Biaka… that guy. I never knew how much I needed Lou Holtz trying to pronounce "Biakabutuka" in my life:

We are also 21 Tshimanga "Tim" Biakabutuka days from the start of the 2019 〽️ Season. I don’t have any videos lined up for 2️⃣1️⃣, but I do have former ND Coach @CoachLouHoltz88 trying to say his name back in 1994.
Enjoy & GO BLUE!! pic.twitter.com/5VNSXjHhdx

— Dr. Sap (@DrSap4UM) August 11, 2019

IMPORTANT IMPORTANT. It's important to economize your words.

I'm just now finding out that the Pioneer Pioneers' coach is named Bill Billers and this is blowing my mind minders. https://t.co/ruRTqKyIJ0

— Andy Reid (@misterAndyReid) August 13, 2019

Alas, this appears to be a typo; for the rest of the article the coach is referred to as "Bellers." I apologize for ruining everything.

[After THE JUMP: it's not a new logo, it's just a different branding device]

Coach fight! I want Gattis to be the handshake guy against Maryland. Gattis:

"Mike Locksley can say I watched him call every play, but ask him where the game plans usually came from?" he told reporters earlier this week.

Locksley!

"He knows the truth and as I’ve said before, there’s a difference between suggestions and decisions," he said. "And I’m sure that notebook he has upstairs has a lot of suggestions in them and hopefully he’ll utilize them in the right way and make good decisions like I did for Alabama.

The only way this can be resolved is Stone Cold Stunners at ten paces.

Franz scouting. Wagner played for Germany in the U18 Euros; from what I saw it was a frustrating tournament. Wagner fouled out fairly inexplicably in the first game and ended up not getting a couple of really obvious calls, then a minor back issue saw him miss another chunk of time. He may have had the tournament's best posterization, which leads this highlight reel…

#German forward prospect Franz Wagner has excellent size for a wing at 6-8 with decent length. @DraftExpress got a glimpse of what makes him such an intriguing prospect at the 2019 @FIBA U18 #European Championship in #Greece >> https://t.co/SbM1s6NiIU pic.twitter.com/Oi74W8Ythm

— DraftExpressContent (@DXContent) August 12, 2019

…and still projects as a major contributor this season. But one and done talk seems like it's premature. Draft Express:

Wagner has excellent size for a wing at 6-8 with decent length and a frame that is on the narrow side and will certainly need time to fill out. …aggressive in the open floor, highly creative with the way he finishes around the basket. He shows potential attacking closeouts for pull-up jumpers or even stepbacks from beyond the arc. He's also a team player with a mature approach to the game on both ends…

His lack of strength, average athleticism and overall inconsistent play led most scouts in Volos to surmise that Wagner will need a few years of seasoning at Michigan.

Bad news for next year; good news for the year or two after that. I'm not concerned that his shot wasn't falling since that's a small sample size and he's got plenty of evidence that he's an excellent shooter. His team was not well-structured to take advantage of his assets; it was a lot of head-down driving and very little action that allowed Wagner to either shoot or attack a closeout.

RIP Joe Tiller. Every year the anonymous quotes get more and more anodyne. Why is this anonymous?

"Defensively, they're tough. Absolutely one of the best and meanest defenses in college football. There's enough skill and enough buy-in where they can do a lot of different things. If you don't have athleticism they're going to wear you out. They're high pressure, lots of blitz and play man coverage almost all the time."

That barely qualifies as an opinion.

why did I even link this article it's so boring

The Celestial Empire. The money has to go somewhere. Increasingly it goes to coaches and peripheral folks:

Is this out of control? Survey says…

Auburn University reached out to tell me it's "inaccurate" to report they have a "new logo." This is the communications team's explanation for what they say is not a new logo. pic.twitter.com/eSMi4d6vHQ

— Brandon Marcello (@bmarcello) August 9, 2019

Yes. Yep. Yeppers. Most definitely. Si.

Note that much of the scholarship spending is fake—many scholarship athletes would not be paying full freight if they were civilians—or soft. It doesn't actually cost Michigan 45k to put a student in an already-extant classroom and have them use already-extant facilities.

Also in pay the players already, the number of schools spending 100 million annually went from 4 to 37 over the last ten years.

Hopefully this is wrong? We've been operating under the assumption that Michigan players who played a couple of games their freshman year but did not play after that 78-0 Rutgers game would get their years back, because surely Michigan wasn't foolish enough to blow redshirts for mop-up duty against the Cable Subscribers. But Carlo Kemp seems to believe this is it for him:

“You don’t get these opportunities back,” Kemp told reporters on Friday. "Today’s practice I won’t ever get back. I don’t get a camp next year. This day I won’t have next year. Whatever camp day it is — Camp 10 — I won’t get a Camp 10 next year.

“It’s just trying to realize that I won’t get these opportunities anymore, so every single time you go out there they really matter.”

Kemp played in two games as a freshman, the last in that Rutgers game. It's going to be extremely dumb to not get a fifth year out of him if that is indeed the case here.

Never settle. Former MSU recruiting staffer Curtis Blackwell is suing the school, claiming he was unfairly terminated:

Curtis Blackwell, Michigan State's former director of college advancement and performance, is suing head coach Mark Dantonio, former president Lou Anna K. Simon, former athletic director Mark Hollis and two members of the Michigan State University Police Department in federal court. …

If the parties don't come to a resolution on the case, things could get significantly ugly and out in the open — with Warnicke saying a second suit, alleging racial discrimination, will be filed in Ingham County Circuit Court in mid-Michigan. Warnicke attempted in February to add an amendment to the original case, to add racial discrimination, but the motion was denied by a federal judge, who said that complaint must be filed in state court, not federal court, because it invokes the state's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act.

I assume this will settle because MSU has no compunction about coughing up six or seven digits if it gets to keep the doors closed and the internal workings of a university that harbored the worst sexual assault offender in NCAA history from the public. But let's hope this thing goes the distance anyway.

It's probably not a coincidence that as this goes on MSU is taking what has to be their worst-ever whomping instate. MSU has commitments from the #17, 21, and 23 players in the state and has no shot at the three uncommitted guys ranked in P5 territory. It's unclear if the Blackwell issue is MSU's problem or if it's more the fact that Dantonio pulled the Brady Hoke Memorial Titanic Deck Chair Shuffling this offseason… or it's both.

Hello, various Pehrsons. Hockey announced their incoming class and it's pretty much as expected:

• Forwards: Johnny Beecher, Eric Ciccolini, Emil Ohrvall, Nick Granowicz, Jacob Hayhurst (grad transfer)
• Defensemen: Cam York, Keaton Pehrson, Shane Switzer (grad transfer)

Beecher and York went in the first round of the mot recent draft; Ciccolini went in the seventh; everyone else is old. No middle ground here. Ohrvall, Granowicz, and Pehrson are all out of junior eligibility.

That means six potential 2019 recruits will defer to 2020, which is still a clown car despite some additional defections.

Also, Weisman's replacement:

Providence associate head coach Kris Mayotte is leaving the Friars to join Mel Pearson’s coaching staff at Michigan. Former Union goaltender previously was at St. Lawrence. Great addition for the Wolverines for both recruiting and coaching.

— Jeff Cox (@JeffCoxSports) August 8, 2019

Seems like a good choice. Providence has been a successful program in the Everyone Is 23 era.

The worst! There are organizations worse than the NCAA. Many of them are state high school versions of same. The MHSAA's latest absurdity:

The MHSAA ruled that Walled Lake Western 2020 WR Abdur-Rahmaan Yaseen who has been committed to Northwestern University ineligible for the 2019 football season.

The MHSAA determined that since Yaseen was taking high school level classes as a homeschooled 8th grader that he only needs credits for 3 classes to be graduated from high school right now, thus making him ineligible.

Yaseen is 17, the exact age he should be to be a high school senior.

Etc.: Devin Bush doing Devin Bush things. Official site talks Beecher/York. Don't click here. Steele ranks M's schedule the ninth-hardest in CFB. No standardized injury reports this year.