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If the question is "Which ten?"...

...then: Gibson, Heyward, Chekwa, Boren, Homan, Rolle, Hines, Saine, Sanzenbacher and Browning.

Exactly ONE...

...Junior will leave, and that's Thaddeus Gibson. Cam Heyward will stay in order to chase a MNC (and because he loves being a college kid, and because as the late "Ironhead"'s son he's probably not under any sort of familial financial pressure), and Chimdi Chekwa will stay because he's not that good yet.

1329 is correct that it has always been Tressel's practice to "encourage" any Junior/Redshirt Soph that wants to, to go ahead and file the paperwork that lets them know where they might expect to be drafted.

It's not the case, however, that Tress "encourages" "any that have a good shot" to go pro - that's more of a player-by-player thing. If that WERE the case, then he would have encouraged Malcolm Jenkins to go, which he didn't, and Brian Hartline to stay, which he didn't (as far as we know).

Again: Gibson will be the only early entry. You heard it here first.

My Hope

That y'all come out and DESTROY Western Sat. Honestly.

Yeah...

...Oregon sucks, generally. Wait -

Kudos...

...on the Better Off Dead username. More kudos for having the balls to crack on someone else's shitty movie references whilst still calling yourself "Franch Dressing".

"Dramatic wife"

Yeesh. At least you didn't wonder what time of the month it was, Brian.

Look, I'm not trying to be a dick here, and it's true that a heretic is always scorned more vehemently than a simple non-believer, but it's for damn sure West Virginia knows Rodriguez better than Michigan does at this point.

It really is possible that Rodriguez is the mercenary asshole that these people say he is.

This is not to say that he's not the asshole y'all needed at the time, but it IS to say that, in time, you will likely come to view his tenure with extremely mixed feelings - as a necessary break with the incestuous, hidebound past, but also as a dick who just didn't "get it" when it came to the "character" (and I acknowledge that that word is doing a lot of work here) of your program. Which is to say, he may very well end up being your very own John Cooper. Of course, he may not - but as a longtime obsessive partisan of my own chosen team, and a longtime interested observer of yours, I can tell you that there are plenty of parallels.

Besides...

...I thought I made it clear that I thought adding Paulus to the team was a GOOD idea, just w/ a pretty hefty downside.

Wow....

...just, wow.

How do you know - besieged as you are in Columbus - what RR "appears to have said" to Paulus (and Forcier, for that matter)? Is it on his Twitter?

Isn't the whole point here that since there's a scholarship available, Paulus wouldn't be "try(ing) to walk on", but be given a scholarship for this one year because Michigan's QB situation is far from ideal?

Can any non-insane parallel be drawn between Michigan's and Ohio State's situation @ QB (other than the # of "scholarship QBs in Spring practice")?

Sorry to go off for a second there, but you're missing the point - it's not just that Michigan's coming off the 3-9, or that people just get off on questioning RR - what makes this Paulus thing newsworthy and interesting is that it MAKES IT LOOK LIKE RR IS DESPERATE TO FIND A QB, ANY QB AT ALL, EVEN ONE THAT HASN'T PLAYED FOOTBALL FOR FOUR YEARS BECAUSE HE KNOWS HE DOESN'T HAVE ONE RIGHT NOW AND HE'S EFFED W/OUT ONE.

If you read my diary, you'll see that I don't necessarily agree that that's the case, but that doesn't matter - whatever the truth of this is, which is something neither I, nor you, nor almost anybody else (certainly nobody here) knows, the fact remains that the optics of all this are TERRIBLE. There's no getting around that. I know it's probably unfair, but oh well. Wish for good sports media in one hand and shit in the other and see which gets filled up first.

Well...

...there's tens of thousands of us being unleashed on the world every year. We can't all be as smart as me :)

Not to be a dick about it, but there's plenty of stupidity on your side as well. I just try my best not to hold it against the rest of you. It helps that I grew up mostly in the Toledo-area battleground around lots of decent people whose only flaw was that they chose the Dark Side ;)

"May" is right...

...Senor 66. The point is that that's a complete unknown at this point. It's just as likely that he'll be Justin Feagin.

What kind of masochist...

...watches "PTI"? Ha!

I don't wanna be rude, guy, but Sheridan = B-minus? Ever? That's just crazy. I watched a lot of y'all's games last year and I don't know if I've ever seen a QB that bad. I'm not joking.

Re: King Kaufman @ Salon

Brian, if you're reading this: Unless you've got another outlet for "This Modern World", then you've still got at least ONE good reason to keep visiting Salon - on Tuesdays at least.

What kind of masochist...

...watches "Around the Horn"?

All the more reason...

...he should have been coached up on what to say or else embargoed from the press until it's all settled. Coaches can do that w/ players, you know. Like I said, I'm not talking about what's going on in Tate's head.

Thanks...

...and they didn't pay me. There's more of my kind in Buckeye Nation than you'd think.

???

You're gonna have to define "their bowl track record" for me - Ohio State under Tressel is 5-3 in bowls, 4-2 in the BCS, 1-2 in BCS Championship games.

I'll agree that it's "doubtful" that the Buckeyes pull off the upset, but their BCS-Bowl track record is actually a point in their favor here - as you can see above, since Tressel arrived they're 3-0 in non-championship BCS games.

QB depth at Ohio State...

...is an issue right now. Behind Terrelle Pryor right now there is Todd Boeckman (who is of course a 6th-year senior, having "grayshirted" his 1st year on campus), redshirt freshman Joe Bauserman (who is in a Chris Weinke-type situation of having played minor-league baseball for a couple years before returning to college football), and a freshman named Ross Oltorik (who qualifies as a "who's that?" type of guy). The Pryor/Boeckman situation you're probably familiar with; Bauserman saw the field a few times in mop-up duty this year - during which, it should be said, as well as during Spring Games and such, he looks very competent.

There are also two DBs on the roster, Zach Domicone and Rocco Pentello, who were outstanding high school QBs and who hoped to be considered as QB recruits by Tressel until the Pryor signing made that question sort of moot.

The problem here is Antonio Henton having transferred this year after it became clear upon Pryor's arrival that he was almost certainly never going to start for the Buckeyes. Hard to blame him. He would have been a junior next season.

So: this transfer (having happened just this past fall) left OSU in sort of the same lurch as Beaver has left UM, which is to say scrambling late in the game to find a good QB recruit that we didn't think we'd need. We have been recruiting Tajh Boyd, and nobody else, as far as I know. I have to think - given his stated reasons for de-committing from WVU - that if it does in fact come down to Ohio State and Michigan, that he chooses the Buckeyes. But this is far from assured, since there are other schools in the mix for his services. If we don't get him, then I think Tressel will hope for the best and concentrate on finding a QB (or two) in next year's class.

Of course it DOES...

...change your possibility. By exactly HALF.

The question under discussion here is how damaging Beaver's de-committment is to the chances that Michigan gets a good quarterback out of this class.

With Forcier AND Beaver, there were two chances. Now there's one.

QED

um...

SIC.

Plus...

...don't EVER make a bet that requires you to wear the other team's colors. The very thought gives me chills. I grew up in the NW Ohio battleground between us, and learned that lesson in a hurry. Make booze, or really good beer, or a night out, your wager.

Sure,

the de-commit is not the end of the world, long-term. Unfortunately, I don't think Michigan has the luxury of thinking long-term right now. That depth chart you put up only highlights the problem here: while it is entirely possible that Threet/Forcier will emerge as a winning QB, it is every bit as possible that they will not. It follows, therefore, that the presence of Beaver would increase the likelihood that UM has a winning option at QB, and that Beaver's decision decreases that likelihood.

IT CANNOT BE EMPHASIZED ENOUGH THAT PROTESTATIONS ABOUT BEAVER'S "CHARACTER", "MICHIGAN-MAN"-NESS, etc., are immaterial to this discussion. Think about it this way: suppose Beaver honored his verbal, rehabbed his shoulder all spring, and emerged next fall as a clearly superior QB - would there be any doubts about his character then?

Of course there would not (absent arrests, bad grades, etc.). You're free to disagree, of course - but that kind of nutty denial and self-regard is something I've only associated with those who pray to TD Jesus.

No...

...I didn't mean "one year going on two", I meant that every program is only one QB recruit that actually pans out away from a bunch of nondescript warm bodies: the more warm bodies the better, should the worst come to pass.

I didn't...

...compare UM's situation now to OSU's under Cooper - I only brought it up to establish that I'm not the sort of Buckeye that thinks history began when Jim Tressel was introduced at that basketball game in 2001.

I actually do have a theory about how RichRod = Cooper, but I don't think y'all would like it, and this isn't the place for me to air it, so...

Also:

On this whole "lottery" business: if recruits were not "lottery tickets" in a sense, then players like Colt Brennan, Alex Smith, and Nate Davis would not end up at programs like Hawaii, Utah, and Ball State - even considering whatever pitches coaches like June Jones, Urban Meyer (did he even recruit Alex Smith? - NO), and Brady Fucking Hoke threw at them.

To repeat: Forcier may be awesome and Beaver may suck. That is the nature of a lottery. It is sure that somebody right now is a fantastic dual-threat QB that RR "should" have recruited because he would have come to UM had RR done so - none of that matters at this moment. What matters is that Beaver has cut your odds of winning in half with precious little time or opportunity to recoup.

I wouldn't have mentioned Troy...

...if it weren't for somebody bringing it up here w/r/t this whole Beaver/Tate/-1 situation. I am not at all trying to rub your nose in Troy. I thought I made that clear.

But since you mentioned it: the point is that nobody REPEAT NOBODY - including Tressel - knew during the recruiting/signing period in question that Troy would turn out to be a legendary Wolverine-killer and a Drew-Brees-style world-beater (just leave your Florida digs aside, please - you all know what I'm talking about). It just worked out that way, which was extremely fortunate for us, because I shudder to think what might have been with Zwick at the helm during that time.

The point here is that we had MORE THAN ONE OPTION. The way I see UM's QB situation w/r/t the coming season, there's only ONE OPTION (OK, two)that points toward "success", by which I mean "better than a 6-6 record":

1. Steven Threet improves MASSIVELY from this years performance and ability to avoid injury,

2. Forcier is much more ready than your average true-freshman QB to lead his team to victories.

Of course, it may turn out that Forcier is quite awesome. It may turn out that Threet just needed the number of game snaps he got plus an offseason of RR's tutelage to be awesome. That's not what's important here, other than in the sense that Brian likened recruits to lottery tickets.

What is important is that Beaver's de-commit has thrown your QB situation - always a precarious situation in most circdumstances - into a MUCH more chancey realm.

Not Exactly

caserm10: "I believe in Rodriguez, and the its because of the foundation that was layed this year. This team PLAYED HARD. The quitters QUIT. The upperclassmen REMAINED POSITIVE."

Minor: "You can't really blame Rich Rod because everybody on the team did not buy in like they're supposed to. We have a couple of guys not going hard. We'll correct that most definitely. That ain't going to happen on my watch as a senior."