Stories about Denard (and Kelvin) At Judge's Table

Submitted by M-Wolverine on

Sorry for the mutliple posts, but I was surprised this wasn't already on the board. (I also recommend the excellent Darboh article a couple of post down).  Anyway, Denard and Kelvin served as judges at Pioneer High School’s Future Stars 2012, and one of the other judges (local media personality) tells the story of sitting next to them.

http://www.annarbor.com/news/five-chairs-lessons-learned-from-denard-ro…

Through her son she actually asks a nice question to Grady about his time at Wal-Mart, and I'll just leave the Denard magic with one word- piano.

I'm not much for serving up Denard porn, because I sometimes think we get a little overboard on where he (currently) stands among the all time greats (though not where he currently stands with this team, where me might be underrated).  But I think what gets that reaction is that as great as he is as a player, and it is pretty great, he's even better as a person.  Because while I'm sure he's just a non-perfect college kid, you have to be a lot better actor for all that good-naturedness (did I make up a word?) to be fake.

And I'm glad to see KG go through all his career ups and downs, and still coming out of Michigan another success story.

NOLA Wolverine

January 29th, 2012 at 2:13 PM ^

He, by all accounts, is a really great person. It's pretty cool to see someone like him get to that level in college football, because we hear quite a bit about d-bags who make it to that level. Even better that his personality represents the university we root for. One of my favorite parts of this is that we only really hear about Denard, and hardly ever from him. Really seems for the most part unchanged by the attention.

But, to one of your points, I can't see how he is under rated on this team when there has almost been no buzz surrounding our receivers, who went out and won a majority of 50/50 battles which can be directly attributed to the Virginia Tech and Notre Dame wins. He receives enough attention considering that there are 10 other positions on the offense, most of which we hardly ever get excited about. 

M-Wolverine

January 29th, 2012 at 2:28 PM ^

Because there are STILL people saying "put someone else in at QB". Overrated, because I'm not ready to call him better than Woodson, Carter and all the other greats we've had play for us, whereas some act like we've never had a player as talented. (Yet, at least)

BRCE

January 29th, 2012 at 8:47 PM ^

I've never said it, but the reviving of the sentiment after several temporary deaths mirrors Denard's roller coaster season in terms of individual performance (which doesn't always reflect W/L). It will die permanently when his play consistenly breaches closer to waters treaded in the OSU game than what we saw vs. MSU, Va Tech, etc.

 

 

bluebelle

January 29th, 2012 at 7:36 PM ^

When I was flying back down to Florida from Michigan after the holidays, a group of men seated behind me on the plane kept talking about how "good Michigan will be once Gardner is in at QB." And this was before the Sugar Bowl, after Denard's fantastic games against Nebraska and Ohio State. All I could do was shake my head... 

Cole777

January 29th, 2012 at 2:41 PM ^

Being a student at Pioneer, I can say that seeing them was very cool. Neither of them were very good judges, but that didn't matter. Everything they said was met with rapturous applause. The girl who won shook hands with Kelvin and almost burst into tears. Maybe even more meaningful was afterward, when instead of leaving they stayed and took pictures with the performers.

MGoShoe

January 29th, 2012 at 5:56 PM ^

...morning. It's always nice to see your good opinion of someone reaffirmed. Athletes are always put on pedestals and either lionized or demonized - or both. In the case of Denard, neither is needed.