Check it. Spent a large chunk of the weekend trying to figure out how to roll my own video hosting thing so the UFR videos could go somewhere where they would not be struck down by overzealous people accusing me of piracy. This did not go well. But it turns out in the year since I last checked my third-party options, YouTube went from unusable and ugly to swanky as hell. The tubes and one slick popup module yield a net effect that is pretty cool. Clip embedding returns to UFRs this fall.

Embeds ahoy. This would be better if it was the Coner, but it's Mike Cox and it's still pretty awesome:

Around 1:45 Cox dances himself up some cleans and then looks tired… a dramatic re-enactment of a Barwis workout? Also, someone call up The Oklahoman's Barry Tramel so he can call for Cox to be shot.

Elsewhere in video straight from the football team, Zoltan faced off with Filip Filipovic in an attempt to whack the top of Newsterbaan with a punt. Filipovic failed. (Zoltan at one point deploys "FAIL" IRL LOL.) Zoltan got it in one. Newsterbaan is very large, but Zoltan cannot be contained in any enclosed space. He expands to fill the universe.

(Cox HT: Straight Bangin'. Zoltan HT: poster Shoelace Robinson.)

The real Lloyd Carr is halfway to Alpha Centauri. Lloyd… are you feeling okay?

“I absolutely think what we have can be improved upon because right now, we got two teams and they are voted in,” Carr said. “It’s a two-team playoff but it’s voted in. Let’s start with the idea, take the four best teams and they’ll be controversy there.”

Carr maintained he wanted to keep the bowl format but felt too often, players would be kept out of playing for the national title, not because of on-field performance, but because of computers, coaches who are voting and a bunch of things that have nothing to do with actual play on the field.

Jokes aside, this isn't out of character for Carr. As he aged he got publicly discontent with the state of college football. There was one quote about how the players should be paid now that the 12th game had become such an obvious money-grab, and "fah, money" was a common complaint as his term wound down. You will note that Carr's playoff solution is the most conservative one possible, though.

Not that it matters. As always, the Great Looming Bald Man ruins everything:

“I was with (Big Ten) commissioner (Jim) Delany last night,” Carr said. “I have great regard for him and it does not sound like, in listening to him, it does not sound like a playoff is (going to happen)."

Merph.

Good, bad, I'm the guy with the butter knife. Rodriguez gets frank about the talent on last year's team:

"It was like taking a butter knife to a gun fight," Rodriguez said.

…ohhhhh crap they're gonna blow up about this media fiasco again…

"And that was not from a talent standpoint, but more from an experience standpoint. As much as we tried to coach and educate them, they were going to be in a tough battle, and we knew that coming in."

…nice save.

And last year comes into yet more focus. Michael Shaw's sports hernia*, Jonas Mouton's shoulder issue, and Donovan Warren's bone-chips-with-ankle-salsa…

Donovan Warren needed to get his nagging high-ankle injury, complete with loose bone chips, addressed with spring surgery.

"Talking with trainers and Donovan, he's as good as he's ever felt," Gibson said this summer. "Nobody really knows it except (us what he endured). He wasn't healthy at all. There wasn't one game he was healthy. We had to sit him out of drills to get him healthy. We'd never get him right."

…are amongst the many reasons Michigan was poor last year and figures to get a lot better this year. Shaw may not be slated to start but Mouton and Warren were Michigan's best linebacker and defensive back, respectively, and neither was healthy. From the sounds of it Warren wasn't anywhere near healthy. This is good, as it provides an explanation for Warren's sophomore-year plateau other than "just isn't very good."

*(A "sports hernia" is a somewhat less gross version of the inguinal hernia**; an inguinal hernia is when the little bits that seal off your testicles from the rest of your body rupture and you keep getting intestine in your scrotum. When you get the infamous "turn your head and cough" test they're checking to make sure you don't have an inguinal hernia.

I have the feeling some "sports hernias" are really inguinal hernias that people would rather not disclose to the public for obvious reasons. Like "ewwwww.")

**(DON'T DO IT DON'T DO IT I WARNED YOU)

Etc.: Rodriguez loads up on walk-ons, some of whom will hopefully be useful; "Stevie Brown looking to prove self" stories on their third go-round; Meechigan Dan submits a diary that I'm not front-paging because I fear a mullet invasion but the upshot: over the last four years 'Bama has signed 107 players to Michigan's 84. Whoah.