Support MGoBlog: buy stuff at Amazon
Athletic Department Flippin' Out
According to an email to student season ticket holders, the Athletic Department is going to start booting kids doing the CYA cheer. Consternation erupts!
I am torn by the whole thing. On one hand, the CYA cheer is profane, witless, and annoying. Hearing fratboys scream "c***sucker" is not my idea of a good time. I was appalled by the student section (where I still sit) when Berenson took to the ice with his nephew, pleaded with the crowd to stop the cheer, and was completely ignored. I mean, he only built the damn program from the ground up and transformed Yost from an empty barn into what it is today, there's no need to actually listen to the man. The students have brought this upon themselves.
On the other hand, this is probably the exact wrong way to go about fixing things. The AD has got it in their heads to punish, punish, punish, which is only going to piss the students off. Hockey tickets used to be pretty cheap and the students were treated well. Now they're half-pariah and paying $250 for a season ticket. The band got moved away from them and slashed in half. The club seats overhang the student seating, obstructing the views of kids in the last few rows. The AD has been screwing them a little harder each year. They're going to react to this very, very poorly, as you would too if you found yourself in their situation.
The AD needs to look at the situation and provide a little carrot with their stick. Promise to cut season ticket prices in half if the cheer goes away or gets altered to a PG (not PG-13) version of itself. Threaten to increase them to $18 a seat if the cheer doesn't go away. Then let them choose.
Horton not likely to be convicted
Says the Free Press. The girlfriend in question is uncooperative, there wasn't a medical report, the incident was reported three days after the fact. I offer this information in an entirely neutral fashion.
Oh God, It's Spreading
Whatever implacable demon Tommy Amaker managed to piss off has decided to take a few potshots at the hockey team too. Rohlfs, Brown, and Moss are out this weekend. Brown and Rohlfs have mono, so they could be gone for a long time, the entire season even. Moss has a groin pull, which is a notoriously finicky injury.
Woodford and Henderson will draw in, obviously, and they may as well dress Olson since there's no one else to play. Maybe someone will get bumped to forward? Werner has moonlit there in the past.
Nic Harris Diary III
Here.
He plans to major in kinesiology. I'm just saying, you know, that this one's looking good.
MSU offered $ for Albert Means?
Albert Means, the player who's recruiting saga brought (more) shame to Alabama football, may be spreading the love around. His high school coach testified in court yesterday that seven schools offered Means money. Six of them are SEC schools. The seventh is Michigan State. No details were offered as to MSU's participation in the auctioning off of Means. Perhaps their involvement was peripheral. In fact, it's likely that all the schools mentioned had little or no involvement in the offering of money. Boosters likely took care of it.
This, however, is not boosters:
Lang also testified that he received cash from Kentucky and Georgia for taking Means to their campuses for visits. He said Claude Bassett, then the Kentucky recruiting coordinator, paid him $3,000 and that Jim Donnan, then Georgia's head coach, gave him $700 cash, in addition to $100 Georgia booster Bill Harper sent him.
New year, new SEC cheating scandal. At what point do you say enough is enough?
Carrot... Carrot... STICK STICK STICK
So I get an email from Rivals yesterday with the subject "Valued Member." Bad sign. Usually when someone calls me a Valued Member they're trying to screw me. Uh... in a bad way.
Anyway, the email contains good news:
For one whole year, you now have access to all Ultimate Ticket features (marked with a blue ticket) instead of only Team Ticket access (marked with a red ticket) on the Rivals.com network, all only at the same low price that you pay today.
The catch? Well, you can figure it out, can't you? They've stopped selling team memberships and are now only selling one global Rivals subscription, which will cost as much as the Ultimate Ticket did. And one year from yesterday, I'm going to have to relinquish the same low price that I pay today and pay the different high price I don't pay today because I don't particularly care how North Texas is recruiting. (Clever timing on that--the price increase will hit approximately one week before signing day.)
Rivals has discovered that most people are satisfied with just a Team Ticket. They've failed to up-sell anyone on anything, despite trying very hard. They started producing AMP, basically very nice highlight packages and ESPN-style recruiting reports. They added tons of prospect video for Ultimate Ticket subscribers. Then they made it available to everyone. Then they gave everyone Ultimate Ticket for free, probably because the ratio of Ultimate Ticket to Team Ticket subscribers is really, really low. This is a brute-force approach to increasing revenue.
So is the Wolverine worth 10 dollars a month? Apparently I think it's worth at least 6. But that's going to be a rapid 66% markup... I guess now I can read SpartanMag.com's love letters to Antonio Bass but other than that I'm going to be paying for something I don't want. Bleah. I'm paying for HGTV, Oxygen, and Lifetime, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it. One interesting thing is that if scout.com doesn't increase its prices, it will actually be cheaper than Rivals, which didn't used to be the case--they're basically $100 a year. Rivals will be $120 instead of the $72 I pay now.
I really, really dislike this change but I'll probably get over it in a year. Evil but effective marketing from Rivals. I hate marketing.
Speaking of Rosenberg
He has a Horton article in today's Free Press. The headline's a little weird, because it sort of implies that Horton's making excuses for himself, but the article makes clear that the quotes Rosenberg's using came before this incident.
P-Diddy out tomorrow
So says the Emporer-God-King of East Lansing on WTKA. I don't think it'll matter much but since Davis is their only post scoring threat it will help. But let's not kid ourselves. We'll have a walk-on on the floor at all times.
Can I Get An Amen?
ESPN jumped the shark a few years ago, and now they're taking everyone else down with them. That Slate column reads like a page out of my super secret diary--minus the scandalous pictures of Scarlett Johansson. The argument is basically that the adoption of newspaper columnists and the Stephen A. Smithification of them by network retards has ruined not only ESPN but sports columns across the country.
Amen. Good god, amen. It's not particularly relevant to Detroit because the only local sportswriter with the ability to write a column that will make readers less likely to slit their wrists is Wojo. Everyone else is trash, although should Rosenberg end up with a column it will be good. (I do agree with the DSR on Albom--dude should be credited with making Jessica Simpson money with Ashlee Simpson talent, but a sportswriter he is no longer. (Write or do not! There is no try! Mmm.))
Uh. I got sidetracked. Anyway, it is a complete mystery to me why sports commentary is so flat awful. Does this sh... stuff get ratings? I know that I haven't watched a single minute of any pre- or post-game analysis or even Sportscenter in a very long time, College Gameday excepted. And why do I watch College Gameday? Fowler and Herbstreit are not jive-talking fools like Stephen A Smith. Corso is comic relief, and even he's more of a student of the game than ESPN's NBA hood rat. Don't even get me started on Michael "If I yell THIS LOUD maybe you'll forget about the crack and hookers" Irvin or ABC's Aaron "I can't open the left side of my mouth" Taylor. Morons. All of them.
Whoah. That's a lot of angry for one post. I'll cool down and come back with something about puppies.
