16 — Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Maddie Nolan making strides with
Leigha Brown still out
The
Michigan
women’s
basketball team had a hole to fill
ever since junior wing Leigha Brown
became ineligible for play due to
COVID-19 protocols on Jan. 7, right
before the Wolverine’s match-up
with Nebraska.
Brown was an integral part of
Michigan’s early success that led to
a 10-0 start. Without her, Michigan
has struggled to put points on the
board and guard opposing teams’
perimeter threats.
“I think the hardest part is
learning to play without (Brown),”
fifth-year senior guard Akienreh
Johnson said after a win over Illinois
on Jan. 10. “(Brown’s) such an
offensive presence. She can really get
any shots she wanted, whenever she
wanted.”
But with Brown out, Michigan
might have found their new bright
spot in sophomore guard Maddie
Nolan.
Nolan’s no stranger to stepping
into big roles. Last season she
contributed big minutes late in
the season after multiple players
sustained
significant
injuries.
Her
breakout
game
against
Northwestern in the quarterfinals
of the Big Ten tournament, with 13
points and eight rebounds, made
her a consistent substitute for tired
guards early in her sophomore
season. She’s a scrappy defender that
made teams uncomfortable.
After a brief stint of junior guard
Danielle Rauch trying to fill the spot
left by Brown, Michigan coach Kim
Barnes Arico decided it was time to
pencil Nolan into the lineup once
again.
“Last year when we made our
run in the Big Ten Tournament and
when Kayla (Robbins) went down
with her injury that she stepped in
and really did a tremendous job for
us,” Barnes Arico said after a win
over Wisconsin on Jan. 14. “But I
think it was just her getting back her
confidence, or knowing that she had
the green light.”
Nolan had only started one other
time this season against Oakland,
when Johnson went down with a leg
injury the game before. Nolan added
three points and nine rebounds
against the Golden Grizzlies.
But in her second opportunity of
the season, Nolan proved she’s more
than capable of holding a starting
spot. Against Wisconsin on Jan.
14, she had 21 points — 15 of which
came from beyond the arc. In the
Wolverines’ final game before the
two-week shutdown, Nolan had six
rebounds and five assists.
She brought a 3-point threat back
to Michigan’s offense, something
it missed without Brown. In the
defensive end, Nolan uses her
quickness to disorient other guards.
Contributing on both sides of the
floor, Nolan fills in the gaps.
“Last
year
gave
her
an
opportunity to really play, and to get
experience as a freshman,” Barnes
Arico said after that same Wisconsin
game. “Now her confidence is at
another level. She’s a big strong
guard, she defends exceptionally
well, she rebounds well and she can
shoot the ball and that really gave us
an option from the outside.”
While Nolan can’t fully replace
Leigha Brown, her performance
shows that Michigan has many
starting options. Nolan has the
potential to grow into Brown’s
shoes. And with Johnson and senior
forward Hailey Brown graduating
this season, the Wolverines will
need replacements in the lineup.
Nolan’s
continued
development
will be necessary for sustaining the
program’s success in the coming
seasons.
ABBIE TELGENHOF
Daily Sports Writer
JULIA SCHACHINGER/Daily
With Leigha Brown out due to COVID-19 protocols, Maddie Nolan has stepped into the starting lineup and
provided important contributions.
NCAA Football, NIL and a conversation with Denard Robinson
I’m on the phone with Denard
Robinson, and I need to make an
admission. I called him because of
the news this week –– the kind of
news that saves a very slow week
when you have
to turn in a
column on
Sunday night
–– that EA
Sports would
be reviving its
widely-beloved
NCAA Football
video game
franchise. It
won’t be this year, and it’ll be called
EA Sports College Football instead
of NCAA Football, but its release
will mark the first new college foot-
ball game EA has made since 2013,
when Robinson occupied the cover.
I want to ask him about the
dichotomy of being on the cover of
a video game because of what he
did as an unpaid college athlete.
About what it’s like to be famous
and unable to capitalize on your
earnings potential and whether he
thinks this news underscores the
problem at hand.
But first I need to tell him: I’ve
never played NCAA Football.
“Oh my gosh. Jesus,” he says.
“What? Why not? So you never
played NCAA, that’s what you’re
telling me?”
Yup.
“This is bad. This is really bad.
Who gave you the — come on, man.
You gotta pick this game up. Do
I gotta send this game to you and
make you play it?”
Robinson, before he came to
Michigan and played himself onto
the cover, grew up the same way
lots of people his age did: playing
the game. He and his brothers
would create players and try to
win the Heisman Trophy, going
through a four-year career then
doing it again and again and again.
He sounds the same way most
people do when they talk about this
game. It’s the sort of deep-rooted
nostalgia that a new edition has a
way of killing. When he got to be in
the game, let alone on the cover, he
thought it was the coolest thing in
the world.
“Just to be one of the players on
that — and it don’t even have my
name, it just said 16 from Deerfield
Beach, Florida,” Robinson said.
“That just meant so much for my
city, for me to represent my city. It
felt unreal, you know.”
But the first part is the import-
ant part. It didn’t have his name
because college athletes aren’t
allowed to license their image for
money. Instead, it had a nameless
Michigan quarterback from Deer-
field Beach, Fla., with dreadlocks
who wore #16 and ran the ball
really well.
When former UCLA basket-
ball player Ed O’Bannon sued the
NCAA over his likeness being
used without compensation in the
same way, part of the effect was
EA discontinuing the games. In
the fine print of the announcement
this week was a note that no player
likenesses will be used in the new
video game.
But by 2023, when the game is
expected to launch, that decision
might have nothing to do with
O’Bannon v. NCAA. Twenty states
have either passed or considered
laws allowing student-athletes to
capitalize on their image rights.
Bills have been introduced at the
federal level as well, with bipar-
tisan support, and the NCAA has
started to lobby Congress not to
vote the bills down, but only so
it can have some level of control
over what happens. In this respect,
Democratic majorities in the U.S.
House and Senate will likely make
a bill more favorable to athletes if
passed.
Even if a federal bill isn’t passed,
though, Florida’s bill goes into
effect in July of this year. In the
state of Michigan, a law passed in
December and goes into effect in
… 2023.
“College guys gonna need a
union,” Robinson said. “And I say
that because they’re gonna need
someone to represent them. Cause
somebody gotta be in that room to
represent them. If it’s just NCAA
people representing them, well
then they’re gonna look out for
the best for themselves. So I think
somebody’s gonna have to be in that
room to represent them and come
up with some solutions.”
For a brief moment this August,
it seemed like there was momen-
tum towards a union — or some-
thing resembling one — forming.
A group of players including
Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence and
Michigan’s Hunter Reynolds went
on social media and tweeted a
proposal, asking to play the season
with universally mandated safety
protocols, the ability to opt out,
retain eligibility and create a Col-
lege Football Players’ Association.
Then-President Donald Trump
seemed to endorse it.
Two of those demands — a sea-
son and eligibility retention — were
met. A third, universal safety proto-
cols, didn’t quite happen, but each
conference had its own set of proto-
cols. That last one? You don’t hear
much about that last one anymore.
I tell Robinson my pet theory:
That a majority of players would
never choose to sit out games in
the name of forming a union, thus
the effort will always fizzle out. “I
think that’s the truth,” he said. At
Michigan, he and his teammates
noticed people getting in trouble
for selling shoes, shirts, tickets or
anything else. “Of course we had
that conversation,” he said, “but we
never came up with a solution.”
Robinson thinks athletes “need”
to get paid, but he isn’t closer to
finding that solution than anyone
else. A union and health insurance
would be a good place to start,
though. Thanks to a stint in the
NFL, Robinson has insurance now.
At Michigan, though, when his
earnings potential was at its peak,
he was always a bad injury away
from all those dollars evaporating.
So his brother paid for insurance.
“I’m thinking I’m gonna get
drafted,” Robinson said. “But if I
get injured in my last year, I won’t
be able to see any of the money that
I thought I shoulda seen when I
was in college.”
He brings up the case of Mar-
cus Lattimore, a running back
at South Carolina the same time
Robinson was at Michigan. In
his freshman year, Lattimore ran
for 1,197 yards, but he had severe
knee injuries his sophomore and
junior years. He got drafted by
the San Francisco 49ers, but never
played an NFL game. “He was
one of the best backs in South
Carolina history,” Robinson said.
“... He played three years, four
years in college and never got to
see his real earnings because of
(injuries).”
Robinson, of course, has his own
story. Because he had graduated
before being on the cover — EA
approached him about it right after
the last game of his senior year —
he could be paid for that. But the
man who might have been the most
marketable Michigan football play-
er this side of Charles Woodson left
Ann Arbor with that being the lone
endorsement to his name.
“This is true,” he said.
So does it bother him?
“No, no,” he said. “… I think
everything happens for a reason
in life.”
Sears can be reached at
searseth@umich.edu or on
Twitter @ethan_sears.
ETHAN
SEARS
FILE PHOTO/Daily
When Denard Robinson played in Ann Arbor, he wasn’t able to profit off of his fame; that is set to change in 2023
as Michigan passed House bills 5317 and 5218 allowing college athletes to be paid for endorsements.
Simplicio -
Sagredo -
“So what’s this new idea
you’re so excited about?”
“It’s called ‘undulatory
propagation.’
It’s the idea that phase
change occurs as an elec-
tromagnetic wave prop-
agates. This changes the
frequencey of the wave.
There isn’t a lot of experi-
mental support yet, but this
idea provides a really nice
way to explain the Michel-
son-Morley Experiment.”
See the next big idea in theoretical physics
at its beginning . . .
www.jimetherdrift2013.net/etherdrift.html
© cameron