Another bucolic spring Saturday, albeit without Buckeye football. Let's hope the local team lays low and out of the headlines.
ICYMI:
- My exclusive story on Urban Meyer receiving a Muirfield Village Board of Directors write-in vote.
- Spring Rewind: Offensive line, where Billy Price and Jamarco Jones reign supreme.
- Houston hired Texas quality control coach Kenny Guiton as receivers coach.
- Daniel Tosh and Urban Meyer hung out.
- Help put a life-size statue of Woody Hayes in his hometown of Newcomerstown, Ohio.
Word of the Day: Fallow.
SABAN'S SOLD SOUL STILL SORE. Nick Saban, who may or may not have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for crystal footballs and a military despot in the backwoods of Alabama, is just like every Ohio State fan in that he remembers the details of the 2014 Sugar Bowl.
He's different in that they make him sick to his stomach.
From espn.com:
"I'll never get over it because you never do with those kind of losses," Saban told ESPN this week. "I never got over the returned field goal at Auburn. I never got over playing poorly against Ohio State and losing that game late. And then in this game, we didn't play very well, and Clemson did when they had to. That's what eats at you. We didn't play that great against Washington, either (in a 24-7 Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl win) in the semifinal.
"Something happened to our team from the SEC championship game to the playoff. You look at the Clemson game, and our really good players didn't play very well. But Clemson was a damn good team. They were the best team we played against with the best quarterback, and where we needed to play well, we didn't."
People always talk about Lane Kiffin (more on him in a bit) getting away from the run. Maybe so, but Ohio State didn't exactly come out of the gates with both barrels bucking either. Saban should rest easy knowing the better team won that night.
GUITON AHEAD IN CAREER PATH. Kenny Guiton planned to spend this season in Austin as a quality control coach under Tom Herman. Then Houston dismissed its wide receivers coach and tapped Guiton, the former staffer, as a replacement.
This was an important benchmark for Guiton, and he met it a year early.
From thespun.com in 2016:
CS: It’s early and you’re still really young, but is becoming a head coach at some point the goal?
KG: I definitely wouldn’t mind being a head coach one day. Right now, I want to be a positional coach. That’s no secret or anything. My goal one day is to be an offensive coordinator. Right now I feel like if I become an offensive coordinator, I could so some things to excel and show programs around the country that I’m capable of being a head coach. But that’s so far down the road. My main objective is if I can get a position job, maybe one day become an OC and from there we’ll see.
Future headline: Ohio State Athletic Director Martin Jarmond Hires Texas Offensive Coordinator Kenny Guiton to Replace 12-Time National Champion Urban Meyer.
Just remember you read it on Eleven Warriors first.
WEASEL FAMILY LANDS IN FOREIGN COUNTRY. Spring football isn't over for Michigan just yet. Jim Harbaugh's men land today in the Eternal City, which I thought was Marion, Ohio but is actually Rome.
It sounds like #dad has already arranged a full itinerary.
From espn.com:
Jim Harbaugh, his staff and 99 of their football players will hold three workouts next week in Italy. They’ll spend the rest of their time abroad touring Rome and some of its biggest attractions. Harbaugh billed the trip in February as a cultural, educational and international football experience for his program. Earlier this week, he said he’s hoping the week is “the best experience in these youngsters’ lives up until this point” and the best experience of his too.
[...]
The bulk of Michigan’s roughly 150-person travel party arrives in Rome on Saturday, April 22. Others who haven’t yet finished their final exams will join the team later and some players are opting to skip the trip for academic or personal reasons. The team will practice on April 27, 28 and 29 before heading home on April 30.
When they’re not in pads, the coaches and players will meet with refugees, visit Rome’s most historic landmarks and even have an audience with Pope Francis at Vatican City later in the week. The team also has plans to take in an opera, learn some Italian cooking tips, visit a gladiator training center and perhaps reenact a bit of Italian history with the help of paintball guns.
Honestly, props to Harbaugh and the booster that paid for it. It's a helluva an idea, and I'm in no way jealous of my former roommate Kyle Rowland hustling a free trip to Italy as part of the Toledo Blade's When In Rome series.
But let's let a Michigan fan show us why Harbaugh needs stunts like this:
It hasn't really been 20 YEARS... Has it?? Breaking out the rings and Ann Arbor here we come. 20 years ago, we did it. @UMichFootball pic.twitter.com/RXzWAcBb9q
— Jon Jansen (@BigJon76) April 21, 2017
Jon... It indeed has been 20 years. May this era of prosperity run another 10,000.
KIFFIN-SABAN FEUD HEATS UP. Alabama quarterback Jalen Hurts burst onto the national scene last year. As freshmen are known to do, his production dropped when facing stiffer competition.
Saban says he regrets "protecting" his quarterback.
From gridironnow.com:
“Sometimes later in the year when people played us in a way that we needed to be able to throw the ball, we may not have been as efficient as we’d have liked to have been,” Saban said. “That was probably our fault as coaches, because we protected him, instead of developed him as a young player.
“The goal this spring and certainly before next season is that we can create more balance by being a better passing team to go along with what we’re able to do with our feet as a quarterback — as well as how that creates balance for our overall offense and utilizes some of the other skill players that we have, which we didn’t always take advantage of last year.”
Word got back to Florida Atlantic coach and former Alabama offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin. I'm starting to think Saban bullied him to the point of psychologic damage while in Tuscaloosa.
.@Lane_Kiffin: "Did we protect Hurts? I don't know. Last time I checked the job was to win games. He was SEC offensive player of the year."
— Opening Drive (@openingdrive) April 21, 2017
Taking a minor criticism and obfuscating it into an over-the-top indictment... the argumentative trick humans love to know.
THOSE WMDs. Advertisers opting for Instagram over Snapchat... America's least attractive cities... This is the saddest attempt at stadium grift I've ever seen... Finding Charles Rogers... Desperate malls turn to concerts and food trucks... My class, condensed.
