Unverified Voracity, Scarier When Bald

?? Is Bill Martin now eating hats again? WOTS is that he prefers a nice felt Homburg. Did he have to ask the Regents for money for a hat-eating budget? Will hat-eating stay at the club sport level for the time being, or is there a chance for varsity status?

about eating hats is starting to make me wish I were in the haberdashery business.

Marve's father has cancer and is pressuring him to play close to home. In addition, his HS coach seems to have a pretty good relationship with the USF staff. I would expect him to go there and compete with ex-UM target BJ Daniels.

And, while I agree that Marve isn't a fit for UM, I don't think he is as bad of a kid as many think. One of the big reasons that Miami has underachieved so far under Shannon is that he has allowed the Miami players to form a powerful clique in his attempt to "build a wall around Miami" when it comes to recruiting. Marve didn't fit in the clique; Harris, from Miami, did.

I think Marve is definitely worth a second chance. So, apparently, does Randy Shannon, who originally barred him from transferring to any school in the ACC or Florida, and even added Georgia to the list for some reason. This tells me that Shannon still respects Marve as a player. I don't buy into the "Marve as drama-queen" crap that was probably started by Shannon in an attempt to sabotage Marve's transfer.

Marve could turn out to be like Stephen Garcia, another Tampa product who is running of chances with Steve Spurrier, or he could turn out to be a great QB for someone. I am guessing he stays in Tampa, where the influence of both his ex-coach and his father would be more prevalent.

Be careful with hat-eating threats... The last time I wagered a meal of chapeau, we lost to App State.

Brian's hat, his shorts, his desk, computer, interwebs, AND that dumb cake his girlfriend made.

Will Johnson == Bryan Cranston?

Ombudsman - she has been one of the best reads on that site for 2 years. While I doubt that a television station will ever materialize that can compete with ESPN for cross-sport ratings (if Fox Sports couldn't do it, I doubt any other organization would have the resources), I do think that ESPN will start (if not already) to lose the content war with the Internet and the specialized blogs and sites that are popping up. Just look at MMA - that's a relatively new, popular sport where ESPN's presence is pretty muted, with places like MMAJunkie.com and Sherdog.com leading the way for content. MGoBlog and its ilk are where top-notch college stories reside, not ESPN.com. I suspect that a large portion of ESPN's traffic comes from two sources: (1) people going for specific columnists - e.g. Simmons, and (2) following live feeds/sportscasts for out-of-market or non-televised games. My guess is that ESPN will probably branch out a bit with the networks; maybe a pure live game channel, or a channel for international/fringe sports a la ESPN 8 "the Ocho" from Dodgeball.

My own little Dhani Jones story - my freshman year ('99-'00), I worked in food services in South Quad, where all the football players ate. Since they had random practice schedules and needed to be fed at various times, we were always there late during the season. One night, it's getting really late and there is one football player still out eating with two attractive female friends. That man? Dhani Jones, rocking a bow-tie, vest, and a pretty nice Afro. One of the guys in the kitchen yelled at him that we needed to get going and he needed to leave, and he said something to the effect that you can't rush this with the ladies, and that he'd be leaving in a few minutes. 20 minutes later, he brought his tray up, walked out with both ladies, and gave us all a quick thanks for letting him chill out. Still one of my favorite UM players, and honestly one of the nicer guys I met that year. So it is great to see him put on an interesting show, and I wish him the best.

Yeah, count me in the group who feels ESPN wont change.

The hard core sports fans will not feed their hunger through them, excpet when they are actually showing live games.

Mike and Mike in the morning tells me nothing about the general sports world. Example, all the hoops the last two weeks....nada on their show. Maybe a token interview with Andy Katz, but they were TO, and steroids all the time.

Then, Cowherd. He tells folks like us who are sick of yankees, red sox, TO and steroids to stick it. He says he gets ratings that way and would not get ratings if he spent his time talking about college hoops or the Detroit Tigers. He's said as much on his show.

There's a reason why most of us get our sports fix on sites like this and only tune into the WWL for live events.

Thought I'd pass this little story along.

I lived at 1221 S. State St. from 1998 to 1999 right across from Schembechler Hall. We used to park cars during football games since we were fairly close to the stadium for $10/each. After one game, Dhani came over to our house fuming and demanded that we give his parents back their $10 we charged them for parking (even though we had no idea his parents had parked at our house).

Of course we told him to fuck off. If he had been nicer about it, we probably would have refunded the money. Maybe I hold petty grudges, but I've never felt the same about him since that incident.

B

was shooting for one of those contests during intermission at the Blackhawk's game last sunday to promote his show. He got beat by an eight year old kid. He was getting upset because he ran out of pucks before time was up and they did not hurry to get him more. But smiled about it once it was over. Of course the real star of the show was the hot girl with big fake boobs who shot during the second intermission (Hawks always pick at least one hottie to shoot during intermission - as to many other NHL teams), but just had a couple kids against Dhani.

Always one of my favorite players, and glad to see he has had a nice NFL career. Always knew he had a future beyond football - bright guy. Even before I followed recruiting, he is one guy that I had heard about as a recruit - probably for his wicked high SAT scores or something.

Just read Le Anne Schreiber's last column, it is very well-written. She seems to think ESPN will eventually curb their over-saturation of Yankees, A-Rod, T.O., Favre, etc. talk, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

I watched the show last night, he seems really cool. It is also actually a pretty sweet show. Last night he was in Thailand and was training to be a Muy Thai fighter. It was about half travel stuff (like him eating and being accosted by "ladyboy" prostitutes) and half him training and learning about the sport.

Also, at the end he fought some guy who was visibly frightened of him, and then Dhani kicked him and KO'd the guy. Neat.

Hi Brian. I was member of that comedy troupe when you wrote for it.
I remember being Dhani's lab partner in bio. Smart dude. He also lived in my dorm and ate the $hit out of the lasagna.

I think he was one of the only UM football players to ever be a residential college student. He had the reputation of being a really smart guy when I was at Michigan.

I was happy for Will Johnson, it seemed he wasn't used very well last year as they rotated Martin and used a lot of 3 man lines. It seemed when he played he was solid, maybe he was doing something the coaches didn't like that was hard to pick up watching on tv. I haven't seen any comments from the scouts, has anybody seen if this gave Will any draft buzz?? Hopefully he gets drafted late and catches on with someone. Seemed like a good guy.

If Will Johnson has any kind of NFL career after not doing much at the collegiate level, I'll eat my hat too.

thanks