EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT: Once again Michigan won the Charity Bowl, so we'll be getting together with the Fullcastians on JUNE 28, 6PM at the Ann Arbor District Library, then going to Venue for drinks at 8:30. Signup is here so we can plan a good numbers count, or just remember pizzawestern.com.

Things Discussed:

• House: We're in prime recruiting season but schools are starting to tell kids the distribution money isn't coming to recruit against Michigan.
• What's the holdup? In a vacuum liars will come up with B.S. to sell. We're sure Ohio State is pushing for some kind of system where they can go back to exploiting a black market and controlling the enforcement mechanism so that Michigan won't/can't participate in it.
• Best guess at what's holding it up: they're trying to make a clearinghouse that won't the agreement immediately sued out of existence, which is tricky because any regulation of what people can make without Congressional dispensation tends to lose in court.
• Playoff expansion: Why, who, will it? Petitti is a dumb TV suit and put out a dumb TV suit idea so he can make this end-of-year playoff to get into the Playoff. No this is not the Showcase (which is a +1 format to finish the season with the best games that weren't played and determine a conference champion by strength of season). Sankey is predictably honestly dishonest in that he'll keep saying and doing whatever gets more for his schools, and that means he's going to run absolute circles around Petitti the spineless moron.
• Why are things this way? Powers in control are approaching it from how much more TV inventory can they generate, don't think about where the value is coming out of except they're very protective of their own money. Schools imagining themselves #16 and dealing with opt-outs. Who really pays: fans. Fans who buy another expensive last-minute ticket, and travel.
• For years nobody in power has put any thought into what really makes college football valuable, so they're willing to cannibalize the Every Game Matters. Already happened with 12 teams, where Ohio State finished the season with a worse strength of record than Oregon and shouldn't have had a path to redemption.
• With 16 teams you're going to get a 3- or 4-loss champion who gets hot or beneficial matchups in a year with a team that went 14-1. Also guarantee Sankey will know how to get an 8-4 Ole Miss team that played three Sun Belts and an FCS with one ranked win in the SEC ranked above a 10-2 Iowa that beat nobody because they were in the "Not playing Michigan-Ohio State-USC-Oregon" tier when Petitti was making his schedules for inventory.
• Our dream: If Congress were to demand your conference can't have more than 12 members or you can't pay anybody.
• In the break: McKenna
• Yaxeltalk: Watching his film last year there was a lot more Buzz Williams ball where they would Iso then rebound. Hopefully he gets better looks with better creators on the court with him.
• Don't forget defense: Yaxel's length makes him switchable, and you have some major rim protection that won't have to get tired.
• Need to develop 36%+ shooting so opponents don't just collapse, because Yax isn't an off-the-dribble shooter at all. Can Gayle? Can Cason? Freshmen? Nimari is who he is.
• Kobe Assist team: have guys like Gayle, Cason drawing multiple defenders and there will be a lot of opportunities to "pass" the ball to the basket.
• Turnovers again? There are some Danny Wolf howlers from Cadeau but hoping they can coach him to better options.

Things Discussed:

• On early: Talkin Detroit Tigers.
• How this went down: Yax started with college as a fallback, Michigan visit shifted things.
• NBA side of it stayed—if anything the measurements at the Combine improved his NBA stock.
• But Michigan convinced him. Laid out the red carpet. Coaches went to the Combine to support him.
• Did we out-recruit the NBA? Yes, because the NBA wasn't recruiting him, and we are very good at recruiting.
• Good sign for the future: Dusty May knows how to convince a fringe NBA guy to come back to college. Going to have an advantage when they're the competition because we're always going to want these players more than the NBA for the same money.
• What does this do? Cross between Danny Wolf and Johni Broome. Danny measured 6'10.5, but Yaxel is 6'9", much better about turnovers, much better free throw shooter, better face-up guy, close to that level of defender.
• Team: Cadeau and Yaxel are your creators, need Cason to be a breakdown threat, need Gayle and Nimari to be your finishers, and then center is Johnson's defensive presence.
• Big Ten next year: Purdue is still #1, they are going to have a 7'3" guy from Belgium so they don't die whenever TKR gets in foul trouble. Michigan is in that tier with them.
• Proven shooting on this roster? Uh, Tschetter? Need three or four of Cason/Gayle/McKenney/Burnett/Grady to be that.
• Minutes? Cadeau most of them at the point with Cason taking some. McKenny backup up Gayle and Nimari at the SG spots, Tschetter backing up Lendeborg, Johnson/Mara at center.
• Upside: Team is all about creation: Cadeau, Lendeborg are creators, Gayle and Cason are secondary creators, McKenney has that upside.
• Rotation: 8+2 like Dusty likes. Think they'll work in the freshmen some but Goodman probably redshirts unless there's an injury, Grady gets maybe 10% of minutes as a spacer depending on how the others are shooting, Trey develops into a major part of the rotation by season's end but needs time to adjust.
• Defensively this team will be a nightmare to play against.

Things Discussed:

• Tigers: They go dormant for years but then they pop, and you gotta get a World Series when they do. Sign Skubal!
• Craig's long story about golf in Alabama.
• House Settlement: NCAA is going to relinquish enforcement to a commission/CEO run by the commissioners.
• Will it work? Without legislation they'll just get sued again.
• What some schools are going for is to have rules that nobody enforces except against programs they don't like. This was ideal for OSU/Bama/Georgia/LSU who could get a competitive advantage on programs that self-police, and occasionally could be used as a weapon against rivals.
• Who's the CEO? They said someone not in sports—so Condi Rice? Who's going to take this job who's not in athletics?
• Can they create a player's union? Why would the players unionize when they are getting everything they want. MLB unionized because their players were employees; NCAA doesn't control player movement because they want to avoid their athletes being employees.
• NCAA is getting out but it falls to conference commissioners, who are not at all equipped to handle this. They're serving needs of ADs who are complaining about different things. Ohio State wants there to be rules they don't have to follow and Michigan does. Michigan wants to be able to spend whatever they can raise. Purdue wants to have some player control so their cornerbacks don't get poached. Michigan State isn't thinking "oh I need to make sure Michigan and Ohio State don't boot me" and not even thinking about what's best for Michigan State; they're thinking how can we screw Michigan. You're expecting this mix to come up with solutions?
• Clearinghouse won't work because they'll get a flood of lawsuits. Player already have the money; they won't let you close the spigot.
• Answer is legislation that gives the NCAA some kind of anti-trust protection.
• Will it get prioritized at the federal level? Probably not this Congress, but the next one or the next one. State laws are only trying to make their own teams better.
• Sam: Can they make a special class? They had it in student athletes but that got blown up by the states, which is how we got here.
• The players have no incentive to change things because they're winning. NCAA is deathly afraid of the players becoming employees, which is why they can't regulate player movement even with NIL deals.
• The NCAA can't create a student-athlete class. The federal government can. The schools have real interest in getting legislation that cuts off the players' spigot, and that means the fans have leverage now that we've not had at any point in this conversation. What I want them to do (not saying it'll happen) is use that leverage to get things we want.
• What do we want? Guaranteed access to football broadcasts. Our old conferences back. A cap on student fees (this doesn't matter to us but it's a big deal to smaller schools). Schools can't balloon ticket prices by participating in the secondary ticket market.
• What do we want as Michigan fans? Our interests are aligned with PSU/Notre Dame/USC who want the buy-in price to be high but also some kind of cap so that the value of the education makes us the best option.
• Prediction: House settlement/clearinghouse will be a patch, it won't work, and they'll let it play out until they can get legislation.
• Could they get legislation now? Maybe but it won't do anything for the fans—it would be the schools buying up whatever votes are for sale and passing something they write, and odds are it won't be Constitutional enough to survive the players bringing it to court.