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MSU (at #77) would be a mid…

MSU (at #77) would be a mid-tier SEC school, from what I can see, lagging Georgia, Vandy, UF, and Texas A&M; it is still not as shabby as some would like to believe, despite drastic cuts going back to 2008. USC and UCLA would lag only Northwestern in current rankings.

We know that the rankings are hugely problematic; lots of things to resent about them. But perhaps they remain meaningful in a shorthandy way for these purposes.  

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities

Made a long post in another…

Made a long post in another thread on this subject yesterday, but FSU is currently the number 19 US News public uni, ranked ahead of all but 5 B1G schools. UF is number 5. Both schools made huge leaps in the last decade. FSU faculty would dearly love to create a barrier to further depredations by the state legislature and move to the B1G. FSU is also a perennial top 5-10 Learfield cup candidate, with good to great sports across the board. I'm not sure people are prepared for the effects that UCLA and FSU in the Big Ten would have on a lot of sports, but they'd fast be contending in many of them. Miami and FSU could be a huge boost to baseball.  

EDIT: Miami is way down the list of all schools, at 55. But that puts it ahead of all but six B1G schools, at a quick glance. There's a lot of regional chauvinism, and ignorance, about how schools are seen--in a shifting landscape--but the B1G, despite the AAU status (which is about a certain kind of research) is not necessarily all that. Rust Belt decline and the rise of the air conditioning corridor have had some say in that.  

The SEC would look like a…

The SEC would look like a very regional--i.e. southern--construct in comparison. 

We've seen bad behavior with…

We've seen bad behavior with youth soccer. What we've seen more of, less noisy but equally disturbing, is parents living and dying with every play their kids make. Or counseling them from the sidelines. The joy of flying around and playing can get drained quick for kids. 

Their women's soccer team…

Their women's soccer team has been the best in the country for a decade; they draw huge crowds in Tallahassee. With UCLA, they would increase the profile of that sport. Women's softball has won several recent NCs, and volleyball would be right there with Minnesota. Men's baseball has faltered the last two years, but is a perennial top-five team. They might be expected to crush B1G competition--or, hopefully, raise the level of play/up the ante. Miami hoops was, of course, in the Final Four. Entry to B1G football would be a lifeline for a once-proud program. 

None of this stuff is static, but both Cali and FL schools would hold their own across most sports. And--I've said this before--make the SEC look like a regional phenomenon. I have zero doubt that, at least at first, there would be/will be a lot of anticipation on fans' part. 

Yes. I don't think that…

Yes. I don't think that means that the population drank kool-aid and changed their political stripes overnight, but there's a lot to unpack there. In a different forum. All best. 

He did stay at NC; and that …

He did stay at NC; and that 'probably' is doing a whole lot of work there, friend. How do you know that they didn't learn from Shannon? Is '4th phase' assuming they're blithering idiots? Some of these posts court absurdity. 

I'm responding to the OP. It…

I'm responding to the OP. It's not only not 'inevitable,' but Love was convinced he could pull it off until a couple of days ago. And NC's credits being 'shaky' is pure invention. The issue is the stringency with which the UM gazes on transferred credits. There's no way Juwan would have announced a move that both player and coaches wanted if it hadn't looked like the move was quite do-able. 

As a guy who has taught for…

As a guy who has taught for FSU, now retired and teaching only occasionally--whose wife is a tenured professor here in Tallahassee--I can offer tentative answers. FSU has moved from somewhere around 65 on the US News public uni list to 19 over the last 20 years. That places FSU ahead of all but five B1G unis, for those who are counting, absolutely prime for entry into a new conference, in a town that holds the National Mag Lab and is objectively beautiful. 

Much of that success owes to the very hard work of faculty, and the determination of Jeb Bush to raise the profile of FL unis by designating UF and FSU as the state flagships, and upping their budgets by tens of millions of dollars. (UF, from ca. 15 when I began work on my doctorate there, has moved to number 4-5.) 

It is FSU's mission to enter the AAU, and its academic bona fides are there. But it lags UF in not being the land grant uni or having a strong traditional foothold in scientific research. It is also the fervent desire of many faculty to enter the B1G in order to help combat DeSantis and the far-right legislature.

Yes, DeSantis's actions threaten the status of both schools. When you bring in the far-right president of a little midwestern Christian college to run an enormous institution like UF you unsurprisingly end up with a poorly run school, a naif who has never seen the kinds of challenges his job presents. 

The threat these people pose is no longer merely theatrical or performative. They are destroying institutions. At New College, a university a little like the UM's RC (of which I am a grad), they're ending programs and replacing long-time liberal faculty and admin with zealots. . . The changes have begun to run quite deep, and there is a serious chill, with some students feeling empowered to terrorize faculty. A colleague who showed a documentary about slave shipping recently had two white male students come up to her afterward and say they were going to report her for trying to indoctrinate them; they had grins on their faces. The thing is that some people's academic pursuits themselves are unacceptable to people now crawling around in pursuit of new prizes for their auto da fe.  

The fascinating thing is that a highly flawed guy running on a Bernie-style platform lost to DeSantis two elections ago by less than a percentage point; until last year, FL had more registered Ds than Rs. You'd never know it from national headlines, but there is a lot of progressive ferment at ground level; a progressive D just won in J'ville, often called the nation's most conservative city, where Rs had held the mayoralty for 30 years. The right biotches have the place gerrymandered, however, such that we are in deep, deep water; it's deeply undemocratic. Which is too bad, bc it's f*cking beautiful here in Tally and the Panhandle, the most biodiverse place in N. America (I am an ecologist). But I have a brown daughter, and despite our longtime commitment to the fight, my wife and I are considering bailing when she retires.  

Fascinates me that mgoblog…

Fascinates me that mgoblog has become the place where some sanity prevails when hoops struggles and mass hysteria now regularly takes hold at umhoops; a real role reversal. A lot of dubious scapegoating taking place over there, of an almost purely speculative kind. 

I doubt that Juwan will quit without a fight, but it certainly looks like his hands are too tied to succeed at UM in the current circumstances. 

This is baseless poopoo. 

This is baseless poopoo. 

It's a bit of the…

It's a bit of the reactionary Harbaugh that we're going to get from time to time. 

My dad worked with Bo on the…

My dad worked with Bo on the admin side, and I've just never been able to reconcile the two faces--the adoration on one end, the seething dislike on the other. Bo yelled at everyone and was widely known as a tantrum-pitching tyrant. People did not like him. A certain kind of cruelty was considered manly and laughed over then that wouldn't fly now, and my dad saw the transition. 

Further, Ann Arbor had a gay subculture where a fair lot of ugly was going down, also not an easy thing to talk about in a day when we're fighting for acceptance of homosexuality. When openly or flagrantly expressed, it brought condemnation and worse. But there were a LOT of people who quietly shrugged or shook their heads over the knowledge that this or that (often fairly macho) character was having his way with young men. Right across middle American culture. 

They're probably checking out fast, but there are some people around still who knew about that subculture in A2. 

I can give Bo some latitude. But a number of people came to him, not just one. He f'd up. And I doubt VERY much that Anderson was doopsing him, as someone suggests above. More likely, Bo was just not a super evolved person, and in denial, than that anything more complicated was taking place in his brain, TBH. He just refused to face the facts or act for his troops. And that was, absolutely, a dereliction of his duty to the young men placed in his charge. 

This is the kind of kid…

This is the kind of kid people were complaining we needed more of, a talented player whose game lacks one or two key elements and is likely to stick around. Was disappointed in the increasingly manic crowd at UMHoops that so much disappointment was expressed around Brooks, since--as Matt says--becoming a decent three-point shooter over the next two years would make him a superb catch, and the Michigan coaches look savvy, indeed. 

As others are noting, he's a bright and personable lad. 

"it doesn't matter. . ."…

"it doesn't matter. . ." Pretty obviously not the case, since these schools are being contemplated, and NB was kicked out. FSU has long been focused on applying, FWIW. 

Absolutely true that DeSantis, OTOH, may jeopardize these advances, which--interestingly--came after Jeb Bush (the 'education governor') made FSU and UF flagships and strongly increased their funding. DeSantis is undoing a lot of people's hard work. 

Your original point was way off, though. :)

Well, in a way Steve is…

Well, in a way Steve is saying the same thing, in a very convoluted way, about this season. Green cost them dearly. And it affected everyone's play and confidence, including Poole's. If there's one thing we've learned watching players like Stauskas in the NBA, it's that confidence and positioning on a team are important. A player struggles on one team, emerges on another, finds a secure role on one team and thrives, sees a shift in minutes or role and suffers. These posts that say, "So and so is garbage, or all JP does is chuck the ball" are worse than useless. The question, over time, was whether JP could emerge as the next gen guy as Curry's skills declined, and that was always a tall order. Management knew they were taking a gamble. 

EDIT: Now--as people may have seen--Green is admitting that the punch helped sink the Warriors' season. Direct cause and effect will not be demonstrated, but that would be two championships lost that might be attributed to Green. And yet there's talk of trading Poole, who Stephen Smith alleged after the incident, without being refuted, was knocked out by Draymond's punch. Guy is an MSU-style sh*tbird--with a wealth of below-the-belt shots on film to document the fact--and you have to marvel at how a certain stripe of fan here defends him, and justifies this, and maligns Poole. It's a fascinating world. 

See my note above about the…

See my note above about the FL schools. US is ranked ahead of UNC. People talk through their chauvinistic behinds on this stuff. 

 

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/top-public

UF is the number 5-ranked…

UF is the number 5-ranked public uni and FSU number 19 or 20, according to the (yes, problematic) US News & etc. report. That makes FSU higher than all but five current B1G members (at number five, UF is ahead of UNC).

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/top-public

 

This deserved its own thread…

This deserved its own thread. Arguably. Put some rings in the nipples of that Wolverine and I'm on board, for sure. 

And I think that guy who goes to all the OSU games is already halfway there. 

Kind of a rambling…

Kind of a rambling assemblage of contradictory speculations, but one thing you may be very right about: A coach who has already been disloyal to lots of kids with the portal may be shown less when it's time for players to do what's best for them. Even if Thorne remained the starter, he was looking forward to a pretty thankless season. 

I don't see a lot of comparison to Deion myself, but what goes around may well come around for the most cavalier coaches. 

Picky, picky. 

Picky, picky. 

Hasn't Deion coached at one…

State will win more games, say five to CU's one-three. Mel will be on the hot seat, and Coach Sanders will be looking forward to 24-25. He might fail, too, but Tucker is objectively doing that now. 

Hasn't Deion coached at one…

Hasn't Deion coached at one place and done really well? Isn't that why he's now at CU? 

Loved him at first, got sick…

Loved him at first, got sick of him repeating his signature lines over and over, have always felt I sense a guy just a little too invested and needy. But heard him doing an NBA game the other night and felt there was real skill there, knowledge of the game, a growing confidence. Knowing when to shut up and let the game be the star while not being a total nonentity (a lot of these guys run together for me). . . maybe that takes time. 

Yeah, my daughter loved his…

Yeah, my daughter loved his music when she was little!

Activist. Marched with Dr…

Activist. Marched with Dr. King. Always showed up. Came and demonstrated with us when we took over the Florida capital after George Zimmerman was acquitted in Trayvon Martin's murder. Birth of the Dream Defenders. Good-looking AF.

Otay. 

Otay. 

Yes, to celebrate it as…

Yes, to celebrate it as capitalism is naive as hell, when it's not supposed to be payment--that issue neatly set aside in the excitement--and when most players make zero. It's profoundly unequal, obviously, to the point of absurdity, lacking in transparency or accountability, but a certain kind of fan only seems to want his school to bring lots of money to bear, puffs himself up on the idea that his school is somehow going to whip up on everyone else and feels wounded, as with everything, at the very possibility that it doesn't. When Kansas, "blue blood," reputed to be crooked AF for years, creams everybody. . . Why people like or accept this is a little beyond me. This time, Michigan will be the subject of such ritual humiliation as HD moves on, and some particularly low IQ types will later take all of this as proof that Juwan isn't as strong a coach as Bill Self. None of it stands up to rigorous scrutiny, but it does make everyone more and more comfortable with the idea of players as commodities. . . which in turn makes it easier to scream at them or hate on 'em when they wound us--deeply, deeply, as we've got little else connecting us to anything and this, at this stage of decay, is the American social arena--by not winning each and every game. The idea that kids play the game they love for their school. . . pretty tortured at this stage. It's all kinda creepy.

Pressure's definitely gonna be on Hunter, though; we can look forward to the crap he's going to catch when (if) he fails to live up to expectations; might be hellacious. I'll bet he's doing a little sweating as we speak.   

Yes, I accept this (although…

Yes, I accept this (although your link says nothing of the kind). This does! :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Party_(United_States)

 

Hunter fatigue is a thing,…

Hunter fatigue is a thing, and the way he uses up all the oxygen--on and off-court--has helped create it. We'd'a been a better team with him back, but like others I'm excited to see where we go without him. And hey, respect to him, because he could have just come back without enormous demands on him and cruised. If he goes to Kansas/elsewhere, there will be a fair amount of performance pressure. 

Actually, it was a parking…

Actually, it was a parking ticket in Ann Arbor in '72 when I arrived--[removed some erroneous info after being corrected--see below]. I imagine you're talking about the entire state, but in A2 it was more or less legal for a time. I never needed more than an occasional toke, but The Hash Bashes, the free concerts, the Art Fairs, and the Blues and Jazz Festivals--hell, our Friday Afternoon Wine Drinkers' Club at Huron--were all very, very good times.  

This is the correct answer. 

This is the correct answer. 

I guess I don't have to tell…

I guess I don't have to tell you guys that you're pretty superficial, even by bad movie standards. :)

That's like saying taking a…

That's like saying taking a charge isn't playing defense. What makes games games is their arcane and often arbitrary rules. That doesn't mean tweaking them can't be fun, too. But--yes--taking a charge is defense, and it's neat because--at some cost to their nads--smaller players can gain position and stop points being scored. Likewise, putting--while often perfunctory--brings incredible drama to the close of many close golf matches. 

Yeah, sad about Kante--and…

Yeah, sad about Kante--and in time he might have been really, really good. But short term this is likely better for Michigan, including in the way it may impact prospective players. Dickinson is such a strong player that we may end up only treading water, in strict hypothetical terms, if he is gone (my suspicion is yes). But my hat's off to the coaches for being proactive thus far, and we're guaranteed what I think will be a more fun, better defense-playing team next year. And although we've been spoiled with the talent the last few years, it's worth remembering that most of the Beilein teams we treasured were not made up of five stars, but scrappers who learned how to play as seasons wore on and often came up big down the stretch. It's important not to be idiots and take it too personally when our teams aren't world beaters year in and year out. That isn't the way it worked in the past and it may be less and less the case in future. Basically, schools are assembling squads based on eye and feel from spring to fall now, seeing how they turn out.   

The 'Just Stand Under the…

The 'Just Stand Under the Spigot With Your Yapper Wide Open' Special is 7.99 today. 

This is why I could never be…

This is why I could never be a politician. There might be several good reasons to open this up, but some people gonna die. Upping the speed limit in the less-densely settled states is the classic example. You can predict with reasonable certainty how much it will impact commerce; but you can do that for fatalities, too. 

Agree, but--I may be naive-…

Agree, but--I may be naive--it's hard to see how OSU is given so much of the benefit of the doubt when they'll be breaking in a new QB and playing in Ann Arbor. Yes, freshmen may be hardened, accomplished veterans by the end of the season. But I never knew that was guaranteed. 

Great counterpoint. It's a…

Great counterpoint. It's a very hard thing to say out loud without laughter ensuing, from almost every quarter, including OSU fans, who are (then) forced to acknowledge how silly it sounds. 

Hey, if they double last…

Hey, if they double last year's wins, Deion is on his way, right? 

Can't believe someone didn't…

Can't believe someone didn't tell them there are three or four other teams in the Big Ten with pretty much the same colors? The flag had a little life and history behind it--and the state didn't join the rebs, so it doesn't necessarily carry too much bad odor. Oh well. 

 

Gotta be a typo, right? 'Her…

Gotta be a typo, right? 'Her' two favorites? 

Or as Jewish people…

Or as Jewish people sometimes say in Ann Arbor: Mazel Blue!

Yuh. A certain credulousness…

Yuh. A certain credulousness about his reception here. And at The Athletic. Seems like we're poising to make another bazillion dollars, but as for some of the other fine points (admittedly mostly long since jettisoned). . . 

Yeah, that sounds elitest…

Yeah, that sounds elitest. And upper management types who look down on middle management types as coarse, lacking culture, etc.. . . pfft. Wouldn't look too much different to a farmer from Uttar Pradesh. As a guy who graduated a decade earlier from the UM and went to high school in A2 when the White Panthers controlled city council, I could be sad--and have, at times--felt rather dismissive of all of you. But then, my generation rose when the possibilities were still a bit less narrow, had our own luck and bad luck, survived and didn't. Probably better to mourn for what a wreck this country really is. 

Not sure why, but Oregon and…

Not sure why, but Oregon and Washington feels more natural today than it did five-six months ago. Sure could take some scheduling pressure off of UCLA and USC. 

Slave state, as my KU…

Slave state, as my KU friends like to remind everyone. 

Outskated. Flat beat. Hats…

Outskated. Flat beat. Hats off to the whatever they ares. 

Neat. Thanks. Would love to…

Neat. Thanks. That is arguably the--and absolutely a--golden era of hiphop; had no idea a Detroit auteur was so central. Would love to check that out. 

Some good shifts there at…

Some good shifts there at the end of the period. Hopefully, they've settled down.