Unverified Voracity Sleuths Redshirts

Programming note: Regular posting tomorrow; blog is off Thursday and Friday. UFR will appear early next week; I'm not going to bother with the pointless fourth quarter.

Basketball, yo. Michigan plays Norfolk State tonight at 8:30 at Crisler. Students get in free; citizens get in for a buck with a couple of canned goods. Go, man, and get in on the ground floor of the Beilein Era.

Go.

Go to the basketball game.

Hey, score. So I'm tooling around looking for Washington fans with guns to their temple for This Week In Schadenfreude (tons of hilarious ND content this week, BTW)when I stumble across this on the redshirt status of Jake Locker:

"There is a new tweak to the rule where if you haven't played in 30 percent of the game, you qualify," [UW athletic director for compliance & student development John] Morris said.

Thirty percent would be 3.6 games and, according to Morris, the NCAA rounds up. Given that Locker was hurt in the fourth game of the season, he would qualify on that hand.

(Locker is out of luck because he took a non-injury redshirt as a freshman, FTR.)

The relevance of this to Michigan? Wide receiver Junior Hemingway played in four games before he was sidelined with mono, and under the old rules (25%) would have been SOL as far as a redshirt goes. If Morris is correct, and it's his job to be correct here, Hemingway should get a redshirt and will enter 2009 a sophomore.

What went down. There's been a moderate amount of consternation about that first quarter scuffle on the Michigan sidelines between Charles Stewart and some dude who looks like Morpheus:

Morpheus turns out to be a low-level strength and conditioning coach, which prompts many questions. Such as:

• Why is that guy even on the sidelines?
• What possible business does he have yanking Charles Stewart's facemask?
• Is he a big Lawrence Fishburne fan or what?

Spawn of M Zone has a breakdown of the breakdown so complete in its comprehensiveness there is nothing further to say. Weird.

He's at it again. Would you believe there was another article about how the spread is dead featuring everyone's favorite spread-hating, always-incorrect television analyst? Of course you would. If newspapers are good for anything it's mind-numbing repetition. Here's Gary Danielson again:

"I said in September that Michigan would be the last major program that goes to the spread," CBS football analyst Gary Danielson said. "I'm sure it's always going to be there for the MAC schools and schools like Kansas and Purdue. But at the top of the food chain, I don't see why you'd risk it. Michigan has really painted itself into a corner."

The article actually says "The spread is, in fact, dead."

The top fifteen offenses in total yardage read like this: spread, spread, Oklahoma, spread 4x, Nebraska, spread 4x, ULL, spread 2x. The best offense in the SEC (Florida): spread. The best offense in the Pac-10 (Oregon): spread. The best offense in the Big Ten (Penn State): spread. The best offense in the Big 12: Oklahoma with Texas Tech, Missouri, and Oklahoma State three of the next four slots nationally. The best offense in the Big East (USF): spread. That's five of six BCS conferences. (Florida State is the leader in the ACC.)

Aaaaaaaargh! So stupid make brain ouch.

Ha ha ha ha hahahahahahaha ha.  The one bit of sunshine on Saturday was the stunning announcement by a friend that Notre Dame had managed to lose to Syracuse and pelt their own players with snowballs, causing Pat Kuntz to challenge the Notre Dame student section to a fight. Which… like… awesome.

NDNation would like to remind you that these things don't happen at Notre Dame, so this didn't happen. (FWIW, BGS says the snowball thing was overblown.)

At the time I tried to point out that the Notre Dame game was a turnover and big-play-filled fluke fest in which Michigan kind of sort of looked like a better team if they could cut out the zillion turnovers. ND was one of the few teams Michigan outgained significantly. If you asked me to bet on a rematch, I'd have bet on Michigan. Etc. Etc. That still applies; unfortunately the reason is not "Michigan is better than you think!"

This seems like the end for Weis; even the hardcore Weis fans who say things like "Never before have I found a head coach of Notre Dame so relatable"—which, like, wow, I hope I never find myself at a dinner party with that guy—are calling for his head on a platter.

Will they get it? If the rumors flying about Weis' buyout are correct, no. Because the rumors suggest the Notre Dame athletic department has done something so dumb even people given to think the Notre Dame athletic department is run by these guys…

…must be astounded. Check it, emphasis mine:

The buyout is roughly as secretive as Joe Paterno’s Penn State coaching contract, but it’s believed that it would cost north of $15 million buy out Weis. (As the New York Times’ Pete Thamel notes, it’s not clear if the number for hiring the coach away versus firing him.)

I can read this a thousand different places and I don't think I'll believe it until Notre Dame announces Weis will return for 2009, but there you go.

A note: if Notre Dame does axe Weis there will be an opportunity to pick up a recruit or two. Michigan was involved with WR Shaquelle Evans and OLs Zach Martin, Chris Watt, and Alex Bullard before they committed. (Bullard's finalists were M, ND, and Tennesse, so if he's choosing based on his relationship with the coaching staff, or on, you know, having one, we're in good shape.) They also took a look at WR/DB Nyshier Oliver after his Tennessee decommit. Oh, and DT Theo Riddick is a teammate of Anthony LaLota.

(Cheerleader via the Wiz.)

Things that are not true unless you want attention. This has been bugging me as well:

…many in the media have taken the most losses in school history statistic to equate to worst season ever. The front page of this morning’s Ann Arbor News contained two items making this claim:

• A headline (below the fold) reads, “An epitaph for 2008: Wolverines’ worst“.
• In the lead column, columnist Pete Bigelow writes, “On his watch, the Wolverines careened to the worst season in their 129-year history..”

Defend this! Saying it doesn’t make it so, these statements should be qualified. I went over this last week but it’s not going away and the two mentions on the front page of the News put me over the top. It’s clear that the nine loss number is what people are keying on, and I could see an outlet like ESPN running with that. But the News?

Ah, yes, the News. Tirelessly stalwart friend of the program. For the record, Michigan had a worse winning percentage in 1962, 1936, and 1934. I don't think the people at the News are too stupid to divide, so the conclusion is they wish to sensationalize the matter for a short-term burst of attention.

For the record, MVictors selects 1934 as the worst year in program history. Michigan was 1-7; in the previous four years they had won two national championships and four conference titles. In eight games Michigan was shut out five times and scored just twenty-one points.

So take heart, Michigan fans. This isn't even the worst season in the last eighty years.

Etc.: Unsurprisingly, Michigan leads a select group of top teams in one-score games over the… uh… duration of the Richt era at UGA; AC1997 lays out the case for optimism in the diaries; undies22 recaps the season. (Hint, guys: use some section headers to break up the wall of text.) Also, Jonathan Chait has an entertaining review of Rosenberg's book.