Michigan Football To Host Night Game In 2013 - Did anyone not see this coming? Michigan will look to schedule another night game in 2013, and any cursory glance at the schedule screams that this game is going to be against Notre Dame again.
Longtime reserve Elliott Mealer emerges as likely starter at left guard for Michigan football team - It looks like Elliott Mealer and his beard have taken the lead in the competition for starting left guard. This is probably a good thing in the long run.
Top 10: Positions for contenders that could determine BCS champion - Michigan's defensive line comes in for recognition on a list of units' whose play could affect the national title race. Unless Will Campbell can turn in an all-Big Ten season at NT, then catch 70 passes for 1000 yards, I think the d-lines inclusion here might be a tad optimistic.
8. Michigan defensive line: Brady Hoke's D made huge strides in Year One, but now the Wolverines have to replace the heart of their defense the past few seasons in powerhouse nose man Mike Martin. The hope is that former blue-chipper Will Campbell is finally ready to make an impact. Campbell, who has bounced around position-wise in his career and never has seemed ready, has lost weight this off-season and maybe gets that it's now or never for him there. Steady Ryan Van Bergan also will be missed.
Burgeoning Wolverine Star has two previews up. First, wide receivers, where Chris is really high on Devin Gardner's potential outside:
Gardner spending the year at wide receiver (which I fully expect him to, FWIW) is the only hope for this offense to take any noticeable step forward. While Denard will show some natural progression during his second year in Borges' system, without adequate weapons, his performance will likely be stuck in neutral. Gardner can fill and possibly surpass the threat and production that Junior Hemingway brought last year.
Second is running backs, where Chris is really high on Vincent Smith:
Preposterous though this may sound, Smith is probably the X-factor against Alabama if Fitz can't play--and probably even if he can. Though Fitz has proven to be a great ball carrier, Smith brings something to the table that no other back on Michigan's roster can: the ability to catch balls out of the backfield. Alabama's defensive line is going to nullify the advantage Michigan's offensive line will have against most teams, so the ability to keep the defense honest and account for a scat back coming out of the backfield could be valuable.
THE TOP 25 REVIEWED: EVERYONE IS TERRIBLE - EDSBS actually kind of has nice things to say about Michigan.
8. Michigan. We would laugh, but they won 11 games last year with a defense made of mannequins and Greg Robinson's All-MAC all-stars. Ol' Pizzafarts is capable of this, and besides writing in "Denard Robinson" in the "why" column, we have no real answers as to how he accomplishes it.
Tom Markowski's top players - The top high school seniors in the state of Michigan this year. Go figure that Michigan is well represented on this list.
Images of USC's new John McKay Center - Do you like luxury?
'Paterno': A Relentless, Failed Defense of Penn State's Disgraced Coach - What's that word I'm looking for? Oh yeah, eviscerate.
It's not enough to say that Posnanski does not do well relating the facts of the Sandusky case and Paterno's role in it. The truth is that he doesn't really try. "Joe Paterno was fired," he tells us at the end, "why and how the board [Penn State trustees] made its decision is not my story to tell." If not Paterno's biographer's, one wonders, then whose story is it? And what is so complicated about that story? The answer to "how" the board made its decision is quickly and nearly unanimously The answer to "why" is that Paterno, as revealed in his own testimony to a grand jury and through numerous emails that have been revealed since investigations began, had full reason to suspect Sandusky's monstrous crimes against children and did nothing to stop him.
I like Joe Posnanski, but everybody had to see that it wasn't going to end well when his feel good biography got upended halfway through in favor of a complex portrait of a college football coach grown too influential and powerful for his own good, and how his hubris led to the systemic cover up of a horrible series of sexual assaults. Posnanski's story changed halfway through and he never realized it.