- The Harbaugh Rule is now in place. No one involved with
implementing it will call it that or even admit that Michigan head football
coach Jim “Dad Bod” Harbaugh was the impetus for its creation, but when the
autonomy group of Power 5 conferences voted at the NCAA convention to ban
offseason practices away from campus during a vacation period, it was pretty
clearly a direct retort to Harbaugh taking his team on a spring break trip to
Florida last March and holding practices in the Sunshine State. Not surprisingly,
Proposal No. 2016-139 received majority support from all five leagues,
including an 11-3 vote from Big Ten institutions, although student-athletes on
the 80-member autonomy panel voted 11-4 against the proposal. In the wake of
the vote, Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said no Michigan players
complained of a bad experience last year in Florida, which is probably true
because none of them wants to run afoul of their head coach by criticizing his
tactics. During their Florida trip, the Wolverines held four practices at IMG
Academy, a school that has more than a half dozen top Division I prospects,
including Michigan enrollee Cesar Ruiz, the nation's No. 1-ranked center. No
one hated the trip more than Southeastern Conference coaches and administrators,
who were irate to have a Big Ten school walk into their backyard and try to
blatantly curry favor with recruits - something SEC commissioner Greg Sankey
lied about when asked. "It wasn't about one institution," Sankey said.
"It wasn't about some regional protection effort. It's very simply, if
we're going to sit here and talk about being attentive to the time expectation
and managing those appropriately for student-athletes, then we have to look at
that type of out-of-season, off-campus, take-a-trip practice." Nice try,
commish……….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Romania is not happy with its
government and citizens made that abundantly clear this weekend as thousands of
them marched through the capital, Bucharest, and other cities to protest a
government proposal to pardon thousands of prisoners which critics say could
reverse the country’s long-running and questionably successful anti-corruption
fight. The common man rose up 10,000 strong, amassing in University Square as
evening set on Bucharest, but it wasn’t until well into the festivities that
things got interesting as many demonstrators broke through police lines before
bum-rushing government headquarters. The angry mob was inspired by the
appearance of Klaus Iohannis, a government critic who supports the
anti-corruption drive. It was a truly diverse angry mob and better still, some
of the protestors were elderly folks out to prove that being old isn't an
excuse for tolerating an inept regime. Others carried children on their
shoulders, showing the next generation how to rage against the machine. All of
these people denounced the ruling Social Democratic Party as "the red
plague” and took a stand against Premier Sorin Grindeanu’s plans to pass an
emergency ordinance to pardon prisoners which his government says would ease
overcrowding in prisons. Critics see through the measure and view it as what it
is, a means of freeing government allies
convicted of corruption. Regardless of how you feel about the prisoners,
correctional authorities say 3,700 could be freed if the law is put in
place……..
- While rock stars may be synonymous with strippers,
groupies and the occasional porn star, at least one rocker is lending his voice
to an unusual project that flies in the face of that stereotype. Metallica frontman
James Hetfield is the voice of a new anti-porn documentary, working with an
acclaimed director for whom he narrated a previous project in 2011. The
documentary, titled “Addicted To Porn: Chasing The Cardboard Butterfly,” is the
work of director Justin Hunt. “In this controversial film, award-winning
filmmaker Justin Hunt dissects the impact of pornography on societies around
the globe, from how it affects the brain of the individual, to how modern
technology leads to greater exposure to youth, to watching it literally tear a
family apart,” the film’s synopsis notes. “In what may well be one of the most
devastating issues in modern culture, this film will break down the damage that
porn is doing to us a human race and leave you thinking that it’s clearly time
that we start taking porn addiction much more seriously.” It’s a stance that
makes a lot of sense, especially because folks rarely look beyond the surface
and pay attention to the actual impact porn has on both those addicted to it
and the ones they love, but that doesn’t make it any less odd to have a
tattooed, party-loving metal lead singer as the one who’s narrating the entire
documentary and trying to make sure that society pays more attention to this particular
issue of consequence……..
- Some situations are just rife with bad jokes and the tools
among us just can't avoid making those jokes and acting like said jokes are
fresh, funny and creative. It couldn’t have set up any better for that sort of
jokester when a truck driver oddly carrying entire trailer full of marbles lost
control of his rig and sent some 38,000 pounds of the glassy, shiny spheres of
a bygone toy spilling all over the embankment of I-465 southbound near
Pendleton Pike, Indiana. The requisite spate of jokes about someone losing
their marbles ensued, including the Indiana State Police, who tweeted that very
lame joke out to the public, presumably as a typical warning for drivers to
avoid the area and expect delays if they were traveling that particular stretch
of highway, but mostly so John Q. Law could feel like he has a sense of humor
and doesn’t set up speed traps and smack down unsuspecting drivers while
operating with that giant stick up his ass. Police spokesperson John Perrine
said that a truck overturned along the interstate, but most of the marbles fell
onto the embankment, meaning the situation was less hazardous than it could
have been had the small balls of colored glass clogged up all of the lanes of
traffic and created the sort of exhaustive cleanup that only a giant vacuum
cleaner or a baby boomer seeking to reclaim the joy of playing with non-digital
toys 50 years ago could enjoy………
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