Daily Brews: ESPN analyst names two Big Ten teams to College Football Playoff

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of the Daily Brews.

Here we go.

Interesting rivalry exchange named in Overtime book

The Michigan and Michigan State rivalry may not be as storied as the one with Ohio State, but what it lacks in history it makes up for in venom and bad blood, which has been cranked up even more in the Jim Harbaugh era.

In John U. Bacon’s forthcoming book Overtime, he writes about an exchange that took place after the botched snap in the 27-23 MSU victory at the Big House in 2015 where an MSU assistant coach allegedly ran out of the box upstairs, read Sarah Harbaugh’s, Jim’s wife, name tag after bursting across the hall out of the skybox and mocked her acting like a baby crying while rubbing his eyes.

The writeup was from The Wolverine, but Twitter user Steven McFadden posted part of it on social media:

And so the rivalry continues to turn.

ESPN analyst picks two Big Ten teams to College Football Playoff

The going theory is that Michigan or Ohio State have the best shot to come out of the Big Ten and make the playoff. But is there a scenario where both of them could pull it off? ESPN’s Emmanuel Acho thinks there’s a chance and made the bold prediction.

Acho says Michigan goes undefeated, and Ohio State’s only loss is to Michigan. Well alright then.

All there is to say about this is that if that’s what it comes to...deal.

Basketball hits season ticket high mark since 2000

There may be some pessimism that Michigan Men’s Basketball can reach the heights it did under John Beilein with new head coach Juwan Howard, but the optimism far outweighs it in the minds of the fanbase, who just helped the Wolverines sell the most season tickets the program has moved since the 2000 season.

As a Twitter troll pointed out in response to this tweet, “this is what Michigan fans do when they know they will not beat Ohio State.” Well, friend, that’s not the case for football fans, either.

Jake Butt to undergo another knee surgery

This just stinks. The former Michigan tight end and Denver Bronco has continued to have some problems in the left knee, which is the one where he most recent ACL tear was. He took to social media to announce he will have a scope done on it, which he hopes will help him get back on the field for the Broncos.

At some point, it would be awesome to see him be healthy enough to be a factor for an NFL team because he caught everything thrown his way in Ann Arbor and was so reliable. I won’t continue to harp on the ACL tear from the bowl game that he did not have to play in ruining his NFL career, but it cost him a ton of money and he has yet to successfully hold up. Maybe this procedure will help. We hope it does.

National Brews (or, the transfer section)

• Wide receiver Oliver Martin, who transferred out of Michigan this spring, has been ruled immediately eligible to play this season at Iowa. For as much grief as Harbaugh has gotten, he sure seems to be bad at blocking all of these transfers...
• Georgia Tech head coach Geoff Collins is dealing with both ends of the NCAA transfer system right now. Former Wolverine Myles Sims was ruled eligible to play this season, and he commended the NCAA for that, but has a huge issue with how they handled the transfer of former Florida Gator Antonneous Clayton, who’s waiver was denied.
• Speaking of the NCAA’s garbage transfer system, this one might be the most disheartening of all. Virginia Tech transfer Brock Hoffman has been ruled ineligible to play this season despite transferring there to be closer to his sick mother. To get into the reasons why this is wrong would be deserving of its own piece, but this article from The Roanoke Times sums it all up.

That’s it for today. It’s almost the weekend folks. We have college football on TV tonight!