I’m pretty geeked to get out there to see the 2010 squad. Practice starts tomorrow and I’m going to try to swing by this week to get some insight along with a few photos. Not a surprise, but Media Relations advised that neither Rodriguez nor the players will comment on the NCAA investigation during the spring and possibly into the fall. Naturally I expect a few in the media to either ignore this or ask anyway. We’ll see what happens. Note: Rich Rodriguez will be joining Ira and Sam on WKTA 1050AM at around 8:20am tomorrow morning and WTKA will have audio from his presser at Schembechler Hall tomorrow. Check back in, hopefully I’ll have a few pics and clips from the opening day. Don’t forget, the Spring Game is April 17th, starting at 1pm.
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What A Woman! Rose Bowl Queen (1938)
Here is another great wire photo, this time from the late 1930s featuring my dream girl. It’s the Tournament of Roses Queen Barbara Dougall posing with her crown holding a team photo of none other than Fielding Yost’s first and perhaps finest team, the 1901 squad that started the Point-A-Minute reign of terror at the turn of the 20th Century.
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Jim Rome to Visit Detroit March 19
Word is out that in a couple weeks uber popular sports radio host Jim Rome will be making a rare visit to affiliate station 1130AM WDFN. On March 19th, Rome will do his show from the WDFN studios in Farmington Hills then bolt over to Northville Downs to meet listeners, advertisers, a few celebs and media titans. This won’t be Rome’s first visit to Motown. I know he stopped in for Super XL and local fans might recall one of his (now defunct) ‘Tour Stops’, held at the Palace back in 2003: Rome working the crowd at The Palace in 2003 I dropped into the Tour Stop event with my wife (bad idea). I’ll always remember when Ernie Harwell came out on stage, the interview and the rabid fan reaction, and all that….but I also recall that Rome spent a good portion of the show apologizing for dropping an f-bomb before Ernie came on and felt horrible after he realized the old legend probably heard it. The March 19 event should make for an interesting afternoon given that the beer flows cheaply and in bucket-sized cups at the Downs & the first round of the NCAA tournament will be in full swing. Toss in Rome along with a few thousand 25-45 year-olds lead by ‘Emilio Textavez’ and you can bet…
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No Freeze Out
A big thanks to Marty Bodnar and the M ticket office for hearing my plea & for doing the right thing—> taking care of the hockey season ticket holders as part of The Big Chill game at the Big House next year. Light blue’s for you: Looks like they’ve reserved quite a few ducats for former players and if this thing is to scale, apparently they’re expecting every living dude who has strapped on the skates for the Maize and Blue to show. Speaking of tickets, plenty available for this weekend’s first round battle in the CCHA tournament and it’s do or die. What are you waiting for? Grip your tickets, get over to Yost. Students are gone so make sure you’re there.
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Harry Bennett’s Castle
A quick follow-up on my post from this weekend on Harry Kipke and some of the troubles he ran into in the late 1930s. The muckety mucks on campus accused Kipke of running with some foul characters, namely Henry Ford’s henchman and enforcer, Harry Bennett. Bennett lived just down the street on Geddes and reader John F. sent me this link with several nice photos of the castle, including the bizarre tunnel that lead to the his pets lions and tigers. Enjoy, photos via retrokimmer blog:
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Rough Seas for Coach Kipke (1936)
The fall of Michigan coach Harry Kipke.
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Jim Delany joins Cowherd (ESPN audio)
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany dialed up Colin Cowherd’s radio show on ESPN this morning to talk about expansion, the Big Ten Network, conference revenues and a bit on Notre Dame. He knocked the recent reports about Texas and Pittsburgh joining the conference, and said the strategy would be carved out over the next few months. Not sure if it was off the table, but sadly Cowherd didn’t ask him about the NCAA allegations. Audio: [display_podcast] .
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Quality Control
So as I mentioned earlier the crux of the trouble with the NCAA comes down to how they decide to treat the ‘quality control’ personnel who allegedly oversaw certain drills during the offseason. This is mentioned in the first paragraph on the Notice of Allegations (NOA) and lists these folks as: Adam Braithwaite, Dan Hott, Josh Ison, Bob McClain, Eric Smith and Bryan Wright. In that same paragraph, the NOA refers to these guys as “quality control staff members (noncoaching sport-specific staff members who were not counted as countable coaches)..” But later the report refers to Herron as a “graduate assistant football coach”. Beyond the oversight concerns, it goes further to alleged that Alex Herron essentially lied to the NCAA investigators. From page 7 of the NOA: It is alleged that Alex Herron, graduate assistant football coach, failed to deport himself in accordance with the generally recognized high standards of honesty and sportsmanship normally associated with the conduct and administration of intercollegiate athletics for providing false and misleading information… It goes on to state that Herron denied his presence at certain summer workouts/7-on-7 drills but the NCAA states “in fact” he was indeed “sometimes” present at these activities. The NCAA also asked for for U-M to provide a bunch of materials and responses to the allegations starting with sections of…
