Yes sorry I was flirting but I saw this was a real possibility. #JoshHenschke. Any word on this? He and Will next year...

He’s a husker

Keep those maze and blue doppers up as Bob ufer used to say

Apparently no transfer QB. They are going with Brown, some other no name and Air Noland. Warde will not even visit

Michigan will take on Florida tonight in the second annual Jumpman Invitational. Last year, Michigan lost to North Carolina, 76-80 in the same invitational.

A 7 p.m. tip, and the game will air on ESPN. Jace Howard is out and Jaelin Llewellyn is questionable.

Mike Sainristil is the product of the identity of Michigan Football. An underrated recruit developed through hard work in a team culture, who became a two time captain and All-American.
Jesse Minter says, "there are not many more better than" Sainristil.

to Greg Flugaur.

My friends who are former coaches in the ACC said Clemson and FSU will have their choice of B1G or ESECPN.

They said 3 interesting points.

1. The B1G is liked because of academics and research.

1. b: FSU has a deep possibility unforgiving hate of the ESECPN & the SEC that may be unrepairable.

2. The SEC believes they can get UVA and UNC regardless of what the VA AG & VA Legislature say. Both said it'll be a cold day in Hades.

3. They believe the B1G could get FSU, Clemson, Miami and UNC due to ESECPN's arrogance.

Leaving 2 spots for 1 other school to join ND when the contract is renewed in 2030.

Guessing the B1G will become a 24 team league.

Very interesting I say.

The Wolverines (6-6) run out of gas in 2OT in the Jumpman Invitional losing by five to the Florida Gators.
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Anything new to report @Josh Henschke now that the team has been back for a bit? Seems like it’s all crickets. Hoping they can still find a way to get it done before the New Year but the clocks ticking.

.....every year. We can't recruit. Why be a fan if all people are doing is complaining about the team and recruiting.

38-3 tells me Jim Harbaugh knows how to recruit coaches and identify talent plus cultural fit and develop that talent!

articles written how Bama is so vastly superior to Michigan?

I am beginning to think they only exist because they continue to talk themselves into believing it is true.

Now, I'm not reading that ilk. I can't bring myself to stoop that low.

Driving up from SD with my wife and wondering if anyone had any tips/advice for tailgating. We've got a general admission parking pass are and trying to figure out what time we should be showing up. I know it sounds pretty naive but neither of us have been to any college games let alone the Rose Bowl so I'm just looking for some advice from anyone who has attended before and wanting some recommendations on tailgating, we both just want to make the most out of the trip and hopefully cap it off with a Michigan W!!!!

Figured I'd get this posted now and will come back to answering questions when I'm able to.

Fire away with your questions and we will get back to you when we can!

1). Without a doubt, it was Cornelius Johnson for me. There was a time last season where I would yell, ‘Don’t throw it Johnson!” for most of 2022, because he was dropping balls on the simplest of passes. I wouldn’t begin to speculate as to why, I’ve had years where everything I touched turned to horseshite, but this was freakin’ high stakes B1G football man..and No. 6 just didn’t look he was playing confident and in synch with JJ all year. Honestly, I felt like the should have had Moore or Smith starting above Johnson…I felt he was that much of a liability…until The Game in that pit of vipers in a whole state radical believers in a dangerous football quasi-religious/quasi-fascist delusional death cult. BOOM! CJ is reborn hard and explodes for what? 180+ yards and 2 TDs in THE GAME?!?! Don’t get me wrong, I was elated. He wiped out a whole year of “meh” to “NOO!” In that incredible performance that..well let’s say it.. Michigan doesn’t beat the sucknuts last year without Cornelius Johnson.

This year he’s been overshadowed by Wilson and Loveland, but Johnson was 3rd on the team with 42 catches for nearly 600 yards and 1 TD reception..but that wasn’t his role this year. (I think he had 1 or 2 rushing TDs, but I could be wrong.) Johnson averaged 13.8 yds per catch and he dropped maybe 2 balls all year..and they weren’t gimmies either. No. 6 averaged about 60 yds a game, and they were nearly all high pressure crucial grabs. He was a reliable, trusted receiver for JJ, and was great adjusting with his QB when he was extending plays to make a play. The B1G Championship game was his most targets and catches ever in a game, 9 or 10 if I remember correctly, and he caught every one..again, many for crucial first downs. I expect his low-keyness will end in the CFP, the guy has shown a few times he can be explosive and I’m hoping he tops off a great year with his 2 best games as a Wolverine. He’s far down on Bama’s list of guys to stop on D…I’m way up on Johnson, he’s shown me how wrong about him I was.

2). My favorite 3rd string guy who got some consistent run this year is Mullings..hands down. He showed up this fall running much faster, much more balanced and low..he doesn’t lose his size and power advantage by running upright. This year he showed some jump, some quick twitch agility in his 11 carries for 195 yards for a 6.1 yard avg for 1 TD in 11 games. The dude is 6-2 240lbs and he looks like a quick aggressive Rb instead of a converted LB this year. Next season, with Mullings, Hall, Cabana, and the deeep rb room, Mullings could be a 1,000 yard rb..with Hall not being far behind. Haskins came out of nowhere. Mullings appears to be a much larger version with some better than average rb skills. Oh would I love our RB1 to be a 4.6 6-2 240 rb with enough moves to break off big runs. His ypa of 6.1 per attempt screams it, as he had more than a couple 3rd or 4th down dives. The others were 10 yd to 20+ yard chunk runs. I’m telling you..Mullings and Hall could be no drop off from Corum and Edwards.

In 1983, Bucks County was infested..yes infested..by an army of New Yorkers after the Times and Forbes named our historic county the best place to live and commute to work just a few years earlier. One unexpected aspect was the ton of rich dudes driving around in their BMWs, Porsches, and Alpha Romeos on the dark farm roads looking to race. They were everywhere and as drag racer with a low 11 second 79 Ford Notchback Coupe drag car my pops and I built in a year from a junkyard car, parts, and a rare 1970 Boss 302 engine mistakenly put with all the other Ford 302s I bought for 150$…a priceless engine for 150$. Add aluminum ARP high compression heads made to fit a Windsor 350..just like the original 1970 Boss, a dual tunnel ram with twin Holley Dominators, a Ford 9inch rear with a 4.29 gear and a classic Ford TCI automatic drag transmission. I never broke into the 10s but I was damn close.

However, the car I’m most proud of building was the midnight rally racer I built to smoke all those nouveau riche NYC arseholes and take their money the best way..by subterfuge, dirty deeds, and having a car they had no hope of beating because it was a real European rally race car that the previous owner somehow bribed someone..handsomely..so he could register and insure a German built rally race winner in New Jersey. The 1980 Audi Quattro Coupe..with a longitudinal 5 cylinder turbocharged DOHC 20 valve engine, producing about 300 horsepower to all 4 wheels, was a dominator for taking advantage of the new Rally Car rules allowing 4 wheel drive. That car was a monster in 1983 and I have no idea how the owner got it into the states..I’m just glad he totaled it by bending the right front wheel corner way up and bent out of shape..a unibody car total loss. My friend Chris’ Dad had an Audi and mentioned the dealership was all abuzz about a wrecked race Audi from Europe heading for auction. As a Ford nut I watched English Rally Racing on Canadian TV as a kid and I knew exactly what Audi he was talking about. As fast as I could I went to the dealership in Jersey and made an offer to the Manager of 500$..which he flatly refused. We settled on 1200$ for the wrecked Quattro that everyone thought would be unfixable.. but I’m from Detroit..the son of a hot rodder..and I knew if the drive shafts were okay, the transmission relatively ok, and the engine was fine, I was confident I could fix the car..and quickly too. Ultimately, I cut off the whole front unibody structure, severely chopped a Camaro front clip and channeled the body to weld in a partial frame back to the rear suspension for stiffness and strength. We measured with plum bobs and levels, and though it was never perfectly level, we welded on the fenders, painted it satin black and went out at midnight looking for suckers. Chris and I rarely lost and cleaned up until I had to quit because of my responsibilities. I still dream about flying down those narrow unlit roads topping 100mph in the short straights in that beauty of a car.

Chris said he held onto it well into the 90s, but as it broke down he didn’t have the knowledge to work on the car..finally selling it for 5 grand In ‘96. I, of course, asked for the 1200$ I paid for it originally and was surprised to get a check soon after. Man…that 1980 Euro Rally Audi Quattro would be hard to beat 30 years later. Best hatchet repair I ever pulled off and is definitely my favorite because I did it all without Pops help.

Anybody else have a favorite project car that got away?

Per Tom vh. NM

Nick Saban raised eyebrows last week by hiring former Michigan assistant George Helow.
Michigan DC Jesse Minter says the move makes sense for both sides, but isn't concerned about Bama gaining some sort of advantage.
"I don't put a ton of stock in it."

Gonna assume Bama doesn’t have the same admissions challenges UM does with a sophomore.

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Last week, @KevinWerner shared with me a tweet showing the the top ten programs with the most current NFL players, and what their average recruiting class rank was for the last 10 years.

It was interesting, but I saw some flaws in the methodology. For example... the time frame was off. A school's last 3 classes won't have produced ANY NFL players yet. So Texas A&M, which bought a couple of great classes when NIL opened up, would in fact look a lot worse at producing NFL players than they were. Also, average rank of recruiting class can leave a number that is skewed by one outlier class. For example, Michigan's 2015 recruiting class (using Rivals data) was ranked 37th. Now, that was in part due to low average quality, but also low quantity - we only signed 14 that year. We made the numbers up on the following class, but that #37 skewed our average rank and painted a false picture of the entirety of our recruiting.

So I decided to try to gauge which of the big programs were getting the most bang for their recruiting buck in a more accurate way.

I started by determining who were the top 15 recruiting powers just based on total recruiting points from 2010-2019. That's the relevant time frame for producing current NFL players.

Here were the top 14 recruiting powers (meant to do 15, would have had to calculate several more to figure out who 15th was) for the 2010's, based on total accumulation of recruiting points:

1. Georgia
2. Alabama
3. Florida
4. Florida State
5. LSU
6. USC
7. Ohio State
8. Auburn
9. Texas
10. Oklahoma
11. Notre Dame
12. Clemson
13. Michigan
14. Texas A&M

The next thing I did was look at the number of current NFL players for each of these programs, and calculate an average recruiting points-per-NFL player. Obviously the lower the average, the better. This will show how efficiently programs are turning the raw material of recruited talent into finished products drawing an NFL paycheck.

Granted, this is a bit of a blunt instrument, as it doesn't factor in average draft position, but it's still going to be directionally informative.

Here is what we have...


So what does this tell us?

It's tells us that USC and FSU are recruiting powers who have done a dreadful job of developing scads of high school talent into NFL players.

(FSU is a little weird here, though, as even though they have inefficiently developed NFL players, they have won a National Championship in this span, and went unbeaten this year and might have won another but for Travis' injury. Normally winning games and production of NFL talent track together; for some reason they diverged somewhat with FSU.)

It tells us that Michigan, under Harbaugh, has done much better than most of the big programs at refining raw material into finished products.

It also tells us that the schools we consider football factories - Bama, Georgia, Ohio State - are not just "buying" lots of HS studs and that's why they win. Because USC and Florida are doing the same without the same on-field results.

The numbers show that Saban, Smart and Meyer/Day have also been the best at development, too.

Now, keep in mind: among the schools with the most NFL players are Penn State (7th most), Iowa (10th most), Washington (12th), Oregon (14th), Stanford (15th) and Ole Miss (16th).

None of these programs are top 15 recruiting powers from the 2010's - and only Penn State and Oregon are top 20.

If we were to do their average recruiting points-per-NFL player, PSU, Iowa, Oregon and Washington would come out ahead of even Bama and Georgia. This happens because they give so many more 3* a chance to hit - they have no choice.

The anti-"star gazing" crowd wants to tell you that stars don't matter, that it all comes down to coaching.

But guess what? Iowa, Stanford, Penn State, Ole Miss... they coach the shit out of their guys, get a good number of them on to the NFL... but don't win anything.

The truth - which is borne out in every honest and sensibly carried-out analysis - is that stars do matter.

And coaching matters. This is not an either/or. Want to win at the highest level? You have to do both: bring in tons of highly-rated talent AND coach them up at an elite level.

Getting a ton of highly-regarded HS talent doesn't guarantee you anything.

But NOT getting a ton of highly-regarded HS talent all but guarantees you won't win at the highest level.

4 of the top 15 recruiting powers from 2010-2019 have won 8 of the last 10 national championships. The other 2 were won by #12 recruiter Clemson, but if we ranked the recruiting powers by average points PER recruit, Clemson would be in the top five. They traditionally have small classes because they have the lowest attrition of any of the major powers. Guys just don't transfer out of there.

The upshot:

You can be a good, solid program without being a top ten recruiting power, if you're really well coached.

You will, however, rarely if ever compete for a national title.

The programs who win National Championships are the best recruiters AND the best developers.

One or the other doesn't do it.

After doing some digging, it definitely feels like Oregon has the momentum right now for Dante Moore and it would not be shocking to see him wind up there.

While I think interest was sincere and both sides communicated, I just think it wasn’t meant to be at the end.

Pursuing a quarterback is on the shopping list for Michigan if it makes sense, however, I don’t get the sense it’s high on the list of priorities at the moment. While this is opinion, I THINK some of the line of thought has to do with what JJ does in regard to next season.

If JJ does decide to come back, they’re more than fine with what they have currently and would allow Jadyn Davis a year of development.

If JJ departs for the NFL, I think you’ll start to see the heat turned up in the portal. Again, this is opinion. It’s a tough spot because you have to wait and the QB market will likely be picked through but the spring season might see more departures as well.

It shouldn’t be too long until things become more clear in regards to McCarthy’s future.