Moving towards a semester. This is a development:

BREAKING: @UMich Provost Susan Collins: “We are very optimistic that the University of Michigan will have a public health-informed, in-residence academic year.”

A change from “cautiously optimistic” in previous statements, one day after @michiganstateu announces in-person fall.

— Calder Lewis (@CalderLewisTMD) May 28, 2020

Michigan is still being more circumspect than MSU, which just announced it would be open this fall, and Notre Dame, which announced it would have a fall semester that ended at Thanksgiving. MSU is also ending in-person classes at Thanksgiving and finishing the rest of the semester online.

Still, everything is pointing towards a return. For the purposes of this website this means they'll try to play football like everyone else. The broader impact on the university is currently projected to be… not that bad, actually:

Not much new from Pres. Schlissel, although it now looks like the predicted losses ("for the year ahead" which I take to mean the calendar year) are in the range of $22M to $192M, which is much more optimistic than earlier projections.

— peter honeyman (@peterhoneyman) May 28, 2020

Although that's quite a range. We'll see how it goes. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. The current plans at MSU:

Stanley said. Physical distancing and wearing face masks on campus, as well as strict limitations and regulations on large gatherings are being imposed, he said.

The punch in the mouth is coming from Rick's, et al., this fall.

[After THE JUMP: More on the transfers]

Howard talks transfers. Juwan Howard doesn't seem to think Nojel Eastern's decision is still in the fuzzy realm:

"Having to game-plan for a guy like Nojel, I was always scratching my head," Howard told BTN. "He's a matchup problem for any opponent with his strength, his athleticism, his skill set, his IQ on the floor."

Michigan contained Eastern in two matchups last season, both Wolverine wins. Eastern started the first game, in Ann Arbor, and scored two points in 28 minutes. He played 19 minutes off the bench in the rematch, scoring six.

"He has a lot to prove as a player, like they all do," Howard said. "But he wants to get better. This is from his own mouth: 'I want to improve. There are a lot of areas on my game I feel I can work on and I'm willing to put in the work.'"

Waiver attempts are on the docket but their outcomes are unguessable. Brendan Quinn reports that Chaundee Brown is definitely withdrawing from the draft and will be on campus no matter the outcome of that process.

A HUMANITARIAN DISASTER. WHY

pic.twitter.com/SQkKzytDjx

— Illinois Football (@IlliniFootball) May 27, 2020

NO

Michigan moves forward with NIL. The local version of the Nancy Skinner bill has passed the Michigan house with massive margins:

A bipartisan plan introduced in the Michigan state House by Democrat Joe Tate and Republican Brandt Iden, House Bills 5217 and 5218, easily passed in the state House on Wednesday in lopsided votes. The bills now move to the Senate.

Iden, who played tennis for Kalamazoo College, introduced House Bill 5217 which “prohibits preventing a student athlete from receiving compensation for the use of his or her name, likeness, or reputation." That passed, 94-13. Tate, who was a three-year starting offensive lineman at Michigan State and a co-captain in 2003, introduced House Bill 5218 which “repeals criminal and civil provisions related to prohibited conduct of an athletic agent.” That passed, 95-12.

It is truly incredible that the one thing we can all agree on as a nation is that the NCAA sucks.

I was talking about Butler. HoopVision+ post on Butler's defense under Brad Stevens has a graph of all elite defenses since 2000; the x-axis is block rate and the y-axis is turnover rate. The bottom left corner of the graph has Michigan's lone qualifier, the 2018-19 team spearheaded by X, Matthews, and Teske:

It also has three Wisconsin teams and—ugh—three to six MSU teams, depending on how far you want to stretch out that definition. Contrast the Big Ten's usual route to elite defenses with the UK/Louisville one. You can see the giant arms of both those outfits and the positional discipline and referee min-maxing that prevails in the Big Ten.

Live sports with no fans create a conundrum. Anyone who's tried to watch an NCAA hockey regional on TV can tell you the deadening effect an empty building can have on a TV broadcast. The Bundesliga is piping in fan noise, songs and all, and that'll be the default when US sports resume at some point in the future. We have the technology:

According to Max Chamberlin, a Madden audio artist, the game has a “robust logic system that has thousands and thousands of particular scenarios in-game.” When Dak Prescott throws a long touchdown to Amari Cooper, the sound a player hears is a combination of basic crowd reactions (loud cheering), the crowd’s swell (“Ohhhhh”), and custom “sweeteners” like, “Yeah, all right, Dak!” Those sounds will vary depending not just on whether the Cowboys are playing at home or on the road but whether the roof at AT&T Stadium is open or closed.

We even have technology that seems counterproductive:

At the Super Bowl, you hear cheers from a quieter, corporate-patron kind of crowd.

Someone at EA has gone to the trouble of toning down the Super Bowl atmosphere to reflect reality. This is like the time that the game which infallibly knows where the ball is added replay reviews.

But there's no reason to stop there. Let's get weirder!

In 2010, Hill got permission from Roger Goodell to score a handful of NFL games with the help of Fox engineer Richie Becker. “We got 50 different pieces of music ranging from exultant to sorrowful, and he had them recorded on what effectively looked like a piano keyboard,” Hill said.

The live game action went off like normal. The music played during slow-motion replays, in the classic style of NFL Films. If the replay showed a touchdown pass, Fox might play “exultant.” If the team threw a killer interception, viewers would hear “sorrowful.” Just like the “sad” Fox bumper music that plays after an injury, the score directed the audience’s emotions. “It’s like listening to a theme that’s been composed by Hans Zimmer or James Newton Howard,” Hill said.

That's a terrible idea that I want to experience once.

An incredible legacy. We are so opposed to corporate naming at this blog that we have an annual post about appropriate bowl nomenclature that allows you, the reader, to discuss an upcoming football game by referencing an agricultural product or metal like God intended*. But even this outpost of anti-name-pollution sentiment has to tip its hat to the Whatever It Is Bowl in Tampa:

Devastating news: Bad Boy Mowers no longer title sponsor of Gasparilla Bowl, sources told @Stadium. Previous names:

magicJack Bowl
St. Petersburg Bowl presented by Beef O'Brady's
Beef O'Brady's Bowl
Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl
St. Petersburg Bowl
Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) May 28, 2020

An incredible run. I can't wait to see what's next. The Martin Shrekli Bowl? The Los Angeles Gasparilla Bowl of Anaheim? The 2 Fyre 2 Fest Bowl? Everything is on the table!

*[Yes we are aware that the Citrus Bowl is advertising Florida agricultural products. The objection is not to economic activity but ugliness in naming. We are perfectly happy with the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.]

Etc.: New Deadspin remains one of the most fascinating media stories going even if the content reads like a robot third grader put it together. Red is hired by the Big Ten as a hockey advisor. Regents pass revisions to faculty removal procedures in response to recent issues. Brisson 14, Bordeleau 33 on Corey Pronman's most recent NHL draft board.