Monday and Tuesday should offer plenty of discussion about the upcoming season in Chicago at the annual Big Ten football media days. MI finished second with 10.5 votes.
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Harbaugh answered questions on a wide variety of topics, mostly football related, as anticipation continues growing for a program that looks to be returning to national title contenders.
In just his second season of leading an overhaul at his alma mater, MI football coach Jim Harbaugh has grown accustomed to high expectations – from fans, the betting public (which has made U-M the favorite in Las Vegas to win a national championship) and even his own family.
Harbaugh emphasized several times on Monday that MI just needed to focus on getting better every day. “Gosh, I thought a made that up”, Harbaugh said, snapping his finger and shaking his head in disappointment. “Why not? The reaction here has been very good”. There was a rambling anecdote about a billboard on I-65 and it is not even there, but we’re going to like what gets off the train anyway (if it ever arrives?).
At Michigan and under coach Harbaugh, nothing is given- everything is earned.
If Harbaugh can’t win on the golf course, there’s always Scrabble. “We were outdoors and I want to say it was roughly 12 degrees. But I did respond, RSVP’d that I’d like to go to the game”.
10 wins per season is the benchmark for sustained success in college football.
Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald took Harbaugh’s invitation to speak at his camp in Ann Arbor kast summer. Peppers and Walker also were All-America selections last season, while Barkley and Peppers nabbed freshman All-America accolades a year ago. We’ve got lofty goals. The offensive line is breaking records in the weight room.
The Wildcats are 8-17 during the month since the start of the 2010 season. A lot of times on the outside you can’t see the things going on with the program that are making progress. “It’s typically very good opponents”.
Ash said that he eventually would like to develop rivalries with all the Big Ten opponents. If it’s one percent better, each guy or we got one percent better as a team each day, then after 30 days we’d be 30 percent better.
Claeys highlighted player safety as the biggest need for a change of the play and glossed over potential solutions to fix the kickoff instead of completely eliminating it. But I guess in some ways that’s the nature of the beast. “I look at it as a growing process. That’s the vision I see”. “If you stick bamboo shoots under my fingernails and try to get me to talk then maybe I’ll have to”. “We have a defense that we know we can trust”.
How’s the basketball team going to be this season?
Purdue coach Darrell Hazell said his first question in speaking with Malone was how to improve the team’s quarterback play, and Malone dazzled him.
“You just have to be prepared”, he said.
You went to Drake, right? They have to happen naturally. That will be key this year, with a plethora of first-time starters. Ash brought in TCU graduate transfer Zach Allen at quarterback, though he said four players will compete for the position. “They provided outstanding leadership”.
“They know they’re going to get coached extremely hard”. They’re continuing to learn the offense. “They’re all little pieces of the puzzle that come together”. Most are compiled through votes cast by media members, typically at the conference’s respective media days.
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“I’ll start by saying there’s no rivalry with MI yet”, Ash said. Michigan Coach Jim Harbaugh enters his second season, after winning ten games past year.
