The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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MICHIGAN FOOTBALL nior center Jack Miller, redshirt ju- nior right guard Graham Glasgow and redshirt sophomore right tackle Ben Braden was expected to stick to- gether through the non-conference, though redshirt sophomore Kyle Ka- lis continued to push at right guard. "How they improve — they go back to work," Skene said. "Drills don't change, and the expectations don't change, but somebody or some guys need to step up and put a foot in the ground and take over. Until that happens, the struggles will con- tinue." DAVID BRANDON: DON'T EXPECT BIG TEN EXPANSION SOON Michigan will be making its first- ever journey to play at Rutgers come Oct. 4, and some can't quite get used to the sound of it being a Big Ten contest. One week before the annual showdown against Ohio State, Mary- land rolls into Ann Arbor for another conference battle. Those games will require some mental adjustment on the part of Michigan fans. Not only are they con- ference contests, they're East Division battles for the Wolverines. When Rutgers and Maryland joined the conference, many assumed two more dominoes would shortly follow, making the Big Ten swell to a full 16 schools. That would allow for eight- team divisions in football, and … Not so fast, noted Michigan athlet- ics director David Brandon. He sees the national binge of conference ex- pansions taking a bit of a respite. "I think college football — because let's face it, this whole conference ex- pansion thing is all driven by football — is likely going through a period of time where they're digesting what has occurred over the last three or four years, as we've been in this frenetic restructuring and expansion mode," Brandon said. "Some people think, 'Well, I guess we're just going to go play at Rutgers.' But to assimilate presidents into the Council of Presi- dents and provosts into the organi- zation that academic leaders use to get together and collaborate and con- nect and create programs and poli- cies and plans, to get all the athletic directors on the same page, with all of the athletic rules and policies and procedures, to reschedule everything, to talk about all the travel arrange- ments and the logistics associated with 31 teams traveling to these new areas, to look at every sport and say, 'Do we go with the divisional concept or play round-robin, and if we don't play round-robin, how do we decide who we play?' "These are all things that may look easy from afar, but they're not." That doesn't mean the expansion era has ended, Brandon noted. It might just be on hiatus, with more to come down the road. "Everybody is kind of settling in around the changes that have been re- cently made," he pointed out. "I would be surprised if something were immi- nent in terms of more change. Having said all that, over the longer haul, I still think there is more to come. "These TV deals are becoming big-