I will gladly take any reasonable facsimile of Ben Wallace...
Also maybe an unpopular opinion, but when we seem to be in the drivers seat for someone like Johnell Davis (who has a natural reason to come over with May) and it fades at the end, I am as quick to blame academic issues with admissions as I am to blame insufficient NIL money available. Maybe even moreso... I feel like the NIL problem is more solvable than the transfer academic requirements.
Watched the first few minutes of the Tre Donaldson video highlights... Auburn has zero structured offense from what I could see. All his made shots were with the other 4 guys on offense literally standing around the perimeter every single time.
It doesn't really say much about Donaldson as a player, just an observation.
Good lord. If only Warde had defended his own football program and coach against the NCAA and B1G assholes, as hard as he is defending himself against random fans criticizing him on twitter.
What a loser - trying to take a victory lap for a hire for which John Beilein essentially did the heavy lifting and handed to him on a silver platter.
Firing Juwan gets Warde zero bonus points. It was a complete no brainer. Handling it "exactly how you should" is also called "doing the basics of your job correctly". No points for that either.
His track record is unimpressive at best. This appears to be a good hire. Small credit for enlisting the right parties to facilitate, I guess? When you couldn't get the job done on your own?
The last two years of Juwan required decisive action and leadership, which he displayed zero of - which confirmed what we all suspected watching him "handle" the Mel Pearson debacle and getting pushed around and bullied by the B1G during the Harbaugh nonsense.
I've been making this point ceaselessly that paying players as employees is NEVER going to fly in a Title IX world unless you pay all athletes of all genders in all sports equally, which doesn't address the issue at all. No one on this site want to hear it though, they just love shouting "PAY THE PLAYERS" as loudly as they can.
And you can't play male revenue sports players differently than female athletes or you violate Title IX. In short - college athletics will never be the same if you pay players - So if you asked for this don't bitch about it.
I find it hilarious that the people who shouted over and over "PAY THE PLAYERS" bemoan the current state of college athletics. The NCAA screwed it up badly, to be sure, but anyone who thought that paying the players, in whatever form it was going to take, would not destroy the college athletics landscape was willfully denying reality or just stupid and naive.
It's free agency without a salary cap or any limitations on player movement. Of course it was going to destroy the entire enterprise. Don't act so surprised.
Wow I hate to crap on this thread, but I don't really understand the great appreciation for Williams. He's been an OK player at best, and I am amazed at how many times during a game he looks lost, in the wrong place, taking bad shots or making bad passes. He still looks like a freshman to me in terms of decision making and defensive IQ. I can't really knock his effort, which is something I guess? But I don't see the high motor/high effort that some on this thread are claiming he has shown. Effort is a bare minimum for a high major basketball player, IMO, but he doesn't seem to stand out in this area either.
Terrence Williams has sucked since day one, except VERY brief flashes of unfulfilled. I have never understood why Juwan continues to play him starter minutes.
Consistently getting outperformed in the second half is an obvious sign of coaching deficiency - Both tactical issues as well as effort. Outhustled for every loose ball with the game still in doubt and giving up 50 in the second half. Zero offensive flow, except when Dug is improvising.
I traveled a LOT for a good chunk of my career and I also like smaller airports despite the trade-off with connections. And focusing on one airline (United) and one hotel chain (Marriott) makes life so much easier. I can't get my head around business travelers that swear by Southwest. I get that they give perks (friend flights or whatever they're called) but that airline is an abject disaster in every other way.
Not surprising, but unfortunately it's an overreaction. Couple of my thoughts - I played football from 4th grade through HS, I have coached at several levels over many years, and I have established and run a youth football club for 3rd thru 6th graders...
Football is safer now than it has ever been:
Rules and penalties (both in-game and suspensions) for targeting ("spearing") are far more aggressive than they have ever been greatly reducing the number of "knock out" or "head shot" hits. Watching a receiver come over the middle today, you can see the defensive player doing everything in his power to AVOID hitting the player in the head (and the penalty and/or suspension that comes with it). Yes sometimes they happen. So do cycling or skiing accidents causing concussions. We don't outlaw either one of these.
Equipment technology (helmets and mouthguards specifically) are cutting edge and have made incredible progress.
Coaches are now trained in proper tackling technique that minimizes concussive hits.
Every club, coach, and league that I have seen recently has greatly reduced the number of full contact practices, which is where MANY of the repeated head injuries causing long term damage occurred. It used to be 4 days of full pad practices, now it is almost always 1 or 2 days a week with remaining practices in shorts.
Every club, coach and league has specific protocols in place for concussion detection and recovery. These are science based and are vastly effective at preventing and treating repeat concussions.
In short, today's football is safer than soccer as far as concussion avoidance, detection, diagnosis, recovery, and treatment.
The men who you read about today that have CTE due to playing years of football played for years without ANY attention to equipment, diagnosis, care protocols, recovery, and rules that have eliminated almost all head shots from the game. This is very sad, and very dramatic on the news, but it is almost a completely different game than it was when those men sustained these injuries.
There certainly are and will always be the meathead coaches and parents of the world that want to ignore the realities of concussions and promote the head shot mentality, but those are few and far between IMO.
I was on the field for both the 1992 and 1993 Rose Bowls (student manager), and I have always respected Washington more than just about any other PAC school... I don't exactly know why - they just feel like a mirror image of UM for some reason. Of all the new B1G schools UW was the only one I was excited about when I heard the news they were coming.
Steve Emtman, Napoleon Kauffman, Mark Brunell, Lincoln Kennedy... They all just reminded me of our own guys - Buster Stanley, Ricky Powers, Greg Skrepenak... We didn't really have an equivalent to the gunslinger Brunell but I liked him too.
For anyone following market pricing here, I JUST sold two tickets in second row (Section 14, row B) in the corner of the endzone near the UM bench for $890each + ticketmaster fees. These were GREAT seats so I really would have liked to use them but I just couldn't make it happen. Go Blue!
12/19 UPDATE - SOLD on Ticketmaster for $890 each + exorbitant TM fees
UPDATE - Reduced price from $995 to $890.
Two GREAT seats to the Rose Bowl... Sec 14-H, Row B, Seat 101 - 102 - SECOND ROW corner of the endzone! I bought them through the UM ticket office, and fully intending to go but life intervened.
I have them listed on Ticketmaster rn for $995 each - take a look. I would take $900 each from a verified UM fan (and screwing Ticketmaster out of their BS fees is just a bonus). I probably could get more $$ based on similar seats for sale, but I really don't want to get stuck with them.
You can email me at rieglerandy zero one at gmail if interested.
I agree with the tone of this, but its a bad precedent that all someone needs to do is FILE an HR complaint and people under a zero-tolerance policy get terminated. There has to be some investigation and due process to determine the validity of the complaint firsts. But of course if it IS verified then he has to be fired, or the "zero policy" phrase itself is garbage.
On the floor - Michigan basketball is not good and trending steeply downward in the wrong direction the past 2.5 seasons. Objectively (Poor performance, inexplicable transfers out of the program, no postseason success) and subjectively (ugly heroball basketball and crappy body language)
Off the floor - Howard has been a disaster (I was lonely in my opinion to fire him immediately after the first slap)
But hey - he can recruit! (or at least he used to be able to). And he was a great player in the 90s.
Love the man. Love the cause... But I'm not sure this is the best move. He'll be entertaining and passionate, but I'd rather have a cold-blooded killer of an attorney making our legal case.
Sorry to be blunt, but jock-sniffing wannabe's like this jackass doing stuff like this are just so predictable. While the program isn't guilty of anything, this loser Stanions is. He no doubt thought he was doing some noble duty when in fact he damaged the very program he worshipped. Fire him, ban him from all future M athletic events, throw him under the bus in the media, cut him loose. It's the only way to deter future morons like him from doing stuff like this again.
And if any coaches were aware that he was up to this garbage, they should be suspended or fired, depending on how involved they were in coordinating or encouraging it. What a waste of time, energy, resources, and - most importantly - reputation.
JJ Is the best Michigan quarterback in my lifetime. Including Harbaugh, Grbac, Henne (the previous Top 3 IMHO). (Don't come at me on Brady... I get the argument but I'm talking about while wearing the Winged Helmet)
Trying to soak up every moment until he is in the NFL dominating the Lions.
Thanks for doing that work for me. Crazy I remember the offense being way better and the defense being way worse than any of those numbers, with the possible exception of 2010 offense at #1.
Re Points Per Drive gap - I have to believe a couple of the Richrod/Denard seasons that Michigan was threatening the top three listed. Those GERG defenses were abhorrent.
Geez are we so fragile that if someone writes an OPINION piece that disagrees with your own OPINION the whole paper should be "banned". Get over yourselves people. The Daily is an exceptional independent student run college newspaper that gets it right 98% of the time.
The thesis of the piece is kind of dumb, but he acknowledges the NCAA sucks in general, and he comes off as a whiney holier-than-thou pinhead. Big deal. You linking it here gives it more oxygen than it ever deserved in the first place.
I agree. I was a VERY frequent flyer and once they had the 5:30am UA flight to ORD I was all over it. So convenient and beat GRR hands down. Those flights were always 75%-100% full, I could never understand why they pulled the plug on them. Still GRR is a great airport to get in and out of, I just far preferred MKG for the lack of drive
MCI just opened their brand new terminal, and it is very VERY nice. Highly recommended. They still have the old circular one for the moment (which I completely agree was the worst airport I have every been in ant it isn't close), but it appears they were getting ready to tear it down soon when I flew there last month.
Favorites - DTW, Denver, ATL (not sure all the hate for ATL. It's a huge airport and therefore is large and complex, but I usually make my connections and the food is pretty good).
Absolute worst - Newark. It should be razed and rebuilt, but the way the highways encircle it, that is highly unlikely.
MCI (Kansas City) has been by FAR the worst I have ever flown, but they just built a new terminal and are phasing out the old one. New one is 1000x better.
Meh - ORD and DFW. Huge places and so they will always be logistically challenged, but neither one is overall too bad. Never get a layover less than 45 minutes in ORD.
Recent Comments
I will gladly take any reasonable facsimile of Ben Wallace...
Also maybe an unpopular opinion, but when we seem to be in the drivers seat for someone like Johnell Davis (who has a natural reason to come over with May) and it fades at the end, I am as quick to blame academic issues with admissions as I am to blame insufficient NIL money available. Maybe even moreso... I feel like the NIL problem is more solvable than the transfer academic requirements.
Watched the first few minutes of the Tre Donaldson video highlights... Auburn has zero structured offense from what I could see. All his made shots were with the other 4 guys on offense literally standing around the perimeter every single time.
It doesn't really say much about Donaldson as a player, just an observation.
I ask you - "Why not us?"
LFG!
Warde critic here, but I agree that appearance critiques are just a sign of intellectual weakness or just plain being an asshole. Not a fan.
Good lord. If only Warde had defended his own football program and coach against the NCAA and B1G assholes, as hard as he is defending himself against random fans criticizing him on twitter.
What a loser - trying to take a victory lap for a hire for which John Beilein essentially did the heavy lifting and handed to him on a silver platter.
Read my post, BoFan. I wasn't talking about the hire.
Strong. +1.
Firing Juwan gets Warde zero bonus points. It was a complete no brainer. Handling it "exactly how you should" is also called "doing the basics of your job correctly". No points for that either.
His track record is…
Nah.
His track record is unimpressive at best. This appears to be a good hire. Small credit for enlisting the right parties to facilitate, I guess? When you couldn't get the job done on your own?
The last two years of Juwan required decisive action and leadership, which he displayed zero of - which confirmed what we all suspected watching him "handle" the Mel Pearson debacle and getting pushed around and bullied by the B1G during the Harbaugh nonsense.
Absolutely not.
Who cares? It's MSU.
Wow this is a magnificent piece of heartfelt writing. Nice work.
I've been making this point ceaselessly that paying players as employees is NEVER going to fly in a Title IX world unless you pay all athletes of all genders in all sports equally, which doesn't address the issue at all. No one on this site want to hear it though, they just love shouting "PAY THE PLAYERS" as loudly as they can.
And you can't play male revenue sports players differently than female athletes or you violate Title IX. In short - college athletics will never be the same if you pay players - So if you asked for this don't bitch about it.
I find it hilarious that the people who shouted over and over "PAY THE PLAYERS" bemoan the current state of college athletics. The NCAA screwed it up badly, to be sure, but anyone who thought that paying the players, in whatever form it was going to take, would not destroy the college athletics landscape was willfully denying reality or just stupid and naive.
It's free agency without a salary cap or any limitations on player movement. Of course it was going to destroy the entire enterprise. Don't act so surprised.
Wow I hate to crap on this thread, but I don't really understand the great appreciation for Williams. He's been an OK player at best, and I am amazed at how many times during a game he looks lost, in the wrong place, taking bad shots or making bad passes. He still looks like a freshman to me in terms of decision making and defensive IQ. I can't really knock his effort, which is something I guess? But I don't see the high motor/high effort that some on this thread are claiming he has shown. Effort is a bare minimum for a high major basketball player, IMO, but he doesn't seem to stand out in this area either.
Neg away...
Will Johnson HAS to get a shield doesn't he?
Take State and lay the points. Easy money, unfortunately.
Terrence Williams has sucked since day one, except VERY brief flashes of unfulfilled. I have never understood why Juwan continues to play him starter minutes.
Consistently getting outperformed in the second half is an obvious sign of coaching deficiency - Both tactical issues as well as effort. Outhustled for every loose ball with the game still in doubt and giving up 50 in the second half. Zero offensive flow, except when Dug is improvising.
Just pathetic.
Citing "Norton Shores" instead of Muskegon says a lot about your biases.
5% of the embedded videos are correct. Love ya Brian but can you get Seth to teach you how to embed video the same way he does?
I traveled a LOT for a good chunk of my career and I also like smaller airports despite the trade-off with connections. And focusing on one airline (United) and one hotel chain (Marriott) makes life so much easier. I can't get my head around business travelers that swear by Southwest. I get that they give perks (friend flights or whatever they're called) but that airline is an abject disaster in every other way.
Not surprising, but unfortunately it's an overreaction. Couple of my thoughts - I played football from 4th grade through HS, I have coached at several levels over many years, and I have established and run a youth football club for 3rd thru 6th graders...
Football is safer now than it has ever been:
In short, today's football is safer than soccer as far as concussion avoidance, detection, diagnosis, recovery, and treatment.
The men who you read about today that have CTE due to playing years of football played for years without ANY attention to equipment, diagnosis, care protocols, recovery, and rules that have eliminated almost all head shots from the game. This is very sad, and very dramatic on the news, but it is almost a completely different game than it was when those men sustained these injuries.
There certainly are and will always be the meathead coaches and parents of the world that want to ignore the realities of concussions and promote the head shot mentality, but those are few and far between IMO.
It's about time for a new coffee mug....
I was on the field for both the 1992 and 1993 Rose Bowls (student manager), and I have always respected Washington more than just about any other PAC school... I don't exactly know why - they just feel like a mirror image of UM for some reason. Of all the new B1G schools UW was the only one I was excited about when I heard the news they were coming.
Steve Emtman, Napoleon Kauffman, Mark Brunell, Lincoln Kennedy... They all just reminded me of our own guys - Buster Stanley, Ricky Powers, Greg Skrepenak... We didn't really have an equivalent to the gunslinger Brunell but I liked him too.
Enjoy the game!
I have a hunch the defense is gonna look like armageddon.
Nice work, Alex - Your analysis is always much appreciated. This is much less doom and gloom than I expected.
Only one request - can you please teach Brian how to embed video clips just like you do? His method is a disaster. Thanks.
RIP Buddy
I'm fine with TikTok as a medium, but this particular TikTok (and by association this post) just sucks.
For anyone following market pricing here, I JUST sold two tickets in second row (Section 14, row B) in the corner of the endzone near the UM bench for $890each + ticketmaster fees. These were GREAT seats so I really would have liked to use them but I just couldn't make it happen. Go Blue!
I hate the transfer portal. It's free agency without the rules that every other sports league has for free agency.
It's ruining college athletics. And yeah, go ahead and get off my lawn.
12/19 UPDATE - SOLD on Ticketmaster for $890 each + exorbitant TM fees
UPDATE - Reduced price from $995 to $890.
Two GREAT seats to the Rose Bowl... Sec 14-H, Row B, Seat 101 - 102 - SECOND ROW corner of the endzone! I bought them through the UM ticket office, and fully intending to go but life intervened.
I have them listed on Ticketmaster rn for $995 each - take a look. I would take $900 each from a verified UM fan (and screwing Ticketmaster out of their BS fees is just a bonus). I probably could get more $$ based on similar seats for sale, but I really don't want to get stuck with them.
You can email me at rieglerandy zero one at gmail if interested.
I agree with the tone of this, but its a bad precedent that all someone needs to do is FILE an HR complaint and people under a zero-tolerance policy get terminated. There has to be some investigation and due process to determine the validity of the complaint firsts. But of course if it IS verified then he has to be fired, or the "zero policy" phrase itself is garbage.
On the floor - Michigan basketball is not good and trending steeply downward in the wrong direction the past 2.5 seasons. Objectively (Poor performance, inexplicable transfers out of the program, no postseason success) and subjectively (ugly heroball basketball and crappy body language)
Off the floor - Howard has been a disaster (I was lonely in my opinion to fire him immediately after the first slap)
But hey - he can recruit! (or at least he used to be able to). And he was a great player in the 90s.
The choice is obvious.
Logged in solely to commend you on the "hopped up on goofballs" line. LOL'd.
Love the man. Love the cause... But I'm not sure this is the best move. He'll be entertaining and passionate, but I'd rather have a cold-blooded killer of an attorney making our legal case.
Fun fact... Whitney Sollom is the daughter of Kenny Sollom who backed up Elvis Grbac at QB at Michigan.
Sorry to be blunt, but jock-sniffing wannabe's like this jackass doing stuff like this are just so predictable. While the program isn't guilty of anything, this loser Stanions is. He no doubt thought he was doing some noble duty when in fact he damaged the very program he worshipped. Fire him, ban him from all future M athletic events, throw him under the bus in the media, cut him loose. It's the only way to deter future morons like him from doing stuff like this again.
And if any coaches were aware that he was up to this garbage, they should be suspended or fired, depending on how involved they were in coordinating or encouraging it. What a waste of time, energy, resources, and - most importantly - reputation.
Gold... Make it so, Brian et al.
JJ Is the best Michigan quarterback in my lifetime. Including Harbaugh, Grbac, Henne (the previous Top 3 IMHO). (Don't come at me on Brady... I get the argument but I'm talking about while wearing the Winged Helmet)
Trying to soak up every moment until he is in the NFL dominating the Lions.
Logged in just to tell you that this is amazing.
The lack of self awareness in your comment is telling. The subhead is "Do you believe? Detroit does."
Lest we forget... On October 16, 2011, the Detroit Lions were 5-1 and recently on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Thanks for doing that work for me. Crazy I remember the offense being way better and the defense being way worse than any of those numbers, with the possible exception of 2010 offense at #1.
The human memory is a fickle thing.
Re Points Per Drive gap - I have to believe a couple of the Richrod/Denard seasons that Michigan was threatening the top three listed. Those GERG defenses were abhorrent.
Logged in just to upvote this.
Geez are we so fragile that if someone writes an OPINION piece that disagrees with your own OPINION the whole paper should be "banned". Get over yourselves people. The Daily is an exceptional independent student run college newspaper that gets it right 98% of the time.
The thesis of the piece is kind of dumb, but he acknowledges the NCAA sucks in general, and he comes off as a whiney holier-than-thou pinhead. Big deal. You linking it here gives it more oxygen than it ever deserved in the first place.
Move on.
I agree. I was a VERY frequent flyer and once they had the 5:30am UA flight to ORD I was all over it. So convenient and beat GRR hands down. Those flights were always 75%-100% full, I could never understand why they pulled the plug on them. Still GRR is a great airport to get in and out of, I just far preferred MKG for the lack of drive
MCI just opened their brand new terminal, and it is very VERY nice. Highly recommended. They still have the old circular one for the moment (which I completely agree was the worst airport I have every been in ant it isn't close), but it appears they were getting ready to tear it down soon when I flew there last month.
Favorites - DTW, Denver, ATL (not sure all the hate for ATL. It's a huge airport and therefore is large and complex, but I usually make my connections and the food is pretty good).
Absolute worst - Newark. It should be razed and rebuilt, but the way the highways encircle it, that is highly unlikely.
MCI (Kansas City) has been by FAR the worst I have ever flown, but they just built a new terminal and are phasing out the old one. New one is 1000x better.
Meh - ORD and DFW. Huge places and so they will always be logistically challenged, but neither one is overall too bad. Never get a layover less than 45 minutes in ORD.