OT: What is your football related background?
It is a boring Friday night seeing as many people are off campus for Spring Break, so I figured I would take advantage of my new posting capabilities to have this question answered.
This is a question I have often pondered since I began frequenting Mgoblog. What football background do most people have around here? To what degree is the Mgoblog community made up of just plain old football fans, ex high school players, ex college players, coaches (etc)? This is just out of plain curiousity. Feel free to include other sports experience as well since this is not exclusively a football blog.
I guess I will start. I played high school football and also a bit of amateur/semi pro ball before tearing my ACL and MCL which brought my fun to an end. I played an outside linebacker / hybrid, inverted safety position at both levels. I don't have much experience with other sports other than simply being a well informed fan. Been a huge football fan since the age of six or seven, like most people here I imagine.
I been playing football since 7th grade. Interesting little story of my first practice, I ran the 40 with a group and was the fastest out of the skill guys, coach asked me if I could throw the ball I said I don't know, he had me throw a couple and well I was the starting QB after my first practice ever.
HS made the switch to WR because of an all state QB a head of me and well I became an all state WR my Jr. and Sr. year. I always give him the credit my Jr. because all I had to do is catch the ball and the same for my Sr. year, we had a Soph. QB that could throw.
Never played college ball.
I currently play semi-pro ball as a WR and back up QB. My team went 12-0 and was ranked 8th nationally in the final polls.
Basketball. Pros: Incredible wingspan and intangibles. Cons: Couldn't shoot or defend.
He's Tayshaun Prince with Michael Jordan's indomitable will.
A ton of Madden and a bit of NCAA football.
Other than that, virtually none. :(
I am so sick of the way they made the LBs jump in that game that I had to stop playing it
in the vicinity of football players.
All-Conference DT in high school, initially went to college to play but decided to go into coaching instead (and dropped over 100 pounds off my DT frame). Now I am an assistant coach in Florida and a head wrestling coach. Might stop creeping here and contribute instead.
No reason you can't do both...
He could creepily contribute.
No more creeping for you dude! Go all in! For Michigan!
Played tailback in junior high, but gave it up when everyone on my team hit a growth spurt and I didn't. Stuck with basketball and played that in high school.
I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night...
Highschool quarterback played 1 year at cortland state in new york tore my labrum transfered to U-M and graduated in 10
I played organized football for one year on my high school's freshman squad as a LB and TE. I contributed about 50 yards in penalties to my team's atrocious season and hated most every second of the experience.
Unorganized, marginally talented games with my friends though? I have tons and tons of experience with that. I played a Tebow-ish game at QB and was marginally useful as a receiver and safety in our 'Vandals Football' league.
That's almost word for word the first (and only) paragraph of your Wikipedia page. Coincidence, I'm sure.
Pee wee, junior high and high school football, outside linebacker my junior and senior year behind an all league player who was the freakin man, great guy. Still got a lot of playing time when we went 3-4 or 4-4 and on every specail teams but never good enough to play college.
Senior year was some of the best times of my life though, great memories, 12-0 season and made life time friends.
7th grade youth football tackle football of course. Had 1 sack and 1 TFL on D- Line, also played O- Line two way player here. Decided to focus on Baseball 3rd base, and Wrestling from 7th grade to Junior year. Then realized I was white and not gonna make it to the pros anytime soon. So got a job junior and senior year bought a car, lost my virginity and realized sports really killed my sex life cause of the time involved and that was the end.
For those of you interested, Michigan baseball is playing an early Big Ten match-up vs. Ohio is Florida. Game started at 6:00 ET. Michigan is up 1-0 in the middle of the 3rd.
GameTracker can be found on mgoblue.com
Maybe a good early Friday Open Thread topic.
my mother's side of the family (Burke) all resided in A2 and my grandfather, Henry, worked for UM when I was born. Some of my uncles and cousins either went to UM or worked there. Several aunts, uncles and cousins still live in the area.
I started playing football in Davenport, IA in 7th grade, broke my back in an accident in 9th and didn't play again until eleventh grade. The week I broke my back they were going to change me from middle linebacker to running back, (unstopable.)
By the time I could play again, following a body cast, I had lost much of my ab muscle control and gained enough weight that I could play offensive guard and defensive NT. Our team was pretty bad and I wasn't exceptional although I helped our team win our final game as a senior by one point when their extra point attempt hit me in the helmet as I had made a considerable gain into their backfield.
I've been an M fan since age five when I had my first memory of the Big House. I plan on relocating back to the A2 area if my place sells following the end of the grandkids school year. I also had a considerable amount of voice training and can yell louder than any other M fan including everyone here!
Played middle-school basketball. Everything I learned about football (both scheme and roster-wise), I learned from video games. Anybody remember Keith Jackson commentating on Gamebreaker 99 for playstation? Regardless, I know quite a bit about football, though I've never formally played.
Footbaw since 3rd grade, 3 years on varsity in high school. Got recruited by some smaller schools but decided to come to Michiganfergodsakes to play another sport that is not footbaw. On one play in a 7v7 I schooled Mark Dell. Suck it Mark Dell.
Played competetively through end of varsity career in high school (i.e. played through end of high school, but not in college). Called play-by-play while at U of M for student radio and did some work professionally for McNeese State University, focusing largely on their football program including hosting their coaches show (they were pretty good 1-AA team around then; 2002 1-AA NCAA runner-up). Read a lot of books and stuff. Watch a lot of tv.
Didn't you beat Breese in the Milk Bowl senior year?
Ran the wishbone at Plymouth Salem HS under legendary coach Moshimer in the late 80's. Moshimer ran coaching clinics on how to run the wishbone, including for Bo!
I was too slow to ever play for Meechigan, but was recruited by schools like Kalamazoo.
Great memories and learned a lot about life through my experiences.
Four Years of High School Football, one year as a college walk-on until I realized that getting my butt kicked daily for an outside shot to play garbage time as a senior was probably not the best use of my time. Love the game though and I really miss hitting/getting hit.
College QB and former NFL front office work.
Played football in HS on the west side of the state. Noseguard and guard. Coach offensive line/defensive line and defensive coordinator at the JV level where I played.
Played a couple years of baseball and basketball, was not very good.
4 years of high school
4 years of D1 college
2 years of Rugby
5 years as D-coordinator - CYO
4 years as JV head coach/DC and varsity assistant
I played RB/LB in high school. Had 1500 yds and 27 TDs in 7 games as a senior in 2000. As a white RB, I did what most white RBs (not named McGuffie or Shallman) do and took a football scholarship to play defense at a small 1AA college. Played all four years in college, started 3, moved from starting FS as a Soph to starting SS as a Junior and starting OLB as a senior. I graduated and was a Graduate Assistant for one year. I followed that up by working on films doing sports stunts and choreography (We Are Marshall, Leatherheads). Eventually found my way back to coaching and took a DC job at a high school in Georgia, where I've been for the past 3 years. Currently working on my Masters.
Football? Yeah, I played some football back in the day.
I've probably been watching football all my life, but it only started to register in the early 70s. Too small to play myself, so I ended up playing soccer.
I never played organized football, only pickup and intramural flag football while at UM. Most relevant football experience was the time I spent working in the equipment room for Jon Falk which was priceless.
Edit: Oh yeah and Pat Moons used to play for my intramural soccer team, so we had that going for us.
Played once in fourth grade. I ran for a pass thrown by the teacher, and caught it for a touchdown. On the next play, he threw to me again, but instead of catching it, I took it in the face and got a very cool black eye. Now I just play at the Women's Football Academy.
Al Bundy?
Uh...assistant coach for my high school class' powderpuff team, and played intramural flag football in college.
Defensive end/tight end. All conference my senior year, all state honorable mention (got screwed by politics!!!), could have played ivy league but I chose to pursue my dream of going to a Big Ten football school to enjoy from the stands (my brother went to PSU and I loved it). Now I operate on injured football players and talk shit to the ones that play against Michigan and all SEC players.
3 years in high school, 4 years at Michigan. One Rose Bowl.
In the band.
Played high school football. Was all-conference at CB. Really skinny at the time so no one wanted me. Not so skinny now.
I started at DT at 5'10, 195lbs my senior year. Played four years of HS ball and hope to have enough time to coach one day.
A cool story is that I got knocked out of the playoffs by the same team that knocked Brandom Graham and Crockett out the previous week. The first time I ever saw him was during film that week when I noticed they had one incredibly large punter (he averaged over 45 yards a punt in that game). He made over 20 tackles and his team lost by 21 points.
HS went to CC (Martin, Godin, Shallman) as undersized center had to block Mark Messner(All-American) in practice my junior year. Bled blue my whole life ...went to MSU freshman yr(long story) but had a Block "M" in my window in North Hubbard the whole year - transferred to AA - RA in South Quad - had Leroy, Desmond, Skrepenak, Dingman, Jeff Brown, Evans, Dottin among others on my hall. BTW - that was when Bo(God Bless you!) was there and those guys were never a problem to the staff or students. They respected authority and worked hard. Damn happy I found this blog and that Hoke et al are bringing back the power, respect and honor to the program. (After reading 3 and Out - no disrespect to RR)
I played football and basketball through high school. I started as a wide reciever in junior high and my first number was 21. As I got older I played tight end and defensive end. Basketball was my favorite sport and I can't remember a time I didn't play. When I was in 6th grade I went to the Michigan basketball camp. One day our coach was late to one of the afternoon practices and an incoming U of M freshman bball player came over to my group and taught us an inbounds play to practice while we waited for coach. That player was Chris Webber. I have been a huge Michigan fan my whole life and and grauduated from U of M in 2001.
For Michigan Football Team... Usually held Coach Mo's head phone cords...Once I held Bo's. Was assigned to Coach Meter to setup and breakdown for practice.
5ft 6, white,jewish and slow. Manager was the best I could do.
Season ticket holder since Bob Timberlake led Michigan to a 9-1 season (6-1 conference for the championship, shutting out Ohio) ) and beat Oregon State 34-7 in the Rose Bowl. Anyone want to guess the year?