Recruiting Board Updated

Update 4/28: Removed AL CB Phelon Jones(Miami), MI QB Justin Siller(dropped us), NY QB Mike Paulus (ditto, due to Mallett), and VA QB Peter Lalich (UVA). Moved Ryan Mallett to committed. Also linked to Texarkana Gazette article on his commitment, a second article from the Gazette, and an article on Josh Oglesby -- M in top six.

Editorial Opinion: Actual recruiting news other than OMG Mallett has clattered to a near-halt at this point. It will pick up around camp. I've sliced most of the high profile quarterbacks from the board save Bostick, but he'll probably go sooner rather than later. Given Michigan's late scramble for a second quarterback, any quarterback, in last year's class it seems likely that Michigan will continue to pursue a number of less highly touted prospects -- I wouldn't be surprised if someone gets a camp offer, perhaps Adrian's Stephen Threet.

Oglesby remains guarded, but the overall tenor of internet discussion points to Wisconsin. That's the basest of speculation and not to be taken as gospel.

Update: Good gravy: mere moments after this post goes up, Oglesby commits to Wisconsin. Basest Internet speculation now declares that I have won the lottery.

... nothing? Damn.

ESPN has started their recruit grading process and likes both VanBergen and Chambers fairly well, giving them both 79 -- all numbers this year are out of 100 instead of 10 for some reason -- but are less sold on Mallett than most, giving him an 82. For comparison, last year Cobrani Mixon, Brandon Minor, and Greg Mathews all got 79s from ESPN; there were no 82s but Adam Patterson got an 83 and Mouton, Schilling, and Brown all got 81s. Feldman's latest blog entry has the following excerpt on Mallett:

"He can make any throw and has a quick release. Shows great zip on the deep out, shows touch on the vertical ball and does an outstanding job of leading his receivers on crossing routes. Is tough in the pocket, will take some hits and will continue to step into his throws. … He's one of the few quarterbacks in this class who can probably single-handedly beat you with his arm, but he's also one of the few quarterbacks who will struggle to buy a lot of second chance opportunities with his feet."

A strange trend: hello Northwestern. No fewer than three prominent kids Michigan is recruiting have visited Evanston or are listing Northwestern prominently: California CB Michael Williams, Florida LB/S Lorenzo Edwards, and Ohio RB Brandon Saine. Both Williams and Edwards swung by the Midwest to visit ND, Michigan, and Northwestern. Saine has the Wildcats in the top four. If any of the aforementioned mention academics as a priority I might believe them. Same for Michigan LB Chris Colasanti, who visited Stanford.

Finally, I would write off Michigan's chances with Detroit Mumford cornerback Cedric Everson if I was you. Everson is busy touring the country and hasn't mentioned Michigan in a while. Georgia Tech fans are abuzz (HA! I kill me!) over a recent trip that garnered raves.

Scheduling Conundrum Part II: Solutions

Option 1: Socialism

The NCAA can do this -- they enforce letters of intent, game limits, sanction bowls, etc. They have the power to make teams honor the contracts they sign and even restrict the number of home games a team plays. Options:

• Restrict teams to two or (preferably) one guarantee games per year.
• Create a "letter of scheduling intent" that's binding. Teams can move games around, but they have to play 'em at some point, say five years after the game was originally scheduled.
  
• Put a hard limit on the number of home games... six or seven, likely seven.

Draconian measures all, but the NCAA has the power to make players sit out when they transfer and enforce binding letters of intent.

The inception of the LOI is a good model for what we're talking about here. Before the LOI, teams could poach players up until they showed up on campus. When a few teams started doing so, more teams followed in order to keep their programs on a level playing field, a situation directly analagous to some teams' attempts to schedule their way to fun and profit by lining up patsies. Once a few major contenders smoothed the path to the national championship game, everyone followed because it was in their interest. The NCAA finds themselves in a situation where each team's desire for individual profit hurts the overall product. The argument for scheduling restrictions is similar to that which compels professional leagues to implement salary caps: the main product of sports association is competition; maximizing that competition benefits everyone.

Note that any of these draconian measures will probably hurt a large number of low-level D-I football teams and possibly send a dozen or more down to I-AA, and we should be fine with that. There are no inalienable rights to D-I football. The Sun Belt should know better.

Option 2: Restructuring

Outside of a fairly unlikely NCAA smackdown the best chance for meaningful nonconference games is to make them... er... less meaningful. As of now any non-conference loss is almost a deathblow to one's national championship chances; at the very least it leaves no room for error. Short of making national championships unimportant, the only way to fix this is to expand the playoff system to more than two teams. Yes, "playoff." We've already established what the BCS is. Now we're just arguing quantity.

An eight team playoff -- one of the much-discussed topics of last offseason -- would hurt the unique tension of the regular season somewhat but would reduce the pressure to schedule nonconference games that appear to be easy wins, as there's always the conference championship escape hatch. That combined with increased demand for televisable games going forward could shift the nonconference equation enough to make competitive games the preferred option for power schools. As discussed before, the playoff should be structured to preserve the tension of the regular season as much as possible, which means major advantages bestowed upon the top teams: home games in the first and second round.

Pointless, all of this, but it's a long way to September.

Unverified Voracity: Elderly Cheese Edition

Since there hasn't been an Unverified Voracity in a while, some of these links might fall under the category of Lincoln shot.

Feldman sure does talk about Michigan a lot, and this is probably why:

In truth, I get more e-mails from frustrated Michigan fans than any other.

And this is probably why that happens:

"Consistently, this is the most underachieving program in the country," says one NFL scout. "Although FSU seems to be closing the gap a little."

Yerk. Not so appealing. However, Feldman's next entry also provides an important bit of information that should reassure most:

The big break-through guy for him sounds like DE-OLB Tim Jamison. English must've used the word "explosive" five different times while talking about him. Between Jamison, LaMarr Woodley and Shawn Crable, the Wolverines have a ton of talent there that English should be able to shift all over the place and cause a lot of headaches for opposing QBs.

Steepled fingers: "exxxxcellent." Attempting to determine whether the defense will come together is a fruitless task, but at least we appear ready to put the best players out there. Also garnering praise from English are Branch (duh) and Charles Stewart, who has "has really matured and now has a better understanding of the defense."

One more item on Mallett: he is likely going to be a January enrollee (scroll down) a la Grady, Brown, and Boren.

Further evidence that Ohio State is a bit of a southern outlier. I mean, you got the cheatin', chewin', and cheerin' already. Now this...

...which must adorn rec-rooms all over rural Ohio. Deadspin has that story and also pictures of a Nugent action figure. Dios mio, man.

College hockey is the popular place to be of late, says the Grand Forks Herald... but the precarious status of the CHA conference threatens the further expansion of the Great Unknown Game and by proxy the 16-team tournament. Air Force is leaving the conference to join Atlantic Hockey (for some reason... AH does have Army), leaving the CHA one team short of the six required for autobid status. They can continue on for a couple years at reduced capacity, but college hockey has a problem that isn't going away any time soon.

There are four power conferences, and they're all essentially full. The CHA is a monstrosity cobbled together featuring teams from Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania that exists solely to house teams that have nowhere else to go. Any school looking to add hockey glances at the situation and backs out -- realignment is a requirement.

Ginorbous Etc: Maize 'n' Brew discusses the Graham Brown-as-TE theory; The Sun-Times profiles Jason Avant; Joey scouts Deshawn Sims (who has signed a letter of intent, people); Wheatley is back to finish his degree; Vijay takes apart the Weis made Brady theory of maximum annoyance.

Sweet Fancy Torrents

All hail Vijay, for he is beneficient and wise, having figured out the proper way to make torrents of old Michigan games for the masses. He has posted a torrent for the Michigan-Auburn Citrus Bowl of 2001 here for your downloading pleasure.

Some of you may be asking "what is a torrent and how much spyware does it come with?" Happily the answers are "total awesomeness" and "zero." BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer networking protocol that drastically reduces load for servers by using the largely dormant upstream capacity of other downloaders. In short, everyone downloads from one originator and everyone else downloading at the same time.

To use Bittorrent, you need a client program -- I use Azureus* -- and a torrent to download. Download and install your client, click on the torrent link, and viola: extremely large file on your hard drive. The most important thing to do when you download a torrent is to stay on the line after the download is complete, thus allowing other downloaders to use your bandwidth. This is called seeding. The more seeds, the faster everyone gets the file and the more the love gets spread.

*(Azureus is written in Java, so you may need the Java runtime if you haven't installed it already.)

Fractured Loyalties

4/25/2006 - Edmonton 4-3 Detroit (2OT) - Edmonton leads 2-1

First perhaps I must explain something, having received a request or two to turn my attention Wings-ward during the collegiate-sports-free zone we have now entered: I hate the Red Wings. This came as a bit of a surprise when it first happened. I had never disassociated myself from a team solely because I found them distasteful, but after a long series of futile deadline deals and outlandish contracts for elderly stars I found that I could stands quite a lot but I could stands no more. The acquisition of Chris Chelios, who was a dirty hateful hack in Chicago and still is, was the powerful last straw that severed my last tie to the Winged Wheel.

Why? One theory is the baseball theory. I have long harbored no interest whatsoever for baseball except a violent hatred for the Yankees and everything they stand for. By the time I had divorced the Wings I had taken to calling them the New York Hockey Yankees. I know, it's weird, and you can probably defend a lot of things short of spending sixteen million dollars -- half Edmonton's entire payroll -- for Dominik Hasek and Curtis Joseph as wise moves that weren't out of whack with NHL pay scales, but then you'd have to ignore that $80 million total and stick your fingers in your ears and go "la la la can't hear you" whenever someone tried to explain basic concepts of economics to you. And you don't want to do that, do you?

However, I think that was probably just a cover. Fans, like extremely political people, can justify just about anything if they have a mind to. Rationality and balance have no place in sports fandom, so there must have been something emotional at the root. You can find that root in the fans. Consider, for a moment, the two arenas: the two games at the Joe were tepid affairs with a lower bowl just as half-empty as it is during the regular season. Lawyers chat on the phone with trophy wives. Real estate agents look bored, holding daiquiris. The biggest reaction from the crowd comes when an obese man named "Mo Cheese" pretends he's in a paint shaker for 30 seconds. Rexall Place is full to the brim with howling banshees attempting to scream the opponent to death.

Never ever would have happened without the lockout.
All hail the lockout. Long live the lockout.

One place -- the one with the half-empty lower bowl -- has the audacity to call itself Hockeytown and then studiously ignore all in-state hockey that is not the Wings despite having two of the top programs in college hockey. Meanwhile, in Minnesota they sell out the XCel center for high school games. One place is the northernmost city with a professional sports team in North America, a place that scrapped year after year to keep a team and the memory of Gretzky. The Oilers are owned by thirty-four Edmonton businessmen. Before the lockout, every year they were called up and asked to put in tens of thousands of dollars to keep the club going. Without that lockout there would be no hockey in Edmonton today, and no one would ever again wear a jersey that looked like Gretzky's. The profligate spending of the Red Wings and other teams of their ilk contributed greatly to that.

No other team, however, was as successful, as profligate, and as local to me as Detroit. So you'll forgive me if I find Red Wing fandom fundamentally shallow, false, and destructive. It obviously isn't. But it's hard to see that when Doug Weight gets traded for bits and pieces. The thing begins to grate on you after a while.

OMG I love the Wings!!! An' an' an' daquiris an' an' my lawyer husband. We go to nearly a third of the home games... well, we go to about half of a third of the home games.

Ma'am, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to eat this Dennis Dodd.

My hate waxes and wanes based on the current lineup on the ice -- I feel downright heelish about it when Yzerman is out there, but whenever Chelios or the ghost of Darien Hatcher is present my hate grows strong like bull -- but hate it is. And it just so happens that stripped of my NHL fandom, the wheel spun and landed in a strange place that happens to be the home of the team the Wings are currently down two games to one to: Edmonton, a place I have never been. At the time I had never been within 500 miles of it.

No doubt the primary reason for this affection was the presence of Mike Comrie, who was Michigan's star for my first two years at Yost Ice Arena. Comrie was an impossible whirling dervish of a collegiate player who, despite being small and slow, was an audacious stickhandler, passer, and shooter who almost won the Hobey Baker as a sophomore. The Mike Comrie experience was an overwhelming one for someone who had never seen hockey in person before, especially not seven rows from the ice. When Comrie bolted for the OHL for bargaining leverage, I was mildly upset, but knew that he would be in the NHL sooner rather than later.

By the time I had finally kicked the Wings to the curb, Comrie was the Oilers' second-line center mere months after signing a pro contract. College guys like Comrie, Weight, Poti, Horcoff, Grier, and Marchant littered the roster. The trap is still a dirty, controversial word in the city to this day. In the playoffs they faced Dallas, and easy target for transitional hatred as an ex-Wing fan. It was all lined up, and when the CBC announcers had to strain to make themselves heard over the crowd, well, I was sold. At the start I watched to see Comrie, but it mattered little that a couple years later he would hold out for buckets of money Edmonton didn't have and get traded. I was rooting for the jersey by then, because I felt it stood for something other than "we can pay these guys a buttload of money."

So. When Jarrett Stoll shoveled a rebound past Legace in the second overtime last night I had a series of involuntary spasms reminiscent of Elaine Benes attempting to dance. I know it's totally weird, but:

HA HA HA HA HA HA. HA.

We now return to blogging not designed to infuriate most readers.

Facts About Ryan Mallett

Does not look at all like Billy Idol.

OMG. Shirtless. I can find no better way to summarize Ryan Mallet's assets than this from John Miller of the Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which must have the nation's most unwieldly newspaper name:

Uncle Rico boasted he could once throw a football a quarter-mile and wanted to bet that he could throw the pigskin over a mountain in the movie Napoleon Dynamite.

No one's come anywhere close to that.

But give Ryan Mallett a few years, and who knows what could happen?

The article continues on in that vein: Mallet throws a ball 70 yards in the air, dislocated two fingers on one of his wideout's hands, can throw it "40-50 yards" on a line, shoots lasers from his eyes, etc. He's in Rivals' and (Lemming warning) Lemming's early top ten, is a sure bet for five-star status, and can fix back pain with well-placed throws from the next county.

Two Ts. Just FYI.

Active during the war. On August 4th, 1941, a U-boat sunk a critical shipment of gunpowder destined for the shipyards of London. Private First Class Ryan Mallett was enlisted to hurl flak at incoming bombers, downing six and preserving an orphanage full of strippers. Four years later, he killed Hitler with a well-placed fifteen-yard out.

Sort of like that one other giant white guy... whatshisface. But what about the supposedly-dread spectre of John Navarre? At first glance, the two quarterbacks seem... similar. Hell, this is the second sentence in ESPN's talent evaluation($) of Mallett:

He reminds us of former Michigan QB John Navarre in terms of build and physical tools.

Holy cats! We can look forward to another four years of a giant quarterback with no scrambling ability and a tendency to hurl passes into the kneecaps of onrushing linemen! Abort! Abort!

...or maybe not. This blog came into existence after the Navarre era ended, but had it been around then no doubt I would have pissed off 90 to 95 percent of potential readers with fervent defenses of the Water Buffalo Wonder. Hell, I'm the guy who wrote this article...

John Navarre Blamed For Offense, Defense, Kicking Game, Iraq, 9/11, Everything Else

...after the hilariously mishap-ful 2002 season. By the tail end of Navarre's junior year, he was a very good quarterback. I distinctly remember the 2002 OSU game's offense as two idiotic runs into the teeth of the defense followed by heroic, laser-accurate third-and-long conversions from Navarre. He wasn't Brady, but he was okay by me. The 2003 offense was a machine of epic destruction, and it was helmed by John Navarre. Not bad for a guy recruited as a defensive end by a lot of schools and possessing only one other quarterback offer, that from Northwestern.

So. Take the nonexistent hype surrounding Navarre and turn it up to 11. Turn Navarre from a guy two schools thought could play quarterback maybe to a guy who's going to get the precious fifth star from both recruiting services okay no problem. This... sounds appealing.

You may remember Mallett from such quarterbacks as: other than Navarre your two most cited names are Drew Bledsoe and Ben Roethlisberger, if those are more palatable.

This is not Ryan Mallett. Well, it is, but not that one.

A mysterious traveller. Little is known about Mallett's past -- he was found on the doorstep of Texas High three years ago, swaddled in (copious) rags, clutching a football and quietly muttering about a fusion reactor's backwards flux inhibitor. He asked if there were any games in town similar to the high-paced flarlax he knew and loved so well. After some discussion, it was determined that football was in many way analagous to flarlax... flarlax played by bleeble-babes! Mallett found the game piteously easy -- flarxlax stripped of flaming ninja hordes, roving black holes, and the dread joydlerox is hardly flarlax at all -- but it is the only thing that soothes his raging homesickness for his mysterious homeland... or is it -world?

"Mallett" antonym: "Vick." And he knows it. Mallett on his running ability:

"I can't run at all."

Sounds like we're going to have to radically change our offense to take advantage of his abilities yes this is sarcasm. Except we probably don't have any 70 yard routes in the playbook.

More on what mortals call an arm from that article:

"He's probably got the strongest arm in the history of Texas high school football," said Bobby Burton, Rivals.com recruiting expert.

Emphasis mine.

Coming relatively near relatively soon. Cincinnati-area readers with an obsessive urge can see Mallett play Findlay High at (hur hur) Nippert Stadium on September 15th. Any reports/pictures/video offered will be posted with all haste.

Committing to someone any time now. Who could it be?

Update: Done be us.

Maybe Hopefully A Riposte

Notre Dame has their new golden boy, Jimmy Clausen:

No one with that hair can be good at football.

He's slated to win 5 national championships over the next four years, but there are Citrus Bowls to win, motherfucker, and Michigan needs a giant, immobile quarterback who can throw a football through three guys -- sort of like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -- to do it. 6'7" Ryan Mallet appears to fit the bill and is deciding within the week according to Florida State's Scout site. The finalists are Michigan, Florida State, Alabama, and Oklahoma. How should you feel about this?

Um, good. Perhaps very good:

Florida State has been moving up his list but many feel Michigan is the team to beat because that’s the school that he has visited in person.

“I don’t need to take any more visits,” he said. “I pretty much know about all the schools from talking to all of the coaches on the phone. Academics will be in important along with where I can see myself fitting in. Being able to gel with the coaches is a big-deal.”

Strange hyphen in "big-deal" sic. This decision would appear to be analgous to that of Pittsburgh wide receiver Dorin Dickerson, who decided around this time last year between Pitt and Michigan without ever having visited Michigan. He chose Pitt. No one was surprised.

Tom Beaver of GBW spooked a bunch of message board denizens with an appearance on WTKA, but I would avoid picking up a case of residual panic from them. We're probably addressing need #1 in the 2007 recruting class with option A-1. Notre Dame's quarterback of the future has name with superior unflattering nickname potential ("Jimmah! JimmahJimmah!"), looks like a cross between Billy Idol and a kid playing with static electricity, and comes from a family of certified football retards. Good times.

It's Robbbbbb Thomas Time

4/23/2006 - Pistons 92-74 Milwaukee - Pistons Lead 1-0

Having secured the top record in the league, the last week of Pistons basketball was bizarre lighthearted fun except for the bits where Lindsey Hunter shot a lot. Free to play glorified preseason games, they did, and the games had all the entertainment value of any hopeful, future-looking enterprise. It was fun to see Jason Maxiell attempt to dunk it every time he got inside the three-point line. It was fun to see that Delfino guy. It was novel to watch the Pistons lose by a ton.

However, the Happy Fun NBA Games were a cause for some consternation: what if they're off because of this diversion? 1000 words on that:

They didn't have a good headshot, but the important portion of the picture extends from Ben Wallace's headband up: 'fro. Much like Michigan hockey's propensity for breaking out the super-cool maize jerseys when a statement needs to be made*, the Ben Wallace 'fro is a talismanic declaration that someone's ass is going to get kicked. During the year the 'fro was stowed away, though, as the Pistons went about their asskicking in a methodical, somewhat bored fashion. There was no need to get the emotional amperage up. But the playoffs are another matter.

And lo, it was good despite an alarming Bucks push that had Mental Rewrite showing up and revising this column-thing. That just shows fans are less smooth than the team is. After the Bucks came clawing back from 18 down to 4, you could feel the Palace tighten up... until the Pistons scored close to a dozen consectutive points and the 'fro was once again poised, ready to crush Michael Redd's neck with sheer force of awesome.

Ben finished with a quintessential Ben line: 4 points, 17 rebounds, 2 blocks, 2 steals. The Pistons won by 18 despite long stretches where they played like poop. It, as they say, is on.

*(usually this statement is something other than "we are not a good hockey team despite wearing the super-cool maize jerseys," but this year was not a kind one.)

Assorted observations:

• I think I can trace my complete 180 on Brent Musberger back to his open container citation in Nebraska, as the next week Musberger actually brought it up on national television in order to make fun of himself. In one moment Musberger went from the overbearing guy who gave the world "holy Buckeye" to a dude who slams beer in his car and isn't afraid to let you know it.
  
  The point? At some point during the Clippers-Nuggets game, Musberger brought up this quote from George Karl:

  "A win in the playoffs is better than sex... I'm old."

  Brent's response:

  I know a lot of guys in the NBA are like "what are you talking about?"

  ...and I got a little teary from laughing so much.
  
• Jeff Van Gundy did the color for the Pistons game and was greatly illuminating, pointing out fast breaks off easy misses, point guard penetration leading to further Pistons transition opportunities, and etc. etc. etc. No doubt that's why he still has a job despite piloting Houston to a lot of lottery balls this year. Van Gundy stands in stunning contrast to coaches-turned-color Doug Collins and John Thompson, who are two of the most frustrating guys to listen to in the league because they should be able to give us more than bland platitudes but choose not to.
• The guy sitting next to Walton? Worse than Walton. I don't know where they exhumed this guy, but he's just terrible. He tried to justify Udonis Haslem throwing his mouthpiece at the ref (which subsequently got Haslem ejected). I'm flabbergasted that TNT's top team is the sublime Alberts-Kerr combo and ABC makes do with two functionally retarded men and Mike Tirico, who's okay but severely lacking gravitas.
• Words cannot describe how delighted I am that Antoine Walker is on the Heat. I look forward to a conference finals series full of Antoine sucking like few sucks have ever sucked before. He's trying hard on defense now, but against Rasheed Wallace? He gon' die. What was (were? Accursed confusing team name!) the Heat thinking?
• Andres Nocioni is a bitch, but he can play. The exact opposite of Walker.
  

No Awnser For The Victors Valient

The YouTube find of the week-ish follows. Warning: NSF people who go into seizures at emo.



That's right: there's no awnser for the victors valient. Suckas. There's also no mention of the horrible calls against Iowa in that game. But highlights of one of the scarce wins from last year + hilarious, hilarious misspellings == ratings gold.

Also from the same guy: NSFWSJ*. More bad emo and chestpounding.

*(2000 Orange Bowl, which is Not Safe For Warren St. John.)

There Is Indeed Going To Be Trouble

Scheduling later. Now: diatribe. With swearing. I tried to ignore this guy at first but he keeps appearing in the freaking newspaper, which still has more readership than I do for some unknown reason.

Does this John Pollack guy run around calling newspapers or something? Pollack, who found himself in the New York Times for no discernible reason, managed to get the Detroit News to write another article on him and his very silly crusade. And what a terrible article it is: sloppy, anecdotal, and ridiculous. This is your reporting for you: quotes from Bill Martin and a couple of luxury-box critics and no sense whatsoever of the general opinion of Michigan fans. Check this header:

Opposition is on the rise

No justification whatsoever is provided for this. The closest thing to it:

In March, Pollack's group among others opposing private suites sent a letter to the regents stating their objections, including the "sad corruption" of the university's "defining traditions" and urging them to reject the idea.

First of all, anyone who uses the word "sad" as a tsk-tsk adjective is a holier-than-thou asshat. I'll give you ten to one that the letter also contains the word "laughable." Mostly, though: a letter does not consitute a grass-roots movement, especially when it's signed by a former University president.

Kupelain doesn't even bother to comment on this assertion from Pollack:

"This is absolutely a battle we're going to win because a majority of Michigan fans don't want private luxury boxes in Michigan Stadium," said Pollack, 40, a business consultant who was a speech writer for former Michigan Congressman David Bonior and President Clinton.

"Letters keep pouring into the Web site. The eloquence of people on this subject is truly impressive."

Emphasis mine, as that's a perfect example of quoting substituting for reporting. Kupelain listened to a bunch of unsupported talking from people, played stenographer, and we have this: a squeaky wheel and its unnecessary oiling. This would be a perfect opportunity for a resource-laden newspaper to call up a polling company and get some survey data. Instead, we have nothing but a bunch of quotes from people who make HULK SMASH. So angry am I that I must break out the fisk:

"What we wanted to do was make it convenient for people who cared about the issue to speak out and stay informed," Pollack said.

Aaaaargh. "Speak out." "Stay informed." The duplicitious words of a politician (which is no coincidence) designed to befuddle instead of clarify.

"Everybody wants to see the stadium renovated," Pollack said. "What we don't want to see is private luxury boxes."

The anti-suite forces argue that private seating would divide fans and establish a class mentality where, Pollack said, Michigan fans "have always stood together, cheered together and won together. Shoulder-to-shoulder, standing -- that's the game-day experience at Michigan."

You'll see that this grass-roots movement is so devoid of actual ideas that they resort to hilarious lies constantly. The idea that a football game with 50 dollar tickets and 500 dollar PSLs for the excellent seats which are doled out to people who write huge checks to the university is some sort of proletarian rally where all men are created equally patchouli- scented and be-dreadlocked is beyond inane. And standing? When I stand, I am crabbed at. What Pollack describes is Michigan Stadium in the mirror universe where Paris Hilton is a nuclear engineer, Dennis Dodd is competent, and Ohio State is a university. It's not just wrong: it's the exact opposite of reality.

Jonathan Stone, class of '94, said the intimacy is what makes the Ann Arbor experience special.

"Creating a separate seating area is contrary to one of the basic values the University of Michigan ensures its students learn to appreciate equality," said Stone, who lives in Alexandria, Va.

You. Fucking. Hippies. I do not remember an "appreciating equality" requirement as an undergraduate, and good fucking God, what is the point of going to Michigan if you can't lord it over MSU grads? More proletarian bullshit. These people are delusional.

Apparently this guy doesn't get the pamphlet from the University that details the dozen or so donation levels and the various perks you get at each one every year. Or he can't read.

"Why tamper with the appearance of one of America's true icons of architecture?" Schultz said in a letter to the regents. "The thought that changes are needed to Michigan Stadium so as to keep up with the Joneses is ludicrous."

Example #2 of the mirror universe. Good God. I love Michigan Stadium, but it's a hole in the ground. It's not exactly Solider Field. This man can't be serious. I'm really at a loss for words... where to start? The press box best described as "festering"? The insufficient bathrooms? The fact that I have to battle the fat guy in seat 7 for the inch that decides whether I walk out hale and hearty or crumpled like a submarine at the botom of the sea?

The hippies are on LSD, man.

Pollack said interest and support has been spiking since recent publish accounts of the campaign.

"I know everybody on both sides of this wants what they think is best for Michigan."

First of all... "recent publish accounts"? I thought they had copy editors at the News. And indeed, the people on both sides of the issue want what they think is best for Michigan. It's just that some people live in this universe, and others don't.

It seems that the issue here is less what Michigan Stadium is going forward but more what it is right now. Either it is an idyllic place that cannot be improved upon, or it is not. This has been a rather juvenile post, but what's more juvenile:

• swearing and taunting in the service of a realistic portrayal of the class structure already imposed at Michigan Football games, or
• pretty, dishonest language in service of a fairytale?

As the old commercials used to say, you make the call.

Schedule Conundrum Part I: Problems

It's the offseason, so it must be time to snipe about scheduling, particularly that of the the SEC. House Rock Built and EDSBS have resurrected the slightly annoying corpse of the OMG Georgia-never-leaves-the-confederacy argument to batter it around some. SI's John Walters, no doubt STEALING FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE(!), chips in an outstanding article at SI.com on the sad state of scheduling.

The SEC isn't really an issue. You can argue about whether the SEC's nonconference schedules are or are not more reprehensible than the those of the nation at large, but let's be serious: we're talking about a matter of degree. Everyone who can get away with scheduling fluff in front of a sold-out stadium does. Teams will often schedule a token decent opponent and match them with twin creamypuffs -- and with the twelve game schedule it might be more like three. The accusation that SEC teams stay close to home is pointless and a transparent attempt to leave aside the niggling fact that Florida plays Florida State every year, Georgia plays Georgia Tech, etc, etc, etc. Intersectional is meaningless. Interconference is the issue.

(Almost) Everyone hates this. The athletic directors cited in Walters' article sound annoyed and resigned:

"Are you sitting down?" asked the Aggies' official. "I've got some bad news for you. We're not coming."

"I thought, You've got to be kidding me," recalls Brand.

"But the way it is now, contracts can be simply negotiated out of or simply not honored."

The Wolf Pack have a home-and-home with Northwestern beginning in 2007. And Hickok has learned. "They're coming to our place first," Hickok says, "and believe me, there will be a penalty clause in that contract."

Fans hate seeing the words "Eastern Michigan" and "50 dollars" on the same ticket. Players are forced to roll out onto the field and risk injury for a glorified scrimmage. ESPN gets Timbersports ratings. The only people who seem to enjoy the situation are coaches, who get a stress-free week, a guaranteed win, and a better chance of pointing to an impressive record as a reason he should not be placed in stocks and run out of town at season's end. The only people who seemed anything other than giddy about the Texas-Ohio State game? Jim Tressel and Mack Brown.

Axiom going forward: this state of affairs is dismal and must change. No one is against a season-opener against Designated Patsy A, especially with twelve games: the excitement of the new season and the end of the cruel eight month football fast is enough for one ritual pounding to be just lovely, thank you. But once Designated Patsies B, C, and -- if you're Minnesota or Kansas State -- D start limping into the stadium we have issues.

Money is a red herring. The athletic director's lament of "we need more money" is mind-boggling. For what? Have player salaries spiraled out of control in recent years? You can only create so many "academic centers" with solid gold toilets. The economic troubles of big athletic departments are an entirely self-created problem. Faced with a strict salary cap (generally zero [TRESSEL BASHING REDACTED]), college teams desperate for John Q. Recruit to show up and molest the field hockey team win championships have taken the Mark Cuban approach: Playstations everywhere; Friday and Sunday and Tuesday are lobster night and so is Wednesday and maybe Thursday; teams of sepoys haul the quarterback around in a marble palanquin. All for whatever incremental benefit accrues to your program.

In any case, scheduling a real opponent isn't that costly. Two scenarios, assuming $50 bucks a pop in a 100,000 seat stadium (generous for most what with 80k stadiums and student seating, etc., but add in parking and concessions):

• Two home games against teams of legless goats: $10 million in tickets - approximately $1 million in goat-support payments.
• Home and home with pulse-bearing opponent: $5 million in tickets plus whatever the difference is in TV rights fees.

I have no idea what the latter is but I know damn well that Texas-OSU brought in more than Michigan-Ball State will. Add those to the latter and we're talking something on the order of under a million dollars per year.

The ultimate test here is what teams eventually do with the twelfth game, since it's pure profit. The women's crew team is already provided for. The toilets, as mentioned, are golden and come with robotic servants that wipe for you. ADs should get a free pass for this year, as the 12th game was thrust upon them somewhat suddenly and the constricted schedule means that teams with championship games and the Big Ten have to find someone, anyone, to plug into the hole on their schedule. Going forward, however, there's another chance to test your mettle -- assuming you have some.

It's getting worse. Even oft-cited scheduling titans Michigan (go figure, but people removed from the situation have a vague impression of Michigan losing on the West Coast a lot and don't pay much attention to the MAC snackycakes) and Notre Dame have started scaling back the voluntary challenges they've lined up. Michigan is playing at least two MAC teams a year from now until the sun expands. You'll see them playing a road game on Pacific time sometime after World War III. Notre Dame is trying to line something up with the Coast Guard Academy now that they have Army, Navy, and Air Force on the schedule.

This is probably a futile discussion. I'll propose solutions ("make Pat Hill the coach of all D-I programs") tomorrow but the chances of anything actually changing are very bad. This is acknowledged ahead of time in order to save the comments about this being futile.

Tomorrow: what can be done?

The True Depth Of My Obsession

On occasion I will have vivid, narrative dreams experienced at the cusp of consciousness. Generally the world needs saving and I'm the man to do it. They're sort of like dadaist Jerry Bruckheimer movies except invariably I lose, at which point I wake up with the blood of six billion dream-people on my hands. It's a little unsettling.

But not as unsettling as the dream I just had. Approached by a small team of aerospace engineers, astronauts, and Michael Rappaport (don't ask -- I don't understand either), I accept a berth on a small privately-funded starship that is making a journey to a planet one of the team members has deduced contains intelligent life. We plan to get rich by bringing back fantastically advanced alien technology.

The trip is a fiasco. We are discovered, our spaceship is impounded, and we are forced to live on this slightly foreign planet filled with people who look almost human and work for them in a sort of indentured servitude/slavery.

Apparently this is what alien planets look like.

It seems that these people are a hidden race and we can never go home, as their discovery would lead to some sort of cosmic sanction. The overriding mood of the dream is poignant loss. My friends are all gone, Rappaport is a useless tool, and I'm on a foreign planet largely composed of strip malls and Starbucks (actual line: "Something's fishy here. Check out that Taco Bell. I'll buy that they have Starbucks millions of light years from home, but Taco Bell?" It's all very sad.

Anyway, after some high speed rollerblading (again, don't ask) we pass the Vanderbilt football team practicing. I say "ha ha, you're going to lose" when it hits me: since I am an alien slave on a planet millions of light years from home the chances of me being at Michigan Stadium on September second are nil. Apparently Vanderbilt is not likely to put in an appearance either, but this does not occur to me. My mind fills with one oppressive fact: I Am Going To Miss The Game.

It is at this point, and this point only, that I resolve to escape, which means death if caught. My first tactic, perhaps spurred on by the overall weirdness of my life, is to attempt to wake up. My eyes open and I am once again within easy driving distance of Michigan Stadium, no hyperdrive or escape from slavery required. I exhale.

Beverley To Arkansas

Bye, random person. It's a word:

Amaker: am-a-ker, verb. To blow something long considered a fait accompli, especially in an unsually humiliating and frustrating fashion.

That will teach me to go write up a post ahead of time... there was content today! But it's irrelevant now. Bleah.

Meanwhile, Virginia point guard Scottie Reynolds has asked Oklahoma to release him from his LOI, as Kelvin Sampson is now the coach of Indiana. Michigan was one of the schools pursuing Reynolds before his commitment and are rumored to be interested in him should he become suddenly mobile.

Unverified Voracity: Those Are Cat Eyes Edition

Oh, yes.

It's almost time, and so... more crazed Japanese NBA (Link is essentially just what's above, but make sure you scroll down for the cutest devouring ever if you click.) (HT: Detroit Bad Boys)

If yesterday's overanalysis wasn't enough for you, Michigan Sports Center has another spring "game" recap with some differing opinions -- I actually disagree with everything before his bullets save the disappointment with the quarterbacks -- but let that not dissuade you. And I love Vijay because sometimes it's nice to have player-by-player progress reports and projections for everyone on scholarship.

BC&RS has more Michigan baseball; Yost Built is covering hockey... no one's left yet. Yay.

Back to normal? Patrick Beverly announces his choice between Michigan and Arkansas tomorrow... and given the level of freakout going on at the various message boards it does not sound anything like it did mere days ago when enigmatic baskeball insider DOTMAN was dropping :) and milk and honey ran through the land. Losing Beverly would probably require re-inventing "Amaker" as a verb. I'll use it in a sentence:

"Dude, what happened? You were in! She's so hot... and where is she now?"
"I dunno. I thought she was so into me. I got amakered, man."
"Harsh. What are you going to do now?"
"See that girl with the mole?"
"That's a mole? It looks more like a ferret superglued to her jaw."
"Well..."
"No."
"Yeah."
"You know the stadium seating you had installed in your bedroom?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't think I'll be renewing my season tickets."

Aaaand scene.

We haven't lost him yet, though. I'll tell you when he announces. A bit of good news: DeShawn Sims was named the MVP of the Capital Classic -- and he's signed a LOI so it's okay to get somewhat invested in him.

Etc.: Chris Heisenberg analyzes the changes in Hockey Canada's rules and says they're a transparent attempt to keep the NCAA's mitts off of big time Canadian juniors. Save the childrens indeed.

Spring Game Impressions

And by "game" we mean "practice," which was fine by me since it was 69 and sunny. Disjointed bullets:

• A bunch of un-illuminating position drills started things off. The safeties do a weird drill in which seven of them line up as an offensive line, FB, and RB with one guy playing off the lne as a safety. They run a play, and the one guy at safety comes up to make a tackle at the fictional point of attack. Seems inefficient.
• Sears is that fast; Carlos Brown is also. Brown had one of the highlights of the scrimmage when he scored from a long way out on a run up the middle.
• The crowd's biggest reaction came when Alijah Bradley laid out on a wheel route, hauling it in with every inch of his 4'6" body.
• Neither quarterback looked sharp. Henne dumped the ball off so many times during the passing drills that I was convinced that was the point of the drill for a while, but that's probably not right. He also telegraphed a pass to someone in the flat that Leon Hall had jumped and almost intercepted. He did have one excellent throw, a 25 yard bullet right in Breaston's hands, but Breaston was intefered with and could make the catch. Still, after hearing stuff about Henne kicking ass for the second straight spring, I was hoping for more. He looked just like he did last year, alternating awesome with definitely not awesome. As for Forcier... let's just hope Henne stays upright. Didn't look ready at all.
• Forcier did do a couple of good things, and they were usually to LaTerryal Savoy, who reminds me of Avant. He scored a touchdown -- check this reader-provided video (recommend you right click and save as).
• Doug Dutch can't catch. This is bad for a wideout.
  
• That thing about Bass at quarterback? They were serious, and they're still serious. Carlos Brown got an entire series at QB running the zone read, draws, and sweeps. It didn't work -- see this reader-provided video (save as) -- since the defense knew what was coming, but it was interesting.
• Ecker dropped the first pass of the scrimmage, prompting groans. Someone near me yelled "pitch it!"
• Yes, it is endlessly hilarious to see a jersey with the entirety of "B.J. Opong-Owusu" on it.
• Punting went as you might expect. Ryan consistently went about 35-40 yards and had nothing remotely returnable. Mesko had a couple ok punts and then launched one 55 yards, causing a tingle to samba its way down my spine. Inconceivable!
• It's odd seeing McKinney play DT next to Germany at DE; they look like they should be swapped. Germany had a couple of nice plays but I think they say more about the opposition at RT than his ability.
• For all the crap Carr gave the linebackers during the press conference, they shut down the run consistently during the scrimmage.
• This should come with a heavy bias disclaimer: Jamison looked good. I probably focused on him more than any other player. He was tough for the offensive line to handle and performed well against the run.
• Garrett Rivas missed a 22-yard field goal. Yay.
  

One final note: the "we're doing construction" excuse for not letting fans and kids on the field for autographs was exceedingly lame and more bothersome than scrapping the game format. It's Carr's perogative to have his team practice any way they like, but making something dumb up to get out of being nice to some fans is disrespectful. I'm sure if the department really wanted to they could find somewhere in the area where people were not in mortal danger of one of the backhoes being struck by lighting, coming to life, and going on a rampage.

Same Person Different Color Scheme

Longhorns blog Burnt Orange Nation asked Joey and I a series of questions on the upcoming season. We answered with tremendous detail. You can check out the Q&A session here, which goes as you might expect. Probably nothing you haven't heard already if you're a Michigan fan, but it's better than getting kicked in the ribs.

The (Friedrich) Nietzsche Theory of the Heisman

The Heisman trophy -- proclaimed by itself and everyone else to be the most prestigious individual award in American sports -- has a dirty little secret: it sucks. Thrall to its diverse and more-than-slightly befuddled voting constituency, more often than not the Heisman goes to a default candidate chosen more for his circumstances than his magnificence. Some months later he usually loses a bowl game; some months after that he's drafted in the seventh round. He goes on to have a nondescript Arena League career and marries a girl who could probably be a model -- but not a Victoria's Secret one.

For every Barry Sanders there is a Ron Dayne; for every probably-worthy QB winner like Matt Leinart there are a half dozen noodle-armed system quarterbacks who shouldn't be let within 20 feet of the trophy: Detmer, Ware, Toretta, Weinke, etc. What does it say about an award when you can construct an clever list of ten rules that reduce the field to a half-dozen possibilities before the season starts? It says that you're eliminating 99% of everyone in college football before the first game. And it says that maybe this voting thing isn't working out so well.

We're in good hands here, people.

We're all in agreement as to who should not receive the trophy: losers. More difficult is determining who should get the damn thing, but as I always say, when dealing with matters of superiority and inferiority, Nietzsche is your man. Except I never say that.

(A note for actual philosophy-people: what follows is going to be a very pop understanding of Nietzsche because the popular concepts associated with Nietzsche fit better with what I'm driving at than the actual complicated bits, which I haven't attempted to intepret correctly anyway. A pre-emptive apology for spreading ign'ance.)

So. WWND? First, grow an amazing mustache. Second, take the problem at hand -- who is the best football player -- and attempt to mesh it with his understanding of human nature:

[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant — not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power.

Faced with a game of stark military aggression, Nietzsche would probably see two kinds of players: those who respond out of fear and those who impose their will on things. Meatheads call the latter "swagger." Nietzche would see masters and slaves. The giant guy in the burnt orange loping through the secondary? Master. We're looking for masters, looking for those whose understanding of the game comes from a knowledge of what they can do instead of what they fear their opponents can. We're looking for those who transcend: ubermensch. Overman.

Whereas it was Nietzsche's overman who "balances over an empty space," from the perspective of the ardent college football fan it is we who teeter over an abyss of the unknown, emotional well-being on the knife's edge, waiting for someone to rise up and push us forward... or back. As anyone who's spent too much time with Sid Meier knows, Nietzche accidentally stumbled across a gorgeous description for the sort of sporting event that you realize is far too important to you:

Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping.

The fan is simultaneously tied and carried by "those who cross over," looking down, looking across, eyeing the opposing forces. We cling to the handholds afforded by our captor-champions, and watch as a battle -- our battle -- unfolds on a bridge of rope.

The ideal Heisman candidate is frightening to behold unless he is on your side, in which case he is your flagbearer and protector. The ideal candidate is a force of nature that rolls through his opposition against tremendous odds. His name is graven on the tombstone of instant replay's creator as a justification. He is not sunnily efficient, or competent, or a great fat beast who crushes only the weak. He is slightly terrifying. There is a small but real possibility that he is the escaped prototype of a CIA-developed breed of unkillable soldiers; he is not man; he is overman.

Items Of Interest

• ubermenschliche. that's a German adverb for "superhuman" that I'm appropriating as a noun in this context. What are ubermenschliche? Plays that etch themselves into college football history for sheer amazement value; plays that seem like magic we can't understand. At their best, these are exertions of one player's will on all those around them: Howard's Heisman-pose-generating return; Roy Williams's flying squirrel attack; Leinart's forth-and-nine fade. The Heisman voters usually do get this right by focusing on the plays in a season which seem like pure exertions of will, but the emphasis on them here will be even greater. Anyone who picks up the shattered pieces of a season and fuses the shards back together will have a leg up.
• Bowl Games. The Heisman's given out before the bowls occur, probably due to college football's odd, longstanding opinion that bowl games were cute exhibitions or something. Bowl statistics didn't even count towards records until very recently. Obviously the voters can't take bowls into account unless they have a time machine, but some Heisman trophies are obsolete by January 1st. It would be silly for a retrospective look to ignore some of the greatest performances in college football history.
• In the same vein: The last couple games of the regular season. For some reason Heisman voters are allowed to submit ballots before the end of the regular season. Some take advantage of this opportunity every year. This enterprise, er, doesn't.
• (Some) NFL performance. the Heisman is a college award and shouldn't go to whoever gets drafted #1 in a particular year, but the NFL performance of a particular player can help confirm or disconfirm the talents of certain players who play at small schools or amongst a horde of other stars that may camouflage their weaknesses. Note that players not ticketed for NFL success -- option quarterbacks, 5'9" wide receivers, guys playing on six knee surgeries -- are not punished for their circumstances.

Items Of Disinterest

• Damned numbers. Right, right, I'm Mr. Computer Man with the charts and tables and stuff, but all of those things apply to teams. Attempting to divine which player's overall performance was superior because of a touchdown here or two hundred yards racked up against Ball State is impossible.
• Quarterbacks and running backs. Not prejudicially, mind you, but it's ridiculous that since 1935 only five players (Larry Kelley, Leon Hart, Tim Brown, Desmond Howard, and Charles Woodson) who haven't played the aforementioned positions have happened to be the best players in the country. That's wrong.
• Who you play for. Obviously quality of opposition matters, and it's hard to pick up ubermenschliche credit if you're not playing in important games, but we judge on the content of talent, not color of helmet.
• Eligibility. If you're a freshman and the best player in the country, it's your award.
• Career achievements. even if you've been good for the past three years, no one cares.

First Up: the most personally grating Heisman to Michigan fans in the past ten or so years: 1999. Ron Dayne won it largely for griding Montana A&M State under his heel but never beat or even cracked 100 against Michigan in his entire career. Nominate candidates in the comments.

Some background: 1999 season review. And a preview. And some other stuff.

Unverified Voracity: Get Hed Edition

I'm not sure I like it when Bruce Feldman picks out ten "spring revelations" from programs around the country and settles on Obi Oluigbo as number four. I mean, it's nice and all, but he's a fullback and with Mike DeBord back in the saddle at offensive coordinator any excuse to try the draw on second and twelve is the cause of heebie-jeebies. Feldman knows Carr, though:

Thanks to his improved quickness, Oluigbo is a guy Lloyd Carr is kind of excited about this spring.

Carr is, indeed, mildly intruiged by the possibility of that fullback dude blocking someone, but not enough to miss his Father Dowling Mysteries reruns.

Also on Feldman's list are Michigan State safety Nehemiah Warrick -- Peter's brother and a JUCO transfer -- and Ohio State freshman linebacker Ross Homan, who is reported to look like AJ Hawk. Poor guy. A piece of advice for Homan: try not to wander by any swamps, lagoons, or other areas where amorous bipeds twisted by radiation might take a fancy to you and your apparently cro-magnon visage.

FYI: it appears that the Feld-blog has been released into the wild. 'Tis free to non-OMG-Insiders, as are a fair number of other ESPN blogs. In case you hadn't wandered over there in a while.

Don't you have a headliney-checker guy or something? The south is abuzz over 'Bama booster Logan Young's recent death at the hands of an unknown assailant (though the "violent, bloody struggle" could apparently have been an "accident" according to Memphis police).

The reason I bring up this apparently unrelated piece of news is that an AP article trickled across my newsreader -- it's linked above in the "struggle" quote -- with this headline:

Must... not... laugh... at... violent... death. Maybe just a titter?

This is why Bill Walsh said "every copy desk could use a 13-year-old boy" in Lapsing Into a Comma*:

A puerile sense of humor can be a big asset in the word business. I call it the Beavis and Butthead factor. (Heh heh -- he said "big asset"!)

This means you should know why Court Deals Blow To Homosexuals is a bad headline. You should know that the previous sentence was not the place to abbreviate headline.

*(Yes, I am the kind of person who owns a book on usage and remembers enough of it to fetch it when appropriate. I'm the kind of person who reads books on usage and is pleased when the other books on usage I've read are referenced approvingly. You are given permission to give up all hope for me now.)

Also: Young's death has apparently caused the south to go all crazy-like. They're attacking innocent ninjas in Georgia. Ninja is probably going to flip out and sue. And as long as we're on the topic of headlines, Georgia student newspaper The Red And Black gets one million points for this one:

ATF rids Univ. of ninja threat

Tremendous.

Etc.: Maize 'n' Brew as everything you ever wanted to know about Patrick Beverly; Stadium and Main revisits the comeback win against Iowa in 1997.

Offseason Madness

The industrious beaver-elf mulattos that sit next to the forge in my basement pumping out analysis after analysis of football/basketball/hockey minutiae dread the arrival of this coming Saturday more than any other, for it is then that I have no further use for them and set them free -- "set free," of course, being another way of putting "sell into Keebler slavery." I will then spend the summer tending their larva; in August the next generation will hatch and be introduced to their cruel half-cat, half-man taskmasters. Fettered, blindered, and abandoned, they will spend the next six to eight months of their lives painstakingly assembling the sentences offered in this space for your amusement and where the hell was I going with this?

Ah. Yes. Other than a scattered softball or baseball update, Michigan sports will reach the deep offseason after Saturday's spring game. This enterprise will trundle on. But how? With tangentially relevant posts of dubious value, recruiting updates, and more stat-bashing. The recruiting stuff is fairly straightforward, but the others are fairly wide open. The point: I'm taking suggestions. Currently on the docket, FYI:

• Full-fledged diatribe against offsides in hockey.
• The 50 Most Loathsome People in Sports
• The (Friedrich) Nietzsche Theory of the Heisman
• Application of The (Friedrich) Nietzsche Theory to Heismans of the past 15 or so years.

I may or may not replicate the extensive Big Ten previews from a year ago. Johnny from RBUAS may take that torch up, in which case I can do other things -- one only needs a single excessively detailed preview.

Anyway, there are four months here and we have to fill them all somehow. If you've got ideas, offer away.

Off Day Today

Due to a change in plans that had me driving until now, I have nothing for you today. Lo siento. Here's this article about Alex Legion with quotes from his coach, though.

Unverified Voracity: Callooh, Callay Edition

This is just like that bit in Cruel Intentions... er, I mean Dangerous Liasons. What the hell am I talking about? Here's a quote from presumptive NHL signee Matt Hunwick:

"If Jack's back, and he's our highest-profile player, I can't see why anyone else should leave," Hunwick said. "That tells you how special Michigan really is."

Earlier in the article Antoine Pitts claims that...

Last week, [TJ] Hensick and Hunwick both said there's always a slim chance they could leave early but couldn't see themselves giving up their senior years.

... without offering the actual quotes up for reassurance. Could it be true? Or is this all a cynical ploy that will unravel with the revelation of a cocaine addiction and the playing of "Bittersweet Symphony"? Stay tuned! Or something!

I for one refuse to believe that Michigan will escape the offseason without a defection until I verify the existence of each player during the Blue-White game in the fall. But... hope?

(via Yost Built)

Talk about burying the lede. BGS posted something about a bunch of Notre Dame neutral site games against the likes of South Florida but left this beauty of a phrase uncommented upon:

At last weekend's Rockne Dinner in Chicago, between Charlie saying the only reason he'd leave ND is if he were fired, he died, or he retired, and Aaron Taylor's claim that he's leaving ABC Sports to become an elementary school teacher, the big news was Kevin White's announcement of some of the locations for future "neutral site" Notre Dame games.

O frabjous day! No more banalities uttered from the side of Taylor's mouth. No more shiny head. No more broken knuckles from punching the TV*.

Also: are we sure Taylor said "teacher" and not "student"? I'm just sayin'.

*(except when Dick Vitale, Bill Walton, and many, many others are on it. So that should probably read "fractionally fewer" broken knuckles.)

Etc.: Beverly had a strong game in the Roundball Classic; Mark Hasty busts out the Big Ten Similarities Engine; I can't recommend SMQB's random previews enough.

More Spring Tea Leaves

The second of the three niblets of information to come out of spring practice is Lloyd Carr's post-spring press conference, which was yesterday. You can listen to the press conference (evil Real Player link) yourself at MLive; I condense and interpret below if you don't have 35 minutes. (Also: Scout transcript.)

The third niblet is the spring "game" or practice-type-thingy, which is Saturday at 1 PM. I'll attend and file a report -- hopefully it'll be useful.

Injuries

Bass is out, but not that out. Carr confirmed that Antonio Bass is expected to miss the entire 2006 season with a severe knee injury. He did leave the door open a crack with some vague references to extraordinary rehabilitation, but the upshot was don't expect Antonio in '06. Carr did allay fears that the injury might be career-ending, saying that he "didn't expect" that to be the case.

Other injuries: John Thompson, Mario Manningham, and Rueben Riley have all missed portions of the spring with injuries described as "minor." Freshly-scoped Doug Dutch returned to practice last Tuesday.

More seriously, Chris McLaurin, who underwent shoulder surgery last year, may have to get a similar surgery on his other shoulder. Even if that should happen Carr said he "should be back by fall."

Quarterback

Chad Henne is "right where he needs to be," according to Carr. There's not much to discuss here -- Henne is the starter and good things will be said about him no matter how he performs until fall. Forcier is the backup and will hopefully not be heard from until Henne departs.

Running Back

Mike Hart is going to be the starter, but Carr also had high praise for the rest of the backs, especially Kevin Grady:

[Grady] had the best day of his career on Saturday. He ran with power. He's much more comfortable with making the cuts and finding the hole. He's a guy who likes to compete. He's very tough. He has made wonderful strides. His weight is down, which has really significantly helped him.

Of note is that fifth-year walkon/dustmite Alijah Bradley may actually be in line for some playing time:

Alijah has put himself in position where we know he is a dependable guy. He can do a lot of things. He's an outstanding pass protector and pass receiver, a guy who is very quick.

Bradley did have Michigan's longest run in last year's Ohio State game, a nine yard draw that put Michigan in a fourth and short they converted on their final scoring drive. Also, Carlos Brown has terrific "breakaway speed" and is working at cornerback some.

At fullback, Carr had extensive and specific praise for fifth-year senior Obi Oluigbo:

Obi Oluigbo has had a terrific spring. My guess is this guy is going to be a dynamite fullback in the fall. ... I think he is much, much quicker. He's had some plays where everybody on the team is impressed. 'Wow!' – Those kinds of blocks on linebackers. He really feels comfortable with the things we're asking him to do. He's using his athletic ability to get there, he's got his pads down and he's been exploding into the defender. He's been lights out.

Pencil him in as the starter and hope the praise is warranted.

Wideouts and Tight Ends

Manningham's been out with a minor knee sprain, so he didn't get much mention. Redshirt freshman Laterryal Savoy did, however:

[Savoy] has really shown the ability to help us this fall. He's a big guy, and he can run. He's going to be a factor.

The rest of it is unilluminating praise. At tight end, Massey and Ecker have "improved significantly," and FSF Carson Butler gets an implied superlative from Carr:

Carson Butler is going to be... [what? going to be what?] if his attitude and his work ethic... [aaaargh! whatwhatwhat?] he needs more strength, but he is probably as athletic as any tight end we've had.

Carr at his rambling best.

Offensive Line

Tackle is sure to be the main focus of preseason panic. The first sign the coaches were scrambling was the move of natural right tackle Jake Long to the left side. Now Carr is mentioning anyone and everyone other than fifth year senior Mike Kolodziej opposite Long, including redshirt freshmen Mark Ortmann and Corey Zirbel. Yikes. Double yikes: the guy tabbed by Carr as the likely starter is Rueben Riley, who was the source of much anxiety a year ago. Remember the Penn State preview? The passing offense's "key matchup":

OTs Ruben Riley/Mike Kolodziej ("small animals in my immediate vicinity post-game") versus Tamba Hali ("wood chipper").

That prediction turned out about as well as all the rest -- Riley turned in a nigh-heroic performance against Hali -- but it was rooted in the events of the previous week against Minnesota. During that game true freshman Steve Davis repeatedly ownzored Riley and singlehandedly snuffed out three or four drives.

Anyway, with your mind properly calibrated, check this quote out about who's been playing at RT and try not to curl into the fetal position:

Brett Gallimore is lining up there, I mentioned Cory Zirbel, of course Rueben Riley and Mike Kolodziej. Kolodziej is playing at both tackles. Mark Ortmann is at left tackle. Zirbel has gotten the majority of the snaps, and Kolodziej's gotten some.

Yeesh. That probably has something to do with Riley missing hunks of practice time but it means that Zirbel is at worst second on the depth chart.

Also in limbo: right guard. Carr mentioned redshirt sophomores Alex Mitchell and Jeremy Cuilla as the main contenders, but had caveats for both:

Alex Mitchell has done some good things. He's going to have to compete. He's going to have to lose some weight, and I think the same is true of Jeremy Ciulla. The right guard is a position where we'll go into training camp having to make a decision at that position.

The nominally good news is that three positions appear to be set: Jake Long ("great spring") at left tackle, Adam Kraus ("very good spring") at left guard, and Mark Bihl ("outstanding spring") at center. You might do well to be a bit wary about Bihl's insertion into the starting lineup. He's been given every chance to grab a starting spot for the past two or three years and has never lasted more than a couple games before getting yanked.

Defensive Line

This seems worthy of a sigh of relief...

Tim Jamison didn't have a very good day on Saturday, but up until Saturday, I would say he probably has had as good a spring as anybody on our team.

...as it lessens the chance of a re-Massey. Also coming in for praise: Terrance Taylor ("has a chance to be a great nose tackle... much stronger"), Marques Walton("played very well"), and James McKinney ("made very good progress") -- now a DT.

Linebackers

Ut-oh? Shawn Crable received extremely high praise...

I think Shawn Crable has had a terrific spring. Crable, if he continues, there's no way Crable is not going to be on the field, because he has really turned it up.

... but the rest of the linebackers got a big, fat raspberry from Carr:

The rest of them are up for grabs. ...

On if he is disappointed with the linebacker play this spring:

"I'm a little disappointed at certain places in there, but I expect before we're done there that they will be a strength of this team."

Since David Harris was the one thing standing between the Michigan defense and Indiana-level run defense last year, I would assume his job is safe. I would read the ominous doom-saying about the linebackers as an indication that both Prescott Burgess and Chris Graham are in serious danger of finding themselves on the bench come fall unless they stop playing like Jim Herrmann is still their coach.

Secondary

The battle at corner has a surprising contender in Charles Stewart. When asked about who would start opposite Leon Hall, Carr said that both Stewart and Johnny Sears were having "very, very productive springs." Trent was not mentioned until specifically asked about later; Carr took the opportunity to say this:

He's in a very competitive position because he came into the spring as number one. Sears and Stewart have really come on. He's like a lot of guys. He's got to step up."

If I had to put together a corner depth chart right now I have no idea who would end up opposite Hall -- and it would probably be a distinction without a difference. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, since Trent seemed to perform very well for a freshman in '05.

At safety, the first name out of Carr's mouth was junior Jamar Adams:

We've had one safety I think has really ... I don't like to say solidified, but Jamar Adams has had an excellent spring.

Carr also mentioned that there were a "couple of freshmen" -- Steve Brown and Jonas Mouton -- who would be candidates for time in the fall, but I don't buy it. With Harrison, Adams, Englemon, Mundy and Barringer all returning, Michigan has no fewer than five safeties with starting experience. If Brown and Mouton are going to see the field it's going to be at corner (Brown) or linebacker (Mouton).

Zoltan Watch

"no question, Zoltan has improved from the fall"

Four Heismans are still in reach.

Recruiting Board Updated

Update 4/9: Linked to article on MI LB Chris Colasanti. Removed OR DT Myles Wade (dropped us) and CA QB Chris Forcier(UCLA). Linked to meatnormous article on NY QB Mike Paulus. Added FL LB Ronnie Lillard. Linked to article on MI OL Darris Sawtelle -- sounds like it's Tennessee before too long (er... I mean "it's Tennessee now") and article on MI DE Ryan VanBergen -- yes, a DE.

Also: added OK RB Gerald Jones.

Editorial Opinion: Gone are Forcier, Wade, and Sawtelle. No surprises in the bunch. Michigan is after Ryan Mallet and never offered Forcier, Wade is from Oregon, and Sawtelle's grandfather fought for the Tennessee Volunteers in the Civil War or something.

The VanBergen article has this sentence:

He is projected to play defensive end in college, however, a switch to tight end hasn't been ruled out, according to VanBergen.

I'll move him accordingly. Since the article also lists him at 253 pounds, a move inside is a possibility as well. More stats:

Last year, VanBergen finished with 59 solo tackles, including 32 for loss, seven sacks and four interceptions. Offensively, he had 20 catches for 274 yards and four TDs despite suffering a shoulder injury midway through the season for the 4-5 Vikings.

Chris Colasanti is going to make an early decision:

"My coach is pushing for me to decide by mid-summer. That's why I have taken so many visits. I don't know how to tell who are my top five without taking these visits. I'll probably narrow to a top five at the beginning of the summer, then a top three, and then make my decision."

Michigan's extensive linebacker haul last year might hurt our chances:

"My goal is to play early," he explains. "My dad and I are always on the Internet - how many linebackers a school takes each year and how many are in front of me. I work hard and believe in myself, but don't want to wait four years for my chance."

Colasanti is probably going to end up more highly ranked than anyone from last year's class other than Brandon Graham, though.

Pay No Attention To The Man In The New York Times

The New York Times has an unfortunate habit of bothering with goings-on at the University of Michigan only when extremely silly people are talking. Since the Times is the national paper of record, this has the even more unfortunate effect of legitimizing whatever the silly people are talking about. Exhibit A: a half-dozen years ago a motley crew of student activists and Detroit communists made a statement by decrying the existence of a "secret society" at Michigan that used Native American imagery in offensive ways. Or at least had done some at some point in the past. So incensed at this society that no one was supposed to know about that may or may not still be doing offensive things, they occupied their office, sent out a lot of email, and some months later had their own article in the Times. This only encouraged them further, much to everyone's detriment.

In 2006 a similarly well-intentioned crew of complete and total loons has garnered a Times article and thus stature wildly out of proportion to the merit and importance of their cause: protesting the planned renovation of Michigan Stadium, specifically the addition of what Martin terms "enclosed seating" and the loons term "luxury boxes," a distinction I could not care less about. If I have any preference, I prefer "luxury boxes" because they sound more likely to really soak some of the crotchety elderly I have to contend with whenever I attend a home game.

Do we really have to delve deep into the win-win of luxury boxes at Michigan in order to dispel this ridiculous idea that they will have a negative effect on the game experience for anyone? We shouldn't, but... NYT and all. Okay. Stakeholder-by-stakeholder:

• Loaded old people: Muffy and I no longer have to risk death by frostbite every fall. We obviously enjoy the idea of boxes, as we've voluntarily shelled out the GDP of Belize to sit here. I do sort of miss screaming "down in front" at impudent 50-year-olds with their crazy hair and stupid pet rocks and hula hoops and music videos applesauce applesauce let's sing the applesauce song.
• Joe Plebian in the stands: My, this extra 1.5 inches does make a difference... and there are many fewer crotchety old people yelling at me to sit down during exciting plays.
• Bill Martin: Now I have even more money I can roll around in, Demi-Moore style.
• Michigan players: Yes, it does seem somewhat louder in here, as the higher walls tend to keep in a bit more sound and those displaced to the luxury boxes never said peep in the first place.
• The basketball team: Yay, if Martin ever stops rubbing the money all over his naughty bits, we get the facilities we need to compete with George Mason.

All this can be yours if only one gets on board. Truly, the luxury box is marketing alchemy on par with bottled water. You take the worst seats in the house, add some appetizers, and voila! Millions of dollars. Who are we to discourage the foolish rich?

In any case, you would do well to consider the source: other than the founder of the extremely silly website behind all this, the main source of anti-box quotes is former university president James Duderstadt, who hates everything about collegiate athletics and is as predictable on this topic as a partisan talking head is about, well, anything. It's akin to asking Ann Coulter if she thinks Hillary Clinton would make a good president: you're going to get a lot of spittle and exactly zero information other than "Coulter hates Clinton," something you knew before. Add in the fact that Duderstadt is so out of touch that he pulls a T. Herman Zweibel by referring to the NCAA basketball "final-four" tournament and what you get is less the wise tidings of a respected member of the community and more the crackpot natterings of an angry old man. There's little value in his opinion given his wider worldview.

While Duderstadt dislikes the idea of luxury boxes because he dislikes the idea of intercollegiate athletics that people care about, the other protestors think that Michigan operates outside the rules of thermodynamics. Ignoring entropy, their solution to keeping Michigan relevant is the same that keeps the Sphinx and Hunter S. Thompson in tip-top-shape to this very day: leave it alone and let time's stewardship see it through. Michigan is already in an excited, untenable state by rejecting the advertising that makes the interiors of Spartan and Ohio Stadium corporate eyesores. As a result our stadium is both pristine and badly out of date in dozens of ways -- access to seats, sufficient bathrooms, ugly tin on the outside of the stadium. Michigan has already slipped far behind the average college stadium's amenities -- let alone the NFL so abhorrent to the letter-writers -- and must provide a source of revenue going forward that can make up this slippage and more. Otherwise Michigan's most important tradition, winning*, will start to suffer at the hands of its lesser brethren.

Oh yeah, PS: Let this in no way be construed as an endorsement of that other main bugaboo, advertising. If you've ever been to a road game at OSU or MSU and weren't repulsed by Jewel Osco and the Michigan Marinated Soybean Board bringing you OMG OMG OMG Tractor Racing(!!!) during a commercial break, please deport yourself immediately.

*(And don't let anyone tell you different. Northwestern has traditon-laden program and a history of academic excellence unparallelled in the Big Ten and still plays road games at Ryan Field whenever Michigan wanders into town.)

Blogs Like Weeds

So: revamped sidebar with a few additions, including two new Michigan blogs:

• Michigan Against The World, from a former student manager.
• Stadium & Main: check out Nick's review of the bizarre 2001 season.

There is also a promising new Badger blog in town @ Bucky Blog. Still on the lookout for MSU, Minnesota, Northwestern, and Iowa football blogs to complete the set. (Minus Indiana, of course.)

Also... don't click here. (audio)

Unverified Voracity: Forbidden Donut Edition

Only the penitent wide receiver shall pass. A previous UV pointed out the sweet AC/BE video up at Braylon Edwards' site. As you likely know, Edwards is endowing a scholarship for the #1 jersey. You probably did not know that receiving the #1 is going to be a trial by ordeal:

"No freshman will be allowed to wear the No. 1," Edwards said. "The number holds too much significance and too much value. There are three criteria to receive it: first, no freshmen; second, the GPA (grade-point average); third, off-the-field conduct."

I assume there's an unspoken fourth requirement for total awesomeness. This takes away a recruiting inducement -- Lloyd would dangle the #1 in front of top WR prospects -- but the prospect of getting passed the #1 after earning it is kind of cool. Also of note:

Edwards, who plays for the Cleveland Browns, has created the largest endowment ever given by a former athlete at U-M.

Good on yer, BE.

We'll miss Friday nights in the Metrodome. Or perhaps we won't. But we're sure that there will no longer be any, as the Minnesota legislature has approved necessary funding for an on-campus, outdoor stadium for Gopher football. Three things of note:

• It's only 50,000 seats, which seems small for a Big Ten team not named Northwestern or Indiana.
• In exchange for a piddling $35 million, TCF gets to call the thing "TCF Bank Stadium," which would make it the only stadium in the league whored out to a corporation.
  
• It's a good thing that Minnesota president Robert Bruininks doesn't live in MGoBlog's America, where tortured sports metaphors like this...

  He said the House action "gets us to the 50-yard line. Now we're looking to the Senate to get us into the end zone."

  ... are firing-squad offenses.

The stadium is supposed to be ready for the 2009 season.

And in this week's edition of "Video because I can": YouTube brings us what the Syracuse area simply refers to as "The Run," featuring one Mike Hart:

My favorite part is the 150-pound tailback who's like "yeah! yeah! I am so awesome. I sort-of-blocked half a person on a play where Mike Hart schooled each member of the defense twice."

This is your cue to go "mmmmmm... Mike Hart's healthy ankle."

It's All Denmark

...and by "light posting" I mean "I didn't think this would get finished today."

Alex Legion's mother lives in Inkster, Michigan. Alex Legion does not. Legion lives in Southfield with a man named Tim Green, who is his AAU basketball coach. Green is applying for legal guardianship of Legion.

Take the previous five sentences, mix them with the vapors of dozens of similarly creepy stories involving young men with unusual basketball ability and their assorted hangers-on, and you have world-class agar for investigative journalism to bloom in. Perhaps Alex Legion's situation is on the up-and-up. Perhaps Tim Green's motivations for taking Legion under his wing are totally altruistic. But unless stunning ability with a basketball goes hand-in-hand with a level of charm so absolute that total strangers nationwide are taking in basketball non-orphans simply to be charitable, there is a class of men somewhere between agents and parasites attaching themselves to every prospective NBA player in the country. Shoe wars have turned high school basketball entirely upside down: nowadays your AAU team is more important than your high school one. Where, then, is "Game Of Shadows: College Basketball Edition"?

Don't expect that question to be answered with a "coming right up" any time soon. As Mark Jurkowitz recently detailed in The Phoenix, a Boston alt-weekly, when it comes to muckraking, sportswriters have a rich history of sitting on their ass eating donuts. "Game of Shadows" itself was penned by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, men who

are not the kind of reporters found walking around post-game clubhouses armed with microphones and notebooks. Fainaru-Wada, a former sportswriter, was working on a campaign-finance project for the Chronicle’s investigative unit when the BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative) drug story broke. Williams, a traditional courts-and-cops reporter, is a long-time investigative journalist.

While Jurkowitz's article has an odd concept of stories of import -- he cites work done that showed that certain pro athletes' charitable contributions were not as charitable as all that -- it stands as a damning testament against the sportswriter's feeble plea that their access to athletes and coaches can serve as their aegis against the unwashed blogging hordes. It took ten years, a federal investigation, and two non-sportswriters to break the "news" that Bonds was on 'roids, something that had been conventional wisdom for a half-dozen years. In the interim, sportswriters asked Bonds

• if he liked winning,
• if he liked hitting lots of home runs,
• if he thought home runs were fun to hit,
• and if winning and hitting home runs was kind of like being tickled by ponies.

"Squandered" doesn't seem to cover the totality of the failure here.

Meanwhile in college basketball, the conventional wisdom is not that a few coaches are bending, breaking, or flaunting the rules -- it's that all of them are. At least, everyone who isn't Tommy Amaker is. Even not-a-coach-but-a-leader Mike Kryzwesksisetc,etc,etc ended up entangled with Brett Bearup via Corey Maggette. The coach of your 2006 national champion Florida Gators was publicly accused of being an ATM with Eddie Munster hair by then-Stanford coach Mike Montgomery (though the uproar over those comments caused an epic CYA backtrack by Montomgery in their wake). The NCAA had to rejigger its rules because Jim Calhoun was funnelling thousands of dollars to AAU programs via sham exhibition games. That's just the tip; the iceberg is composed of recruit after recruit ending up at a funny destination for no reason in particular. There's nothing you can say about each individual case -- kids do indeed choose schools for a lot of funny reasons -- but taken together they compose a black mass lurking just under the Greg-Gumbelized surface of college basketball.

And this has been going on for not ten but thirty years (at least!), to the detriment of many but most importantly me Michigan. It's just our luck that basketball's unspoken reptilian tail has smashed Michigan both coming (Ed Martin sinks the program) and going (Crawford, Hairston, Horford, Legion leave before even coming). We swing back and forth from a program not clean enough to one that seems too clean to do the bending that teams far below the corruption median are willing to do: Tory Jackson's scholarship was pulled, so he took off for noted nest of corruption Notre Dame. (That was sarcastic, Irish fans.) We sit idly by, wondering if there are tournaments other than the NIT. We suck, waiting for that one guy with stunning basketball skills to suck the suck away.

Yesterday, that guy was Alex Legion. Now that seems doubtful despite his mother's assertions that she fully expects him to end up at Michigan eventually. When Legion tells Scout that...

"We decided to open it up," Legion told Scout.com. "I'm going to Oak Hill and I'm starting over so we opened it up.

... but tells his mom different...

"Like he told Amaker today, 'I'll be away from Mr. Green and my mom and get a chance to think things over,' " Williams said of her son, referring to his guardian Tim Green. " 'I'll think about my own self and my own choices.'

...it's hard to go with mom over he person he lives with -- and what an odd sentence that is. It's hard to be the kind of person who makes his own choices when you've never done so before. Is it "we" or "I"? And will Legion pick a place his mother wants him to go, or a place that might make Tim Green some money? No one knows right now, but I've got a nickel on green, capitalized and un-.

That's not to say I know Tim Green from Adam. As noted, this could all be completely legit and Legion will call Tommy Amaker to recommit and go where his mom wants him to go... but you'll forgive my cynicism. Occam's Razor and all that.

Meanwhile, we're left with sports journalists that Ball Four author Jim Bouton describes in the Phoenix article as "fans" who are "in it because it's fun" -- an assertion that any actual fan is taken aback by, since most sportswriters are about as fun as a bag of tacks to the face. For that matter, sportswriters seem to recoil from the term "fan" as if it was three letters of hydrochloric acid. As Colby Cosh noted when Bob McKenzie said that the "fan in [him] died long ago":

McKenzie certainly doesn't mean that he no longer gets pleasure from hockey: he's using the word "fan" as a pejorative, the way Nietzsche used "human." McK's saying he has transcended, attained a higher state. The fan had to die to make way for the expert. It's kind of like a political columnist describing himself as no longer a mere voter.

It should be noted that McKenzie is an MGoBlog favorite and all-around good (seeming) guy, but Cosh is right. Anyone who's read Drew Sharp or any of his legion of crabbed clones across the country knows they're no good at fun or fandom. But they do have that precious access, and so I ask: if you'd like to prove your vast superiority to blogs, why don't you do college basketball a favor and rake some muck? We'll save the bearclaws until you get back.

(Cosh's pith via Offwing)