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Yeah, its kinda crazy to think he's only a junior and should presumably get faster.  The guy he beat in the 200m is also a junior, so that should be a hell of a race next year.

Here's an updated article with times and whatnot.

He had a 10.8 in the 100, and 21.13 in the 200.  The 21.13 was 4th fastest in state history.

You're right.  It is old news.  Very old news actually.

Here's an article from May 6th talking about the June 27th commitment date, and his desire to visit all of his finalists before he commits.  Wonder why reporters were treating it as something new?

I officially retract my jackass-y comments.

How is this old news if Jones just texted his decision date and visit plans out?  Are you from the future?  Did we land Da'Shawn Hand?  What about Adoree or Artavis? Did Brady Hoke develop a triple point manuever??  So much I want to know...

Apparently, the regents are having a conference call about this today and two of them already want him out.  So yeah, its news.  And potentially bigger news shortly.

While the AD may not get fired, this is the type of thing that should get people on the search committed fired.  You hire a firm to look for candidates, ignore their advice, and hire someone with the same checkered background that got you into the mess in the first place.

The people on the search committee had one job to do, and fucked it up in every possible way.

If this does prove to be a jinx, I'll eat hot dogs as punishment.

double post

I get what you're saying that these sites make money off of these kids, but at its core, its news gathering and reporting.  There's a large audience of people out there that want to know what's going on with these recruits and what the latest news is.  Much in the same way there's an audience in every town that wants to know what the latest news in the community is.  

Both the recruiting services and your local news send reporters out to news worthy events, get quotes from notable people, and deliver that infomation to their audience and profit off the ads they sell built around there news reporting.  The recruits don't get money in the same way the local gardener doens't get any money when he's interviewed about having the city's most kick ass garden.

And everybody in news distorts headlines.  Its called a tease and it gets you to tune in or click on a link. "Is there something in your house that can kill you?  Story at 11."

When interest in these recruits dries up (not happening any time soon) the sites will dry up too.  But in the meantime, this is just how news works.  Deal with it.

ESPN has a free video discussing Speight at the Elite 11.

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:9285242

Its a brief mention, but hey...its free.  And there's highlights.

We should totally recruit his shadow.  Its faster than Jabrill and able to stick to its man like glue.  Would be a fantastic corner.

Fun fact, only one D1 team (Iowa) had just one QB take all of snaps in a season last year. Didn't do the research myself, by but that's what I was told.

Here's your intro to TV -- the majority of the TV channels on cable are owned by like 4-5 companies: Viacom, Disney, Time Warner, News Corp, and Comcast/NBCUniversal.  Lifetime is partially owned by Disney.  So in your example, you're never going to get the 5 channels you want because Disney forces cable companies to bundle all of their channels together -- the ESPN networks, all of the Disney channels, ABC Family, Lifetime, A&E, etc.

And I know everyone always has this a la carte pipe dream, but it'll never be cheaper.  The fact that all of the channels are bundled together keeps the cost of them down.  So you'll never get just ESPN/ESPN2 for like $5 a month.  If it ever went to a a la carte model, Disney would probably try and bundle all of their channel together for like $30/month or give you the option of getting ESPN/ESPN2 for $25 a month.  Its the Costco model of media -- its cheaper to buy in bulk.

Miles and Mattison are definitely the best, but you have to go back almost 20 years for their time as assistants at Michigan which I wouldn't consider recent enough to fit in the whole developing coaches thing.  Same with Vance Bedford.

Ron English I wouldn't really count as a success since he went Michigan DC -> Louisville DC -> Eastern head coach.  That's a downward path in my opinion.  Fred Jackson has been running backs coach for a 147 years.  Not a lot of developing their either (except in outlandish superlatives -- he's still the best at that).

Scott Loeffler is good example.  And Sheridan and Hoke I'll give you too.  But both were Michigan assistants 10-15 years ago.  And going back to the main point of paying assistant coaches, since salaries have exploded in the last 10-15 years in college football, Michigan hasn't really "developed" anyone outside of Loeffler maybe Montgomery and he was only here for two seasons and its too soon to know if he's a success story or not.

Not to be the turd in the punch bowl, but which assistants have gone on to great coaching careers out of Michigan in the last 10-20 years?  Montgomery to Oklahoma was the only one I can think of lately that moved up.  Going back to Carr, Hoke has pretty much been the only one to amount to anything, right?  Wasn't one of the big criticisms of Lloyd that he never had much of a coaching tree?

Yeah, fuck them for protecting their property. Dicks.

Mike Cox is never irrelevant. (5th grade snickering...)

He's got the ability to play on offense and be an electric punt returner like Woodson was.  So I think Woodson 2.0 is a better comparison than Ty Law 2.0

You'll only have one of Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State (when they get their shit back together) in your championship game every year.  That's going to hurt whoever's left on the outside's shot of getting into a playoff.  Like it or not, the Big Ten ain't getting the same love that the SEC gets in that regard.

Because that was annoying when that happened...

Only two players in the state of Ohio cracked the ESPN 150.  I think the state of Michigan had 4 or 5.

I think if you're going to be a top 15 pick, then yes, its probably worth it because you're getting that rookie contract with the guaranteed money that comes with it.  But if you're in the bottom half of the first round, then no, its not worth it because you could easily slide into the second round and be out of the league quickly, no guaranteed money, and be left with a career floating around Europe.  

Plus, if you go at the end of the 1st round, you can have a D. Morris situation where you go to a good team and sit on the bench with limited opportunities to crack the starting lineup.  Stay in school, work on your game, and enter the league in a situation where you have a better shot of  getting a lot of playing time to showcase yourself for that second contract.

I think the odds of Shane making it through 2013 without burning his redshirt were pretty low to begin with.  Hopefully Gardner stays healthy and we only need the backup for mop up duty in a blowout and said backup can be this Cleary kid.

Given that he had Denard, Devin, an Bellomy on campus, and a great 2013 QB in Shane Morris already committed during the 2012 recruiting cycle, it was a gamble to skip taking a QB that year and get some much needed depth elsewhere on the roster.  And depending on how Morris shapes up once he gets on campus, it may still be the right decision.

We can't have nice things, can we?

At least we have some depth at LB for once.

I've stood next to Douglass before at a camp and I think the 5'10" height is pretty accurate.

He can only do good with underachievers, but can't do well with talent?

Belichick must be laughing his ass off

That's a helluva deal for the 49ers

Lineman generally never look that good in those drills as the advantage is slanted pretty heavily to the defensive lineman.

Any 15 seed that can commit to outhustling them and outworking them has a real good shot of winning.  Wouldn't surprise me at all if they lost in the first round.  Also wouldn't surprise me to see them in the Final Four.  Such a wishy washy and confusing team...

Oh, they're real.  And they're spectacular(ly average).

4.43 officially

You watched the Big Ten this year, right?

Rivals has gone all-in with Under Armour.  UA sponsors their 100/250 rankings, as well as their camps.  As a result of their three year deal, Rivals also becomes an offical selection partner for the Under Armour All-America game.  As I mentioned above, ESPN (as a result of the game being on their air) still has a say in the roster selection for the UA game as well, but they no longer have sole control over it as they have in years past.

http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2013/02/07/under-armour-inks-marketing-deal-with.html

Preach!

Would love to know how many times the kids that say they are going to be a package deal actually wind up going to the same school.

I don't think people are forgetting, but if you're expecting an RB to come in and contribute as a true freshman, going with the guy that's the top RB in the country and not just Ohio is a pretty safe bet.

I don't know if the grind of the season is catching up to him as a freshman, if he's sick, or if he's just intimidated by better competition, but he just looks out of it.  I constantly see him just jogging back on defense, standing flat flooted under the rim while opppsing players jump over him for rebounds, and just standing around on offense.  And considering he's gone from 41 to 33 to 21 min in the last three games, it appears JB is reacting accordingly.

If it were just one game, that would be one thing.  But its not.  Michigan is now routinely getting absolutely crushed in the first halves of road games.  That's not a hallmark of a team just having an off night.  It a sign of some serious issues and good teams are picking up on them and exploiting those issues.

Dude looks completely uninterested in being involved on either end of the court when he's in the game.  Beilien needs to have a come to Jesus moment with him.  Sit him the rest of the game or something to make a point.  Either play hard, or you're not playing.

Getting him on campus this early is really good for Michigan.  Kid ran a 4.44 laser timed 40 at the UA Combine in St. Pete.  As a sophomore.  Which given all of the FAKE 40 times out there doesn't sound to impressive, until you realize that in 2012, out of the 16,000+ kids that ran a laser timed 40 at a Nike Combine, only 19 ran one under 4.5, and only 3 ran one under 4.4

Source for 40 times: http://espn.go.com/high-school/football/events/nike-sparq-combines/2012/results/_/sort/40time

DGB is from Missouri, Clowney is from South Carolina, and Hand is from...Virginia.  Solid logic on why he would never wind up at Va. Tech.

I hope you're not a lawyer.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.  My client is totally innocent of murder because he totally shot that guy.  I rest my case."

I know we have a good shot at both, but we're going to be going up against some strong competition for both of them.  With Hand, its going to be tough to pry him away from Va. Tech let alone every top SEC school that's coming after him.  And with McDowell...the history of top in-state DEs (Zettle '11, Gholston '10, Perry '08, Van Dyke '03) picking Michigan isn't good.

So to pull both, we're going to have an uphill battle.

Would rather save the spot for the 2014 class.  That class is shaping up to be smaller, and you can always find a random 3-star CB to fill a spot.  This one doesn't make much sense.

Stauskas just looked off his shot.  GRIII looked completely lost out there.  He was slow and hesitant on both the offensive and defensive side of the ball.  Thought JB should've pulled him for a bit so he could try and regain his bearings.

Gotta start stronger, can't force dumb long threes, freshman need to grow up quicker.  But the biggest one might be learning how to retake and own the lead.  With this game and the OSU game, they were great at sticking to a gameplan on the comeback, but once they tied it or got close, they went off the rails.

All in all though, not concerned.  Its a really young team that'll still learn and get better in time for the tourneys.

Drummond is a solid builing block, but there's a lot of teams in the NBA with one good building block.  You need a lot more to reach the playoffs, let alone get back to conf champ contender status.  Do you have the confidence Joe D can add the remaining pieces to get them in the playoffs and then start to win in the playoffs?  I sure as hell don't.  They're at least 2-3 seasons away from being close to that.

Ever since John Hammond left for the Bucks, Joe D has suddenly gotten dumber.  Most people in the NBA know Hammond was the real brains, but Joe D got all the credit.  I was really hoping when new ownership took over Joe D would get the axe too.  

Who knows, after clearing out this cap space, maybe he'll get the axe at the end of the season and give someone else a fresh start.

If your head injuries are bad enough that you have to quit football, you can be fairly sure that your normal day-to-day activities are also going to be impacted.  If you didn't see it, check out what head injuries have done to Leroy Hoard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnfzNjDvkj8

While Jahvid Best's concussions in college didn't end his career at Cal, they were enough to cut short his junior year and raise a bunch of red flags about how long he'd last in the NFL with those issues.  The people questioning it, wound up being right.  Dude made it one season in the NFL and is now done at the age of 23 because of serious head problems that started in college.  God knows what kind of shitty life he'll have as a result.

So of the five 4/5 star backs we've recruited since 2002, NONE of them have been drafted or had a 1000 yard season despite the fact that according to your research 73% of those backs get drafted, and 82% post a 1000 yard season.  Crazy.

Campbell got weighted and measured at the St. Pete Under Armour combine on Jan 3rd and checked in at 6' 2 3/4" and 177 lbs.

Guys, I'm looking to build a new man cave to watch Michigan football in.  I'll also need to build an entire house around said man cave.  We're thinking about building the house in South Lyon.  Any advice?

That and (pretty sure I'm remembering this right) college athletes don't have rights to their image when they're playing for a university.  They sign all of that away in return for their scholarship.  Its like when you come up with a million dollar idea while working for a company.  In most cases, the company owns that idea -- not you.  This is one of the sticking points on whether or not athletes should be paid, and its come up in the EA Sports lawsuits as well.

Big Ten teams in general pull in more money than schools in other conferences, but they don't seem to spend it on coaching staffs.  The Big Ten is basically the equivalent of a rich family that still shops at Costco.

Didn't think about that, but yeah, what's to stop a school from hiring 25 interns to text and email a list of 200 recruits multiple times every day.  Hell, make it a booster perk.  Donate 25k+ and you can do some recruiting for us.

Frequency of contact hasn't slowed down coaches before.  I've heard a couple of stories for the 2013 class where coaches have sent a recruit 100 letters in a day and the recruits haven't been that dissauded.  So now, (and since texts are easier to send than letters) I'd expect recruits to get hundreds of texts and emails a day.  Its nuts.

Every team would trade down, pick up assets, and then draft the guy they wanted anyways...if they could. The only teams that are really able to do it are just lucky and happen to wind up in a coveted draft spot.  And you never really know which spot will be coveted until the dominos start falling in the draft.

There's no helmet invention you can make that's going to stop your brain from bouncing around inside of your skull.  With the speed and force of the hits at the NFL level, the helmet can only help so much.  Its like an air bag.  They're great when you get hit going 35mph.  But when you're going 80?  Not going to help out a lot.

There are no such thing as CTE rates because the research into it is still very new, and the only way to actually get diagnosed with CTE is to donate your brain to one of the groups studying it.

In general, they think that CTE is caused by concussions or sub-concussions in people that are subjected to repeated head trauma.  Youth football players, high school players, and college players all get concussions and sub-concussions.  So, yes Seau's time playing as a 9 year old all through his time as a pro count.  Every hit to the head counts.

Sure, hard hits get all of the attention, but its also the hundreds and thousands of little hits to the helmet during practice and games that can also cause a lot of damage.  Its a little naive to think that just because you're not a lineman or linebacker delivering hits that you're not at risk.

What the hell does Tom Brady have to do with Hoke's recruiting classes?

ESPN has a contract with the SEC.  So what??  They have contracts with The Big 10, Big 12, ACC, Big East, and Pac-12 too.  Shit, they even have contracts with the MAC.

Not so much strength as it is just general bulking up.  Shane looks pretty skinny out there.  And I know he lost weight from mono, but he needs to bulk up a bit to withstand the grind of the college season.  So maybe its more of a training table thing instead of a weight room thing.

How else do you think Brian makes money on this?  Like all forms of advertising, the more people you can claim that are looking at your material, the more you can charge for ads.  So yes, pageviews = money.

After coming back from two ACL's and with all of those RBs coming in behind him, I doubt Dee ever sees the field again for Alabama.  We'll probably hear transfer rumors around July/August when Bama needs to get down to 85 scholarships.

And in the end, you'd probably wind up paying more for less overall content.  Which in general, is how every a la carte menu I've ever eaten off of works.

Monthly subscriptions to those channels ain't gonna be cheap.  They have to pay for their content somehow, and with les subscribers, they'll need to offset things with higher prices.  And you won't be able to drop things for just basketball season.  They'll make you lock in for a year at least so they can come up with budgets to produce content.  You'd see pricing like this:

ESPN -- $20

FSD -- $5

CNN -- $5

BTN (During hoops season only) -- $5

AMC -- $10

TBS -- $5

TNT -- $10

So, now you're paying $60 for 7 channels.

I'd swap out PSU for Northwestern.

Life pro tip: Don't have a Big Ten award named after you.  Because it will fuck up your world.

If you're basing someone's character solely off of things like Twitter feeds, you could probably call Shane Morris a "diva" too.  You don't amass 19k+ followers by not craving attention.  And yet, we're all cool with Shane, so what's the difference with Laquon?

How about its been a really long time since we've had an elite WR and even longer for an elite RB. And I'd call elite like top 10 at your position. 4-star is more really good, than elite especially since most sites have like 20-30 4-star WRs

When it was posted, it was just speculation and rumors and rumors often drag innocent people/players into their crossfire.  This time, its news straight from the team.

Might just be a suspension for now, and then a "perhaps Michigan isn't the place for you" discussion in the offseason.

Yeah, as long as there was no damage to the ligaments, it looks like recovery time for these types of things is around 4-6 weeks.  Certainly better than an ACL.

The difference is that Hoke had two QBs on the roster.  Without either of those, it easily could have been a similar 3-9 dumpter fire of a season.

But yes, Hoke's staff has shown an ability to develop players (defenisvely anyways) and there's no question he can recruit like a mofo.  I think we're all happy with the current staff.

Nothing against the guys on the team, but I don't think we've got anyone on the team that is deserving of it.  Jake Ryan's probably our best player and he's already got a legend jersey.

I disagree on the best coaches being in the NBA.  I think you have the best managers of egos in the NBA, but the guys that are best at teaching and getting the most out of their players are in college.  College coaches have to develop their talent a whole lot more than NBA coaches do.  Once players get to the NBA, they are by and large a mostly finished product.  Its not a place to learn on the job.

Morris shoots 40% on his 3pt attempts, which amongst PGs in the NBA is actually 12th best.  His problem is his 2pt shots where he's shooting a godawful 30.4% which is tied for 79th amongst PGs.  And making things worse, his assist-turnover ratio isn't that good either at 1.75 (tied for 61st for PGs).  An unproductive PG that can't shoot is a bad combo and it doesn't matter who your coach is, that'll earn you some time on the pine and maybe over in Europe if he gets cut.

I swear you people have no idea how national news sites work.

At the time it was posted, there wasn't a lot going on news wise.  All of the 1pm games were still under way and there's just not much national type news happening yet today.  Give a couple of hours until the 1pm and 4pm games are over and it'll be off the front page.  And ESPN has been putting more and more recruiting info on their front page.  Reuben Foster was on their the other day, and I've seen things there a handful of other times.

Its a top recruit at a skill position committing to a team with a huge national fanbase.  This is how news works.  If its the #2 offensive guard committing to Tulsa, then no one gives a shit because its Tulsa, and its an offensive guard.  This was on the front page because its something they thought enough people would care about, not because ESPN has a giant hard-on for Notre Dame.

I've installed the update and it works fine for me.

Recruits love Tosh Lupoi.  Guy is a fantastic recruiter.  But yeah...Washington is a bit of an outlier here...

As someone else said already, he'll wind up at Georgia.  His best friend Tray Matthews is a Georgia commit, and the two have long maintained that they will go to the same school.  Foster was waiting to see if Trooper Taylor would stay on staff at Auburn because he has been like a father figure to him.  Now that he's gone, the door is open for him to join the Bulldogs.

Probably should have waited on that tat though...

If you wait until after the bowl game, you've burned a good 3-4 weeks of time that could have been dedicated to recruiting players and assistant coaches for your staff.  Its the difference between getting to the buffet line an 30min after it opens and 5 min before it closes.  It would be nice if they could finish, but if you're taking a new job, its just best to cut bait and move on.  And that's true for any job, just not coaches.

Being the rishest conference and having all of that BTN and ESPN money coming in is absolutely pointless if the teams won't step up and start paying their coaches and staffs like the big boy conferences.  This is the reason the Big Ten is falling behind.  There's no reason Big Ten schools can't start offering any coach in the county $4M+ to come to their school.  A school like Purdue should absolutely be looking to get someone big.  Instead, they'll probably find some retread or CUSA coach or something and pay them $2M a year.

You've got the money, spend it.

We also barely beat MSU and Northwestern.  Pretty sure both teams fans bases feel a lot of "what if..." after their seasons.

If either conference could place a team in the top 16, this wouldn't have happened.

Just realized that as smart as they are with naming things, the Big Ten will probably go with East/West divisions and put Michigan in the East.  So then the "Champions of the West" can't actually win the West division.

That would just lead to teams that should logically be in a Lakes division being put in the Heartland division.  Most of the Big Ten is close enough to a Great Lake that they could say they belong in a Lakes division.  Only Iowa and Nebraska are really in what I'd consider the Heartland of America.  And what do you do with Maryland and Rutgers?  Neither is really fits a Lakes or a Heartland theme.

Just go with East/West or North/South and be done with it.  No more cutesy names.

There seriously might be only 10,000 people in the stands for the PAC-12 championship game. That's sad.

But thanks for the super sarcastic comment.

Hey coach, thanks for going through all the trouble of stopping by.  Yeah....I don't like you anymore.  You can go back home now.

Kind of a massive dick move by Conley if you ask me.  Call Mich up before they go through the trouble of visiting you.  Would be like your long distance girlfriend telling you she's excited to see you the day before you travel to out to visit, and then when you get there she's all "yeah...I have a new boyfriend now. LOL"

Its B.Y.O.M.

Tennessee or Auburn? We could beat them. Throw in Kentucky too for good measure

And it may not be fair given what Mattison and co. have done with the defense, but when you hold that coaching job up to the offensive side of the ball, and how things haven't progressed at the same level, it really makes you wonder.

Yes Gardner replaces Denard, but who replaces Denard's running?  Gardner is a good scrambler, but he's no Denard.  

As for Gallon, yes he's back, but anytime your #1 WR is a 5-8" guy that's not going to fly against a lot of teams.  His and the rest of the WR production will depend heavily on Darboh and others being legit threats.  For Gallon to be successful, he needs another Roundtree level talent opposite him.

And as for Fitz...I don't think the team should count on him for much of anything next season.  With the way that ankle/leg broke he's going to have a long rehab ahead of him and quite possible will never be the same back he was before.