• Baseball Complex Donors Madoff’d

    Hat tip to the Ann Arbor Chronicle, it appears as though the primary donors to the new (& very well done) University of Michigan baseball and softball complex were stung a bit by Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff. Ouch. Bloomberg.com compiled and published a list of foundations that invested with Madoff and included the Wilpon Family Foundation. Thankfully it’s not clear how much the family invested and lost with the shmuck Madoff. Related: The WSJ has been all over the Madoff story, read Stephen Greenspan’s essay this weekend, Anatomy of Gullibility: Why We Keep Falling for Financial Scams.

  • Memories…Michigan Rose Bowls

    To help get through this tough bowl season, how about few select items from the MVictors Vault featuring Rose Bowl-related items throughout the years. My favorite? Probably the photo of above from Fielding Yost & company’s trip to the first Rose Bowl football game in 1901. The team is on a trolley heading around town and the photo is featured in Bo Schembechler’s Tradition, available from Amazon.com. Runner up may be the lighter from the 1948 tilt. Want to own your own piece of Michigan Rose Bowl history? There’s a few solid eBay auctions out there right now: * 1981 Rose Bowl Glass * 1965 Rose Bowl Ticket Stub * 1948 Rose Bowl Program * 1998 Rose Bowl Seat Cushion

  • Happy New Year!

    Thanks to all Michigan fans and readers of this site for all the support this year.  Best wishes to  you and yours and look forward to some quality stuff in 2009.  I’ve already got some solid interviews/stories lined up for January and expect more of the same coverage of history via eBay Watch. Cheers and let’s hope I’m drinking posting from somewhere warm this time next year in anticipation of our game.

  • Big Ten Bloggers, Feed

    I recently joined the collective Big Ten Bloggers and added a feed listing recent posts by my conference comrades on my left sidebar and a new set of BTB links just below the feed on the left. Check out some of my prestigious colleagues in the Big Ten nerdosphere: Illinois The Quad Paint the Town Orange Indiana Hoosier Report Iowa Black Heart Gold Pants Michigan MGoBlog MVictors Varsity Blue Michigan Sports Center iBlog for Cookies Maize’n’Brew Maize & Blue Nation Maize’n’Brew UM Hoops Michigan State Enlightened Spartan Ground Zero EL Sparty MSU Spartans Weblog Minnesota Daily Gopher From the Barn Buck Bravo Gopher Football Northwestern Lake The Posts Ohio State Around the Oval Buckeye Battle Cry Eleven Warriors Men of Scarlet & Gray Buckeye Blog Penn State Block Shoes Diary Happy Hour Valley Nittany White Out Run Up the Score Nittany Line No Name on my Jersey Zombie Nation Purdue Boiled Sports Off The Tracks Wisconsin

  • Scott Shafer’s Contractual Silence

    Mark Snyder’s recent blog post in the Detroit Free Press caused a little bit of a dust up over the terms of Scott Shafer’s resignation as defensive coordinator. Here’s some from the post titled ‘Departed defensive coordinator sworn to not rip Michigan’: Shafer parted ways with Michigan by “mutual agreement” a week before the school announced the change in the letter from athletic director Bill Martin, but there were conditions. It said Shafer could not publicly release the terms of his agreement, and he also agreed “that I will not issue any statements to the media or in a public or similar setting which demean or disparage the University of Michigan, the football program, or any of their employees, in any way.” It’s implied here that Shafer would “rip” Michigan if he could, but contractually, he can’t. I don’t know if that’s what Snyder wanted to convey or whether a headline writer took some liberties, but either way it comes off as if Michigan is trying to silence a potentially loose cannon in the form of a disgruntled former defensive coordinator. While we don’t know what Shafer would say right now if could, certainly there was a misalignment with Rodriguez or he’d still be there. The question is whether Michigan went out of its way to write some special language…

  • Rod Marinelli Fired

    Along with the entire 0-16 Detroit Lions coaching staff except wide receivers coach Shawn Jefferson and running backs coach Sam Gash. Take: I’m one of the few that would have been fine with keeping Coach Marinelli around another season to resurrect this crew. Marinelli had these guys playing hard (for the most part) long after the season was ruined. But I understand that if you want a major overhaul, which is needed, that after the GM you should probably start with the coach. If they want to nab a solid name, they’ll certainly have the incentive that a) things can only get better, and b) there’s a boat load of draft picks in a few months to start rebuilding. So, add Marinelli to another Lions coach who bites the dust in the Millen era. [display_podcast] .