Events. There are some. If you're in NY or DC I'm sorry to report that I'm unable to make it out this year for various reasons. All the things that happened this summer plus two small people mean that I'm scrambling to catch up on season preview stuff and can't take four days in August. Next year there will not be a coaching search and College World Series. Probably. Also I've been told that once children turn four you can sell them? Is that true? Don't look it up, it's probably true. 

A graphed history of Michigan football. Most of it, anyway. Bill Connelly's S&P+ graphed and annotated:

The Schembechler era is even a little more bonkers because the only negative outlier in there is when Harbaugh broke his arm and they went 6-6.

Also here's West Virginia, the Tweek of college football:

I'm getting queasy just looking at this thing.

Also also, give it up for Charlie Weis:

xoxo miss you big guy.

[After the JUMP: BTN visits! Nothing happens.]

Ambry status. I'd consider this Not Good:

Ambry Thomas had colitis, per Harbaugh. Lost quite a bit of weight and can be in the facilities, but not practicing yet. Timeline will become more clear in next 7-10 days. Few steps to get there, Harbaugh said.

— Zach Shaw (@_ZachShaw) August 13, 2019

He's not on the fall camp roster. He won't be available to start the season. The hope is he'll be back in week four for Wisconsin.

This used to be a post. BTN is doing their annual conference tour. In the past their stop in Ann Arbor has been newsworthy enough to warrant its own post. Now it's some cellphone clips of guys running routes on air and close to zero information. This isn't BTN's fault; they're being presented with stretching drills and the like. If  you went to the open practice the week before the spring game, it was that.

Josh Uche and Khaleke Hudson going through LB drills pic.twitter.com/xBknTY3s0P

— Dave Revsine (@BTNDaveRevsine) August 13, 2019

This is bad PR and that came through on the broadcast, which was understandably sour. This is a crew that's trying to be optimistic about Illinois, but when you give them nothing they react like people generally do. I have personally experienced the drills-and-nothing else thing, and was sour after.

Dave Revsine did tweet out that he liked Sainristil and that Don Brown had talked up DJ Turner, Chris Hinton, Anthony Solomon, and Dax Hill. Also Gattis gave them a pretty interesting interview:

What changes are in store for the @UMichFootball offense this season?

New OC Josh Gattis sits down to discuss his offensive philosophy. pic.twitter.com/Uc5UMcy23d

— Michigan On BTN (@MichiganOnBTN) August 14, 2019

But that's it.

Obligatory Fickell thing. Fickell asked Harbaugh to lie about why Michigan moved him to OL:

“Coach Fickell tried to coach me on how to say it differently,” Harbaugh said. “I told him, ‘Coach, I believe in telling the truth. Forthright. Honest. What I told James, what I tell you, what I tell compliance is going to be the truth.’”

Harbaugh declined. Hudson is probably not going to get a waiver because he was not run off and his mental health claims are not backed by any evidence. Harbaugh is not telling the NCAA Hudson got run off, because he didn't. Harbaugh thinks this whole thing is ridiculous and he should just be eligible because everyone should, but he declines to lie. The end. Oh wait one more thing:

Luke Fickell: "We had a couple kids (get hurt) yesterday and I spent time with them, spent time talking with their families. That, to me, was more important than what Jim Harbaugh had to say about us and our program or me in general."

— Fletcher Page (@FletcherPage) August 15, 2019

Muh children? Ass.

Also in ass. Will Leitch summarizes Clemson's smarmy Dabo Swinney:

He has said he will quit college football entirely if players get paid, saying that, “as far as paying players, professionalizing college athletics, that’s where you lose me. I’ll go do something else, because there’s enough entitlement in this world as it is.” (He brazenly reiterated this stance after signing that new contract.) He has fought against players receiving stipends in addition to their scholarships. When Northwestern football players attempted to unionize a few years ago, he was one of the loudest voices in opposition.

Swinney’s stances against player autonomy, in both college and professional sports, are legendary. He criticized Colin Kaepernick’s protest, saying that “it’s not good to use the team as a platform” and that “two wrongs don’t make a right” while citing Martin Luther King Jr., something he later had to apologize for. He claimed players don’t pretend they have concussions to stay on the field and that football is “safer than it has ever been.” (Both statements are false.) He once kicked a player off his team — and thus out of college — for “having a bad attitude.” He doesn’t tolerate cursing at his practices. Oh, and remember the Clemson football team’s visit to the White House during the government shutdown, when President Trump gave out all that fast food? The Root reported that while most of Clemson’s black players did not attend, the ones who did go did so because they feared Swinney would punish them otherwise. (Swinney denied this, as did several players.)

Swinney’s unsavoriness goes beyond seeking to maintain his own power and profits. He has said America doesn’t have a “race problem, it has a sin problem.” In 2016, he refused to investigate an allegation that Clemson players had used racial slurs against South Carolina players, saying he could forgive college students for making mistakes but not media for reporting on them. (He actually said that the reporters who published the allegations should have been fired.) He has said that activists should “move to another country.” He even once called himself “Osama bin Dabo,” which is sort of offensive but mostly just weird.

He's Jim Delany with a side of prosperity gospel.

Preseason All Big Ten. PFF's list is a little weird because it has a "FLEX" position on D that should obviously be the spacebacker spot most Big Ten defenses have these days. Instead DiCaprio Bootle and Lavert Hill, both out-and-out corners, are first and second team. Marcelino Ball, a legit spacebacker, is third team, at least.

Anyway: Shea Patterson and Ben Bredeson are first team. Onwenu, Peoples-Jones, Collins, Danna, Metellus, and Hill are second-team. Dwumfour and Runyan are third team. No Ruiz, no Ross. Danna also made second-team All-America, because first and second team All-America are just Big Ten DEs.

Also in PFF. They have a detailed breakdown of how they grade pass rush. Their system is very similar to mine, so it also serves as a UFR explainer. One thing they did not address directly: I don't minus for unsuccessful rushes because a large majority of rushes are unsuccessful even for the best DL. A 20% win rate makes you one of the best rushers in the country.

But I do minus for failing to maintain pocket integrity. If you get out of  your lane and allow the QB to step up in the pocket or scramble for a bunch of yards, that's a paddlin'. I assume PFF does too, but they didn't mention it.

Drevnooooooooo. I'll stop doing this when it stops being relevant: 

Lincoln Riley seemingly threw a little shade at Michigan today when talking about lineman Erik Swenson. “He wasn’t good enough to play in Michigan’s offense, but I guess he’s good enough to play in Oklahoma’s.” #Sooners #Wolverines

— Joey Helmer (@joeyhelmer247) August 13, 2019

(I will probably not stop doing this.)

Etc.: Virtual reality tackling is here. Athletic directors will never face criminal prosecution for anything short of Nassar but it's fun to imagine they would go to jail for breaking NCAA rules. You can buy Beilein practice tapes now, if you want to sit in the dark and blubber. Louisiana-Lafayette is requiring players to donate to the athletic department. Reddit has a cord-cutting table.