I Am Very Proud Not to Have Taken Unnecessary Shots at the South in this Dear Diary Comment Count

Seth

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Left: Jim and Sam, who is smiling, because when is he not? Right: Little Demo, who is giving the look big demo used to give little defensive linemen

Last February I went to that Harbaugh & Harbaugh thing that inducted the brothers into the Pioneer HS Hall of Fame. As part of the charity auction they had each brother sign a Pioneer helmet. First they auctioned John’s helmet, but Jim Harbaugh outbid everyone. Jim sat down with his new John Harbaugh helmet, and signed the other side.

Then they auctioned the one Jim signed. A lot of people bid, including my friend Matt Demorest, but now it’s a competition: John outbid them all, signed his far more expensive helmet, and sat it back down in front of Sam Webb, instructing the auctioneer that he was donating it back to the cause.

So here’s the auctioneer, who can’t figure out what just happened even though the audience had tracked it well enough. On the other end of the table there’s Jim glaring like this is going to end in a wrestling match. In between them are Sam and Ira smiling like their teeth can keep them from bursting out laughing.

Jim leaps up and jams his helmet into the auctioneer’s hands: “I’m donating this back too.” The auctioneer’s like okay…throws out a number near what John Harbaugh just paid, and for a moment it’s silent before Demorest stands up with a massive finger in the air. His kid pumps his fist and goes “YES!” Sam loses it.

So if you’re wondering where your money goes when you buy or refinance with Matt, yeah, he just blows it all on hats. Fortunately it doesn’t cost you much since Homesure Lending is a small shop without the usual overhead, and you’ll make that back in a few months of your less expensive mortgage. Good deal.

ON OTHER MEMORABILIA:

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User Jay Z bought a copy of this print, and was trying to figure out game; the readers figured out it’s 1989 Maryland. In the process it inspired two more threads: mine on your favorite memorabilia, and Wolverine Historian’s list of things the stadium used to have in 1989 that it doesn’t have now.

That list:

  1. Flagpoles
  2. Backflips off the front row
  3. Flinging toilet paper
  4. Marshmallows
  5. Drinking beer in the stands
  6. Packed student section

Go in there’s gifs and discussion.

On the bits of memorabilia, M Fanfare put you all to shame:

And finally, probably the most unusual piece of UM memorabilia I own, given to me by one of my groomsmen when I got married. It's from a book written by a UM geology professor right after World War I about why, in his opinion, the war broke out. But what makes it unique is who owned this particular copy. The author inscribed it to him.

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"To Fielding H. Yost, With the best regards of Wm H. Hobbs, Ann Arbor, Oct 3, 1922."

To those of you who bought bits of the old turf, that was all the doing of Bob Lipson, the guy who created and produced Michigan Replay.

[After the JUMP: I woke up at 5:30 this morning with a burning desire to write something on Tunsil, in case you want to hear me make the same case Brian already made today.]

I CHOSE THE WRONG WEEK TO GIVE UP POPCORN: Hey look, something actually  interesting happened at the NFL Draft (click to biggen):

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To recap, Ole Miss signed Tunsil, Nkemidiche, and Treadwell in 2013 under obvious circumstances. Nothing about Ole Miss—not delightful Oxford Mississippi, the program’s trajectory, or hiring that dickhead high school coach from The Blind Side—could explain how they signed two of the top three national prospects plus the country’s most coveted receiver. An unhinged family member ratted out Tunsil as a sophomore and cost him a few games. Other than that, the best public evidence was Treadwell’s infamous wad of cash.*

Until last night, when someone hacked Tunsil’s phone and published the incriminating screenshots on Instagram. The grams followed a video of Tunsil doing a gas mask bong hit (apparently from two years ago) with a “Rebel Pride” (not) confederate flag on the wall.

If you’re shocked, you’re probably equally aghast that college kids experiment with marijuana consumption contraptions. And if you think this kind of thing will stop by sending federal troops into Ole Miss…ahem…you think drugs would go away if only the government would get serious.

Make no mistake: we love that this left tackle’s phone got hacked for this purpose because we know that Ole Miss is shady and want to see them go down. I get giddy just thinking about Freeze and his bosses doing the sad Bluth walk. It is exactly the kind of image we need to feel like having rules is working. It ought to be a sober reminder that they’re not, and never ever will.

I don’t care if Tunsil’s mom needed to keep the utilities on, or if Tunsil was using the pretense to extort $300 from a company that makes millions of dollars from an ESPN contract. Because that contract’s value is based on the premise of SEC football’s ability to showcase Tunsil-level talent. Freeze’s plea of innocence when he signed the 2013 class was as laughable as a valuation of Tunsil’s football services at a Mississippi degree, room and board in Oxford, and the professional tutelage of Hugh Fucking Freeze.

As Michigan fans we would love it if the players really only got so much. Our tickets would be $10/game, our cable bills would be $20/month, and our football would be sweet because U of M degree + Ann Arbor + Wolverine fandom + coached by Harbaugh et al. would be the Google offer of the business.

The demand for football skill is much greater than the value of America’s scholarship supply, as evidenced by the gigantic black market for it. Standing in the way of the flow of capital never stops it; it stops some, and reroutes the rest through the people with the least respect for the rule of law.

Legalize the thing that happens anyway and Michigan wins, because our money cannon is bigger than theirs. That made sense 35 years ago, when Bo Schembechler made the same amount that my family just reported on our taxes. Today it won’t cost us much more because the business of college football spent the intervening years extracting whatever the market will bear. Title IX is a hurdle every school is well practiced at leaping, and doesn’t even matter if you just let the players sell their own likenesses (which is only a hurdle because then what about TV?)

That business is currently set up so that your appreciation for Jourdan Lewis must be funneled through cable providers, Indiana’s tennis coach, a hotel owner in Orlando, and the marketing guy who came up with “1G” to represent “10”. It is also capped at the offer of a degree without debt, provided he doesn’t fail to earn it for myriad reasons. I wouldn’t buy John O’Korn a beer because it’s against the rules and Michigan chooses to funnel some of that cash to enforcing them. Ole Miss doesn’t, and the NCAA doesn’t care, because that would just mean Ole Miss would go back to being as worthless as they ought to be.

So they get three years of Tunsil playing school for a school that couldn’t even teach him what the symbol on his wall means, and playing football for a substandard coach whose main value proposition is looser morals than most in his profession. Hugh Freeze gets to be a wealthy man with a teacher’s vacation schedule who whines about having enough time with his family. And NFL commentators get to act like Laremy Tunsil is the problem. I don’t buy it, and neither should you.

* [Which FTR was probably proceeds from a pyramid scheme sales job, where the kid sells lotions or hair care products or Cutco knives or whatever, and people beyond his immediate family buy from him because he’s a football star.]

ETC. Hoops crutin update 1 from matt D is on Jamal Cain. The Ravens OC on quarterback coaching points.

YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN

Comments

The Geek

April 29th, 2016 at 7:34 PM ^

even after Hutch's injury. If watching that bowl game doesn't put a smile on your face someone needs to put a mirror under your nose.

That team was LOOOOAAAAAAAaaaa-DED. 

It's fun to think that a return to greatness isn't far off, isn't it?

 

 

RalphWiggum

April 29th, 2016 at 5:56 PM ^

That was the first Michigan game I attended and as a seven year-old, I sat in the student section with my brother. Needless to say, it was an eye-opening experience.

jmblue

April 29th, 2016 at 5:58 PM ^

Speaking of Lipson, he's got to let U-M use "Across 110th Street" again for Inside Michigan Football.  It's just not the same without it.

M-Dog

April 29th, 2016 at 7:43 PM ^

Standing in the way of the flow of capital never stops it; it stops some, and reroutes the rest through the people with the least respect for the rule of law.

Damn, that's a money quote.

1VaBlue1

April 29th, 2016 at 6:38 PM ^

I missed that Moeller offense for a few years. When he ran it wide open, it scored on everyone. Problem was, he went conservative at the mere thought of a close game. And that drove me NUTS! Case in point was the FSU game at the Big House (91, I think). The first half was a good, fun, shoot out. The second half, though, Moeller shut it down and tried to control the clock. Bowden just stacked the box and walked away with a dominating win over a very good team otherwise. Damn that conservative trait that Bo instilled!

ST3

April 29th, 2016 at 6:52 PM ^

that picture is taken roughly from my dad's season ticket area (section 11, row 74) and includes me as a dot in the student section.

The turf comment reminded me that I too have a piece of the old artificial turf, only I didn't have to pay for it. My brother and a few of his friends were walking around the stadium one evening when the University was pulling the turf out. They noticed that the gates weren't locked. So they snuck in, grabbed some turf and got out. I think he may have also snagged a "Section 11" wooden sign. For Christmas that year, he did the box inside a box inside a box thing. When we finally got to the present, it was a square inch of turf and his story.

BornInA2

April 29th, 2016 at 8:11 PM ^

I remember when the stadium was always open. I used to take visitors from out of town in to run around on the field. So many fun things gone because of a tiny, tiny percentage who are idiots.

gruden

April 30th, 2016 at 12:11 AM ^

Maybe you and I had the same friends.

When they were ripping up the artificial turf, I knew a guy who had access to the stadium complex.  He and a friend went in one evening when the turf was rolled up in the stadium, found the piece with 2/3 of the block 'M' in the middle of the field and managed to run off with it.  He mentioned to me one day they had it, and I was interested in it as a memento.  He cut off a postcard-sized piece and gave it to me for $5. 

Meanwhile, the University announced they were selling the turf made into different things like beer/coffee coasters, etc. (Can't let a money making opportunity go to waste.) Around that time, a story appeared in the News (I think) that some 'vandals' had damaged the block M, but shortly thereafter they said it had been fixed.  They were going to auction it off or something for big $$.

The guy I knew, meanwhile, said someone had offered a decent sum for what he had. 

So I'm guessing whoever *officially* bought the 'M' only ended up with 1/3 of it, the rest was re-painted turf from another section of the field. 

Years later after I got married my wife mounted the turf section with a needlepoint of Michigan with a wolverine in a picture frame as a present.  We moved a few years back and it disappeared, I think I'm going to have to hunt for it this weekend and see if I can find it.

kevin holt

April 29th, 2016 at 8:12 PM ^

Some people still throw toilet paper or streamers. My ex was in a group of students who did that and sorta brought it back, idk if anyone else joined or kept it up though. Damn I should really go to a game in the 80s; shit looks awesome

Rabbit21

April 30th, 2016 at 1:45 PM ^

I don't know, I mean I get where he's coming from but the waving away of the title IX question and other objections as being inconsequential and setting up straw men throughout. But I guess that may be the point of a rant.




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cavebeaner

April 30th, 2016 at 6:38 PM ^

chucking marshmallows at opposing players who dared to cross into the endzone.

I watched that clip of the '91 game, which I'm sure I was at as a student, and thought, "Man, TV graphics have come a long way in such a short time," Then I realized that 1991 was 25 years ago, and I curled up in a ball and cried. Then went and yelled at some kids to get off my lawn.

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buddhafrog

May 2nd, 2016 at 3:24 AM ^

That Jim / John Harbaugh AA Pioneer helmet is pretty incredible - one of a kind for sure. That could be Hall of Fame inclusion unique. They both will go down as HoF coaches, and best brother coaches in the history of the the football world.

Pretty cool. What was the auction price paid?

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