FanHouse Michigan

Losing to your most hated rival is tough, very tough. Especially in college football where you have to spend the next 364 days marinating in the bitter stew of your defeat. The only thing worse than losing to your rival is losing to your rival in consecutive years. Three years in a row is worse than that and so on and so forth. Worst of all? When your bitter rival does something so debilitating that you don't even know how to respond.

That happened last Thursday in downtown Detroit when a billboard went up that read, "Congratulations Michigan on 2000 days since the big win over Ohio State." Who's responsible for the billboard? An Ohio State fan site of course.

With the recent passing of Doc "Mr. Inside" Blanchard, FanHouse takes a stab at naming the five greatest living Heisman Trophy winners

In a game that spans many eras, any task like this is exceedingly difficult and fraught with contradiction. With all the nostalgia built into the Heisman Trophy and the game of college football, we're buying into it with a less clinical, more emotional effort at ranking players. There's a bias towards the modern, towards a player being associated with the trophy and towards those that most captured peoples' imaginations.

A couple months ago, Steven Threet decided to leave Michigan. The quarterback started eight games for the Wolverines a year ago, but was obviously not a good fit for new coach Rich Rodriguez and the spread offense he brought from West Virginia.

Threet took his time looking over his options, and he found some potential suitors who still ran some sort of pro-style offense.

It's barely spring here in the Midwest but spring football is well under way, and there's abundant intrigue in the Big Ten conference. Coming off what seems like the 46th consecutive disappointing bowl season, including a Rose Bowl where Penn State's Daryll Clark (right) did his best but the Nittany Lions still couldn't beat Southern Cal, nobody will be expecting much from the conference or its teams when fall rolls around. Somebody has to win it, however, and now is when the jockeying for position really begins.

College Football Spring Storylines 2009 looks at the key developments and big news from spring ball.

It's not often a traditional power like Michigan can be called be called overlooked, but a 4-8 season will do plenty of things to a program other than just riling up the fanbase. In this case, it makes the Wolverines primed for a surprise season.

And they're not alone.

We'll even invite Florida State to the party dadgummit. Florida, Oklahoma, USC and Texas are laughing but inevitably they'll have their season(s) of woe. Until then, some big programs are giving us material in this feature on programs on the rise.

Sooner or later, you would expect Rich Rodriguez's luck to turn around at Michigan. It looked like things were headed in that direction when Rodriguez landed a very strong recruiting class back in February, but apparently the universe has some more kicks to the crotch in store for the Wolverines' second-year coach.

According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, quarterback Nick Sheridan suffered a serious leg injury during Michigan's spring practice on Tuesday. College Fantasy Football Insider speculates that Sheridan broke a bone. The Michigan Daily seemingly corroborates that notion, saying that Sheridan was seen walking with crutches around campus, a large boot on his right leg.

UPDATE: The Free Press is reporting that Sheridan fractured a bone in his lower leg, and will miss four-to-six weeks. If that's the case, the impact of this is pretty minimal, seeing as how the season doesn't start in May.

Every Monday during college football's endless offseason, The FanHouse Walk will put last week's stories to bed and deliver the essentials to bridge that agonizing space between now and September.

Rejoice! Er, potentially rejoice -- Last week the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported speculation that FOX might extricate itself a year early from its BCS coverage commitments. Besides the rarely disputed notion that FOX's BCS coverage is woeful -- thank you, Thom Brennaman and endless band shots -- the network seems to realize they've been dealt a weak hand for their 2010 games.

Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan football team had a tough year. They didn't go bowling, they had their first losing season in like 40 years, the starting quarterback is transferring and, well, you get the point: not a fun year to be a Wolverine fan.

Of course, Ohio State and the kind folks in Columbus are always there to rub a little salt in the wound. And they teamed up with Maker's Mark whiskey to do so, posting a hilarious monstrosity of a billboard on a downtown building. (Big photo after the jump.)

Michigan quarterback Steven Threet, a redshirt freshman who started eight games in 2008, has announced that he's transferring, dealing a significant setback to Rich Rodriguez's program.

Threet's statement didn't say much, other than he's on the way out.

The headline says it all, this is about the top college football recruiting classes in 2009. Like Rivals, we're calling Alabama the top recruiter after a stellar final day saw the 'Tide seal the deal with in-state five star cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick and four star linebacker Tana Patrick. They also picked up the south's best back in Floridian Trent Richardson.

Nipping at their heel was another SEC power with Nick Saban connections: LSU. The Tigers inked the country's top receiver, Louisiana's Rueben Randle. They also got an early enrollment from Texas quarterback Russell Shepard. On defense they picked up five-star cornerback Janzen Jackson and five-star defensive tackle Chris Davenport. Just a monster, monster class.

After the jump, the rest of the real power elite recruiting classes at the end of signing day.