graham couch's laughable opinions

Everything is canceled. Buy reasonable amounts of toilet paper and only talk to people who can't hear you. Wash your hands. Listen to what state and local officials are saying. Stop putting your hands in my water (<—mostly applicable to area one-year-olds).

Trying to un-cancel themselves. I still had the condensed recap of the Maryland game in a tab, and I watched a bit of it. Simpson hit that floater over Sticks in the second half and it occurred to me that was close to the last thing Simpson did in a Michigan uniform. Tremendously sad that he and a bunch of other seniors have had their careers terminated before they got their shot.

A number of NCAA athletes are petitioning for an extra year of eligibility:

Wahrman pulled up Change.org and got to work. She created a petition, then shared it with teammates and friends. It quickly spread to friends of friends and beyond. Across Iowa’s campus, and then across others. It ticked past 1,000 digital signatures, then 5,000, then 10,000. Around 18 hours after its creation, it was at 90,000 and rapidly climbing.

It had begun to feel like a movement. And that evening on ESPN, UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma had given it a prominent voice.

The prospect of recompensed eligibility, Auriemma explained, had been raised even before the NCAA went nuclear. “My feeling is this,” the Hall of Famer said. “It’s an unprecedented event. So you have to take unprecedented measures.

“You can’t say this year never happened, and wipe away everything,” he continued. “Because some teams had amazing seasons, incredible accomplishments, they should not be diminished, and shouldn’t be wiped away.

“In terms of each individual, I would be in favor of allowing all those that were seniors, that have not had a chance to compete, not had a chance to play their spring season, they should be given another opportunity to play. Regardless of what that does to your scholarship count. And the NCAA should foot the bill for that.”

One of the nation’s most influential athletic directors supported the movement as well. "I would like to see us look seriously at providing an additional year of eligibility for student athletes who have lost the opportunity to compete,” Oklahoma AD Joe Castiglione said. “Certainly that starts with the student athletes in their final year of eligibility. There’s not another way to get that back. I don’t know how many student athletes would come back and compete if they had an additional year of eligibility, that’s all speculative. But it’s certainly something we’re going to continue to discuss."

That's a logistical nightmare and a half. Teams have been planning for life without their seniors and even if you expand the allowable number of players you're disrupting minutes and roles pretty much everywhere. The number of transfers that would cause is potentially large.

Still might happen. It would be good press for an organization that desperately needs it, and it's got some high profile backers already. I wonder if smaller schools will nix it because they can't afford it, but the P5 can set some of their own rules now.

[After THE JUMP: old reliable Graham Couch]

Poor Damn Ronnie Bell. Some weird drops stuff hit the internet a few days back. First a CBS article mostly focused on Miami QB Jarren Williams, who hit the portal after the Hurricanes took Houston transfer D'Eriq King. The article makes the case that Williams stats underrate him because Miami had a ton of drops and then incidentally bombs Michigan's WR corps:

Williams' on-target rate was a full 16 percent better than his completion rate. Of the 106 FBS QBs with at least 200 pass attempts last season, only one had a more considerable disparity between their completion percentage and on-target rate. That was Michigan's Shea Patterson, who had an on-target rate of 75.2 percent while completing only 56.2 percent of his passes for a 19 percent difference (so maybe it wasn't his fault at Michigan, either).

Per this article Michigan WRs had the worst catch rate in the country. If this caused you to do a double-take we are on the same page. I went back to UFR charting through 11 games and that does not line up with my takes, to say the least. A guy on twitter summed it up:

If you go by the most difficult receptions (circus catches) on UFR through the IU game, they caught 41% of those. 72% on moderate difficulty. 94% on easy. Only explanation is that this service is saying balls mgoblog thought wasn't catchable as 'on-target'.

— ikestoys (@ikestoys) January 24, 2020

Routine catches make up a majority of charted attempts so I am nowhere near that.

The same service tossed some individual numbers to Tom Fornelli and ah yes there it is:

Highest drop rate among FBS receivers with a minimum of 50 targets in 2019 pic.twitter.com/ltVsIx2vOr

— Tom Fornelli (@TomFornelli) January 26, 2020

All those balls that dinked off Bell's fingernails apparently count. (Also how does Michigan have a catch rate of just 75% if Bell, who got the most targets, is the worst guy in the country with an 83% catch rate?)  Are we filing this as a drop?

I'm not. This is why UFRs have clips and context.

[After THE JUMP: the dirtiest player in the game]

"Remember, don't say a damn thing."

It's been barely 36 hours since National Signing Day, and it's clear the top question on everyone's mind is this: What should we be outraged over?

Since message boards (yes, including ours) seem to indicate EVERYTHING, I'm here to attempt a more even-handed approach.

RAGE ON: Bait-and-Switch Coaches

Seth covered much of this in today's Dear Diary, so I'll keep this short. Yes, it's grossly disingenuous for coaches who've spent years selling recruits on the prospect of playing for their program to take other jobs the moment the ink dries on their letter of intent. I was not born yesterday, and therefore refuse to believe that now-ex OSU RBs coach Stan Drayton just happened to field an out-of-the-blue job offer from the Chicago Bears yesterday, or that UCLA DC Jeff Ulbrich is still wrestling with the decision of whether or not to take a job with the Atlanta Falcons.

Mike Weber got unlucky; he found out about Drayton after he'd signed his LOI. Roquan Smith was fortunate; Georgia coaches—out of the purity of their souls, I'm sure—alerted him to Ulbrich's potential flight before he'd put pen to paper, and now Smith will take a week to reassess his decision.

The lesson here isn't that recruits shouldn't go to a school based on their coaches. That's just stupid. They'll spend more time with their coaches—and specifically, their position coach—than any professor or faculty member over the next four years. Having a good relationship with their coaches is hugely important for their sanity; getting quality coaching equally so for their dreams of making it to the next level. Yes, they should take into account potential flight risks and hopefully choose a school they'd enjoy attending regardless of sports, but it's hard to see the bait-and-switch coming when a coach is telling you stuff like this and this.

Just as I was finishing up this post, news broke that Texas' D-line coach took the same job at Florida, despite assurances from Texas head coach Charlie Strong to just-signed recruits that he wasn't going anywhere:

Getting off the phone with coach strong "coach rumph did not accept the offer"

— Call Me Deebs‼️ (@DeeChilllin) February 5, 2015

A day later, not so much.

The real lesson here is to not sign LOIs. They're binding only from the prospect's end, and while everyone signs them, they're totally unnecessary; a financial aid agreement serves the same purpose while giving a prospective student-athlete the ability to avoid just this situation.

[Hit THE JUMP for sketchy media members, sketchy greyshirts, unfortunate fan reactions, Thomas Wilcher's strong words about OSU, and something we actually shouldn't be harping on the Buckeyes about. Oh, and Graham Couch being Graham Couch.]