Unverified Voracity Says Never Mind The New Era

Sponsor note. You may have spotted the MGoPatio button on the left sidebar, and wondered "what is that"? If you're a guy with corporate events to plan or you want to host a killer personal event, it's a good idea. As you can see, it's located in the shadow of the Big House itself, and is fancy. The two-level space is heated/air conditioned, features a full bath, has multiple HDTV flat-screens and sound systems. It has grills, coolers, tables & chairs, and will let you store stuff the night before. It will impress people you want to impress, sometimes even before it exists. Sports Illustrated reserved it for the MSU game before it was even completed.

Get started on impressing people by:

• Hitting their Facebook page and liking MGoPatio, which 1) gets you $500 off a full rental and 2) lets you enter a sweepstakes to win one of two original 1927 California Redwood bench seats or one of two fiberglass bench covers from Michigan Stadium, added in 1965.
• Mentioning MGoBlog when enquiring at that Facebook page for $200 off a ground floor rental or $500 off a whole-site rental.
• Ask about the ticket option...but only if you want to sit on the 48-yard line with three friends.
• Contact MGoPatio through Facebook for reservation information.

The discounts expire next week, so reserve it fast. And invite me if you do book this thing. It sounds kind of awesome.

Four years. Phil Brabbs just celebrated four years of existence post-Multiple Myeloma. Here's to forty more.

New era: GTFO. UCF getting a single year of postseason ban for their lack of institution control was exhibit A, and now it seems like that the ever-expanding evidence that UNC football players were in fraudulent classes is not the NCAA's concern:

Going a step further, a report engineered by a faculty committee concluded -- though not yet fully endorsed by the university -- that academic counselors assigned to specific teams perhaps pushed athletes to those baloney classes.

And the NCAA apparently has no jurisdiction in this matter.

Which is why, dear folks in Indianapolis, people just don't get you sometimes.

It would seem to the layman that the intersection of athletics and academic dishonesty is exactly the right spot for the NCAA to step in.

Except, as of right now, there is no indication that the NCAA will revisit or re-examine the penalties it has already inflicted on UNC and its football team for violations related to improper benefits and academic misconduct involving a tutor.

This goes beyond clustering, but UNC is apparently not going to get anything tacked on to their now-standard single year of penance and slight hindrance in the future. Any hopes schools that egregiously break the rules would suffer consequences that would make them hesitate seems gone. Maybe when the new penalties come in, I guess.

Sirius bomb. SiriusXM was on campus a couple days ago and produced a bunch of podcasts for your delectation:

• Denard!
• Will Campbell
• Roy Roundtree
• Taylor Lewan
• Brady Hoke
• Greg Mattison
• Al Borges

Rick Neuheisel asks some good questions, worth a listen.

Basketball preview things. Eamonn Brennan and Big Ten Wonk take to the pages of ESPN.com to say things about Big Ten basketball. Trey Burke (surprise!) is named Michigan's most important player. Brennan's worst case scenario is better than just about every team Michigan's fielded since the Fab Five:

Worst-case scenario: It's hard to see this team, which is indisputably more talented and almost certain to be more dynamic, somehow not being in Big Ten title contention by the end of next February. But if somehow the Wolverines are merely above average in 2012-13, it could be because they carry over last season's just-OK defensive effort (No. 60 in adjusted defensive efficiency). Or because they lack the breadth of reliable 3-point shooters (Evan Smotrycz transferred, while Zack Novak and Stu Douglass graduated) who have come to define coach John Beilein's two-guard front offense, which relies on 3-point shooting to stretch the floor. I think Beilein will make it work, and I think Michigan will be very tough to beat. But increased success is far from guaranteed.

Mr. Gasaway's bits are Insider'd Power Rankings($). Michigan checks in fourth behind the three teams you'd expect:

I may not be betting on a second consecutive Big Ten title for Michigan, but I love their chances to make it further in the NCAA tournament than they did last time around.

Hopefully that won't be hard. I think Gasaway is a little too down on Iowa, which adds a couple of touted freshmen to a solid core of White/Marble/Basabe and should find themselves breaking their NCAA tourney drought this year. He has them ninth; I'd put them sixth.

Oh, man. Fire Jerry Kill proposes more Penn State shirts produced by that awful "Smack" company responsible for the hur-hur-hur rivalry shirts favored by Larry the Cable Guy enthusiasts everywhere. This one may be based on actual threads from BWI:

I couldn't wear that ironically, but someone make this and I'll take a dozen:

Gendo is so getting sued by old Penn State lettermen.

BONUS: Gendo surveys the "#teamoutlaw" twitter phenomenon and comes up with ICP.

DOUBLE BONUS: are you in the market for some appalling comments about the various Penn State transfers? (The comments are in the comments.)

It was expensive while it lasted. Michigan announced a StubHub partnership last year to great fanfare; now, like the Pac 12-Big Ten scheduling accord, it appears we're never to speak of it again. Michigan's now showing up as a "past partner" on the hub:

Wonder what went wrong. I can't imagine the AD passing up a buck.

FWIW, the StubHub think always struck me as brilliantly nefarious. By giving you printed-out tickets that would invalidate the originally issued ones, they undermined all ticket markets that were not StubHub. If you bought a ticket you had no assurance it hadn't been sold already; if you sold a ticket you had no guarantee it wouldn't be resold twice and get you in hot water when someone complained and they traced it back to you, the person Michigan originally sold the ticket to. The only way to guarantee you got a valid ticket was to buy it off Stubhub. It was evil and brilliant and whoever came up with it got a promotion. Now: kaput. I wonder why.

Further shootin' up the charts. ESPN releases post-summer rankings and both Irvin and Walton get bumps. Irvin's gone from 60th to 21st, on the verge of five stars. Dave Telep explains why:

"Zak was a hunter all summer long," Telep told AnnArbor.com via email Wednesday. "He looked fresh, hungry. He played to his size, looked like he improved his skill. Having said that, we've taken a flier on him.

"I don't think everyone would agree on him this high. We're rolling the dice and monitoring his senior year closely. Obviously we liked what we saw in the summer when compared to his peer group."

Derrick Walton made a smaller move from 40th to 32nd, but hopped over four point guards in the process. Mark Donnall slid but sticks in the top 100 at 97. Telep says Walton and Irvin are in the conversation to get in the McDonald's game.

JLS!

That is all. Via EDSBS.

Orson on Wright Thompson on Meyer. Another part of the OSU PR offensive comes in an exclusive Wright Thompson sit-down with the Buckeyes' wooden but very, very successful head coach. Spencer Hall on that:

Wright Thompson got the full-access treatment to Urban Meyer, something he's never really granted anyone in a coaching situation, and pretty much nails the weirdass, ciphery personality of Meyer in his longform profile of him. One key point about Meyer is that he was never really likable as a head coach, so it's nice to see that Meyer doesn't even really seem to like himself a whole lot, and really never has.If that's a puff piece we disagree with your definition, but the last paragraph in particular is really, really interesting. <--arches eyebrows, invites literary discussion.

"He's gonna be different," Urban Meyer's wife says, and makes me preemptively sad for her.

Etc.: Michigan Stadium gets two and a half votes for "toughest place to play in the Big Ten." Beaver Stadium gets eight, so they'll be moving up in the 2016 version of this poll. Mark Mangino at OSU practice looks like just another OSU fan. Don't forget to tilt that head, though.

The Black and Blue producers tell the Willis Ward story in the News. The NCAA has to release financial documents to the Ed O'Bannon group. Maize and Go Blue looks at the freshmen numbers and their pasts. Part 1. Part 2.