Check out some audio from Jim Rome today. He went pretty hard at Rich Rodriguez over the snafu with with #1 jersey and the Braylon Edwards comments.
Rome’s take on this. “Either you didn’t know or you didn’t care. Both bad.” He went off pretty hard on RR.
My take? Hold up here. Let’s not take one incident, possibly a mistake, and turn Rodriguez into Bill Callahan. Let’s see what he says and how this plays out.
Two stories related to the Stadium project have made it onto the front page of the Ann Arbor News this week.
Today the News reported that some of the concerns over the construction noise were dying down, going as far as to publish a noise readings and on MLive.com, some actual “noise” from the stadium for your iPod:
That fine, but I was a bit more concerned in this piece that headlined the Tuesday May 6 Ann Arbor News. The gist is that the University backed off its attempt to close a lane on Main Street to facilitate the renovation project.
The thing that caught my eye was a quote midway through the story. The U-M spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham said that the lane closure wouldn’t jeopardize the near-term plan to have the stadium in shape for football this fall, but admitted that the plans to complete the gig by 2010 might be up in the air. Judge for yourself:
U-M had planned to have the rest of the work finished in the fall of 2010. Cunningham said U-M is reassessing its construction schedule.
“At this point, we’re looking at the construction schedule, exploring options, as to when and how the project can be completed,” she said.
University officials had previously characterized the lane closure as crucial to their construction timetable and to public safety.
This could be a bit of sour grapes over losing the lane closure battle but nonetheless, it’s the first public mention of a possible delay and I’ll be watching.
One of the things bloggers do when they’ve been away from the keyboard for a little while is check out site statistics. A quick scan of the incoming links revealed that my previous posts referencing my favorite Schembechler phrase are being peppered. It didn’t take long to find out why. As you may know by now you can thank Notre Dame head coach Chuck Weis for that:
“I think the first opportunity they’re going to have to really make a statement is that day [Sept. 6 against SDSU], and then we’ll listen to Michigan have all their excuses as they come runnin’ in and sayin’ how they have a new coaching staff and there’s changes. To hell with Michigan.”
** Translated by Brian at mgoblog, who is fluent in Hutt
Beautiful! I love this.
Rich Rod is getting from all sides this off-season and I say bring it on. Any shot at our new coach just unifies the fickle Michigan fan base and gives a reassuring boost to our rivalries. Now we need Tim Brewster to announce he’s cleared a space in his office to display the Little Brown Jug and we’ll be all set.
Referencing a Schembechler line is fine by me although I’m sure many would say that Weis would never dare say such a thing if Bo were alive. Again, I say bring it on.
Don’t forget to pick up your To Hell With Notre Dame T-shirt while they last:
WTKA is doing a better job of uploading podcasts as of late, and it appears they’ve started to provided from beauties from the archives. I raved about this interview (where Brandon Smith makes several references to beating the Buckeyes) a few months ago but didn’t have the audio. Thanks to WTKA, here’s the audio:
Want to get a little serious tomorrow with the Derby? I recommend this link on the official website that has the entire field. Click on a horse and you’ll be taken to you a page that has all the results, recaps and video of previous races. It’s perfect. It even includes details on the horse’s pedigree, recent workouts and observations from around the stables.
While I’ve been to a few thoroughbred races in my day and witnessed two Derbys, my handicapping skills are on par with throwing a dart. That said, scanning the video of a few horses I must say I was impressed by how the 4 (Court Vision) finishes races and this might make a good box candidate for you.
The current chalk Big Brown - 20 looks unbelievable in limited action and it’s tough to leave this horse out. The sentiment on the site blogs seems to be “sure, Big Brown could blow everyone away but he’s the favorite…” as if there’s a) a jinx, or b) it’s not cool to pick chalk.
From what I’ve seen, I’d look to box up 4 and 20 and maybe toss in 10.
Come on former Wolverines, these rings need to stop ending up on the eBay! This one’s priced at $3000 take it or leave it, Coach Bill McCartney’s 1980 ring sold for just over $2000 last year.
This one isn’t quite as pretty as the 1980/81 version although it appears as though the top is a likeness of old Michigan stadium, press box and all, although it could be the Rose Bowl as well as there’s no tunnel. On the downside, the designer dropped the ball on one side deciding to go with a cute bear sitting on top of Jan Stenerud’s helmet.
Having been at the Ann Arbor version of “Rich Rod on the Road” tour, I can tell you that Coach Rodriguez added some material for the Dearborn version. User WolverinesFTW had a camera onsite and consolidated the talk down to under 10 minutes for your enjoyment:
Good stuff, he did a nice job. And unless my peepers deceive, Coach is donning a tie for this go round. Coach Rod strikes me as a guy that only carries a couple ties in his closet and I don’t think the polish meets his shoes very often.
Like I said before, some new stories and some old, but all good.
Sports Illustrated finally released its recap of Michigan’s April 12th spring game at Saline High. Austin Murphy covered the game and to little surprise given the size (barely half a page) and its release almost three weeks since the final whistle, there’s not much that you don’t know.
It did end with quotes from M legend Ricky Leach who told SI “This offense would’ve been tailor-made for me”, and added that, “the defense is going to have to really step up.”
Murphy did give a mention to the Michigan nerdosphere:
Three offensive linemen bailed out of the program, including returning starter Justin Boren, who transferred to Ohio State (and is known in the maize-and-blue blogosphere as Judas)
I’ll take credit for that although in the M nerdiverse, the webmasters of this and a dozen other sites are huddled inside Apollo 15 listening to Ufer 8-tracks on a loop, orbiting BC’s Jupiter. And ok, maybe a Uranus.
I’m a big fan of the YouTube efforts laid down by WolverineHistorian. Not too long ago MGoBlog offered up that every once in a while you’d like to see a few of the difficult moments in games, not just the endzone dances. I think that’s fair.
Likewise, the eBay Watch series tends to focus on the good times and back in the day good times were plentiful. But then you have a season like this.
As Harry Kipke’s Wolverines were preparing for the season of 1934, they were relaxing on the laurels of back-to-back national championships and hadn’t lost a game in nearly three years, a loss to Ohio State in October 1931.
This installment of eBay watch takes a look at a couple items recently up for bidding from that historic season. First, a student ticket coupon book from that year. Funny, I thought this concept was a recent phenomenon to stem scalping (I had books in the early 90s, not sure when this was started in the modern era). While I don’t know how prevalent scalping was back then, there definitely was an attempt to crack down on anyone using these tickets beyond the rightful owner. The student was required to sign off on a set of conditions, including a warning:
“If presented for admission by any person other than the owner the book will be forfeited, taken up at the time of improper presentation and full admission collected.”
It actually had tear-away coupons for each event inside, most of which are still in there. According to the jacket it was used for athletic events in general but for football “reserved seating” in particular. The owner of this book, which sold for around $40 last month, was a gentleman named George G. Sipprell who lived at 516 Walnut at the time. It doesn’t appear as though George attended many games, or they didn’t bother to tear out the tickets inside that year:
Next, what is described as a “Harry Kipke’s playbook” from 1934, produced by Sayger Sports Syndicate of Tiffin, Ohio. It includes pictures and general strategy according to the auction. Bidding just started at the time of this post and here’s a sample:
I’ve mentioned the miserable season of 1934 within these pages on a few occasions, mostly recently inside the post on the Meyer Morton Award. The Really Great Depression as it’s known to M historians was a rough ride on many fronts, yet remains significant in the great tradition of Michigan football.
The season is probably most famous as the senior season of the most famous Michigan football player of all time, President Gerald Ford. He was named MVP of the team where the Wolverines finished just 1-7 and were outscored 143-21. Yikes.
But do you think the Michigan fans bailed on the pitiful Wolverines that season? Not really. While attendance in Michigan stadium hovered just over 20,000 throughout the ‘34 campaign, the fans stepped up when it counted. Coming off the 34-0 defeat on the road to national champion Minnesota, when the team arrived back home Sunday morning the train station was full of fans waiting to greet the combatants. Ford later noted this event which he described as a “demonstration of loyalty that I’m sure none of us has forgotten.”
Other factoids on 1934:
* This was the season Ohio State started the tradition of giving gold pants charms to players & coaches if they defeated that team up north. It wasn’t until years later that OSU players started the tradition of selling their gold pants on eBay.
* The 1934 season included the racially charged game against Georgia Tech, which was described within this post I published on Ford after his death. Georgia Tech said they would not take the field if Michigan’s Willis Ward (an African American) suited up. Michigan caved; Willis didn’t dress.
So the draft concluded today with a few surprises for the Michigan Wolverines. From Jake Long as the #1 pick, to the controversy surrounding Manningham to the speculation over where Hart and Henne would fall, the Blue played a major role in drama of the 2008 draft. A few takes on these guys:
Chad Henne: The guy is going to be a very good quarterback if things fall his way, and I think they will. Without getting too far into the comparisons I just don’t understand how a guy like Flacco can be taken way ahead of Henne. Brohm and Ryan? Fine. Now I hear the scouts say Flacco’s arm is stronger (which is also hard to believe) but based on the solely on the four years of experience at Michigan I just don’t get it. I guess we’ll see.
Mario Manningham: He kind of lost me during the Wisconsin game this past fall. Bitching at Mallett and at times, seemingly dogging it…I just don’t have any patience for that. So when the drug stuff came down followed by the bite sized Wonderlic score, well, I just started to feel like the guy was getting a taste of what he deserved. He was projected as recently as today (the current ESPN rating) to go late first round and he ended up being the 14th WR taken - ouch.
Mike Hart: Must have been a tough day for Hart. I don’t know where he really thought he was going. I heard him on The Huge Show Friday on WTKA saying he was told late 2nd to 3rd round. In the end he was pretty close to not being drafted. Hart was the 21st running back taken, obviously teams didn’t give much weight to his status as the all-time Wolverine rusher.
The Colts get a tough guy, a great leader and a warrior. The dude has made a career out of proving people wrong about his abilities so now he gets to do it on the big stage. I’ve heard all the knocks on the guy and obviously size and speed are huge. A lot of it has to do with the size of NFL rosters. While I’m sure a lot of teams would be willing to take a chance on a guy like this given room on the team, a back up running back in the NFL needs to do something on special teams to earn a spot. There are questions there for Hart. Again, we’ll see. He gets into a good situation in Indianapolis.
Adrian Arrington: Man, this guy barely got drafted and really rolled the dice by leaving early. He was just a few picks away from Mr. Irrelevant and may live the real life version of that role if he can’t get out of training camp. I hope he does. He’s a guy that seemingly turned it around after getting on the wrong path and wanted to take his shot at the big time after a highly productive game in the Capital One bowl. He’s got a tough road now.
The Free Press dug up this video with Coach Rod in session teaching the offense:
Check out Jim Carty’s blog tonight. Carr told Bruce Madej [above, with Coach Rod at the Spring game] that the Columbus Dispatch report that claims Carr helped Justin Boren land at Ohio State is false:
Carr denied the Dispatch report via Michigan athletics spokesperson Bruce Madej, who said the coach was unavailable for an interview Friday night.
“Lloyd told me that’s a lie,” Madej said.
Here’s the claim made by a “source” to the Dispatch:
Maybe they should take a cue from previous Michigan coach Lloyd Carr, who according to a source close to the situation worked behind the scenes to help Boren obtain his scholarship release from Michigan. Carr even assured Boren that Ohio State is the closest thing to Michigan that he would find and that there are “good people” in Columbus.
Elsewhere: As Coach Rod advised during the his ‘On the Road’ tour, sometimes you just need to let those who stray from the V formation go off….and die (geese metaphorically). Let’s focus on those that are here and that means some recruits. So while everyone’s still excited about Virginia QB Kevin Newsome, here’s a Spring Game outtake of Coach Fred Jackson closing the deal:
Press play at your own risk. Just a taste:
“Jake Long, Bill Parcells is making you rich,
so Jake Long don’t turn out like Tony Mandarich”
Borendict Arnold!! confirmed.
So Jake Long will be the #1 pick in this weekend’s draft, signing for just under $58M. Factoids for you:
* He joins the great Tom Harmon as the only Michigan #1 overall picks in the draft.
* While we’ll never know the exact figure, taking a swag you figure that Long made himself an extra $30 million or so by staying an extra year at Michigan. Of course, he didn’t get paid last season (we hope) and may have cut off a year of NFL life. But all in all, he made out big.
* I know Henne’s stock is rising, but perhaps the fellow four-year starter could join Long in Miami as the Dolphins’ first pick of the 2nd round?
* What could Long do with $58 million? How about buy every seat for every game in the Big House next season plus every seat at the Rose Bowl on January 1, 2009. He’d have some change left over for parking and Twizzlers.
