Site notes. Items of interest:

• The "MGoBoard" tab has been updated to have a consistent interface: comment counts appear on all tabs now and, more importantly, each tab has a pager in it so you can scan MGoBoard painlessly from the front page.
• Hopefully in the near future the tabs will load only when you try to display them, which should speed the page up a little bit.
• I looked into Drupal's mobile support. It's not good. The relevant modules are out of date. I'm still going to try to get something up, but it will take some more time.
• I have returned the leaderboard ad to its place, as it appears the evil reckless driving woman and her page takeovers are permanently banished.

More changes are in the works.

Chip. Oh, Ann Arbor News. It's been a while:

In the 1970s, Col. Steve Austin became a household name as the lead character in the dramatic television series "The Six Million Dollar Man."

Last year, the University of Michigan had its own $6 million man: Football coach Rich Rodriguez.

Setting aside the middle-school quality of that lead there, that's 1) completely disingenuous and 2) not news. The majority of that six million didn't go to Rodriguez but was a one-time payment to West Virginia for all that buyout noise. Michigan forked over 4.1 million total (2.5 million plus taxes) to West Virginia. This was known in August. Also known in August: the terms of Rodriguez's contract.

It's hard to escape the idea this is a hit piece, then, especially when the opportunity is taken to contact two academic sorts to bitch about the (completely fake) number. Can't say it better than some snark-merchant in the comments:

Posted by cruland on 01/22/09 at 9:40AM

Anyone with a calculator could have figured that out, and you needed the Freedom of Information Act as leverage to make you look like a clever, investigative reporter. Sweet.

A waste of time and trust on the paper's part. BONUS: Fanhouse bitchin', too, as it was either I or someone less inclined to call BS to write it.

Changeover. Tim Jamison's going to get drafted sometime in April, and Tom Kowalski has an interesting article on his current status:

While many experts applaud Jamison's physical skills, he gets marked down because his fundamentals aren't as strong and as consistent as other players.

Much of the reason for that, though, is the difference in coaching philosophy that happened between Jamison's junior and senior seasons. There was a radical change in how the coaches taught the importance of footwork.

"We had a new coaching staff for my senior year. The old staff taught us to shoot out our hips first and use our hands and our step was second. Our new coaching staff taught us to step first,'' Jamison said.

Jamison's being told by everyone that pad level is the thing it is all about; this naturally freaks out Lions fans with bad memories of Marinelli. Items:

1. Another symptom of the coaching changeover and reason for optimism moving down the line: less confusion as to how you've been taught.
2. Except we just hired a new defensive coordinator.
3. If pad level's really what it's all about I can't wait to see Craig Roh's weird crab-stance hit campus.

Waiting to exhale. South Florida coach Jim Leavitt has some sort of weird longstanding grudge against Rich Rodriguez. Why? Well, combine this story from EDSBS…

Greg Gregory, who already suffered from the mediocrity seemingly inherent in the double named, now has to deal with his demotion from offensive coordinator at USF. The move came after Gregory admitted an interest in interviewing for the now-taken TE coach spot at Florida, a move that sent Leavitt first into anger, then into tears, and then into setting Gregory’s car on fire, and then into a kind of peaceful, composed and confident space where he told Gregory to move on, playah after draining his bank accounts and finding a hotter, younger assistant.

…with Rodriguez's hiring of USF assistants Rod Smith and Greg Frey two years ago and you have a recipe for bitchy, unprompted press conference quotes.

Oi! Playoffs! I must admit that the wack Australian Rules-style playoff bracket proposed by some wack Australian and relayed by Dr. Saturday is deeply appealing to me.  As best I can sum up:

1. The top four teams play each other in 1-4, 2-3 matchups.
2. The next four teams play each other in 5-8, 6-7 matchups.
3. Top four winners get a bye. Bottom four losers are eliminated.
4. Top four losers play bottom four winners in the second round.
5. The four remaining teams after the second round play out semifinal and final games.  No rematches in the semifinal.

If that's confusing here's a visual aid:

Setting aside the obvious retort ("this will never happen"), the Aussie system has many of the same pros this blog's pet playoff proposal has:

• powerful motivation to finish in the top 2, top 4, and top 6, plus motivation to finish top 8.
• a difficult road for low finishers, which helps legitimize any hypothetical championships for them
• lots of home games

To this it adds room to go to eight teams, which helps get a couple non-BCS teams in when they deserve to make it. The major drawback is the slight possibility of a title-game rematch (pretend Alabama beats Florida above and you get a rematch of a first round game) and a slight possibility two teams go 1-1 against each other with one being declared the national title winner. But no proposal is perfect.

Etc.: UMHoops assesses the ills that have befallen the basketball team; Road Games critiques ESPN's "prestige ratings."