The annual WTKA takeover for Mott is going on now, with some events continuing through Friday. The radio-thon is one of the many ways that the football team and athletic department as a whole support C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. The full release from UM Health System:

The University of Michigan football team, coaches, players and former players will take over the airwaves in Ann Arbor to raise funds for the U-M C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital.

Ann Arbor Radio’s four stations – Sports Talk 1050 WTKA (1050 AM), W4 Country (102.9 FM), 107one (107.1 FM), and WLBY Ann Arbor’s Business Talk Radio (1290 AM) – will host a 12-hour radio-a-thon event to raise awareness for the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital building project and fund-raising campaign. The radio-a-thon runs 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, June 11.

The event will continue live across the state on “The Huge Show” hosted by Bill Simonson, 3 – 6 p.m. Friday, June 12. “The Huge Show” – which is headquartered in Grand Rapids – will broadcast from Schembechler Hall in Ann Arbor, and heard statewide on Sports Talk 1050 WTKA (1050 AM) and the “Huge” radio network: 97.5 FM-Muskegon, 100.9 FM-Midland, 730 AM-Lansing, 1280 AM-Mt Pleasant, 1330 AM-Flint, 107.3 FM – Grand Rapids, 1380 AM-Greenville, 1440 AM-Dowagiac, 1450 AM – Holland, 1660 AM-Kalamazoo.

In addition, a BBQ with the Boys event with the football team at Schembechler Hall to continue to raise money for the radio-a-thon will be held from 3 – 6 p.m. Friday, June 12. Tickets are $250 for four people, which will include tours of the hall, games on the practice field, autographs and pictures with the team.

Contact mott-development@med.umich.edu to purchase tickets.

In 2008, the radio-a-thon helped raise more than $100,000 for the children’s and women’s hospitals.

In addition to the Wolverine football program, C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital patients, families and medical experts will be featured during the radio-a-thon.

Listeners that day can pledge to make a contribution to C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and Women’s Hospital by calling 800-559-2657, or going online to www.mottchildrenshospital.org, www.wtka.com, www.w4country.com, or www.annarbors107one.com.

Ann Arbor Radio’s broadcast area covers all of Washtenaw County, North to Flint, South to Ohio, East to Detroit and West to Jackson with more than 260,000 daily listeners.

Money raised from the radio-a-thon and BBQ will go towards the playground equipment for the new hospital.

To learn more about the children’s and women’s fund-raising campaign and building project, visit www.mottchildrenshospital.org.

Posted under Football

The Free Press reports today (via the Boston Herald) that the University of Massachusetts will likely be slated for the 2010 season opener in Michigan Stadium, the first game after the completion of the renovation project. Since the game is more than an entire season away, a full-on Googlestalk might be a bit much, but here’s some baseline information on the Minutemen:

The UMass Minutemen play in the Colonial Athletic Association, and have competed in various other conferences (which were apparently other incarnations of the same conference, in effect) in football. They have some degree of success over the years, having captured a National Title in 1998, and losing to Appalachian State in the 2006 Championship Game. Last year, they went 7-5, and lost to both 1-A teams on their schedule, Kansas State and Texas Tech. In 2009, they again play a road game at Kansas State.

Mark Snyder also points out annoyingly, and with horrible sentence structure at the end of his article that playing FCS teams is a pattern for Michigan, as they have played 3 of them since Division I split up. This is stupid, because it’s far less of a pattern than, say, almost every other school in America (save certain outliers like Southern Cal), who play a I-AA opponent every single year, and especially those like Texas Tech and Kansas State, who play multiple in a single year (I swear I wrote this paragraph before looking up UMass’s 2008 schedule. Funny how sometimes Actual Facts back up Perceptions in a ridiculously coincidental and awesome way). Gee, I wonder why newspapers are failing so spectacularly? Hmm… Nothing against Snyder, because he’s typically one of the better UM beatwriters, but Jesus Christ is that assertion stupid. In fact, looking back on it, the whole article is written very, very poorly. A wag of the finger to you, Mr. Snyder!

Posted under Football

OK, These posts might become more common in the offseason as there isn’t a ton of actual news to report/analysis to undertake.

• As reported by several other outlets over the weekend, Michigan’s pursuit of Greg Paulus has come to an end. I was basically indifferent on the Paulus situation, and I hope the Wolverines can bring in Jason Forcier, who can be a depth player and a mentor to his little brother.
• The Wolverine Blog’s Ace Anbender cut a Tate Forcier Highlight from the spring game:
  
• The Athletic Department reports that student season ticket sales are down, and they expect overall non-renewal rate to increase as well. Something tells me they won’t have a problem filling those seats with fans on the waitlist.
• Odd situation with a “commit or not?” for the Wolverines yesterday, regarding DC LB Javarie Johnson (final answer: not). More on this situation later today or tomorrow in a Recruiting Update.
• Catch up with the Michigan Baseball team’s progress in the weekend recap of the Michigan State series. Formerly’ll have a more long-term analysis for you later this week.

Posted under Baseball, Football, Other Sports, Personnel, Recruiting, Spring Coverage

Paul and I both attended the spring game (with Brian of MGoBlog – we must have missed all of you at the tailgate…), and we worked together to put together a general summary of what we saw. My camera has gone MIA temporarily, so the photos will have to wait until later.

Tate Forcier

The defense wasn’t allowed to hit him, and he made his fair share of freshman mistakes, but anyone who watched the spring game has to be somewhat relieved that there will be a significant upgrade at the quarterback position over last year. Tate is by far a better runner than either Nick Sheridan or Steven Threet, and had better throwing mechanics and accuracy than either, as well. He has a much stronger arm than Sheridan, and by the time fall rolls around, it seems he will be able to better grasp the system than Threet did last year, or at least make fewer big mistakes. Forcier threw for three touchdowns, and ran for one more. He also had a few boneheaded moments, giving up a “safety” by fumbling into the endzone (in live scrimmage, it would have been a defensive touchdown), and throwing a pass right to a wide open… Brandon Herron. Another thing I’d like to see him work on is keeping his eyes downfield when he vacates the pocket. On design rollouts, he was fine, but on packet plays, once he started scrambling, he was going to run the ball. Still, for a high school kid, he wasn’t half bad.

Offense

It’s hard to judge the offensive line when it’s #1s vs #2s and vice versa, but an immediately noticeable improvement is that there are enough offensive line to have three separate teams. Hooray depth! The #1 offensive line was (left to right) Ortmann, Schilling, Molk, Mooseman, Huyge.  Schilling to LG was pretty much a done deal (at least for the spring) for the past for week, but the Huyge thing developed really quickly this week.  Considering the buzz around Omameh, it seems to be a good omen that Huyge was able to beat him out.  The OL looked like they were working well together, and they certainly opened holes, but it was against the #2 defense when the #1 didn’t have 2 of their 3 best D-Linemen.

Odoms didn’t play much (being a known quantity and all), but his play that stood out the most was when he let a punt bounce off his chest pads and out of bounds.  Stonum really struggled for most of the day. He was playing with the #2s, some people think because of his recent legal trouble, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if Hemmingway just beat him out. In his defense, Stonum has all the physical tools and made a really nice, difficult catch in the end zone. He has the ability, maybe it will just take a while for it develop.  The real stars were the sophomore slots who didn’t play last year. Terrance Robinson was consistently getting to the open parts of the zone and making good catches. He also had a couple bubble screens and showed good shake.  Roy Roundtree got some playing time and had a few nice catches.  The quality and quantity of the slot ninjas will, hopefully, really make the offense run a bit smoother.

Plenty of different running backs got their turn. Minor started and looked how one would expect him to look. He ran strong and found the holes well, but nothing spectacular. Carlos Brown really stole the show. He broke a 50 or so yard run which featured a nice move to get by Emilien (not Vlad’s fault at all).  Brown definitely looked like the fastest guy out there. Hopefully he can stay healthy.  Smith had at least one big run, and looked pretty comfortable out there. One thing I’ve noticed about him is that I’ve never seen him really get hit. Granted, I’ve only seen him at practice and the Spring Game, but he seems like the kind of runner who is so shifty that he’ll never really get stood up.  It was nice to see Grady have some success out there. He did his pinball routine for a touchdown and didn’t fumble the ball at all.  I really hope he can get something going this year.

Defense

The good news: the offense looked much better than it did last year. The bad news: the offense looked much better than it did last year. The defense was suspect at best on this day. It could have been a particularly bad day for the Michigan defense (and they were missing several starters with injuries of varying severity – including Mike Martin, Ryan Van Bergen, and Donovan Warren), but even the #2 offense (Coner!) was able to move the ball against the #1 defense. When your #1 defense is giving up 30-yard scrambles to David Cone, they had a bad day. For his part, Cone looked decent for a scout-team quarterback. That is to say, be very afraid if he is ever pressed into serious playing time in a game that matters. For a 6-6 non-mobile guy, you’d think he would have a rocket arm or ridiculous accuracy or something, but this was not the case. The defense has a lot of work to do in the off-season, both in terms of getting healthy and hopefully getting on track with GERG’s schemes. The spring depth is scary, especially considering the #1s couldn’t even stop Michigan’s backups on offense. I can only imagine if the #2s get pressed into playing time during the season.

Format

This was a little more Actual Scrimmage-y than past Michigan Spring Games, but there is still a little ways to go in terms of making it truly interesting for the fans (and the Spring Game is an event that is undoubtedly for the fans, not so much the actual team). There was almost no drilling, and it was all real back-and-forth action between the offense and defense. However, the proprietary scoring system that 1) none of the fans know going in, and 2) most of the fans aren’t going to understand, is no good, and I’d much rather see a real game, played with two teams, 1s-v-1s and 2s-v-2s. The depth this spring didn’t allow for that, but hopefully in the future, that will be an option, and the Spring Game can look more like a, well, game. This, of course, will help out significantly with Atmosphere. As an aside, one thing that I think would be cool to do for next year is basically split the fans in half, and give away t-shirts to everyone, with half getting maize and half getting blue (and all of them saying “Spring Game 2010: I was there” or something equally stupid), and have distinct teams that each side is cheering for, to make it more like a home or away game for players.

Atmosphere

I was very pleasantly surprised with fan turnout. Going in, I got the vibe that nobody really expected the attendance to even approach Rich Rod’s stated goal of 40,000. However, as I rolled up to Michigan Stadium Saturday morning, the Crisler lots were already closed (a huge mistake in judgment by the AD or whoever was in charge of parking, as probably 10% of the parking spaces were still unoccupied), and the line for the locker room tours reached out the tunnel entrance, around the North/East end of Crisler, out the main Stadium Drive entrance, and back past Crisler towards Pioneer, with the end of it nowhere in sight. I skipped said locker room tour (been there, it’s really not worth any wait, much less multiple hours), and didn’t even catch the tail end of the flag football game, which I had been planning to do. The stadium was mostly packed, since the top 40-ish rows on the East side and 25-ish rows on the West side were closed. There was still plenty of open space to stretch out in the upper levels of each end zone, though. Next year, when there isn’t construction to worry about (at least not closing seats), I think Rich Rod’s goal of 92k+ might be attainable – as long as the marketing of the event continues on its current trajectory.

Posted under Football, Spring Coverage

It’s become something of an off-season tradition for me to criticize the Athletic Department’s marketing campaign (or lack thereof) each spring. This year, instead of being negative, I’d rather point out some positive examples of what better athletic marketing might look like, and what the AD has done recently to improve their marketing effort. Since this is a very football-focused blog, most of the suggestions will relate directly to football, but can be easily applied to just about any sport, revenue-generating or non-.

Coach/Sport Websites
The current trend in Athletic Departments is for football and basketball teams to have their own websites, separate from a general athletics website. Even hotter still os for the coach himself to be the face of such a website, a la Mack Brown. Such sites have several uses, not the least of which is augmenting recruiting efforts. Minnesota’s sites for Tim Brewster (with the ever-so-subtle URL “Play4Brew.com”) and Tubby Smith are excellent examples of such uses. The over-stimulating flash might be a little much, unless it’s an effort to replicate the GOFIGHTWIN aspect of Brewster’s personality, but the emphasis on attractive presentation is duly noted nonetheless. PeteCarroll.com is predictably one of the best coaching websites, because he’s just an awesome dude, and everything he touches turns brotastic. His use goes beyond assisting a recruiting effort, and even gives coverage of the team’s own recruiting on Signing Day.

Even high-profile coordinators, like Virginia Tech’s Bud Foster, can use their own websites as promotional and recruiting tools. Quickly: Check if GERG.com is available! Michigan doesn’t necessarily need to go quite that far, but having dedicated websites for Football and Basketball, featuring their respective coaching staffs, and separate from the hideous MGoBlue.com design, can only help the program.

Of course, no discussion of coach visibility would be complete without a discussion of Twitter. Rodriguez (@UM_CoachRod) was one of the earliest adopters among the coaching ranks, which is very positive. He won’t be quite as bro-tastic as Pete Carroll (“Rocking out to don henley’s “boys of summer” right now… What a great song!!”), or as obnoxious and moronic as Tim Brewster (“WINNING ON AND OFF THE FIELD EACH AND EVERY DAY IS WHAT CREATES A CHAMPION!”), but exhausting any potential outlet is necessary in today’s media environment.

Facilities
I’ve harped on this before, not in terms of “Michigan needs better facilities,” but definitely in the sense that Michigan needs to market better what they do have. Of course, as Oregon and Texas have shown, “If you build it, they [ESPN] will come,” but if Michigan had a website that would better show off what are inarguably some of the best facilities in the country, it would generate some positive buzz. Top football recruit Marcus Lattimore is aware Michigan has good facilities:

“We have the same offensive system that Michigan has,” he stated.  “I have seen their great facilities up there already on their website. “

Think how much more impressed he might be if the website was designed to better show off the facilities than it currently is.

The sadly-defunct razorbackfacilities.com has been replaced by a (far inferior) inline facilities section on Arkansas’s main athletics website, but their display is still far more impressive than Michigan’s. With interactive panoramic views of every building on their athletic campus, the Razorbacks know how to flaunt what they’ve got. Merging their “Shock and Awe” tactic with Michigan’s “Just the Facts, Ma’am” approach and integrating good web design could form one of the best facilities sites on the internet (Texas’s implementation is a good example of the right direction to head, but could be more interactive).

Of course, the excuse of “Blerg too much construction blerg” can be used as a reason not to have a more impresive facilities website. On the contrary, it’s an opportunity to show off how much Michigan cares about improving the facilities, and show status updates, along with live images (sadly, almost nobody knows about these) of the progress on Michigan Stadium.

Media Coverage
This ties in with the facilities argument above, but welcoming the media is an important part of marketing the program. Perhaps more important, is having worthwhile events, people, etc. Daily writer Andy Reid agrees, but dude, you’re in position (perhaps better than anyone) to see what the Athletic Department is doing to make the spring game worthwhile, yet you completely ignore all these steps? Like, welcome to being the new Future Drew Sharp, idiot. Better, yet, you could even read the title of “UM adds activities to Spring Game” and realize that your column is complete crap.

Now, for the actual facts (something Reid has no time for, obviously). This area is one in which the program has probably made the most strides since Rodriguez has taken the helm:

• The AD has crafted a video to hype the spring game, which is certainly more than they’ve done in the past.
• The spring game will return to Michigan Stadium for part of the Spring Sports Weekend, along with Baseball, Softball, and other non-revenue sports contests.
• The Stadium Locker rooms will be open to the public before the practice, and Athletic Department officials will be giving guided tours of the new premium seating.
• The Wolverines will honor those Michigan Men who participated in the Super Bowl. Lamarr Woodley and Larry Foote have already committed to attending the event, and others (such as Steve Breaston and Gabe Watson) are expected to follow suit.
• Along the same vein, an alumni flag football game will be played in Michigan Stadium the day of the game, with commitments from Gary Moeller (who had been something of a persona non grata around the Michigan AD until recently), Jerry Hanlon, Rick Leach, Anthony Thomas, and Derrick Walker already.

Allow me to make one more suggestion: Do This. Please. I’d be surprised if Bill Martin and Rich Rodriguez didn’t invite live coverage, or at least a remote “GameDay” set from BTN or even the real thing from ESPN. These exciting changes, along with Rich’s stated goal of breaking Alabama’s Spring Game attendance record, lead me to believe, for the first time since I’ve been blogging about Michigan sports, that the marketing of UM athletics is headed in the right direction, at least in one way.

Posted under Football, Spring Coverage

Tonight, between 3:30 and 7:00 PM, the University will perform a sound test in Michigan Stadium to determine how the addition of massive structures along either sideline will affect the venue’s acoustics. The purpose of the 140db “cannon shot” isn’t to measure the added volume from crowd noise fto the players on the field (it’s it’s to plan speaker placement for the PA system), but it certainly can provide some information, however obliquely related.

To the crowd-noise-obsessed Michigan fan, this calls to mind the Oversized Metallic Dandelion from last year’s Minnesota game. Associate Architecture Professor Mojtava Navvab was attempting to determine the difference in crowd noise that adding boxes would cause. The results were something along the lines of “2-4 times as loud,” and though I’m sleptical on that degree of difference, 1) I do not have a graduate degree in architecture, and 2) Even without glass last year, the difference in sound was noticeable.

Of course, the Athletic Department is not actively trying to increase crowd noise with the boxes (at least not as their primary goal), so they likely won’t pursue ways in which crowd noise in particular will increase with the added structures. However, if they wanted to really impact the noise on the field, the most effective way to do so would be encouraging fans to make more noise in the first place.

I’m not a fan of my college football events being Minor League Hockey, as Brian would say (translation: RAWK MUSIC, hokey pump up videos, etc.), but there are ways that the AD could promote a louder environment without delving into the corny. Other schools in the Big Ten take this a bit too far, Sparty, Ohio State, and Penn State among them – though I think it’s no coincidence that the latter two have the best homefield advantages in the conference, but there is a happy medium. Pump up videos are unnecessary, but the banner-shaped video board along the bottom of the scoreboards can be used for evil (a word which here means “good”). Step 1) Stop encouraging the GD3DKPT, also known as “God Damn Third Down Key Play Thingy.”  Step 2) Change the message on the board, not only during third down, but all defensive downs, to something simple like “Make some NOISE!”

I’ll wrap this post up before it gets off on too much of a tangent (that i’ve covered several times before), but, uh yeah. Sound test in the Big House tonight, huh?1

Posted under Football

Frequent commenter and friend of blog(er) formerlyanon and I are were talking yesterday about how successful the athletic department has been in terms of coaching hires, facilities improvement, profitability, program success, etc.  While there have been some historically bad seasons in football and basketball, many of the non-revenue sports experienced a lot of success.  The current programs are fairly strong and there doesn’t seem to be issues with revenue streams, so we figured it’s about time to add more varsity sports. If my memories serves me, the last new varsity sport is Woman’s Water Polo which got started in 2001.

Obviously creating a varsity team or even promoting a club varsity team to full varsity status has a lot of strings attached. Obviously there is the cost of equipment, coaches, conference affiliation (if the Big Ten doesn’t have a championship in the new sport) as well as travel to teams that aren’t in the area.  Beyond cost, there is the Title IX issue requiring roughly equal scholarships that also needs to be factored into the equation as well as countless other issues that I am omitting.

The Unofficial Varsity Blue Position

Admittedly this isn’t thinking too far outside of the box, but adding Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse seems to make the most sense to me.  Some reasons why I think it’s a good idea in bulleted list form:

• Facilities already exist
• Men’s Club Varsity team has experienced a lot of success on its current level (National Champs!). Information is a bit hard to find on the Woman’s club team, but in 2007 they went 15-5 in the regular season, which seems good.
• Natural rivals in the area: Northwestern, Ohio State and Penn State all have programs.
• Growing interest in the sport.  It seems as though ESPN is pushing it rather hard, and ESPN really shapes the viewing market.
• At least for men, a major league exists.
• Just what we need to put some heat on Stanford for the Director’s Cup*
• Equal scholarships/teams added, so maybe there won’t be an issue with Title IX?

But there are some issues:

• Seemingly most fitting conference, the ECAC, has a pretty large footprint. In 2010 it will go from Massachusetts to Colorodo.
• The Big Ten doesn’t have Lacrosse.
• There are some real power houses in Lacrosse, so the teams may not have much initial success.
• Despite ESPN trying to make it cool, Lacrosse is still a niche sport.
• It would cost a lot of dollars.

Obviously there are a lot of things that I haven’t thought of in these lists.  Additionally there may be other sports that may be a better choice.  There’s a list of official Club Varsity level sports on MGoBlue for your (brief) perusal.  So if you have suggestions about my idea or your own idea, leave it in the comments.

*Adding another sport will not help much at all to wrest the Director’s Cup away from Stanford. Unless adding that additional team causes all the other teams to win national champioships.

Posted under Other Sports

Rich Rodriguez announced last week that Michigan’s Spring Game will be returning to Michigan Stadium. This year’s intrasquad, to be played April 11th, will once again be open to the public. This is obviously a major step forward for the program, after last year’s final practice was closed, and held at nearby Saline High School.

Now that things are on the right path, I humbly offer a few suggestions to the athletic department the ensure this year’s game is a success.

• Have a real game with normal scoring. None of this “offense v. defense, a sack is 2 points for the defense, a first down is worth half a point…”-type nonsense. A spring game is for the fans, and so let’s not make it confusing to follow. Figure out a way to get it done (I suggest first teams v. second teams, but there are a number of other ways to get this done).
• If there are going to be activities other than a game, make them interesting. Florida has the players race each other (and students who want to try their hand at beating the likes of Percy Harvin). Michigan has players run through drills that fans don’t get. Which do you think is more interesting to observers?
• Invite every high school coach in the state, and most from Ohio. Encourage them to bring their teams. Invite every single prospect that has been identified for the classes of 2010 and 2011. I don’t care if they’re from Florida, Hawaii, or Timbuktu. If they want to come, they will. If it’s too far, they won’t. What does it hurt to extend an invitation? Since there’s guaranteed to be less media covering the spring game (regardless of who is invited), allow the recruits to stay on the sidelines during the scrimmage – something they cant do during an actual game.
• Have a festival-like atmosphere, or at least treat it like a game. Have tailgating, the Victors Walk, contests, concessions. Have the whole band and the whole cheerleading squad in attendance. Bring in forme (or current) NFL players to call plays. Invite College Gameday to Ann Arbor (they were in Gainesville last year) – or at least whatever BTN’s version of GameDay is. Invite all the media that cover the team during the regular season – go out of your way to make sure they know they are welcome.
• If it’s cold, have a pep rally in Crisler before the game. If not, hold it in the stadium. Have Coach Rod speak to the crowd.
• Give tours of parts of Michigan Stadium fans have never seen. Considering all the construction, that could just be whatever has been completed since November 15th. Let them in the locker room, or Junge (unless it’s being used for recruiting) or the press box.

As for fans? Well, they just need to show up, have fun (regardless of the weather), and maybe have a tailgate or two. If there’s one thing fans can do to help the team for next season, it’s showing they still care about and love the Michigan Wolverines, and maybe build a little confidence for the players and coaches going into ’09.

What ideas do YOU have to improve the spring game? Leave them in the comments, and I’ll post a roundup/revision post as spring practice begins. Maybe the best suggestion will get a prize… Anybody interested in a DVD set? There’s a copy of The Rivalry Series: Michigan Beats Ohio State up for grabs.

Posted under Football, Recruiting, Spring Coverage

Michigan comes in third. They had been in second before the tabulation of spring sports, but UCLA was able to pass on the strength of their spring programs.

This is a fairly standard finish for Michigan, despite relatively poor years in the two biggest sports, football and basketball.

In case you’re scratching your head going “Stanford?!,” just know that they always win. Always.

Posted under Blog News

Clothes!

For those who haven’t seen it yet, the alleged away jersey has been revealed on an internet. The picture comes from the Women’s Football Academy held in Ann Arbor by the coaching staff. From the looks of it, however, I would say this looks like a practice jersey (cheap numbers, instead of the sewn-on type, and the material looks cheaper than one would expect). I guess we won’t know for sure until Notre Dame, unless there is an official unveiling of sorts.
The student t-shirts are also available at the MDen now. We unveiled the design here back in the spring. Again, I’m not enamored with the shirt, and I think “Schedule as shirt design” is a horrible, horrible idea. The AD needs to go back to having people with a clue design the shirts.

Posted under Analysis