Former Michigan and current Indianapolis Colts running back Mike Hart just doesn’t know when to be quiet. He should have learned his lesson when he called out Stanford head coach Jim Harbaugh for criticizing Michigan’s low academic standards for athletes.

“He says we don’t have great student-athletes, but he just accepted one of our transfers,” Hart said. “What kind of sense does that make? Obviously, he wants guys like us at his school. I don’t know how he can say that. He’s not a Michigan man. I wish he’d never played here.”

Just think. Michigan might have beaten Appalachian State if Harbaugh played there last season.

It turned out Harbaugh was telling the truth for the most part. The Michigan football team was all about general studies and not communications. According to Pat Forde, “only one junior … declared a major, according to the guide (in movement science)” in 2007. “In 18 years of covering college athletics, I’ve never seen virtually an entire junior class without a major.”

Now Hart’s gone and done it again. The sixth round pick is claiming that the NFL isn’t as hard as he thought it would be.

“It’s a little different,” Hart said Saturday at Randy Wise Chevrolet in Flint, where he signed autographs. “The only surprise is it’s not as tough as I thought it was going to be, as far as practice and those type of things,” he said. “It’s more laid back.”

Hart was selected in the sixth round of the April draft by the Indianapolis Colts. He said: “Indianapolis is a different organization. You watch ‘Hard Knocks’ on HBO and you expect to be hazed and a lot of those things, but the Colts are a lot different. It’s not as bad as I thought — we don’t get taped, we don’t get hazed with the Colts.”

Hopefully Hart thinks OTAs are similar to training camp. The coaches and veterans must love hearing him say practice isn’t that hard or that he’s not getting hazed. It’ll be interesting to see if he thinks the same way when he’s duct taped to a bed while getting teabagged by a camel during training camp. Then again we probably have it wrong. Tony Dungy probably has his players read his book and go out on the town to haze gays while Marvin Harrison shoots off his guns like a Palestinian prisoner release celebration.

Timeless? What’s timeless? Nothing happened.

Michigan alum and current Phoenix Sun Jalen Rose bought a billboard to honor the Fab Five the season after their 15-year anniversary.

“The motivation for that speaks for itself,” said Rose, who didn’t tell the
other guys until after it was up, wanting it to be a surprise. “Being this
(2006-07) is the year of the Fab Five 15th-year anniversary, people nationally are talking about it — about how we changed college basketball and the landscape of the sport. We have no banners and representation at U-M, almost like we didn’t go there.”

Perhaps he’s forgotten about the illegal loans to Chris Webber and other players that resulted in penalties for the university in addition to the removal of all banners commemorating their achievements from Crisler Arena.

Former Michigan AD Bo Schembechler threw them under the bus as well.

“They were five really fine basketball players. But what did they do?” [said] retired Michigan football legend Bo Schembechler, the university athletic director in 1989, when he fired Bill Frieder and promoted Fisher to head coach on the eve of the 1989 NCAA tournament. “They never won the national title, and frankly they had enough talent to do it. Did they win any Big Ten championships? What did they bring us?”

That’s some cold shit, Bo. They did bring increased visibility, more applicants and huge merchandise sales in addition to tripling athletic royalties.

Rose had the billboard placed in Detroit near the area where he and Webber grew up. He said he didn’t want to cause any distractions.

“Unfortunately, what a couple players were accused — never proven — of doing, our banners got taken down so our memories aren’t as fond as they should be,” Rose said. “There’s no hard feelings and I think some good eventually will come out of it. But, especially when, being in broadcasting, I see what (former Ohio State running back) Maurice Clarett was going through, and they didn’t take their (championship) banner down. I see (former USC running back) Reggie Bush and what he’s going through. And I see what (former UCLA basketball coach) Jim Harrick goes through, and I notice it’s original and unique how our situation is handled.”

Rose can’t be blamed for being bitter and he does have a point but it seems as though he absolves Webber of any guilt in the situation. To their credit, Rose and Jimmy King have continued their association with the basketball program.

** Ray Jackson is living in Austin, TX running a moving company and Rise Up, Inc., a non-profit that mentors kids on and off the court. I always wondered what happened to him.

“No one can ever remember a bigger upset. I know in Columbus it’s the biggest selling shirt and everywhere else it’s, ‘Ha-ha, hee-hee.’ This might sound funny, but Appalachian State sounds like a funny name, and it’s a name people can kind of laugh at, so everybody is going, ‘Hee, hee.’”

– former Michigan quarterback John Wangler.