Cracks in Fort Schembechler

This week we got a couple of very short glimpses into the otherwise locked-down existence of Michigan football. Normally under the current regime, we don't hear or see much of anything between the end of Spring ball and the beginning of fall practice unless a player is hit by a meteor (i.e. "suffered some off-season setbacks"), gets arrested ("has some learning to do"), or gets frozen in carbonite ("has struggled to get in game shape"). So when you get six seconds of live-action footage, YOU TAKE IT.

Enter: Devin Gardner's Vine account.

THINGS WE LEARNED:

• Fitz still has two legs. Those legs can support the weight of a human being as that human being does various physical activities. MEDICAL SCIENCE: HOW DOES IT WORK?
• Fitz has some dance moves. I have no idea what kind of moves, mind you... but they are moves nonetheless.
• Jeremy Gallon hates shirts
• Gallon's cloaking device still works, and is so now effective that the coaches have insisted that he carry a bell around with him so he can't sneak up on people anymore.

THINGS WE LEARNED:

• If you hang around on State Street long enough, Blake Countess and Devin Gardner will entertain you.
• Countess can do a standing back-handspring back-tuck.
• When Countess does a standing back-handspring back-tuck, I try to spot him through the computer screen so he won’t get hurt.
• Most urgently, the only logical explanation for this video is that the surgeons must have botched Blake Countess's surgery. It's kinda like Rookie of the Year, except instead of gaining a wicked fastball, Countess has lost the ability to backpedal. The only way he can move backwards is through some combination of back handsprings and back tucks. And sure, that might work on short and intermediate routes, but what of the deep ball? Even if he gets back there, he'll be too dizzy to make a play on the ball. No, no, no, this is all wrong.

[Side note: Countess is not the first Michigan football player with some gymnastics skillz. Brandon Graham was once a guest judge for the UofM Women's Gymnastics team's intra-squad scrimmage, and as part of that event he put together a video of himself doing some legitimate tumbling. If anyone has this video, you are needed at the Youtube. Also, it confirms Bo's lesser-known mantra that Those Who Do Gymnastics Will Be Really Good Defensive Players]

[ED: Ace has located additional backflip footage of Kenny Demens and Brandon Graham from Mock Rock 2009, starting at 2:00

]

[JUMP]

But then of course Yellow Jackets are non-migratory

The recruiting photoshopping thing has officially gotten out of hand. We already discussed the crap happening up at Florida. And then similar stuff happened at Wyoming:

…and Oregon State:

/writes hilarious #BeaverBarrage joke

/deletes joke for being inappropriate

/repeats many, many times

But then a GA at Georgia Tech…. well, see for yourself.

There are many, many more. Like, a disturbing amount. Click the link if you want, but be warned that it will make you more than a little concerned for humanity.

If you’re wondering what “The Migration” is, his theory is that so many people should want to move from the northern states to Georgia, it should qualify as a migration. And he tried to turn the thing into a viral meme that encompassed other memes. A metameme, if you will.

But there are a couple of TEEEEENSY problems with this idea. The first is that as we have been told every day for the last decade, all of the talent EVER CREATED comes from the south. Slow people with no coordination and tiny hands (the better to stickhandle you with, my dear) come from the north. The second problem is that if you want recruits to mentally associate your school with this fancy new meme you created, your school should actually be mentioned IN the meme. No one commits to "Migration." This is your classic talk-up-the-Funke-name-and-then-announce-yourself-as-Tobias scenario, but without David Cross it just doesn't work. And third, and most important, your stuff is ridiculous and you should feel ridiculous.

Emojis for all

Marlon Humphries is a very highly rated corner in the '13 class. As such, he's probably used to getting bombarded with tweets exhorting him to "OMG COME TO OUR SCHOOL." So when a Mississippi State fan named Sarah Jackson tweeted him a message saying, "I can't wait to see you at #HailState [winky-face emoji] [heart-eyes emoji]," he might not have thought anything of it. But for whatever reason (possibly because the accompanying avatar of a couple of young ladies) he opened her page. And, well...

I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson, but are you for real?  If you don't recognize the recipients (and good for you for not being a crazy stalker who tweets a bunch of recruits at the same time), they are all highly ranked recruits from the '13 '14 [ED: thanks, Shoe] class. The scary part is that this was just a sampling. There were more. MANY more. Jackson has since deleted her profile, which is probably a wise move.

The real mystery here, though, is the heart eye emojis. Humphries got one. Jamarco Jones didn't. About half got the heart eyes, but half didn't. I guess she ACTUALLY wanted to see some of them at #HailState, but didn't much care about the rest. But she still wanted do her recruiting duty. She had a job to do, ya know? Otherwise how would recruits know where they were wanted?

[Ed-S: Alternate theory: heart glasses cost extra recruiting points.]

'Crootin, man. 'Crootin.

Who could have seen that coming?

Have you ever heard any sports talk radio? And do you remember that scene in Good Will Hunting where Ben Affleck goes to the job interview pretending to be Matt Damon? The good people at the LA Kings apparently answered those questions with a resounding "nope," and "was that the one where they were the angels and Alanis Morissette was God?" They allowed a morning radio host to take over their Twitter account for the second period of the Kings' playoff game against the Sharks. The results were duh:

 

If you were wondering, “what’s the worst that could happen,” Mr. Ryder opened the bidding at ‘rape joke.’ Now, in the Kings defense... uh... I've got nothing. This was the most obviously dumb thing ever.

A Sad, Final Jose Canseco Update

Regular readers to this column know my love of the exploits of Jose Canseco. His zany, carefree, tin-foil hat wearing, megalomaniacal attitude brought some amusing moments. In hindsight, those same traits, and indeed those same amusing tweets, hinted at a darker side to Canseco’s unstable psyche.

Yesterday, Canseco tweeted that he was being accused of rape. He named his alleged victim. He listed her phone number. He tweeted her address and place of work. He tweeted her picture. I don’t feel like going to deeply into the sordid details, but you can read a (details redacted) summary here and here. Needless to say that we will no longer be tracking what Mr. Canseco has to say, either in real life or on Twitter.