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Date Title Body
3 weeks 3 days ago Seriousness of concussions not new

I desperately wanted to play football in high school in 1955.  I had had two prior rather serious concussions, one as a result of a bicycle accident where I was unconscious for 9 hours in the hospital; and another diving into the knee of another baseball  player trying to catch a pop fly.  Even back then my General Practitioner doctor wouldn't let my parents let me play.  The seriousness of concussions is not new.
7 weeks 1 day ago Why???

I never understand all the obsession with failure to redshirt, especially with Hoke and Co. doing the recruiting.  From this point forward there are always going to be capable players in the pipeline.  Let the young man graduate and get on with his life.
7 weeks 4 days ago Saturday vs. Purdue

My wife and I attended the match on Saturday.  Lots of fun, and pretty good crowd on hand.  It was a little shocking to see Bernstein serving underhand right off the bat.  Not a real tennis player myself, but it was immediately obvious when he repeated that serve he had a shoulder problem. He didn't hit any overheads either, which can be a problem in doubles.  The guys all hung pretty tough.  As I recall, all three doubles matches had UM trailing at some point.  Even King and Bernstein were down 1-4.  Two of the three obviously rallied to win the doubles point.  Lot of fun.  Go Blue.
8 weeks 6 days ago Redefine

Cultures redefine words all the time.  Enormous means large.  Enormity means largety.
9 weeks 3 days ago Megatron II

Devin just got a look at Calvin Johnson's contract.
12 weeks 2 days ago Ben Braden redshirt

One of my pet peaves is the incessant clamboring for fresh recruits to redshirt their first year. That is simply asking a young man to spend at least 5 years in college.  If he can graduate in 4 years, it seems selfish to me as a fan to ask him to hang around so my team might be better 5 years from now.  If the recruit and the coaches think that is in his best interests to do so, fine.  But if that recruit thinks it is not in his best interest, that should be fine also.

It might be different if we only had a few high quality recruits.  Then we might be success-starved if they didn't hang around for a bigger, stronger, fifth year.  However, if we can continue to recruit high quality players, they will all be pushing for playing time early.  When Ben Braden is in his fourth year, he will have three years of top quality recruits right behind him. Keeping him for another year, it seems to me, would be frustrating for the guys behind to looking for playing time, and, apparently, frustrating for Braden who wants to be in a position to move on.

Couple of years ago lots of bloggers wanted Gardner's redshirt saved, so he would be around an extra year.  Now Gardner almost seems like an afterthought with Morris in the picture.  Who needs Gardner's redshirt.  Take a longer view of things, folks.

All of this brings up an interesting subject.  What is the ideal recruiting / playing cycle for an athlete.  Let's say you sign all 5* players, one for each position of the team every year.  Fans would want them all to redshirt year one, scout team year two, special teams year three, two deep year four, start year five.  Then off to the pros.  Repeat year after year, after year.  How many 5*s are going to settle for that pattern?

Maybe you cut that down a year; skip the redshirt year.  That gets your 5* backups playing time sooner.  But maybe you can't even recruit 5*s the second or third year in this cycle  because there are too  many 5*s ahead of them.

Maybe you cut that down one more year and send your 5*s off to the pros after three years.  This makes it easier to recruit  5*s behind the ones leaving early.  That would jeopardize you ARP, however.

Maybe you recruit only 4*s who will stay the full four years.

All this is highly theoretical, of course, but so is the reason we think in year zero, that a player needs to redshirt.

 
12 weeks 5 days ago Coach Funk

I think you have to attribute a lot of the O-line recruiting success to Coach Funk.  If you are a quality recruit and you follow  this blog at all; it couldn't have hurt that Funk's presentation at the coach's clinic last week was all business and not a single swear word used.  That has to mean something to parents, too.  I like the way this is heading.
13 weeks 2 days ago Quality

That is one intelligent and perceptive young man.
15 weeks 3 days ago There's always a frosh who's . . . . .

I remember the anguish a year or two ago when everyone was castigating RichRod for playing Gardner as a freshman and possibly ruining a redshirt year.  "We have to save that redshirt so we have Gardner for an extra year."  Now some are wanting to push him out of the way to make room for another frosh.  You know what, there will be another hotshot quarterback we recruit in another year or two whom everyone thinks should start as a frosh.  Funny how what goes around comes around.  I  am content to  let the coaches recruit and play the players they think give UM the best chances to win.  Go Blue.
15 weeks 6 days ago Looks like

Looks like I had it right last night.  Diamond full of himself.
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