thundercleetz

Boras knows what he is doing. Someone will pay Davis if we don't.

Got a $3.5M signing bonus plus he gets his complete $3.5M annual salary for 2015.

Two contracts! Power to him!

Dee... Same thing happened to me when I played through Ground Zero. It wasn't until I nearly beat the game that I realized you could choke people out. Looking back at the game, it's probably possible to beat it in less than an hour. However, it took me over five because I didn't know what to do lol.

Hargreaves got killed yesterday by Ridley who went for 8 receptions for 102 yards.

DC I completely agree with you. It is a low risk, potentially high reward hire (low risk unless you count time value of the opportunity cost of hiring someone of Chip Kelly's stature). I am not a Terps fan, however, I spoke with a Terps fan who is heavily invested and the problem seems to lie with Kevin Anderson. He set the expectation that this would be a big hire, and went as far as comparing UMD to an East Coast Oregon alluding to Chip Kelly all but in name. I was told the consensus among Terps fans is that Anderson botched the Sean Miller negotiations after Gary retired, and botched negotiations with Richt. I don't know how true any of it is, but Anderson is not a popular guy apparently among boosters. So I think it's nothing personal against Durkin. However, a coach like Durkin if he does well at a school like UMD, there's always the threat he bolts to OSU, Texas, LSU, Alabama down the road. But I guess that's a good problem to have?

Butler's upside is probably what Kamar Aiken is now. Great effort, but there's a reason Harbaugh says he needs to play faster, he has limited speed.

Maybe they did that and Kelly wasn't interested? I would have to think USC would have waited had there been a chance of hiring Kelly instead of promoting internally. Rutgers goes the same route as UMD and hires Chris Ash, OSU's DC. Between Ash and Durkin, OSU and Michigan are sure to lose some other coaches, which is good for the rest of the division.

I guess a silver lining for bad drafting is you have less of your own players to re-sign

This seems to be the consensus among UMD fans. I think that is because Kevin Anderson set the expectation that this would be a big time hire. However, when you fire your coach midseason you put yourself in a purgatory. Signing day is in February, so waiting for the NFL season to end to see if Chip Kelly or Bill O'Brien will be available would essentially wreck this recruiting class. If you are positive you can get a guy like Kelly or O'Brien, that is no big deal. However, waiting that long not only are you risking Kelly or O'Brien not being available, but you are risking a hot prospect like Durkin not being available as well.

Who would you have liked the Terps to hire? Outside of Richt, I was not impressed with the candidates out there. Unless you consider waiting to see what happens with Bill O'Brien or Chip Kelly and take that risk.

Max, I am with you. I don't think Trestman has been as bad as everyone gives him slack for. Ravens got what they asked for. Trestman was a known pass happy OC. On top of that he is used to having big, strong, tall receivers who can go up for balls thrown downfield and in the redzone. Don't give him the weapons, it's not realistic to think his offense will work. I don't mind the pass happiness. Redzone inefficiency and coming away with threes as opposed to sevens have been our downfall, especially considering the close games we've had. We've always had a poor redzone offense under Harbaugh.

Happy bday!

@jcrasnick: Expectation in the industry is that Darren O'Day lands a 4-yr deal at slightly under Andrew Miller money. Maybe $32-34M.

Prototypical Oriole hitter! He'll fit right in! If Chris Davis leaves we should sign Pedro Alvarez who was recently DFA'd by the Pirates. He's another high K, low OBP, plus power guy who would probably do well in Camden.

Everything I've read about Richt says he's a great guy and good with the media. Outstanding hire for Miami. With how weak that ACC division is he should be competing in no time.

If you have time, this is an interesting podcast (it's long) where the guest (Randall Carlson) presents his theory for how much man has contributed to climate change in addition to what is considered "cyclical". Honestly, I am not smart enough to know one way or the other (too much science for me), but interesting nonetheless Interesting tweets I read the other day: @mims: I know Obama says this is a battle against cynicism but this isn't cynicism, it's just a practically unavoidable scenario. @mims: Implications of this are not often appreciated. One is the bottom billion humans are probably doomed on a century timescale. @mims: The other implication is that fairly large-scale adaptation to climate change from 2050 or so on will be the unending order of the day. @mims: Can we survive this existential threat? Certainly. But it will eventually consume our resources at a world war-scale. @mims: I stopped being an environmental reporter in 2012 after this piece. It stands up well and probably will for decades. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-our-disinterest-in-the-environment-signals-the-end-of-nature I tend to agree with his bottom billion comment. I am of the thought that technological innovation will prevail, but there is no real incentive until there is a legitimate threat to developed nations. By then, how many people will have died in poor nations? I am sure the migration problems we see today are small compared to what we have coming to us in the future as a result of climate change.

Absolutely. The West created artificial borders in the Middle East after the World Wars. However, that caused a different set of problems than what I described from the fall of the USSR. For example, Syria is still 90%+ Arab. Those people would still identify as Arab and Syrian. The Syrian rebels are not self-determining and creating their own nation within Syria, they are trying to stage a revolution within the pre-defined borders of Syria. Yes, there is a Kurdish minority. That is a regional problem of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. I am sure the Kurdish would like to self-determine an autonomous region, like many former Soviet oblasts did in the early 90s through today. During the rule of the USSR, you would be hard pressed to find a Russian in Crimea identify themselves as being from the Ukraine, an Ossetian from South Ossetia or Abkhazians in Abkhazia as being from Georgia, or an Armenian in Nagorno-Karabakh as being from Azerbaijan. You said it, Democracy is a dirty word in Eastern Europe. Despite these "borders", none of it mattered because it was all a puppet under one communist rule. After 1991, the former oblasts I mentioned pushed for autonomy once their respective "nations" tried to exert traditional democratic control over the territories. Once again, a foreign concept to the ethnicities who had lived the past century without democracy and without any meaningful connection to the official "Soviet Republic" it was placed under. In Georgia and Ukraine, the problems didn't initially stem from Russia, it stemmed from these nations trying to fight back as the territories became more autonomous. Many of these territories had a high level of autonomy predating even the Soviet Union. Yes, Russia antagonized, saw an opportunity and pounced. However, being placed originally within a larger nation was unnatural. As much of a mess Crimea and Ossetia/Abkhazia were, the early-1990s wars stemming from self-determination were a lot bloodier. I highly recommend the article "What the Kremlin is Thinking" by Alexander Lukin in the July/August 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs. Interesting read (or listen on Audible) on the Russian physiological perspective that we don't hear at all in our media. Like the Middle East, the U.S. and Western world has no idea how Russia operates and is making no attempt to figure out in order to achieve better diplomacy.

ESPN posted a good article about what you mention: Saban's effect on coaching in the SEC: http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/14259323/nick-saban-impact-mark-richt-les-miles Amazing that Miss State's head coach Dan Mullen interviewed for the Miami job. After seven years it's almost as if he knows he can't beat Saban and it will only be a matter of time before he's let go. Might as well go out on his own terms. Richt is also rumored to be in play for the Miami job (he played QB for them). Btw that Miami job is not a good job. Bad conference, private school with high academic standards, a terrible sports town, bad facilities, and a stadium that's forty minutes from campus and doesn't get good student body support. But then again, Miami is a great place to live...

Probably not, but I don't think that's a slight against Richt moreso as it is a testament to guys like Nick Saban and Urban Meyer. Amazing LSU would even consider firing Les Miles with the winning percentage he has, much less $15M to leave. Same with Nebraska and Bo Pelini a year ago. The line between a solid coach and a national championship is very difficult to cross. It's like you said, you know a guy won't be able to get you over the hump. But do you take a risk of replacing him when the new coach will likely not even be as good as the old coach? It's tough, but a risk you must take if you want to win a championship. Kind of like a good QB vs. an elite QB in the NFL. UMD at this point needs a guy who can win 9 games, maybe challenge for a Big Ten title down the road. Richt would be perfect for that. I think for a program without a rich football history like Maryland to win a national championship (much less a Big Ten title), the program will have to be built up more first regardless of who the coach is.

Richt would be a homerun hire for the Terps. IMO Georgia is making a big mistake letting him go. With what's out there, the next guy they are going to hire won't be as good as Richt.

I actually agree with a lot of what you say here. Good post and analysis. In no way did I mean to insinuate that Putin is being guided by a moral compass. All I was saying, comparing Putin's actions to that of the US or other NATO nations, and no one has a moral high ground. The US has bases all over the world. What would our reaction be if Russia put a base in Mexico, or Cuba, wait... I think a lot of Putin's behavior you described above we can thank ourselves for. We have unnecessarily antagonized and placed sanctions on Russia in response to matters that are no importance to us. I don't really want to get into Crimea again, but the USSR drew some very poor and artificial borders in relation to demographics, culture and historical inhabitants. These artificial boarders were essentially a problem that was stop gaped from the end of WW1 to the early nineties. When the Iron Curtain fell, all hell broke loose in some areas of Eurasia and Eastern Europe. Ethnic populations didn't match the borders that had been drawn nearly 80 years earlier. Anyways, we saw former oblasts like Crimea, South Ossetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and Transnistria self-determine as a result of the poorly drawn borders that didn't match the ethnicities of the people who lived within them. Given the self-determination and the history of that area, I do not see Crimea in the same light as Syria, nor do I see Putin being hypocritical in regards to sovereignty in these two situations. Of course, many would disagree, which I'm sure you do as well.

The WR Carroo for Rutgers is a stud.

Kurds have certainly had it tough. You look at what they went through in Iraq, and in the early 20th century in Turkey. Even today in Turkey, the Kurds are a sizable minority but have limited ability to form political parties and have restrictions on formally teaching their language and culture in schools (maybe this was changed recently? Haven't checked for awhile). It's interesting to look at the Treaty of Sevres, in which Woodrow Wilson drew up a map of the Middle East.

It's not that Putin doesn't have the gull to do something, he's simply not at the point where he has nothing to lose. Russia's economy is in terrible shape, and the current military operations have to be draining, so I am sure they have a tipping point. You keep poking a bear its eventually going to fight back. You might be able to handle the bear, but it's going to cause some collateral damage going down. Before this whole plane shot down saga, it looked like NATO was going to work with Russia. Now it's chaos. You have to look at all these events from Putin's point of view: in Crimea he is trying to help his own people who do not have basic rights. Questionable ethics in doing so? Maybe. But then he sees the U.S. bombing buildings in Iraq killing innocent people, or Israel doing the same against the Palestinians. Then in Syria, Russia is the only nation that is actively respecting Syria's sovereignty (regardless of whether his intentions are sincere or not). Whereas other NATO nations are talking about (and in Turkey's case) arming rebels. With all that said, Putin probably feels he's the righteous one in all of this. By the way, fun fact: Assad and Erdogan's families vacationed together in the past. Now Assad doesn't serve Erdogan's purpose, and Turkey is letting rebels enter through the shared boarder. Turkey is trying to get NATO to do its dirty work in Syria and rid themselves of Assad. It's all just one big cluster.