The other reason for MSU fans to not go nuts about the recruiting class rankings is that we've been consistently signing smaller classes. Dantonio has never signed more than the 23 he did in 2007. Which also shows that John L. Smith didn't leave the place in as bad of a state as was commonly thought.
He told the DetNews that he picked MSU partly because Michigan wanted him to play TE. I had to come and post here because I'm actually the only MSU fan who follows recruiting left. Everyone else killed themselves yesterday over Monty Madaris waffling at his high school's fax machine.
P.S.-I really want someone to ask Mark Dantonio if he knows what a hipster is. Or a meme.
...to play you, let your nice friends up the road know the method.
Izzo gets asked about by fans on his radio show from time to time. The last time I heard it, he responded with something like "I don't know. Ask the pope." Apparently, repeated overtures in many different permutations have been rebuffed.
Western is actually sitting home at (6-6) hoping for some 5-6 Sun Belt and Conference USA teams lose and improve the Broncos bowl chances. There's not a Kalamazoo-based bowl game (The Bells Bowl?) so they're probably at a pretty big disadvantage to more nearby teams for selection.
John L., whatever else you'd say about him and it would all be true, actually mostly cleaned up the behavior problems that had flourished under Bobby Williams. (Smoker's drug use and RB Dawan Moss dragging a Lansing cop being the most notorious) Smith's teams had one ugly incident where the top two TEs beat the crap out of a kid and (supposedly) tried to drown him in the Red Cedar. He suspended both of them for the rest of the season and that's about all I recall. John L's teams were known for bad discipline ON the field, not really off. He also much improved the academic standing of the team from Saban/Bobby levels, if I remember right.
I'm suprised you wouldn't know this, given the Dantonio-taunting potential. Blocking out Bobby Williams' entire tenure seems more like something we'd do in Spartan land.
That's probably the best defense of John L. Smith. Compare the talent he and Bobby had and it seems to me he did about the same with less. Plus, he really hated Notre Dame.
....on Thomas? I thought the general book on him was that he's a pretty natural, instictual LB?
MSU is not as poor for Big 10 DE sized people as we have been in the past, either. Thomas has a pretty good chance, if he's really all that at LB, to come in and take over Eric Gordon's vacated OLB spot as a true frosh. Nobody among the group of backup LBs has really distinguished themselves that I've seen except Max Bullough, who's the heir apparent in the middle.
Dantonio inhereited a team much more suited for his preferred system in his first year than Rodriguez did. Suprising, given that we were making a fairly opposite transition, but true. John L. Smith apparently had a pretty good power-running, balanced offense team that he didn't make use of.
MSU 2007 had a decent QB, two very good backs including Jehuu Caulcrick who was almost unstoppable inside the five, a disruptive, experienced d-line and an offensive line that had something like seven guys with starting experience, including four 5th-year seniors. Plus, Devin Thomas emerged from the middle of John L's depth chart as an excellent reciever and Kellen Davis was a very good TE.
He had to do a lot with the D, staring at least three freshman, but they all turned into four-year starters.
Overall, a lot easier than trying to run the Rodspread with Threet and Sheridan.
....plus the severity of the shellacking we took has sort of a calming effect. And the game was over by halftime, so we had some extra time to relax and breathe deep.
...a perfect surprise onside against ND last year. They did it after taking a small lead, which seems best as far as surprise goes. Brett Swenson got the ball to do a nice, slow roll and the recoverer played it perfectly, getting ahead of it and waiting for it to cross the 40, while shielding the slow-reacting ND guys away with his body. I wish I could remember who did the recovering.
....according to same paper, along with most of MSU's other top targets, of course.
"It was an amazing game to be at," Zettel said. "I think that Michigan State is starting to become a very good team. I was able to have some small talk with a lot of the recruits at the game."
Not a particularily encourgaging quote for MSU. The RCMB's conventional wisdom is that he won't pick us, whether he goes to U of M or not.
As someone who is irked by the very existence of The Game (the hyped rivalry not the rapper) and all it represents, it really needs to be saved just for tradition's sake.
The biggest lesson of the Big 12 and ACC division splits is to keep the rivals together in sensible divisions and don't try to manufacture a championship matchup, we're going to not make rivalries the highest priority and try to manufacture a OSU-M championship game?
Can Tom Osbourne explain to his new peers what happened to the Oklahoma-Nebraska game and how that wasn't good? And how trying to guess competitive balance is a pretty inexact science taught at Colorado and Kansas State? One problem I see with the since PSU joined data is that you've had at least two pretty improbable things happening during that time.
1.) Michigan's historic reign of winning seasons encompasses most of it. Anybody think any school in the 85-scholarships, everyone's on TV era breaks that?
2.)Joe Pa's reign at Penn State. The average good school would have had to make a hire or three in 17 years since they joined the Big 10, with all the pitfalls that entails. Excellent Big East coaches or promoting assistants who get big bowl wins after Saban leaves might have done Penn State in for a 4-5 period at some point under the normal run of things.
Maybe the compromise would be to say, the geographic ones are the divisions for the next 8 years, we can revisit them if they prove to be uncompetitive.
Mayo doesn't display any more knowledge of MSU stuff than this for actually "covering" that beat. He's a cliche-recycling opinion writer and doesn't seem to do any original reporting. Booth Newspapers (GR Press, Kazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, I think the Saginaw and Bay City papers) got rid of Steve Grinzcel as their MSU beat writer and replaced him with half-assing by GR Press people. The Kalamazoo Gazette (I still get the actual paper paper) actually has a pretty good writer assigned to covering WMU sports. That was probably a sound business decision, as I'm only subscribing to get local news and I'm not going to stop wanting to know what the county commission and township board are doing because the paper's day-old MSU coverage is now of much lesser quality.
My impression is that David Mayo actually knows a lot about boxing, when I hear him on the radio he sounds enthusiastic and informed about it. But when I read him on anything else, I get the opposite impression.
And I'll stand as one vote in favor of sportswriters smoking more weed, not less.
...any slack from you guys, given that the slap was supposed to mock Charlie Weiss? I thought we were supposed to get along when we were disliking Notre Dame. John L really hated the Irish, for whatever reason.
The unidentified MSU player was Nehemiah Warrick, from a game in Madison in 2007. The head he hunted belonged to Kyle Jefferson, who lived.
Gladwell arguing with Steve Sailer without pointing out his racial crankery, which Sailer has made himself well known for among people who read leftwing political blogs, would kinda be disadvantaging those reading Gladwell who don't also read Matthew Yglesias.
It doesn't make Sailer wrong about this and I guess it fits the dictionary definition of ad hominem, but I don't see it as a problem with it unless Gladwell actually hadn't even bothered to refute the argument. And it isn't the same as your example, Tha Stunna, because it's an attack on Sailer's prior published thinking and analysis, not an attack on him because of some random characteristic that no serious person would believe to be an impediment to clear thinking.
...actually.
When Colletto had his season as Lions offensive coordinator, I think a lot of us were thinking 'why is this guy even coaching?' and GERG provides an answer.
Unless ND's roster is about in the same state as M's was in 2008, especially lacking a QB who could really run the new coach's system to best effect, I don't see how it's a comparison. There's not an equation you can put in where y= new coach success.
I'm sure you've all heard from MSU fans who point out that Mark Dantonio did a similar transformation of systems in 2007 and went 7-6 with players John L. Smith went 4-8 with. As fun as that game might be, the truth is that Dantonio got a squad that fit his system pretty well: a steady QB, a thunder and lightning tailback duo, seven big offensive linemen with starting experience, an NFL quality TE, an NFL quality WR/KR, a good front four on the D-line, with two NFLers, three good safeties, a decent CB, two good returning kickers (one was a kickoff specialist) and a redshirt frosh punter. He added a few guys who made impacts as freshman.
I don't follow M close enough to really compare MSU's 2007 roster to what Rodriguez had in 2008, but I think you actually have to make that comparison of rosters to compare the situations at all.
...of the guy's argument in my opinion, but the thing I really liked was the 'think like university president not a sports fan' thing. I think that's something a lot of people aren't doing when thinking about expansion, especially when they say Pitt or ISU. Those only makes sense if they're just hot to add a 12th team so they can stage a championship game.
Dunno how much you read of Frank the Tank, but I took his general point to be saying that Texas makes sense because they'd be a big splash PR wise, be a great market for the BTN, would fit as a research university and would be a great addition in the Big 2 sports. And he conjectured that Texas would have to at least give it a look because of the additional money they could reap for athletics from the BTN contract, which is so much better (according to him) than even the disproportionate share of Big 12 revenue Texas gets. And the money and opportunities for research that being part of the Big 10 would get them. That sounds pretty sensible to me, who had initially discounted Texas to the BTN as crazytalk.
Just as a fan, I don't want expansion. I don't see the need for a championship game. If the problem is the long break between season and bowls, or the loss of attention, you can address that by scheduling games later in the calendar. If the Land Grant Trophy was obscured by snow, that'd probably be a good thing for all mankind.
I see by the link below, ND's AD basically said 'No, witless, you're full of crap. We do too care about conference.'
They seem pretty happy without one. As an MSU fan, I certainly don't support some Big 10 ND ban. We've got a historical sorta friendly rivalry with them. (Old timers say ND helped legitimize what was then MAC and MSC football and that we probably don't get into the Big 10 without that) Plus, they're a win we can get and often get more credit for then is deserved.
As for expansion, I've been reading this guy's stuff on it.
http://frankthetank.wordpress.com/
He makes a lot of sensible points. The main summary is don't think like a fan, think like a university president, about whether the new member would burnish the conference's rep, academically and athletically. Or at least not hurt it in either area. One interesting thing that came up in his comment section was the loud opinion from some ND fans that they would be very unhappy with academic affliation with 11 universities that do non-Pope-approved research. I dunno how widespread conservative Catholicism is within the ND fanbase, but I bet it's a factor among enough influential alums that would be a factor they'd have to consider.
As for the Big East having leverage over ND, I don't see it. My impression is that our mutual friend doesn't care enough about basketball to be strong armed by the Big East. There are also so many basketball conferences that they could absolutely find a home.
...Grey was the MSU homer and Bakita was the U of M homer, but I'll take your word that it's the opposite, as I'm not so sure. Whichever one the MSU homer is, I seem to remember he predicted something like 10 wins for us in 2009. Ahh, August...
Kazoo resident, MSUer here. Simonson sounded to me like he was still pretty heavily on Rodriguez's side. He segued into one of his ultra hilarious comedy bits about how the Freep was moving its headquarters to Breslin or some such (what MSU did to get dragged into it, I'm not sure. I tend to think that Freep vs. Rodriguez is an inter-Blue affair that only interests us for entertainment value. He also bashed John L. late in the foolishness) and that the Freep was reporting that Bin Laden was hiding out in Schmbe.....oh, it's too lame to even type. Simonson sucks, but he sucks less than NPR I'd already heard or whatever national crap 96.1 was running after Sean and Terp end at 6 p.m.
Anyway, Simonson will turn on Rodriguez whenever Rich stops coming on his show. He's not about Green or Blue. He kisses up to Izzo something fierce, but not Dantonio because Izzo comes on his show and Dantonio doesn't. (Which makes me like Dantonio as a person a bit more, but as a head coach a bit less)
My west Michigan sports radio ratings, which I'm sure everyone is dying to read:
1. Bakita and Grey (though I think someone up thread may have gotten which one is the MSU homer wrong). Too much ND talk ("Am I alone in disliking the French? I thought not." - Al Bundy upon entering a British pub), but they don't generally freak out and don't climb on their high horses too much.
2. Sean and Terp are pretty good and I like that they're bringing on Tom Kowalski more. Their main virtue is honestly that they don't refer to themselves in the third person.
118. The Huge Show. Blowhard, knows less about any given topic than anyone this side of Colin Cowherd. Ego needs to regulated by the FCC, etc.
...ran the 4-2-5 in the John L. Smith years, finding a "bandit" that could cover worth anything was a big problem. SirDarean Adams (who was a pretty fast LB and actually returned punts in 2007 under Dantonio, before he got first suspended for an off-the-field incident and then ineligible) manned the position for 3 years and couldn't cover down the field. The staff continued to call defenses that had him defending the deep middle and he continued to not make plays on the ball when he was in the safety-type role. His predecessor was Tyrell Dortch, a converted RB (who got carries on the 1999 squad before the coaches decided T.J. Duckett was more valuable at RB than LB) who came back from a gruesome leg injury to start in 2003. He seemed to do better in deep coverage, but that may have been teams not zeroing in on the defense's weakness in the first year of John L. regime.
The idea of U of M having the two hybrid types rarely responsible, if I'm understanding the general defense correctly, for covering deep zones seems like a way around that problem.
There's actually been a lot of jabber that MSU will run a lot more 3-4 look next year.
Jones had said all along he wouldn't leave if he got anything less than a first round grade. With all the talk about the NFL CBA, it seems like being drafted in 2nd (where Jones is generally graded by draft sites of unknown veracity) this year could be as good as being drafted in the late first round next year. Plus, he'd get his signing bonus before any possible lockout.
I think he'll be helped as a player by staying for another year and work on his pass drops (if we've got anyone who can teach him pass defense, arghh) and getting bigger, but I don't know that his bank account will be helped that much, even if he has another excellent season. To say nothing of the injury risk.
He's talked about promising his mom he'd get a degree and all the sacrifices his parents made, working multiple jobs when he was growing up. He also seems a bit different of a guy than what you think of as the average football player, saying he wanted to be a music teacher, and just being sort of quiet.
I gotta say I appreciate him making choices that seem to privilege my amusement over his financial interests.
...I'm really, really glad Woodson won, even though he's a Wolverine. Of your buddy's arguments, none really offer any support for "Charles Woodson was NOT the most outstanding college football player in whatever year that was." The lack of truth in labeling just irks me.
....this is the alignment I generally like. It also makes much more sense with the presumed aim of getting BTN on more cable systems than Pitt would.
Keeps M and OSU in one division. Repeat games are lame and breaking traditions is lamer, so you guys still have to play OSU at the end of the year. No OSU/M literal championship games, assuming, you know.
Keeps MSU and M together and keeps Minn, WI and Iowa together. These are really less of a big deal, because you could take care of them by guaranteeing one out of division rivalry for each team. I'd take Wisconsin for MSU, they just bother me for some reason. I think they're crowding their side of the lake. Just play the interdivisional games early to make championship game repeats less pernicious.
Continues the fond hopes of George Perles that MSU/PSU will become a real rivalry and hotly contest the glued-together stuff from a closet trophy with championship implications.
I don't buy PSU/OSU/M in one division as a problem (assuming, you know) because things change and you can't base your divisions on that. In the short term, Iowa has as good a claim to pretender to the crown as PSU does. Nebraska would alleviate all the football balance concerns.
That's a pretty good yardstick for breaking your ties among rivalries.
Mine are:
1. Michigan
2. Notre Dame, surprisingly close second. But my mom was at MSU during the 60s and used complain vaguely about Ara Parseghian. Then there's the constantly overrated thing.
It has to be a team you're already rivals with. Like the Lewin QB projection system from Football Outsiders, it only works by using the scouts input on who's a top prospect, or you end up with Colt Brennan being the best NFL prospect ev-ah, or Montana State being Michigan State's biggest rival.
"And no, I don't expect MSU to come out of that division, like, EVER. They should REALLY hate it."
I'd say that playing for a Big Tenwelve title without beating M, Wiscy, Iowa and OSU would feel a little odd. (For the record last time MSU beat that list was 1987) If we're not competing for the title, we're not competing for the title. I don't think the mechanics of that are very important to me. Maybe Big 12 North fans of recent years think they're competing for titles, but most everyone correctly thinks Oklahoma-Texas is for the Big 12 title.
...there isn't any evidence this happened.
It didn't look that way to me as MSU fan watching our pre-Michigan games, though I didn't see the Wisconsin game. MSU didn't look like it was playing any different schemes against M(t)SU, CMU, ND than we did against M. We just played it a lot better against M (and against Illinois).
..."Also better than I should for 2-3." As in I'd rather be 2-3 with two close losses (Wiscy score was misleadingly close) than 2-3 having been soundly beaten three times.
I wouldn't say I'm happy with the season. I was thinking, conservatively, 8-4 with what I thought was an easier schedule over 2008. I thought the (get ready to laugh) defense would carry us through while the offense figured out life after Ringer. Maybe we go 7-1 and get there, but I wouldn't bet my collection of green and white stuff on that outcome. A lot better at 2-3 with a win over M than I would at 1-4 without a victory over a I-A team and the entire Internet of M fans howling, though.
If you want me to admit that Wolvy has had a better season so far, despite Saturday, I will. They obviously have. Ask me if I'd rather be 4-1, with our only loss to you, I'm enough of a born-and-raised Wolverine hater to think about it a second, but I'm (I think) confident that Dantonio's team won't go 1-6 down the stretch so I'd take that. Plus it would mean we'd beat ND. I love beating Michigan, but I hate losing to ND, especially under Slappy Weiss.
"# One possible explanation: Steve Sharik thinks Dantonio "gets the rivalry" to the point of manic obsession: "After watching MSU's D for their first 4 games and then today, it seems obvious that they spent almost all off-season and much of fall camp working on defending Michigan. I don't know how else to explain how a so-so run defense, horrendous secondary and meh pass rush turned into the Super Bowl Champion Baltimore Ravens that suddenly." Michigan might be wise to have a package of stuff designed to combat this in the future; it was equally obvious last year that disproportionate amounts of effort had gone into preparing for Michigan. Congratulations, Spartans: you're 2-3."
(Spartan fan)
At least to the bit that MSU was holding back and focusing on Michigan to the point of robbing from other games.
It looked like the same defensive schemes and alignments, the players just executed it much better against U of M than they did previously. (And in the first half we mastered the voodoo-drop-the-ball-open-reciever scheme.) U of M's oline is also not as improved as I thought it would be over last year. Kinda like the MSU secondary, experience doesn't always make players a lot better.
Emotionally? I don't think so, but that's subjective. I guess we'll see how we look at Illinois, as far as the proverbial hangover. Dantonio is 2-0 following U of M games, but the last second Wiscy win last year was a hangoverish effort.
Mostly, just feeling good about beating Michigan. Also better than I should for 2-3. We're two or three very improbable plays (onside kick and offsides on FG against CMU, blocked PAT at ND) from being 4-1.
...slap thing against MSU in 2006 (uncontrollable rage at the memory of that game) was very "these are not the droids you're looking for."
The best thing about John L. Smith was that he really hated the Irish.
...at:
"listening to Cowherd spew ridiculous inaccuracies today about this situation and the program as a whole."
Even Michigan doesn't deserve that.
If Cowherd's "show" is what's on the radio, your barber might be Satan and you might be dead and in hell.
...the name, but Jolly Green Giants seem like a pretty MSU blog.
http://jollygreengiants.wordpress.com/
I don't think they'd vote MSU#1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! every week or anything.
Recent Comments
This, exactly, GoBlogSparty.
The other reason for MSU fans to not go nuts about the recruiting class rankings is that we've been consistently signing smaller classes. Dantonio has never signed more than the 23 he did in 2007. Which also shows that John L. Smith didn't leave the place in as bad of a state as was commonly thought.
Did your boys really not offer Jamal Lyles?
He told the DetNews that he picked MSU partly because Michigan wanted him to play TE. I had to come and post here because I'm actually the only MSU fan who follows recruiting left. Everyone else killed themselves yesterday over Monty Madaris waffling at his high school's fax machine.
P.S.-I really want someone to ask Mark Dantonio if he knows what a hipster is. Or a meme.
...to play you, let your nice friends up the road know the method.
Izzo gets asked about by fans on his radio show from time to time. The last time I heard it, he responded with something like "I don't know. Ask the pope." Apparently, repeated overtures in many different permutations have been rebuffed.
It should have read "2013."
/Getting my 2012 trolling in early.
Western is actually sitting home at (6-6) hoping for some 5-6 Sun Belt and Conference USA teams lose and improve the Broncos bowl chances. There's not a Kalamazoo-based bowl game (The Bells Bowl?) so they're probably at a pretty big disadvantage to more nearby teams for selection.
John L., whatever else you'd say about him and it would all be true, actually mostly cleaned up the behavior problems that had flourished under Bobby Williams. (Smoker's drug use and RB Dawan Moss dragging a Lansing cop being the most notorious) Smith's teams had one ugly incident where the top two TEs beat the crap out of a kid and (supposedly) tried to drown him in the Red Cedar. He suspended both of them for the rest of the season and that's about all I recall. John L's teams were known for bad discipline ON the field, not really off. He also much improved the academic standing of the team from Saban/Bobby levels, if I remember right.
I'm suprised you wouldn't know this, given the Dantonio-taunting potential. Blocking out Bobby Williams' entire tenure seems more like something we'd do in Spartan land.
That's probably the best defense of John L. Smith. Compare the talent he and Bobby had and it seems to me he did about the same with less. Plus, he really hated Notre Dame.
So, um, Go Blue, is how you say it?
...ahead and type that name twice more. See what happens.
....on Thomas? I thought the general book on him was that he's a pretty natural, instictual LB?
MSU is not as poor for Big 10 DE sized people as we have been in the past, either. Thomas has a pretty good chance, if he's really all that at LB, to come in and take over Eric Gordon's vacated OLB spot as a true frosh. Nobody among the group of backup LBs has really distinguished themselves that I've seen except Max Bullough, who's the heir apparent in the middle.
Dantonio inhereited a team much more suited for his preferred system in his first year than Rodriguez did. Suprising, given that we were making a fairly opposite transition, but true. John L. Smith apparently had a pretty good power-running, balanced offense team that he didn't make use of.
MSU 2007 had a decent QB, two very good backs including Jehuu Caulcrick who was almost unstoppable inside the five, a disruptive, experienced d-line and an offensive line that had something like seven guys with starting experience, including four 5th-year seniors. Plus, Devin Thomas emerged from the middle of John L's depth chart as an excellent reciever and Kellen Davis was a very good TE.
He had to do a lot with the D, staring at least three freshman, but they all turned into four-year starters.
Overall, a lot easier than trying to run the Rodspread with Threet and Sheridan.
....plus the severity of the shellacking we took has sort of a calming effect. And the game was over by halftime, so we had some extra time to relax and breathe deep.
...chatter and his statements, it seemed not. Lawrence Thomas said he didn't really like the recruiting process and picked MSU pretty quickly.
It seemed like he didn't really look much at anyone else.
...a perfect surprise onside against ND last year. They did it after taking a small lead, which seems best as far as surprise goes. Brett Swenson got the ball to do a nice, slow roll and the recoverer played it perfectly, getting ahead of it and waiting for it to cross the 40, while shielding the slow-reacting ND guys away with his body. I wish I could remember who did the recovering.
Oh, and, BLARGHHHHHATEMICHIGAN111111111111111SMASHDENARDROBINSONSFACE
111111111111111RODRIGUEZGOBACKTOJOHNDENVERSFAVORITEEASTERNSTATE
GOSTATE11111YOUDIDNTREALLYGOTOMICHIGANSHAMMALLAMADINGDONG
ARROGANCE
Thankfully, nothing bad involving onside kicks has happened to MSU in the last few seasons, so I'm sure we'll be okay on that score tommorrow.
C'mon, it's not like the Gameday crew didn't deserve it.
....according to same paper, along with most of MSU's other top targets, of course.
As someone who is irked by the very existence of The Game (the hyped rivalry not the rapper) and all it represents, it really needs to be saved just for tradition's sake.
The biggest lesson of the Big 12 and ACC division splits is to keep the rivals together in sensible divisions and don't try to manufacture a championship matchup, we're going to not make rivalries the highest priority and try to manufacture a OSU-M championship game?
Can Tom Osbourne explain to his new peers what happened to the Oklahoma-Nebraska game and how that wasn't good? And how trying to guess competitive balance is a pretty inexact science taught at Colorado and Kansas State? One problem I see with the since PSU joined data is that you've had at least two pretty improbable things happening during that time.
1.) Michigan's historic reign of winning seasons encompasses most of it. Anybody think any school in the 85-scholarships, everyone's on TV era breaks that?
2.)Joe Pa's reign at Penn State. The average good school would have had to make a hire or three in 17 years since they joined the Big 10, with all the pitfalls that entails. Excellent Big East coaches or promoting assistants who get big bowl wins after Saban leaves might have done Penn State in for a 4-5 period at some point under the normal run of things.
Maybe the compromise would be to say, the geographic ones are the divisions for the next 8 years, we can revisit them if they prove to be uncompetitive.
Mayo doesn't display any more knowledge of MSU stuff than this for actually "covering" that beat. He's a cliche-recycling opinion writer and doesn't seem to do any original reporting. Booth Newspapers (GR Press, Kazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, I think the Saginaw and Bay City papers) got rid of Steve Grinzcel as their MSU beat writer and replaced him with half-assing by GR Press people. The Kalamazoo Gazette (I still get the actual paper paper) actually has a pretty good writer assigned to covering WMU sports. That was probably a sound business decision, as I'm only subscribing to get local news and I'm not going to stop wanting to know what the county commission and township board are doing because the paper's day-old MSU coverage is now of much lesser quality.
My impression is that David Mayo actually knows a lot about boxing, when I hear him on the radio he sounds enthusiastic and informed about it. But when I read him on anything else, I get the opposite impression.
And I'll stand as one vote in favor of sportswriters smoking more weed, not less.
...any slack from you guys, given that the slap was supposed to mock Charlie Weiss? I thought we were supposed to get along when we were disliking Notre Dame. John L really hated the Irish, for whatever reason.
The unidentified MSU player was Nehemiah Warrick, from a game in Madison in 2007. The head he hunted belonged to Kyle Jefferson, who lived.
Gladwell arguing with Steve Sailer without pointing out his racial crankery, which Sailer has made himself well known for among people who read leftwing political blogs, would kinda be disadvantaging those reading Gladwell who don't also read Matthew Yglesias.
It doesn't make Sailer wrong about this and I guess it fits the dictionary definition of ad hominem, but I don't see it as a problem with it unless Gladwell actually hadn't even bothered to refute the argument. And it isn't the same as your example, Tha Stunna, because it's an attack on Sailer's prior published thinking and analysis, not an attack on him because of some random characteristic that no serious person would believe to be an impediment to clear thinking.