Unverified Voracity Is Just Trolling Me Now Comment Count

Brian

AFC wins! Congratulations to AFC Ann Arbor, the NPSL Great Lakes conference champions. Also a cow!

milk-cup-championsjpg-ef098f09e5faa969

This is actually the Milk Cup, a trophy for the best Michigan team in the NPSL that is somehow not sponsored by Jim Harbaugh. AFC went 12-1-1 to capture the top seed in the Midwest playoffs and will attempt to make the NPSL Final Four next weekend.

Crootin, 1980. Via Dr. Sap:

Spielman sues! Chris Spielman saw this banner and was like aw hell no:

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He's suing and trying to get a class of OSU athletes certified to take this wider. The mindblowing thing is that this only comes after eight months of negotiations broke down:

Spielman told Dispatch reporter Bill Rabinowitz that it pains him to sue Ohio State, but “players have a right. If somebody wanted to endorse you, don’t you think you have a right to say yes or no, or to negotiate?”

Yes, I do. Apparently, so does Griffin, the two-time Heisman Trophy winner and former president and CEO of the OSU Alumni Association who supports Spielman’s efforts to gain recompense from universities and corporations that benefit from the use of players’ names and likenesses.

Ohio State takes a different tack, which explains why negotiations between Spielman’s attorney, Brian K. Duncan, and the university dragged over the past eight months without any compensatory agreement being reached.

Never forget that Gene Smith is the dim bulb who chose to go to the Gator Bowl instead of not taking a bowl ban for Urban Meyer's first year. OSU's athletic department sounds like a very Brandon place:

“It’s not the money part of it so much, but (Ohio State’s) attitude toward how they run their operation — with an iron fist, and they smash anyone they can,” Stillwagon said. “But then when you come at them, they say it’s all about giving scholarships. I’ve had dealings with that (OSU) marketing group and they’re abusive.”

Stillwagon loves Ohio State. He and his Buckeyes brethren simply want OSU to love them back by spreading the wealth.

“This (licensing compensation) is just a correction that needs to be done. This is the way it is now,” Stillwagon said. “Coaching is about money. Where you get to sit in the stadium is all about money. But they don’t want to talk about that. Funny, it’s against the mother nation, you know?”

You'd think this should be a slam dunk given the outcome of the Ed O'Bannon case. SI legal guy Michael McCann points out that this is in a different circuit—6th instead of 9th—and that an outcome that conflicts with the O'Bannon precedent would give the Supreme Court a much better chance of reviewing the case.

What Michigan should do. Michigan Licensing, Inc. Avoid these lawsuits and give everyone graduating from the program a healthy chunk of change. It's like bagmen, except explicitly endorsed by the US government?

Rutger can be good. Not that Rutger, Rutger Reitmaier. Michigan pursued Reitmaier pretty hard late in last year's recruiting cycle but he decided to stick it out with Oregon despite a coaching change. That did not last:

Michigan was expected to be his pick for a minute there because his family was gung-ho about Harbaugh; Sam Webb says Michigan will kick the tires but a longstanding relationship with Brady Hoke will probably point him to Tennessee. Michigan does have the room after Corey Malone-Hatcher's retirement, and the DL they brought in are flexible enough to make it work.

Basketball scheduling items. Michigan draws LSU in the first round of the Maui Invitational. LSU was horrendous last year, going 10-21 and finishing 172nd in Kenpom. They should be better since they'll return everyone they don't run off and add a decent recruiting class featuring top-50 PG Tremont Waters; Michigan should still expect to beat them easily. LSU was 327th in eFG defense a year ago. Beilein will carve them up.

It would greatly behoove Michigan not to lose that game because Chaminade almost certainly awaits the LSU-Michigan loser. Notre Dame, a 26-10 ACC team that got a 5 seed last year and potential good win, is the alternative. Other than Maui, games against UNC, UCLA, and Texas round out the meaningful bits of the schedule.

The rest of the nonconference schedule is the usual:

  • North Florida (#255 Kenpom, #221 RPI last year), CMU (#229/218), and Southern Miss (#325/331) are the first three games after the D-II exhibition against Grant Valley.
  • No similar excuses for UC Riverside (#311/330), Alabama A&M (#351/351), and Jacksonville (#275/305).  Alabama A&M was 2-27 last year and dead last in Kenpom.
  • A game against Detroit (#302/289) at New Joe Louis that is vaguely more acceptable than the other six because it's a local thing.

When you're looking at some other Big Ten team's resume and wondering how in the hell they got a better seed than Michigan, those seven games against awful, awful competition are going to be why. This nonconference schedule has a lot of games that are going to be very hard to win and zero easy wins against decent lower level teams except maybe CMU, which is losing their entire O. I give up.

Meanwhile in Big Ten scheduling, this is one of those years when Michigan plays MSU and Wisconsin just once because Rutgers exists. Thanks, Jim Delany.

Okay then. Andrew Dakich is transferring to Ohio State because they have nine scholarship players, just three of them guards. I do not think this one is likely to lead to a Big Ten championship, as the Max Bielfeldt and Spike Albrecht transfers did for Indiana and Purdue.

Etc.: NCAA basketball to emphasize road wins more. Gary and Hurst show up on NFL.com's list of DL to watch this season. Everything's coming up Milhouse! Toys R Us is struggling. Man says thing. Man soccers with Soccer Stars. Basketball gets a PWO.

Comments

ijohnb

July 18th, 2017 at 1:49 PM ^

Sometimes I feel like certain stereotyping of Michigan fans is accurate.  Pre-conference basketball scheduling?  That is what we have resorted to complaining about.  We play Texas, North Carolina, and UCLA (at home).  These pre-conference matchups would be praised and anticipated by almost every other college fanbase.  But we are complaining about the schedule because "it doesn't have any easy but not that easy wins against bad but not that bad teams."  Are you guys serious?  Just such a petty and whiny take.

bacon1431

July 18th, 2017 at 1:55 PM ^

I think the complaints should be levied against the selection committee, which still uses a system that disproportionately awards a team by beating the crappy RPI 205 team and disproportionately punishes beating the RPI 300 team. Both are absolutely awful but somehow one means significantly more than the other.

JB should probably try to schedule with the system in mind. But it's a fucking awful system because it thought Minnesota's nonconference schedule (which was embarrassing) was better than Michigan's (which was ok). We've got a decent nonconference schedule as it stands. We have some good teams and some gimmes.

281wolverine

July 19th, 2017 at 5:29 PM ^

Lol, Maizen and Brian's reaction to our non-con schedule is absurd and most certainly not "right."   Particularly with more weight being given to road games, this is much ado about nothing. We win two Top 25 roadies and our RPI is literally bulletproof all season  (man, how I'd love to steal that one in Chapel Hill).  Even this past year, we probably jump Minny with a win over them on the road.  Some just like to complain.    Like when we lose a recruit, or schedule a powder puff basketball game.  I don't understand their ilk, but alas, we ostensibly root for the same team, so I tolerate it. 

bronxblue

July 18th, 2017 at 1:45 PM ^

I was hoping you'd copy-paste that here.

Nope, still not a disaster. But this is a hobby horse q couple people want to ride off on, and I'm too tired to point out how UM's OOC RPI wasn't demonstrably different from other teams seeded where they were.

Don't lose to OSU at home or get blown out by Illinois on the road and Michigan gets seeded higher. Beating Bradley instead of Florida A&M isn't going to change that.

Maizen

July 18th, 2017 at 3:46 PM ^

The only reason Michigan's RPI was respectable last year was because of nuetral site wins against Minnesota, Purdue, and Wisconsin in the B1G tournament. Had they lost to Purdue I shutter to think where we would have been on selection Sunday. But hey, I guess people are cool with play-in games and being underseeded every year, because until John Beilein addresses scheduling RPI anchors that's what is going to happen.

bronxblue

July 18th, 2017 at 5:20 PM ^

Michigan's RPI absolutely benefitted from beating three top-ranked teams to end the year; it also benefitted from beating two tourney teams early in the year.  But they also lost to VT, UCLA, and South Carolina, with UCLA the only one being a top-40 RPI squad.  It's the middle that messed them up, and that wasn't because they didn't beat a couple of top-150 teams vs. top-200 teams.  Again, they lost to Iowa (RPI #81), Illinois (#64), OSU (#90).  None of those teams were good, and Illinois blew them out to boot.  

Everyone points at Minnesota as some example of a team that "gamed" the RPI system, but they ultimately finished with about the same RPI as Michigan, and won a bunch more road games than Michigan (5-4 vs. 3-6) in conference.  These are all incremental differences that boast a team's RPI rating.

I know people keep trying to tease out one factor that led to Michigan being "underseeded" (even though if you look at the rest of the 7 seeds, they basically had the same profiles), but this was a team that didn't have a shot at the tournament before they got hot to end the year.  They were bad on the road, didn't have any marquee scalps for over a month, and had some bad losses at home.  Everyone wants to make this about more than that, which is their prerogative.  But just because Brian says Michigan is doomed by a couple mediocre OOC games doesn't make it the case.

TrueBlue2003

July 19th, 2017 at 12:16 AM ^

were 41st and 47th respectively in ESPN RPI (iwth some variation in other places) so that's a nice cherry-pick cutoff at top-40, but those were both quality, tournament teams.  And no shame in losing to SC (who made the final four) away.

The Iowa, Illinois and OSU games hurt more than those two games, but the scheduling also hurt us by about 8-10 spots in RPI and 1-2 seed lines.

Also, Minnesota finished 10 spots higher than Michigan, which is a LOT for a team with a worse resume (their one more conference win is more than offset by our three more BTT wins against quality comp) and clearly the worse head to head team. Their non-conferense schedule wasn't even better as they only played two! games away from home, compared to our four, all of which were against tourney teams.

PopeLando

July 18th, 2017 at 12:58 PM ^

"Entity led by Dave Brandon struggling"

Least surprising article in a long time. Water is wet (but can make a shit load of money convincing people it's dry...)

True Blue Grit

July 18th, 2017 at 4:07 PM ^

Back then and the years that followed, I always thought Fritz Seyferth would become the AD.  He always impressed me.  But, at some point he got passed over for the job for whatever reason and he moved on.  too bad.  That 10 year period after Bo and before Martin, we could have used better leadership.  

1VaBlue1

July 19th, 2017 at 7:31 AM ^

Ughh...  Thanks for the reminder of that 10-yr war against competence...  I'm still not sure who was worse - Tom Goss or Dave Brandon?  And they both played for Bo!!  I'm not too disappointed about Martin.  His coaching decisions (save for JB, queue Maizen) were somewhat, umm, underwhelming.  But he did stabilize finances and got the AD facility infrastructure upgrades going.  The halo, though...

jblaze

July 18th, 2017 at 1:16 PM ^

Wouldn't Speilman be taking the money from OSU? Honda paid OSU $X for the sponsorship, which is presumably from some marketing budget and assumes some kind of return (don't make me look up some cheesy B-School acronym for measuring returns from advertising). Therfore, OSU would have to split $X with Speilman (and the other players), correct?

Yo_Blue

July 18th, 2017 at 1:36 PM ^

Spielman is trying to get a class action suit going with other involved athletes including Archie Griffin.  Spielman want to give the money back to the OSU athletic department, while Archie has indicated he would donate winnings to charity.  Both believe their likeness should not be used for advertising, either for (in this case) Honda or for OSU.

JFW

July 19th, 2017 at 10:05 AM ^

My first contact with Spielman was as a Lions fan. I didn't know about his dark and checkered past. But he keeps rising above!

In all honesty, I love the guy. I used to watch his video's with Mike O'Hara; and his daughters would be moving around in the background sometimes screwing with him. He just took it. You get the impression he is a fantastic family man and just general, all around great guy. 

BlueinOK

July 18th, 2017 at 1:30 PM ^

I love how the AFC Ann Arbor conference championship led off the post! As a season ticket holder of a team by me, I love the level of play, prices and short season to make it through the summer months...Plus any team that finishes above DCFC has my support! And Brian's troll jobs of the DCFC supporter group are hilarious. 

Kilgore Trout

July 18th, 2017 at 2:48 PM ^

The aura around dcfc is disappointing. The premise is cool and what they did with the stadium is very neat, but it's hard to get behind the vibe. There was a guy in my middle school (25 years ago) who would walk around calling people out by just saying "trying to be" and it was such a good burn. They've done some cool things, just relax and quit trying to force it.

Yo_Blue

July 18th, 2017 at 1:32 PM ^

I couldn't stop laughing through that entire rose-colored-glasses article. What kind of drugs was that guy on?  He is trumpeting that MSU is more likely to win the B1G than Rutgers. SMH.

TrueBlue2003

July 19th, 2017 at 12:42 AM ^

that's actually not at all true that their odds are closer to OSU's than Rutgers.

Implied probabilities of those odds: second number/(first number plus second number):

OSU: 54.55%

MSU: 1.96%

Rutgers: 0.20%

In what idiot MSU universe is that closer to OSU than Rutgers?  Moran thinks the first number being closer makes it closer or something? Hey, 50 is closer to 5 (or is it 6) than it is to 500, woohoo!  Wow. Classic sparty.

(Granted these are all proportionately high by a factor about about 1.1 because the house needs to tilt things in it's favor, but small difference)

 

schreibee

July 18th, 2017 at 1:39 PM ^

Why is NFL.com "looking at" Rashan?

Is there some imminent move to admit 2nd year players into the draft?

Or is this more of a "Lookat this Dude, he's a beast!"?

canzior

July 18th, 2017 at 1:45 PM ^

Rutger is leaving Oregon?  Is it reasonable to consider that if he can't handle Willie T, then Harbaugh might be too much for him too?