Revisiting Alabama (Links) - Over the last couple months MnB's very own contributor, HoldtheRope has put together one of the most thorough and well researched previews of Alabama that I have seen anywhere. It is broken down into position groups, and while it is a little bit dated, I don't think there is a better preview out there. A good weekend project: read all of these preview pieces and impress your friends.
Michigan's Desmond Morgan has gone from overwhelmed to experienced in one short season - Desmond Morgan, now only a sophomore, is going to be counted on much more heavily than last year. Although given the depth at the position and the youth present, it is comforting to know that two of the main contributors at linebacker are still just sophomores. Linebackers? We haz them.
Brady Hoke: WR Roy Roundtree has 'good' chance of playing against Alabama - Look for Roudntree to not miss any substantial time.
/looks at wide receiver depth chart
/still passes out, because, whoa man there isn't much there
Magnus weighs in on Roundtree here.
Ten corner back recruits to watch for 2014 - Maize and Blue News continues its 2014 recruiting primer, this time with corners. Michigan has been stocking up on the position as of late, but there are a couple highly sought after names which Michigan is in a good spot for already. With the prevalence of the nickel defense* under Mattison, look for the position to be well represented in the next few recruiting classes.
*(I don't think I linked to that look at Mattison's use of the nickel formation that Seth over at MGoBlog did earlier this week, but damn, it is certainly worth a read.)
Goodbye To All That - Bob Ryan hangs it up, and David Roth sums that up.
The nicest and most modern one I've seen was at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, but it was also the most airless and weirdly distant from an actual sports experience. It was, in every way, a really nice place to work, offering copious televisions, chewy A-1'ed steak tips on the buffet, solid-enough end zone views, ease of access to the field and locker rooms and the interview room where Bill Belichick shifts and mumbles and makes a point of not concealing his disdain without ever having to engage any actual, for lack of a better term, sports fans. It also had a crushingly bright, airless THX-1138-y vibe and was dense with the sort of computer-charged air that inescapably and unmistakably signals that you are entering a Place Of Work. There was no saltiness or cigar smoke or surreptitious hip-flask nips or whatever romantic old-timey else I still stubbornly hope for in a press room; it was all "media," no "press." Which is to say: computer screens and the passable buffet and lanyards and credentials and so much lighting, beat writers typing and Peter King popping fruit flavored lozenges-my notes say "Halls Breezers"- and patrolling his Tweetdeck. But there was also Bob Ryan, of the Boston Globe and television and 44 years of writing about sports, who romped and goofed through that climate-controlled no-place as if there were no place he'd rather have been, and who was so boomingly at home there that he might as well have been in his living room.