Unverified Voracity Runs Routes On Air
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?
— Michigan On BTN (@MichiganOnBTN) August 14, 2019
New OC Josh Gattis sits down to discuss his offensive philosophy. pic.twitter.com/Uc5UMcy23d
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.
August 16th, 2019 at 1:28 PM ^
Both youz guys: Your avatars check out.
August 16th, 2019 at 12:46 PM ^
This is clearly a pattern now of coaches wanting to be transparent with the media when they first arrive and then slowly clamming up as the years go on. If I had to guess, it's related to the fact that unlike places like East Lansing and Columbus, where the media is state-run by the athletic department they cover, the local media covering Michigan is not so kind, and the coaches get tired of dealing with it.
August 16th, 2019 at 12:46 PM ^
Fickell must be hoping Day fails and is positioning himself as the successor candidate when THE Ohio State U decides it needs another psychotic coach who won’t use “M” or refers only to “the team up north” or any of the other childish games they like to play in C-bus.
August 16th, 2019 at 1:33 PM ^
Yes, please. Fickell as Tosu coach was great.
August 16th, 2019 at 1:39 PM ^
you know what, I hadn't considered this but I bet this is actually true
August 16th, 2019 at 12:51 PM ^
The BTN doesn't have access to more exciting practices. Boo hoo.
August 16th, 2019 at 1:04 PM ^
Of Dabo "McButterpants" (this is my nickname for him, screw you guys I'm going home) Swinney:
He's Jim Delany with a side of prosperity gospel.
This might be one of the best catch-all descriptors in MgoHistory.
August 16th, 2019 at 1:13 PM ^
The reason Dabo Swinney would quit college football if paying players ever became allowable within NCAA rules is because he'd lose his competitive advantage of paying players under the table.
It's also why neither he nor Urban Meyer will ever seek to coach an NFL team. They saw what happened to Saban when he went to coach in the NFL and lost the ability to skew the roster talent grossly in his favor. It wasn't pretty.
EDIT: And to clarify, I think certain schools with sophisticated bagman networks would STILL have an advantage, assuming any NCAA sanctioned player payment regime had certain restrictions on it (overall caps, funding formulas, etc), but the GAP of the advantage would be significantly narrowed.
For example, if the new above-board payment regime raised player compensation to 80% of their true market value, the bagmen would still steer the illicit 20% to the players. But at least (for example), instead of school X offering $0 and the $EC/O$U program offering $250K (gap of $250K), now the player would be looking at a $200K legitimate payment from school X versus the $EC/O$U school paying a legitimate $200K plus a $50K illicit payment (gap of $50K).
August 16th, 2019 at 1:35 PM ^
Wouldn't it be great if Saban started pushing to (legally) pay players so he could get rid of Dabo? I always considered Dabo as the lesser of two evils in this terrible era of college football, but he's awful too so f*** him.
August 16th, 2019 at 1:41 PM ^
I mean, if I were Saban & wanted to cement my legacy as the greatest football coach of all time, I'd ABSOLUTELY start pushing for the legal payment of players at the NCAA level. It'd take a good 5+ years to push that reform through & have it significantly impact the recruiting trail & on-field results. By that time, Saban would be in retirement mode and wouldn't have the deal with the fallout.
Basically, build up your legacy exploiting a major lack of rules enforcement. Then, once you've banked your millions and your legacy as the greatest CFB coach ever, you push to change the environment so nobody behind you can copy your business model.
It's like how people who become insanely wealthy in a new or unregulated industry are often the ones to push for the major reforms, but only AFTER they've already established themselves as market leaders. It's in their best interest to strictly regulate the enviornment so that it's harder for any new players to disrupt the status quo.
If you are over 6 feet tall standing in a room with your competitors who are all 5 feet tall, flood the room with 5.5 feet of water.
August 16th, 2019 at 4:43 PM ^
This^
August 16th, 2019 at 10:14 PM ^
What makes you think the schools with bagmen ops won't continue to offer the same $ to get players they want?
August 16th, 2019 at 1:17 PM ^
After listening to the 1925 episode of The Teams podcast, Dabo Swinney reminds me of Alonzo Stagg. Both acted sanctimonious about the proper way to run a football progam and cultivated a reputation for "doing things right". But behind that veneer, Stagg seems to have been a rampant cheater. Swinney probably shares that veneer, especially given John U. Bacon's story about the last minute challenge in Rashan Gary's recruitment.
August 16th, 2019 at 1:21 PM ^
so i know my old smart TV does not support youtubeTV but does have a youtube app. will i still be able to use the services of youtubeTV by signing on to the generic youtube app (like how youtube red works) on my old smart TV? or is it a totally different platform?
August 16th, 2019 at 1:37 PM ^
Pretty sure that won’t work but just buy a Chromecast. They’re like $35 at Walmart, plug in to any HDMI port (which a smart tv is bound to have) and you if you have the YouTube TV app on your phone you can watch with that.
August 16th, 2019 at 2:22 PM ^
thank you!
August 16th, 2019 at 1:24 PM ^
Why is it every time the Swenson thing gets brought up it’s always 100% Drevno’s fault?
August 16th, 2019 at 1:57 PM ^
Because everything is 100% Drevno's fault.
August 16th, 2019 at 2:00 PM ^
Because Swenson refused to come to the campus. Obviously, that's Drevno's fault.
Though Drevno may, indeed, be the one to blame for not keeping Swenson and his parents in the loop regarding the fact that Swenson was risking his spot by not coming.
August 16th, 2019 at 10:24 PM ^
It's also the thing I'm maybe least annoyed about regarding his time here.
August 16th, 2019 at 1:31 PM ^
Speaking of selling kids -when I was a bad kid my dad used to threaten to sell me to the gypsies. I didn't really know what this meant (it was something he picked up from his Old World Greek and Hungarian grandparents) but it sure scared the shit out of me. You should try it next time your kids get out of line - it definitely straightened me out quick.
August 16th, 2019 at 1:49 PM ^
It's important to remember that to the Romani, "gypsy" is often (almost always?) a slur. They've got a point, in my opinion, considering what happens in Europe now, and what happened during and before WWII.
Be mindful.
https://web.archive.org/web/20050205135317/http://www.utexas.edu/featur…
August 16th, 2019 at 1:55 PM ^
Dabo Swinney is a piece of shit person who hides behind his Christian "holier than thou" cool dad persona. Once you see him for the person he actually is, he sucks
August 16th, 2019 at 2:50 PM ^
But southern moms eat his shit up like no one else and that will likely not change barring some kind of scandal.
August 16th, 2019 at 5:40 PM ^
Yep, he's like the snake oil salesman James Franklin plus christianity and southern hospitality
August 16th, 2019 at 2:09 PM ^
That sound you hear is Craig Ross furiously ordering all of the Beilein practice tapes.
Also, Fickell is full of shit.
August 16th, 2019 at 2:37 PM ^
Warning, the "furious" sound you're hearing may not be tape-buying
August 16th, 2019 at 6:15 PM ^
Is this real life? Are we actually approaching something close to nearly arriving in the general proximity of the football season?
Don't toy with me.
August 16th, 2019 at 8:51 PM ^
And the LA Times story tells us that Illinois had a kick to win the game as time expired but it hit the crossbar.
August 17th, 2019 at 8:23 AM ^
That Dabo stuff is bizarre. Never knew a lot of that happened. However, the lack of Ruiz on a list is befuddling.
August 17th, 2019 at 10:51 AM ^
Gee, I wonder why Dabo doesn’t want players getting paid? Does it maybe even the playing field a bit? Methinks yes.
Guy is a great coach, not disputing that, but he’s just another typical southern good ol’ boy with his aww shucks, holier-than-thou attitude who thinks everything in this world can be solved if you just pray hard enough.
August 17th, 2019 at 10:54 AM ^
Notre Dame's S&P under Holtz should have an asterisk by it. That little weasel cheated at every school he coached for. He stayed one step ahead of the NCAA and left his former program on probation with serious penalties.
August 17th, 2019 at 2:45 PM ^
Cool graphs ... "a picture is worth a thousand words"
August 18th, 2019 at 10:20 AM ^
So Danna is preseason all American, yet doesn't start. Then we can extrapolate that Paye and Hutch are first team ???
August 21st, 2019 at 3:21 PM ^
This goes for those who think Dabo is some pillar of athletic/moral/social/political virtue: It takes complete, gullibility, blind bias conformation or a promiscuous relationship with hypocrisy to espouse and embrace this hack's old school worldview on player compensation. One that is bed-rocked in pre-television contracts and an amateurism that is no longer relevant in most contexts save the walk-on.
I used to be one of those guys too, and I never made millions coaching a physically brutal game while pretending the student athlete was more "student" than "athlete" for ESPN, CBS and even my beloved alma mater.
I've come 180 on being pro-compensation - not because I think it's necessarily good for the game(s), and certainly not to pick a fight with old-schoolers who are understandably nostalgic for "the way things were" - but because it's the only fair way to conduct modern college athletics in the age of revenue sports. And not because, I might add, I am a capitalist. If this leads to a market correction, so be it.
You can still expect hard work, academic and social accountability, physical and mental sacrifice from today's players in pursuit of athletic glory (and I still firmly believe athletic scholarships are still a gateway to opportunity for many whom might not have other opportunities), but let's drop the pretense that CF is anything else than high stakes entertainment with the majority economic benefits being reaped by the networks, schools, coaches and all but a scant percentage of those players going pro.
The sweat equity and risk is weighted far more heavily on the workforce and any clown that declares so sanctimoniously this isn't the case while becoming a multimillionaire in the process, is the very definition of a jabroni. I'm not even getting to all politics which I find secondary to his main sin...though it is funny to see all these conservative-leaning religious types caw for socialism for the players, but capitalism for everyone else.
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