Unverified Voracity Has 100 Problems
Sponsor Note. Did you ever want a lawyer who just appears in UVs because he's writing interesting things? Maybe someone who also has probity? Does anyone other than a lawyer ever have probity? I don't think so, but Richard Hoeg's got it in spades.
If you have or want a small business engage Mr. Hoeg for probity, and contracts, and incorporation, and all manner of legal whatnot.
Not a sponsor note. Here's a twitter thread from Hoeg on the early days of NIL and what looks like a full on gold-rush with little in the way of brakes:
And yet, according to this lawyer, either the restrictive language proposed *wasn't intended* to cover a circumstance where the owner of an entity tells a national media outlet he is arranging these payments to improve the team and institution, or *it's incapable* of doing so.
— Richard Hoeg (@HoegLaw) July 6, 2021
There's going to be a lot of sorting out to do. The much discussed Barstool NIL scheme is probably going to make folks ineligible since they're basically a sportsbook with some bolt-on frat bro misogyny these days. Unless legal incorporation fig leaves mean that it won't. I have some sympathy for NCAA compliance officers these days, who just got handed a bucket of cranky toddlers with no instructions.
[After THE JUMP: the specter of two cokes]
Mmmmm Hoke death spiral. You may have noticed your inbox get rather full of late:
— ace (@AceAnbender) July 13, 2021
I have repeatedly thought "didn't I just archive that?" in the past couple weeks. The fake people who want to write guest posts for this here site are hardly less persistent.
That's Ace's new site, by the way, explore it and see if you're interested.
One good thing about next year's team. Aidan Hutchinson, who makes PFF's top 50 returning players list:
29. EDGE AIDAN HUTCHINSON, MICHIGAN
Hutchinson played only three games in 2020 before suffering a season-ending injury, but the Wolverine seemed to be on his way to taking that next step forward on a mere 149 snaps (82.5 PFF grade). With a clean bill of health, he is quite easily among the best all-around defensive linemen in college football.
The 6-foot-6, 269-pounder is versatile, has incredible power behind his hands and is one of the more polished players at the position. For proof, look at his 2019 outing against Iowa when he became one of the few to post wins against 2020 Super Bowl champion Tristan Wirfs.
Hutchinson produced an 83.6 run-defense grade and 27 run stops along with a 76.0 pass-rush grade and 46 total pressures in 2019. Still, he never really put together a dominant performance from start to finish. We need to see more elite outings in 2021, and he easily has the potential to make that happen.
If Michigan can get some DTs next to him he could bust out. Otherwise, hello double teams.
Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man. The NCAA's expert witness in the Alston trial is having a Falling Down moment in the aftermath of the NCAA's smackdown at the hands of the Supreme Court:
“I don’t mind that some people are jealous that Nick Saban gets so much money,” Heckman said during a recent hourlong telephone interview. “I personally don’t care if he has a private plane and flies to Monte Carlo. But I do think it is misleading to cast [college sports] as a labor market and to somehow think the goal of college is to make money off these athletes. I don’t see that as the goal.” …
Heckman decried Kavanaugh’s “rant” as a “bull—- opinion.”
“College is not an athletic market, and Wilken was irresponsible, and Kavanaugh was just insane in thinking this was an athletic market, and they were squeezing salaries down,” Heckman said. He says Kavanaugh was taken in by a handful of heart-tugging anecdotes about ill-treated college athletes, stories propagated by “yellow journalists” and “so-called sports economists.”
This guy has a Nobel Prize! For, like, economics! I could understand it if he had a Nobel Prize for shaping his opinions into pretzels that get him paid handsomely.
Take heart if you're lonely. You can be a millionaire with 2% body fat and still get dragged down, and then a Heisman winner can step into offer some fatherly advice.
Young fella you grown cut that shit out
— Charles Woodson (@CharlesWoodson) July 8, 2021
Maybe this is not actually encouraging. What will the rest of us with 3% body fat do? Nevermind.
Real free agency. Kofi Cockburn is returning to college but possibly not Illinois. Instead he may be going to Kentucky, which happened to hire two Illinois assistant coaches this offseason:
"He's the reason I went to Illinois," Cockburn said of Antigua. "When he left along with Chin Coleman, I decided to go in the portal to leave my options open.
"Kentucky? It's a serious option. Antigua is my guy. I'm going to consider them, but there [are] a lot of schools. I wasn't really focused on that while I was in the NBA draft. Now I can take my time and evaluate it better."
Seems pretty bad for Brad Underwood that he's got a team coming off a one seed and it seems like the most important thing about the Illinois program was an assistant coach. I think we can extrapolate some overlap between UK and Illinois recruiting practices and while UK is always going to be at the top of the heap, recruiting-wise, I wonder if Illinois is going to be hurt by NIL leveling out certain playing fields, particularly in Chicago.
This is a good time to have a head coach who isn't a beet-red screamer. Widely beloved Juwan Howard is going to have an easier time holding onto guys than the Underwood/Miller/McCaffrey mold of barely controlled dynamite. I'm not sure that was what Big Ten ADs were thinking when they leaned into the Howard model with their hiring decisions this offseason, but it should be helpful.
Soon there will be a draft and this will stop happening. Yet more scouting of Michigan's 2021 draft class. NHL.com on Luke Hughes:
"To me, the runway (for Luke) is there and the upside is almost limitless," Central Scouting senior manager David Gregory said. "When you put together the whole package of his size, skill and IQ, there's potential that he'll be the best of the Hughes brothers. But he could be the best of this draft too. He has that kind of ability and upside.
"This is a player I think would have really made some people start asking questions (about who should be drafted No. 1) if he had been able to finish the year."
Article also contains several entertaining stories about the Hughes brothers growing up.
Meanwhile, Corey Pronman has superlatives for the draft class. #1 skater: Hughes. #1 puck skills: Kent Johnson. #4 hockey sense: Owen Power. #1 compete level: Matthew Beniers. Is that good? Yes. Also, further indications that Power and Beniers want to return to school pending what happens at the draft. More from the Daily:
“For me, I’m definitely leaning towards coming back,” he told reporters on Thursday. “Got a really good group coming back, a lot of good players. We’re gonna get a real run at a national title, I think, and I definitely want to win a Big Ten championship. (Defenseman Owen Power) is kind of leaning towards coming back, so that’d be fun if he came back and we got kind of the whole crew back together and gave it another go.”
Still in believe-it-when-I-see-it mode here but dare to dream.
Etc.: Do you want an I Heart Huckabee's themed mediation on the very nature of soccer, man? Of course you do. PFF ranks every D1 quarterback situation. Michigan checks in… uh… 70th. Metroid is real! Strauss Mann signs with a Swedish league team. Interesting. Devante Jones on his decision to come to Michigan. College sports fandom: now less gross. Matt Turner, save guy doing save things.
Agreed. Also, tell donors to stop sponsoring coaching positions and give the money to the kids.
I know that Brian's been beating the drum for some time. But the crapification of college sport will continue apace, if not accelerate.
This is a good time to have a head coach who isn't a beet-red screamer. Widely beloved Juwan Howard is going to have an easier time holding onto guys than the Underwood/Izzo/Miller/Izzo/McCaffrey/Izzo mold of barely controlled dynamite.
FIFY
This guy has a Nobel Prize! For, like, economics!
There is no such thing.
Nope. Nobel had nothing to do with it. It’s something a friggin’ bank cooked up in the 1960s.
"The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel has been awarded 52 times to 86 Laureates between 1969 and 2020."
And yet this tool bases his argument on the notion that the primary objective of colleges and universities (as represented by the NCAA) is academic and not financial. Now, that’s what I call hard science!
"This guy has a Nobel Prize! For, like, economics! I could understand it if he had a Nobel Prize for shaping his opinions into pretzels that get him paid handsomely."
If I look at the people who have won the prize, I begin to wonder what the difference is. Then I look at the fact that the prize was created by a bank, I conclude there isn't really much of one.
This gets political really quickly so maybe even this comment is too much. It's worth going down a rabbit hole if one's interested in academia and prizes and economics (or any of the other "Nobel Prizes" that aren't in his will). Suffice it to say that there are many people who don't like the idea of the prize being associated with Nobel, and many who aren't that thrilled with the (perceived) biases of the awarding body.
Whatever else is true, very few academics who win the prize ever go hungry.
"This guy has a Nobel Prize! For, like, economics! I could understand it if he had a Nobel Prize for shaping his opinions into pretzels that get him paid handsomely."
In a past life, I was a business major at Boston College and took micro- and macro-. Based on that, and reading since, this is basically all of economics.
I think he primarily won the Nobel for his methodological research on selection effects and his estimator that deals with selection bias, not economic theory. Econometrics is probably the most apolitical area of economics.
70th ranked qb in D1. Jesus. Smh
I can almost guarantee that at least half of those teams above us would do anything for a QB room with a 3rd year 4*, a freshman 5*, and a P5 veteran.
I would almost guarantee everyone here would rather have a proven, good qb instead of the uncertainty that continues to be Michigan qbs.
We don't come close to measuring up to Indiana's Penix. Huge gain this year for him.
But they don't even take JJ into account.
Yeah it's almost like they have taken into consideration how great the qbs here have been the past 5 years.
I’d like QB coaching in our QB room.
I'd like GOOD QB coaching in our QB room.
Fixed it.
All the paper talent in the world doesn't mean squat if you have no idea how to develop and utilize said paper talent.
I'll buy stock in Michigan's QB room when the program gives me a reason to do so. Until then, that's a hard pass.
Seth has asserted on Twitter that football tickets won't be sold for under face value due to the new digital ticketing platform. Is this true? Seems like we'll see a pretty empty Michigan Stadium this fall if that's the case...
I can’t imagine that’s accurate. That would be a disaster.
Seems like a terrible idea unless your goal is to have less people showing up for games
Might take quite a big drop from face value to fill it up with this schedule.
Can we just get a ticket if we buy a coke?
IMO- Becoming a "barstool athlete" will not make a single athlete ineligible. Namely, they have "signed" tens of thousands of players (+100k maybe) and the NCAA isn't going to ban that many athletes. The NCAA doesn't even take action on players and coaches that have cheated out in the open. These deals are very small- like the players get free barstool t-shirts.
Add in the fact that this occurred in the first week or two of NIL- they will certainly get the benefit of the doubt and have a legitimate claim of negligence.
It's hard to tell because if rules are put in place that don't allow deals with sports betting and gambling entities then Barstool very well could be a forbidden entity
I think the point is the NCAA is far more likely to clarify this and let it be undone than to just exclude 100k athletes because they signed onto the wave early. If they do anything at all, that is.
A reference to Ace and criticism of Barstool? Hang on to your butts in the comments.
corey pr0nman
Cockburn?
Can't say I like the sound of that.
I still don't understand the name "Bucket Problem." Can someone fill me in? Sorry in advance for my ignorance.
some players get described as being a "bucket" (a consistent scorer, need 2 points? he'll go get you a bucket). others can be described as being a "problem" (for the other team).
Franz Wagner was consistently a problem last year, but rarely a bucket. That make sense?
Solid name choice if it has to be constantly explained.
Not surprised the AD is apparently struggling to sell season tickets.
- Last year was a disaster
- Everyone is apathetic toward the Harbaugh tenure.
- The home slate sucks outside of Washington and a near certain ass-beating by OSU. 2 MAC schools, Northwestern, Indiana, Rutgers. Who wouldn't want to fork over a few hundred dollars for that?
I fear how red the stadium is going to be this year when OSU comes to town
And you can add the bullet point, "Now that college football has been made semipro football, it's going to have significantly less appeal on many college campuses."
In places like Michigan, the charm of the sport has now basically disappeared. It's still there in places like Columbia and Penn and Dartmouth, and it never mattered in places like Ohio, Bama, and Clemson -- but in sort of the "middle" and "upper middle," places like Michigan, that's going to matter.
I wrote here a few weeks ago that there's no real reason to think Schlissel and the senior adults have much interest in running a semipro football program at Michigan; early returns seem to be confirming that. The blithe assumption around here that Michigan would just ease into the semipro era and unleash the "money cannon" never really made a lick of sense. We've pretty clearly seen Peak Michigan football.
""Now that college football has been made semipro football, it's going to have significantly less appeal on many college campuses."
It really has with me. The transfer portal, the irrelevance of games outside the top four at the end of the year, the recruiting wild west... it just stinks.
Sadly, I agree with the Schlissel comment. I don't think that the higher ups in the University care too much about Michigan athletics. They want to not be embarrassed but I can see for someone like Schlissel in his friend set the taming of UM football would be praised 'You didn't fall for that nonsense and didn't knuckle under.'
Again, bring me back to 9-10 wins a year and just acknowledge who we are and I'm okay with that.
Where so much fan angst comes from is the idea that we are really this uber elite organization that is being held back by its coaches. We aren't. Put Saban in here and unless he's given complete control he couldn't reproduce wha the did in 'Bama.
"Now that college football has been made semipro football, it's going to have significantly less appeal on many college campuses."
LOL, coaches getting 7 figures and leaving for better gigs before ever coaching a single down is the epitome of amateurism but a player getting $1.50...
The “money cannon” is unleashed when ticket sales/revenue plummet. Michigan’s admin. and board will blink first. There is no other conclusion given the importance of the program financially.
So OSU QB that has never played a down is ranked #20,. but UM's 5* QB JJ McCarthy isn't even listed? Yep, that checks out.
Given the weapons around him and the performance of prior QBs, I can easily see that ranking. OSU has loads of athletes and a coaching staff that utilizes them.
So then they're ranking the passing offense, not the QB...
I ask everyone to please look back at the 2020 rankings from PFF and notice these totally dead-on rankings:
- #3 Jamie Newman didn't play a down for UGa after opting out for COVID-19 but was also apparently passed by J.T. Daniels.
- #5 Tanner Morgan, who we all saw struggle the whole year throwing the ball and generally looked lost without his former OC.
- #6 Sam Ehlinger, who struggled for large parts of the year and Texas fans were ready to boot at the end.
- #13 Grant Gunnell, who lost his job at 0-5 Arizona and then transferred to Memphis this off-season.
- #18 K.J. Costello, who somehow threw 5 TDs in his first game against LSU...and finished the year with 6 TDs and 11 picks in 6 games.
And there are others; I just looked at the top 20.
Again, this isn't to knock the list; they saw some gems early on and properly ranked guys. They also underrated some players like Ian Book, Mac Jones, Zach Wilson, etc. But it's a list made by a service that focuses mostly on NFL games and players and has, AFAICT, a mandate to generate content as quickly as possible and worry about its credibility and consistency later as it relates to college.
I think UM's QB situation is fine. It's not great, it's not horrible. They've got a couple of decent options and potential to be pretty good but also the possibility to bottom out. We'll see how it goes, but trying to prognosticate how this season will look in July is inevitably going to lead to bad takes.
Yeah, PFF can't possibly think their own list is that accurate. Way too much uncertainty going into every season and specific to us- no way do they actually think Michigan is at #70. Clickbait
Situation: You're going to bet $10,000.00 on which quarterback is going to be more successful this season. You're options are OSU's CJ Stroud, UM's Cade McNamara, or UM's JJ McCarthy.
Who do you choose?
Yep, that checks out
I mean, come on guys, let's be real here lol.
Note: If you have to think about this too hard then I'd strongly advise you to hire a professional to manage your finances...and also to stay away from casinos.
I would love to see the hockey roster stay pretty much intact for a second season to see what they are really capable of doing.
Talent wise, it is mind boggling....just need more time on the ice together....
One more year boys!
Brian: "sympathy for NCAA compliance officers ... who just got handed a bucket of cranky toddlers with no instructions"
NCAA's Nobel-Prizer James Heckman's work focuses on early childhood development
If you're a hammer, everything you see is a nail. If you focus on childhood development, everything you see looks not like a labor market but like children playing.
I bought one of the 3-packs a few weeks ago. I have pairs of endzone seats for Washington, NW, and Indiana that cost just under 600 altogether. That's pretty good value. I'm going to enjoy the shit out of tailgating and the improved product on the field.
Thank you, persistent online marketing. You aren't the devil. I choose to preoccupy myself with how to close the gap with OSU instead.
2014 wasn't the only recent season when the athletic dept had to resort to unusual tactics to move tickets—in 2010, right before the start of the season, I was able to purchase two tickets together for a price that was considerably below normal season ticket prices, in a package that was supposedly only available to alumni. The only catch was that the seats varied in location from game to game, but that didn't bother me. I think it was clear that the athletic dept was having trouble filling out the stadium.
It would be ironic if it was the alumni hero coach to suffer the indignity of one of his games having so many fewer than 100K in attendance that UM has to formally acknowledge that the streak is officially over.
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