Bob Bland has been Michigan’s assistant equipment manager for 23 years, and I’m pretty certain he’s second in command on Jon Falk’s staff. One of Bland’s duties is to retrieve the tee from the field after kick-offs and bring it back to the sideline. During the first half of the Delaware State game I timed his round trips (sideline-tee-sideline), in seconds: As you can see that Rodriguez wasn’t the only one to empty the bench. Bland passed the torch of tee retrieval to his student assistants after the 5th touchdown and they made the most of the opportunity. The young bucks clearly wanted it more on this day, turning out easily the best times of the first half including the only sub ten second trip.
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Air Novak, Dunk contest Winner
Photo of the dunk, from AP’s Tony Ding, via a Tweet from @mikerothstein Via Dylan at UMHoops.com, a nice clip of Zack Novak’s winning dunk at last night Midnight Madness event…high bounce, through the legs and down: From the other side, via AnnArbor.com:
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Kids Having Fun: Mud Bowls and Protests
Check out the downfield blocking and note the tight spiral in the face of the rush A few details about the SAE Mud Bowl, which will happen prior to the Penn State game this year on October 24th. Per a couple of true gentleman: Kick-off of the game is planned for 11:30am. SAE’s opponent in the fraternity portion will be finalized next week, as the tournament used to determine the opposition is incomplete. As of last night the remaining teams included Fiji, Theta Chi (who need to complete a semi-final game) and Phi Psi. For the ladies, the squad representing Kappa Kappa Gamma will face a partnership of the sororities of Alpha Phi and Delta Delta Delta. Get this– this joint team is a result of a punishment put down by the Greek council (Panhel) thanks to bad blood between the sororities due some to teasing, taunting, tattling and other nonsense between their chapters. My suggestion of a pillow fight to settle this was quickly shot down. Elsewhere…according to AnnArbor.com, in the spirit of the great University protests over Viet Nam and Willis Ward, students today at 3pm will protest the recent crackdown on postgame partying around town. From the story: More than 1,400 students have confirmed on a Facebook events page they plan to attend a 3 p.m. protest…
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The Shirt
Awesome:
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Ricky Leach calls out Carr on WTKA (with audio)
This morning former U-M QB Rick Leach dialed up WTKA’s Michigan Insider with Sam Webb and Ira Weintraub to sound off about the report that Rodriguez backed off the claim that the team hit the highest GPA in team history. Leach painted it as another attempt by the media to discredit Rodriguez, another “example of people with an axe to grind.” But then Leach took aim at former coach Lloyd Carr, saying “I’ve had it,” asking folks to investigate where and with whom Carr sat at the Iowa game (translation: Carr sat with Iowa people and wore one of those corncob hats). Per Leach, with this act, “our ex-coach flipped a huge middle finger” at Rodriguez. Further, Leach implied that if and when folks dig around they’ll find that trail of the negative press on Rodriguez and this team will lead back to Carr. Here’s the audio of the call, thanks to WTKA: [display_podcast] . Quick take on the Iowa thing –> I don’t have a problem with Carr being at the Iowa game in a suite with Iowa people. I’m pretty sure when folks like Mary Sue Coleman visit other teams, like Michigan State, they are the guests of their peers across the sideline. Do they have a Michigan suite at Iowa and at other schools? Where are Carr…
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Mark Messner on WTKA (audio)
Former Michigan legend Mark Messner joined Sam and Ira on WTKA this morning. Overall he’s very pleased with the progress this season and with this team, on the quarterbacks. In the wake of the talk of Rodriguez yelling at Forcier, Messner recalled being yelled about by Bo and how he feels about RR blasting away (he likes it). Messner called in to help promote the auctions for the Pat Maloy Scholarship going on right now (including some items signed by Messner himself). Here’s the audio (it starts about 1 minute in): [display_podcast] . Sam mentioned my interview with Messner earlier this year when he talked about his recruitment; you can find that here. Update: A scoop for you. My sources at the Maloy auction tell me that next week’s honorary guest on WTKA to pump the auction will be the great Gordie Bell! Look forward to that.
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The Boot & The Blame
The media are now kicked out of practice for the rest of the season, maybe forever, thanks to someone who spilled the beans on what they saw during the 30 minute glimpse of practice afforded to the writers on Wednesdays. According to mgoblog: You know, I saw this Daily article detailing this new pitch play Michigan was working on, and I thought "that’s really cool, I wonder why more practice articles aren’t this specific": In a rotation that was repeated about four times, a quarterback and running back lined up to practice a simple outside pitch play. Though the play was basic, the pairings were different than usual. And then Michigan ran that pitch play to pretty good effect against Iowa and then Rodriguez closed practice for the rest of the year. Oh, that’s why. Brian also mentioned that “blogs” might have been mentioned, but don’t look at me, Homes. Unless…Rodriguez got wind of these little plays I showed diagramed on this site last week: If so, 1,000 apologies to RR, Angelique, Wojo and the rest. Related: Angelique talked about her understanding of the rules of what you can report from practices in the wake of the boot on WTKA radio.
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Hello, Angelique (WTKA audio)
The great Angelique Chengelis joined Ira and Sam today on WTKA’s Michigan Insider to talk concussions, Hawkeyes, substitutions, Denard, the media getting the boot from practice (and her understanding of “the rules”) and the Delaware State campus: [display_podcast] . Full podcast and all of the Insider podcasts here.