Unverified Voracity Still Vulnerable To Italicized Exclamations Comment Count

Brian

Softball go. Reminder: tonight and tomorrow Michigan takes on Tennessee at Alumni Field for the right to advance to the Women's College World Series. Tomorrow's game is at 7:30 and is on ESPN (just plain ESPN); the Friday games are at 4:30 on ESPNU and (if necessary) 7:30 on ESPN2. Tickets are 5-10 bucks. Actual athletic competition between people! No documents at all!

For the billionth time. I linked this on the sidebar but I think it's worth posting up. Dave Brandon on Rodriguez and whatnot:

Insert the usual hosannas about Brandon and his ability to act as the face of the athletic department in tough times.

Be attractive in private, thanks. Remember Mike Cox doing a bit of modeling for Bivouac? Yeah, that was a secondary violation:

Nov. 11, 2009
The violation: A football player engaged in impermissible modeling for two local stores.
The punishment: The stores were issued cease-and-desist letters to remove all images of the player from their websites, and the athlete was declared temporarily ineligible. His eligibility was later restated.

That was one of nine Michigan football secondary violations since 2005 revealed in the document dump. The rest are pedestrian stuff involving a phone call here, 60 bucks there, etc. Birkett does point out that Michigan's had a relative paucity of secondary violations in comparison to Lane Kiffin, or Ohio State, which has averaged almost 42 per year for its athletic department over the last decade.

Oversigning ramps up.

The single dumbest thing written about the Day Of Slight Reckoning, non Hat Guy Edition. Yes, Hat Guy wrote something, and it exists in its own Hat Guy category, impervious to logic, reason, and the American Way. Outside of Hat Guy territory, the crown goes to Lynn Henning:

Once upon a time it was Michigan State that got into all the trouble. It was East Lansing where there were stability problems. …

Michigan State is now the regional example for how a Big Ten athletic program should be run. There was a bad mess with November's dormitory fracas. But between Mark Dantonio's reconstructed football program and Tom Izzo's spotless work in making MSU basketball an elite and ongoing force, MSU has become the Michigan of 20 and 30 years ago, while Michigan has taken MSU's unenviable place as the campus where too much bad sports news originates.

"Fracas"? The number of kids kicked off the team reached double digits! It was the second consecutive year a large group of Michigan State football players descended upon a group of innocent bystanders and heard the lamentation of the women! Just the most recent incident has outstripped the entire Rodriguez era when it comes to player arrests… by a factor of five! Dantonio was directly responsible for the second incident because he let Glenn Winston walk out of jail and directly on to a practice field! This is brushed off in a single sentence!

You think you could let six months pass without 20% of the Spartan team beating down some engineers before declaring it a paragon of righteousness and virtue. Apparently not. People on the board have mentioned that when you contact Henning he seems like a nice guy—one willing to listen—so there's that, but good Lord that's dumb.

Also, Mark Dantonio's "reconstructed" football program won one (one) more game than Michigan last year, losing to a MAC team along the way. If not for the fact that MSU was the second-luckiest team in the nation in 2008, Dantonio's first three years at Michigan State would look exactly like his three years at Cincinnati and the last 30 years of Spartan football.

Just when you think you're a hardened observer of sportswriters, incapable of being stunned into a series of italics-laced exclamations at the sheer stupidity of an argument, they go and prove you wrong. Hat Guy, by the way, made fun of Michigan for firing Herron for lying to the NCAA.

Maybe we can have something resembling competition? The American Needle decision handed down by the Supreme Court seems like the prelude to something instead of actually something—all they said is the lawsuit can go ahead—but the most relevant outcome may be a weakening of EA's iron grasp on sports games ever since 2K got uppity and EA started shoveling money at the leagues for exclusive licenses. This can only be good, as some of the 2K games were pushing, or far better than, EA's editions of the same.

In other video game news. Hot on the heels of the announcement that CHL teams will appear in NHL 2011, Paul Kelly of College Hockey, Inc. announces that colleges will appear as well:

"We've actually been in discussions with EA for a couple of weeks," Kelly began, "and while we don't have a formal announcement to make at this moment, we are certainly in discussions with EA Sports and they are very interested in having a college component to their game. We, the colleges, are very interested in having that happen and we are just currently in the process of figuring out what dimensions that ought to take."

Hockey players will be under the same restrictions as football and basketball players, but you'll be able to figure out who C #12 is. This might be short lived if the Ed O'Bannon case ends up going in favor of the plaintiffs: while EA will probably have to figure out a way to license likenesses for football and basketball, hockey will just get dropped.

Hockey destinations. Chris Dilks of Western College Hockey has a brief correction on Boo Nieves's plans:

Nieves was drafted by Indiana, but he's actually going to be attending Kent School in Connecticut next year, where he'll be coached by former Michigan captain Matt Herr, and then probably playing in the USHL for his senior year.

FWIW. The OHL is not a threat here.

As far as 2011 question mark Lucas Lessio goes, Waterloo's GM thinks they've got an excellent shot. They're also bringing in Alex Guptill (now Michigan's only other 2011 commit with Derek Deblois arriving this fall) and hope that will suffice as enticement:

We're taking a calculated risk," O'Handley said of Lessio. "We know he has options. Nick Ebert (current Black Hawk) has options, so it is no different. If you get him, to some degree you win the lottery.

"We wouldn't have done it if there was absolutely no way. We wouldn't have done it if it was 50-50. And, we're going to have to work hard to get him."

Note that the USHL has two drafts, the Futures Draft Nieves went in earlier, where players are not eligible this year but you can maintain their rights, and the Entry Draft, in which you get the guy's rights for a year and if you don't sign him you get nothing. Lessio was picked in the Entry Draft, so Waterloo's put a lot on the line to acquire him.

Speaking of that 2011 class, Michigan might need to get cracking on it. They lose Rust, Hagelin, Caporusso, Vaughn, Winnett, Llewellyn, Langlais, and Hogan after the season. They've got two forwards committed, leaving them to find another three forwards, two defenders, and a goalie if they're going to keep the same levels of roster depth. (Joel Vienneau, the Canadian goalie they were looking at for this year, committed to Minnesota for 2011.) They likely aren't—this fall's Michigan team will be the deepest I can ever remember—but they need at least another forward, defenseman, and goalie to feel comfortable going into '11, especially since there will be a number of flight risks next offseason.

Hockey lack of destinations. The buzz around the hockey program is that they would not lose anyone early to the NHL this year, and here's further confirmation of that from Mike Spath:

There is no rumored candidate expected to bolt for the NHL. In fact, the Wolverines seem to be taking a cue from forwards Louie Caporusso, Matt Rust and Carl Hagelin, who all declared their intentions to return for their senior seasons.

Also I must have missed this, but in April Michigan named captains: Hagelin gets the C (obvs), Glendening is the ultra-rare second captain as an ultra-rare junior (was the last one Ortmeyer? I think I'm missing one), and Rust and Caporusso get As.

Etc.: New Michigan blog Holdin' The Rope takes a page out of the OSU playbook and analyzes the development of Terrelle Pryor in the Rose Bowl. If you're wondering, no, Michigan's baseball team can't swing an at-large bid to the tournament.

Wetzel & Co at Yahoo break a major story about parts of the Kansas athletic department being complicit in Final Four ticket scalping, providing both a major story to blow Michigan's off the front page nationally and an example of how an investigative piece can be scrupulously fair. One complaint: late in the piece Yahoo cites "published reports" about complaints primo seats at Allen Fieldhouse are going to scalpers without even bothering to mention where the report was published.

Comments

ish

May 27th, 2010 at 10:19 AM ^

can we agree that whatever rule that prevented cox from modeling is a bad one?  why is it bad for a student-athlete to get a job as a model?  i know he's possibly using his noteriety as a football player to make money, but isn't it also possible he's just a good looking dude?

Shalom Lansky

May 27th, 2010 at 10:54 AM ^

I mean if the model were (was?) Tom Brady or Drew Henson (during his time at U of M) one would assume that Bivouac was capitalizing on the player's football career to sell product but in Mr. Cox's case, wasn't THIS BOARD even unsure of the athlete in the ad for awhile? If Mgoboard doesn't immediately recognize the player, they should be allowed to model, that should be the test.

Overall, the rule makes sense though (as far as any NCAA rule make sense), how would the NCAA determine which players are hired for modeling due to their on-field success and which are hired b/c they are objectively attractive (mutually exclusive of on field accomplishment or notoriety).

maracle

May 27th, 2010 at 12:32 PM ^

Hmm, well I think the problem is that modeling is a status-y type of job and you can't tell if they're being legitimately paid for the work or paid for being a football player.  In other words it would be a pretty easy way for boosters to give them money. (although regs do limit income from work to $2000, or maybe a bit more now....it was $2k in 1998)

It seems a bit unfair in a way, but I think if it were allowed it would be chaos.  Imagine how allowing guys like Tim Tebow to "model" and appear at events for various businesses would corrupt the system

lexus larry

May 27th, 2010 at 10:32 AM ^

I think the communal thesaurus at the Detroit Media Partnership has only one alternate word for "brawl" and it's "fracas."

From what we can see, based on 25,000 internet daily readers COMBINED, the new fangled intertubes have just flown straight over the heads of everyone associated with the DNP...thus, they're incapable of using the net to find any alternate wording.

Though I'm happy to help:

Brawl

Brouhaha

Pack of thugs/hoodlums/urchins/toughs/vandals

Nerd Beatdown

Inadvertent facial contact with open hand/closed fist

Rumble

Fracas

Sgt. Wolverine

May 27th, 2010 at 12:23 PM ^

just because of one paragraph.

"What that speaks to is the fact that we continue to retain the majority of our readers, said Rich Harshbarger, vice president of consumer marketing for the Detroit Media Partnership, the agency that manages business operations at both Detroit newspapers. "Readers have come along with us."

In the midst of an article that says everything everywhere is down, one man still finds a way to be positive.  "Hooray!  We lost some readers, but not all of them!"

Brian

May 27th, 2010 at 2:23 PM ^

Okay... I think you're offbase. The 25k number is daily combined readers for the "e-edition" available only to print subscribers. Daily web uniques are going to be a lot higher than that. The last time I checked on quantcast this site was doing about 10% of the people the Free Press site was. Unfortunately, sports drill-downs weren't available.

lexus larry

May 27th, 2010 at 2:47 PM ^

So unlike the lolmsm to leave quoted data in such a manner open to all sorts of interpretation.
I could see that "e-edition" thingy being what that was intended to be...but he sure didn't say it that way.
Sounds much more pathetic that way, too!

jamiemac

May 27th, 2010 at 10:39 AM ^

I mean give Henning a break. For the last thee years, he's been reporting the Bonderman is going to be back as a factor. Judging from yesterday, he might be correct. Finally.

All things being equal, I'll take practice gate over Rather Hall or illicit ticket selling, thank you very much.

JustGoBlue

May 27th, 2010 at 10:46 AM ^

we all missed the naming of the Captains.  I remember large, obvious articles on MGoBlue about it (well, about naming Summers the Captain, the rest came mid-season) last year that were absent this year.  I also remember large, obvious articles on MGoBlue, last year about Red re-signing his contract and I would REALLY like to see the same (or other confirmation) really, really soon.  Paranoia sucks >:o

JustGoBlue

May 27th, 2010 at 12:56 PM ^

he has said so, but I would really like something official.   Especially when all the official word after the regional was that official word would come about a month later, max.  It's been more than a month now.  I know he's said he'll be back for this upcoming season and the prevailing opinion is that  he will be and then he's gone after that, but I want a nice little article on MGoBlue or somewhere else credible, with a title that is something like "Berenson Signs Contract Extension Through 2010-2011 Season".  I just want the paranoid little "what if..." voice in the back of my head to go away and not come back.  I was hoping since Red has apparently named captains somewhere and MGoBlue didn't bother to pick it up, he would also have singed an extension somewhere that MGoBlue didn't pick up and somebody could link me and I could crawl back into my hole, but the wait continues I guess... :-(

Tater

May 27th, 2010 at 10:59 AM ^

Henning is bright and passionate when it comes to baseball.  When he writes about anything else, it's as if he has no prior knowlege, does minimal research, and slaps together enough to satisfy the assignment.  Sometimes, I get the idea he would chew off his own arm to get out of a UM/MSU assignment so that he could get back to writing about baseball with his other arm.

To me, Henning work isn't stupid as much as it is ignorant; it is merely a reflection of the instate media's mindset concerning MSU.  Basically, Henning has minimal and superficial knowlege of the beatdowns at MSU and is merely parroting what he has read about them from the MSU shills who seem to populate the Michigan MSM. 

My "pet peeve" with the MSM since the beatdown occured was that it is almost always referred to as either a  "fight" or an "incident."  I'm sure those who were attacked by large men wearing ski masks in their own homes don't see it as a "fight," an "incident," or, as Henning now does, a "fracas."

tbliggins

May 27th, 2010 at 11:43 AM ^

He is an MSU alum, and has covered MSU sports for a couple decades.  My guess is that as an alum, he has just fallen for MD's reputation as no-nonsense, strict coach, as most everyone has.  Somehow MD has gotten as much attention for punishing a player for not wearing a tie as he has for his role in these brawls. 

steelymax

May 27th, 2010 at 3:06 PM ^

... but yeah, his articles on college football aren't as sure-handed (let's say) as his take on baseball.

Last November, he wrote an article about being "mystified" by Rodriguez's lack of success. I linked him the mgoblog report on the defense's rate of attrition and he seemed to appreciate that.

HAIL 2 VICTORS

May 27th, 2010 at 3:25 PM ^

 

Son, we live in a world that has blogs, and those blogs have to be guarded by men with posts. Who's gonna do it? Geauxblue? You, Offline? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for and you curse the posters. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that the Freep allegations, while tragic, probably killed lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, despises the Freep. You don't want the truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about in chat rooms, you want me on this blog, you need me on MGoBlog. We use words like double post, the horror, OT. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a poster who rises and sleeps under the web site of information freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just post "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you start a thread and post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think.

tmotts62

May 27th, 2010 at 11:57 AM ^

Wholly agree.  Bless you, Brian, for the hat tip (pun intended) to a group that made it their passion to call out bad sports journalism/broadcasting.  In my lifetime, I've followed just two blogs on a daily basis -- this one and FJM.  I really miss those guys as well.

As for Hat Guy, if you read his RichRod article, after gagging and cursing you will note that he managed to slip in a food metaphor.  Ken Tremendous would be proud.

Wendyk5

May 27th, 2010 at 12:06 PM ^

The Henning piece enrages me. A program that sees a group of its players don ski masks and attack other students (not to mention reinstating athletes that have served jail time) should be held in higher esteem than a team that messes up its CARA records and barely exceeds practice time? Am I missing something? In my moral world view, this is a no brainer, and to compare the two programs in the way that Henning did is creative writing. I would say the guy should be reprimanded, but obviously everyone over there is on board with him. It's unfortunate the MSM have become such lemmings. 

  

Big Boutros

May 27th, 2010 at 12:30 PM ^

Wait a minute

So NHL 11 might have NHL (obviously), QMJHL, WHL, OHL, Elitserien, KHL, Extraliga, SM-liiga, and NCAA teams? Or NCAA Hockey will be its own title? Because whoa dawg that's a lot of hockey. The world would never need to make another video game ever again. MOAR HOCKEY MOAR

mgovictors23

May 27th, 2010 at 4:15 PM ^

That is such ridiculous trash, it made me so mad to read that. Sorry unlike Michigan State we don't have a team of women beaters and guys that think it's fun to end other guys careers in other sports by beating them to a pulp. We also don't have a coach who recruits a player that is caught with robbery a mere week before he even makes it to campus then lies about it to the media.  Also we don't have 20 players every couple months going around beating up everyone on campus. Michigan State is a classless program that shouldn't even be brought up in the same breath as Michigan.

Tom_Harmon 2.0

May 27th, 2010 at 7:43 PM ^

Brian,

Thanks for posting the link to the Terrele Pryor analysis.  I've done some analysis of his play on my own and I'm glad to see Hold the Rope and I are more or less on the same page.  In my opinion, he is a gifted athlete, but he is not God by any stretch of the imagination.  If defensive backs could a) cover his throws to the flat and b) STOP THE EFFING BOOTLEG RUN AROUND THE LINE, his stats would look a whole lot worse.

ToughD

May 28th, 2010 at 4:47 PM ^

So let me get this straight.  OSU can break NCAA rules all over the place and nothing comes out of it.  No headlines, ESPN garble, etc.  NOTHING!!  Yet Michigan commits minor violations, which provide no advantages, occur because of lazy idiots not doing their job and the result is that RR is lamb basted and made to look unethical.  WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP!!! 

Calm down.... OK. 

I just hope RR and the team can wipe the floor this season and show what a real eithical, honest, and hard working coach can accomplish.  I hope RR doesn't decide this Michigan job isn't worth the hassel and leave.  I know many out there would love that but I believe he is the future for this football program and EVERYBODY NEEDS TO LEAVE HIM ALONE AND LET HIM DO WHAT HE DOES BEST WHICH IS BEING A GREAT COACH, ON AND OFF THE FIELD, AND WINNING GAMES!!!

Ok I'm done.  I said what I needed to.  Thank you.