Unverified Voracity Is Terrified Of Everything Comment Count

Brian

About that banner contest: obviously, it has not come off. This is because I am working on Hail To The Victors 2010, a process that should be complete in a couple weeks, at which point we will kick festivities off. If you wanted to submit a banner the door is still open.

Also in sitebulletins: there's a wiki page up designed to be an inclusive list of whatever the community thinks is worth keeping around in an easily-accessible form. Trusted users (>500 points) can edit it. It's available under the "Useful Stuff" tab.

Olympic Mascot Horror Lookalike. The Olympic mascots:

image 

Yes, they're terrifying. Yes, they're hovering. It is now time for everyone to figure out what they look like from your childhood. My entry: the Spathi from Star Control 2. They're cowardly mollusks!

I'm waiting for the day when the Olympic mascots look like the Umgah. (Also: SC2 was released as open source and is now available in a form that functions on modern computers. If you didn't play it back in the day you'll probably find it too clunky, but anyone looking for a blast from the past will enjoy a game still in my top five list all time.)

Guh. I know this is a very nice column with many nice things to say about Zack Novak and Manny Harris, but… just dude dude no:

Manny, Manny kudos to Wolverines' Novak

    CHICAGO

    | Five minutes with most NBA Draft prospects and you can tell if they have character; if you can pay them a fortune to represent your team and not lose sleep at night.

You know they've got game, but can you trust them?

Five minutes is all it takes.

Do their faces light up when talking about the game? You need that, rookie or vet, in an 82-game season.

And so forth and so on with the one-sentence paragraphs hot of the cliché press. Anyway, apparently Harris patterns his game after George Hill. Do you know who George Hill is? He's a 6'2" point guard who started about half of the Spurs' games this year because Tony Parker was injured. He averaged 12 points per game. He's also a 40% three-point shooter. Manny Harris compares himself to a player who is 1) nothing like him and 2) not even that good. I don't even know what's going on. What is going on? I don't know.

He's very nice and says nice things about Zack Novak when asked about it by a guy who speaks like a slightly deranged man, offering staccato blips about what's important in Northwest Indiana. Then, to see if he can get away with it, he compares himself to a cucumber. But, like, the cucumber that plays for the Timberwolves. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Moving on up. The Big Ten is pushing for an earlier start to official visits, namely June:

"So many kids are taking unofficial visits right now and the cost to families is astronomical trying to go see X amount of schools in June,” Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “It only makes sense. How many of these kids are making early decisions, making verbal commitments, without ever taking an official visit that you can pay for to be on campus for that 48-hour window?"

This is an obvious thing for the Big Ten to push for since top recruits are concentrated in the South these days and getting a kid to campus radically increases your chance of signing him. It also reflects the changing reality of recruiting, where a ton of kids are off the board by the start of their senior seasons. Undoubtedly, the SEC and Big 12 will try to shoot it down but what their rationale could possibly be is a mystery.

Also, there's the now-usual assertion that an early signing period is on its way:

"The coaches are in favor of [an early signing period], most of the leagues are in favor of it," Alvarez said. "Somehow it got stopped in legislation last year. We're not really sure where, but everyone seems to be in favor of it. That wasn't the case a few years ago. A few years ago, it was split 50-50."

As I've said before, I don't see why there have to be signing periods at all. Just implement a system where any time a prospect wants he can be put on a non-binding "do not call" list that exempts one school. Coaches can't contact a player on the list and players can't take official visits to schools other than the exempted one. That way the "verbal commitment" actually means something without locking in a player in case of a coaching change.

soony-saad-shiny-thing Lethal. One of Michigan's soccer recruits got a shiny thing. That's incoming freshman striker Soony Saad and the Sports Drink Co Soccer Player Of The Year Award. Saad got it for scoring 76(!!!) goals this season and leading his team to the… round of 16. It's his measly 15 assists that did them in.

The Saad shiny thing dossier:

An All-America first team selection by ESPN RISE and a National Soccer Coaches Association of America All-American in 2009, Saad was also the 2008 U.S. Soccer Development Academy Player of the Year. The Michigan Soccer Coaches Association's Mr. Soccer this past fall, Saad concluded his high school career with a state-record 172 goals to go along with 51 assists.

Good lord. Does this happen in high school soccer programs? Do people just put up like three goals a game?  Dearborn is representing of late, what with Miss USA and Saad.

He should be an impact player at Michigan immediately after choosing Michigan over UCLA and Akron, which latter is a much bigger deal than it sounds. #1 Akron was undefeated last year until the NCAA final and stomped Michigan 5-1 during the regular season. The entirety of their starting defense was named to the US-U20 team. Akron is no joke.

Etc.: Six Zero continues his series profiling the many eccentric characters who comprise the MGoCommunity. This edition features MS Paint maestro The Shredder. The RCMB spends much time putting video game Tate Forcier in compromising positions. The new Miss USA drops a "Go Blue" on the Today show, then explains her stripper pictures. Win? Win. Cam Gordon is Bruce Feldman's #2 breakout star of spring.

Comments

jmblue

May 21st, 2010 at 12:29 PM ^

Wow, I didn't think anyone could top this guy, the 1996 Atlanta mascot, for sheer tackiness, but I think we have a new winner!  

Yostal

May 21st, 2010 at 12:34 PM ^

Good lord. Does this happen in high school soccer programs? Do people just put up like three goals a game?  Dearborn is representing of late, what with Miss USA and Saad.

Brian, yes, it does.  One of the things about high school soccer is that the gulf between good teams and bad teams can be and usually is very extreme.  If your high school team has a couple of travel team kids on it, you can run circles around a team composed primarily of kids with rec soccer experience.  Even worse if you have significant affluence disparities in your high school league, where every school is fielding a team, but one of them has all Premier players from top local club teams and the other is made up of the aforemention rec refugees.  I have sat through many a soccer game that is 10-0 by halftime, even with liberal subbing in of backups, and the ten minutes of the second half is a mere formality under the rules (I am not sure this is still the rule.)  It can actually be an even bigger gulf in girls soccer. 

NomadicBlue

May 21st, 2010 at 12:58 PM ^

If anyone ever wonders shy the US can't compete on an international level, go to a high school soccer game and you will see why.  For the most part, we play a totally different game in the US that is most apparent at youger ages.  here is the instruction that most kids get in soccer as they grow up, "Here's a ball.  Kick it in that direction."  So, when there does exist a true talent(s) on the field, the result is brutal. 

Side note.  I played soccer from the time I was 6 years old and throughhigh school.  My father was my coach until I turned about twelve.  My dad has never played one second of soccer in his life.  Not one second.  Now being older and talking to other parents about getting my kids involved in the local soccer programs, I am learning that this scenario of having a completely soccer ignorant coch is still pretty common.  This is soccer in the US. 

Blazefire

May 21st, 2010 at 12:42 PM ^

I always knew Sparty was obsessed with us, but to take the time to take screen shots of a tackle of Forcier in a video game? Wow.

Also: Why is the one on the right doing a pelvic thrust?

Magnus

May 21st, 2010 at 12:44 PM ^

George Hill played pretty well in Tony Parker's stead, and some people are suggesting that the Spurs might get rid of Parker and make Hill the team's starting PG.

Don

May 21st, 2010 at 12:54 PM ^

"Soony Saad: Sports Drink Co. Player of the Year and Wolverine, or Hezbollah Mastermind? Wolf Blitzer reports on the raging controversy"

Raoul

May 21st, 2010 at 12:56 PM ^

From that story on Manny Harris:

"Coach (John) Beilein saw something in Zack Novak and Coach is a genius, so he knows," Harris smiled.

From a Free Press article from today on Ekpe Udoh:

[Udoh] was complimentary of Beilein's basketball knowledge, calling him a "genius," but he was looking for a place that was a better fit.

Side note: These two articles are listed at annarbor.com on a Michigan Wolverines Links item, along with Brian's Jake Ryan profile, which is mistakenly credited to MGoBlue:

Michigan Wolverines Links: Several top recruits have pulled out of the Big House BBQ event

By Justin Rogers | MLive.com

May 21, 2010, 11:00AM

Well, I guess they were only off by two letters.

TMS-Mr. Ace

May 21st, 2010 at 1:01 PM ^

Yikes.  The guy is about to push Tony Parker out of San Antonio.  I can see some similarities between Manny and Hill's game...but Manny would be fortunate to be half the player Hill is.

MGoShoe

May 21st, 2010 at 1:28 PM ^

...one of the worst Digital Shorts there is.  Apparently when they went to Space Olympics they screwed with the every four years schedule.   Either that or it took the place of the Winter Olympics. 

evenyoubrutus

May 21st, 2010 at 1:34 PM ^

after following that link to Spartan Tailgate and making the mistake of reading the comments, I'm curious; has Spartan Tailgate always been that obsessed with MGoBlog?  I think about 2/3 of the comments said something like "You should go post that on MGoBlog OMGOMG LOLLOL"

TG7782

May 21st, 2010 at 1:50 PM ^

"I don't even know what's going on. What is going on? I don't know."

 

Made me laugh out loud, so simplistically funny and true all at once.

Seth

May 21st, 2010 at 1:53 PM ^

In a Spartan fan's NCAA dynasty, Michigan's quarterback is named "My Vag Hurts."*

In a Michigan fan's NCAA dynasty, Michigan State's quarterback is named "QB #7."

I also imagine they go through an awful lot of controllers after spending so much of their free time chasing the dreadlocks of a sprite named "Doo Nards Robertsucks."

------------------

* Answer truthfully: how surprised are you that there wasn't an apostrophe before the 's' in "hurts?"

Tha Quiet Storm

May 21st, 2010 at 4:42 PM ^

UM fan: I'm going to do a lengthy statistical analysis of 4th down decision-making, including a bevy of charts and graphs/I'm going to do a lengthy analysis of our defensive personnel, recruiting, and attrition to try and figure out why we're bad and how much better we will be in the future.

MSU fan: I'm going to take pictures of my NCAA videogame and make vagina jokes about Tate Forcier.

This is why you are, and always will be, little brother.

My name ... is Tim

May 21st, 2010 at 2:14 PM ^

Wow, that meltdowns sections is epic, and unbelievably hysterical. Kind of makes me long for another wildly discombobulated post from white_pony_rocks. I rather enjoyed it. How did I miss these?!