Seems Legit
I’m sure by now you have all seen Brian’s startling admission from this weekend:
I know, right? But it gets even more disconcerting:
Welcome to the world of Lemme Tweet That For You, a site that allows anyone to spoof a tweet from the the Twitter user of his choice. And as you can tell, it looks pretty convincing. Apparently the site has been around for about a year, but has recently been rediscovered and has become a thing. It can’t send tweets to a user’s followers (in other words, I can’t make Heiko’s love of Twilight appear to his followers as if it came from him), but this could still cause plenty of problems for athletes. You can envision someone saying, “hey, check out this screenshot of this since-deleted tweet." And since people often delete their stupid tweets, it might seem plausible.
Or, for more advanced trolling, you can envision some fan saying to a particularly volatile college athlete, “hey, did you see what this dude tweeted about you?” The athlete then responds in kind, and before long the two are going at it, with each thinking the other started it. It’s basically the plot of The Sum of All Fears (the Tom Clancy novel, not the Ben Affleck movie that is okay as a standalone but completely ignores the entire Jack Ryan back-story).
Now all we need is a particularly volatile college athlete…
O HAI Marshall Henderson
I’m sure by now you’re all familiar with Marshall Henderson. He’s the Ole Miss junior who combines the shooting conscience of Allen Iverson, the people skills of Genghis Khan, and the personal aesthetic of Joe Dirt. He started out the NCAA tournament with a statement of questionable taste.
[after the jump]
That’s what you call a “red flag” when it comes to character analysis. Mike Bruesewitz. Swag. The mind tries to combine these words in some sort of Kevin Bacon-esque six degrees of linguistic separation, but no reasonable bridge can be made between these words.
But then things took a turn for the less cordial, when Kentucky sophomore Ryan Harrow took to Twitter to taunt Henderson. Henderson replied in kind:
Two problems. One, that’s not actually Ryan Harrow. That’s just a random dude pretending to be Ryan Harrow. And two, that’s just a terrible idea. It lacks a certain classiness, and while he may or may not have intended it, telling a black guy to get to the “back of the bus” is… dicey? Yeah, let’s go with dicey. But hey, why wouldn’t we give this kid the benefit of the doubt?
Oh. I see.
The Fort has been Breached. TO THE TREBUCHETS!!!
Spring practice has been going on for a little while now, but as most of you know, spring practice under Brady Hoke consists of 2-minute long practices in which guys hit blocking dummies for one minute, run one inside trap, complete two quick hitches, and some talk about preparation and teamwork.* On Tuesday, though, an interloper invaded Fort Schembechler and returned with fantastic tales of people doing things.
This is obviously encouraging on several fronts. First and foremost, it proves that Ross Douglas and Taco Charlton do exist, and are currently doing football things. It obviously bumps the Taco hype from "medium" to "spicy habanero."** It bumps the Kalis hype from [error: parameters exceeded]. It also matches most of the Brady Hoke Buzzword List: "offensive and defensive lines," "tough," "physical," "smashing," and "competition" all made an appearance. We were missing "hearing football" and "tremendous," but that's what spring ball is for: finding weaknesses and addressing them. You'll get there, Gerry.
It's also really hard not to like how positive DiNardo is overall. He isn't a 'blow sunshine up everyone's tight end' kind of guy; last year he pretty much said during the BTN's fall camp tour that Michigan wasn't a Top-10 team... and they weren't. Having a reasonably non-insane analyst give credence to the theory that to a team is turning the corner is nice, especially when that's the only thing anyone is saying.
The downside, though, and it is the inevitable ridiculous extrapolation. If DiNardo thinks Douglas and Charlton were the most impressive, then what's wrong with Dymonte Thomas and Kyle Bosch? There was no mention of Devin Gardner, so IS HE STILL THERE AND ALIVE AND IS HIS ARM STILL ATTACHED? Is "Michigan could have the two best offensive tackles in B1G" a polite way of saying that the interior line is a pile of grass clippings and copies of the Life section of USA Today?
September: perpetually too damn far away.
* SOURCE: Every MGoBlue practice video ever.
** Seriously, the Taco wordplay is going to be so much fun you guys
Gentlemen, You Can't Fight in Here
This week Brian tweeted his displeasure at the extent of the “we fought the good fight” coverage of the hockey team’s CCHA run at the end of a disappointing season. Children of Yost did not take kindly to this, and it was, as they say, so on.
Obviously this is a serious series of accusations leveled by CoY. We should address these individually for a full adjudication on the merits:
CHARGE: Brian forcequit on hockey coverage midseason.
For the prosecution: For the defense:
| Brian DID forcequit on hockey coverage. He authored a piece to that effect in January. Moreover, he pledged that he was "not writing another word about this hockey team." And then he did. So he's a dirty, dirty liar. | Dude, did you SEE this team for the first 70% of the year? It was unwatchable. What was he supposed to write? "Yep, once again Michigan didn't appear to give two craps, and once again they got housed." As a former mod of the MGoBoard, I can attest that some topics just can't be discussed without jabbing Godwin in the groin with a hot poker. |
VERDICT: Guilty, but sentenced to time already served. Brian had to watch every home game of this season, which is punishment enough. Like my mother always told me, if you can't say something nice, stop talking before you start questioning the stances of a bunch of 18- to 22-year-olds vis-a-vis regicide and dolphin-punching.
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CHARGE: Brian took to Twitter to complain rather than to compose his thoughts on MGoBlog.
For the prosecution: For the defense:
| Brian has a widely-read and rather popular internet-based weblog thingy, yet he chose to Twitter-bait Michigan hockey fans. | Brian DID share his feelings on his blog (violating his pledge to not write about hockey, and making him a dirty, dirty liar). Just because I own a cornballer doesn’t mean I can’t make myself some hot ham water too, right? And just because Brian has one platform doesn’t mean he can’t use others. |
VERDICT: Not Guilty. Rage-baiting is what the internets are for, forum be damned
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CHARGE: Brian threw a water bottle at a guy at a football game.
For the prosecution: For the defense:
| He, uh, did. | Tell me you didn't throw things after the Toledo game. Besides, he missed, so no harm no foul, right? |
VERDICT: Guilty. HE MISSED. Brian spends his life covering football. He has access to a greater wealth of football knowledge than most of us could hope to dream. He missed a middle-aged dude with a water bottle from TWO ROWS AWAY. Two rows at Michigan Stadium is, what, five feet? From a stationary target who was already distracted? Sentenced to attend the Michigan Men's Football Experience and train with the QBs.
As for the substance of the debate... I don't know if there really IS a debate. It seems like everyone agrees that (a) most of the season sucked, (b) CCHA run and general un-suckiness of the last month-plus were encouraging for the future, and (c) the death of The Streak meant that the objective goals of the season weren't met. I mean, we're really down to a debate over whether the season was a "failure" or a "disappointment." MY NEAR-SYNONYMOUS ADJECTIVE IS MORE APT THAN YOURS. LOUD NOISES!
You Know What Time It Is
I don’t know if I should sleep better or fear for the Universe. I’mma go with “probably.”