According to Bill Parcells, Drew Henson's time with America's Team is done.

"I just didn't see enough," coach Bill Parcells said Wednesday.

Parcells said Henson hadn't been waived, but the coach wouldn't elaborate when asked if the Cowboys were trying to trade the quarterback who started only one game for Dallas.

"I'm really not at liberty to discuss the situation because I'm not privy to that information," Parcells said. "He's not going to be on our roster. That's all you need to know."

Henson's locker had already been cleaned out when reporters were allowed into the locker room before practice Wednesday. For now, rookie free agent Matt Baker is the No. 3 quarterback behind Drew Bledsoe and Tony Romo.

Has there ever been anyone in recent memory that has been as big of a bust as Drew Henson? He essentially baseball'd his way out of being not only one of the greatest quarterbacks in Michigan history, but being a top-5 NFL draft pick, a probable starter somewhere, the list goes on and on and on. Instead, he opts for baseball, screws over Lloyd Carr, has a batting average less than his weight in the minors, and by the time he wants to give the NFL a try, he hasn't taken a snap in a game situation in over 3 years.

Will anyone else take a chance on the Golden Boy?

Drew Sharp from the Free Press, who I usually don't agree with anyway, came up with a pretty pretty absurd article concerning Michigan's success in placing players in the NFL, as opposed to Ohio State.

Ohio State 31, Michigan 16.

No, that's not an early peek into the crystal ball on what will happen in Columbus, Ohio, three months from now. And, no, it's not a first-quarter score from the police rap sheet.

It's the NFL draft score between the two programs over the last four years.

And it underscores more than anything else the wide disparity between the programs. You can't fool the NFL. The Buckeyes have the talent while the Wolverines have the temerity.

The Fraternal Order of Michigan Football Apologists is happily delusional these days, downright giddy that the proper cosmic forces are in place to revisit history this season.

They're thinking 2006 has a great chance of becoming 1997, when the Wolverines began the season residing within the middle of the nationally ranked and finished with a share of the national championship.

Lloyd Carr was under fire then as well.

But the Blue hairs are conveniently forgetting one integral aspect -- all 11 defensive starters on that 1997 team played in the NFL, and one of them happened to win the Heisman Trophy, if you'll recall.

The Wolverines are no longer feared and the Buckeyes are zooming past them. They've lost an average of 7.8 players to the NFL in the last four years and yet they're still ranked No. 1 in the country in the preseason.

Are you kidding me, Drew Sharp? First of all, last I checked, the University of Michigan isn't an NFL program. Who the hell cares if Michigan sends 1 player to the NFL every year, or 11? It's not Lloyd Carr's job to prepare players for NFL rosters- it's Lloyd Carr's job to prepare players for Michigan.

And, let's be honest here, a player can come out of a school as a low draft pick, appearing to have next to no pro potential, and come out with a handful of Super Bowl rings. Tom Brady, anybody? If you had told me in 1999 that by the time he was 30 he'd be amongst the best, if not the best, quarterbacks in the NFL, with a trophy case filled beyond capacity, I'd have laughed. Good college quarterback? Yes. But a probable future Hall of Famer? I would have thought Drew Henson would have had a better shot at that.

Just another stupid Drew Sharp column.

Michigan Basketball has released its 2006-7 basketball schedule. Mmm-mmm! Can you smell that excitement?

Thu., Nov. 2 Wayne State (ex)
Sun., Nov. 5 Michigan Tech (ex)

JOHN THOMPSON CHALLENGE
Fri., Nov. 10 Central Connecticut State
Sat., Nov. 11 Davidson
Sun., Nov. 12 Eastern Michigan

JOHN THOMPSON CHALLENGE FINALE
Wed., Nov. 15 Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Fri., Nov. 17 Harvard
Wed., Nov. 22 Youngstown State
Sat., Nov. 25 Maryland-Baltimore County

ACC/BIG TEN CHALLENGE
Mon., Nov. 27 @North Carolina State

Sat., Dec. 2 Wofford
Thu., Dec. 7 @Miami (Ohio)
Sat., Dec. 9 Delaware State
Sat., Dec. 16 Northern Illinois
Sat., Dec. 23 @UCLA
Thu., Dec. 28 Army
Sat., Dec. 30 Georgetown

Wed., Jan. 3 Illinois*
Sat., Jan. 6 @Northwestern*
Sat., Jan. 13 @Purdue*
Wed., Jan. 17 Penn State*
Sat., Jan. 20 Purdue*
Wed., Jan. 24 @Wisconsin*
Sat., Jan. 27 @Indiana*
Wed., Jan. 31 Iowa*
Tue., Feb. 6 @Ohio State*
Sat., Feb. 10 Minnesota*
Tue., Feb. 13 @Michigan State*
Sat., Feb. 17 Indiana*
Wed., Feb. 21 @Illinois*
Sat., Feb. 24 @Minnesota*
Tue., Feb. 27 Michigan State* OR
Wed., Feb. 28 Michigan State*
Sat., Mar. 3 Ohio State*

OK, let's overlook the Big 10 schedule for a second here. Check out those early-season barnburners! Central Connecticut State, Davidson, and Eastern Michigan. Awesome. And it gets better! Harvard, Youngstown State, Maryland-Baltimore County! And who can contain their sheer and utter glee for that Wofford game? Golly-gee, I can't wait. If Tommy Amaker was any more giddy, his pants would be hiked up to his shoulders.

If Michigan comes into the UCLA games with more than 1 loss, look out. This is a team with a mountain of question marks, and frankly, a cupcake schedule going into what looks like a freakishly difficult Big 10 schedule (that last 12-game stretch looks absolutely brutal), we can use all the wins we can muster up. It's all about padding the record for the inevitable late-season injury/suspension/forgetting the fundamentals collapse. Yeah, we've scraped the bottom of the barrel for what appears to be hopeless opponents. But if that's what it takes to eek our way into the tournament, I'll take it. I've said this each year for the past 3- if Tommy Amaker doesn't lead this team to the NCAA tournament this season, he needs to pack up the ridiculously casual wardrobe and get the hell out of town. Finishing the season with home matchups with Michigan State and Ohio State doesn't sounds too inviting. Then again, neither does sitting through about 4 or 5 40-point wins in a 3/4-empty arena in November.

There are certain days of the summer that I consider red-letter days. The Spring Game. Big Ten Media Day. The first day of fall practice. Things like that. But perhaps the most fun of all is the day I get my Michigan Football Media Guide. I love it. It's like Christmas 4 months early. I tear through it digesting every little morsel of statistic, intangible, and tidbit of information. And this year is no different. Today I stopped by the M-Den at Briarwood and picked up this year's edition of the Media Guide. Entitled "Michigan Football Tradition," I flipped it open and gave it a preliminary perusal. And one thing immediately stuck out:

Apparently, 2005 (or as I like to call it these days, 200(7-)5) isn't a part of that tradition as far as the Athletic Department is concerned. No season stats. No game-by-game recaps. No pictures, nothing about the Alamo Bowl. Nothing. Only the customary little box with the game scores, team captains, and the like alongside the other 126 seasons of Michigan football. This was the season that did not exist.

Before last season, the NCAA changed the rules on media guides to restrict the number of pages to a paltry, arbitrary 208. And so schools like Michigan, who were accustomed to putting out Biblical texts of 400 or more pages were forced to decide what to put in, and what to eliminate. Stat hounds like me are now forced to check out mgoblue.com to get bowl recaps, lists of letterwinners, and other things thought too trivial for the guide. Apparently this year, they didn't have a lot of difficulty filling pages, as the guide is now home to pages and pages of filler, including:

-2 pages on the Women's Football Academy (206-7)
-2 pages on Carr's Wash for Kids, with great pictures of football players in t-shirts looking very bored washing cars for C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. (204-5)
-2 pages on the Radio-a-thon the team held this summer at 1050 WTKA (202-203)
-2 pages on the "Michigan football traditions" involving sedate Ann Arbor street scenes and a full page on the Detroit professional sports teams and their venues. (198-199)
-4 pages on the Athletic Academic Center (184-187)
-21 pages of 1/3 to full page pictures of every Wolverine in the NFL today. Who knew that John Navarre's 2 games of NFL action was worth a half of a page? And, for that matter, who knew that Todd Collins was still in the league? And Kevin Dudley has never been on anything better than an NFL practice squad? (62-83)

That's a full 33 pages of pretty useless crap. Yeah, it's something to turn a new page and turn your back on 2005. But to eliminate any trace of the entire thing ever existing? Mmmm-hmmm.

Must be a slow summer in Columbus. Rivals.com's OSU division has resorted to doing a wee bit of fantasy football. With a Playstation. So far the Buckeyes are 8-0. It even includes some nice sports journalism content to update us on the Heisman race, the polls, bowl rankings, and miscellaneous notes on the team roster.

A bit much, wouldn't you agree?