Daily Brews: Former FSU coach Willie Taggart spotted in Ann Arbor on Thursday night

Willie Taggart has a lot of free time on his hands these days after being dismissed as the head coach at Florida State less than two years into his tenure at Florida State, but he has already reappeared in the realm of college athletics.

Our good pal Brice Marich over at The Michigan Insider captured a photo of Taggart attending Michigan hockey’s game against Michigan State on Thursday night at Yost alongside Jack Harbaugh, who was his former head coach when he was a player at Western Kentucky.

The Harbaughs’ relationship with Taggart goes back quite a ways with Jim and Jack Harbaugh recruiting him to play at WKU and eventually coaching there. Taggart was also on Jim Harbaugh’s staff at Stanford. He has jokingly been referred to at times as a brother to the family due to the closeness and familiarity.

Taggart is currently unemployed, which led some to believe that it would only be a matter of time before he wound up in Ann Arbor to, at the very least, help with some gameplanning stuff down the stretch this season. It is way to early to tell if he may be in line for one of those analyst roles or an assistant coaching position, but it seemed likely at some point that he would be rolling through at the very least to have a cup of coffee inside Schembechler Hall.

As of right now, the only thing to do is speculate. However, we will be keeping an eye on if he remains in Ann Arbor throughout the weekend and if he may be at the Big House on Saturday.

Desmond Howard weighs in on Chase Young

Former Wolverine and now-ESPN analyst Desmond Howard has chimed in with his thoughts on the suspension of Ohio State defensive end Chase Young and his two-game suspension (that was reduced from four) due to a loan he took last season (allegedly).

Howard thinks something fishy is going on.

“Student athletes under the age of 25 don’t know anything about loans,” Howard said. “They borrow money with the intentions of never paying it back. The smoking gun is, listen, you know he took a loan? You know he paid the money back? If you know those things for fact, then you know the amount of money. The smoking gun is the money. No one’s releasing the money because they don’t want you knowing how much is involved.

“You going to tell me he took money so a girl could go to Pasadena for a game? My point is, it’s like they’re sitting here and blowing smoke up our butts, spitting in the wind and letting the spit hit the wind and saying, ‘that’s just rain.’ Everybody is looking at the NCAA, but we have rules people have got to abide by. No one has ever released the amount of money.”

Other Brews

• Minnesota regents have approved the new contract that the Gophers agreed to with PJ Fleck to keep him in the Twin Cities for the forseeable future.
• Shoutout to all of the remote workers, stay-at-home parents and more this weekend who watch HGTV in the background during the day (did I just out myself?). Chip and Joanna Gaines will be the guest pickers this weekend from Waco, Texas.
• A Reddit user may have just cracked the code on something. AP Top 25 teams do not fare so well the week after a new Call of Duty game gets released, and they have the facts to back it up.