The most Iowa thing ever. The Athletic has an article in which old coaches are interviewed abut their recruiting stories. It starts off by asking about the biggest recruiting wins these guys ever had, and it's a litany of names you know: Orlando Pace, Jadeveon Clowney, Ray Lewis, Champ Bailey. And then you get to former ISU head coach Dan McCarney, who was an assistant at Iowa:

the one that had as much to do with us turning the program around at Iowa was Reggie Roby. … It came down to Iowa vs. Wisconsin at midnight the night before signing day. …I felt at the time he might have as much to do with us turning that program around as anybody we could sign. In 1981, we had one of the best defenses in the country, and offense, that was OK. And we had Reggie Roby flipping the field like nobody had seen in decades. In my career, the two best punters I’d ever seen were Ray Guy and Reggie Roby.

A punter. Big Ten! Note that I'm not explicitly not making fun of this after RON COLUZZI IS A GOLDEN GOD cost Michigan a game in Iowa City. I post out of respect and fear.

In general, McCarney seems like a guy you'd like to be regaled by. On the "arms race" in CFB:

McCarney: (Laughs) I would have liked to have been in an arms race. The early days at Iowa, Wisconsin, Iowa State, I’d have loved to have been in an arms race.

On whether rules are being broken more now or more back in the day:

Now, guys go past the visit rule or the old bump rule, that thing was ridiculous. The bumps used to last half an hour to 45 minutes. Oh OK, I just bumped into you. Why were you in the room with the door shut for 45 minutes? That’s a long damn bump.

Put this man on TV with a gin spritzer.

[After THE JUMP: wacky football play]

Blow it all up, the bill. No idea how feasible passing this is but here's the Nuke The NCAA bill:

College athletes would be able to form players' unions and would be considered employees of their schools if a new Congressional bill introduced Thursday morning is passed into law. …

"Big time college sports haven't been 'amateur' for a long time, and the NCAA has long denied its players economic and bargaining rights while treating them like commodities," Murphy said in a statement Thursday morning. "...It's a civil rights issue, and a matter of basic fairness."

The bill explicitly states that existing scholarship compensation is not taxable and establishes each individual conference as a bargaining unit. Both are smart. The former deflates one of the more common (but oddly trivial) arguments about paying players. The latter creates bargaining groups with a relatively level playing field and prevents low D1 teams from either spending money they don't have or preventing money from going to the players.

Everyone hates the NCAA but the prospect of explicitly allowing unionization might cause the bill to founder in the Senate. The NCAA's response to the bill seems to have some red meat for potential opposition (emphasis mine):

"…turning student-athletes into union employees is not the answer."

(It is the answer.)

This could have been us. Michigan ran out the T formation a few times in Harbaugh's first year, but they did not do this:

1956 was the first year of Ara Parseghian tenure at Northwestern before he left for Notre Dame.

Here is essentially the same play from the Bears in 2017: pic.twitter.com/aQGZ0BSp4F

— Coach Dan Casey (@CoachDanCasey) May 24, 2021

It is my opinion that they should have done that, at least once. I miss early Harbaugh's dedication to Weird Old Running.

PFF projects the Big Ten. To no one's surprise, Ohio State is projected to win the conference. Michigan's section:

5. MICHIGAN WOLVERINES

Conference Championship Appearance Probability: 9%
Conference Championship Win Probability: 5%
Projected Win Total: 7

The safety tandem of Daxton Hill and Brad Hawkins is among the best in the Big Ten and has the potential to be one of the top pairings in the Power Five. And edge defender Aidan Hutchinson — a top-five player at the position nationally — is back and fully healthy after missing half of Michigan’s six games in 2020. The big thing to monitor on the defensive side of the ball is the outside cornerback unit. The group was scorched for a good part of the shortened 2020 season, ranking 57th of the 65 Power Five teams in expected points added allowed per target to outside receivers.

On offense, starting quarterback Cade McNamara — a four-star recruit in 2019 — is the obvious linchpin. He attempted 71 passes on the year over a few starts en route to a middling 65.0 PFF grade.

I think 7-5 and absorbing another roundhouse kick from OSU means Harbaugh is gone, but not a whole lot about bringing him back with a lame-duck extension made a whole lot of sense to begin with so it's hard to predict what'll happen if Michigan improves from 2-4 to a nondescript December bowl game.

Ohio State projected to leave the conference. Apparently OSU officials wondered about preserving their football season by stepping outside the Big Ten:

Johnson texted Smith: "Anyway to go independent?"

Smith responded: "I am trying to understand our contracts and if we can play independent this year. Nebraska is trying too and gone public with it."

The Big Ten resumed play, changed its rules midseason so that OSU could play in the title game, and got OSU to their inevitable playoff bid and loss to Alabama. College football has become simultaneously outrageous and boring.

Sure, okay. Zlatan is not on topic here, except Zlatan is on topic everywhere:

“Do you believe in God?” Zlatan asked, to puzzled glances from around the room.

A couple of guys in the back answered sheepishly in the affirmative.

“OK,” Zlatan answered. “Then you believe in me.”

That was it. “That was our first impression of him,” Bingham says.

Also!

“We need more guys to get stuck in on tackles,” Ibrahimovic bellowed. “Like Kevin.”

Ibrahimovic’s teammates were intimidated by the giant, ferocious Swede, who was prowling around the locker room, unloading on each and every one of them. But mostly they were confused. You see, there was no Kevin on the team. Zlatan, at this point, had been with them for weeks.

“Finally someone musters up the courage to ask him,” says Pontius, “who is Kevin?”

Ibrahimovic motioned toward defensive midfielder Perry Kitchen, who was seated at his locker. “Him,” said Ibrahimovic. “Kevin.”

I cannot recommend this Athletic story sufficiently. Only Zlatan could do that.

Mayotte replacement. Hockey lost assistant Kris Mayotte to the head coaching job at Colorado College, and per Jeff Cox his replacement is a familiar name:

Hearing from multiple sources that Jeff Tambellini will be the new assistant at Michigan, replacing Kris Mayotte. Wolverine alum played 242 NHL games, was a scout for TBL, formerly coached at Trail in BCHL.

— Jeff Cox (@JeffCoxSports) May 20, 2021

Tambellini makes sense for a lot of reasons but he seems like he has a lot of overlap with Bill Muckalt, another BCHL alum who was a forward in college.

Etc.: USMNT conspiracy theorizing gets more difficult. Beniers scores at the World Championships. Softball has experienced a bit of a dropoff. Hockey has four skaters in the top six and six in the top 30 in the CSB's latest rankings of North American skaters.