lolmsm

Correction. I misattributed the source of the coaching clinic notes posted last week. Their origin is Go Blue Michigan Wolverine (the blog, not the Scout site). Apologies to ERoc & co.

Fixes. Your blog fixes/all-natural-enhancements for the week:

7/9/2008:

• Added "Hot" tab for message board.
• Fixed IE6 bug where content would end up pushed down the page.
• leaderboard ad centered.
• Killed the "ad takeover bug" by removing the code that delayed ad loading until end of page.
• Added "MGoElsewhere" block with useful links to the Fanhouse, Facebook, and MGo.licio.us, as some had requested their return.
• Deleted all accounts that had never been logged in and disabled email validation temporarily.

If you had problems registering and never logged in, you can take another shot at it, as I've cleared out all the old usernames and temporarily shut down the email registration that didn't tell you it was coming and sometimes never showed up. You should be able to pick a password.

The ad takeover bug got way worse yesterday morning when I committed a change that was working on my local install of Drupal, saw it had severely broken the site, and immediately lost internet connectivity until around 11 AM the next day. Which was awesome. I've pulled the clever change I made that had the ads load last and then moved them into their correct locations, and that's probably not coming back... it's just impossible to debug when I don't know what elements the javascript will provide me, and the cost of not debugging -- whitescreens with only ads on them -- is incredibly steep.

Another note: the "popular" and "hot" tabs for both diaries and message board only display posts from the last week.

My next task is figuring out why anonymous comments aren't displaying. As always, check the "crude bug tracking" page if you've got an issue, and comment there or email.

I got a lot of suggestions for the "Diaries" rename but none of them seemed very usable. Still looking.

Where will I get $5 shirts that say "Michigen" now? If thought selling six t-shirts for ten dollars was not a particularly good business model, congratulations! You're now the proud owner of a Notre Dame MBA. Also, Steve and Barry's is about to die:

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Steve & Barry's is considering closing more than 100 stores across the country and has fallen behind in payments to builders, suppliers and advertisers. The chain is seeking $40 million in private financing to avoid filing for bankruptcy. ...

Aside from its bankruptcy troubles, the retailer took a hit when the University chose not to renew its licensing contract with 4004 Inc., the apparel company that supplies Steve & Barry's. Kristen Ablauf, the University's director of licensing, said the decision was made because of "concerns with their ability to fulfill their requirements of their license agreements."

IE: they ain't gonna pay us. Or, apparently, the Daily, which is owed over twenty grand by Steve & Barry's.

This story reads like this to me: blah blah blah. blah. World's most ridiculous liquidation sale! What are they going to offer? Ten shirts for ten dollars? All "leather" jackets come with a free barrel of oil? Buy a hat and get Steve or Barry's first-born free?

(Via MSC, and a preemptive update: Steve and Barry's is screwed.)

Over Wisconsin. WolverineHistorian has compiled the 1998 Wisconsin game:

You write about sports for a living. You've obviously made some serious mistakes in life. Varsity Blue is prompted to reflect on what Kevin Grady's punishment will be for blowing Ken-yon Rambo's GPA (oh ten-year-old irrelevant-diss snap!) by yet another cranky sports guy calling for a beheading:

The proposals range from doing nothing (as Ohio State fans think will happen, for some reason), to kicking Grady off the team. Jeff Chaney, a columnist for the Grand Rapids Press, said today on the radio that he thinks the latter is the most appropriate and likely outcome. Naturally, I disagree.




The logic Chaney followed was this: Grady is a third-teamer, and therefore must serve as an example to the rest of the team.

Attention, sports columnists of Michigan: there are options between doing nothing and kicking a guy off the team. If you were judged so harshly for the times in your life you did something incredibly stupid, parts of your anatomy would be speeding past Mars at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

There will no doubt be similar caterwauling from men of Chaney's ilk when Grady is not booted, but wouldn't Michigan be better off with an open scholarship than a disappointing running back who'll probably be third-string at best this fall? Michigan has five other running backs, all of whom have either shown better on the field or fit better in the offense. Grady is unlikely to contribute at all; keeping on the team is an act of mercy.

Shades of gray exist, people!

Look, see? Chengelis provides some shades of gray in her piece.

Etc.: Got $5 million burning a hole in your pocket? Want a tower? In the diaries, GSimmons says Michigan will be impervious to weather and Dex explores the wonders of Kevin Grady's Big Adventure. Worth it just for the special guest star's fake name. Also: do you have a widescreen monitor? Embiggen your MGoExperience here.

Full up. The Bama Sports Report says Ivan Matchett has made his grades and will enroll at Alabama shortly. Matchett is the 27th recruit to qualify -- two enrolled early -- and Alabama has now maxed out their freshman class. Three players will have to go by September, and there are still two guys trying to get eligible.

Hello, nurse. Anyone with an interest in viral marketing, branding, or boobs probably knows that JC Penney has been scrambling to control the fallout from a fake teen sex ad that was leaked onto the internet. But everyone's missed the hidden subplot except an alert reader: that chick is a Michigan fan. Check the shirt she's putting on/taking off/putting on:

Thousands of sixteen-year-olds across the country will now find themselves inexplicably fond of winged helmets.

Slightly lame. A large number of departures from the quasi-revenue sports of hockey and baseball:

• 2010 hockey recruit Jared Knight has signed with the OHL. This is not a huge deal since that class is two years from seeing the ice and Michigan will no doubt secure a suitable replacement, but Knight would have been a first-round OHL draft pick without his Michigan commitment and is a disappointing loss.
• 3B Adam Abraham, SS Jason Christian, and top reliever Mike Powers have signed MLB contracts and won't return for their senior years. Putnam is still wavering after being selected surprisingly late, though.

Say goodbye. Comrade Rodriguez has declared that Michigan Replay will no longer be taped on Saturday night, which was mildly disappointing. This, however, is the end of an era:

"It was the greatest thing I ever did professionally," said Bob Lipson, who created the show in 1975 and produced it for 33 years. "It's me. That's my identity. I absolutely loved it and worked with three great coaches. Nobody had it better than me. It was a great run."

So what's to become of new coach Rich Rodriguez's show this fall?

One thing is certain: it will not be called "Michigan Replay."

"I own the name," Lipson said. "It's not for sale."

Harsh, man. Likely out the door with the "Michigan Replay" name is the show's inexplicably funky theme song, and you should be sad. No question, Jim.

Feed me, multiply. Stadium and Main emerges from a long slumber with some original reporting:

...the most important thing about the BTN is having access to all of its "overflow" feeds, so you can see all of the games (without having to worry about whether you'll receive your team's game). This is especially important for me, since I live in Washington, DC. So if I only get one BTN channel, my "regional coverage" might be the BTN Game of the Week (which may or may not include Michigan), or worse yet, Penn State (since they're the closest geographically). This short blurb from the Baltimore Sun makes it sound like the BTN will be available on Comcast's Sports Entertainment Package in cities like Baltimore (stated), DC, NYC, etc. (inferred), which was expected. But what about those overflow feeds?!

S&M (...errrr) goes on an intrepid journey to get a comment on the matter from Comcast, finally surfacing with:

We plan to review this situation week by week, and hope to bring our customers as many of these extra games as possible, based on level of interest and available channel capacity. BTN has told us that these details of this opportunity will not be available until August, and that they are quite subject to change, week to week, based on the game selections by ESPN, ABC and NBC.

Bleah. Sounds like this remains in question; head over to Stadium and Main for a fuller parsing of the above.

Snippet. Oddly, I'm an Edmonton Oilers fan (long story involving Chris Chelios and Mike Comrie), which sucks when it comes to actual on-ice accomplishments except during the Pronger year but is pretty killer when it comes to blogging. One of the best Oilers blogs out there -- albeit one of the worst named -- is MC79Hockey, and they've just wrapped up the main problem with the "access" frequently trotted out as the reason you shouldn't read the internet. Former Sioux defender Matt Greene just got traded:

Looking at Matt Greene first, he’s a fifth or sixth guy on a bad team. I had to laugh tonight as Jason Gregor was promoting his upcoming LIVE INTERVIEW WITH MATT GREENE and then explaining that he saw his upside as being a number three defenceman, because he can’t play on the PP. It was a stark illustration of the corrosive effect of access on truth telling.

Not everyone goes that route, of course, but the ones who don't tend to be Sharp/Mariotti types who Speak Truth To Power in a super-annoying way. Access is a double-edged sword.

(Also re: Greene: " I’ll always remember him, but mostly because I went to school with the guy who hit him with his truck." ZING!)

The MZone is dead, so someone's gotta do it.

There's only one man in the Big Ten Network footprint who's upset at the recent BTN-Comcast accord, and you get zero guesses as to his name. You didn't even guess, but you're right: Drew Sharp.

If you have a memory longer than two days you remember the minor scare that the BTN would agree to an eight-month preview only to be shuffled off onto a sports tier afterwards. It turns out said scare was caused by 1) sloppy media members not being careful with their words and 2) the exceptional paranoia of yrs truly. You probably remember every one of the hundred articles from every paper from Minnesota to Pennsylvania being very clear that this was not a possibility, that any move would be to a "broadly distributed" digital sports tier that 80% of Comcast subscribers already get.

Sharp either didn't read a single article on the deal or couldn't figure out what "broadly distributed" meant:

The Big Ten finally agreed to an arrangement ensuring that 94% percent of Comcast's subscribers within the eight-state Big Ten footprint would get BTN over an expanded basic cable package that, from Comcast's standpoint, basically amounts to an eight-month "free preview" to the network before Comcast can switch BTN to a special digital sports tier package in those pockets, not including local Big Ten home cities such as like Ann Arbor and East Lansing, where it believes the demand is highest.

This underpins the entirety of what passes for his argument: the Big Ten completely caved and should have done this a year ago. It is completely false. Drew Sharp doesn't even read his own goddamn newspaper:

The BTN and the cable carrier announced a multiyear agreement today that puts programming on expanded basic on Aug. 15 in states with Big Ten schools. After the 2008-09 basketball season ends, Comcast has the option to shift the network to its digital service.

Comcast has about 5 million customers with basic cable and 4 million with digital in Big Ten states.

Sharp's entire column is based on a misunderstanding of the situation that reading 600-word article could have cleared up. He cannot be bothered to even understand the deal before doing his Drew Sharp thing, which is to trash anything that does not win a championship.

And so, the eternal question: why? I'm not asking this in your standard "lolmsm" fashion. I am genuinely puzzled. Every sports fan I've ever come across in this town loathes Sharp. He is inextricably linked with two things: hatred and the Detroit Free Press. Why would the Free Press intentionally antagonize readers that now have a vast multitude of other options? Sharp's a dinosaur from the days when readers had a choice of Paper A or Paper B, the prime numero-uno example of why lazy-ass columnists rage against the internet: it exposes how very much they suck and provides alternative sources of attention.

Every column he writes pisses away more subscriber goodwill and drives consumers to less annoying sources. Even if he gets attention, it's the wrong kind of attention in a hotly competitive media environment.

Update: A Free Press minion has corrected Sharp's error to this...

to the network before Comcast can switch BTN to a digital package, which is more expensive than expanded basis.

...which is a nice try but only makes the column even more transparently nonsensical.

Note: lately, I've been dumping a lot of things into UV that could rightly stand on their own as posts, and I'm going to try to split those things out in the future. Often I'll hold something for a day or two until the next edition and by that time every Michigan blog has already said their piece and I feel stupid. Also, much of the time I end up throwing a bunch of disparate stuff together -- that's kind of the point -- and it mucks up the categories. If you click "baseball" or something on the right sidebar you get posts with baseball, but often leetle pieces of baseball in a larger post.

So, anything that's news or news-y I'll post ASAP, and anything program-related and longer than a few lines will also get split out.

House. I should probably start plugging Michigan-relevant stuff I post on the Fanhouse since every couple days I get an email asking why I haven't covered X when there's a post up over there. So: Want Michigan tickets? Cut your legs off.

(It's already happening!)

On a more serious note, yes, it's a little annoying that handicapped fans get to cut in the season ticket line and get their PSLs waived, but those were probably conditions of the settlement and in the long run said settlement saved Michigan some coin, and a lot of seats.

The point. It's fashionable, and somewhat accurate, to bash Bill Simmons these days. But everything you need to know about why sports columnists are thrashing around in their death throes can be found in his post-Celtics victory column, and it's all about his dad. I am a little sick of Simmons' schtick, incredibly sick of Boston teams winning championships, and was sort of annoyed at parts of the column, but...

Dad bought a single season ticket for the Celtics for the 1973-74 season and carried me into the Garden for the next four years, sitting me on his lap and even letting me sleep on him during the famous triple-OT game against Phoenix in 1976. When I became too big to sit on his lap, he bought a second ticket even though we really didn't have any money at the time. And we've had those two tickets ever since. How do you repay someone for a lifelong experience like that? You don't. You can't.

...this and the discussion that follows it is about the strange thing fandom is, something only a lifelong fan could communicate. Often, I think, we start pulling for a team by proxy. I wanted Michigan to win when I was a child so my dad would be happy. When Michigan was trailing by 21 in the Water Buffalo Stampede Minnesota game, my girlfriend at the time wanted Michigan to do well so I wouldn't accidentally shove her off the couch again in rage. Now that I'm friends with the sort of Auburn fan who involuntarily screams things like "GO LESTER" on every run longer than three yards, I want Auburn to win.

At some point a switch flips and the rooting is no longer by proxy and now you're just sort of infected with this thing. And it makes you do and think very strange things about completely irrelevant external events, and coping and dealing with this weird little disease of passion requires a sort of support group.

In general, newspapers have chosen to strip the passion out of their sports section in favor of objectivity. They've been so successful at it that Bill Simmons -- a "blogger" according to sneerin' Rick Reilly -- is the most famous and influential sportswriter* in the country.

*(writer. Wilbon, Kornheiser, etc... TV.)

Man down. Alabama cornerback Lionel Mitchell, he of the severe back problems that sort of held him out of spring practice, -- brutal! -- is yet another medical scholarship recipient. Will Alabama make it? This is exciting!

EEEEEE Barwis:

Via MVictors, which helpfully picks out this sentence:

"If you can't make it intense, and make the environment an environment that elicits greatness, and get into that environment, coach, and make kids energetic about, and fired up about putting 500 pounds on their back and hittin' reps and running sprints until they throw up and pushing themselves to the absolute limits of their mental and physical capabilities then you're not doing anything, you've wasted your time with your science because they're not going to grow if they're not pushing themselves to those points..."

Dude, Faulkner just threw up in a bush.

Thin, thin. Antonio Henton, the dual-threat Ohio State backup quarterback who is not Terrelle Pryor, is transferring. Probably:

Ohio State quarterback Antonio Henton has reportedly told his Buckeye teammates he's headed for GSU, an ESPN writer confirmed to the Statesboro Herald Wednesday. Georgia Southern's B-term for summer classes begins next week, and second-year GSU coach Chris Hatcher said he couldn't discuss transfers until then. Henton could not be reached for comment.

That leaves Ohio State with eh starter Todd Boeckman, Pryor, and thousand-year-old walk-on(? - I think) Joe Bauserman. They aren't much deeper than Michigan, though they are more experienced/hyped/diapered.

Dash. Wisconsin people say don't get your hopes up for Charter or Time Warner:

"I think they're going to be really, really lucky to get it done by football season," Prof. Barry Orton told The Capital Times. "It means they have to turn this around in a month and a half or so. That's tight. I would think we're safer to say (a deal will be done) probably by basketball season and maybe by the end of football season."

Yes, yes it does. NBC's extended their contract with Notre Dame another five years, and they're very proud of it:

"We are thrilled to continue this landmark partnership with Notre Dame," Ebersol said during a conference call. "Notre Dame defines who we at NBC Sports are: from the Olympics, to the U.S. Golf Open to Notre Dame."

From the Olympics... to golf... to Notre Dame football! NBC sports: the home of soft-focus quasi sporting events that only appeal to white people!

Meanwhile, the Rock Report writes from an alternative universe:

Who kills the magic at Notre ame? Often times it's the very network that supports it... NBC has been a good partner, but it is time ND started demanding more from NBC.

Like ponies.

Past snark, the new NBC contract is lame for ND, the Big Ten, and college football in general. It guarantees seven home games and an eighth "neutral site" game that ND contr
ols the gate and TV for. If you fit that into a conference framework, ND has four home games and four road games like any Big Ten team was, then three nonconference home games and a "neutral site" game... if a Big Ten team tried that their nonconference schedule would be Wisconsin's. And with home-and-home slots given over to USC, Navy (-ish), Michigan, and three Big East teams, Notre Dame is going to have to push out traditional rivals like Purdue and Michigan State to make it work.

To ND fans' credit, they loathe this state of affairs as much or more than Michigan fans hate the idea of the MAC-MAC-Utah at best-ND nonconference schedule that seems to be Michigan's fate for the next thousand years. Again, I say: the NCAA can stop this if they care to. Force five true road games a year. Limit commercial time in broadcasts. Stop trying to squeeze every nickel out of a supposedly nonprofit enterprise.

Chances of this happening: zero.

Etc.: New IU blog Cannot Falter highlights some interesting chatter from the Knight commission on APRs and infractions; here's a theory as to why Mendenhall hates Zook. 20 questions on M from the OZone... IMO, not up to Gerdeman's usual standard. Recruting notes from UMHoops.

(What a good job I did of cutting this down.)

EVENT! RBUAS posting!

Several helpful readers provided tricksy ways to unearth the pictures at the official site, so I can now provide you that super picture from the women's academy for those too lazy to dig it up themselves:

What's with the smiling chick in the upper right? Where's your intensity, lady? Barwis! Eat her!

But what about the SUPER-SUPERCONFERENCE? When the Wizard of Odds threw out a post on this a few days ago, I shrugged, but the Wiz has now linked to this nut from the Orlando Sentinel twice more and the disease has started to spread outward.

His name is Tim Stephens, and he is a very stupid man. He proposes that college football is moving inexorably towards four sixteen-team superconferences and a four-team playoff between the winners. Nevermind that the WAC was briefly a creaky sixteen-team "superconference" before all its members decided that was an incredibly stupid idea and broke off. Nevermind that it's just a matter of time before the creaky sixteen-team Big East basketball "superconference" splinters. Nevermind that he actually titles a post "could five dollar gas spur the playoff debate" (his answer: yes!) and then, like, in the very next post about his incredibly stupid idea puts Notre Dame in the Pac-10. Nevermind that every team past 12 dilutes the financial impact of a championship game.

These are all reasons that Tim Stephens is a man propounding a very stupid idea and wasting everyone's time, but the main thing is this: at the absolute most, teams will play nine conference games. When you have a "super conference" that's basically two eight-team divisions in which you play seven games and then two games against the other division, which is not a conference at all, really, and is the main reason the WAC exploded.

What a waste of time.

Precedented. A reader forwards along a Chronicle of Higher Education piece on new ADA regulations($) that would about halve the number of handicap-accessible seats stadiums are required to provide. How is this related to Michigan?

The new regulations, if unchanged after a public comment period, would be roughly comparable to the terms of a recent settlement between the federal government and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. This spring, in response to a lawsuit over handicapped-accessible seating in its football stadium, the university agreed to provide 329 spots -- or a third of a percent of its 107,000 seats -- for fans in wheelchairs.

So even though this rough halving of the number would seem to put Michigan under the microscope again, apparently the settlement is being used as a model and we should be okay.

From the same article:

No Ferrets

Service animals are another focal point of the new regulations. The proposed rules distinguish service animals from "emotional-support animals," which they say are not covered by federal disability law. ...

Support animals, like ferrets and snakes, have been a sticking point for colleges, where students have asked to keep them in residence halls and take them to class.

That is all.

Defcon 4. Max Pacioretty is the only potential departure who hasn't publicly stated his intention to return. This is probably why:

Heard it from a very good source that he would like to sign and that Montreal wants him but the family will have none of it. At this point, put the chances of him returning for his sophomore year at about 80%.

That's the Wolverine's Mike Spath, so that's legit. I'll take 80% but the news that Patch wants to sign is unwelcome; he was telling teammates he'd be back a month or so ago. He'll be one to watch until September.

(Via Michigan Hockey Net.)

Aw, come on. Notre Dame/Halloween candy blog Rakes of Mallow is providing an overview of ND's oppnents and though they're advertised as "nearly prediction free" there is a little numerical difficulty number applied to each. North Carolina, 4-8 a year ago, warrants a 7. 4-9 Washington gets a 6. Purdue is a 5, Michigan State a 6.

Michigan? 3. The same as Stanford. I know every Notre Dame fan out there yearns for Michigan to have the same sort of Hindenberg season Notre Dame did a year ago, but... uh... not likely. Notre Dame had the second-worst offense of the decade, and outliers, probability, bell curves, binomial distributions, etc.: Michigan replicating that is highly, highly unlikely.

Etc.: I knew those fake-o new jerseys running around had boobs. Boiled Sports interviews yrs truly. Jemele Hill is sitting in timeout for comparing the Celtics to Hitler; shouldn't she be in timeout for not being interesting? Maize 'n' Brew takes issue with the preseason magazines... which is why you should by HTTV 2008!

It is for quiz. Clay Travis throws down the gauntlet to blog-bashers in his latest CBS Sportsline piece:

Five bloggers that have agreed to participate will take on a team of five of the most talented, educated and intelligent mainstream sportswriters that are willing to compete against them. Hopefully the roster will feature at least a few of the recent blogger insulters (Bob Costas, Buzz Bissinger, Rick Reilly, Michael Wilbon) you name the mainstream media members who are willing and there's a blogging team ready to play them for charity.

And, as a bonus, we'll let the captain of the mainstream media team select a charity they would like to raise money for. So, for example, if he's willing to participate, we would be happy to send all the proceeds to fund more of Reilly's mosquito nets in Africa. In fact it would be ideal if Reilly, given his frequent and vituperative criticism of sports bloggers and his new boffo column deal, was willing to put together his own team. Even if Reilly's not a member of the mainstream media we'll be willing to let him join.

There's more, including a brief section on yrs truly, one of the distinguished panelists. If anyone who's taken a shot at blogs is reading this, 1) your father was a hamster and your mother smells of elderberries and 2) seriously, step up to the plate. Money goes to a good cause and I can't answer any questions except those about my mother's basement. (Example Q: who did you cut open during the Great Lego Battle of Thanksgiving 2005? A: Tom.) You will wipe the floor with us. I can barely spell.

O ZOMBIE RLY? Penn State fans are super-excited that they've raided Maryland something wicked in this recruiting cycle, but, uh...

COMMITTED	Pos	Stars	Ht	Wt	40	RR	Hometown
Eric Shrive	OL		6-7	285	5.1	6.0	Scranton, PA
Darrell Givens	DB		6-0	170	4.46	5.8	Indian Head, MD
Sean Stanley	DE		6-2	250	4.7	5.8	Gaithersburg, MD
Brandon Felder	WR		6-2	167	4.43	5.7	Oxon Hill, MD
Ty Howle	OL		6-2	290	-	5.7	Bunn, NC
Derrick Thomas	DB		6-0	176	4.49	5.7	Greenbelt, MD
Mark Arcidiacono	OL		6-4	289	-	5.5	Philadelphia, PA
Stephon Morris	DB		5-8	172	4.48	5.5	Greenbelt, MD
Stephen Obeng-Agyapong	DB		5-10	174	4.5	5.5	Bronx, NY
Malcolm Willis	DB		5-11	201	4.64	5.5	Indian Head, MD
Curtis Drake	QB		6-0	175	4.49	-	Philadelphia, PA
Frank Figueroa	OL		6-4	282	5.2	-	Alexandria, VA

...is this recruiting to be excited about? Dominating Maryland football recruiting is like doing a killer job finding hockey players in Ohio.

Shrive's their only top 100 recruit and of their 12 commits only three have four stars. This looks exactly like 2008, when they had one non-linebacker pick up four stars, or 2005, when the Justin King-Derrick Williams duo overshadowed a class long on signees (19) but short on talent (only four of them got more than three stars. Penn State has gone back to its recruiting style from the early portion of the decade, when they would lock up a host of marginal prospects -- "QB" recruit Curtis Drake's only other offer was from Northwestern -- early.

You can get away with that stuff here and there when you uncover a diamond in the rough -- talented if somewhat asshatted DT Chris Baker was a two-star, Braylon Edwards, all those anonymous guys from Ohio State's secondary -- but in general you either recruit like a national contender or you don't, and Penn State isn't.

If you believe recruiting rankings matter (and you should), Penn State's lining itself up for more of the same. This is a complete list of offensive skill position players with more than three stars acquired since 2006:

• Chris Bell (off the team after machete incident)
• Pat Devlin
• Andrew Quarless (hanging by a thread, their Carson Butler)
• Brent Carter
• Brandon Beachum
• Michael Shaw (snake oil enthusiast)

That's one QB, one TE, and two RBs in three and a half classes; Michigan has locked down that many four star skill position recruits in the 2009 class. I think I might harp on this a bit more than I should, but this article in the Inquirer set me off. It unrealistically portrays everything as hunky-dory in Penn State land, when I, and most other Michigan fans, would be freaking out given the last four years of results on the field and in the star realm. Hell, I'm still a little freaked out about this year's class, and it features seven four-stars amongst nine recruits so far.

Ohio State? Killing it. They are not going away, not like you expected them to.

Assistant to the. Fluff on Mike Debord has this paragraph embedded:

DeBord was a candidate to replace Lloyd Carr as the head coach at the University of Michigan, and when that did not pan out, he opted to take a job as assistant offensive line coach for the Seattle Seahawks.

I was also a candidate to replace Lloyd Carr but opted to not wear pants.

I drive a Benzing. Spectacularly named new MLive author "Philip Zaroo" provides a post detailing John Beilein's latest appearance on WTKA:

"Robin would only be an emergency center/big man type of kid," Beilein said. "He's a straight-out forward. He could play either the three or the four at 6-10 1/2.

The comparison always made is Dirk Nowitski, so expect him to hang out on the perimeter a bunch. Most expect Benzing will have to sit out 2008 after playing on a professional team (but not getting paid) in Germany.

Dude. Sporting News is re
launching, and amongst their new contributors:

Lloyd Carr and the Legends Football Coaching Association
See a different game with Michigan's Lloyd Carr, UCLA's Terry Donahue, Alabama's Gene Stallings and dozens of famous college football contributors.

Hopefully he writes a media-crit column.

Etc: UMTailgate takes a look back at Moellergate; Tim from VB 1) fell four stories, 2) isn't dead, 3) has a broken spine. But he's answering mailbag questions. Hardcore. (FYI: this QB we've offered is 2010.) Michigan has not one top 25 vote across ten preseason polls.