.  

If worse comes to worse, he can eliminate a middleman by giving some of his own golden handshakes.  

DeuceInTheDeuce

December 21st, 2011 at 5:22 PM ^

I think it's a great move, and a potential solution to a difficult catch-22.  They don't have the luxury of staying in power through a vast network of wealthy alumni and fans derived from years of hegemonic rule.  People get upset about a hire like this because they feel threatened or because they are idealists who refuse to accept the true money-war-by-proxy nature of college football.  Kudos to Coastal Carolina for openly acknowledging it.

CRex

December 21st, 2011 at 4:44 PM ^

Bauserman is no longer some guy at Ball State.  As per his website (click me) he also now enjoys a post at the prestigious Ivy Tech Community College.  

Also he has a 2.5 on Rate My Prof and the first comment is "He smells".  All is right with the world.

(People who can be found on Google shouldn't write dumb letters.)

bacon1431

December 21st, 2011 at 4:48 PM ^

Man, how Hoke is supposed to be considered among the likes of Nick Saban and Bobby Petrino, I will never understand. That is embarrassing by the person who wrote it and Easterbrook. I wonder if those guys have ever left a job for the sake of advancement elsewhere.

This is Michigan fergodsakes. It's a step up from 99% of all programs.

ESNY

December 21st, 2011 at 4:54 PM ^

Hasn't Easterbrook proven himself a completely asshole, not to mention completely unreadable?  It still amazes me that ESPN pays to have his crap on their site, and even worse, that people actually read it.

Marley Nowell

December 21st, 2011 at 4:56 PM ^

Junior quarterback Denard Robinson has a pregame superstition. Sophomore offensive tackle Taylor Lewan throws Robinson into the air before every game. Robinson said he has never been afraid the 6-foot-8, 302-pound Lewan would drop him, but he is afraid that the two will forget to do it.

The only two times Lewan didn't throw Robinson into the air this season were before the Michigan State and Iowa games -- the Wolverines' only two losses.

"Trust me," Robinson said. "We won't forget to do it against Virginia Tech."

bigdukesix

December 21st, 2011 at 6:17 PM ^

I enjoy that his column doesn't just give you shitty thoughts about football; you also get shitty thoughts about politics, science, and life in general. He's a true Renaissance Man.

wlvrine

December 21st, 2011 at 9:52 PM ^

Hobbes on the other hand fried his brains on cocaine and meth.  He then became a huge Clemson fan.  He was last seen prowling the sidelines of Memorial Stadium, waving his paws at imaginary threats and screaming obscenities into the faces of passing toddlers.

Drbogue

December 21st, 2011 at 9:34 PM ^

After reading that article, I feel dirty. And I commend Notre Dame for not going to a crap bowl game when they were 6-6 a few years back. Is there a way to donate to the playoff PAC?