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We also have a Director of Player Personnel, Chris Singletary, which is probably what Hondo is talking about MSU not having.  Singletary's bio starts "Former Wolverine linebacker Chris Singletary is in his sixth season as the recruiting coordinator with the Michigan football program. He handles all of the team's recruiting efforts, both on-campus and out in the community."

Even goofier, they said Lewan could have potentially gone number 1, and then rank him behind the guy who was aTm's right tackle last year because Joeckel was apparently better.

Regardless of what you want, it's either going to be a weird divisionless schedule where the schedules are totally random as to your one-plays (i.e., just like now except there will be more teams you only play once), or it will be divisions where you play all your division teams twice and everyone in the other division once.  An upside of the latter: two games every year with Indiana, Ohio State and MSU, and only once a year are we subjected to the soulcrushing Wisconsin basketball experience.

Just in case anyone was wondering why people rip on ESPN's football recruiting rankings, Luginbill posted their top 10 WRs today (paywalled) and there isn't a single guy from outside the SEC footprint.  5 from FL, 3 from LA, 1 from MS and 1 from TX. 

Trey's shooting was for shit but he was great at everything else. He was the primary guy on MCW in causing his awful night, he dished fine and also hit the boards. That's what a great player does. And yeah, McGary was awesome again and I really hope he stays even if we win Monday.

Burke should be a lot better with guys his height in the backcourt instead of the huge Syracuse guards. Although Burke's D on MCW was some of his best all year. Oddly although Louisville is clearly more talented than Wichita, WSU might have been a worse matchup. They're the monster rebounding tough D with shooters type we struggled with and we really didn't have any way to match up with Early, who was a beast.

If they called Michigan games this tight Trey would shoot 20 free throws.

Seth Davis retweeted a guy who suggested that during those video reviews the players have to stand in the middle of the court so it isn't a free timeout.  They really do need to do something about this, because this is two nights in a row where a team without a timeout got a free one to plan their last play.  Of course, neither Arizona nor Kansas converted, but still, it should be easy to fix for next year.

Costa Rica actually has a brand-spanking-new national stadium, but I suspect that they will now plan our match for Saprissa, which is much more intimidating (the fans are right on top of you, while the new national stadium has a running track so the fans aren't close) and has, as you note, the horrid artificial turf.

Maybe a concussion/concussion-like symptoms, but also possible that given the location of the cut, the swelling was causing his eye to close up some and affecting his vision.

He's a work in progress, but he isn't a lost cause.  I think he's already better than the guy ESPN had doing the 2006 World Cup (O'Brien).

Considering the run of play so far, that would be a glorious result for the US.  We look terrible.

Hell, some posters on that IU site are saying it's not intentional and that Christian Watford pushed GR3's arm.  If IU fans are willing to agree it's not a big deal, then it probably shouldn't be a big deal.

In the Bayless family, there had to be some true awfulness to counterbalance Rick.  Unfortunately, somehow that pile of suck managed to get himself on ESPN and inflict himself on the rest of us.

I am much more worried about that game than Illinois' recent play would dictate.  They won at Gonzaga, blew out Butler on a neutral court, and blew out OSU in Assembly - this is obviously a team that can play on their best day.  They shoot a ton of 3s and Michigan has allowed teams to shoot a lot of 3s, if they're hitting that day (rather than their recent horrid shooting during the losing streak) it could be big trouble.

The upshot is that Illinois is not a slow-paced team under Groce and it seems like for most teams getting into an up-tempo game with Michigan is really asking for it this year.

I thought they did a fairly good job.  By and large they did not call you for a foul if you were straight up and down defensively and didn't initiate the contact.  I think those were a large source of the Minnesota crowd's bad reactions, but the crowd was wrong, that's just good defense.

There were a ton of fouls called in the last quarter of the game, but frankly, it seemed like the physicality also stepped up a lot, and I'd rather the refs keep calling fouls than let it degenerate into beefsketball where it's just a contest of who can be more physical and get lucky with when the refs decide to call something.

I kept it on because it was early enough in the game and the team has shown the ability to score huge numbers of points in relatively short periods of a game.  The truly impressive part was that they came all the way back without ever really having that stretch where they started raining in 3s and dunks.  It was just a slow drip the whole time.

Yep, they made the final in '05 and lost to a more talented UNC squad.  In '01 they lost to Arizona in the elite 8 when they fouled out two entire front lines (small forwards, power forwards and centers, x2) and Arizona shot 56(!!!) free throws and Illinois still only lost by 6.  2005 was the epic comeback in the elite 8 against Arizona.

It was great when the Packers had Frank Zombo.  The possibilities are endless with Frank Zombo. 

Getting Hulls in iso period works.  That was a walkon who was averaging under a bucket a game who took him on Butler's last shot.

Porcello and a middling prospect could almost certainly get you Marmol.  Cubs were going to trade him straight up for Haren (who only had one year left on his deal) before they got a look at Haren's medicals and backed out.

We need to convert the "That's Racist" ani-gif to a "That's Pacist"

I'm pretty sure the Peach is joining the big boys along with the Cotton.

Tapeh lasted a few years in the NFL too as a fullback.  That team was loaded in the backfield, Terry Jackson ran for like 1300 yards in '02 and basically got Pipped by the others.  Too bad they couldn't throw or play defense.

Bellomy beat out Gardner in spring practice, or was at least good enough that they felt comfortable with moving Gardner to receiver.  I still think there were some injury issues with Bellomy and the change in playcalling from Devin to Bellomy won't be so massive as from Denard to Bellomy either.  I suspect Bellomy will be the backup next year unless Morris is so good that he forces his way on the field as the starter.

I don't see how OSU isn't red from our perspective, except that the dislike of that team is so great that we refuse to assign anything the color red in relation to the rivarly. 

No 1980s pop culture memes?  Inconceivable!

I'm guessing NFL teams will look at him and hope they can turn him into Percy Harvin.  Returner, a few carries a game, routes designed to get him into space.

Even Kentucky needed some guys to return who were top guys before they finally won a title.  Terrence Jones in particular would have been a first-rounder but stuck around for a second year.

Too bad for them that he's a senior, but yeah, it really smoothed the offensive transition to have a QB already on the roster who was a good fit for the offense.

Case may sound like a cupcake now, but Ohio State was only 11-10-2 against them and actually had a losing record against Western Reserve (Case's neighbor, combined as Case Western Reserve U in the 60s).

At least Godwin Igwebuike is going to a school with enough smart people and nerds to have "Godwin's Law" signs/shirts if he turns out to be great.

Heh, I was reading through on the front page, got to the Heininger Theorem thing and thought "hey, he should call it the Heininger Certainty Principle", click through to the article, and see the UPDATE.  Nice.

I know he was getting up there in age, but still weird to see commentators you've watched for a long time go.

I hear Zombeano Cook will still be picking Notre Dame to win the national title though.

That big empty area on the right corner is mostly student section.  There's still the empty part in the end zone, but their fall break accounts for the biggest of the empty spaces.

Also, Purdue's homecoming game is this week, and may as well be the division championship game this season (Illinois and Indiana are pretty terrible, OSU and PSU ineligible).  If you can't just go to every game, or you're only going to one game this year as a Purdue fan, you're probably not picking the Michigan game over this week's game against Wisconsin.

And furthermore, as people have noted, it's Purdue.  They don't really sell out against anyone except maybe Notre Dame.

I'm not sure how it will affect the crowd overall, but Purdue is on fall break this weekend and it's possible that the student section will take a pretty big hit as a result.  I'd have stuck around as a student for a game during such a break, but there's probably some that would use the long weekend to go home.

It isn't just the percentage (and I believe the owners' initial offer was 43%) -- the owners also want to redefine what that hockey revenues pot is, so they want the players to take a lower percentage of a smaller, redefined pie.

And if a team can't make money at the salary floor, then the owners probably need to either fix their revenue sharing, allow that team to move, or contract it (the players wouldn't like the contraction option either though).

Had a seizure on a road trip at the beginning of the season and never recovered. The players loved the guy.

This is clearly TerBush's fault.

You should have posted that in a new thread titled "My thoughts on Michigan's big targets" or something.

When I took the ACT, calculators weren't allowed. 

Does anyone know what kind of weather to expect for an inland storm?

Nerd stats say Trout is a little better, but it's close enough and a stat like UZR really only gets enough sample size over multiple seasons. The Angels also have an even better defender in Bourjos, so on some days Trout is actually in left.

Errors for an outfielder are largely pointless.  Terrible outfielders also usually don't commit a whole lot of errors.

"nobody on this defense has been in the same defense for two consecutive years"

Hey wait GERG was DC for two years oh right they had no defense scheme those years LOL ARGH

Also because that addition didn't exist when 95+% of the alumni were in the student section. 

And for good reason -- the "you suck" addition, uh, sucks.

The spot starter was the clown who pitched tonight and predictably got his head beat in - the guy tomorrow (Quintana) has been in the rotation since Danks went on the DL two months ago.  I'm not really sure why they didn't junk the plan to give Peavy and Sale an extra day and get them both against the Tigers when it turned out Gavin Floyd was hurt and had to go on the DL, but they stuck with it anyway and trotted out some guy who had no business starting a major league game.  They might have gotten away with it if it were some bad offensive team like the Mariners, but doing it in Fenway?  Yeah, they were pretty much punting tonight as a loss from the get-go.

The Canadian government has apologized for Bryan Adams on several occasions.

Columbus Brewing makes a pretty darn good IPA.

Dantonio has that reputation too.

They redshirt damn near everyone, and hardly anyone leaves early for the draft.  Sooner or later that leads to a scholarship crunch.

Dee Liner, and his siblings Owen "O" Liner, Ocean Liner, Sinking Liner (star baseball player), Air Liner (basketball), and Iman "Eye" Liner.

Apparently the SEC is the human-sized chicken.  The only thing it does is beat the crap out of Peter (although Peter actually wins, so it doesn't entirely work).

Maybe consider one-stop shopping with Dempster and Darwin Barney, who is good defensively, dirt cheap salary-wise (not arb eligible for another year or two even), and not totally useless with the bat and seems to have improved this year over last.  At 26 should be entering his prime over the next year or two.  Of course, that means you'd have to give the Cubs a reason to trade him and the combo of the two might cost a better prospect than the Tigers are willing to give up. 

I'll be pretty surprised if Orson doesn't give a bonus Fulmer Cup point for this because it's hilarious in addition to the points for the felony and misdemeanor. 

Holy cow, is that  Michigan Cross Colours shirt or something?

Well, he also omitted James Vandenberg from the QBs, which is stupid.  He probably should be the 2nd teamer.  3rd at the lowest.  Scheelhaase might not even hold on to his starting job, there's no way he should even be 4th team.

That said, I'm in the group that would rather it just be the band, sort of how I'd prefer that Blackhawks games be mostly stuff on the organ (I can live with Chelsea Dagger).

And "hype music" generally needs to be stuff most people know, and all-age appropriate, which is why it's the same damn stuff everywhere.  Much as "Snap Your Finger Snap Your Neck" by Prong, or "Walk" by Pantera, or a bunch of other RAWK that could work, it doesn't fit in as hype music.

If he hadn't transferred right after his WR coach left, there probably wouldn't have been any question in the NCAA's mind or this long delay in a decision.  As I understand it his dad wasn't in great shape when he went to UT in the first place, so maybe it looked slightly fishy to them.  But only slightly -- I mean, it isn't like the guy wasn't playing there, and maybe he realized that being closer to home mattered more than it did when he made his initial decision.  When there's no tampering and a valid non-football reason for the transfer I'm generally in favor of letting these guys be eligible right away.

Along with a relatively liberal granting of those waivers though I'd hope the NCAA would utterly annihilate any program caught tampering to make sure that kind of shenanigans doesn't happen. 

Maybe noon kinda sucks for Michigan fans, but it's even worse for the half of the conference where those are 11am kickoffs. 

I am curious to see what they do for the rest of the conference.  The one they did for themselves is pretty amusing too.

Yeah, no one goes to NFL playoff games in Chicago or Green Bay or New York or Philly or Pittsburgh or Seattle or Cleveland unless they're in a luxury box, right?  Who would pay over 100 bucks to sit in the elements?

(Yes, I included Cleveland as a joke, everyone knows there's no such thing as an NFL playoff game in Cleveland)

I'd love him as a 3-tech on the Bears, although Henry Melton (a running back his first two seasons at Texas) stepped up his game this last year so they might not be looking for a guy at that spot.

"Also, creepiest non-shirtless-recruit picture ever on the MGoBlog front page?"

You must not have been here for Naked Guy
 

And repeat offender.

Of course, this being the way things have been officiated in this year's NHL playoffs, rather than being on a 5 minute power play the Blackhawks actually ended up shorthanded after that hit.  All four officials claim to have not seen it.

I don't think I've ever seen that happen before.  I've seen guys get hit in the dugout, but never one that hit the starting pitcher, who would be going back out there the next inning, directly on his pitching arm.  Crazy.

Thornton is the best reliever in the Sox pen (has been for years, really, other than a blip early last season) and he doesn't have a big platoon split over his career either. 

Consensus of my IU friends is that you can bank on Ferrell, Oladipo, Watford and Zeller all being starters by the time things matter.  Ferrell's the only real floor general, Oladipo's easily their best on-ball defender, Watford's a senior who was at times their best guy on the floor this year, and obviously Zeller.  Fifth guy is up in the air a little.  Hulls will get minutes because there's always minutes for a shooter.  Sheehey may get the fifth starting spot, or one of the freshmen could seize it.

If his parents and Beilein are trying to convince him to stay, I think the "20-35" report is bunk.  If he had any likelihood of being a first rounder I suspect his dad would probably be OK with his leaving to give it a shot.  More likely the NBA advisory advice was or is going to be the same "second round or undrafted" that basically all the draft analysts have said out there.

20-35 seems like an awfully optimistic projection considering I haven't seen a single mock draft that has Burke in the first round.  At least Morris actually showed up on some mocks as a first rounder, even if he did eventually fall into the middle of the second round.

Well, Dantonio got into a war of words (HAR HAR MIKE HART IS SHORT) with an opposing student-athlete, so maybe there's something in the water up there.

Knew we were going to get hosed on something when they announced that the two refs were Chuck Barris and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine.

Teams that want to win a title sure as hell do. 

And if Michigan lists him at 5'11", he's either that height or shorter.  He's definitely not 6'1". 

I love the guy as a college point guard, but his comparables either didn't get drafted at all, didn't get drafted in the first round, or best case scenario went in the latter half of the first round after staying several years and having great college careers.  Jameer Nelson's actually a decent comp for what Trey could turn out to be, but Nelson stayed 4 years, led a smaller school to within a shot of the Final Four (amusingly, KO'd by a shot from another dinky point guard, John Lucas III, who for the first time this year is actually getting some run with an NBA team and contributing, and only getting that shot due to injuries), and won several National Player of the Year awards his last season.  And still didn't get drafted until the 20th slot, because he's a 6' point guard.     

I think this will all be moot because the advisory board is likely going to tell him he's got no shot at the first round and will tell him to stay in school.  And to work on 1) his defense (for things he can do without team practice, workouts to try to improve his agility and quickness would help there), and 2) his shot.

I'm just sad that Novak and Stu had to go out like that.  Not just losing in an upset, but both of them (especially Novak) had pretty crappy games to boot.  It's easier to handle if it's Burke or Hardaway (who himself was no great shakes in the second half) because they should get more opportunities.  But there's no banner being hung next year without Novak and Stu, and I think that's what people are going to remember long-term rather than a tourney exit in the first round rather than the second or third. 

Also, people blaming Metrics are insane.  We're not even in the game at the end without his shooting performance. 

You guys, you're all wrong, I was watching the History Channel and they said that none of those guys gave the order to burn the boats, it was actually aliens that burned the boats.

The Illinois job is considerably better than the ones he turned down last year though, which makes it a little more interesting.  I mean, Bruce Weber wasn't considered a great recruiter and Illinois still pulled top 15 recruiting classes the last few years.  If Smart keeps Jerrance Howard (who is a Friend Of Wes) around he'll have zero problems recruting the Chicago area -- he'll actually do better than Weber did there in all likelihood.

If Beilein can't win it in a year he takes a team without a single top 25 recruiting class (by Rivals) on the roster to conference co-champs, I don't know when he'd ever win it.  It has to be considered a better coaching job than Matta or Izzo, and with Crean it feels more like "about time you did something with the talent you've been recruiting" more so than "wow, great job."

The SI anonymous coaches article has some gems.  The first half of the Wisconsin one is a "tell us how you really feel" one.  And "UConn literally doesn't run a frickin offense" is pretty great too.

You got the headline wrong -- I think the correct term is "banished to Columbus."  Holy balls is that team terrible. 

So how long until Barlow transfers to Iowa State?

Scottsdale is fine.  We stayed for a few days this March, there's some good restaurants in the area, as well as a couple of breweries.  If you really don't want to stick around in the area there's always a trip up to Sedona or the Grand Canyon for a few days if you'd rather.  Obviously, there's lots of good golf in the area.  You can ski within a few hours of there as well.

A friend of mine from high school ended up in Orlando after finishing college.  She said that the nightlife in Orlando reminded her of Urbana/Champaign (she was a U of I grad).  A friend of hers came down there to visit and made the same comment.  It was not a compliment.  It's a family vacation destination but not at all a place most others enjoy that much.

James Franklin.  Maryland OC in 2009 and 2010, now Vandy's head coach.  And his OC at Vandy was also on the Maryland staff.  Vandy's returning QBs don't seem particularly good either.

Of course, supposedly O'Brien's release doesn't allow him to go to Vandy.  Which is really lame of Maryland, it's not like Vandy is in their conference.

"Extreme frustration" might be an understatement.  Living in Chicago I know several people who are rooting against their own team because they want Weber gone ASAP.  For several years people were pointing to the recruiting classes that came in 2009 (Rivals #s 38 (Richardson), 42 (Paul), 120 (Griffey) and 128 (Bertrand)) and 2010 (Rivals #s 31 (Leonard), 35 (Jereme Richmond, long thought to have been a likely 5 star but ended up not being one) and 84 (Crandall Head).  Their 2011 class also ended up top 15.

So they're talented, but mediocre and they suck to watch.  You can understand why the fans are so mad. 

He looks like Kenny's dad on South Park.

And son of Blackhawks legend Keith Magnuson.

The reason the Tigers moved him to first base was because he was already becoming terrible defensively at 3rd.  Although they haven't changed his listed official weight in years, he's at least 30 pounds heavier than when he broke into the league, and that's a low estimate.

While the bonus will probably all be paid up front as a signing bonus (meaning between Manning and Luck they'd have a big cash outlay this year), Luck's cap hit won't be too bad.  Newton's cap hit for the 2011 season was only a little over 4 million since the signing bonus  gets prorated over the life of the contract.  Luck's won't be prohibitive to having both him and Manning around either if they really want to keep Manning for a year or two.  Manning's number, on the other hand, will be massive unless they renegotiate. 

Better on ya' Caleb to know you want to be close to home now..  Good luck to you in the future, much as we"d like to have you in Ann Arbor, your heart has to lead you to the right program, and Cincy ain't half bad.  Best of luck from all of us from the Michigan folks with an unhealthy attention to recruiting :)

But in the end, we hope you've hit your right fit that will give you playing time and get you developed for the next level.   The coaches clearly liked you for Michigan, so we can only hope that you can similarly develop into a beast at Cincy.  And that Michigan and Cincy never play each other unless it's in the BCS Title Game.

Vacated games especially don't count when you're talking about a player who was one of the ones responsible for said games being vacated.

Not helpful in terms of winning a World Series, but the Central is truly awful.  The Indians were lucky last year and are more like how they played in the second half (a below-.500 team), the Royals are a year away I think, the Twins lost some of their bats and I'm not sure Morneau's ever going to be right again and their rotation still kinda sucks, and the White Sox need Dunn and Rios to bounce back to be decent, which is to say they're pretty unlikely to be decent.  Frankly, the Tigers could win 86 and still take the division. 

We are back to bitching about how they played in wins.  Even in a freaking BCS bowl game. 

I bet Theo Epstein/Jed Hoyer and some other GMs are already on the phone trying to lowball offer them on a trade for Morales.

Wait, I thought George Carlin was dead, what the hell is he doing on the field next to Roundtree?

If the Gators were becoming a "dying star" that is largely Meyer's own fault, so I doubt that was the reason. 

I would say that complaining that "Beckerman hasn't done anything" would be pretty valid.  I don't understand Beckerman/Edu in the midfield for anything other than just seeing what they can offer.  Bradley's better than both of them, whether as a holding mid or as the CAM.  And the previous excuse for not playing him no longer applies, he's actually playing regularly for his Serie A team.

Ireland is in pretty good shape in their tie, up an away goal and up a man, they really should be able to put another goal or two in the net and get a stranglehold on that one heading back to Dublin.

They're arguing something that isn't what the "stat nerds" argue though.  No one says turnovers or lack of turnovers are completely random.  RECOVERY of fumbles is pretty much random, as in, it's not a repeatable skill of a defense or offense.  Fumbling itself (or defensively, forcing fumbles) is not completely random -- some guys suck at holding onto the ball while others (like Mike Hart) rarely put it on the ground, and defenses absolutely can be good or bad at forcing the ball loose.   

You didn't say accuracy, you said vertical passing ability.