HR is involved. After the Iowa game news broke that… uh… something happened between Juwan Howard and Jon Sanderson that led to Sanderson not making the trip to Iowa City. Brendan Quinn has the details, such as they are at this point:

An alleged confrontation between Michigan head basketball coach Juwan Howard and longtime Michigan strength and conditioning coach Jon Sanderson is being probed by University of Michigan human resources, leaving the program in a state of flux.

According to three team and university sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they’re not authorized to speak publicly on internal university personnel issues, Sanderson filed an HR claim following a heated dispute with Howard on Dec. 7. …

The confrontation between Howard and Sanderson stemmed from a disagreement between an athletic trainer and senior guard Jace Howard, Juwan’s 22-year-old son. Jace Howard has not played this season with a stress fracture in his right knee and tibia, and questioned why he’s yet to be cleared to play.

Sanderson became involved in that dispute, and he and Juwan Howard exchanged words. According to a combination of witnesses and individuals briefed on the matter, no punches were thrown, but things became heated to the point where the two were separated.

If Sanderson elevated this to an HR matter with a report that has some chance of ending Juwan Howard's coaching tenure at Michigan—after the Wisconsin incident a couple years ago he is on a "zero tolerance" policy—I find it hard to believe that Sanderson would be willing to continue at Michigan in the event Howard does stay on.

And at that point you have to wonder if this is going to work out here. Sanderson has not had any public conflicts before and was widely beloved by all of Beilein's players, to the point where people expect second-year players to have a massive jump from "Camp Sanderson" in the offseason. For this to blow up like it did is a very bad sign.

At some point this becomes a pattern, and after the Wisconsin incident, the incident with Mark Turgeon, another incident where he came very close to an ejection against UNC, and now this… I think it's a pattern. Many basketball coaches are little balls of fury, but Fran McCaffrey didn't put his hands on someone and hasn't had an HR report filed on him. This is another level.

The other very bad sign is that this edition of the basketball team is #123 in defensive efficiency. They imported a starter from Tennessee and a 20 MPG sixth man from Alabama, two top-five defensive teams a year ago. They lost the worst defender in the history of college basketball. They hypothetically upgraded from Hunter Dickinson, a paint-bound player who forces you to run drop coverage, to the very switchable Tarris Reed, and they've plunged 75 spots in defensive efficiency.

If the strength coach is leaving and the defense looks virtually uncoached and you're headed for another blah season in the worst Big Ten in a minute, what's the case that this is going to turn around?

I'd say that Howard is probably done, but Warde Manuel has shown a disinclination to, you know, do things. So maybe he sticks it out and things turn around next year when just about everyone can come back and they're adding some nice recruiting pieces. It's just hard to see that outcome in the hazy distance right now.

Portal updates. I'm not going to go over every fringe possibility just to sate the Walter Nolen-heads, but brief updates on the guys Michigan appears to be pursuing:

• Penn DT Joey Slackman canceled his visit and Josh Henschke says that he's unlikely to reschedule. With Thor Griffith off the board to Louisville, there's no obvious target if Michigan wants to import a fourth playable DT.
• Indiana WR Donaven McCulley seems to be taking things relatively slowly. The most recent update on him is just a list of 18 offers and I haven't seen that he's scheduled any visits yet. Chatter immediately after Michigan offered was very positive from the likes of Wiltfong; nothing has really happened since. Kentucky and Penn State paysites are talking about him quite a bit, FWIW. He is coming off a visit to UK, but the Wildcats already have two portal WRs committed.
• WKU CB Upton Stout has fielded two national crystal balls to Michigan along with 24/7's Steve Lorenz and seems like the most likely addition of anyone. Stout visited last weekend; USC is the main competition.
• Maryland LB Jaishawn Barham has also fielded a crystal ball to M from Lorenz. Barham went to St Frances and has a lot of familiarity with various players on Michigan's roster. Lorenz recently upped his confidence level in his CB, FWIW.
• UCLA QB Dante Moore looks like an Oregon/Michigan battle.

Various other distant possibilities went off the board—IU OL Carter Smith decided to withdraw from the portal, Purdue WR Deion Burks committed to Oklahoma, etc. Michigan does appear to be kicking the tires on A&M OL Chase Bisontis. If that doesn't work out that is an indication that Michigan will be looking for an OL.

The other portal update. OSU lost starting quarterback Kyle McCord to the portal and it appears this was genuinely a surprise to OSU because they have not pulled the ND here. Notre Dame started picking up predictions for Duke QB Riley Leonard literally minutes after he hit the portal because they'd clearly already gotten a commitment from him. Nothing like that has transpired with OSU, and with QBs going off the board rapidly the only established P5 starters available are Cam Ward, DJ Uiagalelei, and Will Howard.

Ward seems to be down to a couple of Florida schools; Howard also visited Miami. OSU hasn't been mentioned for any of the three. At this point it wouldn't be a surprise if OSU ends up rolling with their current three guys, possibly with the addition of a speculative up-transfer.

Meanwhile, Pennlive publishes an article about McCord's departure that makes it sound like there are two ways to be an Ohio Stat quarterback: be a Heisman finalist or be despised:

“I really felt bad for him how he was treated after those games, and I don’t think it was fair,” Sawyer said “I think I understand that, at Ohio State, the quarterback’s expected to win games. I don’t think at all it’s his fault that we lost that game at Ann Arbor." …

“He went through a lot, and I feel for the guy,” Brown said. “There was a lot of tough moments. And he grew throughout his career here and built as a leader and built as a player. Being able to sit behind him and watch him grow really helped me look back and kind of think about the things I should work on and grow from.”

You hate to see it.

Kalel Mullings gets his hair cut. Also talks to people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eWQt3MGl8o

A beautiful mind. Interesting takes from NFL people on JJ McCarthy:

“The thing I liked, he knew there were a ton of scouts there and he threw it eight times,” he said. “Yet after the game, J.J. was celebrating. He didn’t give a (hoot). You saw him running all over. Tells me loud and clear he is a team guy.”

Rewind to mid-September and a 31-6 win over Bowling Green. McCarthy was 8 of 13 passing for 143 yards with a career-high three interceptions and said afterward he forced too many throws.

“He’s definitely athletic enough in the pocket,” said a national scout with Michigan in his territory. “He’s got all the necessary arm talent. He’s accurate enough. I like his confidence. There’s that fine line of taking risks and not being stupid, and usually he’s at that line. For whatever reason, there’s been a few games this year he’s been crossing that line.

“He’s a legit first-round contender based on what I’ve seen. I’m optimistic about what he can be. I don’t have a strong conviction at this point.”

Draft takes are all over the board at this point. Matt Miller just released a mock draft on ESPN where he goes 7th. Dane Brugler has him 22nd. The other side of the coin:CBS's latest does not have him in the first round and neither does PFF.

Back to the era of co-champs. One reason Michigan had a long Big Ten title drought before going back-to-back-to-back the last three years is that the addition of the conference title game meant that only one team got to say they were champ, instead of one to three. There was some point back in the mists of time that Michigan was 9-3 and Big Ten co-champs. Nobody seemed to mind that much but for some reason this struck me as utterly insane:

But in an expanded playoff era, a question looms for some of the sport’s most influential leaders: Are conference championship games necessary?

“I do think that people are going to have to look at that,” said Mike Aresco, commissioner of the American Athletic Conference.

“We are in a period of change and assessment,” ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said. “Conference championships should be assessed. Is it necessary to play a 13th game?”

On the one hand, this feels completely crazy. You're going to play 9 games in an 18-team conference and then just declare whoever ends up with the most wins the winner, no matter how many of them there are. On the other hand, this divisionless format is going to end up in tears, probably very quickly, when there are three or four or five teams with the same record and no real way to untie the knot.

(The only viable way to have an 18-team football league with an actual championship is to have divisions. They don't have to be fixed. You can flip them around annually so that teams get a good mix of opponents, play everyone in your division + one bonus game in the other division, and then have a title game. This will not happen.)

The other thing arguing in favor of conference championship games is that broadcasters pay money to broadcast them. I cannot remember a single action taken by the college football powers that be that deliberately took money off the table. The other other thing arguing in favor of a championship game is that the playoff is structured so that the top four conference champions get byes. It's one thing to determine who gets in a championship game with a series of convoluted tiebreakers; it's another to let someone skip a playoff game based on a series of convoluted tiebreakers.

Etc.: Zak Zinter is a consensus All-American. How Michigan built its defense. The portal calendar makes no sense.