Per Brian (and creepily verified through FaceBook), today is the official Zoltan Mesko Birthday, which shall henceforth be known as Zoltan Day. In honor of the joyous occasion, I am wearing my Zoltan shirt (dutifully purchased from MGoStore), and sharing a fun anecdote that I have likely already told and am too lazy to type out in its entirety.

Place yourself in LAX airport on January 2, 2007. You may just spot yourself a Zoltan! If you are extra lucky, connecting to Grand Rapids through Cleveland, you may just find a Zoltan on your flight! (Mario Manningham and Prescott Burgess, too, if you must know). Luckily, you taught your parents the “Z” symbol yesterday at the Rose Bowl of Finite Pain. Unfortunately, they enjoy embarrassing you publicly. They convince the flight attendant to form said “Z” hand symbol in the face of the Zoltan! He laughs in her face, and you feel like an idiot for having taught your parents not only the hand thing, but also telling them that He was on your flight.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Posted under Personnel

Four Michigan players are on the North squad’s Senior Bowl roster this weekend.

The practices have been on the NFL Network the first couple of days this week, and will continue up until the game. The game itself takes place at 3PM EST.

The only televised practice in which the players will wear pads for the North team is tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10:30 AM.

Posted under Personnel

Michigan star defensive tackle Alan Branch will forego his senior season of eligibility and enter the NFL draft, the Associated Press reports.

Branch was graded by the NFL’s draft service as a middle-to-late first round pick.

“Michigan took an unknown kid from Alburquerque and turned him into a Michigan Man.“

Best of luck to him in the NFL.

Posted under Personnel

Though pretty much everyone expected it, this is kind of an interesting fact to sneak in to the last sentence of an article.

UM Banquet article in Free Press

Posted under Personnel

Mister Simpson has been granted a release from his scholarship, and is looking to enroll at the University of Cincinatti.

It doesn’t bother me much, since he have never seen the field, and it opens up another scholarship to give this year. The only potentially troubling thing is his close relationship with Cobrani Mixon, as people have been speculating that Mixon may follow him to UC. We are already out of the running for Eugene Clifford, so it shouldn’t affect us as far as recruiting Colerain kids in the future.

Best of luck to Mister Simpson, hope he tears up the Big Least.

Posted under Personnel

MGoBlue.com reports that redshirt junior OT Jake Long has been named to the preseason watch list for the Outland Trophy, an award given anually to the nation’s best interior lineman.

Posted under Misc., Personnel

At least that’s what a few NFL teams are thinking…

Posted under Personnel

Maybe I’ll post a couple other clips later, but for now, I hope this clip will do. Notice that two defensive players let him run right by them.

#23 Carlos Brown Touchdown Run

Posted under Personnel

Lloyd Carr had his pre-spring press conference, at which he shed a little bit more light on the Antonio Bass situation.

The knee was actually injured during a conditioning drill. Bass is probably not going to practice in the spring.

Interestingly, Lloyd also said that Bass was going to play both WR and QB in the spring practices. It was unclear whether the QB was scout team (i.e. practicing for Ohio State et al), or if he was actually going to see significant time at the position this year (other than the occasional gadget play).

Maybe, based on the lack of QB depth that we will have this year, it was actually going to be a position he would think about playing. I think that would also represent a big step forward in UM’s coaching staff getting with the times of the current football climate in the NCAA as well. This is all speculation at this point, however, so I guess we’ll never know.

Other pertinent information from the press conference will be divulged when I have the time to review the tape (have to get ready for the NIT, of course).

Posted under Personnel

I’ve heard that Antonio Bass hurt himself playing basketball, and the injury is supposedly somewhat severe. I don’t have a whole lot of details, but at this point it’s pretty clear that he will likely be out for spring practice. I’ll do some more detective work and see what I can come up with.

A posting on his facebook wall from his girlfriend makes it sould as though there may be some truth to the rumor.

Posted under Personnel