gehringer_2

that's no answer to the recruiting morass that NIL is going to create. One of the reasons other sports have organized minor leagues to create an organized system of player procurement. You could basically transplant the NHL system into football, where guys are drafted and then go to school while already 'belonging' to a pro team. But NIL even upsets that, because even if a player is already property of a pro team you face financial bidding to get him to come to your school. It's not a matter of purity, it's a matter of having some semblance of an orderly system that doesn't bankrupt the schools for the privilege of playing. If recruits have an opportunity to be paid competitively to attend a school, it seems inevitable that the schools are going to figure they need to have a draft system. *Every* pro league has come to that same conclusion. If NCAA football becomes professional, why should it avoid that same end point?

It's an curious calculus. Putin attacking Ukraine is not a direct threat to the US like the wars in the middle east that threatened oil supplies a generation ago were. And in fact if Ukraine fell back completely into the Russian orbit it would not even have significant impact on the world economy. The ex-Sov block are not serious economic players and even on the energy front Putin wants a puppet gov in Ukraine more to guarantee he *can* sell gas into Europe than so he can threaten the EU not to. What's at stake in Europe is all about principle, not so much actual security or economics, and Putin may be right that the West may rather compromise principle than actually spend blood and treasure when it's just as easy to say "Well Ukraine has been part of Russia since Catherine the Great - this is just a return to the longer term status quo" Taiwan is a much tougher case. If an attempted Chinese take-over of Taiwan led to widespread destruction of the Taiwanese economy it would seriously upend the world economy. The are a big player and are huge in many critical technologies like semi-conductor manufacture. And of course if the Taiwanese actually landed any blows of their own on the mainland? It's formulae for real chaos. I don't see the Japanese or Korean or even us being willing to go to war with China over Taiwan, but it still would be chaos enough short of that. But Xi is probably too smart for that. Unlike Putin who is too imperialist to care about what he may break, Xi wants his cake and to eat it too. He wants Taiwan intact. So I think we are looking at a very long game pressure campaign hoping to just tire everyone out - and the question of how hard the Taiwanese would actually fight? Who knows on that one. Bottom line I wouldn't argue that China is a more serious threat, but Putin is a more immediate one to cause trouble.

Hmmm. Seems to me Clinton(D) passed the harsh sentencing laws and Grassley (R) has been at least one working to change them, but carry on.

could be an irony that the most desirable QB might be a guy like Ewers who still has freshman eligibility (not sure if Ewers does or not but that's not the point, he could...) and has burned his transfer already. Also that means that the team with the best chance it land most top recruit QBs is going to be the one that has the biggest sugar daddy lined up to give him the biggest NIL deal. I wonder if the folks in Columbus feel burned that they they didn't tie Ewers' deal to staying there - or maybe the people that gave him the deal aren't ever local and don't care - not a detail I want to know more about. I find it all depressing. Functionally NIL is basically taking the game right back to bad old dirty boosters days, but just like baseball and gambling, we are told by our new overlords that we can forget all those arguments from the past about why these things are bad ideas. Relax, that was then, this is now! (sure...........until it isn't......) So of course you know where this recruiting arms race will have to ultimately end? A HS recruit draft.

Speaking of OSU. Ewers is gone. QB goes to Columbus, doesn't play, walks away taking a 7 figure $$ NIL deal through the portal with him. https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/32781078/ohio-state-quarterback-quinn-ewers-set-enter-transfer-portal the team, the team, the team,..............my deal, my deal, my deal!

maybe that is part payoff from some of those early wins when we all expecting them to start working on the passing game but they just kept pounding the rock. Maybe their approach was that an O-Line gets more out of running the ball in live games than they could get ever get in practice.

crappy showcase for Thibodeaux. One sack.

Pay half a billion for two SS and have them play 2nd and 3rd? It's not my team so works for me! But something we know from watching Mike Ilitch at the end - there is a difference between signing bats and building a team.

Football is a game of unit to unit match-ups, and for all the reasons you describe, this M team was a bad match-up for OSU. Especially when M was able to score first. What I wonder is whether Harbaugh and his staff sat down last off-season and decided to design a team that could defeat a Ryan Day squad (OSU has been going with pretty much the same game plan for a few years now), or whether they dumb lucked into it. The other factor is that M stayed relatively healthy this year - esp on the D side. I was not fan of his, but in fairness to Don Brown, IIRC one of his teams that got torched by OSU throwing crossing routes over the middle had lost 3 or 4 LBs from opening day.

doesn't seem likely this is going to end well.

that's all we need now, a Michigan version of Ruby Ridge in Hillsdale Co.

To me they violated the 1st rule. They spent a lot of money to replace a position where one of their best players was already playing. Kiner-Falefa had the same WAR last year as Seager and was still arb eligible. Though TBF, Kiner_F probably goes to 3B so the comparison should be to Brock Holt, who was more like replacement level last season.

Rangers had a -190 run differential. Rangers had the 3rd worst ERA, 2nd fewest saves, fewest shutouts, 2nd fewest strike outs, 3rd worst ERA+, and 2nd worst FIP in the American League. They have added a career 107 ERA+ pitcher. Meanwhile, in the field, Kiner-Falefa was +9 Rdrs at short, while Nick Solak was -7 Rdrs at 2B. They totalled -16 batting runs. Seager and Semien totalled +9 Rdrs and 48 batting runs. So with 75/yr million spent I figure they are still short of closing half the run differential to get to even.

TBH, Correa not that much betters in the 'antics' department - depending on how you like that kind of thing.

Schoop is an odd one. A little like Upton in that when he is slumping, he looks so unable to find the ball that he should have been out of baseball two years ago, then a week later he's got the zone down cold and is hitting every ball hard. In Schoops case it is way more than just the random BaBIP noise that all hitters go through. He literally does go from a great to a terrible hitter and back again. Sleep issues? Allergies? Bio-rhythms?

over 9K cases per day for the last two days. We are in a full blown rout. I just took a test today as I have come down with something- feels like an ordinary cold but at this point you have to check on everything.

Brooks goes and dies and the County administration turns to mush in 2 years.....

question: Who is going to want to take this case? These folks don't look like they have the money to hire OJ's team. The Oakland county public defenders office is probably not a happy place since this tragedy

Iowa needed 4 INTs to beat PSU and lost to Wisc and Purdue. Cade is the most careful QB in the conference. On paper there is no game here. Of course 20 yr olds can come up flat for mysterious reasons, but aside from that always there underlying risk of them not showing up, there isn't any kind of football based analysis you can do to persuade yourself MI is likely to lose this game.

Sorry son, I know you are on trial for crimes that may put you away for the rest of your natural life, but we are facing a class D felony and are booking it out of here. Good luck. -Mom and Dad.

I would say that as of last year Cabrera did have long stretches where he saw the ball pretty well, but the knee would come and go - you could watch to see if he was picking up his left foot from day to day/week to week or just swinging flat footed. There's always a possibility the layoff or some off-season routine or treatment will help the knee, or it could just get worse. So I won't try to guess what Miguel can contribute. Clearly last season he was not ready to go when the season started (329 OPS in his 1st 17 games, 747 the rest of the way) - . Hinch had given him 40 AB in ST, could have done a little but not much more there.

but didn't call the cops or the school immediately? Have they determined if he was just picking victims at random?

1st a live round that magically appears and now a gun that magically fires itself?

I've seen 3 weeks given as the minimum ST for the pitchers - so 1st week in March?

Notre Dame promotes their DC to HC. Marcus Freeman is in. Probably saved some $$ there. https://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/college/2021/12/03/notre-dame-promotes-freeman-35-replace-kelly-coach/8851561002/