Monday Skull Session

Did you blink or sleep this weekend? You might have missed a commitment in the aftermath of Ohio State's record-setting spring game.

Here are the latest names:

The Lord of Whispers broke down the wild weekend over here. 

Oh, and congrats to the Teflon Wizard for winning the AAU Sullivan Award.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: The reigning champion Ohio State Buckeyes meet President Obama at the White House at 2:30 today. Our Eric Seger is in attendance (there's no way I'd have cleared that background check), so we'll have you covered at Eleven Warriors dot com. (Reminder: This is a celebration, and nobody here cares about your political hot takes. In fact, perpetrators will be banned instantly.)

 GETTING TO KNOW TODD SIBLEY, JR. Fret not, Michigan fans. Because while it's been proven your school can't win without elite Ohio talent... you will always have this tweet from one of Ohio's most exciting prospects:

All I can say right now is... Go Blue

— T Sib 2 3 (@ToddSib23) March 24, 2015

Hmmm. Makes you think, for sure. Let's fast forward to not even a month later:

Very Happy to announce my commitment to THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY!! #Go Bucks pic.twitter.com/nXLwQouJLk

— T Sib 2 3 (@ToddSib23) April 19, 2015

And that's why the streets call Urban Meyer "The Closer."

But just who is Todd Sibley, the powerful #teen that earned a scholarship from Ohio State after a mere two high school football seasons? This interview is from November 2014, but it's still pertinent:

Once upon a time, I pondered majoring in English. Then some uppity professor tried to make me diagram a sentence. I looked at the calendar —  it wasn't 1976 — so I walked out of the class and never returned.

If I had some advice for Todd it would be to avoid English all together. As my position here proves: It's a language being strangled to death right before our eyes.

 LOOKIN' GOOD, JTB! This video is from Friday's practice, and it was sent to me by Remy.

I'm am a doctor¹, actually, and in my 100% professional medical opinion, J.T. Barrett's ankle looks to be mending just fine:

Obviously a ladder drill is a little different from contact football, but there's nothing to take from this video but positive vibes.

ALEX BOONE BASHES HARBAUGH. Alex Boone, one of the biggest men I've ever seen in my life, was a vocal defender of Jim Harbaugh while Harbaugh coached the San Francisco 49ers.

But now that Harbaugh's been ousted... it looks like Boone is done bullshitting to maintain workplace decorum.

From Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk.com:

“He does a great job of giving you that spark, that initial boom,” Boone explains.  “But after a while, you just want to kick his ass. . . .  He just keeps pushing you, and you’re like, ‘Dude, we got over the mountain.  Stop.  Let go.’  He kind of wore out his welcome. . . .

“I think he just pushed guys too far.  He wanted too much, demanded too much, expected too much.  You know, ‘We gotta go out and do this.  We gotta go out and do this.  We gotta go out and do this.’  And you’d be like, ‘This guy might be clinically insane.  He’s crazy.’ . . .  I think that if you’re stuck in your ways enough, eventually people are just going to say, ‘Listen, we just can’t work with this.’”

There's the obvious OSU-UM dynamic at play here, but Boone enjoyed a renaissance in his career under Jim Harbaugh.

To go from that to wanting to kick his ass/wondering if he's clinically insane... well, let's just say I get less worried about Harbaugh by the week, and I wasn't particularly worried about him to begin with.

Where would Michigan turn if Jim Harbaugh flamed out? Oh, be still my heart.

MIKE CONLEY POWERS UP ON PORTLAND. Thanks in part to pedestrian performances by Jared Sullinger (likely playing hurt) and Evan Turner (bad), the Boston Celtics, the worst franchise in professional sports, lost to the Cleveland Cavs in the first game of the NBA playoff's opening round.

On the other side of the bracket, the Memphis Grizzlies put the screws to the Portland Trailblazers, 100-86. Mike Conley dropped 16 points and one beautiful Eurostep:

Conley also wrecked Damian Lillard's life but missed the shot.

More surprisingly, Kosta Koufos dropped five points, three rebounds, and four personal fouls! If you had told me in 2008 that Koufos would be logging NBA playoff minutes on a contender in 2015... I would've punched you in the face.

 THE MAJOR BACK IN THE GAME. Tom Herman's Houston is now my third-favorite team. (My second-favorite is whoever is playing Michigan, obvii.)

But do you remember Major Applewhite, former OC at Texas? Well, he's returned to coaching after a hiatus and will be Herman's OC next year.

From Bruce Feldman of FoxSports.com:

Back then, Tom Herman was an anonymous graduate assistant, a California kid not much older than Applewhite. Last August, Applewhite visited the buddy who had since become the offensive coordinator at Ohio State and spent a week in Herman's basement, picking his brain and studying how the Buckeyes head man Urban Meyer coached his coaches and taught his players by harping on the details, like exactly how crucial field position can be. 

Since it was during the grind of training camp, there were long days, but when the two got back to Herman's home, the 39-year-old Buckeyes OC and Applewhite retreated to the basement, had a beer and talked ball for 45 minutes. Then it was see you at 5:30 in the morning. Some five months later, when Herman was hired at Houstonas the Cougars’ new coach, he asked Applewhite to be his offensive coordinator.

"Those four days were kind of the interview of what he knew and believed in and could learn, all of that stuff," said Herman. "In the back of my mind, ... it was, 'Put him high on the list.'"

That's right: Tom Herman was culling his coordinating wish list... in August of 2014. That dude is a mastermind.

THOSE WMDs. Meet the father, daughter with world’s widest tongues... Clowns Battle Protesters in Big Top Brawl... Hidden alien forest... Batman vs. Superman official teaser... The man who makes the world's funniest people even funnier.

¹ I am not a doctor.