I hate to play the role of the Debbie Downer, but we had the perfect storm in a good sense the last couple of years and that may not be repeated soon. We had unusual coaching talent, players who hung around for an extra year and were some of the best talent the program has had along with few major injuries, Zinter being the exception and Blake in '22 but Donovan saved the day.
And by the way, much of that talent got here before NIL.
I have enjoyed every bit of the last three years. My National Championship football arrived yesterday and I was luck enough to be in Houston for the NC game. I thought we were good enough to have won the whole thing in 2022 also.
Realistically, while I wish coach Moore well, I have my doubts that he will be another Harbaugh. Harbaugh was exceptional. You don't find coaching talent like that often. I'm still saddened that JH is gone, in part because I think with the right AD he might have stayed.
Our schemes were perfectly matched for our talent.
JJ and Blake were exceptional. We had talent everywhere as the NFL draft showed; and potentially three more first rounders on this year's team.
My crystal ball suggests we will be good over the next few years but not as good as the last three years have been.
What has largely been missing is the personnel we should have been able to recruit with our record. Some of that was due to JH's dalliances with the NFL and some was due to not embracing NIL.
I think OSU has looked at college football in its current state and done exactly what needs to be done to win, namely, fire their money cannon. We have not. Sure, things have gotten better but our NIL money is at another level than what is happening in Columbus and not in a good way. Time will tell, of course. Our schedule is going to get tougher from the new B1G.
It was a lot of fun being at the top. I'm concerned that unless things from a money standpoint being a championship teram will be a fleeting memory.
Maybe it's me but I doubt we would see something similar from Brady.
Kids emulate parental behavior. I'm sure my kids did their fair share of downing one too many while students at Michigan and we often had a beer or shot of Scotch together, but not when they were seven and not in excess.
Seth, employment agreements, particularly with companies having strong balance sheets, are not bound by a salary cap of $20 million divided by N although NIL changes things a bit.
I used to put much more stock in the education component than I do now. For a player with the skill set that would permit playing in the NFL or NBA, MLB, etc., the amount of money generated by a typical education is of secondary importance. A guarantee of a four year scholarship should pro sports not work out is an incentive that could be added to a contract. Didn't Michigan once guarantee the four years even if a player left for the pros?
The major issue I see with unions for players is that even if the B1G and the SEC were to create a consortium where they control the narrative, there are other conferences not thusly bound. Consequently, those schools could buy the services of players.
I believe the NFL had a merger with the AFC several decades ago when a second league was formed. If everyone is on board, life gets easier but with the disparity of the income potential between schools, I don't see that happening.
Regarding Brian's comment that the single transfer rule was correct, I would agree that the rule would significantly reduce movement in and out of the portal.
What I would question is whether such a rule might be a problem from an antitrust standpoint.
The Supreme Court decision was a game changer and college football is a very different product than the NFL. A superleague might be a good answer because that is where maximum fan interest will reside along with the money players would be paid and where the presence of a union and financial rewards might provide the incentives that result in stability.
What I don't comprehend about the revenue proposal is how it deals with NIL money,
The proposal is about paying players with a maximum per school. However, if NIL is not limited, you still have a scenario where schools with generous boosters will have the ability to "buy" players to their heart's content. How I read the new proposal is that you start with a higher threshold depending on the whim of a given university.
I'm also at a loss as to how conferences are going to limit liability for past players who weren't paid. What would Denard have been worth when he was a player?
Why would Michigan and OSU, with their viewership and stadium capacities, want to be limited to the same maximum as Rutgers and Northwestern?
We live in Frisco, TX, a northern burb of Dallas and moved here after five years in Ann Arbor. My wife and I are both professionals.
Weather - summers are hot from June - September, the rest of the year is very nice and conducive to an outdoor lifestyle with the rare exception of cold weather which doesn't last very long. The Dallas area gets a fair amount of rain - over 40 inches annually so it is very green.
Frisco is a great place to live. If you like sports the Cowboys, PGA, Dallas Stars, a pro soccer team and a minor league baseball team is either here or headquartered in Frisco. The Cowboys have a 14,000 seat indoor stadium where the team practices and high schools play their games or at Toyota Stadium, a 20,000 outdoor stadium Public schools are top notch. More restaurants of every variety than you can imagine. Parks are everywhere. Our county is 1/3 Asian which makes for a great restaurant scene. If you have heard of the store, it is here or nearby. Very nice large mall with a 24 screen theater. Fiber to the premises. The town has won many awards for city planning. The area has great health care with UT-Southwestern having a campus in Dallas that makes Michigan Medicine look small by comparison. Lots of high-tech jobs and young professionals. Lots of culture. Cloes to two airports, DFW and Love Field.
Frisco, a few years ago, was Money's #1 town in America. One of the safest cities in the US if crime is a concern.
Infrastructure is terrific and much of it is new. Potholes largely don't exist in the burbs, although they do in older parts of Dallas. There is a reason why many businesses have relocated to Texas; sane regulations and things get done quickly. Even the MVA functions well.
Texas does not have an income tax but property taxes are higher to make up for it. Housing is still affordable and you get a lot for your money. Texas BBQ -- brisket is other worldly good.
Gripes - it's a big area with 8 million people so there is traffic at rush hour. Summers are hot.
I think you pretty much nailed it...in the past tense.
I was the lucky owner of a 2020 BMW M5 which I recently traded in for a 2024 540i X. I loved the M5 and would have bought another but the new version is going to be a hybrid (PHEV). BMW has also used the same platform for its new 5-Series (designated G-60) for EV's and ICE cars. Because of that, both types of cars get compromised. The range is not great for EV's and there are compromises all over the place for ICE cars including the new car being longer, wider and taller, features that are not advantageous for sports sedans. I also believe BMW, along with just about everyone else, had made predictions about the rate of EV adoption that is simply not taking place.
Don't get me wrong - the new 5-Series is a nice car but IMO a step away from why many of us were so high on BMWs in the past.
I keep wondering when the schools that actually earn the bulk of the money each of the conferences receive based on viewership are going to ask for their fair share. It won't be an equal distribution.
OSU and Michigan, before the addition of the four West Coast schools were responsible for about 40 percent of the viewership. If a system based on proportionality can't be figured out, the "superleague" that has been talked about may be next.
Screw Tony Petitti. Some of us have not forgotten.
Maybe....we play a very difficult schedule and the replacement pieces on offense are not equal to what we lost. I was not disappointed in the Spring Game play but it was not the same offense we have gotten used to over the last three years.
JJ and Blake were generational talents and to have had them at the same time created a synergy that I don't expect to see any time soon. We had exceptional O-lines and a very good receiving corps. That is not a knock on our current players and coaches but exceptional talent and coaching like we have had since Harbaugh rebuilt the coaching after 2020 just happened to give us what was arguably the best three years of Michigan football.
Combining real-time AI with analytics could be an interesting approach. With enough processing horsepower and a good link (thus ruling out Michigan Stadium) you could get very quick responses that might be very helpful in terms of tendencies. Uniform numbers provide immediate player ID. The analysis could be transmitted in a few seconds.
For what it's worth the frigging NCAA has taken 30 years to do what the NFL did in the '90's. Ditto for high schools in Texas that adopted in-helmet microphones quite some time ago.
But hey, the MFers can draft rules that allow for an ice cream cake to be eaten by a recruit in the lobby but the same cake can't be brought to the recruit's room.
There's been progress. Recruits can at least have cream cheese with their bagels now.
Hate to say it but the fact that our universities remain NCAA members says as much about the leadership of our universities as it does about the NCAA.
Am I missing something here or is it abject absurdity to make a rule restricting conversation between a potential recruit and a coach, i.e. a dead period? That the University rolls over and accepts punishment for such a heinous crime makes a case that Warde needs to go along with the Regents who support accepting punishment for something so ridiculous.
From the perspective of antitrust law, I suspect a strong case could be made that regulations such as this are unduly restrictive.
OMG! Coaches talked to a few recruits during Covid. What a horrible crime!!
Yet, the FBI investigates and finds all sorts of issues with paying players pre-NIL, and nothing from the NCAA. Why do we continue to support this organization and why does Michigan keep falling on its sword?
i don't think it works that way. I'm saddened by this news as working as part of the Michigan team was an opportunity that might not come again sometime soon.
Perhaps Moore will show some pity and get him help but I would guess he is likely gone.
Speaking of dark places, I live in Frisco, TX, a northern suburb of Dallas and we had about four minutes of totality. We also got lucky in that a partly cloudy day had clear skies when totality hit.
What I found most interesting was that the onset of darkness did not seem "linear," i.e., it was not much darker until right before totality and it became light very quickly right after totality. I took some interesting pictures although I'm not sure it was good for my iPhones CCD. We all observed a brief drop in temperature.
I found the experience to be an interesting one but not one of deep emotion.
I'd agree...I thought Iowa's loss today was likely because I felt that SC was a better team with better athletes who could make it tough on Clark and they did.. Connecticut figured out how to guard Clark as did SC and she was not the same player as she was against lesser teams. Obviously she is incredibly talented but your competition matters.
Sadly, free speech rights have been rolled back at many universities for quite some time now. The days of giving a platform for opposing points of view has been usurped due to the political leanings of significant numbers of faculty and students and this has been going on for years.
I assume most people have heard about the debacle at Stanford Law School when a conservative judge was invited to speak. Things did not go well. It was a major embarrassment to Stanford.
I suspect one salient reason behind what Ono is doing relates to alumni contributions. Many older alumni don't see what is happening on campuses as something they choose to support and they protest by not writing checks.
Regardless, a right to protest does not give one an inherent right to disrupt. I don't believe Ono's comments suggest anything beyond not allowing disruption, a position I would agree with.
That's a big bummer that you missed the game due to weather. We drove to Houston from Dallas the morning of the game and hit a little rain but it wasn't until game time that a serious storm blew in. It was nice most of the afternoon.
Thunderstorms in Texas are not for the faint of heart. Between the hail, wind and possibility tornados you have to take them seriously. My biggest concern is hail. Homeowners policies here typically have a 1% deductible for hail.
We live in Frisco, TX, a northern burb of the Dallas metroplex. We get 4+ minutes of total eclipse but a weather forecast that calls for partly cloudy in the morning and then thundershowers in the afternoon. Fingers crossed!
We have 8 million people in this region - can't imagine what traffic will be like surrounding this event.
Speaking of Signgate, has there ever been any evidence of an actual Michigan violation, other than Scalion being “more likely than not” on the sideline of the Central Michigan game?
I wonder when your 4.4L V8 BMW's were purchased? That engine was completely redesigned a few years ago. I just returned a 2020 M559 after almost four years of leasing and the car never once needed a drop of oil and had zero engine problems. The performance was a thing of beauty. Having said that, I would not own a BMW without a warranty. Ditto for Audis.
I have been buying all-wheel drive cars for close to 20 years. I had an Audi A8L Quatro and a bunch of BMW AWD's. I like AWD performance in snow and rain.
I now live in TX and just bought a 2024 BMW 540 iX AWD. The powerplant is a twin-Turbo in-line six cylinder with 375 HP. BMW has had great success with their straight six powerplants.
I never quite understood the issue after the Wisconsin game where the University quickly fell on its sword. Please correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Greg Gard grab Juwan after the game to talk to him when Juwan was looking to exit and was hot over a Wisconsin timeout and then when a scuffle broke out Juwan lashed out after an assistant shoved a Michigan player?
If that's the case, I'd be in lots of trouble as I would do the same thing if I were a coach. You don't push another team's players.
Two seasons ago, who would have expected that with three incredibly talented players, DIckinson, Howard and Bufkin, that the team would not have performed better.
Then things went to hell this season and the Sanderson episode occurred.
Sometimes things just don't work out. Whatever chemistry the team had in its first four years evaporated.
I wish Juwan well and hope he knocks it out of the park with whatever he does next.
It's the great Michigan academics double standard again. If an athlete were to attend Michigan as a freshman with SAT/ACT scores well below what the average student needs for admission, that's OK if the kid goes into one of Michigan's academic program. But if a kid transfers into the same program from other universities, sorry, your credits from another school are worthless.
If you were an up and coming coach, would you accept the Michigan job with one hand tied behind your back due to the academic roadblock to say nothing about NIL money?
Successful use of the portal can rebuild program quickly but not if the deck is stacked against you as it is at Michigan. This program will be starting at ground zero.
I thought this was the best game against top competition, start to finish, Michigan played all year. If they can continue to play future games like they did last night, they are going to be hard to beat.
I finished watching the series last night. I thought the depiction of Brady's trip to Michigan and his history was fairly accurate. From what I have heard, he almost left Michigan. There is the story with pictures about the episode relating to fan appreciation and how Brady had almost no one in his line while Drew Henson had a long line.
I also thought that the story of how Brady and Bill Belichick grew apart was likely an accurate depiction of what took place.
I don't think you need to be an insider to realize that in addition to the players having checked out, so have a majority of the fans. An empty Crisler and no one watching on TV is not a good thing when it comes time to pay the bills.
In this day and age where major college sports are all about the money, the revenue stream may talk loudly.
Having a lesser team win happens periodically. It's been happening in the B1G West for as long as I can remember the B1G with divisions.
What I like about it is that there is competition in the conference right up to the last game or two.
There is no way a team like PSU, having lost to us and OSU, should have another opportunity to be in a playoff. That is going to be the case with probably 2/3 of the teams that are selected.
I'm one of those people who has thought less is more when it comes to the playoffs. That Michigan-OSU game every year was for all the marbles. Going forward that will no longer be the case. While my anxiety level may be lower, the importance of the game will be diluted.
Have a conference playoff. Do something akin to the NFL model of four team divisions and have the division winners play. It would have been easier with sixteen teams. Or go to 20 and have five team divisions with four divisions or 24 teams and six divisions. Have the winners of the SEC and B1G play each other,
If you had 24 team conferences, you could have 12 teams in a playoff that matters and then the winners from each conference play.
And if ND is not in one of those conferences, they can tune in and watch.
JJ's accomplishments speak for themselves. College football fans are a fickle bunch, particularly when they have had gotten their asses kicked the last few years.
I believe JJ has all the tools to be an excellent pro. Let us not forget, he is only 21, If you want to talk about toughness, the Maryland game is an example of just how tough he is.
Time will tell of course, but JJ has all the tools, the physical skills and the intangibles that are much harder to develop.
i have to believe that it wouldn't be Ono. The direction being taken for the football and basketball programs' handling of NIL likely involves the top leadership of the University including legal, the AD and the ultimate decision makers - the Regents - a bunch of largely older people who fail to see how the athletic world has changed after the Supreme Court handed down its opinion re NIL.
With Michigan's stance on NIL and our policies on transfer students, I'd suggest that our regents have exhibited dysfunction with respect to a few areas of college athletics.
The last two years have gone from bad to worse. Sometimes things just don't work out and this is one of those times. There is no justification for Manuel to give Juwan another year. The program has reached embarrassment stage.
Between the results, Juwan's temper issues and now Sanderson leaving after a long, successful stint working with the program maintaining a status quo would be hard to justify.
I say this with no malice of any kind towards Juwan. His tears of joy when he got the coaching job were very real, the tears of someone who loves his alma mater. I am sure the pain he feels is deeper than ours. Having said that, change is necessary.
Devin yes, but Denard was never an accurate passer in HS...something in the mid 40% range if I remember right. He did a bit better at Michigan but his passing skills were limited (relatively speaking.) I always saw him as a slot receiver who would get lots of usage because of his running ability once he had the ball in his hands.
It might be the taxes but it sure as hell isn't the weather, Take 23 into Ohio and the road quality is instantly smooth and well maintained as soon as you leave Michigan. I've driven through Iowa and Nebraska many times and have visited much of the Midwest on business and you just don't see the same problems as Michigan. Whitmer's efforts have helped a bit but there is still a long way to go.
For a quality town, Ann Arbor roads seem to be some of the worst to say nothing about the unpaved roads in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County.
I say it all depends. After I finished my education, and this goes back a bit, I took two years off and moved to Aspen where I skied almost every day from Thanksgiving to mid-April. I had skied for six years before then and was a decent skier. I started skiing shortly after college graduation.
I like lessons, particularly group lessons. Obviously group lessons are a bit more generic than private lessons but I found them lots of fun and met lots of fun people. In Aspen, they used to have inexpensive clinics in January for local people who were advanced skiers. I took weeks of them over the time I lived there and afterwards. A good ski school will place you in a group consistent with your ability. Some folks advance faster than others.
As for snowboarding and skiing, I have done both. As an expert skier it took three days of lessons and lots of butt time on the snow to get the hang of snowboarding. I snowboarded for a while but then went back to skiing, not that I didn't like snowboarding but it seemed like I had reached an ability peak which I never felt skiing.
Both of my kids started skiing at age three and before they were teenagers were excellent skiers. They switched over to snowboarding for a couple of years but both went back to skiing.
I recently moved from Ann Arbor, What I always liked about the town was that an awful lot of good things were very easy to get to including the Stadium, Yost and other athletic facilities. Until you need it, you don't appreciate how nice it is to have world class healthcare a few minutes away. The food scene is obviously quite good for a small city.
Globe Life Field is a beautifully done indoor stadium where the World Series winner Texas Rangers play in Arlington, TX, which is part of the Dallas Metroplex. There is also the old Rangers stadium close by.
The weather should be beautiful although if they are indoors, it won't matter. 70's and 80's which is only 20+ degrees above normal for this time of year.
Recent Comments
I hate to play the role of the Debbie Downer, but we had the perfect storm in a good sense the last couple of years and that may not be repeated soon. We had unusual coaching talent, players who hung around for an extra year and were some of the best talent the program has had along with few major injuries, Zinter being the exception and Blake in '22 but Donovan saved the day.
And by the way, much of that talent got here before NIL.
I have enjoyed every bit of the last three years. My National Championship football arrived yesterday and I was luck enough to be in Houston for the NC game. I thought we were good enough to have won the whole thing in 2022 also.
Realistically, while I wish coach Moore well, I have my doubts that he will be another Harbaugh. Harbaugh was exceptional. You don't find coaching talent like that often. I'm still saddened that JH is gone, in part because I think with the right AD he might have stayed.
Our schemes were perfectly matched for our talent.
JJ and Blake were exceptional. We had talent everywhere as the NFL draft showed; and potentially three more first rounders on this year's team.
My crystal ball suggests we will be good over the next few years but not as good as the last three years have been.
What has largely been missing is the personnel we should have been able to recruit with our record. Some of that was due to JH's dalliances with the NFL and some was due to not embracing NIL.
I think OSU has looked at college football in its current state and done exactly what needs to be done to win, namely, fire their money cannon. We have not. Sure, things have gotten better but our NIL money is at another level than what is happening in Columbus and not in a good way. Time will tell, of course. Our schedule is going to get tougher from the new B1G.
It was a lot of fun being at the top. I'm concerned that unless things from a money standpoint being a championship teram will be a fleeting memory.
Maybe it's me but I doubt we would see something similar from Brady.
Kids emulate parental behavior. I'm sure my kids did their fair share of downing one too many while students at Michigan and we often had a beer or shot of Scotch together, but not when they were seven and not in excess.
Seth, employment agreements, particularly with companies having strong balance sheets, are not bound by a salary cap of $20 million divided by N although NIL changes things a bit.
I used to put much more stock in the education component than I do now. For a player with the skill set that would permit playing in the NFL or NBA, MLB, etc., the amount of money generated by a typical education is of secondary importance. A guarantee of a four year scholarship should pro sports not work out is an incentive that could be added to a contract. Didn't Michigan once guarantee the four years even if a player left for the pros?
The major issue I see with unions for players is that even if the B1G and the SEC were to create a consortium where they control the narrative, there are other conferences not thusly bound. Consequently, those schools could buy the services of players.
I believe the NFL had a merger with the AFC several decades ago when a second league was formed. If everyone is on board, life gets easier but with the disparity of the income potential between schools, I don't see that happening.
Regarding Brian's comment that the single transfer rule was correct, I would agree that the rule would significantly reduce movement in and out of the portal.
What I would question is whether such a rule might be a problem from an antitrust standpoint.
The Supreme Court decision was a game changer and college football is a very different product than the NFL. A superleague might be a good answer because that is where maximum fan interest will reside along with the money players would be paid and where the presence of a union and financial rewards might provide the incentives that result in stability.
What I don't comprehend about the revenue proposal is how it deals with NIL money,
The proposal is about paying players with a maximum per school. However, if NIL is not limited, you still have a scenario where schools with generous boosters will have the ability to "buy" players to their heart's content. How I read the new proposal is that you start with a higher threshold depending on the whim of a given university.
I'm also at a loss as to how conferences are going to limit liability for past players who weren't paid. What would Denard have been worth when he was a player?
Why would Michigan and OSU, with their viewership and stadium capacities, want to be limited to the same maximum as Rutgers and Northwestern?
We live in Frisco, TX, a northern burb of Dallas and moved here after five years in Ann Arbor. My wife and I are both professionals.
Weather - summers are hot from June - September, the rest of the year is very nice and conducive to an outdoor lifestyle with the rare exception of cold weather which doesn't last very long. The Dallas area gets a fair amount of rain - over 40 inches annually so it is very green.
Frisco is a great place to live. If you like sports the Cowboys, PGA, Dallas Stars, a pro soccer team and a minor league baseball team is either here or headquartered in Frisco. The Cowboys have a 14,000 seat indoor stadium where the team practices and high schools play their games or at Toyota Stadium, a 20,000 outdoor stadium Public schools are top notch. More restaurants of every variety than you can imagine. Parks are everywhere. Our county is 1/3 Asian which makes for a great restaurant scene. If you have heard of the store, it is here or nearby. Very nice large mall with a 24 screen theater. Fiber to the premises. The town has won many awards for city planning. The area has great health care with UT-Southwestern having a campus in Dallas that makes Michigan Medicine look small by comparison. Lots of high-tech jobs and young professionals. Lots of culture. Cloes to two airports, DFW and Love Field.
Frisco, a few years ago, was Money's #1 town in America. One of the safest cities in the US if crime is a concern.
Here's a link:https://www.livingindallastx.com/the-best-frisco-texas Watch the vid.
Infrastructure is terrific and much of it is new. Potholes largely don't exist in the burbs, although they do in older parts of Dallas. There is a reason why many businesses have relocated to Texas; sane regulations and things get done quickly. Even the MVA functions well.
Texas does not have an income tax but property taxes are higher to make up for it. Housing is still affordable and you get a lot for your money. Texas BBQ -- brisket is other worldly good.
Gripes - it's a big area with 8 million people so there is traffic at rush hour. Summers are hot.
Tuck cuming!
There is always the felony aspect of not declaring income.
I think you pretty much nailed it...in the past tense.
I was the lucky owner of a 2020 BMW M5 which I recently traded in for a 2024 540i X. I loved the M5 and would have bought another but the new version is going to be a hybrid (PHEV). BMW has also used the same platform for its new 5-Series (designated G-60) for EV's and ICE cars. Because of that, both types of cars get compromised. The range is not great for EV's and there are compromises all over the place for ICE cars including the new car being longer, wider and taller, features that are not advantageous for sports sedans. I also believe BMW, along with just about everyone else, had made predictions about the rate of EV adoption that is simply not taking place.
Don't get me wrong - the new 5-Series is a nice car but IMO a step away from why many of us were so high on BMWs in the past.
I keep wondering when the schools that actually earn the bulk of the money each of the conferences receive based on viewership are going to ask for their fair share. It won't be an equal distribution.
OSU and Michigan, before the addition of the four West Coast schools were responsible for about 40 percent of the viewership. If a system based on proportionality can't be figured out, the "superleague" that has been talked about may be next.
Screw Tony Petitti. Some of us have not forgotten.
I'd bet JH is smiling.
There are always exceptions but for the most part people not drafted or UDFA's or draftees taken in round 7 are in those positions for a reason.
There is a simple way to get ND to join a conference. Don't schedule them unless they agree to join be it the ACC. B1G. etc.
Having a contract without games is like having no contract at all.
Until I can get an ice cream cake that doesn't melt in the lobby, I'd say the NCAA does a relatively shitty job of running things.
Maybe....we play a very difficult schedule and the replacement pieces on offense are not equal to what we lost. I was not disappointed in the Spring Game play but it was not the same offense we have gotten used to over the last three years.
JJ and Blake were generational talents and to have had them at the same time created a synergy that I don't expect to see any time soon. We had exceptional O-lines and a very good receiving corps. That is not a knock on our current players and coaches but exceptional talent and coaching like we have had since Harbaugh rebuilt the coaching after 2020 just happened to give us what was arguably the best three years of Michigan football.
Combining real-time AI with analytics could be an interesting approach. With enough processing horsepower and a good link (thus ruling out Michigan Stadium) you could get very quick responses that might be very helpful in terms of tendencies. Uniform numbers provide immediate player ID. The analysis could be transmitted in a few seconds.
For what it's worth the frigging NCAA has taken 30 years to do what the NFL did in the '90's. Ditto for high schools in Texas that adopted in-helmet microphones quite some time ago.
But hey, the MFers can draft rules that allow for an ice cream cake to be eaten by a recruit in the lobby but the same cake can't be brought to the recruit's room.
There's been progress. Recruits can at least have cream cheese with their bagels now.
Hate to say it but the fact that our universities remain NCAA members says as much about the leadership of our universities as it does about the NCAA.
Am I missing something here or is it abject absurdity to make a rule restricting conversation between a potential recruit and a coach, i.e. a dead period? That the University rolls over and accepts punishment for such a heinous crime makes a case that Warde needs to go along with the Regents who support accepting punishment for something so ridiculous.
From the perspective of antitrust law, I suspect a strong case could be made that regulations such as this are unduly restrictive.
Didn't Harbaugh say he didn't remember?
Unless what I recollect is incorrect, why are you not giving him the benefit of the doubt?
OMG! Coaches talked to a few recruits during Covid. What a horrible crime!!
Yet, the FBI investigates and finds all sorts of issues with paying players pre-NIL, and nothing from the NCAA. Why do we continue to support this organization and why does Michigan keep falling on its sword?
i don't think it works that way. I'm saddened by this news as working as part of the Michigan team was an opportunity that might not come again sometime soon.
Perhaps Moore will show some pity and get him help but I would guess he is likely gone.
Speaking of dark places, I live in Frisco, TX, a northern suburb of Dallas and we had about four minutes of totality. We also got lucky in that a partly cloudy day had clear skies when totality hit.
What I found most interesting was that the onset of darkness did not seem "linear," i.e., it was not much darker until right before totality and it became light very quickly right after totality. I took some interesting pictures although I'm not sure it was good for my iPhones CCD. We all observed a brief drop in temperature.
I found the experience to be an interesting one but not one of deep emotion.
I'd agree...I thought Iowa's loss today was likely because I felt that SC was a better team with better athletes who could make it tough on Clark and they did.. Connecticut figured out how to guard Clark as did SC and she was not the same player as she was against lesser teams. Obviously she is incredibly talented but your competition matters.
Sadly, free speech rights have been rolled back at many universities for quite some time now. The days of giving a platform for opposing points of view has been usurped due to the political leanings of significant numbers of faculty and students and this has been going on for years.
I assume most people have heard about the debacle at Stanford Law School when a conservative judge was invited to speak. Things did not go well. It was a major embarrassment to Stanford.
I suspect one salient reason behind what Ono is doing relates to alumni contributions. Many older alumni don't see what is happening on campuses as something they choose to support and they protest by not writing checks.
Regardless, a right to protest does not give one an inherent right to disrupt. I don't believe Ono's comments suggest anything beyond not allowing disruption, a position I would agree with.
That's a big bummer that you missed the game due to weather. We drove to Houston from Dallas the morning of the game and hit a little rain but it wasn't until game time that a serious storm blew in. It was nice most of the afternoon.
Thunderstorms in Texas are not for the faint of heart. Between the hail, wind and possibility tornados you have to take them seriously. My biggest concern is hail. Homeowners policies here typically have a 1% deductible for hail.
We live in Frisco, TX, a northern burb of the Dallas metroplex. We get 4+ minutes of total eclipse but a weather forecast that calls for partly cloudy in the morning and then thundershowers in the afternoon. Fingers crossed!
We have 8 million people in this region - can't imagine what traffic will be like surrounding this event.
Is violating the spirit of sportsmanship an actionable offense? That phrase is definitely subject to interpretation.
Speaking of Signgate, has there ever been any evidence of an actual Michigan violation, other than Scalion being “more likely than not” on the sideline of the Central Michigan game?
I wonder when your 4.4L V8 BMW's were purchased? That engine was completely redesigned a few years ago. I just returned a 2020 M559 after almost four years of leasing and the car never once needed a drop of oil and had zero engine problems. The performance was a thing of beauty. Having said that, I would not own a BMW without a warranty. Ditto for Audis.
Here's a link about the engine:
https://www.bmwblog.com/2024/01/02/bmw-n63-engine-pros-cons-and-reliability/#:~:text=The%20N63's%20reliability%20is%20a,reliability%20compared%20to%20its%20competitors.
I have been buying all-wheel drive cars for close to 20 years. I had an Audi A8L Quatro and a bunch of BMW AWD's. I like AWD performance in snow and rain.
I now live in TX and just bought a 2024 BMW 540 iX AWD. The powerplant is a twin-Turbo in-line six cylinder with 375 HP. BMW has had great success with their straight six powerplants.
I never quite understood the issue after the Wisconsin game where the University quickly fell on its sword. Please correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Greg Gard grab Juwan after the game to talk to him when Juwan was looking to exit and was hot over a Wisconsin timeout and then when a scuffle broke out Juwan lashed out after an assistant shoved a Michigan player?
If that's the case, I'd be in lots of trouble as I would do the same thing if I were a coach. You don't push another team's players.
Two seasons ago, who would have expected that with three incredibly talented players, DIckinson, Howard and Bufkin, that the team would not have performed better.
Then things went to hell this season and the Sanderson episode occurred.
Sometimes things just don't work out. Whatever chemistry the team had in its first four years evaporated.
I wish Juwan well and hope he knocks it out of the park with whatever he does next.
It's the great Michigan academics double standard again. If an athlete were to attend Michigan as a freshman with SAT/ACT scores well below what the average student needs for admission, that's OK if the kid goes into one of Michigan's academic program. But if a kid transfers into the same program from other universities, sorry, your credits from another school are worthless.
If you were an up and coming coach, would you accept the Michigan job with one hand tied behind your back due to the academic roadblock to say nothing about NIL money?
Successful use of the portal can rebuild program quickly but not if the deck is stacked against you as it is at Michigan. This program will be starting at ground zero.
I thought this was the best game against top competition, start to finish, Michigan played all year. If they can continue to play future games like they did last night, they are going to be hard to beat.
Megumin, I think your synopsis is accurate,
I finished watching the series last night. I thought the depiction of Brady's trip to Michigan and his history was fairly accurate. From what I have heard, he almost left Michigan. There is the story with pictures about the episode relating to fan appreciation and how Brady had almost no one in his line while Drew Henson had a long line.
I also thought that the story of how Brady and Bill Belichick grew apart was likely an accurate depiction of what took place.
Maybe Alford likes winning...hasn't happened in Columbus for quite a while.
I don't think you need to be an insider to realize that in addition to the players having checked out, so have a majority of the fans. An empty Crisler and no one watching on TV is not a good thing when it comes time to pay the bills.
In this day and age where major college sports are all about the money, the revenue stream may talk loudly.
Having a lesser team win happens periodically. It's been happening in the B1G West for as long as I can remember the B1G with divisions.
What I like about it is that there is competition in the conference right up to the last game or two.
There is no way a team like PSU, having lost to us and OSU, should have another opportunity to be in a playoff. That is going to be the case with probably 2/3 of the teams that are selected.
I'm one of those people who has thought less is more when it comes to the playoffs. That Michigan-OSU game every year was for all the marbles. Going forward that will no longer be the case. While my anxiety level may be lower, the importance of the game will be diluted.
Have a conference playoff. Do something akin to the NFL model of four team divisions and have the division winners play. It would have been easier with sixteen teams. Or go to 20 and have five team divisions with four divisions or 24 teams and six divisions. Have the winners of the SEC and B1G play each other,
If you had 24 team conferences, you could have 12 teams in a playoff that matters and then the winners from each conference play.
And if ND is not in one of those conferences, they can tune in and watch.
I think Klatt calls it right on lots of issues. I listen to many of his podcasts and almost always agree with his perspective.
When you go 15-0 and 40-3 over the last three years, there are a lot of positives or you would not have had that level of success.
If you sued that miserable organization and included a TRO, I'd bet you would win.
A kid wants to go back to college and get better educated while playing for another year.
How Awufl!
I could write a long list of things that could be worse.
The NCAA is a dumpster fire that needs to meet a quick demise.
JJ's accomplishments speak for themselves. College football fans are a fickle bunch, particularly when they have had gotten their asses kicked the last few years.
I believe JJ has all the tools to be an excellent pro. Let us not forget, he is only 21, If you want to talk about toughness, the Maryland game is an example of just how tough he is.
Time will tell of course, but JJ has all the tools, the physical skills and the intangibles that are much harder to develop.
I would not bet against him.
If not them, who, Warde? Ono?
i have to believe that it wouldn't be Ono. The direction being taken for the football and basketball programs' handling of NIL likely involves the top leadership of the University including legal, the AD and the ultimate decision makers - the Regents - a bunch of largely older people who fail to see how the athletic world has changed after the Supreme Court handed down its opinion re NIL.
With Michigan's stance on NIL and our policies on transfer students, I'd suggest that our regents have exhibited dysfunction with respect to a few areas of college athletics.
If cost were not part of the equation, would DJ's have the better product?
Zingermans also makes crullers and they are the best I have ever tasted. I think they were $4.
The last two years have gone from bad to worse. Sometimes things just don't work out and this is one of those times. There is no justification for Manuel to give Juwan another year. The program has reached embarrassment stage.
Between the results, Juwan's temper issues and now Sanderson leaving after a long, successful stint working with the program maintaining a status quo would be hard to justify.
I say this with no malice of any kind towards Juwan. His tears of joy when he got the coaching job were very real, the tears of someone who loves his alma mater. I am sure the pain he feels is deeper than ours. Having said that, change is necessary.
Devin yes, but Denard was never an accurate passer in HS...something in the mid 40% range if I remember right. He did a bit better at Michigan but his passing skills were limited (relatively speaking.) I always saw him as a slot receiver who would get lots of usage because of his running ability once he had the ball in his hands.
If you don't like snakes, particularly venomous snakes, a good portion of the US is off the map. .
It might be the taxes but it sure as hell isn't the weather, Take 23 into Ohio and the road quality is instantly smooth and well maintained as soon as you leave Michigan. I've driven through Iowa and Nebraska many times and have visited much of the Midwest on business and you just don't see the same problems as Michigan. Whitmer's efforts have helped a bit but there is still a long way to go.
For a quality town, Ann Arbor roads seem to be some of the worst to say nothing about the unpaved roads in Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County.
I say it all depends. After I finished my education, and this goes back a bit, I took two years off and moved to Aspen where I skied almost every day from Thanksgiving to mid-April. I had skied for six years before then and was a decent skier. I started skiing shortly after college graduation.
I like lessons, particularly group lessons. Obviously group lessons are a bit more generic than private lessons but I found them lots of fun and met lots of fun people. In Aspen, they used to have inexpensive clinics in January for local people who were advanced skiers. I took weeks of them over the time I lived there and afterwards. A good ski school will place you in a group consistent with your ability. Some folks advance faster than others.
As for snowboarding and skiing, I have done both. As an expert skier it took three days of lessons and lots of butt time on the snow to get the hang of snowboarding. I snowboarded for a while but then went back to skiing, not that I didn't like snowboarding but it seemed like I had reached an ability peak which I never felt skiing.
Both of my kids started skiing at age three and before they were teenagers were excellent skiers. They switched over to snowboarding for a couple of years but both went back to skiing.
I recently moved from Ann Arbor, What I always liked about the town was that an awful lot of good things were very easy to get to including the Stadium, Yost and other athletic facilities. Until you need it, you don't appreciate how nice it is to have world class healthcare a few minutes away. The food scene is obviously quite good for a small city.
If they would only fix the Fing roads.
Globe Life Field is a beautifully done indoor stadium where the World Series winner Texas Rangers play in Arlington, TX, which is part of the Dallas Metroplex. There is also the old Rangers stadium close by.
The weather should be beautiful although if they are indoors, it won't matter. 70's and 80's which is only 20+ degrees above normal for this time of year.