The Jim Thorpe Association Likes Chekwa Better Than You. Though he's cleary a lightning rod 'round these parts, Chimdi Chekwa was named one of 10 semifinalists for the Jim Thorpe Award, an honor bestowed annually upon the nation's best defensive back. If Chek were to pull the greatest upset since dirt beat soap, he would join Malcolm Jenkins and Antoine Winfield as Buckeyes to have won the award.
Tyler Sash from Iowa and Brandon Harris of Da U are also semifinalists. The winner will be announced December 9th at the The Home Depot ESPNU College Football Awards. Who's your front runner?
I Vant To Suck Yer Blood. The annual Blood Battle between Ohio State and Michigan kicked off for the 30th straight year. Besides saving lives, another reason to participate comes in the form of gaining entry to win a pair of tickets to The Game. The article refers to specific blood banks in the Western Lake Erie region but call 1-800-828-1975 if you are interested in locating donation houses in your area. Good luck to Buckeye Nation on their quest to show that Michigan also sucks at bleeding. I'm too big a wuss to be messin' with needles but I encourage you to get your bleed on.
Speaking Of Michigan Sucking...Heath Schneider's blog has s 20 factoids about the Rich Rod Regime that should help you get through the chronic-induced cottonmouth dry bye-week. A sampling:
- 2 - Total number of Big Ten wins at the Big House in the RRR
- 4 - Total number of Big Ten wins by Tressel at the Big House
- 8.5 - Average offensive scoring against Ohio State in the RRR
- 13 - Number of times the Michigan defense has surrendered 35 or more points in a game in the RRR
- 16 - Big Ten losses for Michigan in the RRR
MGoPoll Evaluates The Program. MGoBlog surveyed their readers to get a feel for what the educated masses think and while some of the feedback was obvious, other responses were a little harder to digest.
A majority (82%) of respondents agreed the offense has improved over the last three years but only 54% said DC Greg Robinson should be fired at the end of the season while another 37% need to wait to see how the final four games unfold. I would've thought, regardless of injury woes, that at least 75% of fans would be standing in line to buy Robinson a bus ticket. Interestingly, Robinson must have a lot of relatives that read MGoBlog as 9% of respondents think he should return in 2011.
Cutting to the chase, 70% said Michigan hasn't shown enough improvment under Rich Rod's leadership and on the question of whether RR should be retained after the season, 37% said Yes, 41% said to wait until the season is over to decide and 21% said he should be fired. Now, with four games left including three against legit opponents, I'm sure many of the respondents are simply reserving final judgment until those games play out. Fair enough, but with Illy (65% said UM loses), Wisconsin (88%) and OSU (85%) all expected to be favorites, it's a good bet RR's MGoBlog support will continue waning until he's in a deeper hole than when Kurt Cobain was tagging Courtney Love. Zing!
Harbaugh Hates USC Too. One of the most qualified targets to steer the Michigan program back to prominence, should the university come to grips with reality, is their charismatic former QB, Jim Harbaugh. The obvious problem with Harbaugh is the all the hurt feelings he caused when he lobbed this tongue-grenade while propping Stanford for its admission standards:
"Michigan is a good school and I got a good education there, but the athletic department has ways to get borderline guys in, and when they're in, they steer them to courses in sports communications. They're adulated when they're playing, but when they get out, the people who adulated them won't hire them."
The comments pissed off most of Michigan family making his return a tough chore. Harbaugh has continued his outspoken ways over the years, taking shots at USC and Pete Carroll. Last week, after taking Washington behind the woodshed, Harbaugh reportedly piled on former USC coach and current Washington HC Steve Sarkisian when giving his team a post game talk saying, "What are you guys, 5-1, 6-1 against that group? That's the highest-paid coaching staff around!". With Les Miles showing what a wildcard he can be, do you think Michigan would try to make peace with Harbaugh and lure him back to Ann Arbor?
"Twin Cities" aka "Swatterdale" Makes B10 Player Poll. AnnArbor.com conducted a quick survey of players attending the Big Ten hoops media day in Chicago and while it only involved 11 players, I still found some results interesting. Tom Izzo was named six times as "the coach, besides your own, that you'd want to play for. That's to be expected but I as surprised Thad didn't get one vote from the other five despite John Beilein earning one. The flip side saw Tom Crean as the anti-Izzo (4 votes) and Matta was not named.
Amazingly, Value City Arena earned two votes as "the best arena to play in besides your own" with the Breslin Center taking seven votes. Lauderdale finished 2nd in "dirtiest player in the league" voting with two votes, one shy of Northwestern's Michael Thompson who apparently "..just pinches and stuff". Kinky. Of course, Lewis Skolnick told us that years ago.
Speaking of OSU Hoops...The Buckeyes kick off the season Sunday at 2pm with an exhibition tilt against Walsh. The game can only be seen on the Big Ten Network Online. There are some differences in the BTN's streaming this year including a new partner (NeuLion) and a change from a pay-per-view model to a subscription model. If that's not in your plans, we've got your back as Kyle will be attendance and will provide a recap.
