Zinter and Johnson All-Americans to The Athletic

Submitted by VintageRandy on December 6th, 2023 at 10:13 AM

Persona non grata and all but The Athletic staff have released their All-America teams and feature Zak Zinter as a first-team OL and Will Johnson as a second team DB. Click if you so choose: https://theathletic.com/5114962/2023/12/06/college-football-all-america-teams-2023/

PFF has also released their first team lists but sadly they do not feature any Wolverines. This is Mason Graham and Mikey Sainristil erasure!!!

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dragonchild

December 6th, 2023 at 10:48 AM ^

Persona non grata and all

No, that is all.  I don't give a flying fuck about The Athletic's AA teams.

Downvoted for signal-boosting a rag that tried to sink our program.

Joined: 10/13/2011

MGoPoints: 60911

readyourguard

December 6th, 2023 at 10:55 AM ^

Much like ESPN, The Athleltic is hemorrhaging money. They are losing market share and clout daily.  So in an effort to bolster their viewers/clicks (like a Black Friday sale), they resorted to tabloid level muck raking over this stupid sign stealing faux scandal.  And since nothing sells like the University of Michigan and Jim Harbaugh, the two went balls deep into the story.

Therefore, they both can kiss my ass.

Joined: 08/21/2008

MGoPoints: 40986

Needs

December 6th, 2023 at 11:14 AM ^

This is meta, but the Athletic no longer exists as an independent entity. It's now just a line item within the New York Times much larger budget. Very soon, the vast majority of its "subscribers" will be incidental subscribers, a function of the 10 million people who digitally subscribe to the Times. Purchasing the Athletic, for the Times, became a means by which it could jettison its sports section. So its losses are offset by the money the NYT has gained from no longer staffing a sports department. (But it is still losing money and it's almost certain that direct subscriptions to the Athletic are far, far less important to the NYT bottom line than are a. Wirecutter, b. NYT Cooking, and c. the NYT Crossword).

If you look at the Athletic's broader history, what it did was put the final nail into local sports coverage by hiring tons of local reporters, costing significant number of sportswriting jobs as they were not replaced. It then was consolidated into a much larger entity, which has only marginal incentive to maintain quality local coverage, as subscriptions to the Athletic are driving a relatively small number of overall subscribers to the NYT.  In a way, it's a more extreme  version of ESPN's history since being purchased by the Mouse, with the difference being ESPN can still drive subscriptions to cable and Disney thus has a greater commitment to maintaining at least ESPN's live sports programming aspect.

Joined: 08/05/2008

MGoPoints: 11636

bronxblue

December 6th, 2023 at 10:56 AM ^

Olu Fashanu continuing to get all these awards as a top tackle befuddle me given the fact he's looked fine in the games I've seen but certainly not some dominant guy.  

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 171745

Needs

December 6th, 2023 at 11:29 AM ^

For oline voting, because there are few reliable stats and understanding excellence requires the kind of fine grained grading that Brian and Seth do (and almost no one else does publicly), voters both rely on preseason hype far more than any other position and are less apt to change their priors.

In Fashanu's case, this means that an olineman widely regarded as a high draft pick last year, who returned to college, was always going to have a lot of hype. It was maintained by in-season mock drafts. And, despite Penn State's inability to run the ball, the rough pass rush stats (I believe 10 pressures allowed is what the Athletic quotes) are enough to maintain his status

Joined: 08/05/2008

MGoPoints: 11636