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It's almost ready. Actually…

It's almost ready. Actually it's done but I have to publish it.

Appreciate your…

Appreciate your understanding. Good luck!

Why? Who would know better…

Why? Who would know better than us?

We talked about this on the show. We all still love Don Brown--he was a great coach--but Michigan couldn't be the program Harbaugh needed it to be with Don Brown as a de facto HC of the defense, and that caused culture problems, for which Mattison's departure was an early warning. There's a report that got the hockey coach fired that was about culture problems; that is just fact. And I'm sure there's going to be plenty to say about Howard's basketball program.

When we say Day's program might have similar issues, we're not saying it's just an Ohio State thing at all. We're saying we've seen this kind of thing in all three major sports within the last five years, and that OSU's football program is showing signs that we recognize from our own history.

It's an open secret that…

It's an open secret that Hart and Harbaugh didn't get along. I don't think there was any chance Hart was coming back if Harbaugh returned. It's also not hard to figure out that Hart had high ambitions, because you'd get the insiders he talks to floating his name for future HC and stuff as far back as when Harbaugh was talking to the Vikings.

I can tell you in no uncertain terms Harbaugh isn't easy to work for. He's demanding as hell, and weird as hell--enough that a lot of people suspect he's a little bit on the spectrum. We used to talk about "Harbaugh Guys" in his program, people who got who he was and saw that he goes way deeper than the weird guy, and also people who got a chance to because they performed up to Harbaugh's freakish standards. I think a part of the 2020 turnaround was he started focusing on finding more people like that, until everyone in the program was a "Harbaugh guy." The Harbaugh guys tend to adore him. Go figure.

That's the end of shit I know.

My understanding of what went down is Hart wanted to be more than RB coach, Sherrone couldn't offer that, they couldn't come to terms somewhere in the middle, and that was why they parted ways.

I also think this would have gone down in January but something came up in Hart's personal life that caused the leave of absence and paused talks. Michigan wasn't going to move on without him while he was dealing with that, so we waited, and he waited, and then things progressed as they were going to.

I don't know how things ended but hopefully they ended well. I think Hart's going to be a great head coach one day.

There's a reason we don't…

There's a reason we don't allow the message board to be used as kiosk. I recognize the board is a community, and that people want to ask the community for help in times of need. But I cannot confirm that need for everyone, and if we don't regulate this it's going to overwhelm the board.

SalvatoreQuattro's gofundme is here: https://gofund.me/117349cd

Darker Blue's is here: http://spot.fund/rs2pssc

I ask that future calls for help be taken down more quickly.

No. Even basketball THIS bad…

No. Even basketball THIS bad is better than anyone who's not focusing on basketball. Kendrick Bell and Jason Hewlett, off the top of my head, were D-I basketball prospects, but at best you're adding true freshman Jace and T-Will who haven't played more than HS ball, and never focused on their techniques.

It's weird we have one of…

It's weird we have one of the few jobs where you could absolutely get blazed as much as you like if you wanted, and nobody on our staff even uses pot.

fuck this should have been…

fuck this should have been the preview.

So I don't feel guilty…

So I don't feel guilty starting our new campaign tonight instead of watching the last basketball game of the season.

Yeah, I hit publish instead…

Yeah, I hit publish instead of publish to draft. Meyer/Day was a typo, the other was a thing Sam said that I was still looking up and couldn't confirm. Day had two stints at BC a decade apart so if it happened it was probably in the early 2000s. Had it fixed in 5 mins. Sorry about that.

EE's got a bit too much…

EE's got a bit too much psychology for us, which isn't a bad thing except my wife's a psychologist, and when we're turning on a Youtube we're trying to escape work.

My referenced challenge to…

My challenge to the guys before we started recording was to name a historical figure (no relations) whose profligate sex life was more profitable to your quality of life. I for one am grateful to the man who fucked his way through Versailles for naval support against the British that also bankrupted the ancien regime.

I relistened to the segment…

I relistened to the segment this morning and I agree. I should have jumped in to make that point more clearly. Like even the NCAA preventing games from being on TV was about money, because they thought TV was competing with ticket sales, which were their main, ballooning revenue source. The demise of the PCC was ostensibly over punishing the Southern schools for cheating, but really it was about UCLA and USC not wanting to share revenue with Idaho when they had 10x the ticket sales.

I was gonna say "Peggy"…

I was gonna say "Peggy" there but the man was on a roll.

No it was directed at…

No it was directed at Decatur Jack's strawman. I gave you a longer answer below.

It's hard to talk real…

It's hard to talk real numbers because:

a) Often we don't get the real numbers, just talk.

b) When I do, usually the number's only single-sourced, from someone who did not share it with permission to pass it along, and 

c) The numbers and reality are often way off.

So speaking for myself, I try to straddle that line of saying things that I think to be evidenced without being forced to burn bridges by presenting all of that evidence. It's not something I will do often, and only do so with player remuneration because the nature of it is so cloak-and-dagger.

With Bryce Underwood, I think it's out there enough to share people are saying LSU offered $3 million/year for 3 years. The way they do that is to pledge to get that much in NIL deals, and then they go and facilitate those deals, and when they come up short they pay out from the collective anyways. But because they can't use them as inducements, there's no paperwork, and Michigan can use that unsurety to offer something more concrete from the local program with a bigger fanbase (e.g. "Hey, didya know JJ McCarthy made more than Heisman winner Jadyn Davis?"). We're also probably not talking about Michigan matching, just coming up with enough to make up the difference, since LSU is overcoming Michigan being a better situation from a lot of other perspectives (coaching, development, degree, postgraduate support, local NIL value, community).

I do not have anything concrete on this, but I strongly suspect the money that A&M promised kids in the 2022 and 2023 classes didn't materialize, and that's what spurred the massive transfer exodus. I also suspect teams are banking on the kids believing in themselves and how little people care about the kids who don't make it. If LSU gets Bryce Underwood for a promise of $9 million, and he works out, they'll pay it happily...maybe. But if he washes out in a couple of years, and they don't pay him anything close to $9 million, who's going to care?

You'd think that would hurt them in recruiting, but I'm starting to understand we may have overestimated how much it's common practice to fuck over anyone who doesn't meet their expectations. For example Otis Reese's mom got an apartment, and after a year she wasn't living there anymore.

That's because other people…

That's because other people appreciate the nuance in a statement like "It's not my money." There is an obvious implication there that I'm speaking from bias, and that the people whose money would actually be going to get Bryce Underwood might have a different perspective.

I've said before on this show, when my kid was at Mott, that the names on the building's donor wall downstairs were the same that Harbaugh was hitting up on the money tour last summer, and that it's hard to criticize the priorities of such people when LSU is literally stealing from their own hospital to pay recruits.

If you're going to be REAL MAD multiple times in the comments about my NIL stance, I'd appreciate if you, you know, came remotely close to understanding what everyone else seems to understand about my NIL stance.

My bank account wouldn't do…

My bank account wouldn't do jack shit in one of these recruitments.

I thought his best work was…

I thought his best work was finishing Wheel of Time, tbh. Stormlight and Mistborn series gave me "Marvel of fantasy fiction" vibes, where he hits the right notes at the right time to make it enjoyable, but I don't find myself thinking about it much afterwards. The standalone books are actually better than his series.

Here are the runner-ups from…

Here are the runner-ups from the last contest.

ben-singer-2 

andrew-mcintyre

This is much less political…

This is much less political than it seems: https://theauthoritarians.org/ and also it's free--written by a professor in the mid-2000s and he just wanted to get it out there. Heard about it from the British History Podcast, who was using it as a framework to understand the psychology of William the Conqueror and the society of the Norman aristocracy he grew up around.

Very interesting. He takes different personality types and puts them in wargames, and sees the results. Outside of politics, his findings have are extremely applicable to college athletics.

Uh...ask again later?…

Uh...ask again later? Herbert's successor is probably going to continue the same treatments and plans, and guys who are already here are going to keep doing what they're doing, so I think development will be fine. I think we lost something in scouting with Jay Harbaugh for sure, and a big selling point for recruiting with Ben Herbert. It'll be interesting to see how Herbert does after a year in the NFL. A lot of S&C guys have tried to take that next step and found they're just not able to get the players to buy in when they all have their own trainers.

Michigan also still has Abigail O'Connor managing their food intake. She was probably 1/3rd of the story in that development. Herbert's big thing was actually preparing your body to prevent injury, not specifically weight gain or any of that. I think the program is committed to his philosophy, but have no idea how well Herbert's successor can keep that going.

I've met Warde several times…

I've met Warde several times, once when he was himself. The persona he has for the public is not the one he has with players, and presumably not with Jim Harbaugh. The old football player is still very much there. I think Warde is uncomfortable making decisions, but I don't think he's an empty suit at all. He's a real person who has to pretend to be a suit.

I left and it was dark out. 

I left and it was dark out. 

Davis wants to redshirt…

Davis wants to redshirt. That's been the plan all along. They don't want to rush him and burn a year of eligibility because he's the kind of guy who could be a great college QB and make a lot of money at that without going pro until his eligibility is used up. His height limits his value to the NFL and that's not changing.

I mean I guess it depends…

I mean I guess it depends which side you identify with, right?

Here's what the info box…

Here's what the info box looks like on staging for the updated site, fwiw. Hopeful to have this out next week.

Erick All now likes his…

Erick All now likes his Michigan coaches

Article is good, framing by OP was bad. All left because Michigan's docs wouldn't approve a crackpot doc who had a treatment for All's back. The experimental surgery included some sort of NIL deal, but M docs we're adamant he didn't need it, and had strong reservations about All marketing it because it could lead to more surgeries on healthy young backs.

Guh. I was saying other than…

Guh. I was saying other than Dexter but then my mind wrapped around Thibo. I got it right in my Wink writeup. Stupid thing to get wrong because I've watched so many Giants games in the last few weeks.

Intentional. I wrote rip…

Intentional. I wrote rip after it

Now with comments on

Now with comments on

The talent in Chicago at…

The talent in Chicago at that time was unreal.

For the youngs, the phone…

For the youngs, the phone chant started because (I know this is hard to imagine) people used to use their cell phones mostly to call each other. These things would ring with obnoxious loudness.

In quiet times most of the building could hear one go off. So we'd tell the goalie who it was and what she said.

That's the joke dot gif

That's the joke dot gif

They take away a Michigan pp…

They take away a Michigan pp (from the best PP in ncaa hockey) on that phantom bullshit, while Notre Dame has guys flopping left and right, two which earn reviews and one by their goalie that deserves to be on the highlight reels for dives. Their guy careens into our goalie and knocks the net off its morrings and they ignore Michigan was in the act of shooting as well, and then they call a penalty on Estapa for NOT hitting their goalie at a critical juncture in the game.

This game wasn't on the level. It's reached the point now where it needs to be made a thing at the league office.

I am very proud to have made…

I am very proud to have made it through this entire game without ref screaming on twitter. The closest I came was at the end when the linesman invented an offsides after Michigan took possession to prevent an empty-netter.

MeanJoe's weird replies
I…

MeanJoe's weird replies

I don't know what was up with you last night so I changed your password. Email me with a good explanation to get your account back.

This feels like the reverse…

This feels like the reverse of that game last year when the Wings were holding onto a wild card spot and Tampa Bay came to town and shut them out. That loss was the catalyst for trading away Bertuzzi and another cycle of being hockey's have-nots.

There's still a lot to finish, but they look like they're going back to the playoffs finally.

Michigan playbooks are blue…

Michigan playbooks are blue binders. That's a notebook.

Harbaugh wasn't trying to…

Harbaugh wasn't trying to hire Hart.

^ This. I mean, Craig's…

^ This. I mean, Craig's arguing that this family was genetically robust when their last heir died of a Hemophelia B mutation so well known in the Prussian and Spanish royal houses it was literally called "The Royal Disease."

Holy shit this is exactly…

Holy shit this is exactly what I was talking about today on TKA. You can speak to his motivations all you want, but the #1 most economical thing the NCAA member institutions are in a position to offer players is an education, and they're actively devaluing that the more they promote a system where every player is a free agent every year.

What they need to do instead of regulate is incentivize.

Caleb Downs
Apparently…

Caleb Downs

Apparently unfollowed OSU on instagram. Don't know what to make of it, but this post was so bad it had to come down.

I'm kicking myself I missed…

I'm kicking myself I missed a key point. Remember I said the center comes off the line and reads whatever the running back is doing. That's how you defeat the single wing offense right? What the Mad Magicians did was make that read impossible. The ball was moving around so much the guy could not figure out what direction to go in and they couldn't play it the way they wanted to.

That's the relevant part for today too. You can run this until the middle linebacker figures out what you're doing. You saw the Washington play where Paige makes the stop: Colson is flying off the wrong direction. But you need that misdirection to make it work because defenses have known how to defeat this for 130 years.

I'm sorry I was recording this a little too tired and started yammering instead of sticking to the script.

That should tell you how…

That should tell you how many friends Stapleton has left, that the first name drop is literally the friendliest person in Michigan football. Even Jim Tressel says Madej's his dude.

MichiganNation2 isn't a…

MichiganNation2 isn't a reliable source, but the email from Stapleton is real. I saw a copy of it on Tuesday night and I think Balas posted it to his message board yesterday. That's probably where this twitter account got it from.

Fair enough. I went back and…

Fair enough. I went back and gave Jenkins a +1.

This is discussed.

This is discussed.

You're cherry-picking what…

You're cherry-picking what you're not making up (Advocated for Yaklich? Wanted Bakich fired?) out of whole cloth. I really wanted the first post advocating giving Howard another year to be better than a pack of recriminating mistruths.

I thought they were fixed…

I thought they were fixed. We have a big update rolling out tomorrow so i'm not going to tinker w anything today.