Interesting tidbit from Kirk Herbstreit on SportsCenter today. He talked to RichRod and relayed this anecdote. There is a certain strength drill that only two UM players could accomplish when RichRod/Barwis arrived. Now over 30 players can accomplish the unspecific task.

With everyone having over a year to work with Barwis, the results should really come into fruition this season. I recently saw a pic of Mike Martin. He looked like he was ready to tear heads off.

There was a video on Youtube of this interview with Rich Rod but it got removed. I'm pretty sure it was a dead lift of a certain weight, but I'm not sure. And in that video, he said it was only one player, which I imagine was Will Johnson who was a freak strength-wise. Obviously great to hear.

Supposedly, RR told Barwis that come the fall, he needed the team to be in the best shape of any team he'd ever had. At the end of the summer, Barwis told RR he thought he had succeeded.

I read this somewhere else last week or saw it in a different RRod video or something. They're talking about power cleaning 300 pounds. In Mike Martin's video on MGoBlue he is doing reps with 315.

Barwis would feed chuck norris to the d-line.

also, anyone nearby any of next year's recruits for some high school football?

can't decide between going to watch DJ Williamson (he won the 100m in Ohio as a Jr, but doesn't really have a qb/coach) or a kid from Youngstown Liberty who i saw a bit last year, but was more focused on Fitz and Isiaih Bell.

Martin is a freak

Yeah, Martin lookin' jackedddddd

62 is huge too. Online roster says that it's Dominique Ware and that he's 5'7" 249 pounds. lol

Cissoko looks like a carbon copy of Freamon on The Wire

Freep: Michigan football program broke rules, players say

Full story here:

http://www.freep.com/article/20090829/SPORTS06/90829023

Gist of it is that Barwis et al work the team like dogs, and that non-attendance of non-mandatory workouts results in non-attending players having to work harder during practice and mandatory team workouts, so that the non-mandatory workouts are essentially mandatory.

I guess I'm a bad person, but this is one of those things that I assume:

- goes on everywhere

..and as a fan of a team that's apparently finally doing it:

- am perfectly okay with it

I'm sure it sucks for the players, and thankfully it's not me who has to run the Big House steps all day in February and puke my brains out in the snow while Barwis yells in my ear and calls me a pussy...but I'm quietly pleased this is the situation.

I mean, not to sound like an internet tough guy, and not to turn a blind eye to rule violations or approve of them, assuming the story is accurate -- but this makes me pleased to hear.

Rosenberg has never once said one positive thing about RR @ Michigan.

Will definitely be interesting though.

I am so sick of the Free Press and all of their bull****. Rosenberg is the worst. If the NCAA really wanted to investigate this, they'd find nothing. All of these programs cover their asses by making it clear what is technically mandatory and what's not. In the tough programs.. if you don't make the "optional" stuff, you run to make up for it. Michigan's finally become one of the tough programs.

Snyder is an M alum and is an actual fan though, and is one of the last guys in the Detroit/A2 press corp to take RR through the mud unnecessarily.

NCAA will find nothing because they won't investigate, and the rest of us who root for Michigan should be pleased this program finally got out of the Gittleson/Lloyd dark ages of pizza and beer diets and half-assed practice and workout routines.

Nobody cares about that. It's the exceeding of practice time which is an obvious and provable NCAA violation.

Practice time gets split up and classified differently specifically to counteract the NCAA regulations. All teams do this. The NCAA won't even investigate, but if they did, they would find nothing.

That's not how it works though. You are allowed to practice all you want. The coaches aren't allowed to require you to work out more than the NCAA session. On top of that, things like film sessions, coaches meetings and time with trainers do not count.

The 20/10 rule is a joke for any sports team at a major college, even the minor sports.

Ikes said it best - there's no limit on how much you want to practice voluntarily. But to use the old phrase, playing time isn't mandatory either.

While nothing will come out of this, more than anything else it's just unfortunate to see another story casting UM in a negative light plastered across the ESPN ticker.

What this is a perfect example of is a ******ed writer who got a story from a ******ed player.

Btw, who could it be? I'd figure it would be a transfer/graduate.

I'd bet it was that ****** who was about to get kicked out of the school, but said he transfered because the family atmosphere left. Did he get any playing time?

lol @ this being a "violation."

Reggie Bush's family blatantly accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars with NO PENALTY WHATSOEVER and "making" kids practice too much is supposed to be a scandal? LOL NCAA.

It is truly a joke of an organization...they make congress and the IOC look clean.

Personally, I'd love to seem some reform done so that athletes get paid. Big time athletic departments make 100m+/year. That kind of system is obviously going to get abused.

Football is especially concerning, because they are forced into what is basically a minor league for the NFL.

This.

The only value this article is going to have is as food for trolls on message boards. It sucks from a PR/distraction standpoint, though. What a crazy coincidence that this article comes out just in time for the Sunday edition the week before the first game. They clearly have an agenda. **** the freep. I'm never clicking link to another article there again.

Michael Schofield's dad, fwiw:

"As a parent of a Michigan player I will say that the Freep is full of ****. Michael spent more time this summer on class work than any thing eles, he came home to visit, there were no Barwis police chasing him making him pratice, he played basketball, goofed around with other sports athlets at the dorms, like all college kids do. To say that these kids are training or being made to train over the NCAA limits is untrue...what my wife and I like about Michigan Football was there committment to education first. Some thing the Freep dose not belive in.

GO BLUE"


I also find it interesting that our football team managed it's highest GPA EVER last year while being run into the ground 24/7 by the coaching staff.

pffffft, judging by the espn story, my ultimate frisbee team at UGA had more mandatory practice hours than the Michigan football team does. I fine with this sort of "violation."

As you guys have said, this just sucks from a PR standpoint. I was @ the bar last night and saw "MICHIGAN" in big letters on the ticker.