A strong NFL Draft Combine performance has Michigan QB J.J. McCarthy rising in mock drafts.
Is McCarthy a top-10 lock? Is a big market team the new favorite? Could a team make history and trade up for a 1-2-3-4 QB draft?
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I saw that Sherrone wanted to expand the recruiting department. How is that going? Are there any hires that aren't being public right in the recruiting department?
Is Champions Circle getting some big donations(in the millions) from our big donors to help keep this roster intact after spring ball?

I just thought of these questions since we need some good news right now with the state of the men's basketball program.

@Josh Henschke curious if you are hearing anything. I don't need to get into the "slept with Worthy's mom" accusations, but curious about his repsonse.

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Is anyone familiar with Juwan Howard's contact?

How much will it cost Michigan to fire Howard today?

How much will cost at the end of the season?

Enjoy the the victory lap. With this many Wolverines participating as the defending CFB National Champions in Indy I anticipate that the maize and blue will dominate the conversation at the combine.

Are you with me with my guesses at some Michigan 40 times?

Roman Wilson 4.36
JJ 4.52
Blake Corum 4.47

Over/Under UM players that get drafted in this years draft in Detroit? 15

Over/Under UM players drafted by the LA Chargers? 2.5

Will Warde Manuel continue to limit Michigan’s use of financial incentives in recruiting to the same as he found so effective when he was recruited in 1986?

If we thought recruiting and tampering was wild until now, we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.

Beginning Of The End Of The NCAA

Michigan Hockey secured a series split with Minnesota this weekend, keeping them in the race for the NCAA tournament.
Pairwise gives Michigan better than-not odds, but a Big Ten Quarterfinal matchup against Notre Dame could secure their fate.
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The dude was a pro. I loved the Mort Report. He battled throat cancer.

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Buckeyes outlast Wolverines in Columbus
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He breaks it down with Adam Friedman. I get the sense he's one of the top backs on the board currently.


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… that the SEC has a rule that players can’t transfer from one SEC school to another without sitting out a year?

The SEC established that rule with the objective of minimizing intra-conference transfers. The SEC talking heads think that this rule will minimize transfers out of SEC schools because a lot of players want to play in the SEC, but won’t want to sit out a year in order to transfer to another SEC school.

What if the B1G established the same rule but along with the SEC achieved comity between the conferences by jointly establishing full faith and credit clauses wherein each conference would honor the rules of the other? With 34 of the biggest schools requiring transfers to sit out a year, would that slow down the volume of players transferring?

If a new B1G-SEC Division is formed, the root cause will be the multiple lawsuits that the NCAA has already lost or is losing. These suits will bankrupt the NCAA, possibly leading to its extinction. The lawsuits have frozen the NCAA in place. It can’t even enforce its own rules. The result is total free agency for players and schools recruiting players using money as incentives.

Free agency can be controlled. Rules exist in the pro sports leagues to provide an acceptable structure to their free agency. Unfortunately the rules in the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB are all based on collective bargaining with the players.

Colleges, college leagues and the NCAA have all resisted the idea of bargaining with the players on their intercollegiate sports. But until someone comes up with a structure of such bargaining, the Wild Wild West of the current free agent for college athletes will continue, not only unabated, but probably even worsening.

Part of the basis of the idea of a new college division formed by the Big Ten and SEC is that they will almost certainly create some form of collective bargaining with the student-athletes in order to reclaim control of the current unmanageable free agency.

Let’s see what happens.

The ACC and Big 12 face no-win situation in 14-team CFP proposal. What will they do? Will they be permanent second-rate conferences, or will they take the 2 automatic playoff slots and be quiet?

It looks like the Big Ten and SEC are telling everyone else, “Do it our way, or we’re outta here and you guys can figure out a playoff system for yourselves.”

Actually, it’s worse than that. The B1G and the SEC would almost certainly offer a few schools to join them — Clemson, Florida State, Miami, Duke, UNC, Utah, Arizona, Arizona State, maybe Colorado or Oklahoma State. Or maybe Notre Dame.

That could make for a nice 44-team conference. Four divisions of 11 teams, maybe geographically based to minimize travel. Each team could play a 12-game schedule—2 non-conference games followed by 10 conference games. The CFP would be 16 teams, the top 4 teams from each of the 4 divisions. Only conference games would count for the playoff selections.

Heck, one of the 11-team divisions could be the original Big Ten plus Penn State!

The regular college season would be completed on Thanksgiving weekend as it is now, followed by a bye week for everyone on the first weekend in December. The schedule could be arranged so the round of 8 be played on New Year’s Day in the Rose, Sugar. Orange and Cotton bowls, followed by 2 semi-final games and then the conference/national championship in late January as it is now.

Play the natty in a permanent stadium—eliminate the confusion. Maybe the Super Dome so there could be a big pregame party on Bourbon Street! Or maybe in the Grandaddy of them all—back to the Rose Bowl!

Notre Dame? They could join the new conference or not. Their choice. A one-time invitation, no do-overs later. And no waiting around for an answer!

All the other teams? Call them Division II. They can organize their own conferences and playoff, like Division I.

I wouldn’t spend a helluva lot of time discussing the current 14-game proposal because I’d actually prefer the 44-team B1G-SEC+ conference anyway. That conference would work for basketball and the Olympic sports, as well.

Brilliant plan, Kahuna. Why don’t they put me in charge?

Win count in 2024.
Michigan Football 2
Michigan Basketball 2

Since the last time they played, Michigan is 1-11.

16 of the last 18 games are losses, many not even close, including a few 30 point loss games.

ohio state is 3-1 since firing their coach including beating msu at msu.

Michigan is 11.5 point underdogs.

Is there any chance of showing improvement today and being competitive?

It's time for another Michigan basketball game!

Michigan has had incredible success over Ohio State in just about every sport in the last year or so. The Wolverines will look to keep that going today as they take on the Buckeyes in Columbus.

Tip off was originally scheduled for 4 p.m. on CBS, but it's been pushed back due to Indiana and Maryland going long.

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....4 years ago we got a female puppie when I wanted a male but I lost. So, I insisted on naming her. The obvious name was Jimmy. 10 months later we got another FEMALE golden doodle from the same breeder same mom and dad. So, naturally I named her Juwan.

That was kinda short lived. At least we got a NATTY out of Jimmy. Contemplating renaming Juwan.

He has another 40 yard dash left.

Michigan WR Cornelius Johnson just put together one of the best athletic scores in NFL Draft Combine history.
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This Sanderson/Howard situation is getting weirder by the minute.

I just spoke to some folks who are vehemently denying Sanderson’s account of events. In fact, the lack of evidence of Sanderson saying that Juwan was trying to fight him had not been corroborated In fact, multiple people during the investigation had a totally different view of how things happened, hence why Howard was not fired with his zero-tolerance policy. And the people retelling the story are not directly related to the incident itself.

Regardless of who you want to believe, this should not have happened, shouldn't be public and should’ve been handled in-house before it got to this point.

At any rate, there’s a lot of people to be at fault here, with one person I spoke with calling it a “hatchet job”.

Either way, very messy. Doesn’t change much when it comes to public opinion.

There may be several ways to control the out-of-control free agency in recruiting, tampering, transferring and the payment of college players, particularly in football and basketball. Here’s a solution that’s proven to work by the pro leagues and does not violate federal anti-trust laws — a collective bargaining agreement between a conference, or two conferences like the Big Ten and SEC and an organization representing their scholarship athletes. This idea might be a subject for discussion by the “advisory committee” the Big Ten and SEC recently announced.

The professional sports leagues and their players’ unions have negotiated contracts which have substantially limited the problems of unfettered free agency among the players, permitting the pro teams to stabilize their rosters and player costs and equalizing the competitive position of individual teams. Obviously the players agreed to the terms because their contract with the NFL, NBA or MLB has also proven financially beneficial to them.

In the case of college sports the substantial source of funds provided by the multi-billion dollar TV rights contracts could be used to control the problems free agency is causing in recruiting and uncontrolled transfers between schools.

There is no reason why the Advisory Committee formed recently by the Big Ten and SEC conferences couldn’t affiliate and make a collective bargaining proposal to all their student-athletes. The athletes would have to figure out how to organize in order to respond to the conference’s proposal, of course. But the substantial money involved would certainly result in the prompt formation of such an organization.

Without going into detail, the major elements of a proposal by the conferences could include:

• A substantial portion — say 20% — of the annual TV Rights payments paid to the conferences by the TV networks would be allocated to payments to men’s and women’s scholarship athletes. In the case of the current Big Ten TV contract, that would amount to $16-20 million per year per team payable to scholarship athletes. The SEC would be a similar amount.
• The new college athlete’s union would agree that recruits would forfeit their rights to payment in exchange for their acceptance of a grant-in-aid by a particular school. (No Pay-4-Play).
• Base salaries would be negotiated for both revenue and non-revenue athletes. The salaries would be the same for all scholarship athletes in revenue-producing sports, a lesser amount for Olympic sports scholarship athletes.
• A substantial portion of the allocation of TV rights money after payment of base salaries would remain available for the schools to mandatorily distribute to athletes as incentive compensation.
• The athletes would agree on a total amount of aggregate compensation from both the TV rights allocation as well as NIL payments to individual athletes. (A Salary Cap)
• The conferences would agree to a minimum amount of aggregate compensation from the TV rights allocation payable to individual athletes. (A Salary Floor)
• The players would be required to accept terms whereby athletes transferring between any schools in the B1G or SEC would be required to sit out a year of competition. (The SEC already has this rule for intra-conference transfers.)

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There are a lot of details which would have to be agreed upon by the various stakeholders in intercollegiate sports and then negotiated with the newly-formed athlete’s union, of course.

The school presidents would probably resist an idea which reduces the amount of money they have been provided from the TV contract distributions. But by taking this narrow view, they ignore the reality of the worsening problems of uncontrolled free agency. College sports will be weakened as the result.

The TV networks would like this proposal because there would be a lot more competitive balance between the teams in the conferences, and much more competitive TV matchups.

But please, let’s not debate the fact that this proposal violates the concept of amateurism in college sports. Sadly, we’re already well beyond that notion.

Thought this was cool

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Couple notes.

The DJ intro line to Sherrone Moore about how good UM’s offensive lines are viewed in the NFL is great publicity. Even if David Sanders jr. isn’t acting interested others should.

JJ showing that Ann Arbor is a fine fit for qb’s that want to win and get drafted in the 1st round. McCarthy draft buzz is great for Michigan all around. Every UM fan knows he’s damn near perfect.

Cojo uses combine to show off his physical tools and has one of the best combines ever. He’s always been a great ambassador for UM.

Got to believe that every team in the NFL would want to draft Sainristil. Seems like a sure thing. No one would be surprised if he flourishes at next level. Great weekend for the playmaker.

Ditto for Kris Jenkins. Great bloodlines. Tremendous film. Outstanding personality.

Blake Corum did fine despite the 4.53. @Trevor McCue video post of his cutting ability was impressive. Skip Bayless made an Emmitt Smith comparison. Heard a draft analyst compare Corum & Donovan Edwards to the Lions backfield of Jahmyr Gibbs & David Montgomery. Like that comp for both backs.

You know you’re fast when a 4.40 40 is looked at as disappointing. It will be interesting to see his pro-day time. Maybe Roman had a bad reaction to that strong horseradish sauce at St.Elmo’s. Scouts still love him.

Harbaugh recognizing the UM fans in Indy was a great moment. Having his Michigan Rose Bowl top on was a pure UM sight to see. It takes awhile for some to adjust to his departure. The championship glow is still happening.

Friday, Minnesota beat the Wolverines 6-2 assuring them of third place and Michigan 4th with a BTT date with Notre Dame next weekend in AA.

M is on a NCAA bubble which places great importance on tonight's game and the BTT. It's unlikely the NCAA take 4 B1G teams and Wiscy, MSU & Minny are all virtual locks. It is still possible, but this one game good and one game bad will get you bounced. Not sure even Michigan's name will benefit them this year barring some wins.

Yesterday it was the Minny powerplay which sort of did M in. I stll question Minny's third goal for an interference penalty which was not called when our D got flattened in the crease by a Minny Forward and they scored. Perhaps our D's hand grazed the puck, but it wasn't obvious. Barczewski had another game where he made some great saves and others where I am sure he wished he could have back. Seems to be a repetitive story this season.