2021 away game at Wisconsin. When Jump Around dropped and our players were loose enough to have fun with it even in a tight road game. I new things were DIFFERENT.

Yep. Earlier today it was at Meijer on Carpenter road. There were a couple people from the CFP and from Dr. Pepper there with it when I saw it. The line took around 45 minutes to get through to get my pic taken with it. 

I’m also baffled that ESPN’s broadcast is only in stereo, with 5.1 surround not available. Especially seeing that ABC’s (and Fox’s) broadcasts have 5.1. 
 

His original GoFundMe is still up and getting donations:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/big-meech-road-to-victory

Similarly to you, I grew up a Sparty fan - my parents met while they were at MSU. I spent a summer during high school in an engineering program at MSU, and liked it. The fall of my junior year though, I stayed on campus at Michigan for a recruiting weekend and absolutely fell in love. Submitted my application and the rest was history. 

Definitely rooting for Georgia. First because who wants to see another Bama championship? Second, because if we have to lose, I’d rather have lost to the eventual champs. Third, because Georgia is a pretty likable team and fanbase - even while they were killing us I wasn’t feeling hate for any of their players. Nothing dirty, no over the top taunting, etc. - they were just clearly the better team. Easy for me to root for them. 
 

I will say this - the one reason to root for Bama would be that it’s the better story to fight against the SEC narrative. Whenever a team other than Bama wins from the SEC, that helps their argument of overall SEC superiority  vs it just being Bama that is dominant. That being said, I’m still rooting for Georgia based on the three things I mentioned above. 

Exactly - it’s a warning. Saban is going to take full advantage of whatever the rules allow him, whether that’s on the field with style of play, or in recruiting/NIL. 

I think the average star rating is a big indicator of future success. But I know from a first hand basis on an individual player level that stars don't matter. My nephew is currently a true freshman on Stanford's team. He was a consensus 3 star in the 2021 class, but also had offers from Michigan, Alabama, Notre Dame, Georgia, Florida, Florida State, Michigan State, USC, and several other large programs. His top three was Stanford, Michigan, and Notre Dame - ended up choosing Stanford for several reasons. 

It was a weird recruiting year due to the pandemic and many of the camps and visits having to be cancelled, but the fact that my nephew had all those official offers and was still "only" a 3 star definitely showed me that the star ratings don't matter for individual players.

I grew up in a Sparty household - my mom and dad met while at MSU, so I was a Sparty fan. But when choosing colleges, I got a nice scholarship offer for Michigan so it was a no brainer decision in terms of academics.

My freshman year at Michigan was 97-98, and we all know what happened in Fall of 1997. The magical moment for me was celebrating on South U after the Penn State game when Lee Bollinger opened up the president’s house for students to come in cheering. I was hooked for LIFE at that point. 

And Steph, Lillard, Harden...

Yep, I think this is exactly it. We'll see that same package later in the year, but there is a TON that can be done out of it. Morris as a lead blocker, Morris keeping and running. Morris throwing. Peppers throwing. Peppers handing back off to a WR on a sweep reverse. 

Whatever it is, we have the basics on film now so if/when that package comes in teams are gonna have to account for it but not really know what they are accounting for. 

Just about any GM in Joe's position would have made the same pick at that spot. That's how high all the scouting reports were on Darko. It was a foregone conclusion that Darko was going #2 before Joe made the pick. Even before the lottery happened and selection order was known, Darko was considered a lock in the top 3.

Here's an article from April of that year wondering how high Melo's draft stock would be after his NCAA run and wondering if he would pass up Darko on GM's draft boards. I've swiped the relevant conclusion:

http://www.nbadraft.net/draft-buzz-42203

Even if a team needs a wing player more so than a post player, it's hard to see a team passing on Milicic. Darko is a "once-in-a-GM's-lifetime", or better yet "...GM's-tenure" type talent. Since teams began scouting players overseas, not one prospect of Darko's caliber has come along. He is a proven entity having competed against even better competition than either James or Anthony. 

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

There are other articles out there from that time frame that say the same thing. Joe Dumars wasn't off in his own world on Darko. And on top of all of that, the Pistons were in a FAR better position than anyone else to take a player at that point that mayhave been a high risk because the team had the number 3 pick but wasn't in rebuilding mode at all. We had just come off of an Eastern Conference Final and had the luxury of taking that high pick because of a previous trade. Darko was a no brainer pick at that point.

Signing Josh Smith was an all around bad move. He gave him WAY too much money (should have learned his lesson on that after Ben Gordon and Charlie V.) He also signed him with the intention of moving him to the 3 because we already had Drummond and Monroe. Playing the 3 amplified all the worst things about Smith's game and negated the best things about it. 

gave us room to make a splash in the free agency market. The issue is what Joe DID with that cap space - he gave a ton of money to Ben Gordon and Charlie V.

If that's the case then maybe he wants to remain an osu commit in public while still evaluaing his options in private. I wasn't saying I think he's going to Michigan, just that our chances aren't over because of that statement. I think Michigan is very much still in play.

specific recruitment. If Weber's statement meant that it's over for us, Sam would know that.

Another thing he was strongly saying this morning is that Weber is still the unquestioned number one target of this entire years class, and that he is the highest priority for the staff. This is again AFTER that statement came out, so the staff has obviously still thinks they have a decent shot if he is still at this high of a priority.

was that the key words Weber used were "think" and "official". Sam harped on that and repeated it a few times. Weber doesn't have to take an official visit up here, and he might not have a visit to Ann Arbor be an "official" visit anyways because he wants to keep it relatively quiet since he is commited to osu. 

I'm not saying that Sam was telling us that he's coming to Michigan, just that he wouldn't say our chances are over because of that comment from Weber.

It's hard for me to imagine Lloyd actively sabbotaging a coaching process. I think he may have made his opinion known, but if the AD let that change who they were going to make an offer to then that's on them and not Lloyd. I think he's way too classy to actively work against a potential coach.

We should stay with adidas but get them to raise the quality of what they are providing. Also just stick with the standard uniforms, in the correct colors.