Hutch: “How come you couldn’t get your boy Marinelli out here?  Is he busy with the Lions?”.  Griese: “Buurrnn!”  Photo: MLive National champion quarterback Brian Griese dialed into WTKA this morning to promote The 3rd annual Brian Griese/Steve Hutchinson Champions for Children’s Hearts Celebrity Golf Tournament which will be held this year on May 16-17.  The event is sold out this year, but Griese mentioned you can call for a slot next year if interested by dialing 734-998-7702.  Details here on this year’s event, which has raised around $750,000 for the hospital over the last 2 years. Griese discussed the event of, the impact of the players’ trips to Mott Hospital and the various athletes and coaches (Rodriguez, Carr, Moeller, Hanlon..) that will be attending this year. He also reflected briefly on last season’s woes, “It was such a transition, not just from the coaching staff…it was very difficult for them to be successful.” On the outlook for Rodriguez’s bunch, Griese called on the old Parcells adage in support of Rodriguez, “If you want me to cook dinner, you have to let me get some of the groceries.  Hopefully coach Rodriguez has the opportunity to get some more groceries…” When asked about the outlook for Matt Stafford and the Detroit Lions, Griese suggested that the new quarterback will need to…

Former Buckeye (hated him!) and Detroit Lion (loved him!) Chris Spielman joined Mitch Albom on the radio in Columbus.  It sounds like Mitch was in town for a speech and did the show at a studio where Spielman does a drive time show with Kirk Herbstreit. An interesting moment right off the bat, and Mitch recalls that getting a quote out of the Lion linebacker was like pulling teeth, and now marvels that he’s on TV and radio.  Spielman took it in stride, admitting, “I probably had an unhealthy obsession with football, now that I think about it.” You may have viewed my headline and figured I was going to rip on the guy for saying that.  No way.  Somewhere inside I think we kind of hope everyone on the field is a little bit obsessed/crazy about football.  Just like you in the stands.  I loved the guy when he played for the Lions because while maybe he didn’t say a lot, it was clear he was wild about the game.  Didn’t he insist that if injured, he’d never allow anyone to help him off the field?  That he’d crawl or drag himself with one arm if need be?  That’s awesome.  I don’t know if David Harris was shared Spielman’s obsession but he sure played like it. And this is…

Baseball coach Rich Maloney dialed into 1050AM WTKA to talk about this season, the struggles and the outlook in coming years for his young team.  Worth a listen: [display_podcast] Elsewhere:  An excellent profile of offensive line coach Greg Frey from mgoblue.com.  An excerpt, sending bloggers and internet nerds into a tizzy: “David Molk, Tim McAvoy and Perry Dorrestein spent three hours on the Wii one time and I think Molk still holds the record for the slalom in Winter Olympics,” says Frey. “Dan O’Neill is huge on Call of Duty and a lot of the guys are into video games. We’ll talk about some of the new games and they’ll make recommendations and I might be six months late on getting a game, but on a random Saturday in the offseason, maybe I’ll pop in a game and play for a while.”

A nice piece of University of Michigan memorabilia came up for auction this week and starts off this edition of eBay Watch.  It’s a photo album covering events from 1915-1919, apparently assembled by a female student or a club/sorority.  The album includes a few sports items, 200+ photos, programs from plays, dances, and other events, personal letters and much more.  The auction shows just a few of the pages. One page is titled ‘One Sunday in June’ and includes a pair described as ‘Lovers’ perhaps the owner of the scrapbook and her gentleman caller:   OK, enough of the sappy stuff.  Our scrapbookers clearly enjoyed all that campus provided including some activities on the gridiron.  Here’s the program from the November 18, 1916  season finale against Pennsylvania, flanked by some encouraging words: If the program design looks familiar, it was used before.  Here’s the cover of the 1918 game against M.A.C. for instance.  While it is tough to tell from the photo, the seller claims that the full program is glued to the scrapbook page [me cringing]. The 1916 squad was a fine one for Coach Fielding Yost, rolling through its first seven opponents before dropping a 23-20 game on the road at Cornell on November 11th.  According to the account in the Chicago Tribune, Michigan held a 20-6 lead…

Via SI.com’s listing of athletes separated at birth from their celebrity counterparts, this gem.  Lions QB Matt Stafford and the ice cream gobbling ‘Chunk’ from the Goonies:

The 14 year career of Ann Arbor News writer Antoine Pitts is coming to a close, and it sounds like he’s leaving the industry all together.  He called into Andy Evans this morning and reflected on his career, his favorite moments covering hockey & elsewhere, his favorite pieces, on the state of Ann Arbor journalism, and much more: [display_podcast] .

MLive’s Quad Blog seeks talented blogger: MLive.com is seeking a Wolverines blogger to write posts on national and local news and opinion, provide analysis, interact with readers and possibly cover live events for The Diag blog. Candidates must be highly motivated and sports savvy, with a strong passion for anything Wolverines, including recruiting. If you’re interested in sharing your enthusiasm with a large statewide audience and have time and energy to devote several blog posts per week, contact us at wolverines.mlive@gmail.com for more information. One question: why bother following recruiting?  Unless you get an insider, would anyone really come to MLive for recruiting updates?

I feature the occasional wire photo on eBay Watch (scroll down, see the Willis Ward photo below, the Tom Harmon in class, earlier, Yost’s funeral etc).  Does anyone know how that process worked back in the day?  For an pic taken by the Associated Press, did they take the photo, attached a caption and mail that off to certain papers that requested it?  Were many copies made and distributed?  Is there such thing as the “original” wire photo?