barack obama
[Barron]
I was trying out a few pieces of transcription software and though they didn’t speed up my process it felt like a waste for me to not just finish transcribing and post this for your consumption. This scrum took place during Saturday’s Ann Arbor Aerial Assault camp and exists thanks to Maize & Blue News uploading video of it.
You don't have all the NFL guys [this year]. I mean, you still have goals to get out of this camp? It seems like there's a large interest still and everything.
“Yes, yes. We use a lot of our own players and coaches other college coaches. Just-- there was changing in rules and IAWP status and some NFL players have siblings or they coach at high school so you don't want to go on that road at all. I think it's better at getting all the-- getting other coaches and so it's been good. It's been a good camp.”
The players are pretty involved. It seems like they are eager to teach--
You guys are done with camps, you've been back around the guys a couple of days here, spent more time with them than you had been in May. Of course, you were gone.
“Yeah. Less camps; we've been around here more. Been here since the beginning of June.”
There's a lot out true freshmen that are hanging out here. Have you gotten to kind of get to know those guys in a way that you hadn't before?
“Yeah, we're starting to, we're starting to. We've really had an emphasis to improve the commitment and the accountability and so far that's been been working nicely.”
What are these young guys who weren't here in the spring have to kind of--what can they gain here in the next couple of months?
“You can gain a lot by watching. Can observe a lot by just watching, and they're slowly working into the workouts. They're voluntary workouts right now so they don't become full-time until we start classes and orientation June 24th.”
What date are you starting camp?
“July 31st.”
[Read the last answer after THE JUMP and tell me that’s not a lesson learned from experience]
Dr. Z, out and about. I made mention of this when Paul Zimmerman suffered a series of debilitating strokes, but it bears mentioning again: Zimmerman was a formative influence on yrs truly. His crotchety, detail-obsessed, no-bullshit work was the spiritual predecessor of UFR and this blog's desire to find a number that corroborates any belief it happens to have. In my first heady years of broadband internet I absorbed every word he wrote for what was then CNNSI.com. A couple years ago I bought a used copy of "The New Thinking Man's Guide To Pro Football" and—this is unusual when it comes to sports books for me—read it.
So the stroke was pretty harsh, and it's good that Zimmerman is both alive and mobile but tragic that the strokes have left him bereft of the thing that was his stock and trade:
The e-mails suddenly stopped last autumn. Zimmerman, better known to the readers of Sports Illustrated as "Dr. Z," suffered a series of strokes that left him unable to speak or write.
There was a fundraiser for Dr. Z a few days ago that endeavors to get him in an expensive, specialized program that might restore his ability to do these things. It's at a place you might be familiar with:
The event, along with an online memorabilia auction, is expected to raise more than $125,000 to help offset the costs of a six-week immersion program at the University of Michigan. Most of the treatment, aimed at getting Zimmerman behind a keyboard again, is not covered by insurance.
Again: I hope he makes it back.
(HT: @richarddeitsch)
That's a zinger. As you might imagine, Syracuse blog Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician is intimately familiar with the various nonsensical utterances of Greg Robinson and enjoys them in a fashion that has only recently ceased to be ironic. So of course it caught this gem from a long fluff piece in the Free Press:
"In his mind, [Troy Woolfolk] saw himself paddling uphill with two real good corners playing ahead of him...All of the sudden he had the opportunity to compete for a starting job and he took to it like a duck to water.”
Yes, our defensive coordinator just accused someone of paddling uphill.
Also of note is Robinson's wholly unique approach to defense. He likes aggression. Desmond Howard:
He told me he's going to have his defense as an aggressive defense, a defense that's going to keep pressure on quarterbacks so they can never get comfortable.
I can tell you that in my ten thousand years covering college football I have never heard a defensive coordinator suggest he would be anything other than a piteous mewling fraidy-cat, and this new "aggressive" mantra both thrills and frightens me, like the opportunity to make out with Paris Hilton.
But wait! There's more! Robinson's philosophical inspiration appears to be the comments section/message board on this very blog. Howard again:
Remember that little fishbowl that your teacher used to have on her desk with the goldfish in it? Imagine 11 piranhas in that thing. It's like a frenzy.
Imagine 11 "douchey" MGoBlog posters in that thing: dead quarterbacks. Opponents averaging 20 yards per game. Meticulously spelled and punctuated game recaps. Let's get to it. (NOTE TO ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT: I expect a Rose Bowl ring out of this.)
Upon this, we can all agree. This is treading dangerously close to politics, which is verboten in this place, so let this not suggest any opinion one way or the other about abortion. On this subject, I believe exactly what you believe.
But one thing we can all agree on is that Notre Dame is a strange island in the sea of time populated mostly by strange bitter short insecure impolite people and one enormous mofo who may be Sam Young but probably isn't and seems pretty cool:
18