Unverified Voracity: Catch Up Edition

Okay. Things happened when I was gone. This is not a major surprise. Vijay and MNB Dave have filled the void for you.

'07 hockey recruit Ben Winnett committed. At 16, Winnett scored 49 points in 60 games in the BCHL playing kids three and four years his senior. Less than a PPG in the run-and-gun BCHL is not generally indicative of future college stardom -- Milan Gajic more than doubled that -- but it is impressive for a player Winnett's age -- Gajic was 19. He and Wisconsin-bound Kyle Turris are considered the top two up-and-comers in the league.

The Wolverine's Bob Miller was given permission to post an article from Paul Shaheen's Research On Ice column:

"So many people around me said I was a Michigan type player," says Winnett, a high school senior and one of the most well-spoken young men his age. "With my skating, offense and awareness, many guys branded me a Wolverine. I was flattered by that."

Even someone who'd never seen Winnett play before said exactly the same thing.

"Last year, " explains Winnett, "we were having a practice skate, and (former Maine Black Bear assistant captain) Jeff Mushaluk came out to skate with us. (An Armstrong, BC native, Mushaluk played two seasons at Maine after transferring from Lake Superior State). Jeff came up to one of our coaches and said, 'heah who's that number 16? He looks like a Wolverine.' That was a huge compliment."

(HT: WCH)

Michigan kicked some ass at bridge. Eat our national championship, Princeton!

SMQB got all up in my grill. No he di'in't(!). This here website was cited for aiding and abetting severe recruitnikdom by reporting on Mallet's thrilling victory in the NCAA '07 competition at the Elite 11 camp:

And then we are treated to a link to a lengthy review of another person we do not know, who is not yet a high school senior, playing a video game? And how its results might possibly suit this young man for a certain school's conservative offensive philosophy?

For the record, the sarcasm hat was firmly in place for the entirety of that post, from exclamatory headline to dubious recommendation to examine the "teary acceptance speech."

EDSBS held a pledge drive. Which is over, though you can still donate.

And now three dog-bites-man stories:

The NCAA did something dumb. The game clock will start to tick down when the play clock starts after a change of possession this year in order to shorten games by five or ten minutes. The outrage generated by 3-2-5-e is widespread. Stadium & Main has some in a rundown of all the new rule changes ("NCAA, you are dumb" is the succinct conclusion); SMQB accuses hungry wives of getting their way, &c. I'm ambivalent. Games have lengthened terms of both time and playcount in recent years because of spread mania and something should be done to reduce the massive time savings yielded by the passing game -- perhaps starting the clock when the ball is set for play after an incompletion -- but this is a totally arbitrary rule change that will do more harm than good.

The NCAA did something dumb. Something else.

What now are I-A programs — the Texases, Notre Dames and others vying for bowls — will play in the Football Bowl Subdivision. The Georgia Southerns, Montanas and others now known as I-AA will play in the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision, alluding to the 16-team playoff that settles its national title.

Our long national nightmare is over.

Gene Wojciechowski gave oral typewritten pleasure to a collegiate coach. This time it's our own Lloyd Carr instead of Charlie Tuna but the overall effect is the same: breathless praise for 1,200 words. The script is somewhat different since Lloyd is generally regarded as "embattled" instead of an up-and-coming sooper genius, forcing Wojciechowski to make snide comments about crazy Internets types and their loony blogs instead of leaping right into the pleasure bits:

Carr is now 1-4 against Tressel, which explains why some of these U-of-M bloggers need distemper shots. ...

Wait. There is one writer Carr does read on a regular basis: Rudyard Kipling. As he gets hammered in chat room after chat room, in the Letters to the Editor, in blogs, in his own Big House, Carr leans on those opening lines of Kipling's poem, "If."

Yes, this is a standard "can you believe all these crazy people on the Internets who don't like Coach X after sucky season Y" article, but this one is personally irritating. As the unofficial dean of the Michigan blogosphere I strenously object to the sloppy characterization of not only we admittedly-loony Internets masses but the Michigan fanbase in general in the service of another generic fluff piece from Wojciechowski. Did Carr get booed once during this trying season? No. Did this blog or any of the ones on the sidebar call for Carr's head after it? Except for Joey, who probably could use said distemper shot, no. Are Michigan fans responsible for the incoherent blatherings of Detroit newspaper columnists? No. Aside from always-retarded, always-angry talk radio and a few websites no one visits, Wojciechowski has invented a world in which Carr is public enemy number one* simply because he needs such a thing to exist so he can write his crappy, generic, useless article.

There's a difference between reasonable criticism and the raving lunacy that is the antipode of Wojciechowski's constant sunniness. Much like facism and communism, at their extremes the two opposites become alike in unreason. Wojciechowski and FireLloydCarr.com deserve each other.

*(Public enemy number one was and always will be Jim Herrmann, who this article could have been written about with no, count 'em, no amounts of intellectual dishonesty. Too bad for Gene that he's a Jet.)

Etc.: SMQB previews ND; The Colts' official site previews Marlin Jackson.