gehringer_2

Filmed in 1965. Jason Robards and a teenage Barry Gordon. A quintessential 60's story.

The long term question to me is whether NIL fundraising will eventually eat academic fundraising. College football doesn't make that much money for most schools - but just breaking even on the athletic dept budget is considered good enough because the good will generated by a national sports presence is thought to prime alumni giving across the board. But depending on where the NIL arms race goes/is allowed to go, at what point are you having to divert so much of your total development dollars into NIL that you can no longer make the argument that FB is supporting a net positive in the overall giving to the rest of the institution? For scale, UM is budgeting for ~$150M in donor contributions for FY '22. Just to pick a number out of thin air, let's say you can argue that a third of that is supported by sports goodwill That means if NIL costs get near $50M/yr people may start asking why you are operating a football team. Could it get there? Who knows at this point? Since M is one of the richest sports programs and also has one of the biggest total donor bases, you have to think those numbers are relatively smaller most other places. Sure, the Alabama's, Notre Dames and Michigans are not really very likely to be driven to the mat by this, but you have to have other teams to play! If schools at the bottom who can't compete financially start dropping out of conferences, the formation of new super conferences may be actually be fine from the fans perspective and the net result will be more non-revenue football being played in more places. Maybe not such a bad end - who knows?

I see what you did there.

This is in vitro work, which is valuable as preliminary data, but how any particular in vitro will translate into in vivo is always a question. This is moving so fast that we will probably have epid survey data a lot faster than we'd like to.

yeah that was interesting, and probably too high. Supposedly he is not going back to Vanderbilt so I don't know what he thinks he's going to do with himself to maintain his marketability going into the '22 draft. And if he would not submit to a medical for the last draft, is he going to for the '22 draft? And if he doesn't, I would guess no team will touch him in any early round next year either. And if he does do a medical, what was the point in refusing last year? Situation doesn't make much sense. Plenty of whistling past the graveyard talk from Boras, but I have to wonder if he is regretting taking Rocker on as a client.

The police have gone though an interesting transition my lifetime. Rationally, they know that nothing makes their jobs harder or more dangerous than the ubiquity of guns, and PDs in the main used to support gun control. But what has happened in this generation is that the membership of PDs have become radicalized toward RW philosophies, and so have become guns advocates even in contradiction to their own daily best interests.

NLRB has cleared the way for a union to form and some people at UMinn are already trying to get one off the ground, so that possibility is being pursued. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/31896889/new-players-association-aims-represent-college-football-players-amid-changing-ncaa-landscape The hockey model ties a player to a pro team, so in a system like that the NFL and the NCAA/conferences could work out deals on player placement, but I think it would still end up looking different because the current hockey system maintains amateur status for college hockey players and that is just what has gone away. Or maybe I should day maintained? I feel like all terms have to be used past tense! But one place I wouldn't look for constructive solutions would be the NFL. To them, the beauty of NIL is that it is not their money. I don't see them being in a hurry to offer suggestions for a system that looks like a minor league and makes them responsible for salary payments into a minor league/college system.

Shad Khan wants to modify the situation; Bigly: " I am bitterly disappointed to arrive at the conclusion that an immediate change is imperative for everyone.

Urban Meyer Jan 2021 -> Dec 2021.. Ridin' high in April...Shot down in May...

MI cases seem to have started back down on what is a 4th surge but Omicron is just getting started so who knows what next month will look like.

I will boldly predict (again) that the end game will be a HS draft into the NCAA.

I don't think Harbaugh wants to go anywhere else. I think he likes working with College players. But we'll see.

right - WCF didn't mind spending money, but he would only spend it on flash - like a great running back or an occasional splashy FA signing (things that put fannies in the seats was the phrase IIFC), but good scouting and (keeping) good assistants and deep rosters in the trenches didn't float his boat, so the Lions didn't have them.

That may be harsh. I think the issue is competence. Martha had no more clue than the man in the moon how an NFL franchise should be run regardless of where she wanted to take it. And WCF was actually anti-competent. He cared about the wrong things so his team produced the wrong outcomes. All we can hope is that Sheila has been doing her homework.

yes - the state labs have been doing sequencing to track the new strains - first detection of Omicron in MI was 12/9 https://www.wilx.com/2021/11/30/michigan-state-health-officials-testing-omicron-variant/ https://www.freep.com/story/news/health/2021/12/09/omicron-covid-variant-first-michigan-case-detected-kent-county/8889733002/ UM also does sequencing in it's surveillance which is where B117 (now known as alpha) was detected.

People don't believe me when I say that I think NIL is going to turn *everything* upside down before all is said and done.

You know, I have a recollection of the Lions saying they would not entertain the idea of trading him, but I don't remember if that was before or after he walked away - so as per the above it was after he told them he was done.

I"m sure US DOD is taking his advice under advisement. Still, it goes to show that you give people like this the propaganda edge when you regularly kill the wrong people.

This is all true though I would offer one caveat. When a player like Calvin Johnson bad mouths not only the recent FO but can't say anything good about the current either, that may affect how other players look at the prospect of playing for the Lions. Of course the degree depends on what kind of personal respect Calvin commanded among other players.

LOL - so he obviously intended at that point to play for 6 yrs, not two.

whether and why any other player left the game early has no direct bearing on Lions' history.

Please consider the words actually written in your responses: " a career that ended up less than it might have been". The other part of your objection is already addressed in the post.

Maybe the most concrete case to take would be Barry. It not for Barry's unhappiness with the Lions he might have keep playing and set a lot more records that would have stood longer than he did. I think that is a pretty safe argument. So in this case you have direct logic from the disfunction in the Lions' org to a career that ended up less than it might have been. That said, no-one forced Barry to stay with the Lions. Though you might make the narrower argument that it was specifically Lions' disfunction that got worse after he was already locked into his last contract. Again, he could have demanded a trade. But the counter arg would be that there was a lot of weird psycho-drama between Barry and his father about his career and accomplishments, so there may non-Lions related reasons for some part of his somewhat inscrutable decision making.

I was struck by the pre-Ford ownership. They were clearly too cheap not be outbid by the AFL but also too dumb not to waste picks they weren't going to sign. And they were a pretty successful franchise - think what they would have been without squandering a bunch of top picks!

Lions 1st round QB picks. 1944/4th overall. Otto Graham(HOF). Played 10 yrs, 7x All Pro, 23584yds. All for Cleveland. He never signed with the Lions. 1948/6th overall. Y.A. Tittle(HOF). Played 17 yrs, 3x All Pro, 33070yrds. Never played for the Lions. Signed with the Colts (AAFC) instead. Off to a great start here! 1949/2nd overall. John Rauch. Never played for the Lions( 3 for 3 so far!) - Traded for Doak Walker. Rauch only spent three seasons in the NFL as a player but did coach the Raiders to a Super Bowl. Walker turned out to be the real deal so the pick was by no means a waste, but still did not yield a quarterback. Lions didn't try for QB agains in the 1st round until 1962/10th overall. John Hadl. Played 17 yrs, 1x All Pro, 33503 yds. Never played for the Lions(!!!). Went to the AFL Chargers instead. 1964/5th overall. Pete Beathard. Played 11 yrs, 8176 yds, Never played for the Lions (!!!!). Went to AFL where he backed up Len Dawson with the Chiefs. 1968/11th overall. Greg Landry. Played 16 yrs, 16053 yds. Landry played 11 yrs for the Lions. Started 98 games. 40/41/3 record. The 1st QB in 6 1st round tries to actually play for the Lions. Has the closest thing to a winning record of all Lions 1st round pick QBs. 1986/12th overall. Chuck Long. Played 6 yrs, 3747 yds. Long spent 5 seasons with the Lions. Long was pretty much a bust, though as I recall it was in part because he couldn't stay healthy. 1990/7th overall. Andre Ware. Played 4 yrs. 1112 yds. Ware started 6 games for the Lions over 4 seasons. Apparently the Lions scouting director quit over Wayne Fontes' insistence on taking Ware. He was a bust. 2002/3rd overall. Joey Harrington. Played 6 yrs. 14693 yds. Harrington started 55 games for the Lions in 4 yrs, going 18-37. Played additional seasons in Atl and Miami and was out of the NFL. He passed for 3000 yds once with the Lions. Probably a fish out of water in the NFL. Semi bust. 2009/1st overall. Matthew Stafford. 1x Pro Bowl. Still active. 49007 yds. Stafford started 178 games for the Lions going 74-90-1. One notable Lions pick at QB came in the 1957/17th round. Lions took Jack Kemp out of Occidental College. Kemp, a two time All Pro, threw for 21218 yds in his NFL, before moving into politics. But he never played for the Lions, who cut him in training camp. There you have it. A brief history of Lions' 1st round QB picks.