"He's a hard worker, and he watched me and Tim (Hardaway Jr.) and Nik (Stauksas) put work in to become (first-round picks), and I'm just happy he's getting better," Burke said. "It's great for the program, too. It shows what type of program the University of Michigan is and the direction it continues to go in."
cumong man
"please don't get tackled from behind this t--dawwww"
so we've got that going for us
help i've been transported back in time to Jim Tressel's hiring help
oh my god the blinking goes up
See! It could be worse.
noon Wednesday if you're interested
M alum was Mr. Irrelevant of last year's MLS draft.
standard stuff
well, yeah
vague
here's one vote for "John Beilein's head in a Futurama jar"
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Probably no reason to be alarmed. This popped up over a busy weekend: that thread on the message board has validity to it. There was an incident at Scorekeeper's over the weekend between a few football players and (presumably gel-haired) ruffians. You can extrapolate the names from context if you want.
Anyway: a couple sources indicate that the incident is very unlikely to end up in court or anything; suspensions are therefore unlikely and the punishment will probably be handled by Barwis.
About whom eeee. Will Johnson remains the scariest bald 22 year old on the planet:
Defensive tackle Will Johnson turned in the day’s most-impressive performance, wowing the scouts and onlookers with an eye-popping and record-setting 47 reps of 225 pounds. The effort eclipsed anything that has been previously achieved by a Wolverine and broke what was believed to be the NFL Combine record, 42 reps set by former U-M left tackle Jake Long last season. Johnson also clocked 4.9 second in the 40-yard dash.
Johnson's given up on the receding hairline and gone for the wholly bald look, which usually makes white guys look like cancer patients. Johnson, however…
…eh, not so much.
Marve? More like No-rve. Miami transfer Robert Marve, he of the father that really hates Randy Shannon, has a final list of schools he's considering:
Former Miami quarterback Robert Marve, who left the Hurricanes after his redshirt freshman season, hopes to choose a new school after visiting Michigan, Nebraska, Purdue, Texas Tech, South Florida and UCLA.
Uh, one of these schools is not like the other when it comes to "enjoys pocket passers": Michigan. Marve has to sit out next year and will be a redshirt junior when eligible, so bringing him in would be like taking a JUCO QB in the 2010 class. A pocket-passing JUCO who wasn't very good and has a tendency to blow up in a program-embarrassing fashion when not anointed the starter.
Michigan doesn't need drama or pocket passers who won't be eligible this year. I don't have any inside info here, I seriously doubt Marve even takes a visit, and if he ends up transferring to Michigan I'll eat my hat.
Goodbye, beautiful antagonist. Le Anne Schreiber's two-year run as ESPN ombudsman has come to an end. She was excellent, if almost always ignored, and her final column aptly sums up the frustrations many sports fans have with the Worldwide Monolith:
the message from fans that I have found hardest to impress on ESPN's executives and talent is this: The predictable day-after-day dominance on ESPN of certain marquee teams and players is making a lot of fans both heartsick and cynical.
The rest of it is right on and worth reading, especially if you're the guy who directed the Michigan-Iowa game and thought it would be a fantastic idea to miss game action for fake Tom Izzo hairstyles.
Dhani Jones: famous! True story: once when I was in college Dhani Jones came to a performance of the sketch comedy troupe I was writing for. At the time he had just had some sort of shoulder surgery and was beslinged. After the show I approached him, said hi, asked him how the arm was doing, and actually sort of patted him on the back, if I remember correctly. It was creepy. This was mortifying about 5 seconds after the fact, and remains so to this day.
Anyway, Jones is now on the TV, and if he ever mentions "random Albanians" that's probably my doing. Also he won't ever do that. But he'll do other things:
Jones, a former Michigan and current Cincinnati Bengals linebacker -- and bow tie designer -- brings a nice light touch to his new Travel Channel series, which premieres at 9 p.m. Monday. [uh… yesterday.]
In future weeks, he'll take on nine more sports, including rugby in England, dragon boat racing in Singapore, Schwingen wrestling in Switzerland, hurling in Ireland and jai alai in Spain, while sampling the local culture in beautifully shot travelogues.
"They're all amazing sports," Jones said. "It's hard to say which one I enjoyed more than the others. Some are more intense than others, some are more enjoyable, but they all were life-changing."
Jones rugby exploits for the show were featured here a while back.
Etc.: Wojo on Manny and Sims.
thanks
If Will Johnson has any kind of NFL career after not doing much at the collegiate level, I'll eat my hat too.
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.
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.
He was best friends with my roommate - he was a really nice, really bright, extremely friendly guy. I met/dealt with a huge number of football players in my time there, and most of them were obnoxious at best - Jones was a really good guy.
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 $hit out of the lasagna.
I watched the show last night, he seems really cool. It is also actually a pretty sweet show. Last night he was in Thailand and was training to be a Muy Thai fighter. It was about half travel stuff (like him eating and being accosted by "ladyboy" prostitutes) and half him training and learning about the sport.
Also, at the end he fought some guy who was visibly frightened of him, and then Dhani kicked him and KO'd the guy. Neat.
I was going to post how the Thai ladyboys made me lol, but you beat me to it.
It was pretty cool to see him KO the guy in the 2nd round, even if he was basically the Thai equivalent of Ju#$@n Bo*&n.
What really intrigued me was how quickly Dhani picked up all the movements, especially the prefight dance. The fighter who was training him even commented on it. It was also pretty wild to see how much weight he dropped--he said "5 kilos", or around 11 pounds, but he was visibly thinner on the last day--scary considering he was only there a week. Maybe I need to go on the Muy Thai diet.
Peace
Ty @ The Lions in Winter
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.
Much like the Fords won't sell the Lions until they're not making money, ESPN won't change its obnoxious habits until ratings drop. As long as the product is still making money, it doesn't really matter how much people complain about it.
Come on Versus! If they ever came up with their own sports news/recap show for evenings and mornings, ESPN would actually have to pay attention to what hard core sports fans want. Since they currently have a monopoly on the 24/7 coverage, they can afford to ignore the wishes of their core audience in order to push the big names in an attempt to attract more casual fans (What are you going to do, hard core sports fan? Wait until the late local news shows 10 seconds of clips? Watch the Today show while you get ready for work?) I don't know if Versus is scared that inertia would keep a Sportscenter competitor from succeeding, but I think it would be really popular the next time ESPN decides to spend half the show with talking heads yelling about the latest saga instead of showing highlights of actual games.
I think that rather than a generalist network like Versus, it may be the individual sports' own networks that become major competitors to ESPN.
I've just had the MLB network added to my lineup and I like what I see so far.
Same with BTN, that and MLB are pretty much ESPN's only competition.
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.
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
bvanlee...that is absolutely creepy...i am living at 1221 South State street with 5 other guys next year
Only $10? I think what Dhani didn't realize is his folks got off cheap. We used to charge $20 at UVA and nobody ever thought twice about forking over the cash.
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.
There's a reason its called ESPN and not SPN.
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.
Brian's hat, his shorts, his desk, computer, interwebs, AND that dumb cake his girlfriend made.
I'm kind of hoping Marve transfers to Michigan now, just because I've never seen such a willingness to eat random inedible things outside of a great white.
that would be one hell of a BM later
Be careful with hat-eating threats... The last time I wagered a meal of chapeau, we lost to App State.
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.
about eating hats is starting to make me wish I were in the haberdashery business.
?? 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?
