Glasnost

For many years, off-seasons in Michigan football was about as exciting as watching paint dry. The only time you ever got any verifiable news was at the signing day press conference, the spring practice news conference and at the start of fall practice. Even then you hard to read between the lines to figure things out: "Lloyd only used one 'tremendous' when describing Steve Schilling, but used two on Mike Boren, so Boren must be further along in practice." You'd hear rumors of things from Rivals or Scout message boards, but you could never be sure of what was real and what was just rumors. Information was horded like water in the Sahara. You needed a kremlinologist just to figure out what was going on. In short, there was a reason why the football building was known as "Fort Schembechler"
But in the last two days, we have gotten more relevant information from Rich Rod than we did in 13+ years of Lloyd Carr. First, he went on the Jim Rome show and announced that in all likely hood Mario Manningham and Adrian Arrington were leaving for the NFL, and he hadn't heard from Ryan Mallet. He then followed that up with an impromptu news conference at half time of the Michigan / IU basketball game, where he confirmed the departures of the three offensive stars, and stated we hoped to get a full class of 25 players. Now, in a normal off-season, the loss of most of our offense from this year would send most M fans into a funk. But the fact that this info came from the head coach pretty much as it was happening is so mind blowing as to soften the blow of losing these players.
This truly is a Brave New World.