Isn't this like his fourth trip to the portal and previous 3 times he's returned to MSU? I'm assuming an NIL ploy but will be interesting with the new staff if they take a harder stance on him returning. Although they may not have a choice. Brian Kelly at LSU basically said they were going to be shopping for DL when the portal opened.
I prefer Caitlen version. My wife has a reasonably popular name but has a different vowel in place of what I could consider the traditional spelling. Much like Caitlen vs Caitlin. It gets misspelled constantly, even in work emails where the spelling is RIGHT THERE. She gets unreasonably annoyed by it and it never fails to make me chuckle.
I had a similar experience in Boston 2 years ago. Obviously a lot of fans of the teams involved but also a whole bunch of various Boston schools, Providence, Umass etc.. Granted this was Boston so it was a large melting pot of third party fans with many hockey schools fairly local.
Also kinda tracks with my own plans when Frozen Four was scheduled to be in Detroit. I had already bought tickets well before we would have determined which teams were going to be in it.
I can understand that rule. Those games we used to play were miserable. Plus generally it is above that threshold around here this time of year. I was just surprised that cold/wind absent precipitation was enough to cancel games.
Do they actually cancel games for cold at this level? Maybe because it's a non-con against Oakland so it's easier to be rescheduled but when I played college baseball (In Michigan) we never had a cancellation for cold/wind that I can remember. Field conditions was always the biggest concern this time of year as any level of rain turned the ground very sloppy.
Played in many games that were lightly snowing, sleeting or a couple times we played on a turf field where they had shoveled snow off the field just onto the other side of the fence.
Part of my experience is also that we were a smaller school so we weren't traveling to warm climates in February to get games in other than a trip over spring break. This meant we weren't playing games until closer to the end of February and Conference tournament happened around May 1 so our schedule was a lot more constricted than Big Ten schedules (Michigan softball played their first game February 9 and conference tournament is May 8).
I can understand the Peach Bowl, SEC title and National title rings. I am a little surprised they did a separate ring for CFP championship game as a standalone.
Looks like Georgia's rings last year were revealed in mid-April so I expect Michigan's to be similar so they can be presented to the players before the end of the Winter semester.
I believe the Vapor Elite's come in slightly smaller than NFL balls. Like 1/2" shorter and 1" diameter smaller. NFL only uses their very specific Wilson "The Duke" balls so I'm not sure Nike even makes a replica NFL size. Even though the nike website says they are the "official" size which is good for high school, college and "pro" use (no indication on what level of pro but definitely isn't NFL use).
Each team brings their own ball for each possession so yes in theory you would have slightly different dimensions depending on who has the ball.
This would especially be true when teams are sponsored by different companies. For example Michigan uses a Nike branded Vapor Elite (I think) ball. Whereas Wisconsin uses a Wilson GST last time I looked. Both of these balls would be roughly the same but would have some differences in feel/sizing.
It's actually a bigger issue in basketball. There isn't a standard for brand of ball to be used throughout the NCAA so each home team will provide a ball for the game. So if you're a Nike school you're using Nike basketballs and non-nike schools use something else (Wilson).
To combat the potential feel differences, I imagine the Michigan basketball team has a variety of basketball brands on hand so that when they are playing at Wisconsin, they can use Wilson balls in practice to get used to that feel.
Here's an ESPN story talking about having to use a different balls on the road/NCAA tournament.
Grew up in a town very close to Ann Arbor. Very first memory was watching the 1995 Michigan vs OSU game with my dad. I don't remember much from the game but watching with him is the memory.
First game I went to was 1997 vs Baylor. Was in awe of how big the stadium was and thought it was the coolest thing that it looked relatively "small" from the outside and you walk in from upper rows. I still get that feeling walking through the tunnel.
I watched that entire 1997 season with my dad and is a great collection of memories to look back on.
Let's also not forget that in that $4M profit number includes debt service, leases and rental fees of $17.5M and Athletic Student Aid of ($32.5M).
Now obviously we need to make debt payments and things like that but non-government entities don't include principal debt payments in the P&L when looking at profit in the traditional sense.
Also I won't pretend to know how the university accounts for athletic scholarships but $32M is a steep number. I'm sure this number includes actual costs like housing, meals etc... but if it's also including the value of the tuition that is being given to the student athletes, then that value is likely quite inflated.
RE: Sherrone having a list of 10 guys at each position. It's entirely possible he did have those lists put together. Unfortunately, due to the timing of the NFL hiring schedule and the timing of our openings, a lot of guys may have already taken new jobs or made the decision to stay in their current situation.
I'm really looking forward to future years when we can make our coaching decisions during "normal" CFB coaching cycles.
Seriously look at what the Lions did this year. Most of that was built on guys drafted in 2021 and later plus a few key acquisitions.
Now the Chargers aren't going to be loaded up on a bunch of first round picks like the Lions got for Goff but they have a coach with a Name and location to sell to free agents.
It would be Athletic Director malpractice to not have already put out numerous feelers. You knew as soon as Jim didn't sign the extension back in December when we were hearing it was in his court that he was going to wait for NFL offers.
Biggest issue though is he already had done that the two years prior and had returned so if you're a Deboer or Fisch you couldn't wait until end of January to make a decision.
I don't think Michigan will hire him but acting like Leipold being 17-21 at Kansas is bad is wild to me. That program had not won more than 3 games in a season since 2009(!) before they won 6 in 2022.
Took a Buffalo program that had 2 total bowl trips in its history, and he managed to be bowl eligible in his last 4 of his 6 years.
And that doesn't even mention him going 109-6 at Wisconsin-Whitewater and winning 6 DIII national championships in 8 years and losing in the National championship game in one of the two seasons he didn't win it.
That dude can flat out coach and I think he would be very successful if he were to be hired to a major program.
EDIT: Ah I see you've edited your comment where you were disparaging Leipold's record at Kansas.
It never should have been attempted to be fielded. If they happen to drop one perfectly at the 1 you tip your cap and you deal with it but you under no circumstances have there be any possibility of a turnover.
The next week against Washington they did what I thought we should have been doing. We punted with 12 seconds left in the half. They sent Giles Jackson back to show "hey we have someone back here" but the second the ball was kicked he ran completely away from it and the gunners stopped way short. Zero chance of a bobble or screw up.
We downed it at the 2 but Washington took their knee and went to the locker room without any dramatics.
Man so many to choose from that all could have had huge impacts.
Rayshawn Benny forcing the fumble on Allar to start the second half. PSU was already at the 50 and was going to get a first down on the play. If they go on to kick even a field goal, we likely are unable to do the "run the ball 30 times in a row" thing and who knows how that game finally turns out.
Quinten Johson hit vs OSU, that's a 7 point game and a ball that was very close to being completed to our side of the 50 later in the 2nd half. They ended up punting on that drive and we followed up with a field goal to go up 10.
All of our open field tackling against Washington. We all remember what happened with Quintin Johnston for TCU breaking off a long TD on a missed tackle. This year that tackle was made, nearly every time.
Any number of plays vs Bama. Forcing that fumble and flipping the field, JJ catching Edwards throwback pass, Thaw holding onto the ball after the muff.
Depends on if they meet the requirements for the Rooney Rule. Two external minority candidates need to be interviewed in person. The other issue is that anyone currently employed by another NFL team can't be interviewed in person until January 22.
So if they need to interview someone currently employed to meet the Rooney Rule requirements or just because they want to interview others then it will have to wait until after January 22.
They used to have it on the CFP official shop but I think they ran out by the Saturday of FanFest. I picked one up at FanFest Saturday later afternoon but they were already starting to run out of sizes in the Michigan specific one and they removed it from the site so I'm guessing they won't be making more inventory.
I'll clarify. The Rooney Rule requires at least two external minority candidates to be interviewed In Person. They did meet with Leslie Frazier in person because he is not employed by another team. But cannot interview any other coaches currently employed In Person until January 22.
Chargers did interview other minority candidates like Steve Wilks but those would have been over zoom and would not meet the in person requirement.
I guess theoretically they could interview another minority candidate who is not currently employed by an NFL club but I can't think of any that would fit the bill without being an obvious attempt to skirt those requirements.
If Harbaugh does take the Chargers job, it will not be official until next week at the absolute earliest. Chargers still have to comply with the Rooney Rule and they cannot begin those interviews for anyone currently employed by another NFL club until January 22.
Ole Miss has been a player in the transfer portal this year right? Presumably with high NIL dollars for incoming transfers.
I can see how a guy who is already on the team and very productive at the college level could see how much some of these transfers are getting on the open market and forcing Ole Miss to pay to keep him especially if they didn't want to open the checkbooks to begin with.
Wouldn't shock me to see him withdraw from the portal in a few days.
At some point we'll have 3+ undefeated or 1 loss conference teams who haven't played each other and will come down to some ridiculous tiebreaker scenario that is completely out of your own control.
Someone on the CBS sports Cover 3 podcast suggested a Big Ten conference playoff. Like top 4 teams do a semi & Final in the Big Ten. Considering the conference is going to have 18 members I don't think it's the worst idea.
Could even schedule it in such a way that every team plays 8 or 9 conference games then leave the last conference week of the year "open" and re-seed like they were going to do in 2020 so that you aren't adding on an extra game.
Primarily because anyone that graduates this semester will not be on campus anymore, along with anyone going to the NFL. Would be lame to present JJ, Blake, Zinter, Mikey etc with awards and have none of them in attendance because they're off preparing for the draft.
One other thing to note. They kept the playoffs as top 6 conference champs right? But the Pac 12 died so we're going to be guaranteed to have 2 G5 teams into the 12 team field now. Plus with Houston, BYU, UCF, SMU, Cincinnati all being in power conferences, the field of G5 teams to put into the playoff is likely a lot weaker than 2 years ago.
I won't be shocked if before next year they change it to 5 conference champs plus 7 at large.
Some great program matchups. Will be interesting to see what happens with Oregon, USC and Washington. All three of them are losing their QB's this year. OSU also losing their QB and I don't care what you say about transfers or McCord, it takes a minute to get up to speed. Ewers hasn't made an announcement but he also could be gone this year.
Plus Washington going to be losing their top RB and likely at least 2/3 of their top receivers. I have no idea what a guy like McMillan's pro prospects are but they've all been there for 4 years now.
Won't pretend to know the full level of depth on the west coast teams but many of our opponents are going to be looking at some significant turnover at the most important positions.
I fully agree with you Don. When all of this first broke he was one of the ones taking shots at Michigan during his interviews. None of them were outright aggressive and were framed as jokes but he definitely seems like someone that thinks this is the 'worst thing ever' considering how many jokes and comments he's made about it.
"you must be a current football season ticket holder OR a donor to Michigan Athletics with 500+ points."
Emphasis mine. The opportunity to request tickets was always open to all football season ticket holders regardless of point total. But it is also open to those without season tickets with 500+ points.
I just went back and looked at that box score and holy smokes it was worse than I remember. Dickinson leading our scoring with 11. Eli Brooks with 8 points in 37 minutes and Franz 1/10 shooting.
I'm not all that surprised by their 2014 team. That team lost by 2TD at home to a terrible VT team, needed 2 OT and one of the most ridiculous review scenarios I've ever seen* to beat a bad PSU team, only up 1 against a 3 win Indiana team going into the 4th and the Michigan game against our garbage 2014 team was tied until almost the end of the 3rd quarter.
They were obviously talented and could bomb some teams out of the building but they had their fair share of struggles throughout many of those games.
*Hackenberg was "intercepted" but replay on TV and in the stadium very clearly showed the ball wasn't caught at all. But the officials claimed there was "technical difficulties" with the equipment resulting in the play staying an INT even though 100k in the stadium were watching it not be caught. https://www.sbnation.com/2014/10/25/7071291/ohio-state-interception-gif-penn-state
I certainly don't look at it being a requirement but even using your examples:
Dabo was an internal elevation to interim before getting the full time job,
Fleck went to G5 Western,
Urban G5 Bowling Green,
Ferentz coached for 9 years or so under Hayden Fry as OL coach and left to be a HC at Maine before bopping around the NFL for a couple years. He had connections to Iowa and Fry long before getting that job.
Jim went to FCS school first.
So I don't think being a prior coordinator is a requirement but it is still exceedingly rare for someone with no coordinating or previous HC experience to get hired into a P5 job. Hart obviously has some help considering his previous ties to being on staff at Indiana.
Didn't stop Dan Lanning from taking the Oregon job. He was announced on December 11, 2021. He did stay on to coach through the CFP that year for Georgia which I would expect Moore to do the same if he were take another job.
I think committee would put Bama in over Texas which would mean Michigan would likely draw Bama in round 1 unless they put FSU 4 (or even 5 and shove both Bama and Texas in).
Not sure how you keep Texas out in your scenario assuming they take care of business. I don't see it happening but there's an argument to keep both Bama and Georgia out.
Bama wins, Texas wins. Texas gets in over Bama head to head. Bama would be in over Georgia Head to head.
Then you have Michigan, Pac 12 winner and FSU all in. One spot left for Texas. Zero chance Washington gets in with a loss to oregon.
I'm not surprised you might have gotten more than normal random interactions in Nashville than many other places. I think a lot of Tennessee fans are still convinced that Stallions helped South Carolina beat them last year and knock them out of the playoff picture. And that Hendon Hooker hurting his knee was also because "SCAR had their signs"
After all that was the only game they used wristbands!!!!!!!
Joe Bolden was on the OSU staff for 2020-2021 as a quality control coach on defense. Not saying he was involved or anything else but there very well could be others that have soft spots for Michigan/Harbaugh on those staffs.
It also makes Ryan Day's comments of "nobody here has done that" be technically correct (the best kind of correct).
Nobody currently on the staff stole signs and shared them with Purdue. But does not refute the possibility that someone did that last year and is no longer with the program.
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Isn't this like his fourth trip to the portal and previous 3 times he's returned to MSU? I'm assuming an NIL ploy but will be interesting with the new staff if they take a harder stance on him returning. Although they may not have a choice. Brian Kelly at LSU basically said they were going to be shopping for DL when the portal opened.
I prefer Caitlen version. My wife has a reasonably popular name but has a different vowel in place of what I could consider the traditional spelling. Much like Caitlen vs Caitlin. It gets misspelled constantly, even in work emails where the spelling is RIGHT THERE. She gets unreasonably annoyed by it and it never fails to make me chuckle.
MGrowOld, Impressive usage of Caitlan, Caitlen, and Caitlin all in the same Post lol
And I double posted. Shame!
I had a similar experience in Boston 2 years ago. Obviously a lot of fans of the teams involved but also a whole bunch of various Boston schools, Providence, Umass etc.. Granted this was Boston so it was a large melting pot of third party fans with many hockey schools fairly local.
Also kinda tracks with my own plans when Frozen Four was scheduled to be in Detroit. I had already bought tickets well before we would have determined which teams were going to be in it.
I like this move. Hockey going to be in the tournament and playing MSU for the B1G Championship on Saturday night. Relevant and current.
Otherwise National championship gear is always acceptable.
I can understand that rule. Those games we used to play were miserable. Plus generally it is above that threshold around here this time of year. I was just surprised that cold/wind absent precipitation was enough to cancel games.
Do they actually cancel games for cold at this level? Maybe because it's a non-con against Oakland so it's easier to be rescheduled but when I played college baseball (In Michigan) we never had a cancellation for cold/wind that I can remember. Field conditions was always the biggest concern this time of year as any level of rain turned the ground very sloppy.
Played in many games that were lightly snowing, sleeting or a couple times we played on a turf field where they had shoveled snow off the field just onto the other side of the fence.
Part of my experience is also that we were a smaller school so we weren't traveling to warm climates in February to get games in other than a trip over spring break. This meant we weren't playing games until closer to the end of February and Conference tournament happened around May 1 so our schedule was a lot more constricted than Big Ten schedules (Michigan softball played their first game February 9 and conference tournament is May 8).
I can understand the Peach Bowl, SEC title and National title rings. I am a little surprised they did a separate ring for CFP championship game as a standalone.
I knew someone else who celebrated on March 1 because they were born on the day after the 28th.
I believe the Vapor Elite's come in slightly smaller than NFL balls. Like 1/2" shorter and 1" diameter smaller. NFL only uses their very specific Wilson "The Duke" balls so I'm not sure Nike even makes a replica NFL size. Even though the nike website says they are the "official" size which is good for high school, college and "pro" use (no indication on what level of pro but definitely isn't NFL use).
Each team brings their own ball for each possession so yes in theory you would have slightly different dimensions depending on who has the ball.
This would especially be true when teams are sponsored by different companies. For example Michigan uses a Nike branded Vapor Elite (I think) ball. Whereas Wisconsin uses a Wilson GST last time I looked. Both of these balls would be roughly the same but would have some differences in feel/sizing.
It's actually a bigger issue in basketball. There isn't a standard for brand of ball to be used throughout the NCAA so each home team will provide a ball for the game. So if you're a Nike school you're using Nike basketballs and non-nike schools use something else (Wilson).
To combat the potential feel differences, I imagine the Michigan basketball team has a variety of basketball brands on hand so that when they are playing at Wisconsin, they can use Wilson balls in practice to get used to that feel.
Here's an ESPN story talking about having to use a different balls on the road/NCAA tournament.
https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/28072023/the-hidden-disadvantage-facing-college-basketball-road-teams
Grew up in a town very close to Ann Arbor. Very first memory was watching the 1995 Michigan vs OSU game with my dad. I don't remember much from the game but watching with him is the memory.
First game I went to was 1997 vs Baylor. Was in awe of how big the stadium was and thought it was the coolest thing that it looked relatively "small" from the outside and you walk in from upper rows. I still get that feeling walking through the tunnel.
I watched that entire 1997 season with my dad and is a great collection of memories to look back on.
Let's also not forget that in that $4M profit number includes debt service, leases and rental fees of $17.5M and Athletic Student Aid of ($32.5M).
Now obviously we need to make debt payments and things like that but non-government entities don't include principal debt payments in the P&L when looking at profit in the traditional sense.
Also I won't pretend to know how the university accounts for athletic scholarships but $32M is a steep number. I'm sure this number includes actual costs like housing, meals etc... but if it's also including the value of the tuition that is being given to the student athletes, then that value is likely quite inflated.
RE: Sherrone having a list of 10 guys at each position. It's entirely possible he did have those lists put together. Unfortunately, due to the timing of the NFL hiring schedule and the timing of our openings, a lot of guys may have already taken new jobs or made the decision to stay in their current situation.
I'm really looking forward to future years when we can make our coaching decisions during "normal" CFB coaching cycles.
Seriously look at what the Lions did this year. Most of that was built on guys drafted in 2021 and later plus a few key acquisitions.
Now the Chargers aren't going to be loaded up on a bunch of first round picks like the Lions got for Goff but they have a coach with a Name and location to sell to free agents.
It would be Athletic Director malpractice to not have already put out numerous feelers. You knew as soon as Jim didn't sign the extension back in December when we were hearing it was in his court that he was going to wait for NFL offers.
Biggest issue though is he already had done that the two years prior and had returned so if you're a Deboer or Fisch you couldn't wait until end of January to make a decision.
I don't think Michigan will hire him but acting like Leipold being 17-21 at Kansas is bad is wild to me. That program had not won more than 3 games in a season since 2009(!) before they won 6 in 2022.
Took a Buffalo program that had 2 total bowl trips in its history, and he managed to be bowl eligible in his last 4 of his 6 years.
And that doesn't even mention him going 109-6 at Wisconsin-Whitewater and winning 6 DIII national championships in 8 years and losing in the National championship game in one of the two seasons he didn't win it.
That dude can flat out coach and I think he would be very successful if he were to be hired to a major program.
EDIT: Ah I see you've edited your comment where you were disparaging Leipold's record at Kansas.
It never should have been attempted to be fielded. If they happen to drop one perfectly at the 1 you tip your cap and you deal with it but you under no circumstances have there be any possibility of a turnover.
The next week against Washington they did what I thought we should have been doing. We punted with 12 seconds left in the half. They sent Giles Jackson back to show "hey we have someone back here" but the second the ball was kicked he ran completely away from it and the gunners stopped way short. Zero chance of a bobble or screw up.
We downed it at the 2 but Washington took their knee and went to the locker room without any dramatics.
Man so many to choose from that all could have had huge impacts.
Rayshawn Benny forcing the fumble on Allar to start the second half. PSU was already at the 50 and was going to get a first down on the play. If they go on to kick even a field goal, we likely are unable to do the "run the ball 30 times in a row" thing and who knows how that game finally turns out.
Quinten Johson hit vs OSU, that's a 7 point game and a ball that was very close to being completed to our side of the 50 later in the 2nd half. They ended up punting on that drive and we followed up with a field goal to go up 10.
All of our open field tackling against Washington. We all remember what happened with Quintin Johnston for TCU breaking off a long TD on a missed tackle. This year that tackle was made, nearly every time.
Any number of plays vs Bama. Forcing that fumble and flipping the field, JJ catching Edwards throwback pass, Thaw holding onto the ball after the muff.
90's kid so Luther Ellis, Johnnie Morton, Robert Porcher, Corey Schlesinger, Chris Spielman, Bennie Blades etc...
Depends on if they meet the requirements for the Rooney Rule. Two external minority candidates need to be interviewed in person. The other issue is that anyone currently employed by another NFL team can't be interviewed in person until January 22.
So if they need to interview someone currently employed to meet the Rooney Rule requirements or just because they want to interview others then it will have to wait until after January 22.
They used to have it on the CFP official shop but I think they ran out by the Saturday of FanFest. I picked one up at FanFest Saturday later afternoon but they were already starting to run out of sizes in the Michigan specific one and they removed it from the site so I'm guessing they won't be making more inventory.
https://shop.collegefootballplayoff.com/collections/1-michigan-cfp-2024
I'll clarify. The Rooney Rule requires at least two external minority candidates to be interviewed In Person. They did meet with Leslie Frazier in person because he is not employed by another team. But cannot interview any other coaches currently employed In Person until January 22.
Chargers did interview other minority candidates like Steve Wilks but those would have been over zoom and would not meet the in person requirement.
LA Times has a good story on it. https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2024-01-15/chargers-coaching-hire-timeline-rooney-rule
I guess theoretically they could interview another minority candidate who is not currently employed by an NFL club but I can't think of any that would fit the bill without being an obvious attempt to skirt those requirements.
If Harbaugh does take the Chargers job, it will not be official until next week at the absolute earliest. Chargers still have to comply with the Rooney Rule and they cannot begin those interviews for anyone currently employed by another NFL club until January 22.
Alabama has a chance to do the funniest thing. Go grab Jonathan Smith from MSU.
Generally fine out of Austin. Had a small delay due to other flights being delayed on their way in but nothing major.
Muppets!!
Let's Go Blue! Great video as always Mello
Pete Carroll won both even though the NCAA one was eventually vacated.
Ole Miss has been a player in the transfer portal this year right? Presumably with high NIL dollars for incoming transfers.
I can see how a guy who is already on the team and very productive at the college level could see how much some of these transfers are getting on the open market and forcing Ole Miss to pay to keep him especially if they didn't want to open the checkbooks to begin with.
Wouldn't shock me to see him withdraw from the portal in a few days.
At some point we'll have 3+ undefeated or 1 loss conference teams who haven't played each other and will come down to some ridiculous tiebreaker scenario that is completely out of your own control.
Someone on the CBS sports Cover 3 podcast suggested a Big Ten conference playoff. Like top 4 teams do a semi & Final in the Big Ten. Considering the conference is going to have 18 members I don't think it's the worst idea.
Could even schedule it in such a way that every team plays 8 or 9 conference games then leave the last conference week of the year "open" and re-seed like they were going to do in 2020 so that you aren't adding on an extra game.
Primarily because anyone that graduates this semester will not be on campus anymore, along with anyone going to the NFL. Would be lame to present JJ, Blake, Zinter, Mikey etc with awards and have none of them in attendance because they're off preparing for the draft.
One other thing to note. They kept the playoffs as top 6 conference champs right? But the Pac 12 died so we're going to be guaranteed to have 2 G5 teams into the 12 team field now. Plus with Houston, BYU, UCF, SMU, Cincinnati all being in power conferences, the field of G5 teams to put into the playoff is likely a lot weaker than 2 years ago.
I won't be shocked if before next year they change it to 5 conference champs plus 7 at large.
Some great program matchups. Will be interesting to see what happens with Oregon, USC and Washington. All three of them are losing their QB's this year. OSU also losing their QB and I don't care what you say about transfers or McCord, it takes a minute to get up to speed. Ewers hasn't made an announcement but he also could be gone this year.
Plus Washington going to be losing their top RB and likely at least 2/3 of their top receivers. I have no idea what a guy like McMillan's pro prospects are but they've all been there for 4 years now.
Won't pretend to know the full level of depth on the west coast teams but many of our opponents are going to be looking at some significant turnover at the most important positions.
I fully agree with you Don. When all of this first broke he was one of the ones taking shots at Michigan during his interviews. None of them were outright aggressive and were framed as jokes but he definitely seems like someone that thinks this is the 'worst thing ever' considering how many jokes and comments he's made about it.
"you must be a current football season ticket holder OR a donor to Michigan Athletics with 500+ points."
Emphasis mine. The opportunity to request tickets was always open to all football season ticket holders regardless of point total. But it is also open to those without season tickets with 500+ points.
I just went back and looked at that box score and holy smokes it was worse than I remember. Dickinson leading our scoring with 11. Eli Brooks with 8 points in 37 minutes and Franz 1/10 shooting.
Honestly thank god we won that game because I could not take a lifetime of "last two years doesn't count because Stalions"
You know Day would have made his Lou Holtz speech look like a picnic.
I'm not all that surprised by their 2014 team. That team lost by 2TD at home to a terrible VT team, needed 2 OT and one of the most ridiculous review scenarios I've ever seen* to beat a bad PSU team, only up 1 against a 3 win Indiana team going into the 4th and the Michigan game against our garbage 2014 team was tied until almost the end of the 3rd quarter.
They were obviously talented and could bomb some teams out of the building but they had their fair share of struggles throughout many of those games.
*Hackenberg was "intercepted" but replay on TV and in the stadium very clearly showed the ball wasn't caught at all. But the officials claimed there was "technical difficulties" with the equipment resulting in the play staying an INT even though 100k in the stadium were watching it not be caught. https://www.sbnation.com/2014/10/25/7071291/ohio-state-interception-gif-penn-state
I certainly don't look at it being a requirement but even using your examples:
Dabo was an internal elevation to interim before getting the full time job,
Fleck went to G5 Western,
Urban G5 Bowling Green,
Ferentz coached for 9 years or so under Hayden Fry as OL coach and left to be a HC at Maine before bopping around the NFL for a couple years. He had connections to Iowa and Fry long before getting that job.
Jim went to FCS school first.
So I don't think being a prior coordinator is a requirement but it is still exceedingly rare for someone with no coordinating or previous HC experience to get hired into a P5 job. Hart obviously has some help considering his previous ties to being on staff at Indiana.
Didn't stop Dan Lanning from taking the Oregon job. He was announced on December 11, 2021. He did stay on to coach through the CFP that year for Georgia which I would expect Moore to do the same if he were take another job.
I think committee would put Bama in over Texas which would mean Michigan would likely draw Bama in round 1 unless they put FSU 4 (or even 5 and shove both Bama and Texas in).
Not sure how you keep Texas out in your scenario assuming they take care of business. I don't see it happening but there's an argument to keep both Bama and Georgia out.
Bama wins, Texas wins. Texas gets in over Bama head to head. Bama would be in over Georgia Head to head.
Then you have Michigan, Pac 12 winner and FSU all in. One spot left for Texas. Zero chance Washington gets in with a loss to oregon.
I'm not surprised you might have gotten more than normal random interactions in Nashville than many other places. I think a lot of Tennessee fans are still convinced that Stallions helped South Carolina beat them last year and knock them out of the playoff picture. And that Hendon Hooker hurting his knee was also because "SCAR had their signs"
After all that was the only game they used wristbands!!!!!!!
Bet
And for tapping that sparty ass in the sport they were longing for to distract them from their piece of shit football program.
Joe Bolden was on the OSU staff for 2020-2021 as a quality control coach on defense. Not saying he was involved or anything else but there very well could be others that have soft spots for Michigan/Harbaugh on those staffs.
It also makes Ryan Day's comments of "nobody here has done that" be technically correct (the best kind of correct).
Nobody currently on the staff stole signs and shared them with Purdue. But does not refute the possibility that someone did that last year and is no longer with the program.