gehringer_2

Mahomes certainly has more ability to extend a play than Goff, not much comparison there and that counts for a lot. OTOH, while his ability to move is limited, when Goff does move he still makes pretty good throws. He may be a little underestimated there. The conventional wisdom, which was vindicated in the Bears loss, is that Goff gets worse faster when he doesn't have time, though the version of Mahomes that was playing yesterday looked a lot worse under pressure than he is usually thought to be!

I'm certainly not saying a state process isn't subject to review at the federal level. But you seem to be saying the state can't possibly have the authority even if their process passes a review standard. I think that is a much more open question. The federal court give states wide leeway in running elections - look at the their reticence to take on the gerrymander issue. Which as an aside, makes me wonder were the western district in MI thinks they are going by throwing out the commission redistricting....... As a practical matter, one outcome of this case would be that the court tosses what CO has done based on process defects without taking on the question of whether the state might have the authority or not.

This is exactly it. They were a 500 team last May-Oct. If that team shows up this April they don't need to be much better to get to 85-88.

yeah - If Harbaugh goes I can't see Moore as anything less than a lock.

I have no particular opinion on Manuel, other than that he keeps the lowest public profile of any UM AD in my memory. But you have to understand that a major college AD is rated by his employer on only one basis - how much money is the Athletic Dept either returning to the school of hemorrhaging from it. By the only standard that matters to the people he works for, Warde has been a big success.

Colorado had a process - I guess whether it constituted 'due process' is exactly the question?

My wild ass speculation about Harbaugh is that the worst (or best, depending on your view) combination will be UM loses in the playoff and the Ravens win another Superbowl. I don't think he would able to help himself from going back to the NFL to try and top big brother. Both those things look fairly likely right now....

Talked to a friend in SoCal today who said Harbaugh to Chargers is a hot local rumor

no arg that if Meadows' bat continues to play that is the superior outcome.

One second thought, I'm not sure there is a material difference in which field he plays if he can't be more careful with himself. In the corners there are more walls to hit - which Riley has also done. He needs to play more controlled no matter where he is.

I actually don't have a problem with a candidate being taken of the ballot by a state per se. To me the important question is not whether the action is taken by a state or feds, but what the process is to come to that decision - is it actually a fair one? In a federal system there is no reason a priori to assume that state adjudication should be less valid that the Federal. For example most death sentences in the history of the country have been handed down by state courts - so it's not like they are not empowered to make serious decisions. The right of Federal review is there, but the finding of fact is a state process. So I don't take it as just per se that Colorado should be overruled *just* because it would empower Alabama. I think the question merits a deeper examination than just that aspect.

And the best to you and yours!

Assumptions of sanity are not in order. They're struggling against Satan, and Facemasks for God's sake!

I think it's already too late for Congress to try to put the toothpaste back in the tube. They could have done something in that 1st 12 mo or so after the initial NIL ruling but with each conference realignment and NIL deal it get's harder to get back to anything like the status quo ante, and without descending into political commentary - it's factual enough to say that Washington is dysfunctional enough that fixing college sports isn't very likely to make it to the agenda anytime soon.

You can't put a price on doing God's work.

Better games in abstract, quality of play sense, but here is the "on the other hand": In a super conference full of similarly resourced teams, records of playoff teams are more likely to trend to 8-4 than 12-0. Even though we know it's the result of cupcake scheduling, the current system benefits from the hype around all the still undefeated/nearly undefeated teams near season end. The odds of getting a late season game between undefeated UM/OSU (and your 17M eyeballs?!), in a super conference are going to go down - to maybe zero.

ten years is eternity in the NFL. And O linemen tend to be on the older side of players when they entering the NFL with nearly all the good ones having been red-shirted.

LOL - could be the bettors will be enough keep everything oiled. Still the relationship between alums and teams has changed and continues to change. How much that affects anything is certainly up for grabs. Part of it is the economics. When my cohort was in school, even non-student tickets were cheap and on graduating you could move into alumni ticket holder status pretty easily. Just in my personal acquaintance I know a number of people, I went to school with, some of whom have even moved out of state, that still buy their alumni tickets going back to the year they graduated. In my son's cohort, that does not seem to exist at all - 1) the added costs of seat licensing and the lower value of entry job offers... and that more grads leave the state immediately on graduation, never to return - though that's an issue that transcends sports! .2) and seats are less available because us old coots haven't given them up! . So maybe the commercial interests and the bettors keep the money flowing, but you're whistling past the graveyard if you don't think alumni bonds are decaying. In that it's no different than the decay of every other institutional attachment people used to have in the US. To me the most striking thing in the decade+ I have been working with students, is how the Friday buzz about Saturday's game in our student lab has reached a point of non-existence. Maybe Michigan is just more of an outlier on this because our student body is less local than most schools, whatever - but you can't miss the difference. The game can go on without the students caring, but OTOH I do think that the further college ball goes down the road to being the NFL light, the more they risk making a left turn into something like the NBA gleague or MiLB. Time will tell -- but never underestimate the capacity of greedy people to screw up a good thing.

Ottawa County makes the front page of WaPo. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/12/23/ottawa-county-commissioners-michigan-department-health/

No question you are more optimistic than I am. My question is where is the market position? Once the college players are pros, you basically have the NFL light, and every league that has gone up against the NFL for eyeballs has failed, because nobody does what the NFL does better than they do. The attraction of college sports has been in all the differences in the way it operated from the way pro sports operated. If you take away all those differences, which are disappearing by the day, why am I watching Ann Arbor vs Columbus (UM/OSU) instead of Det vs Cleveland - aka Lions/Browns? There can only be one set of top pros, and it's going to be the NFL. Sure there is a certain amount of alumni market to particular existing brands, but judging by the loose attachment of today's students to their varsity teams, that's a lot weaker once you get past the boomers into gens x/y/z and the boomers are dying.

IDK - At the NBA level two guys - one a ten yr vet, the other supposedly with great basketball IQ, have to be coached how to run a pick and roll? Ok, coaching may be a big issue but I'd locate it more at the accountability end than at the level of that kind of instruction.

Before they tore down the Metrodome there was a nice pub more or less right across the street - we'd go there before Tigers games at the dome, but I'm pretty sure that either Hennepin County Hospital has now built into where they were or may the block got bulldozed when they were puttin in the new stadium but I don't see it on the map anywhere.

College football today is like watching a train barreling toward a cliff, the bridge is out but everyone on board is too busy partying to bother looking down the tracks.

It's gotten to where if you want a top tackle or C, you've got to think 1st round. Sewell, Ragnow and Decker were all 1st rounders. Should find a fine guard in the 2nd.

Yup - Weaver has drafted/collected a stable of 2nd team role players without ever having any core players beyond Cade to put them around. They are a long way from anywhere now and there is no indication that either Weaver or Gores even understands what a player in today's NBA is supposed to look like.