News and Notes on New Year's Eve

• Michigan opens the Big Ten Basketball season today at 2:00. DeShawn Simms who turned an ankle against North Carolina Central, should be ok to play. The game will be on ESPN 2.
• Official Recruiting Visitors for January 9th include: LB Barkevious Mingo, DE Sam Montgomery, QB Denard Robinson, WR (current commit) Cameron Gordon, OL (current commit) Michael Schofield, DE Bennie Logan , and CB Demontre Hurst.
• Western Michigan's Bill Cubit agreed to a new 5 year contract before kick off of last nights Texas Bowl. Good timing, WMU got blown out by Rice 38-14. Blown out is maybe the wrong term, I guess they got "Boiled" by Rice.
• UCLA defensive coordinator DeWayne Walker has been hired as New Mexico State's head coach. Congratulations DeWayne and long overdue!
• Do you think Michigan has the best facilities for education and athletics? Well, the NYT says U of M has a construction campaign budgeted at $2.5 billion, ranking it among the largest university building programs in the United States. If it doesn't now, it will soon!
• Former Michigan QB and current Stanford head man, Jim Harbaugh is still being mentioned as a head coach candidate for the Oakland Raiders. (Hey Jim, that wouldn't be a good career move!)
• Memo to any former Michigan State Spartans WR: Go down in your basement and stay there for at least 6 months. There is some serious bad mojo following you and your former peers. For another example, see this from Monday: Andre Rison, was arrested early Monday morning in San Antonio, Texas, and charged with public intoxication.
• Expect former Michigan and Detroit Lions QB coach Scott Loefler to be named to the same position at Washington.
• Does this rule need to be changed? In the second half of the Motor City Bowl, the CMU tailback ran for an 80 yard touchdown. There were two penalties on the play, one was an off sides on a Florida Atlantic rusher and a face mask penalty against a CMU WR on the 10 yard line right before the tailback entered the end zone. The officials called off setting penalties and replayed the down. Wait a minute? If Florida Atlantic didn't jump off sides, The Chips would have gotten a 15 yard penalty from the 10 yard line (and gained 55 yards from the original line of scrimmage) . Instead, they have to go all the way back to the 20 yard line and get a TD erased because the other team jumped off sides? I believe the rule needs to be changed (if the refs called it correctly), where CMU could have declined the off sides on FAU and gotten hit with the 15 yard face mask penalty from the 10. Just my $.02.

Happy New Year everyone and guess what? 2008 is over and it's time to start getting ready for Big Ten Basketball and the 2009 Football Season!