DRob, CAvery, MRob Participate in Youth Football Camp, Comment on OSU

Submitted by MGoShoe on

Yesterday, Denard Robinson, Marvin Robinson, Courtney Avery plus two unnamed Michigan players participated as counselors at the All-American Youth Football Camp, run by Lexington High School head coach B.J. Payne and his staff. Lexington is Avery's alma mater.

Similar, but not identical Gannett stories here and here.

DRob:

Giving up those 12 victories does not mean each victim adds a notch to the win column. Even if it did, Robinson does not want to beat the Buckeyes and end a seven-game - check that, six-game - losing streak in the storied series that way. It would be a huge mistake to even suggest it.

"C'mon man," said Robinson, grimacing as if someone had told him to tie his shoes. "Who really wants to take a win like that?"

"You want to play a team when they're at the top, not the bottom," Robinson said. "These (OSU) guys (at the youth camp) say they're going to be at their best. They're working hard, so that's a good thing."

Avery:

"You can't control what can happen," Avery said, advising OSU players not to let the slow-turning wheels of NCAA justice serve as a distraction. "If you can't control it, you can't worry about it. Whatever happens is going to happen anyway."

"You don't really want to start looking at what's happening in other places; you have to worry about where you want to be as a player," Avery said. "We've got to concentrate on what we can control (at Michigan), and right now what we can control is getting better in the offseason."

Marvin Robinson:

"We wish the best for those guys," Marvin Robinson said. "They've got great talent on their team. I enjoy playing them; it's a great rivalry. We just hope to keep it how it used to be - a great rivalry, a great game."

Five OSU players including quarterback Kenny Guiton, running backs Jordan Hall and Jaamal Berry, and defensive lineman Dalton Britt were also in attendance but were not permitted to speak to the media.

Schweddy Balls

July 10th, 2011 at 9:25 AM ^

Same exact thing I have always been thinking and saying about this. OSU has to be a good team because any Michigan win against a weak OSU team is no win at all except for on paper. It's not unlike OSU teams playing Michigan's team the last several years. UM has not put forth the quality product that they use to. Hopefully under Hoke, that will all change.

Wave83

July 10th, 2011 at 9:47 AM ^

I remember when neither Bo or Woody would let his players talk to the media unless they were at least a junior, maybe a senior.  It is possible he only let the captains talk to the media.  Underclassmen would never be allowed to talk.

I realize that that was a different era.  Given the oversharing era we are in, it is telling that the OSU guys were silenced. 

Cultural Enrichment

July 10th, 2011 at 10:34 AM ^

Excuse me if my sarcasm meter is miscalibrated, but I think it's well worth the extra time typing if you are going to have many readers.  Hopefully, every post on this blog gets well read and, thus, justifies correct grammer and minimal annoying nicknames/acronyms*.  If you're not writing something that you think is worth writing properly, often you're not writing something worth writing at all.

*FWIW: I agree with the implication from previous comment that the DRob, MRob, etc. are annoying nicknames.

panthera leo fututio

July 10th, 2011 at 10:57 AM ^

I don't generally use the First Letter of Given Name Appended with First Three Letters of Family Name formula for referring to players. HOWEVA, I plan on making an exception for Avery, who I will henceforth be referring to as Man Cave. This application, in addition to fitting well in the new era of Home, also opens the door to many potentially fruitful lines of riffing, including such topics as the practice of spelunking, Batman, and the most recent Werner Herzog movie.

blueblueblue

July 10th, 2011 at 9:52 AM ^

Great to see this kind of attitude out of these guys. Folks around here should take heed from our players when wishing doom for Ohio outside of what we hand them. We should hope that Michigan is the primary proprietor of Ohio's doom. If that program takes a major hit from the NCAA, its bad for Michigan. A hit in the short run is fine, but some long-term doom is not good for Michigan. And I think they have taken what will be their hit for the short-run - a couple down seasons. We need both programs to be great for either one to reap any glory. 

NMU Blue

July 10th, 2011 at 10:26 AM ^

Not everyone can be Michigan.  Also, while I expect this from Denard, Avery suprised me.  I can't imagine being this mature at their age, and Avery is an Ohio kid.  I'd have run my jib until the battery in the reporter's recorder died.

Todd Plate's n…

July 10th, 2011 at 11:04 AM ^

If memory serves, Avery was a guy coming out of high school who is coach noted was a kid he would want his daughter to marry, high character kid and strong academically. 

All of the players quoted show incredible maturity and perspective.  I have to think some credit should go to the coaching staff for 1) surely communicating to them, at least in a general sense, of how to respond to these questions and 2) trusting their players to talk about it publicly. 

 

blueblueblue

July 10th, 2011 at 10:29 AM ^

1) There's a big difference between some injured key players, which is somewhat typical at the end of a season, and a chronically unwell program, which is atypical for Ohio and Michigan. 

2) Do you want Michigan fans to stoop to the level of Ohio fans or would you rather we take less of a short-term, superficial perspective?

Wolverman

July 10th, 2011 at 10:51 AM ^

  I want every rival we play to smoke every team they play until they play Michigan. It makes the games more meaningful and elevates us when we win. Fastest way to kill a rivalry is to have one of the teams suck for a decade ( ask any rival of Colarodo), Notre Dames the only exception. I pull for all Big Ten teams in bowl games, like any fan of a big ten team should.

 

Section 1

July 10th, 2011 at 10:55 AM ^

The classy public comments of a Denard Robinson, still an undergraduate in the current Michigan football program, make the great Desmond look bad by comparison.

Really, the guy who is supposed to be a major public figure, an iconic representative of the University of Michigan, and a national broadcaster... and this is the embarassing garbage he posts to the web on his Twitter account:

@Desmond Howard:This OSU self-imposed penalties is laughable...it's like #CaseyAnthony putting herself on house arrest for 2 years.#smh 

Can someone -- a friend to Desmond and our University -- please get Desmond off Twitter, until he has something important and decent to say?  And until he can assemble complete English-language sentences (even Twitter sentences) where the verbs match the subjects?  Please do it for Desmond's own good, and for Michigan's good reputation.

This is now the second of two notorious media stories, in the space of about a month, in which the great Desmond Howard, national broadcaster, has shown himself to have less common sense and less of a classy media presence than the Juniors on the current football team.

I am beginning to get very embarassed about the notion of officially honoring this Twitter-freak at the Notre Dame night game. 

xxmgobluexx

July 10th, 2011 at 11:16 AM ^

I actually agree with Desmond on this topic. Shoelace and others still in school did the right thing, they are representing Michigan when they speak and they said all the right things. Desmond represents himself on Twitter, and to a lesser extent ESPN and the University of Michigan. He just stated what many in the fanbase and others nationwide also believe.

EGD

July 10th, 2011 at 11:30 AM ^

Yeah, I guess we should try to gag Desmond Howard.  Just because he happens to be a charismatic and highly-likable former player, who won a Heisman at UM and a Super Bowl MVP in the pros, and who is still young enough to relate to current players and recruits, that's no excuse for him embarrassing us with grammatical errors on Twitter.  

We should probably get him off Gameday too.  After all, millions of people throughout the country watch that show on Saturday mornings in the fall, and they instantly associate with Desmond with Michigan Football.  We can't have him on there messing up the occasional subject-verb agreement when there could be dozens or hundreds of potential recruits watching.  You see it every day on Rivals.com, some four-star prospect committing to Illinois or Tennessee or some other irrelevant school and explaining, "Yeah, I really liked Michigan and all, but I just couldn't see myself ending up there with Desmond Howard always mis-conjugating his verbs and stuff."  When you think about it, it's even more amazing that Hoke and Mattison are putting together such a good recruiting class with Desmond and his so-called "grammar" out there f**king it all up.

bluebyyou

July 10th, 2011 at 12:26 PM ^

There is no true football fan on the planet who would ever want to take a win when the other team vacates same.  Everyone knows who won.

Does tOSU get to vacate the loss to Wisconsin?