Monday Happy Hour is Teaching, Not 'Catfishing'

Hey, all. Signing Day is quickly approaching, and we're getting ready for it. We'll be having live stream updates the day of, so be sure to stop by Maize n' Brew for all your Signing Day info.

First off, basketball lost to Indiana, and we're not happy about it. Zach on matters:

Let's hope that this kind of thing isn't a trend. Michigan goes on the road to impossibly hard venue X and sputters offensively while falling behind big. It has already happened against Ohio State and Indiana, and with road trips to Michigan State and Wisconsin coming up, Michigan cannot continue to fall back early and expect to stay in games.

Our recruiting blogger Anthony Mammel covers the latest news on Michigan commits.

Dave Brandon gave an interview with Ohio State(!) blog Eleven Warriors. Topics primarily include Big Ten possible expansion, but there's a little rivalry talk thrown in too. Here is a snippet from the interview:

If you're a kid coming in as a freshman and you’re going to be part of the Big Ten Conference with 14 teams, if you only play eight conference games a season, you’re going to go through a whole four-year career and not play some of the other teams. That doesn’t feel particularly right. You're trying to build conference continuity and cohesion. We want to travel to their campuses, they want to travel to our campuses, and you're going to put yourself in position where you aren't going to be able to do that.

That would be why a lot of the conferences have moved to nine. I don’t believe any have moved to 10. But I know a lot of ADs and coaches are concerned about a season where Ohio State plays four conference home games and Michigan plays five, and we’re competing for a Big Ten championship. There are some that would argue that that isn’t a level playing field, and I understand that. There are tradeoffs in whatever direction this goes.

Definitely worth a read. Also, here are MGoReaders reactions.

Derrick Green sits down with Bleacher Report to talk about what his five star rating means going forward:

"No status, that's gone for me," Green said during a phone interview. "When I step on Michigan's campus, I'm there to grind and learn the playbook...That 5-star rating means nothing to me. College is another level. I'm just going to go in there and do what I have to do."

You may have heard about a recent "catfishing" thing that went on at Michigan. Well, MLive reports Brady Hoke's explanation for the "catfishing" thing:

"Before he came in, we gave him 20 Facebook accounts of guys on our team," coach Brady Hoke said earlier this month while speaking with hundreds of the state's high school football coaches. "He had his assistant -- she tried to talk to our guys. 'Hey, what are ya doin'?' Whatever it might be.

"Well, two months later we're in a team meeting and we're on the topic of what you put out there in the cyber universe ... you should have seen 115 guys when that young lady -- she was hot, now; a very, very nice looking young lady -- when she walked into that meeting room, and the guys looking at each other.

"Because some of them didn't use their heads when communicating back and forth with that young lady."

As a preface to the 11W interview with Dave Brandon, associate AD is also quoted along those lines:

The experiment involved an attractive female who ‘friended’ athletes. Some of the players responded and sent her comments that were deemed inappropriate. At a later gathering of athletes, the woman walked in to the room. Only then did the players realize the person they had been in contact with was the employee of a firm hired by Michigan to conduct social media lessons.

...

“The use of the word ‘catfishing’ is inaccurate and not what was done in this circumstance (fall 2011),” said associate athletic director Dave Ablauf. “The female did not interact with student-athletes other than to friend request them. What they did was what 100 percent of the individuals who have social media accounts can do – friend or follow an individual.

“Did one or two of the student-athletes reach out and ask her questions about herself? Sure they did. But that was not the premise of the exercise and not used in any way in the presentation. That is where (Eleven Warriors) and others are getting lost in the details. You are attaching what has transpired in the last (Manti Te’o case) and what the show on MTV showcases and are trying to draw a correlation that's not there.

“This should be a positive story about teaching student-athletes about the perils of social media, but the use of one word creates a negative connotation.”

The Detroit News also weighs in with similar quotes from Ablauf:

"We use it as an educational process," Ablauf said. "It wasn't catfishing. It's being misconstrued. They didn't go to that extent (like Te'o's situation). There was no interaction like a catfish.

"They weren't going down that path. This wasn't us trying to trick anyone."

Lastly, be sure to check out Magnus's post at Touch the Banner where he starts looking at the 2014 quarterback prospects.