Michigan is set to release their self-imposed sanctions in about 30 minutes. File this under FWIW, but despite what some maintain it’s not the first time Michigan has been mixed up with serious off-the-field issues. I’ve covered a couple of these incidents on these pages and beyond, but thought it’d be a good time to review.
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Every Three Days
Last week when U-M SID Bruce Madej called into WTKA 1050AM to douse the rumor of a potential deal in the works to sack Rodriguez in favor of lighter NCAA sanctions, he half-jokingly wondered if there are people out there thinking, “Well it’s been three days, how can we hit Rich again?’” Ugh. Turn over the egg timer. Via a tweet from Mark Snyder of the Freep, former DB Morgan Trent is one of the NFL players profiled in the book Draft Season, which chronicles the story of four mid-round draft picks from 2009. Bengals.com provided a book summary and noted a claim by Trent that Lloyd Carr told him that prior to the draft, Rodriguez trashed Trent “to every NFL scout he could”": At the end of the book, Deren describes the scene with Lloyd Carr, the former Michigan head coach that recruited him to Ann Arbor, breaking the news to Trent that current head coach Rich Rodriguez did him no favors. “Rodriguez had bad-mouthed him to every NFL scout he could,” Deren writes. “Rodriguez claimed that Morgan was lazy, he had an attitude problem and he was a big reason the Wolverines finished with a 3-9 record…” Trent admits the words were “jarring,” and they were hard to understand given that he was so serious about his career…
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The Dark Side…of Sports Memorabilia
I’ve run the eBay Watch series for a couple years and occasionally I uncover some unsettling personal details related the memorabilia involved. In June 2008, the auction of an 1986-87 championship ring resulted in a saga ending with a former teammate contacting the player who sold the ring to make sure everything was cool. In January of ‘08, I featured the auction of a U-M football ring that was alleged to be a salesman’s sample with the name “McCartney” adorning the side of the band. After posting a photo I was contacted by the wife of former coach Bill McCartney who claimed that ring was no sample: it belonged to her husband and yes, he wanted it back. Recently a seller posted a bunch of photos from the turn of the last century including one featuring an old favorite of mine, hero and captain of Fielding Yost’s wonderful 1909 Wolverine team, Dave “Pig” Allerdice sitting criss-cross applesauce: I wrote extensively on the 1909 season in Brian Cook’s epic Hail to the Victors 2009 & I hope you had a chance to read it. Allerdice’s 1909 crew suffered an early setback to Notre Dame but recovered, smoking fools for the rest of the season including powerful Minnesota (and for the first time, U-M walked off with a prestigious piece of pottery)…
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James Walter
Photographed by: Chuck Solomon/SI So word is out that legendary Michigan running back Jamie Morris was given his walking papers in his capacity as Major Gifts Officer within the U-M athletic department. I don’t get a bunch of inside information or scuttlebutt on the goings on down on State Street, but rumors (unsolicited, mind you) were abound the past few weeks that Jamie was on thin ice in the new administration. Contrary to some message board talk I’m certain it had nothing to do with his call to the Columbus radio station last fall, where Morris seemed to hesitate when asked about Rodriguez’s future at Michigan and suggested that Jim Harbaugh would be welcome back (should that day come). Speaking of Harbaugh, back in 2007, Morris joined the Mike Valenti and the Sports Inferno in the wake of the former QB’s comments on the academic standards at U-M. Morris fired some pretty serious shots at Harbaugh, suggesting he wouldn’t have said any of those things if Bo were alive and added that Schembechler would have “whooped Jimmy’s butt”. [As an aside, I’ll never forget Morris’s words at Bo’s memorial service in Michigan Stadium.] A few years ago Morris became co-host with John U. Bacon on WTKA 1050AM’s longstanding Sunday mainstay “Off The Field” radio show. The show is currently on…
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55…..Bam!
Bam!: Boom!: Pow!:
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Swing to Cure Diabetes – May 17 – M Golf Course
Another member of the Michigan football family is stepping up and giving back. Former U-M quarterback/cornerback Rich Hewlett is holding the second edition of his ‘Swing to Cure Diabetes’ at the Blue Course on Monday, May 17. The outing benefits both JDRF (The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) and the University of Michigan Comprehensive Diabetes Center (UMCDC). Details from the official website: Date: Monday, May 17th, 2010 Time: 10:30 a.m. – 7:30 p.m. Format: 11:00 a.m. Shot-gun Start Location: University of Michigan Golf Course 500 Stadium Blvd, Ann Arbor, MI Cost: $250/per golfer To Register: Download and complete the Registration Form Register By: May 1, 2010 I was at the last Swing event, held in 2008 at the Blue Course as well. Many dignitaries were in attendance including honorary chair Kathy Schembechler along with coach Carr: These are great causes and it’s a wonderful event. It’s a great chance to play the U-M course and meet some cool folks and help fight this awful disease. I’ll be out there and hope to see you too. For more info, to join the outing or to donate or sponsor, check out their website: swingtocurediabetes.com. ————————————————————————————- As for Hewlett, his claim to fame while donning the winged helmet will always be getting the start as a freshman against Art Schlichter and the Buckeyes in…
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Driving a Tally-Ho Through It (Michigan-Chicago 1895)
Here’s a remarkable wire photo printed in 1929 of a scene from the 1895 Michigan-Chicago game, held in the Windy City on Thanksgiving Day: It appears as though someone did a 1929 version of a photocopy, actually taking a photo of a photo to produce a copy. I cropped the shot above but in the full version you can see a finger holding down a corner of the old pic alongside a caption: Why didn’t they just use the original photo for this piece? No idea. Perhaps the papers required the images be in a certain size, format and/or medium. While the back of the photo says it was reproduced in 1929, it appears as though it ran (perhaps reran) in a 1931 piece in the Chicago Tribune which reproduced the old photo for an article on the life of legendary Chicago coach Amos Alonzo Stagg. Here’s how it looked in the paper: The caption reads: This is a view of the Chicago-Michigan game, Thanksgiving day 1895. You will note that the fans came in tallyhos, buggies and sleighs. It was played at Staff field, then called Marshall Field, after the donor of the ground. Michigan won the game 12 to 0. The GameDigging deeper, I recovered a recap of the 1895 Michigan victory from the Trib including some beautiful…
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Denard’s Day
I took a load of photos but during the Michigan Spring Game but the best were of Denard Robinson doing his thing. It was his day and consider Brian’s take seconded: Robinson looks like a quarterback now. A running quarterback with rudimentary passing abilities, but a quarterback. There were zone reads and screens and rollout passes and a number of zippy seams that hit players between the numbers. When the offense broke down, Robinson made the concept of "pursuit angles" humorous. Putting him on the edge, as suggested by the coaches’ clinic tea leaves, puts the defense in a bind. His throws were all on a line but they were accurate aside from a couple mediocre bubble screens. Here’s sixteen in action. Please save the “Why don’t you marry him?” as I’m happily married. Wait, is he available? Ironic that everyone is blurry except the guy flying through the scene. [Ed. A few folks asked for a high res copy.] As Brian noted, he tossed a pair of soft screen passes but beyond that the passes were solid. That said, the follow through here is awkward unless he’s demonstrating that the Denard Meter is on high. He ended up turning this up field for a nice gain, but in this shot consider that he’s facing…
