Thursday, October 6, 2016

Michigan Thursday: Is The Mighty Quinn Back at Practice?

Quinn Nordin is famous for two reasons, he was the top kicker in the 2016 class and Jimmy slept over at his house during his recruitment.

Kenny Allen was one of the most accurate kickers in Michigan history last year, this season he has had considerable trouble finding the middle of the up rights.  Jimmy, has said he doesn't like putting all the kicking duties on one person (kick offs, punts and field goals) and all that stress might be effecting his accuracy. 

The latest news on this weeks kicking news is that Quinn is back from an injury and participating in practice.  “We’ve been working extremely hard at it. ... Unfortunately, we missed three kicks in the ball game last week. We have confidence in our guys, yet we want to see that competition in practice. I feel if we make them in practice, we’ll be able to make them in a game. Guys are battling this week.”
And doing well, including freshman Quinn Nordin. Nordin had been working through an injury, but he returned to the competition this week.
“Quinn made both his kicks yesterday, in fact, and had a really good day yesterday. Kenny Allen made all his kicks; Ryan Tice made all his kicks and Quinn made all his kicks," Harbaugh said. "It will rage on again today.”


  • There is an active proposal in front of the NCAA for two early signing periods for football recruits in June and December.   A player would have 3 days to sign an LOI during each period.   I like the idea and think there should have been at least one early signing period for football.   One issue is, if the coach gets fired and a new staff comes in that kid is stuck.   I would like to see some type of easy process where a player could void his LOI in those situations
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  • The early reports from Grant Newsome's surgery is positive and it seems he will play again.   Hopefully as soon as next season.

  • There is also some buzz that Nebraska maybe interested in leaving the Big Ten to return to the Big 12.  They feel that their brand hasn't grown in the Big Ten.  I agree, it sure hasn't.  The issue is you haven't been winning football games and your basketball team is usually at the bottom of the conference.   If you want to do a trade for Oklahoma straight up, I think the Big Ten would take that all day long.    Can we trade Penn State for Texas?    We might even throw in Rutgers. 

Big Ten Games Of The Week:

What a terrible match up week for the Big Ten.   Here are a couple of games that are slightly interesting. 

BYU at MSU:  Are the beat up Spartans ready to fold up camp?  BYU can score points but doesn't play a lot of defense.   MSU is a 6 point favorite.   MSU 28 BYU 17

Iowa at Minnesota:  Minnesota plays well at home and Iowa has struggled lately.   This is almost an even game with Iowa -1.   Iowa has to be better then this right?  Iowa 17 Minnesota 14

Maryland at PSU:  Do we really know if Maryland is good this year?  Penn State is a home day at PSU +1.5   Maryland 20 Penn State 18

3 comments:

Renegade said...

In response to VoR’s comments yesterday regarding LOI, I did some investigation and found the following.

To begin with student-athletes sign an NLI, which is a modified LOI, but is viewed differently from both a legal and NCAA perspective. LOIs apparently have an ambiguous legal stand (google “loi legal”). They are viewed both as binding and non-binding. Traditionally they are seen as a precursor to future negotiation which doesn’t make much sense for college sports.

NLI on the other hand has specific rules attached to them. To address VoR’s issue about contact after an NLI has been signed (not verbal commit) visit https://web3.ncaa.org/ECMIP/docs/quick_ref_guide_to_nli.pdf

“What is the Recruiting Ban?

Other institutions must respect the prospective student athlete’s NLI signing by ceasing all communication. The recruiting ban remains in effect until the prospective student athlete enrolls at the signing institution. Once enrolled, the student athlete is governed by NCAA recruiting regulations.

If the prospective student athlete does not enroll at the signing institution, the recruiting ban will be lifted after the institution’s academic year has elapsed (e.g., prospective student athlete signs during 2015-16, the recruiting ban applies through the end of the 2016-17 academic year).”

At the least, a breach of this regulation would violate NCAA protocol and it is reasonable to assume some punitive action would be taken by the NCAA. As for legal prosecution I don’t know. The institutions employing the NLI must be subject to some sort of contractual obligation with the NCAA and, hence, legal action may be possible.

Voice of Reason said...

Thanks Renegade that was excellent research work and seems to address the issue exactly. Therefore, if I understand it correctly then those institutions that have contacted Brad Hawkins and maybe Dytarious Johnson during this period is in violation of at least NCAA regulations and "may be" subject to further prosecution if the powers that be are so inclined to pursue it. However, since there doesn’t appear to be any damage as of yet, then if there is no harm then there is no foul. Maybe the fish would have to be a big one in order for the NLI holding school to pursue taking any kind of action against the violators if that so called big fish decided to move on elsewhere. I appreciate your work. IMHO!!!

Voice of Reason said...

Bob, I agree with everything in today's article. My question regarding the kickers is that why haven't they been having this competition since the very beginning? It seems as though this competition is coming as a result of a bad two games. Every other position is up for grabs so why not the kickers?

I am glad Grant Newsome's surgery went well. I hate to see a kid lose his career over a bad injury. I’m looking forward to his being back on the field next year. I had a former Michigan football (NFL) player work for me after he completed a very short NFL football career many years ago. He was telling me his knees were gone primarily because of the artificial turf at that time, but their knees get banged up so badly in the game that some of them can’t even walk without pain. I for one don’t like those cut blocks. I understand why players do it but I still don’t like them.

I really think Nebraska is a good school and like Penn State should have never come into the B1G conference. Why? Mainly because they were successful where they were and they didn't make the adjustment well and may never actually adjust here. The Big 12 conference is more up Nebraska's ally. PSU can fashion a schedule that allows them to be more competitive based upon where they are in their rebuild. I don't think Maryland or Rutgers should be in the B1G at all because they aren't a fit. I don't think a whole lot of Oklahoma and honestly I believed OSU was going to blow them out when they played this year. Oklahoma although with a winning record hasn't really been a very strong team or faced very strong competition. Those days when Bo's Michigan played a strong Oklahoma team in the Orange bowl has been long gone. (Heavy sigh!) I miss those days. IMHO!!!