Former Michigan fullback Aaron Shea dialed up Ira Weintraub and Sam Webb on WTKA on Friday to fire back at the comments made by Rick Leach on Thursday.  Notes: “I wanted to talk about what Rick Leach said yesterday.  I was really disturbed about how he called out Coach Carr.” “There’s not a bigger Michigan Man than I know than Lloyd Carr, and look who he learned from: Bo.  Bo coached Rick Leach and for him to call Lloyd Carr really, frankly, pisses me off.” Shea then went on to defend Carr’s decision to sit in Erik Campbell’s suite in Iowa City, and I agree. “I want to let everyone know—don’t ever question Coach Carr’s loyalty and for Rick Leach to say that…I tell you what, I hope I don’t cross paths with Rick Leach for a long time.” You can hear all of the WTKA 1050AM podcasts here.

A few notes from the game, a few minutes after Michigan resounding win: No offense to Delaware State, The Approaching Storm and the nice folks from Dover.  But if we must put these FCS teams on the slate they’ve got to at least be upper-tier programs, like maybe our winged brethren Delaware.  Having a game today beat a bye week— but just barely.  This game was no fun for me after watching the first two possessions.  The student section was maybe 3/4 full at kick-off: The closed captioning at Michigan stadium was debuted today.  I think it’s a nice idea and I’m all about improving the game experience for the handicapped, but I wonder how helpful this really is to the hearing impaired: Rodriguez emptied the bench of course, but didn’t go to “R. Calhoun”…a fan who was in full pads, helmet, gloves, etc., and ready to get in the game.  Seated right up the gut in section 23, he even wandered down to the sideline gate to share a few observations: The prohibition of bags into the stadium of was in full effect again today, and I noticed these guys atop the northeast tower looking for serious troublemakers.  I want these guys on that wall.  I need these guys on that wall: I enjoyed checking out WTKA’s Bud Light…

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. 

  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:

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…

Awesome:

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…

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.