maryland awful thing

Things discussed:

• Nate Stanley: Dude!
• Maryland: Dude! Once you have a certain level of money and power you think you lose accountability. How to check this: have a legitimate 3rd party making medical decisions. Any donor who wanted to pull their money: pull your money.
• MSU-Purdue: dude! State gets the rain again, Blough had his bad day.
• Penn State: At their most potent when Trace McSorley is running the ball. Make him throw! Alan Robinson wanted to come to Michigan badly—they don’t have anyone like that anymore.
• McSorley healthy? He ran a 51-yard TD after his knee got banged. He’s performing at a better level than his stats imply but his receivers are his receivers.
• Their DL has five guys who can get after the quarterback. Two Michael Dwumfour types at DT and three dynamite DEs, including Yetur Gross-Matos who’s playing out of his mind.
• Nobody can say Oruwariye, nobody in the linebacker level looks like a Linebacker U guy. Can PSU stand up against Michigan’s ground game? Pull out all the Harbaugh and grind them down.
• Jansen: Brian explains why you don’t run much power against an odd man front. Here’s a graphic from me:
  
  
• Ed Warinner has a play sheet now—Michigan didn’t know what they’re doing with Shea against Notre Dame; maybe Ed’s teaching them how to not suck at spread
• We want Bama…to win against LSU? Don’t trust the committee to leave out a 1-loss Alabama that doesn’t go to the SEC Championship over a Michigan that wins out.
• Ferentz still brings up the fact that Chris L. Rucker got out of jail and played against him.

You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream on Podbean.

Segment two is here. Segment three is here.

THE USUAL LINKS

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• What's with the theme music?

Not every school sells their soul.

Reminder. Tom VH will hold you at Literati tomorrow at 7. He'll also be on MGoRadio. Pat pat, there there. I'll be there, too, but I didn't write a book. 

So that happened, and then un-happened. Maryland retained DJ Durkin, and then fired DJ Durkin, because people are just in charge of things for no reason. Like Michigan State, the people in charge of things in this case are the regents. Reports that president Wallace Loh wanted to axe everyone were likely true, and after everyone from the student government to both candidate for governor publicly complained Maryland admitted what every adult American other than their board members already knew: DJ Durkin's career is toast.

Anyway, now's a good time to reflect on the colossal failure Big Ten expansion has been:

Let’s start with rutger. I don’t know if I need to say anything more about these guys that hasn’t been said in the past four years. They’re terrible at the major sports. They’ve embarrassingly brought down the strength of the Big Ten schedule. A few months after their Big Ten membership became official, the basketball coach was caught on video throwing basketballs and yelling homophobic slurs at players. Ex-AD Julie Hermann was routinely making shocking statements to the media and embroiled in controversy at her former schools. Ex-football coach Kyle Flood once threatened a professor if he wouldn’t change a player’s grade. The list goes on. rutger remains an easy target. We’ve already covered them extensively on this blog. Oh yeah, this [a Rutgers player being kicked off the team for a failed double-homicide] happened yesterday as well. Not great, Piscataway!

Moving onto Maryland. Until recently, the frustration with the Terps was a little more subtle than their New Jersey counterparts. The football team employed Randy Edsall. The basketball team hasn’t reached the heights it did under Gary Williams, attendance is down after a post-B1G boost, and an FBI investigation looms over the program. At least men’s lacrosse and women’s hoops have been reliable, though.

But then there is the situation with head football coach DJ Durkin, which after months of investigations regarding McNair’s death, was seemingly resolved yesterday. The Maryland Board of Regents overruled outgoing university president Wallace Loh, who seemingly wanted Durkin fired, and reinstated Durkin as the coach, despite the release of a 200-page report that illustrated the abusive behavior of the coaching staff under his watch. After all of this, one startling fact remains: a 19 year-old student-athlete died, and the head coach has been allowed to keep his job. Unsurprisingly, Jordan McNair’s family was angry about this decision, and at least 3 players walked out of a team meeting with Durkin yesterday. Now, the university administration has received tons of criticism, and is facing backlash from Maryland lawmakers as well as UMD students, who plan to hold a rally Thursday.

Great job, Jim Delany. Hope the brief surge in television revenue was worth it.

Urban's head. Meyer's strange behavior on the sideline has a cause:

Since kneeling down on the sideline in a game against Indiana on Oct. 6 because of severe headaches, Meyer has been peppered with questions about his health and future in coaching. He said the cause of the discomfort links back to a congenital arachnoid cyst in his brain, which has led to severe headaches at times in his career.

“The past four years, we’ve been working closely with coach Meyer to monitor and manage the symptoms that have risen from his enlarged congenital arachnoid cyst,” said Dr. Andrew Thomas, Meyer’s personal physician and the chief clinical officer at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center. “This includes aggressive headaches, which have particularly flared up the past two years.”

That sucks for him and does not excuse his conduct with Zach Smith. Verdict: still a bad dude. Not the kind that saves the president. An expired coupon kind of guy.

[After THE JUMP: secret scrimmages, ooooooh]

[Bryan Fuller]

Aftermath of a decision. Spencer tackles the boggling end of the Penn State-Ohio State game. Two timeouts and two checks to the sideline resulted in this:

This is the PSU version of that one screenshot from Lloyd Carr's last Ohio State game.

It is truly boggling even aside from the stunt that eats the play whole. Penn State's left tackle doesn't let the backside end go! PSU options nobody on fourth and five! Trace McSorley had 175 rushing yards! This is after two timeouts! And two checks to the sideline! Three different guys are utterly unblocked! What!

In related news:

I just did the math.

Penn State's win probability peaked at 97.3% in 2017 with 7:35 left on the clock, and 96.1% this season with 8:00 remaining.

The odds of Ohio State winning both of those games at that point, given those numbers, is 0.105%. Literally one in a thousand.

— Kevin Harrish (@Kevinish) October 1, 2018

FFS, James Franklin. Next year is going to be real interesting for PSU. McSorley is the thing propping them up right now in their Moorhead Wile E Coyote year. Could be very different next year. PSU fans can console themselves on 24/7; Franklin is recruiting his ass off. Which he'd better since he's the gameday equal of Brady Hoke. Except with more yelling at fans.

Someone please stop EMU. This looks like Pleasantville State taking on Generic Green Opponent That Has Frenched A Lady's Bosom*:

BALLGAME.

NIU's @Harbison_iii with the game-winning TD in triple OT! #theHardWay #MACtion pic.twitter.com/xzk6LrHXDc

— #MACtion (@MACSports) September 30, 2018

I am mesmerized, but it feels like NIU folks entering the endzone should suddenly burst into color.

*[I don't quite remember the plot of Pleasantville. Or, apparently, what to do in the boudoir. Boudoir. Boodwah.]

[After THE JUMP: Maryland's culture is screwed all the way to the boosters]