gehringer_2

College football success is so much about head coaching. Alabama won with Bryant, lost with others, won with Saban. USC has been up and down from a national powerhouse to an also ran - all following who was coaching. M plateaued under Bo at a high but not highest level because he was a great recruiter and teacher but a terrible football mind. Moeller combined the two and was building M into a top level power but couldn't keep his personal act together. Carr inherited the momentum of Moeler's 'Quarterbak U" program but slowly let it run downhill. Harbaugh has made the team tactically strong and has recruited well enough to the style game he wants to play. But the big caveat with with Harbaugh even if he stays is QB recruiting. It took him a long time to find JJ and if he does return but can't put another uber talented QB in a winged helmet they will be right back to 8-4. He hasn't proven he can bring QB talent into the program consistently enough to stay at the top of the conference or in the playoff picture.

I have a really hard time believing NIL is anything but a short term transition to schools paying athletes directly. NIL makes no sense from an economic standpoint because the the players are not being paid out of the income they actually generate - which is the media rights income. Ultimately the expenses to produce a product have to be paid directly out the real income the product produces. NIL is based on what is pretty much imaginary revenue potential and not real revenue collected somewhere. I think any economic arrangement where revenue is going one place and costs are being borne somewhere else can't sustain.

I think he does, it's just not the only thing he wants to do and he can't to all the thing he wants to. I think it comes down to Harbaugh wanting to win a SB in the worst way. But that is a single objective. The man loves the college game and players much more than the pros. On a personal level he was anything but a happy camper with his experience in SF. He has loved the life he has at M. So how do you come down between a thing you want to do and the life you prefer to live? Beats me but I believe that is why he is always going in both directions at once.

If you believe the NCAA is going to hammer him - say suspend him for a season (which is why he wants an employment guarantee to ride such a thing out) then you would believe he's likely to go as opposed to missing a year at M and possibly getting fired anyway. OTOH, if you believe nothing from the NCAA is going to amount to anything (recent comments from the NCAA pres about M being a deserving champion for instance.....) then you'd likely believe this is just the annual Harbaugh attempt to extort better terms from M before doing what he want to do - stay at Michigan. I don't know who would actually have any solid intelligence on what the NCAA is going to do. Other than that I don't have any strong believe one way or the other. I think he really does love being a college coach - pro coaches don't get that kind of hero on a pedestal from their players that Harbaugh loves. But he also wants to one-up big brother in the worst way as well. So we can all keep guessing until he decides...

I know people have accused both Trump and Biden of being on the path to dementia more in hope than supportable by fact, but the way Trump is starting to fall back into serializing disjointed little pieces of preprogrammed rhetoric during his speeches more and more often doesn't seem like a good thing.

Really. Stafford wasn't coming here to have a 20th reunion with old pals, he came here to take the Lion's lunch money and to do his best to send the fans home in despair again. Football is an exercise in sanitized war in 4 parts. For 60 minutes between the line the other guy is supposed to be the enemy.

Smith's smile is a little nerdy but still more authentic than anything DeSantis could ever hope to muster. 🙃

Another thing with Lyon is that he does not clear the puck to the other team a lot. All goalies do it some, but Husso seems especially terrible at giving the puck back when he does a clear around from behind the net. It's not a big thing in a goalie's game compared to save % but when a team has as much trouble regaining possession as the Wings often do, having a goalie that isn't constantly clearing the puck right to the other teams is just another small plus.

They can move the game closer to rugby tackling rules, but not without making major changes to slow down offenses otherwise you'd never see another punt, and neither the league or the fans would be happy with that. Every rule you add to restrict tackling means more guys that won't get tackled. So that's the conundrum.

This team is beginning to show how good Yzerman is. Almost every night we go against teams where the best player on the Ice is on the other side, but Yzerman is starting to build enough depth of secondary talent that they are succeeding anyway. Yzerman has often talked about the fact they you can't really control getting generational players, so he's doing all the things he can control better than the other guys. I don't know if he can get them to being a great team without finding more stars, but they're at least getting to be a good team again. The question is are they good enough yet to keep Yzerman from deciding to pull the plug and sell assets for future picks one more time.

The Cap'n does it. Wing ahead of the Leafs. definitely sweet.

One point banked. 90 seconds of 4 on 3 to get the 2nd

Good game from Maata, not so much from Chariot.

seen a lot worse than that not called for embellishment - but we'll take it.

two posts for the Wings. Panthers getting some luck now. Tying goal has energized the Wings - do they have enough in the tank to hang on?

and there it is! And not really luck but some good work by Ras

yeah - doesn't look like they aren't winning this one without a little puck luck.

During the stretch at the end of '22 playing with Larkin I though he was an effective fore-checker - maybe their best, but not so much in his own end and not so much of anything really after that stretch.

IDK - I don't think you should underestimate how much big institutions hate being played -- even when it's by the goose that laid the golden egg. You see orgs dump successful people all the time even at the cost of shooting themselves in the foot because of the 'no-one is bigger than the org' imperative (which ironically is football mantra...). I don't claim any knowledge of where on the spectrum JH and the 'U' are those scales, I'm just saying I would not be surprised by either an extension announcement or a 'see ya later' kiss off. That kind of organizational dynamic is just unpredictable. There is always someone further up the food chain that can force the org to take the hit if they get sufficiently ticked off.

there is no parallel though - Harbaugh has taken an NFL team to a superbowl.

It's also not like he didn't already have a contract that he is only half way through.... Situations are fluid. if M had lost to PSU and OSU there would be no offer on the table at all.

I don't know the details on how they get around whatever constitutes admissions 'standards', and these kids would be transfers anyway. What I think does matter is that regardless of how they came to college, most B1G teams do want kids who will put in the work to try to graduate because programs do get pressure and bad press when graduation rates go down.

This doesn't really parse. If Warde thought Harbaugh was so much a loose cannon threatening the long term health of the program that he was willing to deliberately rat him out because the Admin was intent on keeping him over Warde's objections, then I can't see Warde not walking when the admin decided to make the extension offer to Harbaugh. Warde doesn't need Michigan any more than Harbaugh does - it wouldn't take him more than 10 minutes to get another AD offer.

Yeah - this is where he's just being greedy. He's wants the U to leave his offer on the table so he can wait out the NFL decision process, that's a bad deal for the U if he walks anyway and Moore (or whoever) is left with no time to put next year's team together. If Buddha is right and his mind is made up to go the U at least gets their $1.5M back if they stand pat without sweetening the current offer.

If this works out I might be able to dump directTV...Yay!