Unverified Voracity Hit Mark Emmert With A Chair Comment Count

Brian

No news yet on the Jalen Wilson front. Other than the fact that he received his offer:

Standard "everything went great" takes from Josh Henschke at 24/7, but Henschke does mention he has an interview scheduled with Wilson. That in and of itself is a fairly good sign.

All-22 aggression. Via Cody Alexander:

This is the kind of stuff I can't see from the broadcast angle. One caveat: pretty sure that's Rutgers providing the opposition. Michigan had almost as many sacks (5) as Rutgers had completions (8) in that game, thus allowing things like "deep centerfield safety gets his nose on a ballcarrier at the line of scrimmage."

Alexander's Don Brown clinic notes are fascinating and available at the link.

*swoon.* Brad Stevens on a sticky wicket he found himself in:

I would not trade John Beilein for anyone. Brad Stevens makes you think, though.

WELCOME YOUR NEW GOD GAMBLOR. The Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports gambling, thus paving the way for every state hard up for a little cash to legalize and regulate the wildly popular activity. (Probably: Richard Hoeg has more law-talking details.) And if college athletic departments have their hand out…

…wait, what? Here is your justification:

"If this is legalized, what the ADs said is that we'll have to spend more money on compliance and we're going to have increased risk," McMillen told ESPN in a Thursday phone interview. "What was shown, at schools with regulated [sports betting] markets -- Nevada, UNLV -- they spend considerably more on compliance, because it's more open, more transparent, more in your face than the other schools where it's illegal. The fact of the matter is that the onus is going to fall on Marshall and West Virginia."

Those compliance departments have to send out way more than one tweet in March about not joining an NCAA pool? They have to have a workshop about how gambling on sports is bad if you play sports? I'm not sure what the big expense is.

Brian Windhorst has an interesting article about the push from pro sports leagues to legalize sports betting in the US; the NCAA is likely to get caught up in this whether they want to or not.

BAH GOD SHE KILT EM. A post-committee Condoleeza Rice is more explicit that the NCAA should restore name and likeness rights to athletes:

"We believe that students ought to be able to benefit from name, image and likeness but you can’t decide a program until you know the legal parameters,” Rice told USA TODAY Sports. “That was the point. I think some of the commentary suggested that we didn’t really speak on this issue. I think we did speak on this issue, it’s just that we understand there’s a legal framework that has to be developed first.”

Rice said she thought the commission’s report was “pretty clear” in its support of athletes being able to cash in once the various legal issues are resolved. But she maintains that the NCAA cannot do this while a pair of ongoing cases are pending.

"I think people may have looked at the fact that we said there's a legal framework to be developed and said, 'Oh, well, maybe they're punting on this.' Nobody was intending to punt on it."

As something that costs the NCAA nothing, has broad public support, cuts down on a bunch of self-contradictory rulings, and would pave the way for the return of NCAA Football, restoring NIL rights to college athletes is an obvious slam dunk. It thus has a 37% chance of actually happening.

One and done doesn't even accomplish much. John Gasaway has created a history of one and done that convincingly asserts that it accomplishes little:

We don’t yet know the order in which the freshmen of 2017-18 will be selected, of course, but, by Jonathan Givony’s lights, we may be due for a similar evaluative echo next month on draft night.

                     RSCI 2017    Projection 2018
Marvin Bagley III        1               3
Michael Porter, Jr.      2               8
Deandre Ayton            3               1
Mohamed Bamba            4               5
Trevon Duval             5              45
Collin Sexton            6               9
Wendell Carter, Jr.      7               7
Mitchell Robinson        8              22
Jaren Jackson, Jr.       9               4
Kevin Knox              10              15
  

Yes, Duval stands out, and, sure, projected No. 6 pick Trae Young made very good use of the one additional year of evaluation afforded to NBA teams. The question then becomes whether one-and-done earns its evaluative keep simply by having flagged the fact that Duval “should” drop 40 spots and Young “should” jump 20.

That’s pretty much all the current eligibility requirement is accomplishing in terms of player evaluations. Otherwise, we could have held this draft a year ago, and it would have looked highly similar to what will (we think) transpire next month.

Actually, even that gives one-and-done too much evaluative credit. In an alternate reality where players could be drafted straight out of high school, it’s possible Duval would have been a 2017 pick — but Young, surely, would have gone undrafted. Then, after the amazing freshman season that we now know happened, Young would have been a 2018 lottery pick. In this scenario, then, the lone evaluative function of one-and-done with regard to the top of the board is to prevent Duval from having been a high draft pick a year ago, period.

And Duval had to enter the draft anyway because Duke recruited over him with authority. There are probably some extraordinary busts the NBA has avoided, but the one-and-done rationale about preventing Kwame Browns is extremely flimsy.

No seed for softball. Michigan gets shipped to Lexington for the opening round of the tourney:



Lexington Regional

No. 16 Kentucky vs. UIC | 2:30 p.m. ET Friday on WatchESPN

Michigan vs. Notre Dame | 12 p.m. Friday on ESPN2

Softball regionals are, well, regional, so that's not a definite statement that Michigan was #17, but if they weren't they were fairly close. Unfortunately, Michigan is entering the tournament on a skid after getting blown out twice at the Big Ten tourney.

Iggy can dunk. But he has still not set a video of himself to Lust for Life.

Etc.: Remembering the 2004 Clemson-South Carolina brawl. Excellent set-piece goal in stoppage time gives AFC Ann Arbor a 1-0 win over Detroit Suburb Residents FC. More All or Nothing potentially on the way? Who the F is Tom Brady? Transferring is not really an epidemic. Adam Silver is not just in charge of things.

Comments

Wolverine Devotee

May 14th, 2018 at 2:16 PM ^

Brian you can't get blown out twice in a single elimination tournament. We lost one game.

Rabbit21

May 14th, 2018 at 3:46 PM ^

Quibbling,

Their last regular season game was a 10-1 blowout at the hands of Ohio State.  So with that and then the 7-0 loss to Michigan State in the BTT, Brian's correct to say that's not an expecially encouraging lead-in to the NCAA tournament.

TrueBlue2003

May 15th, 2018 at 6:19 PM ^

the leagues follow federal law because they do interstate business.  Weed is still illegal federally and leagues probably won't (can't?) allow it until that changes.

It's more like insider trading.  You can trade all the stocks you want except on companies you have control over or inside information about.  And the reason for the restriction is that for the system to work, the public has to have confidence in the integrity of the markets.

Same for sports betting.  Bettors have to have confidence in the integrity of the market and fans of the leagues have to have confidence in the integrity of the sport.  Both would be jeopordized if there will insiders trading in the market or if participants were influencing outcomes in disingenous ways.

oreblue

May 14th, 2018 at 6:22 PM ^

Anything that hastens the return of NCAA College Football is A-OK in my book. I hope they let you do recruiting dirty tricks next time.

TheReal_GR3

May 14th, 2018 at 10:59 PM ^

This will probably be unpopular but I really see the positive on the play by our defense posted... We gave up what looks like 4 or 5 yards on the play. Taco sets a good edge and Godin does a decent job of getting down the line and trying to keep a guy from getting to the 2nd level. 

But the rest is kind of poor. Gedeon doesn't get down hill attacking the LOS and ends up catch a block which gives up the biggest gap in yards. Glasgow gets cut and creates the cut back lane. I believe that is Gary who gets walled off by a TE, the 2nd TE actually ends up blocking two guys by himself. 

Anyway...

I've talked to you guys before if you want more All-22 vid I can help with that. I've sent several plays from Shea last season but I haven't seen any of it used. 

Ziff72

May 15th, 2018 at 10:29 AM ^

I think the only thing being praised in the tweet is the safety coming downhill so aggressively.

 

You have All 22 clips?   Get posting.   Unload your all 22 cannon and fill the board.  That's way better than reading posts about people crying about in state recruiting or some other garbage