Brandon Minor bears down
I know this is from the paper that shall not be named, but things are sounding good for our boy. He has the right attitude. As a Bears fan, I am pleased at his chances... Greg Mathews, not so much...
Sorry, not reading it.
all you have to do is change
freep.com/article
to
freep.com/print/article
...Bears news from a Chicago source vice the Freep.
"I have to work my way up the ladder and start out on special teams," said Minor, who also got interest from the Saints and 49ers. "I don't worry about not being drafted because there are plenty of backs in the league who get enough playing time who weren't drafted."
It's hard to evaluate players without pads but coach Lovie Smith likes what he has seen.
"When you want to run the football, you need a big guy like that," Smith said. "We have a good mixture right now with Forte, Chester and Garrett giving us something else. Great opportunity for him to prove what he can do."
I, too, will not be part of the Freep's pathetic 2% rise in web traffic.
It makes me think of him giving birth.
Or getting a rectal exam
Or growing a tail...
Good for Minor to not get injured during rookie camp.
It has been posted on MGoBoard before, by many, many contributors, but I'll say it again since it seems we might be getting a bit lax around here ...
We don't ever - ever - put a direct link to the Freep on this site. Every click on their site equates to dollars for them. I know you don't want to help contribute to the Save the Employer of Rosenberg and Snyder Fund, right?
(And I don't know why you're reading that poor excuse for fish wrap, anyway, online edition or not). Just say "no"!
I'm happy for Minor, but as MGoShoe points out here, get your news from a Chi-town site. The Trib will do just fine.
who honestly cares if 2 writes for a newspaper tried to pull off a poorly executed hatchet job on a football coach? this is the same paper that almost single handedly exposed the corruption in the mayors office a cpl years ago. by virtue of that service alone, the freep is still way in the positive in my ledger.
"Neg on sight" status as far as I am concerned.
oh no anything but that
While I don't love your abbreviations and lack of capitals, I agree with your sentiment. Two guys got out of hand and wrote a poor article on a lot of levels. The article should have been better researched and better sourced, no question. I think that's all been covered pretty extensively here.
There is a lot of good content in the Free Press and on freep.com. If you're interested in the politics and general goings on in Metro Detroit, I think you're only doing yourself a disservice by not reading it. If this blog has 10% of the readership of freep.com, there just isn't that much impact that a boycot can make. I think the Free Press and the News will not end up surviving, but unless a real alternative arises to take their place, I won't be celebrating that day.
I also got a chuckle out of your response to the "neg on sight" above.
And misrepresented themselves, the facts and their profession. They brought on an NCAA investigation into a practice that - at best - was a misinterpretation of the rules. A misinterpretation, I might add, that is more than likely common practice. Even "Buckeye Nation" reacted to the NCAA's findings with a primal "meh."
Did I say that Rosenberg is a UM grad? He did this to his own alma mater! I'm just speculating here, but chances are his mother is giving him a, "No, thanks, Michael. I'll handle my own end-of-life care plans with my doctor. No need to get you involved. In fact, I'd rather prefer that you weren't."
they're just sports writers. there are "hard news" writers on the freep staff that have done serious good for the city of detroit. the actions of a few dickhead sports writers is not enough of a reason to keep me from reading a newspaper that, in all my time reading it, seems to to take their civic responsibility seriously. and by civic responsibility i dont mean polishing the M in Michigan, i mean things that actually matter.
and i really do think its funny that 30 people have seen fit to neg me because i wont stop reading a newspaper over events that-in the grand scope of the sociopolitical landscape of detroit-dont mean anything.
id be shocked if everyone who is "all in for boycott" is actually from metro detroit. i think its easy for some of them to boycott the freep because they were only going for the UM stuff in the first place. but im not going to stop reading the local section of the paper over idiot sportswriters.
I actually think you raise a good point here.
Unfortunately the "poorly executed hatchet job", despite being a journalistic joke, still managed to bring NCAA sanctions to this program and a boatload of bad publicity. I just can't support a paper that puts out the kind of dreck the Freep sports section does on a regular basis (not to mention how they patted themselves on the back when the NCAA report came out).
Maybe I'm missing the forest for the trees, but I'm honestly just too pissed off about the damage Rosenberg/Snyder/Sharp do to the program to ever support the Freep again.
if Michigan is hit with sanctions it wont be because of Rosenberg/Snyder/Sharp. it will be because they broke the rules.
are people here ok with getting away with infractions? how is the whistle-blower the bad guy, and not the one who ACTUALLY got them in trouble?
Rodriguez (and staff) broke the rules of his profession.
Rosenberg (and company) broke the rules of his profession.
They were both in the wrong. I'm pissed off at both of them.
unfortunately i dont think that your viewpoint is all that common
There are things more important than Mich Football and MGoBlog.
The Freep does provide a legitimate service for "real world" topics and it is a shame that there are a dwindling amount of options out there.
Still hurts that they kicked over the 1st domino in this mess.
... is very well put. I can't disagree that rules were broken under Rodriguez's watch, and that's his own damn fault, but the way they were reported was completely unprofessional and the whole piece was an obvious hit job. People who don't realize this by now probably never will, and I'm sorry but I'm not going to waste my time spelling it out for anybody.
I think a lot of the frustration has to do with the randomness of NCAA rule enforcement. The vast majority of college football programs won't get investigated this year. Does that mean that they're all clean? Hardly. The NCAA rulebook is so long and arcane that it's virtually impossible to field a competitive program without some rules being broken along the way. You just have to hope that no one in the media notices.
There is general agreement among football observers that the violations we are being accused of (having virtually mandatory summer workouts, practicing more than 20 hours, and using GAs as de facto coaches) are widespread across the country. Yet only we face punishment.
Whistle blowing is discovering an egregious wrong and bringing it to light through a factual accounting and the presentation of evidence.
It is not manufacturing and exaggerating a smear campaign/hit-job and then patting yourself on the back when it turns out that you were 0.05% correct.
Accusation: flagrant overage of up to 20 hours over allowable limits
Reality: maybe 20 minutes of misappropriated stretching time/week
Whistle blowing? Meatwhistle perhaps, but hardly journalism.
i agree with you actually. whistleblower wasnt the word i should have used.
but my point remains. the writers didnt commit any NCAA violations, and if Michigan gets hit with sanctions it wont be the sports writers' fault.
I ranted ad nauseum about why I think that is not the case.
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/fall-rosenberg-hes-not-fired-sorry
The debate drivels on.
Short version: I don't hold them responsible for whatever violations may have occured, I hold them responsible for manufacturing a hit job piece with the sole intent of furthering their own publicly stated agenda against RR. I am never going to give them a pass for the biased piece of muck-raking they put out, especially when you consider how ticky-ticky the 'infractions' turned out to be compared to their accusations.
You can apologize for them all you want, but I will never give a pass to anyone that tears into the M program.
Had they written a reasoned, researched, fair article I wopuldn't have any beef with them at all.
Burn the Freep. Copy and paste or something. They're not getting any traffic from me.
First, I love when the Bears sign a Wolverine, but there haven't been many. List of the last few years, in no particular order: Griese, Thomas, Terrell, Kashama. Harbaugh in the 80s.
Regarding Minor's chances, working up through the depth chart, Garrett Wolfe is not an NFL back, sorry Mrs. Wolfe. Chester Taylor's got 9 years worth of mileage on his body, and one 1,200 yard season. I say meh. Khalil Bell is a body double of Taylor with fresher legs. He had a few nice appearances last year behind... Matt Forte. Forte is a very good running back and represents a ceiling through which Minor probably cannot break. He's a little bigger than Minor, and I would say equal in speed.
Minor's size puts him between Bell/Taylor and Forte, which is probably not good for playing time. I would say the over/under on rushing yards for Minor with the Bears in 2010 is about 100.
I agree with your assessment. I don't see him starting any time soon, but he could be a very good change of pace/3rd down/big back option with his running style.
He's also talking in the article about trying to make the team on special teams (where wolfe does make an impact), which is always great to hear from a rookie. Like most the Michigan players coming out he seems like a humble kid ready to prove himself to make an NFL roster.
The A-Train was awesome for the bears, I wish Minor luck going forward.
If MInor becomes a bench player for the Bears, it could work out in his favor. He will be getting paid an NFL salary, and should have time for his body to heal. It's tough to get injured if you don't play a lot. Getting paid to get his body back into what we had all hoped for would be a major bonus.
As for the freep, I said most of what I wanted to in the Rosenpuke thread, but I did like tk's observation that the freep "puts out dreck on a regular basis." To me, that is the biggest silver lining of having one less sports section to read: they aren't really putting out anything remotely compelling anymore, anyway.
And, as much as I wouldn't piss in Rosenpuke's mouth if he was dying of thirst, I might grudgingly admit that Rosenpuke is more a reflection of the freep's clockwise journey down the shitter than a cause. But I don't know if I would go that far yet. Suffice it to say that the Detroit's collective septic tank is full of freep.
For your proposed solution to ending Rosenberg's dehydration.