Why can't you just be in one place? Well, offseason coaching attrition may not be done yet:

Jesse Minter coordinated one of the top defenses in the country last year. The #Eagles are scanning both the NFL and the college ranks (they talked to former Wisconsin DC Jim Leonhard, as @JFowlerESPN reported) and Minter has experience at both levels (former #Ravens assistant).

— Mike Garafolo (@MikeGarafolo) February 21, 2023

Not-yet-mothballed SB Nation blog Bleeding Green Nation has an overview of the Eagles DC search, which is currently up to six candidates. Math indicates Minter is likely to remain Michigan's DC, but the interview indicates we shouldn't get too comfortable with him in the role. If Minter goes you have to figure Jim Leonhard gets a phone call, right?

Photo choice: not inspired. So when you draft an offensive lineman the perfect thing to demonstrate his prowess is to show a picture of him getting his ass beat by Mike Morris:

No. 1 overall 🔥

With the first overall pick of the 2023 USFL College Draft, we select OT Jarrett Horst, @bmocj77. 🐾 pic.twitter.com/HG6yKk0HYl

— Michigan Panthers (@USFLPanthers) February 21, 2023

Probably the best one they could find from that game.

[After THE JUMP: nobody's buying it anymore.]

The NCAA's in court again, and it is Not Going Well. A follow-up to that court case trying to establish that college athletes are indeed employees:

Arguing for the NCAA, attorney Steven Katz encountered a “hot bench,” in that the judges quickly launched into challenging questions and didn’t hesitate to interrupt him. Katz warned that if the players win, it would “create a minefield of unforeseen consequences” that might prove detrimental to women athletes and raise thorny legal questions under two other laws, Title VII and Title IX.

Judge McKee wasn’t persuaded, referencing glaring weight room discrepancies for men’s and women’s basketball players at the NCAA basketball tournaments as reason to believe there are already inequities under the NCAA’s watch.

Katz also faced scrutiny when he argued that college athletes are not professional athletes, because they play without an expectation of compensation. That argument has worked with other courts studying this issue. It didn’t seem to persuade this three-judge bench, who suggested college athletes don’t expect pay because they know the NCAA and colleges have agreed college athletes can’t be paid.

Do not expect quick movement here; this hearing is just a hearing about a hearing about a hearing.

The technical question before the panel is whether Judge John Padova of Pennsylvania’s federal district court applied the correct standard when denying the NCAA’s motion to dismiss two years ago. If the answer is “yes” then the case returns to Padova for pretrial discovery, where the NCAA and member schools would be required to answer questions under oath and share sensitive documents.

So it's been two years since this motion to dismiss was denied and they're just getting around to resolving that small piece of a vastly complex puzzle. Settle in for the billable hours.

Eyeroll. College games are too long because there are more commercial breaks in one quarter of football than an entire hockey game, so it's once again time to try to cut down on the length of games because people need more money. CFB is exploring various changes to clock rules:

The non-controversial proposals include (1) prohibiting consecutive timeouts (ie, icing kickers) and (2) no longer extending a first or third quarter for an untimed down if the quarter ends on a defensive penalty (the down would be clocked starting the next quarter). …

In a third proposal that is garnering wide support, the clock will continue to run after an offense gains a first down except inside of two minutes in a half. In a more controversial fourth proposal, the clock will continue to run after an incomplete pass once the ball is spotted for play.

I enjoy getting rid of timeouts so hooray to 1. 2 is almost irrelevant. The other two are just ways to cut down on plays so that we can see more goddamned Buick commercials. Boo. There's even an estimate of how many:

A running clock after a first down would eliminate about seven to nine plays per game. A running clock after an incomplete pass could eliminate more than twice that number.

If both proposals pass they're cutting out 15% of a football game. FFS. Ross Dellenger slips this bald-faced lie in at the end of his article:

Television commercials don’t impact game time significantly. From 2018-2020, games not televised finished only about two minutes sooner than those televised.

This has to be the all-time greatest water-carrying moment in the history of journalism. I'm just going to pop into one of the games I have on my computer to see how long it is once you cut out the commercials and halftime. Aaaaand Michigan-Rutgers checks in at…

…Michigan-Michigan State?

GTFO out of here with "television commercials don't impact game time significantly." There's a literal hour of them in every game!

Transfer trends. Bill Connelly looks at the transfer market from last year and finds, oddly, that the most plug-and-play spots on the field are…

Offensive linemen remained the most likely to find the success they were looking for. The average score for offensive linemen was second to only that of linebackers, and no position unit saw a higher percentage increase. Interestingly, this was the case no matter what type of move this player was making, up or down the FBS ladder. Two transfer linemen, Michigan's Olusegun Oluwatimi (from Virginia) and Florida's O'Cyrus Torrence (from Louisiana), were named consensus All-Americans.

In all, it was good to be a transfer O-lineman, and it was even better to be a linebacker. Four of every nine linebacker transfers (44%, the highest average for any position) ended up with a score of 4 or higher, and that number skyrocketed to 68% for players moving up a level (either from FCS to FBS or from a Group of 5 school to the P5).

…offensive line and linebacker? I have done a lot of charting over the years and those would have been the very last spots I would have guessed were relatively easy to pick up after a transfer. Good news for Michigan, though, which just restocked their OL with more players than they actually lost to the NFL and picked up a highly touted LB in Ernest Haussman.

Hughes draws notice. Not that Hughes. TJ ranks in Corey Pronman's list of undrafted NHL prospects. He slots in at 26, which is in the "Longshots to play in the NHL" tier, so I don't think an early departure is in the cards just yet:

26. T. J. Hughes, C, Michigan-Ben Ten: Hughes has been quite good for Michigan as a freshman. He’s a very skilled and intelligent center who has shown he can create a lot of offense at the college level and help a power play. His skating is just OK for me and that will be the big thing preventing him from making the NHL level. I suspect he likely goes back for another season, but if he decides to come out I think there would be interest given his scoring record in college and junior and not being undersized.

Pronman also mentions that Portillo is not expected to sign with Buffalo and that "I expect him to either be a free agent by June 1 or have his right traded to a team he will sign with," which implies he's leaving after the season despite having another year of eligibility left. NHL teams retain draft rights to players until "30 days after the player has left college," per NHL.com. I was under the impression that Portillo would not be a FA until after next year. Michigan does not have a goalie coming in so if Portillo leaves they'd likely have to scramble for a transfer.

Etc.: Ludacris's character arc. Alabama basketball shooting story is wild. Mental health practice time for hockey. Mazi Smith (#54) is the only Michigan player in the Athletic's top 100 for the upcoming NFL Draft. Advice about ferns. The origins of Michigan's colors and traditions.