\First off, let me introduce myself to you fine folks here at The Inside Handshake. I am the not-so-illustrious Coach Deuce, moving from the small time to the big time here at TIH. A bit of intro about myself; I am a poor college student currently attending the school where Urban Meyer got his start on dominating the college football world (Bowling Green State University). The username "Coach Deuce" comes from a couple different areas of my life.
First, I always had an interest in being a coach, so much so that my youth pastor saw me diagramming trick plays during Sunday School. It carried over to the early versions of NCAA Football for the Playstation, where my domination of friends led me to talk in the third person to give advice. Ex: Coach Deuce says never run the toss sweep. The name became a reality when at the age of 19 I became a high school football coach. For 4 years, I roamed the sidelines and tried to employ those plays that I diagrammed while studying Moses.
When school got in the way, I moved the Coach Deuce persona into the blogging world, opening up Never Run The Toss Sweep to make inside jokes to friends while writing about mostly Michigan athletics. Unfortunately for you readers, that path has led me directly to The Inside Handshake, where you will be forced to read opinions on things like why old women insist on going to The Big House to watch the marching band instead of the Michigan football game. Or you can just ignore me and I will fade into TIH obscurity as "that guy who liked Michigan."
With the introduction out of the way, let me get into the meat of what is bugging me today. For the past two weeks, Michigan fans have had to endure meaningless story after meaningless story about Rich Rodriguez turning the Michigan football program into his personal labor camp. As Allen Iverson famously said, were talkin' bout' practice here. Practice! Not the game we college football fans die for. Practice, man. Practice. Finally, a real game is played and Michigan plays surprisingly well, dominating Western Michigan 31-7. All of the bad press is forgotten, and suddenly the national media is praising Rich Rodriguez after dumping on him for two weeks. Many analysts come out and dismiss the allegations as trivial, and even Sweatervest himself came to Rich Rod's defense! So we Michigan fans can finally move on, right?
WRONG! News from inside Michigan sources came late last night that the Detroit Free Press (the paper responsible for this facade) is seeking cell phone records through the Freedom of Information Act dating back to 2006 for coaches, administrators, and compliance staff. Anyone remember Houston Nutt's cell phone scandal back at Arkansas? Same thing is going on here, except they probably won't find Athletic Director Bill Martin "sex"-ting with a local news reporter.
Seriously, Detroit Free Press, let it go. The entire college football world knows that these allegations are nothing more than a witch hunt to try and run Rich Rodriguez out of town. Everyone knows it takes more than 20 hours a week to be a successful college football program. All around the country you will find teams putting in voluntary *wink wink* work like extra film study, route running, and weight training. So while you are trying to wipe the egg off your face and regroup after the first wave of accusations has died down, you look to technology for the smoking gun on Rich Rod being a slave driver.
First, I always had an interest in being a coach, so much so that my youth pastor saw me diagramming trick plays during Sunday School. It carried over to the early versions of NCAA Football for the Playstation, where my domination of friends led me to talk in the third person to give advice. Ex: Coach Deuce says never run the toss sweep. The name became a reality when at the age of 19 I became a high school football coach. For 4 years, I roamed the sidelines and tried to employ those plays that I diagrammed while studying Moses.
When school got in the way, I moved the Coach Deuce persona into the blogging world, opening up Never Run The Toss Sweep to make inside jokes to friends while writing about mostly Michigan athletics. Unfortunately for you readers, that path has led me directly to The Inside Handshake, where you will be forced to read opinions on things like why old women insist on going to The Big House to watch the marching band instead of the Michigan football game. Or you can just ignore me and I will fade into TIH obscurity as "that guy who liked Michigan."
With the introduction out of the way, let me get into the meat of what is bugging me today. For the past two weeks, Michigan fans have had to endure meaningless story after meaningless story about Rich Rodriguez turning the Michigan football program into his personal labor camp. As Allen Iverson famously said, were talkin' bout' practice here. Practice! Not the game we college football fans die for. Practice, man. Practice. Finally, a real game is played and Michigan plays surprisingly well, dominating Western Michigan 31-7. All of the bad press is forgotten, and suddenly the national media is praising Rich Rodriguez after dumping on him for two weeks. Many analysts come out and dismiss the allegations as trivial, and even Sweatervest himself came to Rich Rod's defense! So we Michigan fans can finally move on, right?
WRONG! News from inside Michigan sources came late last night that the Detroit Free Press (the paper responsible for this facade) is seeking cell phone records through the Freedom of Information Act dating back to 2006 for coaches, administrators, and compliance staff. Anyone remember Houston Nutt's cell phone scandal back at Arkansas? Same thing is going on here, except they probably won't find Athletic Director Bill Martin "sex"-ting with a local news reporter.
Seriously, Detroit Free Press, let it go. The entire college football world knows that these allegations are nothing more than a witch hunt to try and run Rich Rodriguez out of town. Everyone knows it takes more than 20 hours a week to be a successful college football program. All around the country you will find teams putting in voluntary *wink wink* work like extra film study, route running, and weight training. So while you are trying to wipe the egg off your face and regroup after the first wave of accusations has died down, you look to technology for the smoking gun on Rich Rod being a slave driver.
Not so bold prediction here: no punishment will come out of the cell phone records except text messages from Rich Rodriguez to offensive coordinator Calvin McGee talking about how bad both of their 2008 quarterbacks were. "My 8 yr old throws better than Nick Sheridan, LOL". The one thing that does worry me is that Rich Rod will grow tired of being the scapegoat for the old "Michigan Men" trying to get one of their own back in the coaching seat. Letting Rodriguez go would be the single biggest mistake that Michigan has made since it allowed Tommy Amaker to roam the basketball sidelines for 6 years.
That's all for today, hope you enjoyed the first edition of Chalk Talk and as always..
Never Run The Toss Sweep
Coach Deuce
Strong first blog by Coach Deuce. Welcome to The Shake.
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