Sponsor note. Richard Hoeg will do business law things for you. Contracts! Incorporation! Advice! That sort of thing! If you're interested in being the proprietor of your own small business he'll get you started.

We should probably get his Dune takes. Because he does that, too: purvey opinions on the internet. You could even have a business that purveys opinions on the internet. Who's heard of such a thing?

Moving on up. Aidan Hutchinson is #2 in PFF's latest mock draft:

2. HOUSTON TEXANS: EDGE AIDAN HUTCHINSON, MICHIGAN

Hutchinson is not only an elite prospect from a traits perspective, as he checked in at No. 2 on Bruce Feldman’s preseason Freaks List, but he’s also been elite from a production standpoint. Hutchinson is the highest-graded edge defender in college football this season (93.7). He's racked up 30 pressures across his past five games and is the kind of cornerstone player Houston can build a defense around.

Other names of note: #7 Tyler Lindenbaum (C, Iowa), #8 George Karlaftis (Edge, Purdue), #18 Garrett Wilson (WR, OSU), #23 Chris Olave (WR, OSU), and #27 Jaquan Brisker (S, PSU). The only other Michigan player in their top ten positional rankings is #4 S Dax Hill. That might be good news, overall, because Michigan should get almost everyone back next year.

Grimace dot emoji. Also in PFF items:

Highest single-game rushing grade vs. Michigan in the PFF College Era

Player
Rushing Grade

1. Kenneth Walker, Michigan State (2021)
90.8

2. Dalvin Cook, Florida State (2016)
88.4

3. Jonathan Taylor, Wisconsin (2019)
81.6

Three of his five touchdowns came on a run of 20 or more yards, even though Michigan had given up only one 20-plus-yard touchdown run on the year before this weekend.

PFF apparently had Michigan their top-graded rush defense in the country prior to Saturday, which is odd given, like, Wisconsin and Georgia, but grading does not happen in a vacuum. You get points for winning your matchup even if that's against bad teams, and there's no reasonable way to adjust for strength of schedule at the macro level.

It is wild that a guy who transferred away from Wake Forest is a Heisman contender at Michigan State and Wake Forest (Wake Forest!) is 8-0.

[After THE JUMP: more PFF and basketball preview items]

Finally in PFF items. David Ojabo made their team of the week after two sack-strips, one of which counted:

On first review, Ojabo earned a 93.4 pass-rush grade against Michigan State on Saturday, with a 30.4% win rate and three combined sacks and hits on the quarterback. Now, Ojabo owns a 90.7 pass-rush grade for the 2021 season, making him one of nine Power Five edge defenders with a grade above 90.0 through Week 9.

We've talked about how Ojabo has come on in the past two games; to PFF's reckoning that surge has made him close to an All-American. Since this was supposed to be the year before he blew up, the promise of 2022 Ojabo is enticing.

Quinn on Diabate. Brendan Quinn profiles Moussa Diabate, who's ready to go:

Moussa Diabate is, at the same time, a portrait of youth. A massive smile. He’s bursting with potential and possibility. It spills over the brim. As he tells his story, he spreads his arms, pantomiming a trip from Paris to Michigan, unfolding a 7-foot-3 wingspan that nearly covers the distance. It looks like it could hug the world. Those arms hang upon broad shoulders atop a 6-foot-11 frame. Moussa is often described as thin or lean, but he’s really neither. After arriving in Ann Arbor at 209 pounds, he’s now nearing 225, all of it defined. He is stronger than you think.

This is what all those NBA folks have been looking at for years. Based on conversations with multiple NBA scouts and front office types, the league’s expectation is for Diabate to play one or two years at Michigan, then be selected in the first round of the NBA Draft.

The ideal scenario for Michigan is that Diabate's not quite ready for the jump this offseason and they get back to back years of Dickinson/Diabate and Diabate/Reed, which would be a version of that Wagner/Teske center rotation where everyone could give max effort all the time and foul trouble wasn't that troubling.

Hmm. Oklahoma State got to put Cade Cunningham in the tournament by appealing their postseason ban last year, but the NCAA has upheld their initial ruling so the Cowboys are sitting out this year. The offense arose from that FBI investigation that was completed around 1840 and was relatively small change:

Oklahoma State said it's believed to be the first time a school has received a postseason ban despite no violations in the areas of institutional control, failure to monitor, recruiting, head coach accountability, participation of an ineligible athlete or academic fraud.

At an emotional press conference, Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton held back tears while expressing his unhappiness with the NCAA's decision.

"I'm disappointed, disgusted, appalled, frustrated -- but somewhere in Indianapolis there's a group of people celebrating," Boynton said, in a reference to the NCAA. "They won. Our players don't deserve and shouldn't have to deal with this.

"It was a single NCAA violation. One player received $300. One player. Not a recruit. Not a future recruit. Not a family member. One current player received $300. And in and of itself, because it was self-reported by us, it's a secondary violation. So the punishment is you pay the money back, serve your suspension -- which the kid did -- and you move on.

"It's no wonder that nobody trusts [the NCAA]. They don't have to come and do this, and answer questions, and talk to kids, and talk to parents."

That was one Level 1 violation—probably why OSU's case was the first to get adjudicated. Kansas is facing five. Watching the NCAA drop the hammer on a blue-blood team for violations that are basically no longer violations would be chaos, fury, and doom. I will get the bag of popcorn.

Favorites. ESPN previews the Big Ten season, with four out of five writers picking Michigan to win the league. Jeff Borzello is the lone holdout; he goes with Purdue. Much of the discussion about whether the Big Ten can break its title drought focuses on M:

Gasaway: Playing against Michigan promises to be a uniquely painful experience for opponents in 2022. This was the best defense in Big Ten play by a fair margin last year, and the Wolverines operate a bit like golden-era UConn did back in the day under Jim Calhoun. Juwan Howard's guys don't bother with trying to force turnovers because they know they can force misses. It's unnerving. UM also limits the number of 3s attempted by opponents.

Dickinson's a force of nature who may win Big Ten POY, Eli Brooks has hit 38% of his 3s over the past two seasons, and you may have heard about the No. 1-ranked recruiting class that Howard's brought to Ann Arbor. Does all of the above equal a national title? It very well could. If anyone's got a shot at denying Gonzaga it could be UM. In fact it's the Bulldogs and the Wolverines who carry the nation's longest current streaks of Sweet 16 appearances at six and four straight, respectively. Expect those streaks to reach seven and five straight in 2022.

Holy crap: four straight Sweet 16s straddling a coaching change. FWIW, Lundari has Michigan a two-seed in his initial bracket.

Over at CBS, Hunter Dickinson is a second-team All American, Jerry Palm has Michigan a two-seed in his first bracketology, Caleb Houston is projected to be the conference freshman of the year…

CBS Sports Big Ten Preseason Freshman of the Year

Caleb Houstan, Michigan

There's only one top-10 recruit from the 2021 cycle joining the Big Ten this season, and that one -- Caleb Houstan -- gets our preseason nod as the Freshman of the Year. Houstan, a 6-foot-8 forward, was the No. 10 recruit in his class and the No. 3 player at his position. The Montverde Academy product averaged 13.6 points and made 38.6% of his 3-pointers last season on a team with star Jalen Duren, and he joins a Wolverines team that's likely to feature him next to Hunter Dickinson in the frontcourt as a high-end stretch-four.

…and Purdue is projected to win the conference.

Etc.: Mind blowing Auburn facts.