WTKA Roundtable 7/30/2026: Come Together

WTKA Roundtable 7/30/2026: Come Together

Things Discussed: * Surprised how fast they're speed-running into a 24-team Playoff. They're on a gold rush now because they discovered they can draw out all the goodwill and passion obtained from 100 years of this being a good deal. * Jordan Marshall: Excited to be a captain because it's about bringing people together. Said it's why we beat OSU 13-10, and that OSU had to become more connected to come back and beat them. THAT is what it's about. Seeing nugs of the good college football we're here for all over the place. * M's front seven next year? Not natty-level because not enough superstars. LBs are so young—liked NOB and Chase last year more for freshmen. Staehling doesn't do it for me. Think their depth is shaky. Team is a work in progress. * Who's the best player on the defense this year? We can't answer it. * Reviewing Wink: Was too clever. I have a greater appreciation for the collaborative nature of football. * Bring back Doug Mallory as an analyst. He's a nerd, like Kyle Church or Jay Harbaugh, just doesn't put himself forward enough. * Nicknaming: Moustapha Thiam is Moose. Hockey guys all get a –y, except Seth who was Fat Fish. * Boynton presser: seemed to have a handle on things. Confident, relaxed. VERY happy to have Kyle Church around; Brown was a Dusty guy. * First impressions of new guys: Costello can SHOOT and is a real 6-10. * Different types of dudes you encounter in different sports. * What do you want to hear from Media Days? Bryce is getting it, mention guys we haven't heard before.

Michigan HockeyCast 8.27: Brand New Paint Scheme

1 Hour and 13 Minutes With David Nasternak and Alex Drain This Podcast Has a Sponsor: Michigan Law Grad Jonathan Paul [http://www.michiganlawgrad.com/] is the guy with the C you want skating next to the ref and pleading your case. He's also a good guy to sit next to at the hockey games. Segment 1 The reason we did this podcast. A review of DuPont’s playing style follows- good fit with Michigan’s offensive system, will thrive with the creativity afforded to him. Some kinks to work out in his game but he should be great. After that, discussion of defense pairs, where DuPont fits, and whether this makes Michigan the odds-on favorite to win the national title.   Segment 2 Much talk of many NHL trades and trade requests… yet did the balance of power shift in the league? Skip forward for some Yzerman firing talk and where the Red Wings go from here. Does this move even matter? Podcast concludes with a couple brief Michigan Hockey notes on the non-conference schedule and the loss of Rob Rassey. MUSIC * NHL on ESPN Theme * "In the Summertime" -- Mungo Jerry * Ice Hockey (NES) theme

WTKA Roundtable 7/23/2026: No More FAQing Around

Things Discussed: * Craig asks AI if any of us should be athletic director. * Brian on Warde: Not an easy tenure to assess. The case against him is we're spending $11 million on an investigation because there were too many scandals that were explainable (Weiss) or went away (Shoop, Xavier Simpson crashes Warde's wife's car), on top of $30 million for the Stalions thing, on top of what it costs to send him on his way. There wasn't a lot of coherence. Mixed legacy, but there are a couple of national championships on his resume, graduated athletes, good hires. * Seth: Ends as it lived: waiting around five months to write a big check. He accumulated enemies. If he won some of these battles—kept Harbaugh, kept Bakich, kept Dusty—or had a few more instances where he acted decisively on a scandal (like Weiss). * Sam violates a confidence with Greg Harden to clear up something: the *SCHOOL* had a firm they use to vet people like Shemy; when they failed it fell on Warde, but he didn't have a choice which firm. * Sam thinks Grasso told him "I've got your back, but I'm gone soon, so do you want to go out on your own terms or somebody else's?" * Seth & Sam: The decision not to release the report doesn't look good for the president and regents. Warde was probably the target of the investigation, but they probably turned up things that the vetting org, where the people who commissioned the report are the ones who botched it. This is how Baylor handles things. * Why would you spend $12 million when the buyout is $7.5? Is Warde getting more than his buyout? If so, what are we paying for? Is it to keep quiet about other things? Our rivals want to know, we want to know. Can't think of a good faith reason not to present all of the findings in a report, except to prevent, e.g. Shriver from fishing. * Brian: Michigan has a policy of not complying with FOIA. Sam: Why would they release that? * Seth: Grasso is independent now, because what are they gonna do, fire him? But the regents are elected by the people of the State of Michigan, and too many people who investigate Michigan are too good at their jobs. Not me, but we have real journalists around here. We just got the real story of the botched Shemy background check. Do you really want to wait for Kim Kozlowski [https://bridgemi.com/author/kkozlowski/] to dig out more stories like that? Or the Daily? Because she/they fucking will, and you'll all look like idiots. * Sam reacts to the "Warde is lazy" talk. He was very hands-on when he re-hired Harbaugh in 2020, e.g. there's no way Harbaugh hires Mike Hart. If you were to FOIA conversations about waiting to make a decision on Mel, he's sure you'll find Warde wasn't alone in sitting on the report. What if it wasn't (just) Warde? * Talking about the next president. They're considering Duggan (a politician). Only if it's someone who got out of politics because they're too honest. Craig recommends Obama—he couldn't be *that* bored. Think it will be an academic. * According to one donor, the AD's #1 job: fundraising. A lot of them are going to be super pro-Katie Fraumann, though she doesn't have AD experience. Sam: like going with a politician for president. Seth: no, it's more like raising the OC. It's not direct AD experience, but it's a lot closer to being an AD. * Who are our candidates? We can do a better job of laying out what we want. Winning, obviously. Brian wants someone who *REALLY* cares about the university. Seth wants transparency, who changes Michigan's culture, where you know not to fuck around because we won't cover it up for you. Sam agrees that wasn't a strength for Warde, though he was doing better with it at the end. Craig: someone who really loves the university, because Santa Ono didn't. Sam needs someone who can manage the academic space and also fundraise. Fair to say politicians do more of extracting money without giving anything back. * Fraumann? Donors' pick. Not a seasoned AD, but someone who's been next to the AD. Seth: Warde was very good at raising money without annoying me. I love nothing better than when donors give millions and millions, and I don't have to hear about it, and Katie must have been part of that. I've heard the same things from donors, which is important; I want Sam to find out what the coaches think, because that was a key issue w Warde, and it's important that they want to work for her. Brian: on the surface she looks like a good pick, notable that she was hired for an academic job at DePaul.

WTKA Roundtable 7/16/2026: Al Capone's Secret Tomb

Things Discussed: * The Warde Report: Did they find anything? Apparently not. Do we get anything? Apparently not. Really? Eleven months of waiting and the answer is "nothing to see here?" * Do we get a "report"? Does one exist? To avoid FOIA it's possible that the findings of the investigation were delivered orally so that they could not be used in litigation (e.g. Shiver's). That's a sad state of affairs, because we are interested parties who deserve access to the findings. * The WSJ's thing: Claims Warde was aware of the relationship enough to warn Moore not to bring Shiver on a trip. Doesn't mean anything, unless you really want to stretch it, because the timeline shows the program conducted that investigation after it was brought to the university, and didn't have enough to do anything until Shiver came forward in December, at which point they fired Moore on the spot. * Relitigating the scandals and "scandals." Craig says again he thought the Mel Pearson situation was handled correctly, which gets a lot of pushback. Seth says Warde wasn't playing the long game with the NCAA, and his indifferent approach to the buildup of Ohio State influence plus Harbaugh's inability to separate the little reportable stuff from the fights made all of it into a maximal storm over really miniscule events. The one thing that bothered in all of it was letting people into the building during COVID. That's a minor violation that should have been reported. * The Bad Faith people—sparties, buckeyes, haters—don't need to be reasoned with. Just block and move on, because trying to reason with hate is a waste of time. * Summary of status: They spent $X million(s) on an investigation, the results of which did not lead to the immediate termination of Warde Manuel, and which are not being shared. There is talk of a buyout, which means he's not getting removed now, and probably not for a year at least (there's 3 or 4 years left on his contract). There's clearly a faction that wants him gone, and clearly a faction that needs convincing, and this report did not do any convincing. I feel so....unsatisfied.

WTKA Roundtable 7/9/2026: Don't Test Me on 1999

Things Discussed: * McKenny, Trey: Present. Cadeau, Elliot: Present. Thiam, Moustapha: Present. Estrella, J.P.: Present. McCoy, Brandon: Present. Reed, Jalen: Present. Liburd, Patrick: Present. Goodman, Oscar: Present! Cosby, Brown, Costello...they're rolling 'em out and we expect Moller and Cason back as well. * Retaining staff, especially Akeem Miskdeen. Is he? Leaning that way, not entirely sure. * Would you let Warde give staffers 3-year contracts? Yeah. If I'm Manuel and they just spent millions to investigate me I'm spending all I can because why not? If you fail it's somebody else's problem. It's an issue in the way we run institutions but that's not Warde's problem today either. * If you have a coach on his way up, PAY. Odds are he's moving up and you're getting that money back. You also might get the Super Bowl-winning head coach of 2025 as your defensive coordinator in 2021. * Credit to Warde for going with the interim route to start, because that pushes the period when teams could actually retrieve poached Michigan players into August, and by then it's really hard to change the chemistry of your roster, especially at guard. * Do you give Boynton a 2-year contract? Not right now, because there's no need to, unless that's a prerequisite to holding your team together. * Boynton right now has proven he can hold a roster together. Not new: He got Cade Cunningham to play for Oklahoma State. Can he DEVELOP them over the year is the question. People had Michigan a 1-seed even if they look like a 3-seed roster because they thought Dusty May could develop Thiam, Estrella, McCoy, McKenny, Liburd, Cadeau into that much more effective players over the season. * OFFENSIVE LINE: What do you do if Frazier and Babalola are both able to play left tackle, because it looks like Sprague is a RT only. Seth gives the copout answer, which is the true answer: You play your best five each week and reassess. * Sam things Frazier could be a 1st round tackle after this year, or at least his camp does. Seth says don't say that out loud, Blake; you have to be on the team you're on now before you think too much about your next one, or you diminish your value. * Frazier to center? Sam thinks he can do it, which puts GWAR back at guard, and that would be a MONSTER offensive line. Like that this gives you redundancy, because nobody ever got through a season without injuries.