The Barwis Effect

When you're a blogger, stupid post ideas flit through your mind on a daily basis: "college football programs as cheeses!" or "4,000 words on the construction of authority and why it's still weird when people ask me questions." One of the very stupidest ideas I ever had was a recent one: "I will present myself as a guinea pig and go through a Barwis workout."

I said it was stupid.

Any lingering thought I might actually attempt to go through with this idea -- no doubt futile because Michigan's athletic department remains highly leery of the internet -- was crushed, maimed, and then hurled bodily into a trash can by Spencer Hall's (or Orson Swindle's or maybe SpencerOrson Hall-Swindle's) two-day odyssey of pain. The process looked a lot like this:

That was after nine minutes. Add a significant amount of hair, subtract three minutes, and add some dangling organs I have forcibly ejected from my body and are currently being nipped at by Barwis Wolves and you have the probable result of Worst Idea Ever. So thanks for that, Mr. Hall-Swindle. I owe you a beer and maybe a kidney.

After day one Orson dropped this into his Curious Index and I immediately thought of Barwis:

The mode of thinking this morning after talking with the trainers I’m “working” with (read: being maimed by) is that the only possible reason any discrepancy might exist between the SEC and the Big Ten is talent development. That’s it: not schemes, not odious theories involving weather, nothing but the training they receive and the varying emphases different programs build into their training programs. We’re brewing up a piece on this at SN, but in short think of player development in college football as one exaggerated episode of Top Chef: when everyone’s working with the same produce, how you cut it up and prep it makes all the difference at the margins.

This is unremarkable, since "eeee Barwis" has replaced "sex" as the thing I think about every ten seconds as mandated by crappy stories in the "Lifestyle" section of your rapidly imploding local paper. But it turns out Orson was also allowing his thoughts to linger over Michigan's new S&C demon:

Bringing us to the future, a.k.a. the West Virginia/Michigan training program. I mentioned Michigan's superb record against the SEC above; now consider how well Michigan did using training techniques from the 1970s, as it did until this year's complete revamping of the training program.

(Fun story that's been floating around college football circles: Under the former management, Michigan linemen, in order to gain weight, were allegedly told to "eat a whole pizza" at night. [not alleged; directly stated by Pat Massey, the lineman in question, to Brent Musberger. -ed] I'm amazed they didn't flounder like sick race horses on Saturdays. [Uh... some did. -ed] Also: no squats. The most basic fundamental move in weight lifting simply did not exist in their machine-dominated training program.)

Michigan is now busy reprogramming its players to play in the 21st century, demanding speed at every position (yes, even for pizza-mobbing offensive linemen) and totally rebuilding their talent development system.

Two thoughts crossed my mind as we finished drills: One, that not vomiting on day one represented a substantial accomplishment for a squishy blogger; and two, that if Michigan did as well as it did with old training methods, the possibilities for the Wolverines under a newer, speed-obsessed regime remain both frightening and limitless.

Mike Barwis went from a respected but obscure S&C coach at West Virginia to the head of a cult he had no hand in creating. He is the highest paid and probably the most famous trainer in the country. There is an "eeee I'm a little girl for Mike Barwis" tag on this blog, and it is only half-sarcastic. Can he possibly live up to the hype?

First, we should establish that this comment from Swindle's personal torturer...

"In terms of players we see for the combine, the best-conditioned and prepared athletes by conference come in this order: the SEC, the Big 12, the Pac-10 is just a little bit under that, and then the Big Ten brings up the rear."

...has not actually translated to any notable superiority on the field. This is Michigan's problem with "southern speed":

Date		Opponent (record)	Result	Score		Site
1/1/2008	vs.	Florida (9-4)	W	41	35	@ Orlando, FL	Capital One Bowl
1/1/2003	vs.	Florida (8-5)	W	38	30	@ Tampa, FL	Outback Bowl
1/1/2002	vs.	Tennessee (11-2)	L	17	45	@ Orlando, FL	Citrus Bowl
1/1/2001	vs.	Auburn (9-4)	W	31	28	@ Orlando, FL	Citrus Bowl
1/1/2000	vs.	Alabama (10-3)	W	35	34	@ Miami, FL	Orange Bowl
1/1/1999	vs.	Arkansas (9-3)	W	45	31	@ Orlando, FL	Citrus Bowl
1/1/1997	vs.	Alabama (10-3)	L	14	17	@ Tampa, FL	Outback Bowl
1/1/1991	vs.	Mississippi (9-3)	W	35	3	@ Jacksonville, FL	Gator Bowl

...oops. Add up all the bowl games the two sides have played against each other in the last eleven* years and the SEC is ahead 15 to 14 with most of the damage being done against Ohio State, 0-4 in that timespan and 0-7 since '91. Clearly, being fast -- if SEC teams actually are, which is debatable -- is not a magic ticket.

On the other hand: holy hell did West Virginia look fast, and with functionally zero four-star or better recruits. Under Rodriguez, West Virginia outperformed its recruiting rankings every year, assembling team after team somewhere between good and great without the benefit of more than one or two guys a year with any shot in the NFL. Barwis had a hand in that just like Gittleson had a hand in Gabe Watson's failure to live up to his potential.

The thing that excites about the transition is the sheer gulf between Gittleson, Carr, Debord, et al., who were all decent enough in their time but by 2007 were reduced to shoving an unmotivated, out of shape Alex Mitchell onto the field against Ohio State, and the Rodriguez/Barwis regime, where Mitchell would be laughed off the team. It's not so much the new training techniques that excite but the demand that team members participate in offseason workouts even you're a starter and Daddy has a landscaping business. The offseason is optional: so is playing time.

Over time, everything in your program is shaped by the attitude you bring. Michigan recruits are committing in the full knowledge Barwis is going to kill them, and they are eager to be killed. In time, this will manifest itself and the only things separating Michigan from national title games will be blind luck and Jim Tressel.

*(eleven is a weird number that looks carefully chosen to conceal difficulty, but I'm just using Jim Delany's stupid letter from last year, which pointed out that the teams were dead even over the preceding decade, and going from there.)

Unverified Voracity Ejects Bits

Note: lately, I've been dumping a lot of things into UV that could rightly stand on their own as posts, and I'm going to try to split those things out in the future. Often I'll hold something for a day or two until the next edition and by that time every Michigan blog has already said their piece and I feel stupid. Also, much of the time I end up throwing a bunch of disparate stuff together -- that's kind of the point -- and it mucks up the categories. If you click "baseball" or something on the right sidebar you get posts with baseball, but often leetle pieces of baseball in a larger post.

So, anything that's news or news-y I'll post ASAP, and anything program-related and longer than a few lines will also get split out.

House. I should probably start plugging Michigan-relevant stuff I post on the Fanhouse since every couple days I get an email asking why I haven't covered X when there's a post up over there. So: Want Michigan tickets? Cut your legs off.

(It's already happening!)

On a more serious note, yes, it's a little annoying that handicapped fans get to cut in the season ticket line and get their PSLs waived, but those were probably conditions of the settlement and in the long run said settlement saved Michigan some coin, and a lot of seats.

The point. It's fashionable, and somewhat accurate, to bash Bill Simmons these days. But everything you need to know about why sports columnists are thrashing around in their death throes can be found in his post-Celtics victory column, and it's all about his dad. I am a little sick of Simmons' schtick, incredibly sick of Boston teams winning championships, and was sort of annoyed at parts of the column, but...

Dad bought a single season ticket for the Celtics for the 1973-74 season and carried me into the Garden for the next four years, sitting me on his lap and even letting me sleep on him during the famous triple-OT game against Phoenix in 1976. When I became too big to sit on his lap, he bought a second ticket even though we really didn't have any money at the time. And we've had those two tickets ever since. How do you repay someone for a lifelong experience like that? You don't. You can't.

...this and the discussion that follows it is about the strange thing fandom is, something only a lifelong fan could communicate. Often, I think, we start pulling for a team by proxy. I wanted Michigan to win when I was a child so my dad would be happy. When Michigan was trailing by 21 in the Water Buffalo Stampede Minnesota game, my girlfriend at the time wanted Michigan to do well so I wouldn't accidentally shove her off the couch again in rage. Now that I'm friends with the sort of Auburn fan who involuntarily screams things like "GO LESTER" on every run longer than three yards, I want Auburn to win.

At some point a switch flips and the rooting is no longer by proxy and now you're just sort of infected with this thing. And it makes you do and think very strange things about completely irrelevant external events, and coping and dealing with this weird little disease of passion requires a sort of support group.

In general, newspapers have chosen to strip the passion out of their sports section in favor of objectivity. They've been so successful at it that Bill Simmons -- a "blogger" according to sneerin' Rick Reilly -- is the most famous and influential sportswriter* in the country.

*(writer. Wilbon, Kornheiser, etc... TV.)

Man down. Alabama cornerback Lionel Mitchell, he of the severe back problems that sort of held him out of spring practice, -- brutal! -- is yet another medical scholarship recipient. Will Alabama make it? This is exciting!

EEEEEE Barwis:



Via MVictors, which helpfully picks out this sentence:

“If you can’t make it intense, and make the environment an environment that elicits greatness, and get into that environment, coach, and make kids energetic about, and fired up about putting 500 pounds on their back and hittin’ reps and running sprints until they throw up and pushing themselves to the absolute limits of their mental and physical capabilities then you’re not doing anything, you’ve wasted your time with your science because they’re not going to grow if they’re not pushing themselves to those points…”

Dude, Faulkner just threw up in a bush.

Thin, thin. Antonio Henton, the dual-threat Ohio State backup quarterback who is not Terrelle Pryor, is transferring. Probably:

Ohio State quarterback Antonio Henton has reportedly told his Buckeye teammates he’s headed for GSU, an ESPN writer confirmed to the Statesboro Herald Wednesday. Georgia Southern’s B-term for summer classes begins next week, and second-year GSU coach Chris Hatcher said he couldn’t discuss transfers until then. Henton could not be reached for comment.

That leaves Ohio State with eh starter Todd Boeckman, Pryor, and thousand-year-old walk-on(? - I think) Joe Bauserman. They aren't much deeper than Michigan, though they are more experienced/hyped/diapered.

Dash. Wisconsin people say don't get your hopes up for Charter or Time Warner:

"I think they're going to be really, really lucky to get it done by football season," Prof. Barry Orton told The Capital Times. "It means they have to turn this around in a month and a half or so. That's tight. I would think we're safer to say (a deal will be done) probably by basketball season and maybe by the end of football season."

Yes, yes it does. NBC's extended their contract with Notre Dame another five years, and they're very proud of it:

“We are thrilled to continue this landmark partnership with Notre Dame," Ebersol said during a conference call. “Notre Dame defines who we at NBC Sports are: from the Olympics, to the U.S. Golf Open to Notre Dame.”

From the Olympics... to golf... to Notre Dame football! NBC sports: the home of soft-focus quasi sporting events that only appeal to white people!

Meanwhile, the Rock Report writes from an alternative universe:

Who kills the magic at Notre ame? Often times it's the very network that supports it... NBC has been a good partner, but it is time ND started demanding more from NBC.

Like ponies.

Past snark, the new NBC contract is lame for ND, the Big Ten, and college football in general. It guarantees seven home games and an eighth "neutral site" game that ND controls the gate and TV for. If you fit that into a conference framework, ND has four home games and four road games like any Big Ten team was, then three nonconference home games and a "neutral site" game... if a Big Ten team tried that their nonconference schedule would be Wisconsin's. And with home-and-home slots given over to USC, Navy (-ish), Michigan, and three Big East teams, Notre Dame is going to have to push out traditional rivals like Purdue and Michigan State to make it work.

To ND fans' credit, they loathe this state of affairs as much or more than Michigan fans hate the idea of the MAC-MAC-Utah at best-ND nonconference schedule that seems to be Michigan's fate for the next thousand years. Again, I say: the NCAA can stop this if they care to. Force five true road games a year. Limit commercial time in broadcasts. Stop trying to squeeze every nickel out of a supposedly nonprofit enterprise.

Chances of this happening: zero.

Etc.: New IU blog Cannot Falter highlights some interesting chatter from the Knight commission on APRs and infractions; here's a theory as to why Mendenhall hates Zook. 20 questions on M from the OZone... IMO, not up to Gerdeman's usual standard. Recruting notes from UMHoops.

(What a good job I did of cutting this down.)

Unverified Voracity Desperately Seeking RBUAS

Achtung. This is kind of a silly way to attempt to get in touch with someone, but Johnny of RBUAS, I require you to email me.

Giddyup. Mon... er, Tuesday Recruitin' was heavily focused on one Kevin Newsome, Virginia quarterback par excellence and maybe probably soonish a Michigan commitment. More grist for the mill, this from established Buckeye Planet insider Unionfutura:

...he committed to them Monday. Kid is big man, looks like a LB.

All due caution is advised -- consarned kids with their internets -- but the underground buzz on this is getting overwhelming.

BONUS! I don't give this much credence but it might cause a Penn State fan or two to start bashing his head against the wall whilst moaning "no, no, no, no," so... what looks like a legit Tate Forcier comment showed up on Newsome's myspace page; a helpful reader forwards it along:

Aye bro! How sick would it be if we both went to Michigan? We could do like the florida thing with tebow an Chris Leak... Cuz dude if we both go there we could do some serious damage.
An we could get like the Tightest...

wait for it... wait for it...

WR's

Awwwww, dammit.

Even if that is really Forcier chances are he heads somewhere else.

He fell into our laps. Memo to self: send Dave Wannstedt some mustache wax for Christmas. In the midst of an chaotic coaching search that seemingly had no real candidates after Greg Schiano turned Michigan down twice came salvation in the form of one disgruntled mofo from West Virginia:

Attorneys for West Virginia University have obtained new documents that show Rodriguez' representatives contacted Michigan on Dec. 11 to gauge their interest in him as their new head football coach. Three days later, Michigan officials met with the former coach in Ohio to start hammering out a deal.

So many questions! Jesus, what did Ed Pastilong do? What would have happened if WVU won? Miles? If not... perish the thought. Michigan didn't even have to sell the guy. He was just looking for a way out.

Stop me if you've heard this before. Buried in like 300 words of Ryan Mundy trying to justify going back to the school he spent 80% of his collegiate career at just because it's Michigan -- over it yet? no? how about now? no? -- is another Eeee Barwis quote:

[Mundy] was most grateful, though, for getting to know Mike Barwis, the director of strength and conditioning who followed Rodriguez to UM. Barwis is the reason Mundy made his return journey to Ann Arbor.

"If Mike Barwis was at West Virginia, I'd be at West Virginia. I have nothing against them," he said. "I was so pleased with the way Mike Barwis worked with me that I wanted to continue working with him to get ready for the draft."

Eeee!

Unverified Voracity Is Relatively Unsurprised By Cage Fighting

Light posting today. While I don't particularly crave college basketball, I'm not a communist who won't spend all of today watching the opening round.

Spring Practice. Michigan's now producing its own internet video on, uh, the internet:



There's also some BTN content, via MSC. CCHA fans will be delighted to see Shireen Saski getting her interview on; there is also a Greg Mathews interview on myspace.

Relativity. The statement "I was a cage fighter" is never not surprising. Unless it comes from a guy with an eyepatch, maybe. Revised statement: the statement "I was a cage fighter" is never not surprising coming from a guy without an eyepatch. But in terms of how surprising the surprise is when someone says "I was a cage fighter," this ranks pretty low:

"Barwis was a cage fighter. He was 36-0 and never missed a match. He was telling us about 50 different injuries and never missed a match, and some of those injuries probably would have ended my career."

Well, yeah. Of course Barwis was a cage fighter.

Blow it up. A biglong study purporting to dispute the legitimacy of recruiting rankings recently appeared on something called "omninerd" and got some play around the blogosphere, especially with the group of folks headed by the Wizard of Odds (who is, not coincidentally, an Official Journalist; Official Journalists always but always love dumping on recruiting sites) that take every opportunity to declare recruiting rankings bunk.

It was a crap study and SMQB destroyed it capably:

If you didn’t know better – or if, like the author, you assume a normal distribution in which most of a sample falls into the median ranges (two and three stars) and narrows at either end – you'd think this data suggests the "star system" is random, and not much more predictive of elite success than pulling prospects’ names out of a hat.

We do know better, though, and so, it seems, does the author, who did begin late in the article to look at the number of prospects within each "star" category. Unfortunately, he didn’t get very far at this crucial distinction, only comparing the number of five-star designations awarded by each of the two services in question over the last six years, and failing to compare these numbers with the number of prospects in other star levels because "the necessary data isn’t available."

Still, even without this information, he goes on to make conclusions based on the raw numbers and the assumption of normal distribution: the data is not "biased high" toward the four and five-star end of the scale as it should be if those labels were accurate predictors of success; there’s an "abnormally large number" of 0-star outliers on the all-America teams; and finally, in the "Concluding Comments," the author writes,

...the prospect rankings exist with the sole purpose of predicting the likelihood a player [will] succeed at the generalized college level. Accurate rankings should take these factors into account and still show a much greater percentage of 5-star recruits making the All-America team than 0-stars.
- - -

with the clear implication that the rankings in question have failed to accomplish that purpose. ...

Five-star prospects were about three times as likely to earn an all-America vote than four-star prospects, five-and-a-half times as likely as a three-star prospect, eleven times as likely as a one, two or zero-star prospect. If the setting was 'random; – if the rankings were worthless – every level would show roughly the same 1 in 59 odds of producing an all-American. Three, four and five-star prospects all fared better than that, the top two much better than that. Zero, one and two-stars were not close. If you pay attention to the distribution of the star rankings, the results are nothing like a bell curve.

So that's that, basically. I would like to add the following objections to those voiced by SMQB:

• "All American" is a stupid metric. AA status is frequently a product of media hype and not necessarily actual ability, especially on the lines and in the secondary. Second, there are plenty of kickass players who don't make the AA team, and restricting the study to just All-Americans provides a major sample size limitation. Better would be all-conference teams from the BCS conferences, preferably coaches, and definitely for more than one year.
• Sample size. One year is not a good sample size.
• Kickers and punters are included. Recruiting sites pretty much throw up their hands about specialists, never ranking them higher than three stars; this is a major distorting factor.

The big kahuna is the one that SMQB tackled, though: there are like 25 five star players and nearly 1000 three-stars.

All this is totally invalid for Terrelle Pryor -- henceforth known as The Next Marcus Vick until such time as he opens a can of whoopass on Michigan, whereupon he will be known as Daddy Make The Bad Man Stop -- who is a headcase we didn't want anyway and will undoubtedly be a team cancer that will metastasize in the Buckeye bloodstream and cause the entire state to implode one day, leaving nothing but a foul smell and a sixth Great Lake, which we will call "Lake Steve".

Amen.

OMG LOL. The Daily published reports of psychology professors flaming each other in the aftermath of the AA News piece:

The Michigan Daily obtained an e-mail message yesterday sent by Bill McKeachie, professor emeritus of the psychology department, to the entire department, saying he was "aghast" that Prof. Paris would allege academic misconduct by Hagen. He called the allegation "a crazy destructive thing."

"I did not reply to those reports, I never said a disparaging word about John, and I did not write the story in the Ann Arbor News," Paris wrote. "If being concerned about academic integrity in the department, and following standard procedures for reporting those concerns, 'burns my bridges' at UM, it will be unfortunate, but I chose to follow my principles about teaching at UM. I can live with that, and hope my colleagues can also."

Aaaaand this is why old people + computers == bad news:

Theresa Lee, who chairs the Department of Psychology, said she thought McKeachie might have sent the e-mail to the entire department by mistake, hitting "Reply to all" instead of "Reply."

Ah, "reply to all," the feature you should have to take a three-credit independent study course on before your email client is allowed to have it.

Hockey update: further fiddling with You Are The Committee reveals that even an 0-2 flameout by ND does not necessarily result in a Wisconsin bid if the right team (Princeton) wins the ECAC. There is also the possibility of a third team from HE making its way in via autobid. Two teams out of the tourney right now meet in one semifinal, the winner taking on the UNH-BC winner for all the proverbial marbles. So there are many paths to a friendly Madison regional, none of which occur if Michigan doesn't win at the Joe.

Etc.: More spring practice.

UNVERFED VERCITY BEHDL DEH TOOTH

THE RESSONS AR MENY This provides conclusive evidence that State does rule all:



Stumble. I was looking for stuff on Darryl Stonum when I stumbled across this video of Sam McGuffie going for 6 TDs in his first-round playoff game:



None of those looked particularly difficult or anything, but FWIW. McGuffie's HS career would end the next week.

Draft Bits. Wolverines appear to be moving up the board: on ESPN Todd McShay mentioned Jake Long as the leading candidate to go #1 overall once the Dolphins decide Matt Ryan sucks, though not exactly in those words. Chad Henne's also supposed to be moving up into a solid second round pick; given the way these things work out I wouldn't be surprised if he snuck into the late first. Accursed shoulder injury.

He ran a what? I told you that guy was a 160-pound economics major. Yeah, so the football team held open tryouts yesterday. How did they go? Check the background of this picture from the Daily:

Add in one inexplicably hot chick and an international student that speaks no English and this looks like my EECS 380 class from back in the day. The Daily has a couple articles, one from an... er... "hopeful":

"We're just looking for athleticism," Hopson said. "We wanted to see how they moved their feet, their hips, and you can just put in the paper that you did fantastic."

I wouldn't have a shred of journalistic integrity if I omitted the fact that Hopson burst into a deep belly laugh after that sarcasm-laced response.

There's also a straight news story for your perusal with this awesome passage:

Some of Thornbladh's former teammates, including wide receiver Greg Mathews, quarterback Steve Threet and punter Zoltan Mesko, lounged on the pads behind one of the fieldhouse endzones and kept a running commentary on the performance of the walk-on candidates.

"Probably fun to see somebody else get pain delivered to them," Rodriguez said. "They got pain delivered this morning at 6 (at the team's workout). It's probably human nature to watch someone else suffer, especially when they were running gassers there at the end. That's probably the most enjoyable."

A reader who participated sent in this report:

Brian,

Rich Rod held universal undergrad tryouts for walk-ons. It wasn't well publicized, but it happened today at Schembechler Hall. Don't know whether you care or not, but a lot of our coaches (ALL of whom were present) were fantastic guys. Rod congratulated all of us at the end even though most of us blew - it was an amazing gesture that I will never forget.

What I can vouch for is that Barwis is amazing. His presence is absolutely terrifying, he's so incredibly motivating that even in the brief time I was there I would have done absolutely any drill he made me do as hard as I could. He's a very, very special coach - you want to do exactly as he says because you're so very sure that it'll make you better. During the suicides that we did at the end, he singled me out because I was lagging and screamed at me; I've never willed my body to go faster ever in my life. Awesome.

Also got to meet a couple players that I think could contribute - there's a kid whose name I think was Caleb that I feel very certain may get at least a spring training spot - he was from Ohio and was trying out at RB.

It was an opportunity that I will NEVER forget.

Thanks,

Andrew C. (LSA Junior)

Eeee, Barwis.

The net impact of the walk-on program is likely to be zero unless we have an Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God string of injuries at one position, but it's another symbol of change at Schembechler Hall. Rodriguez is open with information about the team, is expanding Michigan's presence with clinics and camps, holds open tryouts to laugh at undergrads, and wants to have a spring game somewhere or other for the publicity. The program seems fun and young again.

Hello, old friend. A brief bit of Weis-bashing for old times' sake:

Weis also plans to meet with various alumni groups he has cheesed off with his arrogance. Weis attributed the face-time plan to a new NCAA rule barring head coaches from evaluating prospects from April 15-May 31.

So he'll use the extra time to make nice with Notre Dame's grumbling alums. I've seen Weis walk away from conversations with people in mid-sentence. Harder to do that when you're the first Irish coach since Hugh Devore to lose to Navy.

Weis has resigned from playcalling duties with his typical humility, which was the entire reason he was hired in the first place. I got some concerned emails about the Tenuta hire that I might address in an upcoming mailbag, but I'm not too concerned. Charlie Weis has proven a couple things so far: 1) he can recruit and 2) he's around the tenth percentile in terms of interacting with people in a productive way. Nothing's going to fix #2 unless Weis gets his brain trans-reversed by aliens, Steve Dallas-style.

Notre Dame is never going to be as entertainingly awful again as they were last season -- that was a once in a lifetime opportunity for schadenfreude -- but there's no way a good coach's team is that bad in his third season on the job.

Etc.: Rodriguez is studying up.

Unverified Voracity Goes Eeee Again

Sugar rush. Ryan Mundy refers to Mike Barwis as "a live wire." Uh... yeah (NSFW, but not in a naked way):



!!!

Talking. Orson interviewed yrs truly about the state of Big Ten recruiting; unfortunately a small part of the bit it on Michigan got cut off, though anyone who's followed this blog isn't going to learn anything shocking.

ALL HAIL LEMMING. At MGoBlog our policy on recruiting sites is simple: whichever one thinks the most highly of Michigan recruits wins. This year, Tom Lemming wins:

• #11 Sam McGuffie(!)
• #45 Brandon Smith
• #49 Boubacar Cissoko
• #59 Dann O'Neill
• #80 Daryl Stonum
• #93 Brandon Moore

All is forgiven, you oily, muscled ex-postal worker, you.

Check, check. Varsity Blue highlights a Pittsburgh article with this quote from Terrelle Pryor...

"Pitt's out, period. I won't go there, for sure," Pryor said. "I get false stuff said about me all the time. I'm used to it."

Pryor already took an official visit to Ohio State and said he counts Ohio State, Michigan, Florida, Louisiana State, Oregon and Penn State among his finalists.

"I want to play in a college town, a facility that has 100,000 and is packed," Pryor said. "That's how I want to do it."

...then proceeds to dole out stadium capacities and fill percentages to eliminate non-Big Ten teams. VB then cuts OSU because of the college town thing to reach the inescapable "Pryor to Michigan... or, uh, PSU I guess!" conclusion.

Let's hope he places a strict limit of 200k on the town he decides to live in, but I think that was more a response to people quizzing him about Pitt. Pitt's in Pittsburgh, doncha know, and regularly packs its stadium to 50% of capacity. Pryor was expressing reasons he was not going somewhere; in context that quote is sadly without import.

Unverified Voracity Is A Little Girl

BARWWWWWIIIIIIIS. Never in the history of a football program has a fanbase been more geeked about a S&C coach than Michigan fans about Mike Barwis. Heck, this blog put the guy on a par with Rodriguez's offensive and defensive coordinators during the battle over various Rodriguez assistants. Mike Barwis thinks Chuck Norris is a girl. Mike Barwis can't tell the difference between Woody Allen and Bill Brasky. Etc.

These are reasons why:

But Barwis always finds time to reach each player on a personal level. He is a brother to some, father to other, priest to those who need some spiritual guidance and warden, if necessary.

It is difficult to imagine what it is like to be cooped up in a weight room with Barwis, who is hard as granite and wound so tight that he literally can’t take a break from his routine. If you think you get a jolt out of 5-Hour Energy Drink, get yourself a transfusion of Barwis’ blood, if you can get him to lie still on a table long enough to part with it.

The rest of the article is a pretty remarkable story about Barwis' relationship with Pacman Jones, he of the making it rain and year-long NFL suspension. Jones -- maybe the NFL most infamous misbehaver -- started his career at WVU in the fashion you might expect: beating some dude with a pool cue. Enter Barwis, then a new hire:

Upon arriving, Barwis adopted Jones as his own personal project, and the two grew extremely close.

It was tough love, to be sure, but Barwis became the male figure in Jones’ college life that he had always lacked in the real world.

One example of the way Barwis treated Jones could be found in his sophomore season when he was late for a weight-lifting session. Barwis gave an angry glare, shoved a 40-pound sandbag to him to work with and, when he was breathing hard, sent him off running around Mountaineer Field.

“He thought it was OK to be late, so I always made him pay tenfold,” Barwis told ESPN last year. “After awhile, you get disciplined.”

Whatever Barwis did worked, for Jones remained trouble free at WVU until leaving for the NFL, a first-round pick of the Tennessee Titans.

From there you know the story; a number of the hits when you type "mike.barwis eeeee i'm a little girl for mike.barwis" into Google are stories about Pacman's misbehavior in the pros. Barwis usually attempts to defend the guy as a decent person in the wrong crowd. This might be unremarkable, but the mere fact that he's the guy media folks get in touch with instead of his position coach or Rodriguez speaks to the role he has in these kids' lives.

Clap back. Yahoo's Adrian Wojnarowski picks up the torch on Jay Bilas and his obsession with Tommy Amaker's firing, and he's got backup:

It was one thing for ESPN’s Jay Bilas to keep defending Tommy Amaker’s brutal run as coach at Michigan, but another to start going after his successor, John Beilein, for being honest about the pitiful program left him in Ann Arbor.

The more Bilas shills for Amaker, the more people in basketball laugh at him.

Unlike Amaker, Beilein never had the ultimate coaching godfather to pick up the phone and get him a job. [OH SNAP -ed]

“C’mon Jay, that is terrible,” an NBA scout who watched Amaker’s team regularly in the Big Ten emailed me this week after reading Bilas’ blog rant.

“Almost laughable, really.”

Jay, this is your credibility. I'm dyin' here.

Light 'em up. Varsity Blue takes issue with a dumb article that appeared in the Free Press urging Terrelle Pryor to go to Ohio State, and I was going to give it a once-over, too, but the author of that piece explained himself to VB like so:

You should know that I was asked by the Freep Web editor to write that column as a counterpoint to the why-Pryor-should-go-to-Michigan column that ran on the site a few days earlier. I reckon that if the site editors properly packaged them as a point-counterpoint, the vitriol would have been reduced a little. Instead, people think I wrote that on my own initiative, which isn’t true in the least.

Anyway, I regret doing it for several reasons. First, I’m not a columnist. I’m a copy editor. In hindsight, to ask a copy editor to write a column during a 30-minute break in his “normal” shift was unfair. It prevented me from putting sufficient thought into my points and crafting them into a suitable fashion. I admit that the column, as it ran, was shallow. Oh, well. I won’t make such a mistake in the future.

The Free Press web editor was going for cheap hits and Janke got to privilege of being the stool pigeon. Depressing that this stuff must work -- otherwise how could a useless sack of negativity like Drew Sharp keep his job? -- but this is just another example why newspaper sports sections are bound to suck at opinion. One: the article as posted lacked a significant disclaimer. Janke was not identified as a fervent OSU fan who went to State. Two: it was directed to be written no matter the merit behind it. Three: a half-hour window was allotted for it. As long as the bottom line is attention today, attention tomorrow will continue to bleed as more and more people get fed up with idiocy passing as opinion.

The end result of the editor-enforced Pryor article was to make me wonder if this bit on third-string quarterback Robbie Schoenhoft's transfer...

With Schoenhoft gone, the Buckeyes look closer to capitalizing on Ohio State coach Jim Tressel's promise to design the offense around a dual-threat quarterback, much like he did for former Heisman Trophy winner Troy Smith.

...was intentionally left in to foster controversy. Schoenhoft's transfer signals only one thing: big-time schools probably shouldn't offer pocket passers who complete 37% of their passes in high school no matter how many Nazis the kid can throw a football through. Schoenhoft's departure means as much to Terrelle Pryor as the status of Michigan's David Cone.

This guy's gonna feel stupid if there's a decommit. Uh...

If you want a hand-painted Sam McGuffie action figure.... well, you're out of luck since the auction ended Sunday. But if you just want to marvel at the internet, go right ahead.

Slaton's out. This might be standard justification for departure stuff, but Steve Slaton simultaneously gave the departing WVU coaching staff high praise and a bit of a middle finger:

Yesterday afternoon, Carl Slaton, Steve's father, told the Daily News that the family is hearing from NFL people that Steve is being projected as a second-round selection. But, Carl said, "the NFL draft is a crapshoot."

Carl said it was not an easy decision, but, in the end, "it was pushed on him with [WVU coach Rich] Rodriguez leaving [for Michigan] and taking the whole coaching staff."

According to Steve, the departure of offensive coordinator/running backs coach Calvin Magee had the biggest impact on his decision. Magee will become Rodriguez' offensive coordinator at Michigan.

"More than anything else it's that [Magee] also left the program," Steve said. "He taught me so much of what I needed to know, and he wasn't finished, and he would have taught me the rest. It wouldn't have been the same under someone else."

Sorry, Slaton.

Hey, remember when we used to beat Ohio State? 1988, courtesy of Wolverine Historian:



There is also this remarkable home video from an unidentified 1959 game:



I wish our current cheerleaders did more goofy stuff like that.

Etc.: Remarkable story with Bill McCartney's old Rose Bowl ring at MVictors; Michigan will be playing faster next year; eeeebarwis; Yost Built on the WMU sweep; the Daily's Scott Bell has a good Rodriguez column.