patrickdolan

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Date	Title	Body
1 week 2 days ago	Gee, two orthopedic surgeons having a hissy fit at each other...	In other news, the sun came up in the East. There is absolutely no reason for a surgeon to be at practice--they don't practice emergency medicine, and the family practice guy is just as capable. For safety, I imagine an EMT is actually better qualified to stabilize a spinal injury or handle a concussion. People's insurance companies do this kind of thing to them all the time, and SI doesn't get its knickers in a knot about that. We shouldn't either.
3 weeks 2 days ago	I'm old enough to remember Donkey Basketball	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR6DdcnUBas Also, Europeans are eating a little more horse than we knew: http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/09/world/europe/uk-horsemeat-probe. My feeling is that someone at UM should form a Buzkashi club team: http://www.afghan-web.com/sports/buzkashi.html.
4 weeks 2 days ago	If he wants to play pro, even in Europe	He needs to be the first or second guy. No way that happens at IU. Or maybe he's got a grad school he likes.
6 weeks 3 days ago	Good game, great year	This is why I come to this site--almost no whining, and appreciation of the good things--there are many--about Michigan sports. Hats off to Louisville. And the Big Ten will be fun again next year, no?
6 weeks 5 days ago	Michigan's main accomplishment	"Michigan's main accomplishment on many possessions was to not turn the ball over." That's a huge frickin' deal against that defense. UM was impressive as hell not panicking and not revving. (On defense, too, for that matter.) Yogi Ferrell went all freshman when he saw that zone.
9 weeks 2 days ago	You feel old...	I spent Michael Jordan's entire career reminding people about Oscar Robertson. (As the man say, "Look it up.") Trey Burke deserves Big Ten POY. He deserves national POY. I'm an Indiana basketball fan, but I think he played better and more consistently, with much less help, than Zeller, Victor O or anybody else I've seen this year.
10 weeks 13 hours ago	Columbia	You can't lose either way, I don't think. I chose Michigan (L,S & A) over Columbia and never regretted it, even for an instant. OTOH, NYC, if that's your kind of thing.
10 weeks 4 days ago	Not to mention that	James Blackmon Jr., a 2014 IU commit, was sitting behind the UM bench.
10 weeks 4 days ago	This is bad blood that's been building for years...	Meyer was on Kelvin Sampson's staff at IU. If he didn't know what was going on, he's incompetent. He knew what was going on. He managed to convince the NCAA that his participation was inadvertant and minor. He didn't manage to convince them he didn't participate. (What did you think at the time, before Michigan hired him? Tell the truth.) One thing Crean did when he got to IU was clean the lighters out of the lockers. Meyer didn't do that. Crean also made the kids go to class. Meyer didn't do that. And that's why the kids Sampson and his staff recruited left when Sampson left and Crean took over. Now Crean sees Meyer recruiting Indiana successfully, and--I imagine--wonders. Especially when he notices an IU commit behind the Michigan bench. Meyer was part of a staff that took a collective dump on the floor of Assembly Hall. He got away with a slap on the wrist. He apologized to Indiana University for how he behaved at IU. Crean apologized to him for calling him out in public. Belein and Michigan say Meyer is on the up and up now, and I believe them. It's over, or it should be. Go Blue.
10 weeks 5 days ago	In general...	I think we're all underrating how tough the Big Ten was. I think a regional final is a real possibility. At that point, the lack of interior rebounding will potentially cost the game, but of I< can defend enough to run, who knows? In truth, though, this is not a team that underachieved. The MSU win was very sweet, the way they competed should satisfy any but the most cynical. The young 'uns will be older, and if Belein recruits some hardass defenders and rebounders, UM will continue to contend. Play hard, play smart, get to the final game of the Big Ten Tourney and to the regional final of the NCAAs and that's a hell of a year. They just played even with an outstanding basketball team, and took them out of what they wanted to do for long stretches. If you can't appreciate that....
17 weeks 3 days ago	Pulling	Plus, you're 300 lbs, moving at full speed, and you have to locate and block a guy more nimble than you are. The RB has to help you out by taking the route designed, and even so an athletic end, a linebacker or a DB will always have a nimbleness advantage. Watch OL guys trying to block screens to see what I mean. It's hard as hell, and it has to be done on time. That's why I love great OL play. I'm no fan of Alabama, but man, this year...
22 weeks 3 days ago	Todd Marinovich was "smart"	Realizing that that the NFL tests for marijuana and cocaine were really effective, he did nothing but drink and do LSD in season. Lots of LSD. Seriously though, what will they do with athletes in Colorado and other states where weed's now legal? What will they do at Michigan if weed returns to the glory months of early 1972?
30 weeks 1 day ago	As long as we're on the topic...	That one made my heart stop. But this one is still my favorite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTn8_i393FQ. Not ridiculous athleticism, but smart football that helped send Michigan to the Rose Bowl. The look on Cooper's face isn't bad either. Lord, that was a fun defense to watch.
44 weeks 1 day ago	You really, really	wanted us to click on the Saban link, didn't you?
50 weeks 3 days ago	Actually the burning tires aren't in Minnesota...	They're just outside Iowa City, Iowa, in the Johnson County Landfill, and burning as we speak.  Check this out: http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/Officials-to-Begin-Stir-Burn-and-Cover-Operation-at-Iowa-City-Landfill-Fire-157023405.html.
51 weeks 14 hours ago	It's weird...	Nobody had this kind of reaction to Michael Jordan's or Patrick Ewing's kids getting scholarships, although I imagine basketball scholarships are more valuable to the teams. It's not race, per se. Nobody had this reaction to Bill Laimbeer getting a scholarship to Notre Dame, even though, a few years later, he was quoted as saying, "I'm the only guy in the NBA whose dad makes more than he does." And, although I don't know for sure, I think I could have wrangled a DI football scholarship (MAC, maybe) and my dad paid out of state UM tuition without batting an eye. I don't think anyone at Kent State or Indiana would have said a word to me. Maybe it's about hip-hop? The Maybach? Or maybe it's about Sean Combs himself? Seems like lots of people dislike him. Obviously, we'll see if the kid can play.
1 year 16 hours ago	Watching Woody Freak	Was one highlight of my freshman year, a school year that included the Michigan Supreme Court overturning the state anti-pot law, The Dead and Pink Floyd in Hill, John and Yoko (and many more) in Crisler for John Sinclair, the lowering of the drinking age to 18, and yes, Mr. Flood's Party, although I think I spent more time in the Blind Pig and the Del Rio. I had great teachers, too, and I learned a lot in the classroom. These Kids Today don't quite get how much fun college can be, I don't think.
1 year 6 days ago	It turns out that reading the book inside...	makes you go blind: http://www.asianscientist.com/health-medicine/asia-myopia-short-sightedness-lancet-study-2012/. Wankers.
1 year 2 weeks ago	Lou Reed said once that	Mitch Ryder's cover of "Rock 'n' Roll" is the best cover of one of his songs ever. "Then she tuned into that Detroit station..." Iggy. Also: Motown.
1 year 2 weeks ago	There's a rank order to these things.	Gordon Gee is the biggest scumbag in this story because he's whored out a university to athletics. Jim Tressel is a liar and a sanctimonious hypocrite, who expanded and enhanced the corruption endemic in college sports. We fans plunked down our money and kept the machine running. Ohio fans, in particular, denied and continue to deny what was obvious on its face. Pryor participated in a corrupt enterprise that he didn't build. It's entirely possible that at Michigan (or Stanford or Iowa) he would have developed into someone we could respect, even admire. But the choice he made--to attend tOSU, probably for pay--foreclosed that possibility. I wish him well--that is, I hope he comes to understand what happened and does what he can to make amends. And if he did help his mother with the money, well there are worse crimes. The people who should burn in hell are the grown-ups. Pryor's got a ways to go before he belongs in that category.
1 year 5 weeks ago	"Better"?	I'd say that the Ivy League is more impressed with their degrees than the rest of us. One of the reasons that I went to grad school in the Big Ten instead of the Ivy League was that I looked at the degrees of the people who would be my potential mentors, and thought, "incest." (There were other reasons as well. But that was one. And an analogous train of thought led me to go somewhere other than UM, which was my undergrad school, and had/has first rate people in my field.) When was the last time UM hired a president that hadn't been a president or at the highest reaches of administration somewhere else? Mary Sue Coleman was president at Iowa before she moved to Ann Arbor. I suspect that if anything filters out UM grads, it's something that happens earlier in the process. Maybe UM PhDs are more interested in being scholars than administrators? (I doubt it, but I think you'll see possible explanations will multiply if you let them.)
1 year 14 weeks ago	We live in a world...	In which a musician produces better prose than most journalists. My only contact with Detroit was as a UM student in the seventies. It's a great city, with great people, that's been hammered by history and politics. Anybody doing anything to get some money into the local economy and to get people's heads up is fine in my book. (Also, I like a couple of the songs.) I hope I'd have the brains to say the same thing about an MSU or tOSU fan helping out. If you take KR at his word (I do) this about jobs and people. I'm from Iowa, and I'm hoping Steven Bloom gets a job at the Freep.
1 year 17 weeks ago	Indiana	I'm from Indianapolis, and I mostly don't like the place. But Hoosiers, like any people, anywhere, hate liars--part of the reason that they put up with Bob Knight as long as they did was because they believed he didn't pretend to be something that he wasn't. I predict that hiring Tressel won't go down well in the part of the sports community that cares about things beyond winning. And since we're talking about Indiana, I'll point this out: at least it's not an important job, like coaching the North Central High School basketball team.
1 year 20 weeks ago	I realize no harm was intended..	Three facts: 1. On occasion, I work with rape survivors. 2. I find the word "rape" to describe something far less traumatic than real rape painful. 3. I do so because I see the incredible pain and anger the use of the word causes the people I work with. You can do whatever you want with those facts, except make them go away. Go Blue.
1 year 21 weeks ago	It's actually a process that's taken longer than 5 years.	Thirty's more like it, ever since Proposition 13. It just got much, much worse when the housing bubble burst. Fortunately for the "no politics" rule, fucking up the California higher education system, once a model for other states and even the world, has required the full attention of all kinds of people over the years. They'll still be plenty of money for football, of course, never you fear.
1 year 21 weeks ago	Not so much a "straw man."	More a response to this: "I know plenty of people who decided between two colleges based off of the success of their football or basketball program." I talk to students who say they came to Iowa because they're Hawkeyes fans all the time. I think it's nuts, and they tend to be occupying seats that I'm sure Iowa could fill with better qualified students from out of state. But they're in-state kids, and they get a leg up on admissions because of it, as is only right, because they're also taxpayers. I'm guessing it's easier to get into UM if you're from Michigan, right?
1 year 21 weeks ago	Some Facts	This is from 2004/05, so there's probably something more recent out there, but if you're going to say things like, "self-sustaining" and "makes a profit," you probably should actually, you know, look at the numbers: http://www2.indystar.com/NCAA_financial_reports/. Take a look at the 57 schools that give their football programs "direct institutional support," and see what you think. Or the 108 schools that give their athletic departments "direct institutional support." In that year, as in most, Michigan did very well. Its AD pays its way, largely because of football, and men's basketball. As I understand it, in the late nineties, things weren't so rosy (so to speak). There are a lot of imponderables. For example, do you count contributions as part of profit, since they're tax deductible, and thus government subsidized? Where do the UM police department's extra expenses for traffic control and locking up drunks figure in? And so on. Iowa, where I teach, gave its athletic department 2.1 million of general revenue that year. If memory serves, we also raised tuition somewhere between 5 and 9% and the faculty amd staff didn't get a real raise, unless they were in the union. Finally this: if I'm teaching at a school like Michigan, a world class research and educational institution, and you're attending UM primarily because you like the football program, I don't want you in my classroom. I want students who are interested in writing (or engineering, or sociology, or law, or medicine, or music), not students who are interested in (admittedly, the best) helmets. (I exclude real athletes from this, btw. They're pursuing their vocations. Spectators are different.) There are plenty of people out there who'd pay full tuition out-of-state, and who are serious about their educations. Michigan, and any Big Ten school, can and should demand educational excellence. UM did when I was a student there, and I believe they still do. You can buy beer and tee shirts at a Target superstore.
1 year 22 weeks ago	True enough...	But Michigan could get the out of state tuition money from the non athletes it turns down. It's a selective, internationally prestigious university; it wouldn't lose tuition money. And from the faculty's point of view the absence of the tiny percentage of athlete admits (non-revenue athletes are occasionally worse than football players in my experience) who can't handle UM's academics or don't care would be an improvement. UM's AD took in more than it paid out last year. I'd be surprised if they gave a great deal to the general fund; the non-revenue sports eat that up. And within my memory, the AD has had to be subsidized. (Was it Martin who got things back into the black?) The thing to remember is that in terms of money and athletics and academics UM is an outlier. Only Stanford seems comparable and it's private.
1 year 22 weeks ago	Two points	MSU and tOSU fans are trolling each other on the Off Tackle Empire thread. It's delightful. tOSU says they won't appeal. Why do we believe them? (Rhetorical question.)
1 year 22 weeks ago	It's an old joke...	The punch line goes: We've established what you are. We're just talking about the price. The system is corrupt. The only ethical thing to do is to stay out. (See Chicago, U of.) Once you're in, you should shut up about the good of the athletes or education, because it's sanctimonious bullshit. At some schools the athletes are exploited. At other schools (see Rutgers and any other school whose AD gets general funds, including, rarely, UM), the money going to the athletic department is money that could be paying to have smaller classes, newer labs, better IT. Faculty members are entitled to resent this. You would too, if university athletics made it harder for you to do your job. But, again, if you're a faculty member, you knew what you were getting into, so whining gets old fast.

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