Nice longform piece from ESPN on Blake Corum - even more impressed with the kid

The young man is special! He's going to be making bank on Sunday's here soon. Appreciate him for his efforts on and off the field. I'm excited to see how he ends his career here over the next five games!

Saw the Deion tweet posted here already, and don't mind one bit seeing it again. Wonder if they manage to pull him as an honorary captain.

The fact that Blake cites Brian Dawkins, a HOF safety, as a source of inspiration is striking to me. This screams of someone who is obsessed with all things football. Looking back over the past few recruiting cycles, it seems like our program places a growing premium on football-obsessed prospects. Just a theory, but maybe this is why our recruits lately have consistently outperformed their rankings.

Even Mike Hart thinks he's Mike Hart, but fast. 
 

Great stuff OA!

Great read! Can't say that too often about ESPN. So excited to see what the future has in store for this young man. Just a quality person all the way around. Bright future in and out of football.

Mike Hart was my all time favorite Michigan player, one that built my love for hard-running Big Ten football and cemented my Michigan fandom. Then last year Aidan Hutchinson put the entire fanbase and program on his back, breaking all of the narratives by force of sheer will. Even still, Blake Corum may be my favorite player and human being to ever don the winged helmet. He’s exciting but gritty, confident but humble, lightning and thunder, superstar and pillar of the community. 
 

That he and Hutchinson have been our program ambassadors in back-to-back years is no fluke. I cannot applaud Harbaugh enough for building a team of exemplary men. People may knock him for the “transformational instead of transactional”, but damn if his team doesn’t make me proud as a fan and alum.

Thanks for posting.

I attended UM, so does Corum. I volunteered off campus with kid, so does Corum. It's uncanny how much he and I are alike. Virtually twins.

And he's still underrated by people like Bill Connelly (whom I otherwise like) and lesser pundits (see the tweet below) who think any decent RB would be great with Michigan's line.  What they don't seem to understand, if they watch the games at all, is that Michigan's entire gameplan is built around Corum's ability to turn 2-3 yard runs into 4-6 yard runs, stay on schedule, move the chains, and control the game script.

Also quite relevant for any Maye/Corum comparisons: Big 10 has the two best divisions for defense.  ACC Coastal has worst P5 defense by far and overall is worse than the Sun Belt East

This was a really good article that I highly recommend every Michigan fan reads.  Adam Rittenberg usually just posts superficial tidbits, but this is a feature-length story that's well written and researched.

Thanks for posting, OA!!

Beat OSU

Run for 200 and 4 TDs

Win Heisman

Also, in addition to his innumerable personal and performance-based accolades, I'd <3 Blake Corum forever for the utterly casual contempt he showed in his comments about Sharty's gang assault:

"I know as a man, I wouldn’t have felt good ganging up on a couple players. That’s not how I roll. But to each his own.”

Blake is from the same county and area I did much of my childhood growing up in (born in Warrenton, near Marshall, grandparents had an 80 acre farm in Sumerduck, all in Faquier County, I lived as a child in nearby Stafford County/Hartwood/Fredericksburg)

so I just love reading this as it makes me think of home and just love that someone from that area is now a Michigan legend. 
 

My mother is also a graduate of Faquier High like James, although much older, and fun fact: Faquier county is literally pronounced “Fock-yer/year” county. Great when telling people where you are from. 
 

And, end my 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon to Blake Corum. 

"Even Mike Hart thinks he's Mike Hart, but fast."

Happy to see this trope come full circle.

Dammit, who keeps chopping all these onions in here?

I gotta jurdle whoever that is.

Read this before turning in last night. Normally not one for ESPN write-ups anymore, but this was a phenomenal read.

I can’t help but applaud Corum’s maniacal dedication to his craft and willingness to get up at 3am, as a high school kid no less, drive two hours each way every day, get maybe a few hours of sleep, wake up the next day and do it all over again. That is not something many kids that age would be willing to do to achieve their goals. I sure as hell wouldn’t have at his age. He has an unrelenting drive to be great and you can’t help but admire it.

He’s a special player. Sure hope we can get five more games out of him before he goes on to make some serious money at the next level.

on 97.1 this morning with Jansen.  talked about distributing 100 more turkeys than last year’s give away of 200.  what Heisman talk has meant to him and the trip to NYC.  of course talk about his Oline, this season and the Illinois game.