The SF Chronicle web site picked up an interesting AP story on the Fab Five with a recap of what they are up to now. Michigan took down all the banners from their run due to the Ed Martin-related violations; apparently they are stored in a historical library. It’s tough to believe that we’re coming up on ten years since Michigan made the NCAA tourney, pretty pathetic. I can remember watching Michigan in 1998 (spring of my sophomore year at Stanford). Tractor Traylor was on that team, along with the rest of Steve Fisher’s final recruits. If memory serves, they lost to UCLA in the first or second round.
Moving on, it was a rough week at work, so I’ve got some saved-up links. To start, a couple post-signing day evals for college football: The Free Press has gathered some blurbs from recruiting gurus about Michigan’s class. Mildly positive news from the Chronicle about Harbaugh’s first class from Stanford. ESPN has a ranking of the top classes; Michigan is at #10. Stewart Mandel at SI.com has an overview of today’s recruiting world and includes this quote from a Rivals.com guy: “‘[Carr] is not a dynamic personality who’s going to go into a living room and wow you,’ said Farrell. ‘Obviously, there’s an age gap, and when you’ve got guys like Urban Meyer, Ron Zook, Pete Carroll coming into your living room, you’re going to be impressed with that.’” I can’t see Lloyd texting with recruits, but his visit with Ron English did seal the deal with Donovan Warren, that USC-lock CB from Long Beach. (The retort to my point is that constant contact via texting or whatever is complementary to the traditional coach visits and campus visits. Touche.)
In baseball news, the Mariners signed their closer, J.J. Putz, to a new $13m deal. Normally I could care less, but Chris and Blake played against Putz in high school, so it’s fun to see his career progress. A few weeks back there was a Freep article on the Tigers’ fan tour in Michigan; I’m posting that mostly because of the comical photo of Magglio and Sheffield all slicked up. And who does Magglio’s hair? Fabulous.
