You probably wouldn't move into a house sight unseen, right? I mean, there has to be some sort of comfort level built up with somewhere you are going to spend the majority of your non-work hours. The place you are going to sleep and eat most of your meals. Strange circumstances may force you to make hasty decisions, but odds are you're taking a walkthrough.
Well, when June 6th rolls around don't hold your breath that five-star safety Su'a Cravens dons the maize and blue hat. It is now confirmed that Cravens will have to cancel his Midwest unofficial visits -- two of his three leaders were thought to be Michigan and Nebraska -- with no plans to reschedule the visits or push back his decision date. Cravens, a prospect out of California, was long thought to be a USC lean, and this seems to be the final blow to any hope that he ends up coming east.
When it comes to high profile recruits it is a pretty hard and fast rule that you don't have a chance until you get them on campus (which goes double for an official visit). Unless Cravens keeps taking officials after his announcement -- not out of the question -- then it is time to take his name off the board.
Links:
In other recruiting news, Tremendous has two informative posts up (part one, part two) that give some insight into where Michigan stands with a few targets. There is also one more post that deals with, in part, Logan Tuley-Tillman's recent "statement" about the rivalry:
Lesson: They're just kids, and that goes both ways. Do me a favor: when you sit down to have your Sunday drink today, or even tomorrow, sit back and ask yourself if you see the picture above having a tangible effect on a Michigan/Ohio game. I didn't think so. Harmless fun. Logan wants to burn an envelope? More power to him. It's all for the rivalry.
Tremendous has quickly established itself as one of the preeminent sources of recruiting info, and if you are someone who follows recruiting and aren't stopping by there daily you are doing yourself a disservice.
100 Days Countdown: Big Ten - I think Denard might be a little low on this list (sixth) and I am not sure there isn't an offensive lineman in the conference worthy of inclusion on a top-ten list, but it is ESPN so my bringing this stuff up proves that the article did its job (dissent sells, folks).
FF410: 2012 Spring Game Breakdown - If you are big into football strategy or want to know what kind of quarterback Devin Gardner may be, this is an absolute must read. Awesome insight into what we could see in the 2012 season.
Five Questions For the SEC Heading Into 2012 - Ty Duffy from The Big Lead runs down a few issues surrounding the SEC race. One of which is devoted to that team Michigan will be playing in the first week of the season.
/oooooooooh he said "that team"
/bulletin board material
/i'll stop now
Playoff semifinals would 'float,' be played at bowl sites of higher seeds - Obvious announcement is obvious.
A SCIENTIFIC DETERMINATION OF FOOTBALL ADDICTION
How often do you, when without FOOTBALL, think soothing thoughts about a time when you can use FOOTBALL again?
Run Home Jack: If X = the number of daylight hours during the offseason, Y = the average daily rainfall during the offseason, and Z = the percentage of JAG episodes left that I've never seen, then the answer is whenever baseball is on.
Brian Kelly, Ara Parseghian, and the old glory and messy future of Notre Dame football
The bigger question, of course, is whether anyone can really get it anymore. This is now the most fallow period in Notre Dame history; the longer it goes on, the more pervasive the sense that Notre Dame football is gone for good, that the Irish may hang around Saturday afternoons on a third-place network desperate for a foothold in the sporting universe, but will never really be relevant to the 21st century. With every Champs Sports Bowl defeat, the notion that a small, independent Midwest Catholic institution with high academic standards can become a national power - and can recruit nationally - in a sport weighted toward the South (and toward superconferences) starts to feel less and less tenable.
Another in a long line of well-written "is Notre Dame finally dead?" essays.
But there already you're starting to realise that there's more to this than you could have imagined. It feels good to be able to control the ball, but it feels better to be able to control it better. At some point, you are confronted with your own fallibility. You want to improve, but the ball resists your commands, and it becomes a struggle: a pleasant struggle, probably, and maybe a worthwhile one too, but a struggle nonetheless. Soon, you start playing against other people, informally and perhaps formally, and they too want their freedom, which is your freedom; there's only so much of it to go around. You find yourself inexorably pushed forwards—by the demands of your employer, if you find yourself being paid to play. But there are also those opponents to contend with, shrinking the space around you and making the clock speed up. And there is your sense of responsibility to your colleagues and to your team's fans (if applicable). It's no longer so simple as you playing a game; it's grown beyond what you can contain all by yourself.
A soccer post, but still incredibly relevant when it comes to sports, professionalism, and how we approach the game.
When champions like Johnny Tapia die, the first instinct of writers is often to look at what the sport took from them, or put another way, how much of themselves these heroic figures gave to boxing. Arturo Gatti, murdered in a hotel room in Brazil. Joe Frazier, broke, broken down, living above a gym in Philadelphia. How much life did Tapia let seep out of him in the ring, where he was as reckless, as relentless, as anybody? How much of himself did Tapia generously portion off for the fans to whom he connected so vivaciously?
How we eulogize boxers -- and more widely, athletes -- and why the questions we ask may sometimes be the wrong ones.