Unverified Voracity Has Many Hues Comment Count

Brian

WHAT COLOR IS THIS MAN. Adidas released some uniformz for Nebraska that are as goofy as they usually are. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about what color this person is.

Screen_Shot_2015-07-23_at_9.15.29_AM.0[1]

Look at this person's face. That's weird. I guess he's put eyeblack everywhere in an effort to look like a big and tough and maybe remind people of the Ultimate Warrior. You can see that at the edge of his face his skin tone goes back to the lighter shade of his nose.

Now look at this person's arms.

!!!

The Braxton move. If you've followed the first few rounds of Draftageddon you know that Ohio State is basically 1969 Ohio State again. So they've moved a guy who was on Heisman short lists last year as a QB to WR, just cuz:

Miller’s fallback plan has become a reality, as he told SI.com on Thursday night that he plans to start the 2015 season playing H-Back—a hybrid receiver position—for the Buckeyes. Miller hasn’t completely closed the door on playing quarterback, as he estimates that he’ll spend 80% of the time during training camp at receiver and 20% with the quarterbacks. But Miller said with more than two months until he’ll be completely healthy at quarterback, he’s approaching this season as primarily a wide receiver.

"H-back" means a different thing in Urban Meyer's offense than it does in Hoke or Harbaugh's. This is not Wyatt Shallman. This is Percy Harvin.

That does chop down on the "yes, but" Michigan fans are preparing after they saw Devin Gardner's somewhat amateurish attempt to play WR. Miller's going to be an option on a bunch of running plays and get targeted on screens. He is not going to be asked to track balls over his shoulder after lining up on a cornerback—at least not much. That makes his move depressingly plausible.

It also opens up the kind of trick plays you last saw eight-year-olds come up with at the family picnic. Dude.

I have an easy way to fix this. Nobody knows what a catch is anymore. I don't have to tell Lions fans this, of course. Michigan's also had their brushes with the gray area against Virginia Tech and Iowa. The NFL's attempt to fix things:

The problem here is that this is not an algorithm for determining if it is a catch. You need a function. This is an NFL function, FWIW.

function isitacatch(feet_down, touchy_feely_vars){

if (feet_down < 2)

     return false;

if (feet_down > 2)

     return true;

if (feet_down == 2)

     did the ball touch the ground? return false;
     did the receiver bobble the ball such that he had to re-catch it while out of bounds?
     return false;

return true;

}

College version is the same except you return false only on feet_down < 1 and check the touchy-feely on 1 or 2. Also I know you don't need the last if statement.

The VT and Iowa plays above should not have to go to extraordinarily long replays subject to announcer debate. Both of them touched the ground. You have one job as a receiver: don't let it touch the ground.

At some point you have accomplished that job. That point is currently determined by feelingsball instead of "you took another step," which is pretty close to definitive. Engineers should write these things, not lawyers.

Gary Andersen sipping tea. Wisconsin has shot down one of their top recruits:

Incoming freshman running back Jordan Stevenson was denied admission to the University of Wisconsin, according to a report by 247sports.com.

Stevenson, a four-star prospect who was considered one of the Badgers’ top recruits for the 2015 class, confirmed on Twitter that his recruitment is open to any Division I program.

“#Badgernation Thanks for all the love also all the support through all I have been through much love,” Stevenson tweeted.

That's a bizarre situation. Players do occasionally get rejected by the NCAA clearinghouse, but in those cases the player heads to JUCO. Stevenson is apparently trying to find a landing spot this fall. And when serious academic schools who are serious reject players for reasons other than "you are literally not eligible to play", they do it before, say, late July.

If Stevenson does end up on campus this fall (Arkansas?), Gary Andersen's shocking jump to Oregon State will look pretty justified. It's one thing to deny entry to a player. It's another to do it now, months after he signed a LOI.

The wave, 1984. They were super excited about new technology back in the day:

According to Wikipedia, Michigan brought the wave back from a game against Washington in 1983. A letter to the editor claimed that it stuck because

"There are three reasons why the wave caught on at Michigan Wolverine games: It gave the fans something to do when the team was leading its opponent by 40 points, it was thrilling and exciting to see 105,000 people in the stands moving and cheering, and Bo Schembechler asked us not to do it."

From Michigan it spread to the Tigers, and when the Tigers won the World Series that year it was on TV a ton. The rest is history.

Indiana, 1980. Not competitive.

Etc.: Roundtree gets a job at CSU-Pueblo with Jeff Hecklinski.

Comments

Gofor2

July 25th, 2015 at 11:57 AM ^

Flash Forward, to times that actually matter

4-8 Indiana 2014.Not competitive.

5-7 Michigan 2014. Not competitive.
But is currently ranked No.1 in off season performance. It is expected that UM will remain atop the off season standings until the off season is on, and the actual season begins, with actual football games. At which time Michigan will take the place it has earned as tied for 12th in the the big ten. Soon after Michigan will realize that tho they now have Harbaugh as coach, they still have the players that earned them the 12th place finish in the conference. As expected JH will buff and polish that turd, but realize as the rest of the country does, that it is still just a turd.

Summation
UM football = Shiney Turd

Blue_sophie

July 24th, 2015 at 1:09 PM ^

Regarding the Stevenson situation at Wisconsin: I have no idea what happened, but given the timing he may well have needed to pass a course during the summer and not done so. Or depending how late his high school lets out for the summer he could well have had academic struggles during his last semester (which only now would have worked their way through the admissions bureaucracy at Wisconsin. I am just speculating here, but this sounds plausible to me.

KungFury

July 24th, 2015 at 1:42 PM ^

Wisconsin actually falls just behind Northwestern with some of the highest standards. Teams like Michigan and ND can get most anybody who didn't really screw up high school. Becomes more strict with JUCO kids so we generally don't even bother trying. And OSU and MSU you really just need a pulse. 

bronxblue

July 24th, 2015 at 2:35 PM ^

Yeah, he must have been at risk when he signed and failed to complete some course late in the year.  

I don't think this is a standard's issue, because I'm sure Wiscy has let in guys who basically pass the Clearinghouse and not much else.  I'm not going to assume to much, but there has to be more to this story than academics, unless it is super-specific to Wiscy.

TESOE

July 24th, 2015 at 2:14 PM ^

If they laid it on the line then Stevenson could arrange a backup plan.  If they are coming from out of the blue then this is crazy.

Clearly Wisconsin is doing admission differently from others. We haven't had a late fail like this in my memory.  Demar Dorsey happened fairly quickly as i recall. Granted the issues were much more black and white for Dorsey.

Blue_sophie

July 24th, 2015 at 3:06 PM ^

Universities obviously need to keep all academic issues confidential throughout recruiting; disclosing it would be unethical (probably illegal depending on how much info was made public). But if a student can't fulfill conditional requirements, the University still needs to keep mum about everything, which makes them look capricious when they cut a recruit loose at the last minute.
 
If the Stevenson situation IS an academic issue that cropped up in his final semester, maybe there is a systemic problem with how Wisconsin handles their recruiting. It could be that making conditional offers is the problem, or maybe the coaches should not be recruiting athletes who are right on the edge of qualifying academically. Either way, this situation seems like an unavoidable outcome.
 
That said, Wisconsin is doing something right since they have been tops in the Academic Progress Rate for FBS programs (better than Stanford or Northwestern) for the past few years.
 
I wish the best for Jordan Stevenson. Hopefully he gets a solid opportunity to play at a D-1 school.

TESOE

July 25th, 2015 at 12:27 PM ^

Rutgers which helped.  Witherspoon took an online class that didn't pass muster not to mention he was a LC recruit into a RR system.  Andersen probably started this recruitment as well for Wisconsin...there is some ability for coaches to work with admissions as long as all i's are dotted and t's crossed (which is hard to do in a coaching change - though this CC was all about this very issue.)

MarqueeView

July 24th, 2015 at 1:10 PM ^

Someone with photoshop skills should make a roadmap-sized version of that catch function. I can see NFL refs pull it out every time there's something that looks like a catch.



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ijohnb

July 24th, 2015 at 1:20 PM ^

non-catch situation is one of the worst things that has resulted from instant replay.  It is going to get to the point where they review every pass that is caught while a player is falling to the ground.  Like, no pass of that nature will be ruled a catch or not until it has been watched in slow motion 10 times.  They have overthought it.  It is nearly impossible for a player to make a "catch" as defined in such circumstances.

drjaws

July 24th, 2015 at 1:25 PM ^

the Desmond Howard highlights Wolverine Historian posted yesterday and I swear 10% of his TDs would have been called back nowdays for "minor bobbling of the ball" as he was diving/rolling out of bounds.

Reply should be used solely for egregious mistakes that are obvious.  Otherwise, play the effin game.

ijohnb

July 24th, 2015 at 1:55 PM ^

there are times when a player on the opposing team makes a "catch" and they go to the monitors and I am close to just as annoyed as when they go to the monitor on one of our catches.  I find myself just saying "it was a catch, come on, just set the ball down and play."  Instant replay in general is being used way too liberally.  It was kind of inevitable but I did not see it when the debate was going on.  I would actually rather they just scrap it at this point, but that box has been opened and there is no closing it now.

93Grad

July 24th, 2015 at 2:29 PM ^

we are now hyper analyzing film being run at super duper slow mo speeds like its the Zapruder film.  What happened to common sense judgement of what a catch looks like.  The Calvin Johnson and Dez Bryant TD were two of the worst examples. 

MMBbones

July 25th, 2015 at 12:32 AM ^

I don't have a link, but as I recall, Bo's first response to the wave was "I don't know which cheerleader started it, but he's going to be an ex-cheerleader."  But later in the season, at a pep rally, he said, "EXCEPT [pause for emphasis] when the quarterback is under center, I want a wave of energy to fill that stadium!"  He sounded serious, but you could never really tell with Bo. 

I was in the band for that Ghostbusters show.  One of my favorite college memories.

Blue Durham

July 24th, 2015 at 1:25 PM ^

Yeah, those Nebraska uniformz.

Red black and white trim. Kind of like the colors of the National Socialist German Worker's party colors.

And all this time we thought N stood for Nowledge.

El Jeffe

July 24th, 2015 at 1:57 PM ^

In the second step of the catch function, does

 

if (feet_down > 2)

    return true;

 

mean that someone could have more than two feet down? Who dat?

bryemye

July 24th, 2015 at 2:17 PM ^

Bizarre situation for Wisconsin, as Brian said. This is really late in the game for someone to be denied admission to the school...

WolverineHistorian

July 24th, 2015 at 2:21 PM ^

I love how excited the crowd is to do the wave in 84. I have an old Detroit News article on the 85 Notre Dame game (Harbaugh's junior year) and it mentions that the first half was a total snoozer. The only entertaining thing being the students several failed attempts at starting the wave. Had the newness of the wave already faded after two years?




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