Member for

15 years 8 months
Points
17.00

Recent Comments

Date Title Body
small note

Kean isn't a HBCU. It's just a normal school.

Lloyd wasn't close

to their best defensive player. He's a two down MLB that moved to DE. Their best defensive players are the linebackers Lutrus and Wilson.

Shuler

that link doesn't say NW leads. Typical site fluff imo.

UM has offered

RB Savon Huggins (who I told Brian about his last week), and his teammate S Sheldon Royster.

I've always seen

Trey Parker and Matt Stone in Brian's humor and sentiment.

Point 3. above is a very good one, one that I struggle with constantly, especially since I don't really have time to edit my posts.

Along similar lines, there's a very good point about arguments that quickly gets beaten into you in analytic philosophy classes. Always, always, always try to suppress your urges to write a grand, overarching, universal argument and just keep everything this simple.

That makes your arguments better both in theory, and in practice (probability-wise, more complex and longer arguments create more opportunities for error and openings for counterargument). 99% of what I regret writing tends to be when I ignore this rule.

If I ever did a list like this, it'd probably be a compliation of my favorite social science studies.

nitpicking, but

I wrote "DFW", it was just linked here.

[i]Authority and American Usage[/i] has a fairly uninformed and inaccurate portrayal of descriptivism, fwiw.

UConn

totally depends on their QB. The underclassman Endres is pretty good. The ND transfer Frazer is HORRIBLE, but their coach loves him because of seniority.

You should really

read the stuff I linked.

redundant, but

nothing about Beilein on the RU end.

Hey Pinkel

it's easy to explain. The Big XII TV contract blows. You'll never get Texas to cede its dollars, so they're going to have to focus on increasing the overall pot.

considering that

Shuler's father posts on the RU Rivals site and is an admitted huge fan, draw your own conclusions.

Byrd's early leaders are RU and South Carolina.

My insight

1. Rutgers is a very good academic school that would slot in nicely in the Big Ten. It has no money from state support, and has had to lower its selectivity (hence, hurting the US News and whatever rankings) as a result by admitting a ton of students to make up the difference. However, anyone who tries to knock the overall quality of education there is ignorant and/or lying. They also run a squeaky clean athletic department and have an unparalleled academic support structure for football.

2. Rutgers would bring the BTN to basic cable in New Jersey. The question is whether or not they bring the other side of NYC metro across the Hudson. If the answer is yes, then the math works and they're in. Basically this all depends on getting the go-ahead from Time Warner and Cablevision in New York City. The new athletic director is a former television executive at ABC and CBS Sports. He's another Brandon, and doing wonders for fundraising and upgrading the overall stature of the athletic department (facilities, olympic sports, etc...)

A lot of the other comments about fan support, and quality of athletic programs are not exactly truthful. I'll leave it at that, but most of the popular perceptions on both topics are dead wrong.

Haven't heard

that Michigan was strongly linked to either Byrd or Shuler.

Joe Susan

Here is what I just emailed Brian.

He was very important to Rutgers, but mainly in terms of in-state recruiting. The staff's Florida recruiter was Brian Jenkins. I say was because he left over a month ago to take the HC job at Bethune-Cookman, and was recently replaced by P.J. Fleck from NIU. Fleck is an Illinois native but recruited Florida for them, and is expected to do that for Rutgers. Jenkins was very good and I think losing him hurt RU's efforts in Florida, Susan less so down there.

I don't think it's that relevant as pertains to Knight. I had heard some rumblings about him for a while, which is why I asked TomVH a few weeks back when Knight hadn't been mentioning Rutgers that much. RU actually pulled ahead for Knight more recently after Jenkins had left. Also, the DB coach is still on staff even though doesn't do much recruiting. So yeah, don't think Susan will have any impact on Knight, and not sure why TomVH was harping on that on Twitter.

A lot of those Marshall commits

weren't going to qualify. I.e., Brian Robinson.

Couple points

Leave Rutgers and Michigan out of it. It's my blog, not Schiano's. I went out of my way to be as complimentary to UM as possible. Michigan's unparalleled combination of athletic prowess and strong research academics ought to be the model for any university in the country. If anyone actually is curious about the history of the Rutgers athletic department beyond stupid, incorrect cliches I'm happy to link some additional material.

I was just responding to Brian's post about the Big Ten and explaining where the anti B-10 sentiment comes from. All in the spirit of discussion of course. It was candid, but that's the way I handle a lot of things. The site is basically one non-stop outrage mill.

You probably disagree, but that's where the other side is coming from. Of course I'm jealous - that's the entire point. When we actually have a decent season we still have to go to a 4th tier bowl not just because of the big bad Big Ten, but because the Big East is run by incompetent morons. When you see Sparty and that complete imbecile Brewster going to better bowls (and subsequently losing), that's beyond frustrating.

Oh ya - my post was solely concerned with the post 2005 realignment. I don't think anyone is going to pretend that the transition year in 2004 wasn't a nightmare. Once the BE was at full capacity again, and had time to regroup and rebuild, their track record isn't bad at all. That's why I have a chip on my shoulder about the conference always taking a beating from the media.

his solo work was far more popular in America

what are you, some kind of limey wanker?

There is no room for debate here. Your Arsenal and Viva Hate were the best things that he was ever involved in. Whyte>>>>>>Marr

so pleased

that you cited solo Moz, instead of his far inferior work with The Smiths.

disagree completely on the sprad

What about Graham Harrell and Chase Daniel? Alex Smith's cautionary tale is scaring teams off Tebow.

I think that the spread certainly does hurt players at certain positions when it comes to their NFL stock. There isn't enough data yet from the its recent popularity, but there could be an affect there over time.

What I don't understand is why Michigan fans are all that concerned about this anyway. Is Rich Rod going to have to sell the next Matt Barkley on the program? What matters first and foremost is winning games on the college level.

GRob's defense

that first year at Cuse was actually very good. Take into account how miserable the offense was. I was very impressed with that group at the time. Dude's a miserable HC though.

timeline doesn't work

for a NYC bowl. Few years away from getting off the ground. When it does happen, it may not be a marquee matchup, and no guarantee that B10 is involved.

Recruiting study

Brian,

I don't believe that the study is that informative. There was a similar thing in the new Football Outsiders almanac. The problem with both of them is that they do not use a regression analysis.

it's not like

UConn is a doormat. They're a poor man's MSU. With a stout defense, and an offensive playbook roughly consisting of three different off-tackle runs, it's best to just think of this as that mythical ninth Big Ten conference game.

Witherspoon was eligible

per NCAA standards. If that's what the APR uses, you're in the clear. AFAIK Michigan was worried about his credits.

Thanks for this post

and the earlier one about BWB, both of which (unfortunately) reinforced my preconceived notions about the topic.

it's a good site

A ton of non-UM fans read this site. I haven't asked about it, but probably more than any other team blog.

Varsity Blue is wrong

Arie Kouandjio has a profile on Rivals, and looks like a pretty big recruit. I have heard of all five players, but then again I am an East Coast guy and not a UM fan.

Not necessarily disagreeing that some of these are conditional offers though.

I remember GRob's first year

his defense was actually really good, considering how pathetic their offense was. I think most of their failings recently have more to do with talent and Robinson being a terrible head coach.

I'd say this is a fairly good hire.

Marcus Witherspoon

He's not eligible as per NCAA transfer rules. He did finally pass the clearinghouse. His story is that there was a snafu recognizing credits from an online class he took, but it was finally taken care of.

He would not be allowed to enroll without fully qualifying. He's on the roster, so he's qualified.

News

According to http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080904/SPORTS/809040329, Witherspoon will likely end up at Rutgers or Tennessee.

I've been following Cincy's camp

Jones hasn't done much, and he's far down the depth chart at the moment. Kelly might just be good enough to make a serviceable QB out of Dustin Grutza, but his powers may not extend to the defensive side of the ball.

Rutgers

You gave them far more credit than I did. This team has the potential to be good, but they're still inexperienced in key areas. They should be lumped somewhere in that 30-40 "maybe, we'll see" range.

The Big East is looking very balanced this year, you can really make a case for any team not named Syracuse.

Also, anyone have a clue as to why I can't get the blogpoll arrows to display in this post?

There are several Fresno State blogs out there at least

I'm currently playing email tag with one of them.

You're really grasping at straws here None of those handful of **** recruits ever made an impact for them, most of them probably never made it to campus. Devine was really the first big name WVU signed that saw the field and contributed.
"Dude, it's fucking Rutgers" Actually, the fanbase is not happy at all about going 8-5 last year vs. a so-so schedule. Not enough to fire him or even make the seat hot, but several losses were directly attributable to poor preparation and terrible S/T play. Schiano is definitely the right man for the job, but Brian's profile of him, and some of the other stuff I've read from non-RU fans have glossed over his many flaws.
the whole story may never come out

IMO, Schiano's the type where he's not going to play Michigan to leverage his current situation.

Tom Luicci is probably the most connected media person there is into Rutgers football. Here is his account of what actually happened, following up on this post.

In the end, the situation probably worked out well for both sides. Michigan got their man in Rich Rodriguez. I didn't think Schiano was a particularly good fit at Michigan, nor do I think that there's much a chance that he will go to Penn State, despite the baseless speculation of Mandel and PSU fans.

It's interesting though that you chose this date to write about this story, given that some continuing fundraising issues for the Rutgers Stadium expansion have just popped up.