Brian, have you ever made an attempt to interview Dave Brandon?
I'd be curious Brian's thoughts on when Michigan football was at its best overall in terms of football domination, public respect, recruiting momentum, etc. As a follow-up where does Coach Hoke and the current team stand in comparison (assuming it is fair to expect he doesn't think that Michigan football is currently at its historical high point).
do you think football is going to fall off some sort of concussion syndrome cliff, losing credibility to the point where it is shunned in polite conversation, and major universities stop supporting it?
if it does, can anything else fill the Big House? college soccer? lacrosse? rugby?
Now that the defensive scheme/base has changed will we be more aggressive in blitzing and trending towards press coverage? I think this might have been touched on a bit in the offseason but I would like to hear more thoughts around what the coaching staff feels will be some of the more drastic differences fans might see in defensive philosophy from last year.
Have Brian ask Hoke if, now that both coordinators will be on the sidelines, he'll be wearing a headset.
And tell him it's gonna cost him double. And tell him this thing is beautiful. And tell him I'm being a nice guy. And tell him he dresses like a gigolo. Yeah. No! Tell him--tell Brian that having a sexy female assistant is such. A terrible. Cliche.
Who's going to start in fall?
/s
Is MGoBlog now considered the cradle of Bloggers?
- Are any changes coming to MGoBlog? If so, what are they?
- Will there come a time when the identity of upvoters and downvoters will become known to the person whose posts have been voted on?
- Has the Fort Schembechler approach to media access made it easier for people to criticize Michigan’s athletes, because it’s rare that we get to hear them speak or read about their personal stories, so it becomes harder to empathize with them and understand what they’re experiencing?
- Are there any off-field, off-court or off-ice feature stories that you’d want to report on further, but that you’ve been prevented from doing so because you and your staff have been denied access? If so, what were they?
- Any follow-ups or features planned on:
- Stephen Loszewski's "My Wish" Experience at Michigan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bgK2Svlmao
- Hunter Gandee (middle school wrestler who carried his brother 40 miles to the Michigan campus to raise awareness of cerebral palsy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvOygdtQK9Y
- The Hope for Pahokee Campaign/#Eating https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1021358459/hope-eating-from-garden-to-table-season-one
- Zack Novak, Stu Douglass and The Michigan Hoops Revival
-
Alan Oaks (homered off David Price in NCAA Baseball tournament to help Michigan upset Vanderbilt in the regionals) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMIde6FpOs
-
The Mealer Brothers
-
Samantha Findlay (10th inning homer helps win NCAA softball championship for Michigan) http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=7964621
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Soony Saad (Big Ten Freshman Soccer Player of the Year, helped lead Michigan to Big Ten championship and now playing fr Sporting Kansas City in MLS) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfOncvDYRTg
- Michigan's Olympic Ice Dancers
Are any changes coming to MGoBlog? If so, what are they?
Moving up to the latest version of Drupal and redesigning the entire site. Magazine layout. Related articles when you're in an article. Special pages for recruiting, football, basketball, hockey, and statistics (we're building our own database that we plan to make free on the web). Three new staff members (Adam's the new Heiko, David is a back-end guy who is helping us with business-running operational things, and Brian's looking at a new recruit-whisperer).
Will there come a time when the identity of upvoters and downvoters will become known to the person whose posts have been voted on?
The time is now. The place is here. The points level to view it is attainable.
Has the Fort Schembechler approach to media access made it easier for people to criticize Michigan’s athletes, because it’s rare that we get to hear them speak or read about their personal stories, so it becomes harder to empathize with them and understand what they’re experiencing?
It probably makes it harder to criticize; that's why they do it. Rich Rod granted unprecedented access to the media, and immediately there was #1 jerseygate, and uses-bad-words-gate, and soon enough there was Practicegate. EVERYONE bitches sometimes about their endeavors, especially when those endeavors take over their lives to the degree that playing football at Michigan does. You'll notice programs most notorious for refusing access to the press (MSU is a good example) get ridiculously good press. They do it because it works.
Are there any off-field, off-court or off-ice feature stories that you’d want to report on further, but that you’ve been prevented from doing so because you and your staff have been denied access? If so, what were they?
There are off-the-field stories we've all heard that we don't report on, but that's because we don't choose to report on them, and usually we don't have enough information to report on them--if you're going to damage somebody's reputation, especially a student-athlete's, you'd better make damn sure you "have it." Even when you do, a good journalist knows when a story is not worth the ink to print it. You have to be cognizant of the reaction to the story, not just put it out there. Say (just pulling this out of my ass here) that two recruits at a Michigan camp have a fight because they were both trying to hook up with the same girl; one of those recruits loses interest in the school the other is committed to, and someone at the camp passes the story along. What do we have but a rumor repeated by everyone we know at the camp, which we can't substantiate, and if it's true and we print it, it subjects those kids to derision by stupid useless people who get uppity about the sex lives of high school football players. The only stories I know that I don't print are stories I hold back because it would make me an awful person to print them.
There was only one time when someone from the university warned us that what we write could affect our access, and that was when we were tearing down Borges after the OSU game in '12 and Heiko wanted to get an interview with Borges. We tore down Borges anyway, and Heiko got the interview anyway. There was also an incident right after the Gibbons shit broke when they decided to only have "friendly" reporters come to an "informal" discussion with the coaches. That was a really stupid play by the university that made the Gibbons thing even more blown out of proportion than it was, because the Daily immediately called them out for it.
Any follow-ups or features planned on:
Stephen Loszewski's "My Wish" Experience at Michigan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bgK2Svlmao
Not that I know of.
Hunter Gandee (middle school wrestler who carried his brother 40 miles to the Michigan campus to raise awareness of cerebral palsy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvOygdtQK9Y
Not that I know of.
The Hope for Pahokee Campaign/#Eatinghttps://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1021358459/hope-eating-from-garden…
Not that I know of. They don't respond to direct emails so I let them do what they will on the board and leave it at that.
Zack Novak, Stu Douglass and The Michigan Hoops Revival
Of fucking course.
Alan Oaks (homered off David Price in NCAA Baseball tournament to help Michigan upset Vanderbilt in the regionals) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMIde6FpOs
Not that I know of.
The Mealer Brothers
Probably. We get updates directly from Barwis and indirectly from former teammates. I don't feel the need to push the story; this one has told itself, and when it rings a bell we bring it up again.
Samantha Findlay (10th inning homer helps win NCAA softball championship for Michigan) http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=7964621
I covered softball at the time it was on.
Soony Saad (Big Ten Freshman Soccer Player of the Year, helped lead Michigan to Big Ten championship and now playing fr Sporting Kansas City in MLS) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfOncvDYRTg
As news dicates.
Michigan's Olympic Ice Dancers
As news dicates.
I don't believe in forcing stories just because they're positive ones about the thing we cover; journalism is about providing accurate and interesting information in thoughtful context. When there's information that people care about it's shared to a degree dictated by the context. A lot of the things you bring up most people just go "huh, that's nice." I'd rather spend my time dissecting the football team's new base play because we're going to see it probably 100 times this year at least, and there are a lot of Michigan football fans who would like to know what makes it tick and what's going on when it's run.