What Difference Does It Make? It Makes None

Thank you.

this is the most annoying bit of non-news evah.

Fueling the story of course is the Tate Files transcript, which can now be spun into "RR is lying to Tate" "RR is panicking" by the M and RR hating media.

Of course, anyone who has paid any attention to RR has heard him say taht he wants competition at every position. Why would he not let another person come in and "compete." I dont know if he ever said it with Pat White (I bet he did), but the QB's coming here better get used to it. RR believes in "competition."

Tate would be advised to just state that "Tate is only worried about Tate" or some other vanilla cliche, and maybe had he done so there would not be 14 threads on the board about it, but this story cannot go away soon enough.

RR probably didnt see this coming, but he can put a stop to this by setting the record straight.

is full of idiots and porn. That's about it!
(mgoblog excluded, of course)

During the season when Tate takes his nth hit from a 250 lb Big Ten linebacker and he's slow to get up.

The camera won't pan to Sheridan warming up, it will pan to Paulus.

Therefore I won't hear The Undertaker's song in my head and Jim Ross screaming, "Good God!! It's the Undertaker's music."

Thus, I might be able to hold onto my last strands of my sanity.

But otherwise +3 Brian for being intelligent.

Privileged white kids play basketball at Duke? Since when?

Normally, I'd say that competition is good, if it were, say a sophomore, or another incoming freshman. But this is someone who is going to leave at the end of the football season (at least from a sports perspective).

Let's suspend reality for a minute and say that this guy "wins" the starting job. We basically have a frosh QB (except this gets to be an older frosh, think Chris Weinke) but he will be gone after this year.

News flash: We already have an incoming frosh QB that is seen by many as the future of this team. We need him to gain experience so that he can be a better sophomore, junior, and senior QB.

Think about it this way. If Paulus (in his final year of elgibility) had come during Henne's freshman year, would you have played him over Henne? (Can I get a resounding NO?)

So Mr. Paulus, the University of Michigan is an excellent school. Their graduate programs are excellent. If you would like to come here for academics, that is quite excellent and we all encourage that. Also, if this means that we can avoid seeing DEATH warm up on the sideline in the unfortunate event of an injury to Tate, that's even better for us. But don't come here simply to play football for a year.

Now, I've got better things to do.

Thank You.

/back to the cave

I'm beginning to think "Paulus" is some foreign word meaning "one who is relentlessly overhyped."

Do you think Beano Cook will suggest he can win 4 straight Heismans until someone points out he only has one year of eligibility?

The OP wants to have it both ways. He subtly argues that there's nothing wrong with letting Paulus onto the team, yet he insists Paulus won't make a difference. That's fallacious. No one joins a team knowing they won't play. And even the idea of allowing Paulus to try out does make a difference. It means RR has little confidence in the QBs right now. Think about it, if RR had confidence in Forcier, he would have told Paulus precisely what Cutcliffe told Paulus, get lost you have no chance to play QB. The mere possibility, then, is a sign of no confidence on the current lot of QBs.

And can you really blame him? If anything comes of this, it's that the whole world knows just how immature Tate Forcier is right now. The kid threw the most annoying hissy fit I've ever seen, worrying about a guy who hasn't played in 4 years and who in any event would only be here for one season. Do you really think that immaturity will magically produce effective performance on the field. I doubt it. And I for one can't wait for DRob to arrive on campus and seriously compete at least to share the QB responsibilities. So far as I know he hasn't thrown a hissy fit over the story.

Maybe this was a test. Maybe RR did this intentionally to see how Tate would react. Surely you will concede that Tate has reacted childishly, senselessly offering his incomprehensible comments to the world when he should have just closed his mouth or if he had to say something say he welcomed the competition. Wasn't he the recruit who wasn't afraid of competition? You can't bury the Forcier reaction here. It has profound effects not just for next year, but for following years. I am seriously starting to doubt whether or not Forcier is a viable long term option.

Or maybe, just maybe, RR is talking a shot on a kid thinking he can be Chris Weinke. Keep in mind, Weinke spent SIX YEARS playing baseball before playing QB at Florida State. He is an exception, for sure, but to say that Paulus will absolutely make no difference whatsoever is to ignore such a possibility. Maybe the OP just doesn't want Paulus here. He doesn't like the circus Paulus brings. He doesn't like the undeserved attention Paulus has received. Maybe he thinks there's something morally wrong with a Michigan program giving someone a mulligan for a mistake they made. Maybe he doesn't like the fact that Paulus played at Duke, which is quite possibly the ND of basketball. All valid points. I can't say I disagree with any of them. But right now, after Tate's hissy fit, DRob not even being on campus and DEATH, do you really have any other choice?

Logic has no place on the internet Brian. The sooner you write non-logical trash you sooner you'll figure out you get more page views from it.

Dead on the Point. Wrong Smiths song choice though. This whole Internet, Dan Patrick Show, PTI, Sportcenter fiasco is better summed up with:

"Bigmouth strikes again and he's got no right to take my place in the human race, oh oh oh oh Big Mouth ahhahaha"

I hate this story so much. I hate Greg Paulus now too, moreso than before. Talk about inflating your non-legend. Dude, just go fulfill your true destiny as Duke GA, then join the long line of former gritty parquet-pounding point guards turned trusted Coach K assistants and follow your dream of becoming a failed head coach at some major conference school.

At first, I was glad to hear we may be adding some depth for the fall. But once this kid started his national media blitz last night, I said, Thanks but no thanks. The only guy who had it right, the only one who knew who Denard Robinson and Tate Forcier are, was Joe Schad

ESPN's ticker is showing "Paulus to play football at Michigan". Not sure if they know something new, or if this is just like their "Miles to Coach Michigan" ticker from 2 years ago.

thank you for this post

Sweet.

I think it's worth explicitly pointing out here that:

Unique, Vaguely Compelling Sports Story =/= Impactful Sports Event

This will (hopefully) make no difference to Michigan football this year. Nevertheless, this a BIZARRE/interesting story, IMO, which kind of explains why the sports media keeps glomming onto it. That, plus it's the offseason.

The Traditional Media is so fucking dead and stupid, it's hard to parody.

Great move! Paulus sounds like the perfect fit for RR's basketball on grass offense. I have no doubt Tressel is quaking in his sweater vest and has already phoned UNC to learn how to defend this Blue Devil stud.

Instead of Cameron Crazies maybe we could have Big House Bananas?

Ah...well...maybe not. Seriously, after last year Michigan could not have enough QBs on the roster.

The stock went to zero and the machine did that auto lay off thing! We are all out of a job!!!!

Word. My head exploded yesterday while watching the ESPN coverage of this nonsense.

OMG A likely fourth string walk-on is going to play for michigan!!!

Why don't they do a story on the heated battle between Nader Furrha and Jack Kennedy while they're at it.

Boy is this story a Thorn in My (his) Side. Tragically, i'm afraid that this story is a Light that will Never Go Out until This Charming Man becomes the First of the Gang to Die.

What, Brawndo or electrolytes? I'd settle for electrolytes.

After seeing all this moronic coverage all over the place and the stupidity of the general internet commentariat (RR is desperate! RR must not think Forcier is any good! LOL Michigan is down the tubes forever!), heaven knows I'm miserable now.

It's too bad Brian can't fisk every single one of these examples of idiocy, but there aren't enough hours in the day.

Jesus Tap-dancing Christ, Herbstreit just said that Paulus coming here is a great idea because he has a "pulse" and there's desperation in Ann Arbor over the QB situation. He used the word "desperation" about 4 times. The ironic thing is he had just finished talking about how Barkley, the true freshman at USC, is probably the leader for the QB spot there, but was there any talk of desperation at USC? Nope, it's all good there. But a true freshman in Ann Arbor? Ipso facto, that's desperation folks. Yeah, I know that USC isn't down at Michigan's level right now, but I don't blame Tate (or anyone else on the team) right now for getting their dander up over all this. He also said that Paulus ran the same offense in high school as what RR runs here, but that's contrary to what Brian and others have stated.

Tate's a gamer. He knows it and we all know it now. However, anyone with common sense realizes the kid is currently undersized for a B10 QB. He's had 3-1/2 months of Barwis and from what I have heard recently he is still 180 to 185 lb. Granted, he had the flu. But still, I don't expect him to be 200-lb + by September. Unfortunately it appears it's going to take longer than we want for him to build necessary bulk. That said, Paulus seems to be a good insurance policy.

The media circus is crazy but consider that the keywords of this story are Duke basketball, Michigan football and the Green Bay Packers, what else did we expect?

Sam Webb just called into WTKA saying the Paulus saga is over and he's not coming to UofM. They didn't ask where he was going or why..but sounds like it's dead. Now we can talk about Jason Forcier coming in to play against his bro.