Hey Joe: Mailbag compares Harbaugh/Izzo “spectacles”
It’s not often I get mailbag questions from Michigan fans … but when I do, and they’re not profane, I run ‘em!
*Have all the Spartan fans criticizing U-M's "spectacle" yesterday forgotten that Tom Izzo has dressed up like KISS and been “fired out of a cannon” at his basketball kickoffs? Sheesh, lighten up. If you can do something that is fun, fires up the players and base, draws attention, and most importantly raises a bunch of money so hopefully less little kids get cancer, why wouldn't you do this? Of course it was over the top, but so what?
Joe
Joe, you seem to forget that Jim Harbaugh is the worst person in the world, a soulless huckster who discards kids like pocket lint and hasn’t won a darn thing his whole life, while Tom Izzo is a champion of champions who only produces tasteful entertainment. Check that, Harbaugh is a brilliant innovator who is a step ahead of the rest of college football and will soon own it, while Izzo is an overrated anger management case who would be better off impersonating Gene Simmons on stage than, say, trying to beat Duke on the big stage. And let’s not even start on Mark Dantonio! (The point, Joe, is that MSU and Michigan fans are never going to come close to agreeing on this or anything, so let it go).
*I saw the tweet from Tony Pauline about Connor Cook and the "less than effusive" praise from his teammates. I don't really understand why Cook is being criticized as much as he is. Now, I may be looking through green-tinted glasses, but as far as I can see, the only slight against him is the “not voted a captain” issue. He has no off-the-field transgressions, no fights, no arrests, good student, etc. Isn't it possible that on a team with 24 seniors, there may have been three better candidates than Cook? Getting back to the praise from his teammates, isn't it also possible that they are tired of being asked questions about Cook, especially when they are playing in the Senior Bowl and are also trying to showcase their own talents to improve their draft position? The scrutiny seems undeserved, especially when you look at on-the-field results.
Patrick in Ypsilanti
To review for anyone who isn’t on Twitter or didn’t see the exchange last week, analyst Tony Pauline, who publishes DraftInsider.net, sent this tweet out about Connor Cook on Monday: “Word here at the Senior Bowl; MSU teammates have been less than effusive in their praise of quaterback Connor Cook.”
Huh?
What does that mean? Does that mean the three MSU guys at the Senior Bowl praised him, just not effusively? Did they rip him? Did Pauline talk to any of them about Cook? Or is that just the “word?” But wait, what exactly is the word? They sorta like him, but not too much? They’re, like, friends but not besties?
Lots of people asked Pauline about this on Twitter, and he didn’t say much in reply. So add it to the list of vague references from the “NFL draft media” about Cook’s personality and character. It’s been quite a stream of innuendo, really going back to when Cook was not one of the three players voted by teammates as a captain.
Couch: Criticism of Connor Cook's personality is overblown
To review on that, he was voted part of the 12-man leadership council, a year after he was not on that council. For people around the team, it wasn’t a shock that he wasn’t one of the top three – I predicted it before the vote, for the record – but it got a lot of attention elsewhere. It’s a natural question: How is it that the star, senior quarterback isn’t a captain?
So then John Middlekauf, a talk-radio host in San Francisco, tweeted: “#Sparty QB Connor Cook not being named captain is something scouts are talking about. Teammates didn't vote for him. Not a great look.”
Daniel Jeremiah, an NFL Network analyst, responded: “Not hearing good things.”
I called and texted Jeremiah to see if he would elaborate, and he didn’t get back to me. A few days after I wrote about that, he finally did call me back, said it was a misunderstanding with his phone message, and essentially reiterated the same thing – that he had, in general, heard some negatives about Cook’s personality.
At the time, Cook said of the Middlekauf-Jeremiah exchange (which ended up producing a headline on MMQB: “I didn’t see that. And I don’t care, either.”
Meanwhile, all season long, coaches and teammates supported Cook publicly and swore up and down that he was one of the primary leaders on the team. That’s what they have to say, right? But I don’t think Darien Harris – the “surprise” third captain this season to the outside world, joining no-brainers Jack Allen and Shilique Calhoun – had to go out of his way to tell NFL.com what he did last week about the Cook character bashing.
"I don't buy any of that, one bit,” Harris said. “I feel like, as he is my brother and he is family to me, it's kind of my obligation to try to kill some of that noise. Hopefully I can do that by getting people to understand from the inside of that locker room that we loved him and that he was the best quarterback in the country, no doubt about it.
"It's been a mystery to us, and it's really unfortunate. He's a great guy who comes from a great family. It's hurtful to me as well because he's part of our 2011 class that's been able to do so many special things at Michigan State. I know him, I know his parents well, his sister, I know everything about him. We talk all the time. For how close and tight-knit the team was, to me it's been kind of blasphemous, the amount of things that have been said about him."
But I guess that just doesn’t carry as much weight as some vague, anonymous stuff a draft analyst heard from someone.
Two of the three guys at the Senior Bowl last week, Aaron Burbridge and Jack Allen, have been among the most vocal Cook supporters. Maybe Lawrence Thomas has an issue with Cook? Or just wasn’t effusive enough when he said nice things about him?
Connor Cook leaves legacy of records, big wins
Look, I realize how some will take this. The local beat writer rallying around the kid he covered, “smoke” be damned.
So let’s get some things straight. First of all, I have no idea what kind of NFL quarterback Cook will be. Most quarterbacks don’t work out, have you noticed? I also fully realize that when teams are considering making this kind of investment in a quarterback, every rock will be overturned on the character issue. The captain vote was always going to make this process more difficult for Cook.
Also, I have no personal stake in this. I try to treat everyone the same, and that means trying to be professional and friendly. You write a personality profile of an athlete one day, a story about his arrest the next. You don’t get close to the people you cover. And covering Cook over the past three seasons was just fine – he was friendly enough, usually helpful, often aloof, sometimes irritable.
When you cover a beat, you hear a lot of things that don’t ever see the light of day. There are many “off the record” conversations. There are things you know but can’t report, because no one will go “on the record” with it. But I’ll go ahead and tell you what I haven’t heard, on or off. I’ve never heard one thing about his conduct that falls outside of the realm of normal college student behavior.
So let’s see what happens. The questions will continue to come, and Cook will have to answer them. And there’s no telling where he’ll go in the draft or what he’ll do in the NFL. But the next time someone trashes him, consider me effusive in requesting they bring something specific and solid.
Connor Cook wins Unitas award as nation's top QB
*Why is Marvin Clark anchored to the bench?
Mark in East Lansing
Because he got hurt. Because he has struggled on defense when he has played this season. Because Kenny Goins came out of nowhere to become a key player. Because Deyonta Davis has been able to play power forward, giving Tom Izzo big lineups that he has used for all but a few minutes of the Big Ten season. If Clark is going to get minutes, they’re going to come at power forward – he has not played or practiced at the wing at all – and they’re going to come at the expense of Davis, Goins or Gavin Schilling, the three main guys at the four. They’re also going to come instead of Javon Bess, the fifth power forward in the mix, and a guy who has been better than Clark on defense. So while I think Clark’s long-range shot and athleticism could be assets for MSU, and while I recall what he did last March, I have a hard time seeing this changing much.
Couch: Izzo finds a rotation - for now sans Clark, Bess
*Hi Joe, hopefully you can answer a question that doesn't deal with football recruiting. It's apparent that coach Izzo still gets fired up for games against Michigan, but do the players feel the same level of intensity? Izzo (and middle-aged fans like me and my friends) obviously remember all the "stuff" connected to Ed Martin/recruiting etc., but do players who are now 20 years old have a high level of dislike for the Maize and Blue? And as a second part of the question, are there certain teams that the MSU basketball team always gets fired up for … or does that change depending on season? For instance, Maryland will end up being one of this year's most intense games and that's a team MSU had no history with until this year.
Bill in Caledonia
Good question(s), Bill. But man, did you really have to make the point that “middle-aged” folks are the ones who will remember the Fab Five era and all the MSU/Michigan rancor from back then? Depressing. On the intensity thing, I think MSU players are up for this rivalry. I think that’s especially true of the in-state kids – there’s no doubt, talking to Matt Costello and Denzel Valentine this week, that this game means a lot to them. Do MSU players past or present have Izzo’s passion for this game? I doubt it. But he has history. And he has had to recruit an hour away from Ann Arbor for about 33 straight years now. I think the Maryland game was about MSU on a three-game losing streak, on “GameDay,” at home, against a top-5 team. It wasn’t personal. I’d also say MSU is like most teams and gets up for Duke, Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky, and the Big Ten rivals have heated up and cooled based on performance. Illinois used to be big. Ohio State has been big. Indiana has been big. Wisconsin has been pretty intense for more than a decade now. And then sometimes you’ll have something like the Branden Dawson/Purdue thing to fire up a locker room. I think MSU/Michigan intensity is pretty consistent, with varying levels of bitterness (the Darius Morris/Kalin Lucas/Tom Izzo stuff from five years ago got snippy). And the most consistent thing about Big Ten teams getting fired up over the past couple decades is that they consistently do so for Michigan State.