Unverified Voracity Misses Wilford Brimley
Tiller was always good for some anonymous snark
I always miss Joe Tiller when these get published. ESPN does the anonymous coach quote article, and while some of it is of little utility…
Coach, can you talk about Indiana's tempo?
"They're unique in our league in that they're going to try to get 100 plays in a game and just literally outscore you." -- Big Ten defensive coach [who all Big Ten fans reading this article hope is not employed by their program]
…there are a couple interesting bits about Michigan. This isn't a huge surprise since the last coach was Brady Hoke:
"This coaching staff knows how to mask things. It's a lot more double-team, a lot more movement, a lot more point-of-attack doubles and down blocks. They're a team that embraces the 4- and 5-yard play, and not a lot of people in college football do that anymore." -- Big Ten defensive coach
It's still good to hear that Michigan's offense is reputed to be tricky. There is exactly zero chance opponents thought Michigan's offense was difficult to prep for under Carr or Hoke.
Another coach says the linebackers were the weakest part of Michigan's defense a year ago "but with the guys they have up front, if they're healthy, you can get away with whatever at linebacker." Our theory that Michigan could put out a lawn chair at LB and be okay if Glasgow is around: endorsed.
Yet more satellite camp stuff. It is insane how much people continue to talk about this. There are slightly more important things going on in college football at the moment, but there is just a nonstop train of satellite camp takes. Which, again, are about people showing up on a football field and doing football-related activities in full view of the world. And yet. Anyway here's the whatnot.
Jon Solomon stops by one of the satellite camps in Baltimore, discovering that the people who attend them are in favor of them:
I spoke to a couple dozen parents and players over a span of about five hours and this was the resounding message: Thank you for coming, Jim Harbaugh.
"It's huge -- huge -- to have this in inner city Baltimore," said Christopher Braswell, who took his 14-year-old son out of school -- almost all of the middle-schoolers played hooky -- to the middle school camp. "It gives kids a sense that someone's out there who cares about them. These guys come from Michigan. It's 10 bucks, so they're not making any money off it. A lot of people can't afford more. Bring your kid here to interact with college coaches and high school coaches. Black, white, they're just out there having fun. What's wrong with that?"
This is somewhat tautological, yes. People doing thing like thing. Thing is harmless to everything except Hugh Freeze's free time. Turns out you have to explain tautological things to lizard people sometimes.
Solomon's article is long and manages to blow up some arguments against the camps along the way. Greg Sankey:
Sankey on satellite camps: “These are not instructional. There are videos and pictures out there that don't look very instructional to me."
— Barrett Sallee (@BarrettSallee) June 3, 2016
The middle school camp in the morning is largely about teaching and drills, all without pads and helmets, just like the high school session. These middle schoolers are too far away from college for serious consideration of recruiting them just yet.
Also, Gene Wojciechowski drew either the short or long straw, depending on your perspective, and took in Michigan's Australian satellite camp:
Spent 3 hrs in see-yr-breath cold/rain conditions at Michigan sat camp near Melbourne, last nite. Don't hv dog in sat camp fight, but...
— Gene Wojciechowski (@GenoEspn) June 3, 2016
...was impressed by Aussies' passion for game, and Mich coaches' desire to teach them. U wd hv thought u wr at Mich practice--high intensity
— Gene Wojciechowski (@GenoEspn) June 3, 2016
...Didn't matter there were maybe--maybe--a handful of college-level prospects. If this was abt spreading CFB word, then Mich coaches did so
— Gene Wojciechowski (@GenoEspn) June 3, 2016
I'm eagerly awaiting the first statement from Sankey that has any relationship to reality. Meanwhile Kirk Herbstreit says Michigan doesn't "need to do it." This is true. Michigan is doing it anyway.
Also, Harbaugh addresses the tucked-in jersey thing:
"I'm a tuck-in guy," Harbaugh explained, tugging at his belt. "In football, the advantage of tucking in your jersey is big. It's harder to grab the jersey when it's tucked in. When it's untucked, they can grab it, they can sling you, they can swing you, so I always like to tuck in it, and I like the sight lines better of a tucked-in shirt. Football is a game of sight lines -- a very symmetrical field with lines and hashes and dimensions. Sight lines are important."
He's thought long and hard about this.
And then this thing. I was maybe going to fisk that article about "absolute power" from a week ago but I've decided it's just too bad to go over in detail. Wendell Barnhouse, who used to have a job with the Star-Telegram and then the Big 12 but is currently writing for a site I've never heard of, put a bunch of words on paper he has to immediately refute because this is his thesis:
Now here is where this column will anger the thousands of Michigan fans, alums and Jim Harbaugh cultists. Harbaugh is corrupting his absolute power absolutely.
You have read the previous sentence, probably twice, trying to figure out if there is any meaning encapsulated in it. There is not. The Lord Acton quote this dude is trying to reference is about power corrupting individuals that hold it. Barnhouse is stating that Harbaugh is… corrupting power? Which is not a thing?
Barnhouse's point is that what Harbaugh is doing is "about optics" and it's bad for the NCAA, which who cares, and then he comes back around to be like BANG BAYLOR. Sorry. "BANG" "BAYLOR":
Harbaugh is engaged in “wretched excess” disguised as “outworking other coaching staffs.” Staging 38 satellite camps in 30 days might be more about carpet-bombing the “Michigan brand” more so than landing five-star recruits.
And it’s also about Jim Harbaugh having the all-encompassing power to do what he wants. There are numerous examples, including a recent one, that illustrates the danger that lurks.
This draws about 35 different false equivalencies and amply demonstrates why Barnhouse is no longer employed as a writer: he's bad at writing.
Harbaugh already had an opportunity to start off his career in corruption last year and passed. Logan Tuley-Tillman, who had a good shot at being the starting left tackle this year, was booted from the team the instant Harbaugh found out he'd done something seriously wrong.
Etc.: A three-part oral history on a basketball season that ended with a loss in the NIT final. Rutgers? Rutgers. Nitpickers gonna nitpick. ESPN's Where In The World Is Jim Harbaugh is entertaining. Scott Steiner on Harbaugh.
I was a little nervous about Harbaugh being a win-at-all-costs type and what that would mean for program ethics. A year or two later, he really seems like a clean, ethical, law-abiding, cheater-abhorring guy. The worst we've seen is probably the Swenson thing, which wasn't great but really wasn't a big deal either (and who knows about the real story there).
At this point I just have a lot of faith in the guy and affection for him.
Harbaugh never was a "win at all costs" coach. This confuses people because Harbaugh doesn't consider time, fatigue, or even sanity to be significant costs.
But kicking LTT to the curb was illuminating because we have zero legit depth at LT right now (Cole moved to C and Newsome ain't ready).
Yeah, I agree. A year or two later, it's also clear that Harbaugh's a fucking maniac, but he's a maniac in all the right ways.
Sort of? On one hand, what you said is similar to Red Sox fans saying "Manny being Manny" which they said a lot and was their way of saying "the guy's a narcissist dickhead, but as long as it says Boston on his jersey we'll just pretend his antics are part of the reason Boston's shit doesn't stink." "Yeah he's X but he's our X" where X is some undesirable human trait has always felt to me like a great way to justify being a raging hypocrite.
On the other hand, I did largely blame him for that weird confrontation between him and Jim Schwartz and managed to find a way how it wasn't Schwartz's fault, and started changing my mind when Schwartz popped off on Lions fans a few weeks before his mercy firing.
Newsome isnt ready? Is that opinion or do you have corroborating evidence? That parenthetical tidbit should be negged by all without some proof.
He didn't look good. Seth agrees:
-Grant Newsome looked worse than he did live. Taco ate his lunch. Carlo Kemp (playing WDE) ate his lunch. Reuben Jones (playing SDE) ate his lunch. Brandon Watson(!) ate his lunch.
Now let's discuss your rhetoric. Never mind it's over something as trivial as downvotes; I don't like it when someone's first reaction to an opinion is basically a threat. It's OK to challenge a claim, commendable even, but you have the tact of a 12-year-old trust fund baby.
Perhaps he just didn't play well because he was hungry and had low blood sugar. With all of those guys eating his lunch there isn't much left for him.
Maybe he brought enough lunches for everyone!
If JH was a win at all costs guy, he would have never publicly stated that Michigan wasn't doing its student athlete favors by not supporting them academically and after football... for which he was considered a pariah for quite some time.
Honestly, at the time I thought that was a calculated move to raise Stanford's profile by picking a fight with Michigan like he was picking fights with USC. My view on that has changed.
think that is exactly what it was.
Read BLL. Is your thought still the same afterwards?
Feel like those Gene Wojciechowski quotes are likely just as much about the satellite camps as they are a slight humblebrag about getting the front office to pony up for his offseason vacation to Australia. Well played.
I thought the same thing about the Australia camp being a vacation for the coaches. Then I read Wojo's tweet about 3 hours of rain/cold and remembered that it's winter there. Probably not so much fun.
Winter is Oz is a lot different than winter in Michigan.... I'll take cold drizze over months of grey skies and ice any day of the week.
I have no doubt that Australian winters aren't as harsh as Midwestern ones. My point was that cold drizzle isn't as nice as mid 70's and sunny skies like I see out my window now, so not so much of a vacation.
it got down to about 4C last week (40F) in Melbourne. sometimes it's below freezing in the morning but it never snows.
I don't know, on balance I think the attention is helping us. Harbaugh has become the guy who's taking on the two biggest, baddest villains in college football: the NCAA and SEC.
That's my point though... why? JH doesn't have to take on the SEC and NCAA.
He can just do his thing and let them whine. Pretty much everyone outside of the Bubba Zone sees the SEC for what they are. Is JH gonna change the inbreds down there? No... have you read the comments in al.com???
Like my sig says, don't wrestle with the pigs because everyone gets dirty but the pigs like it. When JH tweets "amazing" at Saban, it gets lapped it up in here but what does it really accomplish? Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together sees this is about the kids... I mean middle school, $10 fees, going to far flug destinations with not a lot of prospects in the bunch.
Any SEC whining about unintended consequences of camps is only becuase the SEC and Meyer will find a way to exploit that shit.
I think it's possible that Harbaugh actually will change things. The NCAA hasn't had to deal with a prominent member of the college football community who's willing to publicize Alabama's cheating, Tennessee's sleaziness, the NCAA's hypocrisy, etc. (Mike Leach has his moments but he's no Harbaugh.) Remember, too, that Hackett came out and said that other schools offered Gary's family money. That's the kind of noise that forces institutions like the NCAA to respond in ways they don't want to respond.
Regarding your last sentence, I only wish that would be true...
It seems like the bigger the scandal, the more creative ways the NCAA finds to look like they are giving the appearance of punishing someone; but not bringing down the hammer.
Can Newton's dad got freaking paid for sending his kid to Auburn -- nothing. Reggie Bush got a house for his family -- SC lost some schollys, and 2 bowl games, and vacated past wins.
I could go on and on...
SMU got the death penalty for much less.
I don't see the NCAA responding, for the last 20 years, in a cogent way at all. It's like a smaller scale FIFA and until the money train changes, the NCAA will continue to be feckless.
Yes, the NCAA has a history of unresponsiveness, but my point is that something has changed now, since one of their own is telling the world about how dirty and hypocritical the college football world is. And the one who's doing it, Harbaugh, has as much of a platform as anyone in the sport. Maybe the NCAA will continue to be the shitty organization it has been for years - and the smart money is probably on that - but if anything is going to shake it up it's probably someone like this.
This is kind of where I'm at. At some point it gets a bit cartoonish and "look at me!", but when you're dealing with a certifiable maniac (in a good way) like Harbaugh, this is what you get. He has one speed, and can't go any other way. Mix that with the absurdity of social media... You can't help but get the clickbait Saban/SEC vs. Harbaugh vs. NCAA battles.
I kinda wish Michigan would just keep their heads down and mouths shut and go about their business.
Why, when Harbaugh - who clearly is on the right side of this issue, from the student-athletes' perspective - can further build the profile of his program?
Think about our program from the vantage point of a teenager. Michigan started to be regarded nationally as a paper tiger in the late Carr years, and then fell completely off the map under RR/Hoke, 2011 excepted. A 16-year-old kid doesn't have much memory of Michigan as an elite program. Harbaugh can change that, but in the meantime, he can get their attention in this way.
Michigan can change attention by winning quicker than acting like a petulant child on Twitter can.
The problem with this is that the other side won't keep their heads down and mouths shut about satellite camps, they're running their mouths in an active attempt to shut down the satellite camps. And they would have succeeded if it weren't for people like Harbaugh making the case on why they shouldn't be banned. It's best to take the high road when you can, but some times you need to fight back.
Sorry but if high profile people attack our program I want Harbaugh to stand up and defend whats right. To let our opponents control the narrative is foolish and what Id expect someone to do who isnt secure in thier convictions.
People doing thing like thing. Thing is harmless to everything except Hugh Freeze's free time.
As mentioned, who knows about the Swenson thing, and I'm not going to regurgitate. I think his integrity is not only there, it's extreme. What I mean by that is there were more than a couple of recruits where persuit just seemed to stop cold. I think if the staff even gets a hint that a player can be influenced by $$, or they are interested in being influenced by $$, they get crossed off the board. Period. Kind of like "you want a bagman type of recruiting ? Fine, go elsewhere, we're not even interested in talking to you" I can think of a couple that sure seemed like there was some unknown character issue that stopped the recruitment sudden and complete, and when you look at the competing programs it makes you wonder.
I always love hearing from the Big Bad Booty Daddy. His rundown of Ohio, in Columbus, while wearing a Jake Long jersey on WCW was one for the ages.
won anything as he's so in peoples heads
25 years at the Star-Telegram; now just one of the former mainstream sports journalists circling the drain ...
.. so he starts writing fiction in a garbled, nonsensical fashion.
This just in. Harbaugh makes inner city middle schoolers play hooky. More at 11.
$10 from them.
Harbaugh is making inner city kids skip school so he can steal their lunch money.
I am Greg Sankey and I approve this message.
Kramer: "Sight lines Jerry, sight lines"
"I like the sight lines better of a tucked-in shirt."
What an awesome Harbaughism.
Untucked is more comfortable. If I'm lunging, it's untucked. But if I'm coaching or playing sports, it's always tucked in. I wouldn't have come up with the explanation that Harbaugh does, to me, it's just the way it should be.
That said, tucking in the Allen Iverson jersey into khakis, well, I'll probably leave that to him.
I'm the opposite. I don't really care how it looks, but one thing I do when I'm running is tuck to lower wind resistance. I'm out of shape and I live in Boston where it can get decently breezy (Michigan's no slouch in this regard either), and while the cooling effect is nice, it's rather awful to be on your last drops of glycogen with still a mile to go and then a headwind catches your untucked shirt like it's a parachute. I guess it's partly because I tend to wear slightly oversized shirts because they breathe so much easier, but they sure flap around a lot more.
So, that thought carries over into sports. When I'm defending someone and trying to stay step-for-step I'd rather not be fighting the wind at the same time.
Otherwise it's less obvious when you get tackled by your jersey.
I had my jersey ripped off once and no call? They did make me get subbed out for not having a jersey though.....
Guess that's why people dive in soccer, had I screamed and acted like my entire body was broken I'd probably have gotten a card.
GIMME A FUCKIN MIC!
SEE THROUGHOUT MY CAREER, I'VE WRESTLED A LOT OF COUNTRIES.
YOU COME OUT HERE, AND YOU TRY TO GET THE SYMPY OF THE PEOPLE. BUT YOU DON'T GET MY SYMPY AT ALL. YOU GUYS ARE OUTTA YOUR MIND MAKIN A TABLE MATCH CUZ TONIGHT WE'RE GONNA BEAT YOU AT YOUR OWN GAME. YOU'RE GONNA BE TAKIN SPLINTERS OUTTA YOUR FAT ASSES ALL NIGHT LONG CUZ YOU GOT SOME FAT ASSES.
BIG POPPA PUMP IS YOUR HOOKUP
HOLLER IF YOU HEAR ME
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