jim harbaugh cool dad

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Sponsor note.

WolverineWeekend_MGoBlog

Hey folks, Wolverine Weekend is back at Grand Traverse Resort and Spa from June 9 – 11. The weekend includes:

  • Meet-and-greets with Donovan Edwards, Will Johnson, Colston Loveland and Junior Colson,
  • Dinner featuring John U. Bacon, Devin Gardner, Sam Webb and football players,
  • Golf Outing on The Wolverine, and
  • a Woodson Whiskey Tasting Event.

Great opportunity to get your Michigan on and support some NIL initiatives.

Harbaugh gonna Harbaugh. Pat Forde profiles Harbaugh, and his world champion dad status never wavers:

If Harbaugh hadn’t gone to Michigan and become a famous football player and coach, what skilled trade would he have undertaken?

“A lawnsman!” Harbaugh enthusiastically responds. “That’s what I do. Mowing the lawn is one of the great feelings I have in life.”

I don’t think this will work and I don’t think it should. Deion Sanders has detonated the Colorado roster:

Colorado recently updated its 2023 football roster. All of the names of players who are departing via the portal have been deleted. The revised roster lists 76 players: 12 returning scholarship players, 21 incoming transfers, 17 new freshmen and 26 walk-ons. Not listed are 17 more transfers who have verbally committed. …

A total of 53 scholarship players have left the program since Sanders was hired in December.

A large number of them were told to hit the bricks after spring practice, which is really doubling down on the idea that you can import a roster from whole cloth. Folks are skeptical:

“It is just absolutely unreasonable to think you can sign 25 players out of the spring transfer portal and make your team better,” the Big 12 DPP said.

There’s a reason the NFL sees far less in-season trade activity than any other major sport. In hockey, soccer, baseball, and basketball you can kind of just go play even if there’s some transition costs moving from system to system. In football one busted assignment is a touchdown. And we’ve seen transfer-heavy teams fail to live up to expectations. MSU, which recently aspired to become Portal U, seems to be cratering. Adding a few guys here and there to plug holes is reasonable. Getting a whole football team on closeout from TJ Maxx? Maybe not so much.

[After THE JUMP: how this makes me feel]

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Oh. Barstool. Barstool is trash and it's no surprise that it's Barstool that has again found the trashiest sign on Penn State's campus and been like "oh sick burn, bro," because Barstool just hires whatever local Chad they can find and Chad does Chad things. The latest:

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Set aside the potential odiousness of the joke. It's not even a good joke. The University of Michigan did not decide to change the source of Flint's water, or attempt to cover up the humanitarian disaster that was unfolding. This is equivalent to burning PSU for the actions of Philadelphia's mayor. Nobody does this, because nobody has to when trying to burn Penn State.

Anyway, Barstool's second-biggest problem is that they think "edgy" is funny by itself. Andrew-Dice-Clay-ass website. 

The decline of home court advantage. Home court means less these days:

NCAA_home_court_advantage_margin

This validates Craig Ross's frequently-expressed opinion that in the dingy arenas of the 1970s refs would bone you without repercussion. A couple other items from that piece:

  • home court is a stronger effect the farther you travel
  • it's a stronger effect in bigger conferences, probably because of crowd size
  • all your conspiracy theories about referees are correct

All of 'em. Pick one. Yes, you're correct.

Half the defense. It was a good day for Michigan's defense:

Kinnel kind of surprises me, if only because I'm having a hard time thinking much of anything either way about the safeties. They are off screen for the large majority of this game, and Indiana's offense prohibits replays.

Mike Onwenu and Karan Higdon both made the offensive team. Also in "what were you doing with your offensive line recruiting two years ago": Maryland sophomore OG Terrance Davis makes the team. IIRC Michigan straight up passed on that guy.

20 games. Big Ten basketball head coaches have voted in favor of a 20-game conference schedule. Jon Rothstein reports that the change will happen next year. That'll take the schedule to 7 teams you play twice and 6 you play once, and a that point you might as well implement the Scottish Premiere League approach, which only takes 19 games and is awesome.

Harbaugh interacts with son. Via Outsports:

It’s only been in the last year that he came out to his dad. Dismayed by election results last November, he told his father that he was scared for himself and other people like him. When dad wrote back a vague message of support, James went all in.

“I just it blurted out –– and told him for the first time verbatim –– 'Dad, I'm gay. Do you know that? And because of that, this is why X,Y, Z. I'm scared because of this, that and the other.'

“And he just said something else back, it was an encouraging and uplifting response about how you just need to keep your head up. 'As long as you do what you feel is right in your mind, you live your truth. Everything will end up being OK.'"

James does not like his dad's sartorial choices, which makes him like every son in the history of the universe.

Even more hockey recruiting. Michigan continues to pick guys up at a rapid pace. They recently flipped USHL defenseman Jack Summers from Brown. Chris Dilks's take from a couple years ago:

Jack Summers-Victory Honda U16-Summers is a bit undersized and not a huge offensive threat yet, but he has incredible footwork and skating that makes him an effective defender and gives him the upside to potentially be a very dynamic player.

Summers played under Bill Muckalt last year, so he's a guy the coaching staff knows very well. Heisenberg has him listed as a 2019 kid. Michigan's also added 2019 F Cassidy Bowes, who's a bit of an odd duck. He spent last year playing in a western Canadian prep school league, putting up 49 points in 30 games. He's joined the BCHL and has 6 points in nine games in the early going.

Both Summers and Bowes will arrive in 2019 as 20-year-olds, so they're fleshing out the class. They're the 12th and 13th kids across four different recruiting classes Pearson has recruited since he was hired four months ago. He's added four guys to an already five-strong 2017 class, six 2019 kids to Mike Vukojevic, two 2020 kids to a Little Caesar's trio, and 2021 Dylan Duke.

I'm not sure all these guys are getting to campus or guaranteed full rides, particularly the older gents. This is a more aggressive style of recruiting than Michigan is used to; Pearson seems dead set on not having big roster holes from the inevitable departures.

Etc.: M settles FOIA lawsuit and must reform their terrible, terrible FOIA department. Hooray. Scooter Vaughn is a 28-year-old AHL veteran now, and he's also a cool skateboarder. Hurst still drives for Uber. How Bryce Love is... doing all that. Holding The Rope on IU. Urban Meyer's wife: thinks whatever has a hypen, can't spell, kinda racist. Harmon intercepts Kinnick.

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[Fuller/MGoBlog]

News bullets and other items:

  • Chris Evans blacked out when he was hit, which Harbaugh noted the doctors said is sometimes better for the brain in the long run, and was feeling better by halftime
  • Grant Perry and a few others didn’t play because of disciplinary issues
  • De’Veon Smith got more first-half carries than they planned; the staff liked what they saw and called the same play for him a few times

First half, you’re up huge, did you guys take your foot off the gas or was it something Illinois did to not quite rack it up like you have been?

“Yeah, first of all, I just think our team really played well today. The execution was outstanding both offensively, defensively, special teams. We were just executing well. I was really, really impressed. Those first three drives of the game, and then the entire game-- I thought Wilton Speight might have had one of the best games of his career.

“It was pretty windy out there. It was pretty tough to throw the ball whether we were going into the wind, with the wind, he was throwing the intermediate deep stuff—the 30-yard throws, the 35-yard, 40-yard throws, just on the money—it was impressive. Sometimes it’s never as good as you think until you look at the tape, but I have a feeling that was the best he’s played.”

Hank Aaron was the honorary captain today. What was that like, having him around the team and yourself?

“It was outstanding, Trevor. He’s just such a great man, such a gentleman. His granddaughter, as you know, goes to Michigan, and we’ve become friends through her. I was getting textes last night, I was at a high school game and some of the guys on the team were texting me how great Hank Aaron was. He talked to the team last night. Just A+. Can’t have it better. Got a nice autographed picture that he was gracious enough to sign so I’m gonna hang that in my office. Just being around—you know when you’re around greatness, and he’s one of the all-time greats. Really honored to share a sideline with Hank Aaron today.”

The two Bens on the left side, is that something you worked on during the bye week and you liked what you saw?

“Yeah, we’ve—Ben’s not just in the improvement week. We’ve seen what he can do at left tackle. We’ve seen that over the last 23 months. He’s a very versatile player. Felt like that was our best combination, Ben Braden and Ben Bredeson. Ben Bredeson’s a very ascending player. Thought he had a heck of a good game today. Really, everybody on the offensive line played extremely well today. It was impressive the way they executed.”

[After THE JUMP: the only time Woody Hayes, Malcolm X, and Michael Douglas as D-Fens have been mentioned in the same breath]