Unverified Voracity Orders One Stoneburner

...these "patches" and "legends jerseys" are stupid, just plain fucking stupid.  The point of a uniform is that all players are uniformly attired.  This also works beautifully with the whole concept of team. 

If you start designating guys for special jerseys/honors, how can that not be detrimental to the solidarity of the team?  For crying out loud, Michigan is one of the few schools that makes, for example, no Heisman publicity campaigns yet now we are suddenly sticking patches on the guys who are living up to the status of legends?  What the hell is going on?

And as for the business of un-retiring jerseys, I'm just practically speechless.  Maybe it 'd make some sense if we'd have already retired like 20+ jerseys but there are only four numbers out of circulation.

I used to love, love, love college football but I feel like I'm living in a nightmare now.  The assaults on the traditions and the unique features of the sport are relentless and completely unnecessary.  I'm not sure that I even like college football anymore the way it's going...and I'm on the verge of outright hoping the idiots making decisions keeping screwing up until they kill the golden goose (so to speak).

Shit...I need a drink.

I love Hoke but when he dusted off the argument that the teams are playing too much football making any expanded playoff system a bad idea, he presumed an attitude among the remaining teams we all know won't exist. The reality is the teams that make it to a larger format will work around the inconvenience to be part of something with that much meaning. Kids who miss lame bowl games to play in something relevant and huge, will get a better experience anyways.

Maybe they should cap the practice time at a half hour to an hour less a day and do an 8 pm lock out from the football buildings on all campuses nationwide? That would save time for all the student ahtletes, instead of the few on the playoff team who don't want anyone's help.

Dave Brandon gave two reasons, and both make sense.

Most Michigan fans can’t even tell you which jerseys are retired. Maybe they could name Tom Harmon and Gerald Ford, but certainly not all of them. How many fans even know what the Wistert brothers did?

This is a good way to honor those legendary players, rather than just hanging a jersey in a glass case in Schembechler Hall that almost no one goes to see. When #11 becomes a Legends jersey, they’ll make a big deal of it, and each time it is assigned more people will find out about the Wisterts.

Overall, it is a much better way of honoring these players.

Beyond that, there aren’t enough numbers to go around. As it is, numbers often get used twice on the roster. Michigan was even penalized in a game a few years ago, because they accidentally sent out two guys with the same number for a special teams play.

So if you ever want to honor another number, you’ve got to come up with a better answer than retiring them.

is very similar to the wingback reverse that Bo would run out of the triple option with Dennis Franklin/Gil Chapman and Rick Leach/Jim Smith in the 70s.

The FCS had a twenty-team playoff last year.  Sorry, but that pretty much invalidates all arguments coming from the NCAA against a playoff.  They should at least give us eight teams.  The reason I hope we get superconferences with a breakaway division is that we will get a de facto eight team playoff counting the conference championship games.

Really, though, if they want to take teams that aren't conference champions, at least eight and preferably sixteen teams would be the best way to ensure that nobody has a reason to gripe. Over a period of time, the tournament will provide relevant data as to how many teams should go.  

For example, the last time a seed worse than a three won the NCAA Basketball Tournament was 1988, when sixth-seeded Kansas won.  Villanova won as an eighth seed in 1985, and NC State as a sixth in 1983.  Other than that, winning teams have been third or better since 1979, which is the best chart I can find containing seeds. 

Anyway, one could make a very good argument that the NCAA Tournament only needs to invite 24 teams, or a reasonable one that it could really make do with inviting twelve.  The same thing would happen with a sixteen team football playoff over time.  My guess is that it would be pattern of first and second seeds winning, which would boil down to a data-supported, eight-team playoff.

"...the NCAA should allow recruits to have a nonbinding commitment to a school that prevents them from taking officials and coaches other than the one they've committed to from contacting them. Even without that, that's a good decision I hope they generalize to more sports."

I'd like to see something different. Let the players register with the NCAA and specifically opt out of communication from any school they desire. This gives the athletes some measure of control over their own situation without sacrificing their freedom to look around. In other words, if I'm, say, Logan Tuley-Tillman, and not a huge Ohio State fan, I can simply opt out of communication with them. That still would allow me to field calls from other schools I might be interested in attending. This scenario would probably be nice for coaches too, because they could spend their time working on players with some level of interest in their schools.

Can someone explain the "Scrooge McDuck pile of flip phones" reference to me ?  I have a co-worker who purchased 20 of the same flip phone off ebay so he will never run out of spare parts (never have to spend money on a "smart" phone data plan) and I want to make fun of him with this reference.  Any help is appreciated...