I agree that Harbaugh was behind the transformation, not transactional approach. And for as much as it was made fun of at the time, it worked. We ended up with the most cohesive team in college football full of strong upper class leaders, and young talent that didn't leave when we brought in a few veteran transfers to help win a championship. And the AD was more than happy with that approach as it did not require much from them. However, I think this approach has essentially run its course. The NIL landscape has evolved enough to the point that you need a clear and comprehensive program in place to compete, even if you are not going after the Underwoods of the world.
In Howards case, I think he ran into issue of being second sport at the school. There was just not the institutional will to compete with the true basketball elites. A regime change was needed in order to reassess and come up with plan that was appropriate for Michigan.
I also think the unfortunate truth is this - Michigan has as much or more money in its alumni base as anyone, but our alumni are simply not as interested in paying money for 17 and 18 year olds who might be good at sports as other schools. Some schools were already paying athletes in back channels just quickley moved that into the open when NIL came along. Some schools had large donors ready to start sponsoring athletes once it became legal. Michigan on the other hand will continue to build world class medical and research facilities. I do think there is a way for us to do both, but its going to take more effort from the AD to bring that money in, because it was not happening on its own.
it's just that Harbaugh and Howard were both very famous athletes who could reasonably believe their star power made NIL relatively unimportant.
Not sure I get this. Harbaugh was probably the most outspoken coach in all of college about players deserving their fair share of profit. And I thought Howard has said afterword that he was asking for more NIL support, but was essentially not getting anything from the AD. I think it might just be that Harbaugh and Howard were during transition into NIL world, where everyone was trying to figure out how to navigate. With new regimes coming in, who now have better understanding of the new landscape of college sports, both were in better position to make NIL demands clear as part of taking the head coaching jobs.
A couple years ago BIll Parcels was getting asked questions on Sportscenter about what goes on in team draft rooms. He explained what would normally be in there and the anchor asks "Is Mel Kipers big board there too?", and Bill literally started bursting our laughing. He seemed to remember he was employed by same network as Kiper and managed to compose himself and say "It wasn't in mine but it could be in someones", but it was very clear from his reaction that Kiper was consider a complete joke by anyone in the industry.
Personally the thing that turned me around on May (not that I was ever negative on him), was when I realized how truly awful FAU was before him. Like look at the records of all the coaches before he got there, wholy smokes. At the very least this guy knows how to build a program from nothing.
Interesting that’s it’s 20 hours private flight time for personal use. He’ll have to pay income tax on that, I wonder if that’s what the one time payment of 300k is for
Its Bill Martin all over again. He genuinely though every top coach in the country would be begging to coach Michigan when Carr retired. He screws up Les Miles hire, gets rejected by Schiano, and then scrambles to find Rich Rod who was clearly going to have culture/style issues taking over the program.
Who anointed Juwan the chosen one after one week? At the time he was respected in NBA coaching circles and generally believed he would land head coaching job at some point. JH seemed like a decent hire, but I don’t recall anyone considering him a slam dunk hire from the start, and many were concerned about lack of college coaching experience. It’s fair to say JH never should have been hired based on lack of college coaching experience, but Shaka on the other hand had experience…at being just a mediocre college coach. I think he would have been a worse hire since we actually know he’s nothing special, whereas at least Howard could clearly recruit and had enough pedigree to give him a shot.
Juwan Howard has been to more sweet 16s that’s Shaka Smart. I’m not defending Juwan but why do people keep acting like Shaka is some slam dunk hire. He has made one sweet 16. In 6 years at Texas he did not even get past round of 64. Yes his teams have done alright in regular season but at some point you must be able to do something in the tournament. I would be devastated if we hired him.
Similarly, former Indiana University, Vanderbilt University, and Louisiana State University head coach, Gerry DiNardo, recalled that he would routinely hire a graduate assistant whose sole purpose was to steal opposing teams’ signals. Mike McIntyre, the former head coach at the University of Colorado, went as far as saying that “[i]f you get your signals stolen, it’s your fault, not the other team’s fault.”
While there are a few coaches who believe that sign stealing is unacceptable, they are in the minority
You could be right. Possible the contract was not clear and he did not know, but from a legal perspective since his signature was on it, now the lawyers arguing other ways to get out of the contract.
This kid must have seen 400K cash and just signed whatever. Who is their right mind would give away 15% of pre-tax earnings for life? After taxes, agents and other costs thats at least 30% of his take home pay. After just his rookie contract he's supposed to pay ~1M back, so over 100% interest. He could have ran up a bunch of credit cards at 25% interest and been better off, and not be on the hook still for 15% of next deal.
The article doesn't say he unknowingly signed away his future earnings. It says that the deal, which was this company paying him ~400K today in exchange for 15% of his future NFL earnings, was not an NIL agreement. Thats just a speculative/payday loan arrangement that the lender is trying to profit off of. They did not receive any NIL services from the player, and sounds like it may have broken some Florida payday loan laws.
Still, your point remains that it underscores the shady landscape of the NIL world. 18 year olds are signing 6 and 7 figure contracts. In the business world, a company is not signing a contract that large without it going through legal/financial review from multiple people experienced with contract language and pitfalls. I've always said with NIL that if Michigan is not into pay for play, they should be pitching their massive legal and business network who can help athletes navigate the legal aspects of these deals.
O-line has a floor of Barnhart, Keegan, Nugent, Zinter, Jones that would be best o-line in B10. And theres still upside if Henderson is an improvement over Barnhart.
I keep seeing people mention ECU's decent QB. Am I missing something? He was a 4 star recruit, but his offer list does not reflect that ranking at all. ECU is replacing the most starters of any of our oppenents. Do we really think a guy in his first career start and a mostly rebuilt roster is gonna walk into the Big House and tear apart a Michigan team with Jenkings, Graham, McGregor, Colston, and Barrett chasing him all day?
When I lived in Arlington I had a 615AM flight Monday morning for several months for work. Reagan was great, I could literally call a Red Cab night before for a 515 pickup, and I'd sometimes be through security by 530. But, thats when there was zero traffic. Otherwise I agree with your pains.
Dulles on the other hand, feels like I would walk forever with those low ceilings and had very little amenities. When I moved to Reston and started using more often, I got used to it and learned some of the better spots though. Overall I don't know that I prefer one airport or the other.
Is there anyone that actually has different expectations for alcohol in a sports stadium? Of course it will be expensive and have long lines. Which is why I think people expecting this to significantly increase alcohol related incidents are vastly over blowing things. If Michigan actually allows this, I think the overall impact to game experience would be pretty minimal.
FYI your statement your child "was not granted admission because an athlete was provided a scholarship instead" is a bit misleading. Another prospective student was granted admission over your kid because s/he had a better overal profile for admissions - part of which might have been their ability to contribute to a University sports team - but the University did not admit an otherwise unqualified student only because of their athletic ability.
Were you genuinely unable to understand what I wrote because of the screw-ups? Because if not, it says more about you needing to make pretentious quote to show that you recognized grammatical issues on a message board.
Also I'm not sure what about my post says I'm spending lots of time worrying. I just pointed out that only one or two (not entirely unlikely) events occuring makes things dicey for this position group, and this pickup largely relieves that concern.
My concern with this secondary is not the talent, its the depth. Will Johnson can not go down, McBurrows has had lots of injuries, Walker might still be too raw for prime time, and other recruits have been passed by a walkon. Wallace is not a game changer talent wise but adds crucial depth, which goes a long way elavating the floor of this unit.
The problem was that Don Brown D was it was made to stop exactly what JT Barrett was - a mobile QB with limited throwing. But OSU hired Ryan Day as offensive coordinator and moved to a spread passing attack, which Don Brown had no answer for.
In this years and last years classes Michigan is stockpiling athletes on the defensive side of the ball that don't fit exact mold for any position but could all grow into somekind of DE/LB/S (or even TE for some). Hopefully the strategy works out. I think its the right move in the direction of the game. Modern offenses are looking to spread defenses out with passing game and use that to set up the run. You can counter that with an Aiden Hutchinson and David Ojabo in the DE spots, but if you're not gonna have 2 all american DE's to rush the passer, you need to be able to bring pressure other ways. Athletes all over the D who can get after the QB and can hold up in coverage seems like a solution. Add in some big DT's to stuff the run and eat up doubles all day and you can build a nasty D.
I think its evolution of the sport. The distinction between a someone on the DL who's a stand up edge guy vs a linebacker vs. a viper/saftey has become a bit more blurred. The evolution of passing and spread run concepts means all these positions need to be flexible athletes that can pass rush at times, stuff the run at others, and cover an RB out of the backfield.
I feel like this blog got a little enamoured with NHG because he flashed really good instincts on like 6 plays in 2021. Yet for some reason have hesitations about Rolder who was thrown in as true freshman and, while not Devin Bush, was generally servicable. Thats usually a good sign for future performance.
This isn't really that weird at all. There are definetly some coaches who's forte is their X's and O's kowladge (Riley, Heupel, etc), and there are some that are more of a "CEO" type (Saban, Dabo, etc). I think the CEO of my company is great, but he wouldn't be any help solving a major coding problem with our software and thats just fine. The whole professor analogy might be a little exaggerated, but I doubt its uncommon that head coaches are not that into the weeds on developing plays/game plans.
The thing that pops to me is their passing success rate it quite low. They are much better running the ball (likely has a lot to to with QB running). If we can stuff runs on early downs, then spy the QB, can Duggan complete 3rd and 6+ against our secondary?
All year I thought OSU's running game looked like our passing game the first year we hired Gattis. After the 2018 game we determined we had to improve the offense with some modern passing concepts, so we brought in Gattis, but we never seemed very comfortable in the passing game in 2019. After lasts year game, OSU thought they had to develop a power running game, and they look similarly uncomfortable executing.
I don't remember that at all. If I recall with him he actually disliked Urban, but liked Day. I remember thinking it was just our luck that our rival loses their generational head coach and that actually helped them steal a top recruit from us.
I'm optimistic about Schoon and Edwards. Im not getting hopes up on Corum. The no structural damage is really meaningless, there could still be ligament injury. The only thing that gives me hope is that Chase Brown was carried off the field a week ago with what looked much worse injury, and yet seemed totally good to go one week later. I'm praying for something similar with Corum.
I was wondering the same exact thing. I thought early UFRs even pointed out that there were a lot of things we could build off those plays long run too.
That was probably Freddy Adu. Signed with MLS at 14, never really panned out and had a journeyman career across a number of countries. Honestly I think most people even at the time knew that he was way overhyped. It was just one of those things where 14 year had physically matured early and goes pro, and the hype about the "next pele" kinda went viral. There was no chance he'd live up to expectations
Yea, but this is more like the guy who was promoted to partner at one of the big law firms but then lost a big case so now he's just in house counsel for a F500 company. The guy failed on nearly the highest stage in his profession, he is still incredibly knowledgable about the profession.
This is just not true. Ojabo was getting practive hype from his Freshman year. I think 2020 would have been a breakout year for him, but he got stuck in Scotland due to covid travel restrictions and was only able to join team late in camp. I think that, along with other 2020 qualifiers, disrupted what would have been a breakout year. But the point is that while he had little stats accumulated beforehand there was much more reason to beleive Ojabo was primed to step up last year than we are seeing with anyone this year.
Agree on that last point. I'm not sure why anyone thinks this will impact our NIL offerings at all. Nonetheless, better to see someone who understands athletics impact on the University than someone who is dismissive of it.
Its actually the opposite. Its JH that does not want to engage in the outright free for all go to the highest bidder recruiting. People seem very confused how NIL works...it is not the university paying players. I'm sure there are some things UM could do to be a better facilitator, but the real issue is other schools already had back channel booster apparateus set up to pay players when this was illegal. Now they are just doing it in the open. If JH wanted to step up our NIL game, I am sure he could make some phone calls and assemble a group of alumni/boosters to get this working. He has chosen not to try and compete in the highest bidder arms race. I'm willing to let it play out, I just hope it stays a "we'll always hover in the 10-15 recruiting range" and not "holy shit we can barely break top 30"
In 2020 when there was very little sports still, wasn't there a nationally televised game between Chet and Emoni? Chet dominated the game, and I think that was the first blow to the "Emoni is the next Lebron" narrative, and it just went downhill from there.
This is my thought too. JUB basically says that certain schools that were illegally paying before were able to just leverage those processes and bring them out of the shadows. An operation signing 20-30 million dollars worth of deals each year does not get set up overnight. But my hope is the University would take approach of "Lets get structures in place to help athletes navigate the process" vs "They're free to do it on their own, but we don't want any part of it".
Agree, he has shown me enough to make me comfortable he will be more than adequate replacement for Smith, and probably an overal upgrade. Defensively he's already shown his ability to get into passing lanes and grab steals (people forget Smith's size was probably biggest liability on D). PG is probably the hardest position to acclimate with a new team, Smith also didn't start the year nearly as good as he finished, and I expect Jones to continue to improve as he gets comfortable.
Have a ton of family who went to Wisconsin, I have been to Madison many times. If I had to plan day for a game (which I did in 2019, regretfully) do this:
- Get to town super early, hit up Mickies Dairy bar for breakfast. Get there early because its right next to stadium and gets crowded fast. But also, for parking, there is a lot of residential area near that actually has free street parking. Most times in Madison I am able to find a spot if you go bright and early.
- From there, the walk to the capital. Its probably a 1.5 mile walk but will take you all the way through campus and downtown. Checkout the student union (which for some reason does not serve beer until noon on Saturdays) and the views of lake Mendota.
- Grab some beets in the bars on state street. I like the Nitty Gritty and State Street Brats. There will be plenty of Michigan fans and the Wisconsin people have always been friendly in my experience.
Honest question, what is it that the University is doing to prevent NIL deals for athletes? I have heard of them blocking use of the block M, which from my (albeit limited) experience with IP law, is entirely understandable. I tried starting a small business when I was a student and was given a cease and desist letter from the University for using a block M. But whats stopping a player from doing an ad for a company and getting paid?
The Milton I watched last night, and the one described in this article, is exactly the Milton we had at Michigan. I hope he succeeds, but he is what he is at this point.
This is an all time terrible take its borderline just trolling. Senior Simpson and Teske? You mean a G league guy and a guy playing in Belgium now? Franz Wagner was a true freshman and no where near the player he was his second season. The year before that we were a 3 seed and went to the sweet 16. We lost the top 3 scorers from that team in Pool, Mathews, and Brazdeikis. Even with Beilien the consensus expectations the next year were a 4/5 seed max. We then lost Livers for several weeks and had a rough patch, but he returned and we were on pace for probably a 6 seed. And losing to play in team UCLA? ROFL, same team that lost on buzzer beater to the #1 overall seed.
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I agree that Harbaugh was behind the transformation, not transactional approach. And for as much as it was made fun of at the time, it worked . We ended up with the most cohesive team in college football full of strong upper class leaders, and young talent that didn't leave when we brought in a few veteran transfers to help win a championship. And the AD was more than happy with that approach as it did not require much from them. However, I think this approach has essentially run its course. The NIL landscape has evolved enough to the point that you need a clear and comprehensive program in place to compete, even if you are not going after the Underwoods of the world.
In Howards case, I think he ran into issue of being second sport at the school. There was just not the institutional will to compete with the true basketball elites. A regime change was needed in order to reassess and come up with plan that was appropriate for Michigan.
I also think the unfortunate truth is this - Michigan has as much or more money in its alumni base as anyone, but our alumni are simply not as interested in paying money for 17 and 18 year olds who might be good at sports as other schools. Some schools were already paying athletes in back channels just quickley moved that into the open when NIL came along. Some schools had large donors ready to start sponsoring athletes once it became legal. Michigan on the other hand will continue to build world class medical and research facilities. I do think there is a way for us to do both, but its going to take more effort from the AD to bring that money in, because it was not happening on its own.
Not sure I get this. Harbaugh was probably the most outspoken coach in all of college about players deserving their fair share of profit. And I thought Howard has said afterword that he was asking for more NIL support, but was essentially not getting anything from the AD. I think it might just be that Harbaugh and Howard were during transition into NIL world, where everyone was trying to figure out how to navigate. With new regimes coming in, who now have better understanding of the new landscape of college sports, both were in better position to make NIL demands clear as part of taking the head coaching jobs.
A couple years ago BIll Parcels was getting asked questions on Sportscenter about what goes on in team draft rooms. He explained what would normally be in there and the anchor asks "Is Mel Kipers big board there too?", and Bill literally started bursting our laughing. He seemed to remember he was employed by same network as Kiper and managed to compose himself and say "It wasn't in mine but it could be in someones", but it was very clear from his reaction that Kiper was consider a complete joke by anyone in the industry.
Personally the thing that turned me around on May (not that I was ever negative on him), was when I realized how truly awful FAU was before him. Like look at the records of all the coaches before he got there, wholy smokes. At the very least this guy knows how to build a program from nothing.
Interesting that’s it’s 20 hours private flight time for personal use. He’ll have to pay income tax on that, I wonder if that’s what the one time payment of 300k is for
Its Bill Martin all over again. He genuinely though every top coach in the country would be begging to coach Michigan when Carr retired. He screws up Les Miles hire, gets rejected by Schiano, and then scrambles to find Rich Rod who was clearly going to have culture/style issues taking over the program.
Who anointed Juwan the chosen one after one week? At the time he was respected in NBA coaching circles and generally believed he would land head coaching job at some point. JH seemed like a decent hire, but I don’t recall anyone considering him a slam dunk hire from the start, and many were concerned about lack of college coaching experience. It’s fair to say JH never should have been hired based on lack of college coaching experience, but Shaka on the other hand had experience…at being just a mediocre college coach. I think he would have been a worse hire since we actually know he’s nothing special, whereas at least Howard could clearly recruit and had enough pedigree to give him a shot.
Juwan Howard has been to more sweet 16s that’s Shaka Smart. I’m not defending Juwan but why do people keep acting like Shaka is some slam dunk hire. He has made one sweet 16. In 6 years at Texas he did not even get past round of 64. Yes his teams have done alright in regular season but at some point you must be able to do something in the tournament. I would be devastated if we hired him.
What happened to Leonard? I thought he was one of hottest DCs in country for a few years, now I see he is...an analyst at Illinois?
You could be right. Possible the contract was not clear and he did not know, but from a legal perspective since his signature was on it, now the lawyers arguing other ways to get out of the contract.
This kid must have seen 400K cash and just signed whatever. Who is their right mind would give away 15% of pre-tax earnings for life? After taxes, agents and other costs thats at least 30% of his take home pay. After just his rookie contract he's supposed to pay ~1M back, so over 100% interest. He could have ran up a bunch of credit cards at 25% interest and been better off, and not be on the hook still for 15% of next deal.
The article doesn't say he unknowingly signed away his future earnings. It says that the deal, which was this company paying him ~400K today in exchange for 15% of his future NFL earnings, was not an NIL agreement. Thats just a speculative/payday loan arrangement that the lender is trying to profit off of. They did not receive any NIL services from the player, and sounds like it may have broken some Florida payday loan laws.
Still, your point remains that it underscores the shady landscape of the NIL world. 18 year olds are signing 6 and 7 figure contracts. In the business world, a company is not signing a contract that large without it going through legal/financial review from multiple people experienced with contract language and pitfalls. I've always said with NIL that if Michigan is not into pay for play, they should be pitching their massive legal and business network who can help athletes navigate the legal aspects of these deals.
O-line has a floor of Barnhart, Keegan, Nugent, Zinter, Jones that would be best o-line in B10. And theres still upside if Henderson is an improvement over Barnhart.
I keep seeing people mention ECU's decent QB. Am I missing something? He was a 4 star recruit, but his offer list does not reflect that ranking at all. ECU is replacing the most starters of any of our oppenents. Do we really think a guy in his first career start and a mostly rebuilt roster is gonna walk into the Big House and tear apart a Michigan team with Jenkings, Graham, McGregor, Colston, and Barrett chasing him all day?
I actually think we added 4 captains from the portal. Henderson, Nugent, Wallace, and Barner.
When I lived in Arlington I had a 615AM flight Monday morning for several months for work. Reagan was great, I could literally call a Red Cab night before for a 515 pickup, and I'd sometimes be through security by 530. But, thats when there was zero traffic. Otherwise I agree with your pains.
Dulles on the other hand, feels like I would walk forever with those low ceilings and had very little amenities. When I moved to Reston and started using more often, I got used to it and learned some of the better spots though. Overall I don't know that I prefer one airport or the other.
Do you mean Johnson? Hill just signed last December.
Is there anyone that actually has different expectations for alcohol in a sports stadium? Of course it will be expensive and have long lines. Which is why I think people expecting this to significantly increase alcohol related incidents are vastly over blowing things. If Michigan actually allows this, I think the overall impact to game experience would be pretty minimal.
Wow the one Rutgers player...none other than Aaron Lewis. Good for him, but imagine this team if he had stayed.
FYI your statement your child "was not granted admission because an athlete was provided a scholarship instead" is a bit misleading. Another prospective student was granted admission over your kid because s/he had a better overal profile for admissions - part of which might have been their ability to contribute to a University sports team - but the University did not admit an otherwise unqualified student only because of their athletic ability.
Were you genuinely unable to understand what I wrote because of the screw-ups? Because if not, it says more about you needing to make pretentious quote to show that you recognized grammatical issues on a message board.
Also I'm not sure what about my post says I'm spending lots of time worrying. I just pointed out that only one or two (not entirely unlikely) events occuring makes things dicey for this position group, and this pickup largely relieves that concern.
My concern with this secondary is not the talent, its the depth. Will Johnson can not go down, McBurrows has had lots of injuries, Walker might still be too raw for prime time, and other recruits have been passed by a walkon. Wallace is not a game changer talent wise but adds crucial depth, which goes a long way elavating the floor of this unit.
The problem was that Don Brown D was it was made to stop exactly what JT Barrett was - a mobile QB with limited throwing. But OSU hired Ryan Day as offensive coordinator and moved to a spread passing attack, which Don Brown had no answer for.
In this years and last years classes Michigan is stockpiling athletes on the defensive side of the ball that don't fit exact mold for any position but could all grow into somekind of DE/LB/S (or even TE for some). Hopefully the strategy works out. I think its the right move in the direction of the game. Modern offenses are looking to spread defenses out with passing game and use that to set up the run. You can counter that with an Aiden Hutchinson and David Ojabo in the DE spots, but if you're not gonna have 2 all american DE's to rush the passer, you need to be able to bring pressure other ways. Athletes all over the D who can get after the QB and can hold up in coverage seems like a solution. Add in some big DT's to stuff the run and eat up doubles all day and you can build a nasty D.
I think its evolution of the sport. The distinction between a someone on the DL who's a stand up edge guy vs a linebacker vs. a viper/saftey has become a bit more blurred. The evolution of passing and spread run concepts means all these positions need to be flexible athletes that can pass rush at times, stuff the run at others, and cover an RB out of the backfield.
I feel like this blog got a little enamoured with NHG because he flashed really good instincts on like 6 plays in 2021. Yet for some reason have hesitations about Rolder who was thrown in as true freshman and, while not Devin Bush, was generally servicable. Thats usually a good sign for future performance.
Still need to convert these to committments, but very refreshing compared to last year where we would have these big recruiting weekends then silence.
Lol or just some standard dad joke type banter. I can hear my grandpa saying the exact same thing.
This isn't really that weird at all. There are definetly some coaches who's forte is their X's and O's kowladge (Riley, Heupel, etc), and there are some that are more of a "CEO" type (Saban, Dabo, etc). I think the CEO of my company is great, but he wouldn't be any help solving a major coding problem with our software and thats just fine. The whole professor analogy might be a little exaggerated, but I doubt its uncommon that head coaches are not that into the weeds on developing plays/game plans.
The thing that pops to me is their passing success rate it quite low. They are much better running the ball (likely has a lot to to with QB running). If we can stuff runs on early downs, then spy the QB, can Duggan complete 3rd and 6+ against our secondary?
All year I thought OSU's running game looked like our passing game the first year we hired Gattis. After the 2018 game we determined we had to improve the offense with some modern passing concepts, so we brought in Gattis, but we never seemed very comfortable in the passing game in 2019. After lasts year game, OSU thought they had to develop a power running game, and they look similarly uncomfortable executing.
I don't remember that at all. If I recall with him he actually disliked Urban, but liked Day. I remember thinking it was just our luck that our rival loses their generational head coach and that actually helped them steal a top recruit from us.
I'm optimistic about Schoon and Edwards. Im not getting hopes up on Corum. The no structural damage is really meaningless, there could still be ligament injury. The only thing that gives me hope is that Chase Brown was carried off the field a week ago with what looked much worse injury, and yet seemed totally good to go one week later. I'm praying for something similar with Corum.
I was wondering the same exact thing. I thought early UFRs even pointed out that there were a lot of things we could build off those plays long run too.
I'm not exactly one of the significant vets here, but welcome nonetheless.
Also, to answer your last point: https://mgoblog.com/content/supporting-mgoblog
That was probably Freddy Adu. Signed with MLS at 14, never really panned out and had a journeyman career across a number of countries. Honestly I think most people even at the time knew that he was way overhyped. It was just one of those things where 14 year had physically matured early and goes pro, and the hype about the "next pele" kinda went viral. There was no chance he'd live up to expectations
Yea, but this is more like the guy who was promoted to partner at one of the big law firms but then lost a big case so now he's just in house counsel for a F500 company. The guy failed on nearly the highest stage in his profession, he is still incredibly knowledgable about the profession.
This is just not true. Ojabo was getting practive hype from his Freshman year. I think 2020 would have been a breakout year for him, but he got stuck in Scotland due to covid travel restrictions and was only able to join team late in camp. I think that, along with other 2020 qualifiers, disrupted what would have been a breakout year. But the point is that while he had little stats accumulated beforehand there was much more reason to beleive Ojabo was primed to step up last year than we are seeing with anyone this year.
Agree on that last point. I'm not sure why anyone thinks this will impact our NIL offerings at all. Nonetheless, better to see someone who understands athletics impact on the University than someone who is dismissive of it.
Its actually the opposite. Its JH that does not want to engage in the outright free for all go to the highest bidder recruiting. People seem very confused how NIL works...it is not the university paying players. I'm sure there are some things UM could do to be a better facilitator, but the real issue is other schools already had back channel booster apparateus set up to pay players when this was illegal. Now they are just doing it in the open. If JH wanted to step up our NIL game, I am sure he could make some phone calls and assemble a group of alumni/boosters to get this working. He has chosen not to try and compete in the highest bidder arms race. I'm willing to let it play out, I just hope it stays a "we'll always hover in the 10-15 recruiting range" and not "holy shit we can barely break top 30"
Weird way to just blow away any lingering doubt about your (lack of) credibility.
In 2020 when there was very little sports still, wasn't there a nationally televised game between Chet and Emoni? Chet dominated the game, and I think that was the first blow to the "Emoni is the next Lebron" narrative, and it just went downhill from there.
But I thought Beilein players were just good in his system and never do anything in the NBA?
This is my thought too. JUB basically says that certain schools that were illegally paying before were able to just leverage those processes and bring them out of the shadows. An operation signing 20-30 million dollars worth of deals each year does not get set up overnight. But my hope is the University would take approach of "Lets get structures in place to help athletes navigate the process" vs "They're free to do it on their own, but we don't want any part of it".
Hassan Haskins makes sense, but Hutchinson was a top 100 player?
Agree, he has shown me enough to make me comfortable he will be more than adequate replacement for Smith, and probably an overal upgrade. Defensively he's already shown his ability to get into passing lanes and grab steals (people forget Smith's size was probably biggest liability on D). PG is probably the hardest position to acclimate with a new team, Smith also didn't start the year nearly as good as he finished, and I expect Jones to continue to improve as he gets comfortable.
Have a ton of family who went to Wisconsin, I have been to Madison many times. If I had to plan day for a game (which I did in 2019, regretfully) do this:
- Get to town super early, hit up Mickies Dairy bar for breakfast. Get there early because its right next to stadium and gets crowded fast. But also, for parking, there is a lot of residential area near that actually has free street parking. Most times in Madison I am able to find a spot if you go bright and early.
- From there, the walk to the capital. Its probably a 1.5 mile walk but will take you all the way through campus and downtown. Checkout the student union (which for some reason does not serve beer until noon on Saturdays) and the views of lake Mendota.
- Grab some beets in the bars on state street. I like the Nitty Gritty and State Street Brats. There will be plenty of Michigan fans and the Wisconsin people have always been friendly in my experience.
Honest question, what is it that the University is doing to prevent NIL deals for athletes? I have heard of them blocking use of the block M, which from my (albeit limited) experience with IP law, is entirely understandable. I tried starting a small business when I was a student and was given a cease and desist letter from the University for using a block M. But whats stopping a player from doing an ad for a company and getting paid?
The Milton I watched last night, and the one described in this article, is exactly the Milton we had at Michigan. I hope he succeeds, but he is what he is at this point.
This is an all time terrible take its borderline just trolling. Senior Simpson and Teske? You mean a G league guy and a guy playing in Belgium now? Franz Wagner was a true freshman and no where near the player he was his second season. The year before that we were a 3 seed and went to the sweet 16. We lost the top 3 scorers from that team in Pool, Mathews, and Brazdeikis. Even with Beilien the consensus expectations the next year were a 4/5 seed max. We then lost Livers for several weeks and had a rough patch, but he returned and we were on pace for probably a 6 seed. And losing to play in team UCLA? ROFL, same team that lost on buzzer beater to the #1 overall seed.