Thursday Morning Brews: Guess who

Happy Thursday, folks. Welcome to Morning Brews. Big Ten Media Days are over, which means we’re five weeks plus a day away from the season opener against Notre Dame—when the hurting will be on the Irish, assuming everything goes according to plan.

As usual, there is a song referenced in this morning’s article. There are at least two clues. They may be words, phrases, or photos, and may reference lyrics, the artist, or the album. If you think you know this morning’s song, fire away down in the comments.

Let’s get to it:

Mike McCray hangs it up. I didn’t see this one coming, but Mike McCray took to Twitter on Tuesday to announce his playing days were over. McCray said in a tweeted statement (linked above), “For some time now, I have been playing the game of football for the wrong reasons and during this time I sacrificed my happiness and my well being [sic].” Later in the statement, McCray alluded to a future around the game, saying, “Although this is the end of my football playing career, it is not the end of my football career.” All of us here at Maize n Brew wish McCray the best with whatever comes next for him.

MAC teams are pirates? That’s what conference Jon Steinbrecher wants anyway. Yahoo Sports reports, “Commissioner Jon Steinbrecher announced Tuesday that he’d given every team in the MAC a Jolly Roger pirate flag. If a MAC team beats a non-conference Power Five opponent or wins its bowl game, Steinbrecher wants the team to raise the flag to a flag pole at its home stadium and keep it there until the next game.” Mmmkay, guys. Good luck with that.

Karan Higdon was recently interviewed by Steve Kornacki of MGoBlue. What did the standout RB say about his goals for the season? “As far as the team, obviously, I want the national championship. But before we get there, we’ve got to win the Big Ten championship. Before we win that, we’ve got to win out our conference, and before we get there, we’ve got to beat Notre Dame. If we take care of every day and every week, we’ll reach the goals we’ve set for ourselves.” For the full interview (which I recommend reading), check out the tweet above.

Just in case you needed another reason to circle October 20th on your calendar this year, Michigan State RB LJ Scott dropped this comment on Day 2 of Big Ten Media Days. I’m sure one of the first things Harbaugh did after getting back to Schembechler Hall was to print this out for the locker room bulletin board.

This one isn’t Michigan related, but it’s one of those football things that was simply too wild to not include in the Brews. First, some background. Aaron Feld is Oregon’s strength and conditioning coach, and—like many S&C coaches out there—he’s an... interesting dude. That is surely on display in this clip of him doing resistance curls on a beach in Hawaii. First, we have the ol’ timey mustache. Then, there’s what appears to be a sizeable... dragon tattoo? Third, he’s speaking in hashtags. There’s a lot to digest in this 26 second video.