Last week, we started our offseason series of ranking the best Michigan men’s basketball players since the first time the Wolverines won a national championship back in 1989 to celebrate a 37-year history of Michigan basketball between titles. Today, we look at the next tier up, and it’s a significant one from our scoring model from a batch of already quality list of players in the first rendition of this series.
Michigan
M’m! M’m! Bad! Campbell’s Soup sues Michigan congressional hopeful for false endorsement
A little-known candidate for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District is being sued over her use of a design similar to the Campbell’s Soup logo in campaign materials.
The Camden, N.J.-based Campbell’s Co. and the Campbell’s Soup Co. Brands LP filed the complaint Friday in Michigan’s Eastern District against Democratic congressional candidate Shelby Campbell of Detroit. In the filing, the corporation claims Campbell’s unauthorized use of its logo and refusal to stop was trademark infringement, false designation of origin and false endorsement.
Campbell, 31, told The Detroit News Sunday she has always felt a connection to the soup brand and thought her use of the logo for a single batch of stickers was harmless.
“Growing up, we had the whole house decorated with Campbell’s Soup logos,” said Campbell, a third-generation automotive worker. “I’ve used ‘soup’ in my email and social media since I was 18.”
The attorney for Campbell’s Soup Co., Leah Imbrogno with Detroit-based Foley & Lardner LLP, could not be immediately reached Sunday for comment.
Campbell’s Soup Co. said Shelby Campbell’s intentional use of the logo was not approved and has led to confusion with customers who’ve reached out to ask if the company had endorsed her. It was clear, the lawsuit said, that her use of the logo was a way to use the Campbell brand to boost her candidacy.
As of Friday, when the complaint was filed, her campaign’s X account was “soup4change” and used the logo as a header, her campaign’s website address was www.soup4change.com, her TikTok account was “@atasteofsoup” and her Instagram account was “@atasteofthesoup.” The campaign used hashtags such as “vote4soup” or “soup4change.”
Shelby Campbell did clearly mark her TikTok and Instagram profiles that used “soup” in the name as personal profiles, and her biography pointed people to follow her professional profile “@shelby4congress,” according to a Detroit News review.
Campbell Soup Co. said in the lawsuit it was committed to protecting its brand from those who would “infringe or dilute” the trademark. The company pointed to similar lawsuits filed, including one against Jane Foodie LLC for selling packaged soups in cans with a design that mimicked Campbell’s Soup cans and various political candidates across the country with the last name of Campbell who used the logo in their campaign materials.
Campbell admitted to using stickers with a similar design to the company’s logo, but claimed she only made one batch of them and was not making a profit off of them.
In the lawsuit, the company asked Shelby Campbell to stop using the design over a month before filing the complaint. She refused to and said she understood her use was not breaking the law. She posted her response to the company on her private social media page, writing “Lmfao yall gonna make me blow up and really win congress easily I ain’t scared byeeee,” a screenshot included in the complaint shows.
It’s not clear where Campbell’s Soup Co. got screenshots of Campbell’s social media pages. But Shelby Campbell said that after the comments she made about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death, she knew “MAGAs” — people backing the Make America Great Again movement — were watching her feeds and assumed they sent the posts to the company.
Campbell said she wasn’t sure if she’d continue using a similar logo but said she might just “change it to blue.”
Shelby Campbell is not a well-known name in the 2026 Democratic primary for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, where state Rep. Donovan McKinney of Detroit is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar of Detroit. The field of well-known Democrats narrowed when former state Sen. Adam Hollier decided to bow out of the primary and run instead for Secretary of State. Nazmul Hassan is also running in the Democratic primary, while Republican Andrew Lorenz and Green Party candidate D. Etta Wilcoxon have filed paperwork to run.
“I’m really excited for the campaign otherwise,” Campbell said. “I want girls to know that just because they may have made bad decisions in the past they can have a great future.”
satwood@detroitnews.com
The Spartans have a plethora of players coming in for official visits this weekend.
Few are bigger than 4-star cornerback/wide receiver Gideon Gash.
Gash is a 6-foot-4, 205-pound speedster out of Detroit Catholic Central High School in Novi, Michigan. He holds a 91 rating from 247Sports, which ranks him as the third-best recruit in Michigan for the 2027 class and the fifth-best athlete in the entire class. His 91 rating is also good enough to rank him as the No. 70 overall recruit in the nation.
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His composite score is nearly as good as it gets at 0.9701. That keeps him ranked as the fifth-best athlete in the recruiting class while moving him up to the second-highest-rated recruit in the state of Michigan. His composite score is also the 70th-best mark nationally.
If you’re reading this and thinking you thought the Spartans already had a Gash on the roster, you’d be correct. In fact, they have two.
Older brother Caleb Gash is a redshirt sophomore on the Spartan roster and plays safety for Joe Rossi and the defense. Then, earlier this year, another older brother, Samson Gash, signed his commitment to the Michigan State Spartans. Samson was ranked as the seventh-best recruit in the state of Michigan in the 2026 class and the No. 43 wide receiver in the country. So, in fact, there are already two Gash brothers on the Spartans’ roster, with Gideon still deciding where he wants to play following his final years of high school football.
The Gash brothers are certainly not new to the game. Their father, Sam Gash, enjoyed a successful football career of his own. He played at Penn State from 1987-1991 before being selected in the eighth round of the 1992 NFL Draft by the New England Patriots. He also spent time with the Buffalo Bills, Baltimore Ravens, and New Orleans Saints during his NFL career. Gash was a Super Bowl XXXV champion and a two-time Pro Bowl selection. Following his playing days, he went on to coach in the NFL with the New York Jets, Detroit Lions, and Green Bay Packers.
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Gideon Gash has been one of Pat Fitzgerald’s most important recruiting targets since arriving at Michigan State. Alongside Joe Rossi and James Adams, Fitzgerald has played a key role in the Spartans’ pursuit of the talented athlete. Based on the recruiting efforts so far, it appears Michigan State would prefer to see Gash on the defensive side of the ball, where he could line up alongside his older brother Caleb.
Gash was named the 2026 MVP of the Polynesian Bowl National Showcase & Combine after clocking a blazing 4.35-second 40-yard dash.
As a junior in 2025, Gash was a two-way standout for Detroit Catholic Central, helping lead the Shamrocks to a 14-1 record and a Michigan Division 1 state championship. He played both wide receiver and cornerback throughout the season.
On offense, Gash caught 19 passes for 540 yards, averaging 28.4 yards per catch, while scoring eight touchdowns. Defensively, he totaled 74 tackles, three tackles for loss, nine pass breakups, one interception, one forced fumble, and one fumble recovery. He also added a kickoff return touchdown.
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In the state championship game against Cass Tech, Gash delivered one of his best performances of the season. He recorded six tackles and one pass breakup on defense while hauling in three receptions for 126 yards and three touchdowns on offense.
According to 247Sports, Gash currently appears warm on four programs: Michigan State, Texas Tech, Alabama, and Oklahoma. He also holds offers from Auburn, Boston College, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, LSU, Louisville, Michigan, Missouri, Northwestern, Penn State, Pittsburgh, Wake Forest, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
There is certainly no shortage of interest in one of the nation’s top athletes, meaning the Spartans will have to work hard to fend off some of the premier programs in college football.
Having two brothers already on the roster is a great starting point for Michigan State. However, it will take a strong official visit this weekend to continue building momentum and potentially put the Spartans in an even better position moving forward.
No. 22 – F Morez Johnson Jr. – Score: 78.4
The first player from Michigan’s 2025-26 team has made it on the list, and it’s the bodyguard himself, Morez Johnson Jr. His stint in Ann Arbor was short, but impactful. After transferring in from Illinois, he found his way into a starting lineup with two other players 6-foot-9 or taller in Yaxel Lendeborg and Aday Mara. The trio wreaked havoc all season long thanks to their length and athleticism in a scheme tailor-made by head coach Dusty May.
Johnson was one of the most efficient players in the country, averaging 13.1 points per game on a 62.3 percent clip. He also led the team with 7.3 rebounds per game and was commonly considered one of the best defensive players on the floor with his ability to guard all five positions. He was a Second-Team All-Big Ten and was on the All-Big Ten Defensive Team as well.
No. 21 – F Deshawn Sims – Score: 78.9
In the transition from Tommy Amaker to John Beilein, Deshawn Sims was a part of a special group that propelled the program to relevancy again. Sims was the 19th player in program history to reach 1,500 career points, and the 15th to surpass 700 rebounds. Consistency was key, as he played in 129 consecutive games over four seasons, starting 92 of them.
Everything came together for the Wolverines in the 2008-09 season when Sims and co-star Manny Harris led the team to its first NCAA Tournament appearance in more than a decade. The team underperformed in 2009-10, but Sims’ play stayed consistent.
Along with the elite company Sims established with his longevity, he was also a three-time All-Big Ten honoree and averaged 16.1 points and 7.2 rebounds per game over his final two seasons.
No. 20 – F Ray Jackson – Score: 81.6
Not only did we have the introduction to the 2026 championship team, but this stretch also introduces us to the Fab Five with forward Ray Jackson, the final member of the historic 1991 class.
Jackson not only has the pedigree tied to the culture that surrounded the Fab Five and their two runner-up finishes in the NCAA Tournament, but he was also a great player. One could argue he was the most unheralded of the bunch and deserves more credit than he does. Somehow, he was only a two-time All-Big Ten performer, but he averaged 17.1 points and 7.3 rebounds per game in his final three seasons with the program.
He ascended from the last of the Fab Five to a premier Big Ten player during his four-year career, helping guide Maurice Taylor — an honorable mention in this series — to being a member of the All-Big Ten freshman team when Jackson was a senior.
Jackson’s impact was profound, not just for his role in the Fab Five but for the transition out of it with future players who had impossible shoes to fill. The Wolverines not only stayed afloat, but remained tournament teams in the years following, which would have meant more had that era not been tarnished with “scandal” for a fraction of what is being done today in the NIL world.
- The Top 25 Michigan men’s basketball players since 1989: No. 25-23
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