I already have the new Bob Stitt for you https://theathletic.com/2798730/2021/09/01/meet-ben-mccollum-the-division-ii-coach-winning-titles-and-turning-heads-across-college-basketball/
The thing about Grand Canyon is that it's a for-profit college in reality with online being the driving force. But what they did was sell the college to a non profit entity that is run by the same people that is essentially is taking the profit off the top in order to pay back the "loan."
What they essentially did is purchase a small Christian nonprofit and took it from 1000 students to about 100,000. The whole thing is a huge scam.
The physical campus exists mostly as a marketing tool so that people who attend online think its a real thing. The basketball is even more of an extension of that because the idea is that if they have a basketball team it will make them seem even more legitimate. Hence the amount of money they are spending on it compared to others.
The food scene really is incredible in my experience. While there are some really awesome restaurants (Japan has more Michelin starred restaurants per capita than any other country in the world), you can basically not go wrong with almost anywhere you end up. And just given the exchange rate currently it works out pretty well price wise.
You can of course also go to a high end omakase and the like and it will also be awesome and more expensive but you can have a very good experience at lots of moderately priced spots. And Japanese cuisine is so diverse that there's so many different options and choices. The other thing on a good omakase spot, you can usually get a much better deal price wise if you go there for lunch.
I also wouldn't sleep on the Tokyo pizza scene. I know the idea of going to Japan and eating pizza sounds ridiculous, but Tokyo in particular has some really awesome spots (which are all well priced).
I haven't been to baseball game in Japan but I talked to some people who have who told me it's a super fun experience and definitely worth going (and very much different from the experience here in the US).
The unfortunate thing about the bullet train is they just raised the prices on the 7 day and 14 day passes. They hadn't gone up since 1989 so it's a big jump, but it doesn't necessarily make sense to get the pass anymore unless you are planning on riding the train quite a bit. Whereas before even the round trip from Tokyo to Kyoto would basically pay for itself.
I'm always blown away by how good the food at the 7-11 is and how well priced it is (and the yen is currently way down against the dollar so that goes even further).
7-11 is also just a good choice for a quick and easy breakfast most days.
I feel like I've never had an issue getting by despite my lack of speaking Japanese and I think I was surprised by how many people I encountered did speak at least some English.
But on reservations they can be very difficult to make even for places that are not super fancy unless you are staying at a hotel with a concierge who can make them for you.
I really enjoyed Tokyo quite a bit but I think it's more the case that Kyoto is the place with more history and sight seeing and Tokyo is the sort of place with incredible restaurants and nightlife. Not that Kyoto is bad in this regard, but I went to some really incredible places each time I've gone to Tokyo.
I also second Miyajima Island, I sort of tacked it on when I went to Hiroshima and it was a really cool spot. The floating shrine in the morning and afternoon is really cool, and also going to the top of Mount Misen was an awesome view.
I also did really like Osaka which is really not that far from Kyoto.
I don't know if that's true on the deep balls. There were some issues in 2022 early the year where we kept just missing that all came together against Ohio State and versus TCU (where he threw the deep ball quite well).
This past season I feel like we didn't really throw the deep ball that much because our tackles weren't great at holding up in pass coverage.
The one spot where JJ has had some accuracy issues is specifically intermediate throws to the left which he should be able to clean up in the NFL.
I don't get the Zach Wilson comparisons though. It's a lazy comparison as JJ is a significantly better player.
I think by all reports the collectives really did step up in terms of NIL and making sure they were retaining the current roster. And I do think our NIL game is much better on the roster retention side of things. Where we’ve fallen short is in terms of recruits and guys who are not on campus yet.
We will of course lose guys during the April window. But they will be the more standard typical portal attrition versus further transition costs.
I think the thing is key guys who stick around for the 30 day period are unlikely to jump ship during the spring period.
If you stuck around despite Harbaugh, Herbert, Minter, Elston, and Clinkscale leaving and you have a key role on the team, you probably aren't leaving in April.
What we will have for sure is playing time transfers. Guys who go through spring practice and are buried on the depth chart or like Sabb want to go somewhere that they'll play a more central role. But that's something every team has to deal with. What we're not likely to have in the April window is continued transition costs.
Will Johnson is one of the least likely guys to leave.
The guy is from the state, is a Michigan legacy, and committed to Michigan when things were at the lowest during the Harbaugh era. He's also one of the key players on next year's team who is going to play a ton. Of all our star players he's probably the least likely to go anywhere.
Dickinson was our starting center and one of the best players on the team, whereas Sabb was our third safety next year. Loosing Dickenson is more akin to if Mason Graham were to transfer.
It's a loss because he was going to play for sure, but our starting safeties were the starting safeties for a team that just won the national title. They'll be fine.
I think he played a ton when the other safeties were banged up. They kept rotating for the easier parts of the schedule after they came back but then tightened up the rotation for the bigger games.
In the national title game he played a lot because Paige was banged up and Johnson was out.
It’s a loss because he’s good and he definitely would have played next year. But it’s not hard to see why he’d be not thrilled that he played so little in some of the bigger games.
Where it really could hurt is if we end up having any injuries, which hopefully we do not but are always a risk.
In the end if Moore and Paige had gone to the NFL I don’t think Sabb would have left Michigan.
He definitely would have played lots next year, but we couldn’t offer as central a role as Alabama will be able to.
Sabb played a ton in the national championship, but I imagine he wasn’t thrilled to play 5 snaps against Alabama, 0 against Ohio State, and 11 against Penn State. Sucks to lose him but only so much you can do.
He’s someone I was worried about transferring as soon as Moore and Paige said they were coming back.
I think it was pretty clearly a playing time decision.
He was going to play for sure but both starters were returning and it was still going to be a rotational type thing.
I didn’t want to lose him cause I think he’s a good player, but I don’t think he’s transferring if Moore and Paige are going pro (or if even one of them did).
He’s one I’ve been worried about for awhile even before Harbaugh left because he’s got two guys in front of him. I don’t think it’s indicative of a larger exodus.
We are definitely going to losing guys in the spring who leave for more playing time. This is definitely that sort of move.
I think it was more Morgan wanted to be on the west coast and that he has a very close relationship with DeBoer. He was never going to have that sort of relationship with Harbaugh.
He played pretty poorly against Notre Dame in particular, but alot of those losses were due to a defense that the defensive equivalent of the Iowa offense.
I think JJ is going to rocket up draft boards as people start actually watching film and has he goes through the pre draft process. I predict he ends up getting drafted in the top 3. I don't think he goes 1 ahead of Caleb Williams but I don't think it's impossible.
I also think Drake Maye ends up slipping a bit from QB2 to QB4. I feel like he's been slotted in as the second QB all season long but he was actually much more inconsistent this past season compared to the year before.
Like I've said before, I have my issues with Warde Manuel (his views on NIL, how he handled the Harbaugh relationship, etc), but I don't think the issue has ever been he's too cheap. I'm not sure when that became a thing.
Griese has also been getting interviews for NFL OC jobs. It's hard to know if he'd even be interested.
Campbell was also probably important in terms of retaining Jadyn Davis and Carter Smith. Moore also probably wanted an offensive coordinator he was familiar with and who he had worked closely with (and who would call games similarly to him).
Clearly a popular choice with the players https://x.com/uclafootball/status/1757135040100897046?s=61&t=FWdPjolLEsKsBy4p9r91ow
And in today’s day and age with the transfer portal that’s an important consideration. Same reason we had our key defensive guys spend some time talking to Wink during the interview process.
I’m not sure where things started that the problem is Warde is not allowing us to spend money for our coaching staff.
I have plenty of issues with Warde Manuel, but mostly they have to do with him mishandling the Harbaugh relationship, not doing a good job of getting the people we were hiring, a terrible job of handling the hockey situation, and other things I’m probably forgetting. I guess I never have thought the problem was that he’s too cheap.
You should also take a look at the revenue numbers for the Chargers versus the Michigan Athletic Department. It’s more than twice what we have (and if you look at profit the disparity is even larger). We aren’t actually capable of winning a bidding war with the Chargers even if we wanted to.
No one has actually linked him to the job but Corey Parker from Toledo is a name a lot of people have been throwing around for the DB job, which would make alot of sense.
He was very involved in recruiting previously. Both at Michigan and Navy. And was about to get hired for a similar job at Oklahoma before we made the offer.
I think he had a similar role from 2017 to 2022 when he left and he was previously the director of player personal under Navy before that.
By all accounts this is the first step of really building out and increasing the size of our recruiting department. One area where Sherrone Moore has some different ideas compared to Harbaugh.
I do think they will fill out the defensive staff fairly quickly now that there’s a DC. And there’s already some pretty promising names out there in terms of the defensive line coach position.
No names out there in terms of DBs that they are considering, but lots of people throwing out names like Corey Parker and Archie Collins as ideas.
I mean you have college head coaches jumping ship to the NFL to get away from NIL and the transfer portal, not because of money. The NFL is in the abstract much more attractive to guys because all you are doing is coaching football.
Title IX is a problem for Congress, it’s not a problem for the football players. And I don’t know that it’s clear that Title IX requires equal dollar amounts of revenue sharing.
Once you have collective bargaining there’s no way you are going to get away with shorting the players on their share of revenue. What’s going to happen is other sports are going to get cut.
We have plenty of examples of collective bargaining agreements from other sports. That’s almost certainly where things are going to end up ultimately.
Recent Comments
I already have the new Bob Stitt for you https://theathletic.com/2798730/2021/09/01/meet-ben-mccollum-the-division-ii-coach-winning-titles-and-turning-heads-across-college-basketball/
The thing about Grand Canyon is that it's a for-profit college in reality with online being the driving force. But what they did was sell the college to a non profit entity that is run by the same people that is essentially is taking the profit off the top in order to pay back the "loan."
What they essentially did is purchase a small Christian nonprofit and took it from 1000 students to about 100,000. The whole thing is a huge scam.
The physical campus exists mostly as a marketing tool so that people who attend online think its a real thing. The basketball is even more of an extension of that because the idea is that if they have a basketball team it will make them seem even more legitimate. Hence the amount of money they are spending on it compared to others.
Good time to go as I have memories of going in the fall and trying to figure out how to watch the Michigan game in the middle of the night.
The food scene really is incredible in my experience. While there are some really awesome restaurants (Japan has more Michelin starred restaurants per capita than any other country in the world), you can basically not go wrong with almost anywhere you end up. And just given the exchange rate currently it works out pretty well price wise.
You can of course also go to a high end omakase and the like and it will also be awesome and more expensive but you can have a very good experience at lots of moderately priced spots. And Japanese cuisine is so diverse that there's so many different options and choices. The other thing on a good omakase spot, you can usually get a much better deal price wise if you go there for lunch.
I also wouldn't sleep on the Tokyo pizza scene. I know the idea of going to Japan and eating pizza sounds ridiculous, but Tokyo in particular has some really awesome spots (which are all well priced).
I haven't been to baseball game in Japan but I talked to some people who have who told me it's a super fun experience and definitely worth going (and very much different from the experience here in the US).
I definitely did not find myself enjoying natto.
The unfortunate thing about the bullet train is they just raised the prices on the 7 day and 14 day passes. They hadn't gone up since 1989 so it's a big jump, but it doesn't necessarily make sense to get the pass anymore unless you are planning on riding the train quite a bit. Whereas before even the round trip from Tokyo to Kyoto would basically pay for itself.
I'm always blown away by how good the food at the 7-11 is and how well priced it is (and the yen is currently way down against the dollar so that goes even further).
7-11 is also just a good choice for a quick and easy breakfast most days.
I feel like I've never had an issue getting by despite my lack of speaking Japanese and I think I was surprised by how many people I encountered did speak at least some English.
But on reservations they can be very difficult to make even for places that are not super fancy unless you are staying at a hotel with a concierge who can make them for you.
I really enjoyed Tokyo quite a bit but I think it's more the case that Kyoto is the place with more history and sight seeing and Tokyo is the sort of place with incredible restaurants and nightlife. Not that Kyoto is bad in this regard, but I went to some really incredible places each time I've gone to Tokyo.
I also second Miyajima Island, I sort of tacked it on when I went to Hiroshima and it was a really cool spot. The floating shrine in the morning and afternoon is really cool, and also going to the top of Mount Misen was an awesome view.
I also did really like Osaka which is really not that far from Kyoto.
I don't know if that's true on the deep balls. There were some issues in 2022 early the year where we kept just missing that all came together against Ohio State and versus TCU (where he threw the deep ball quite well).
This past season I feel like we didn't really throw the deep ball that much because our tackles weren't great at holding up in pass coverage.
The one spot where JJ has had some accuracy issues is specifically intermediate throws to the left which he should be able to clean up in the NFL.
I don't get the Zach Wilson comparisons though. It's a lazy comparison as JJ is a significantly better player.
Since when does JJ have accuracy issues?
I think by all reports the collectives really did step up in terms of NIL and making sure they were retaining the current roster. And I do think our NIL game is much better on the roster retention side of things. Where we’ve fallen short is in terms of recruits and guys who are not on campus yet.
We will of course lose guys during the April window. But they will be the more standard typical portal attrition versus further transition costs.
Sure but that's the sort of attrition we would have seen whether Harbaugh stayed or not.
As opposed to guys leaving because of the transition.
I think the thing is key guys who stick around for the 30 day period are unlikely to jump ship during the spring period.
If you stuck around despite Harbaugh, Herbert, Minter, Elston, and Clinkscale leaving and you have a key role on the team, you probably aren't leaving in April.
What we will have for sure is playing time transfers. Guys who go through spring practice and are buried on the depth chart or like Sabb want to go somewhere that they'll play a more central role. But that's something every team has to deal with. What we're not likely to have in the April window is continued transition costs.
Will Johnson is one of the least likely guys to leave.
The guy is from the state, is a Michigan legacy, and committed to Michigan when things were at the lowest during the Harbaugh era. He's also one of the key players on next year's team who is going to play a ton. Of all our star players he's probably the least likely to go anywhere.
Dickinson was our starting center and one of the best players on the team, whereas Sabb was our third safety next year. Loosing Dickenson is more akin to if Mason Graham were to transfer.
It's a loss because he was going to play for sure, but our starting safeties were the starting safeties for a team that just won the national title. They'll be fine.
I think he played a ton when the other safeties were banged up. They kept rotating for the easier parts of the schedule after they came back but then tightened up the rotation for the bigger games.
In the national title game he played a lot because Paige was banged up and Johnson was out.
It’s a loss because he’s good and he definitely would have played next year. But it’s not hard to see why he’d be not thrilled that he played so little in some of the bigger games.
Where it really could hurt is if we end up having any injuries, which hopefully we do not but are always a risk.
In the end if Moore and Paige had gone to the NFL I don’t think Sabb would have left Michigan.
He definitely would have played lots next year, but we couldn’t offer as central a role as Alabama will be able to.
Sabb played a ton in the national championship, but I imagine he wasn’t thrilled to play 5 snaps against Alabama, 0 against Ohio State, and 11 against Penn State. Sucks to lose him but only so much you can do.
He’s someone I was worried about transferring as soon as Moore and Paige said they were coming back.
I think it was pretty clearly a playing time decision.
He was going to play for sure but both starters were returning and it was still going to be a rotational type thing.
I didn’t want to lose him cause I think he’s a good player, but I don’t think he’s transferring if Moore and Paige are going pro (or if even one of them did).
He’s one I’ve been worried about for awhile even before Harbaugh left because he’s got two guys in front of him. I don’t think it’s indicative of a larger exodus.
We are definitely going to losing guys in the spring who leave for more playing time. This is definitely that sort of move.
I think it was more Morgan wanted to be on the west coast and that he has a very close relationship with DeBoer. He was never going to have that sort of relationship with Harbaugh.
He played pretty poorly against Notre Dame in particular, but alot of those losses were due to a defense that the defensive equivalent of the Iowa offense.
I think JJ is going to rocket up draft boards as people start actually watching film and has he goes through the pre draft process. I predict he ends up getting drafted in the top 3. I don't think he goes 1 ahead of Caleb Williams but I don't think it's impossible.
I also think Drake Maye ends up slipping a bit from QB2 to QB4. I feel like he's been slotted in as the second QB all season long but he was actually much more inconsistent this past season compared to the year before.
Like I've said before, I have my issues with Warde Manuel (his views on NIL, how he handled the Harbaugh relationship, etc), but I don't think the issue has ever been he's too cheap. I'm not sure when that became a thing.
Well I feel like that’s just one person’s opinion. This early in the process the opinions tend to be all over the place.
Griese has also been getting interviews for NFL OC jobs. It's hard to know if he'd even be interested.
Campbell was also probably important in terms of retaining Jadyn Davis and Carter Smith. Moore also probably wanted an offensive coordinator he was familiar with and who he had worked closely with (and who would call games similarly to him).
I'm guessing DeBoer might actually be calling plays in the short term.
Yes and he probably doesn’t make that much there. UCLA doesn’t have a great budget but it’s more than UNLV.
A place like UCLA can also poach lower down the ladder still.
Imagine if they hire Brennon Marion from UNLV for instance.
Clearly a popular choice with the players https://x.com/uclafootball/status/1757135040100897046?s=61&t=FWdPjolLEsKsBy4p9r91ow
And in today’s day and age with the transfer portal that’s an important consideration. Same reason we had our key defensive guys spend some time talking to Wink during the interview process.
Doesn't really make sense to me but also not something I really care about either.
The real roadblock to Harbaugh winning the Super Bowl is going to be being in the same division as Mahomes.
Is their confirmation of Sean Magee hiring Connor Stallions? Or are people just saying that because they are both Navy guys?
I did like him as a recruit and think he will outperform his ranking, but the priority is keeping the current roster on board.
Ethan Garbers would make more sense
Milroe also can’t transfer until the spring window
The question was on Herbert leaving because Warde wouldn’t match his demands.
People have said it and I’m asking if that’s been confirmed anywhere reputable.
Has this actually been confirmed anywhere?
I’ve seen a ton of speculation but nothing concrete.
I’m not sure where things started that the problem is Warde is not allowing us to spend money for our coaching staff.
I have plenty of issues with Warde Manuel, but mostly they have to do with him mishandling the Harbaugh relationship, not doing a good job of getting the people we were hiring, a terrible job of handling the hockey situation, and other things I’m probably forgetting. I guess I never have thought the problem was that he’s too cheap.
You should also take a look at the revenue numbers for the Chargers versus the Michigan Athletic Department. It’s more than twice what we have (and if you look at profit the disparity is even larger). We aren’t actually capable of winning a bidding war with the Chargers even if we wanted to.
I think we need recruiters. You have an NFL DC who is not likely to recruit, plus you lost two of your best in Clinkscale and Elston.
No one has actually linked him to the job but Corey Parker from Toledo is a name a lot of people have been throwing around for the DB job, which would make alot of sense.
Osborn apparently is a no go because he was caught up in the recruiting violations.
Mgoblog has gotten an athletic director fired before. You never know when it could happen again.
I think the idea is we are going to build out the recruiting department and hire lots of people around him in addition so it’s not all on one person.
He was very involved in recruiting previously. Both at Michigan and Navy. And was about to get hired for a similar job at Oklahoma before we made the offer.
I mean it was pretty clearly because Harbaugh wanted to bring back Partridge and didn’t have a spot available.
I think he had a similar role from 2017 to 2022 when he left and he was previously the director of player personal under Navy before that.
By all accounts this is the first step of really building out and increasing the size of our recruiting department. One area where Sherrone Moore has some different ideas compared to Harbaugh.
I do think they will fill out the defensive staff fairly quickly now that there’s a DC. And there’s already some pretty promising names out there in terms of the defensive line coach position.
No names out there in terms of DBs that they are considering, but lots of people throwing out names like Corey Parker and Archie Collins as ideas.
I mean you have college head coaches jumping ship to the NFL to get away from NIL and the transfer portal, not because of money. The NFL is in the abstract much more attractive to guys because all you are doing is coaching football.
Title IX is a problem for Congress, it’s not a problem for the football players. And I don’t know that it’s clear that Title IX requires equal dollar amounts of revenue sharing.
Once you have collective bargaining there’s no way you are going to get away with shorting the players on their share of revenue. What’s going to happen is other sports are going to get cut.
We have plenty of examples of collective bargaining agreements from other sports. That’s almost certainly where things are going to end up ultimately.