This Month in MGoBlog History - April 2006

Submitted by Maize.Blue Wagner on

Previously:

March 2006

April 1 – Saturday

Brian previews the Top Five Freaky Stud Freaks For ‘06. Here’s an appropriate statement to start every offseason.

Massive year-to-year roster turnover, somewhere between 30 and 40 major contributors per team, and the every-game-a-playoff regular season conspire to make the beginning of a college football season a uniquely stressful event for the fan. Across the nation, the mental well-being of slightly unbalanced folk depends on an array of unknown players like That Guy Wearing #21, Wait, That's Not Jason Avant, and Number 65 Is A Bit Of A Fatty, Isn't He(?). Every team has an set of unseen players suddenly thrust into the spotlight due to the graduation (or, in the case of Tennessee, arrest) of seniors that have gone before them. Some have more thrust upon them than others.

Here is his top 5:

5. Terrance Taylor

4. Adrian Arrington

3. Tim Jamison

2. Carson Butler

1. Johnny Sears

Well, numbers 5-3 weren’t too bad.

April 4 – Tuesday

PWO Commit from QB Jeff Ziegler.

Unverified Voracity: It’s Okay, There’s a Policy about OSU OL Alex Boone getting a DUI and receiving no punishment. Tressel says that they told their players to set their clocks an hour ahead, but the “message did not get through to everyone.” What?

April 5 – Wednesday

Hello Ryan Van Bergen. Some uncertainty of whether he will be a TE or DE. Probably a good thing he stuck at DE, given the future.

Recruiting Board Update still discussing running backs. Mostly Brandon Saine, but Robert Hughes and John Clay are also mentioned.

Uh oh, bad news about Alex Legion. He’s transferring from Country Day and reopening his recruitment.

If I hadn't had my basketball will to live beaten out of me already, this would probably spur some "aaargh." As it is: looks like Crawford/Horford redux.

April 6 – Thursday

Brian warns of a light posting day, but…Patrick Beverly is close to committing!

He follows that up with a post about the seedy nature of college basketball recruiting and how the main stream media doesn’t do anything to expose it. He also explains some of Alex Legion’s odd living circumstances. This sounds like it could be reposted today and could be completely accurate.

Meanwhile in college basketball, the conventional wisdom is not that a few coaches are bending, breaking, or flaunting the rules -- it's that all of them are.

April 7 – Friday

Unverified Voracity: Forbidden Donut. More details on how Braylon’s scholarship for the #1 jersey will happen. This is viewed as a good thing. Also, a great video of a Mike Hart TD run from high school. Incredible play.

A couple new blogs in the ‘M’ blogosphere. Including one (Stadium & Main) that still has available content, specifically an interesting recap of the 2001 season.

April 10 – Monday

The New York Times has taken up a story about a group protesting the potential addition of luxury boxes. Brian believes luxury boxes are a win-win. Here is his perspective from the different stakeholders:

·         Loaded old people: Muffy and I no longer have to risk death by frostbite every fall. We obviously enjoy the idea of boxes, as we've voluntarily shelled out the GDP of Belize to sit here. I do sort of miss screaming "down in front" at impudent 50-year-olds with their crazy hair and stupid pet rocks and hula hoops and music videos applesauce applesauce let's sing the applesauce song.

·         Joe Plebian in the stands: My, this extra 1.5 inches does make a difference... and there are many fewer crotchety old people yelling at me to sit down during exciting plays.

·         Bill Martin: Now I have even more money I can roll around in, Demi-Moore style.

·         Michigan players: Yes, it does seem somewhat louder in here, as the higher walls tend to keep in a bit more sound and those displaced to the luxury boxes never said peep in the first place.

·         The basketball team: Yay, if Martin ever stops rubbing the money all over his naughty bits, we get the facilities we need to compete with George Mason.

 

April 11 – Tuesday

Recruiting Board Update. Jason Forcier is removed. He’s going to UCLA.

Spring Tea Leaves from Lloyd’s spring presser. Highlights include that Antonio Bass should only miss the 2006 season, Kevin Grady had “the best day of his career”…in practice, flipping Jake Long to LT is seen as “scrambling”, LB is “up for grabs” after Shawn Crable, and Charles Stewart has surprisingly shown himself as a candidate to start opposite of Leon Hall.

Unverified Voracity: Callooh, Callay. ‘M’ hockey might escape the offseason with no defections to the pros (re: Johnson, Hunwick, and Hensick).

April 12 – Wednesday

Brian is taking a day off.

April 13 – Thursday

So this is how MGoBlog works…

The industrious beaver-elf mulattos that sit next to the forge in my basement pumping out analysis after analysis of football/basketball/hockey minutiae dread the arrival of this coming Saturday more than any other, for it is then that I have no further use for them and set them free -- "set free," of course, being another way of putting "sell into Keebler slavery." I will then spend the summer tending their larva; in August the next generation will hatch and be introduced to their cruel half-cat, half-man taskmasters. Fettered, blindered, and abandoned, they will spend the next six to eight months of their lives painstakingly assembling the sentences offered in this space for your amusement

…now they are called Ace, Seth, BISB, Adam…

The point of the post is that the offseason is coming (after Saturday’s spring game), and posting will be light.

Unverified Voracity: Get Hed about the unintended meanings of poorly written headlines.

April 14 – Friday

What makes MGoBlog great? Using Nietsche to determine the ideal Heisman Trophy winner.

The ideal Heisman candidate is frightening to behold unless he is on your side, in which case he is your flagbearer and protector. The ideal candidate is a force of nature that rolls through his opposition against tremendous odds. His name is graven on the tombstone of instant replay's creator as a justification. He is not sunnily efficient, or competent, or a great fat beast who crushes only the weak. He is slightly terrifying. There is a small but real possibility that he is the escaped prototype of a CIA-developed breed of unkillable soldiers; he is not man; he is overman.

Brian gets interviewed on a Texas blog.

April 17 – Monday

Spring Game Impression. Most notably, it was 69 degrees and sunny. Also, this is pretty late in the semester for this to happen. The other thing that stood out to me is that EE Carlos Brown got an entire series as a QB doing zone read. That just seems weird considering that Mike DeBord was the new OC, Rodriguez was coming in another two years, and all that would come with the deep gulf between the various factions, highlighted by types of offenses.

April 18 – Tuesday

Unverified Voracity: Those Are Cat Eyes with links to more spring game reactions and concern on the Patrick Beverly front.

April 19 – Wednesday

And Beverly commits to Arkansas.

Amaker: am-a-ker, verb. To blow something long considered a fait accompli, especially in an unsually humiliating and frustrating fashion.

April 20 – Thursday

Brian recaps his dream about being enslaved on an alien planet, but awakening when he realized it would mean he couldn’t be at football games in the fall.

Brian then begins a discussion on CFB scheduling, outlining the current problems.

The ultimate test here is what teams eventually do with the twelfth game, since it's pure profit. The women's crew team is already provided for. The toilets, as mentioned, are golden and come with robotic servants that wipe for you. ADs should get a free pass for this year, as the 12th game was thrust upon them somewhat suddenly and the constricted schedule means that teams with championship games and the Big Ten have to find someone, anyone, to plug into the hole on their schedule. Going forward, however, there's another chance to test your mettle -- assuming you have some.

April 21 – Friday

Highlight video from the 2005 Iowa game. Video still exists!

Now the Detroit News writes an article on John Pollack and the anti-luxury box campaign. Brian goes off, and it’s entertaining.

You'll see that this grass-roots movement is so devoid of actual ideas that they resort to hilarious lies constantly. The idea that a football game with 50 dollar tickets and 500 dollar PSLs for the excellent seats which are doled out to people who write huge checks to the university is some sort of proletarian rally where all men are created equally patchouli- scented and be-dreadlocked is beyond inane. And standing? When I stand, I am crabbed at. What Pollack describes is Michigan Stadium in the mirror universe where Paris Hilton is a nuclear engineer, Dennis Dodd is competent, and Ohio State is a university. It's not just wrong: it's the exact opposite of reality.

April 24 – Monday

Here’s something you don’t see around MGoBlog any more, professional sports game recaps. The Pistons win their first game of the playoffs.

Ryan Mallett might make his decision within the next week, and things are looking very good.

April 25 – Tuesday

Mallett commits! The post doesn’t actually state this explicitly, but it does link to a Rivals article that is still available.

Active during the war. On August 4th, 1941, a U-boat sunk a critical shipment of gunpowder destined for the shipyards of London. Private First Class Ryan Mallett was enlisted to hurl flak at incoming bombers, downing six and preserving an orphanage full of strippers. Four years later, he killed Hitler with a well-placed fifteen-yard out.

April 26 – Wednesday

An Edmonton Oilers game recap post. Oilers? Most of the post is Brian explaining how he came to dislike the Red Wings and root for the Oilers. Edmonton is up 2 games to 1 over Detroit, by the way.

April 27 – Thursday

Torrents of old ‘M’ football games! Links that no longer work…

Unverified Voracity: Elderly Cheese. There’s a note that Mallett is going to be an early enrollee. The interesting part is that Brian compares this to Grady, Boren, and Brown. From the impression I get and my foggy memory, this didn’t happen often. Hard to believe now that there are regularly 4-5 players a year who do this.

April 28 – Friday

The second part of the scheduling discussion. The two solutions given are either the NCAA requiring teams to honor scheduling contracts with one another or a playoff that would “preserve the tension of the regular season,” thereby encouraging teams to schedule better opponents.

Recruiting Board Update. Here is an interesting look at ESPN’s still-developing ranking system:

ESPN has started their recruit grading process and likes both VanBergen and Chambers fairly well, giving them both 79 -- all numbers this year are out of 100 instead of 10 for some reason -- but are less sold on Mallett than most, giving him an 82. For comparison, last year Cobrani Mixon, Brandon Minor, and Greg Mathews all got 79s from ESPN; there were no 82s but Adam Patterson got an 83 and Mouton, Schilling, and Brown all got 81s.

 

Comments

donjohn64

April 5th, 2016 at 12:56 PM ^

The Unverified Voracity on April 4 links to the same article as the link right above it.

 

Also, I'm guessing these are gonna get real depressing (like, Brandon's Lasting Lessons depressing) in a few years, and then get awesome in about 8 years....

lwblue

April 5th, 2016 at 2:15 PM ^

When it comes to recruiting, Lloyd is even better. He was not always a world-class recruiter, but in this century, the man has done as well as anyone can reasonably expect. Though it is easy to be critical of some failures and miscalculations (e.g., handing Brian Cushing over to USC despite an obvious need for competent linebackers; routinely failing to land top-level speed at RB, Carlos Brown excluded; perhaps not seizing upon John Clay early enough this season, although it's still early; etc.), his oeuvre is impressive. Michigan has routinely landed top-ten recruiting classes despite not winning BCS bowl games, not having a flavor-of-the-month coach, not being particularly concerned with cooperating with that guerilla fighting force of doom called "the media," and most importantly, NOT BEING SITUATED IN A TOP-LEVEL HOMEGROWN TALENT STATE.

Can someone delve into this? Never knew we had a shot at Brian Cushing.