Michigan
Watch: Nearly 110-year-old time capsule found in ceiling at Michigan home – UPI.com
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April 15 (UPI) — A repair project at a Michigan home led to a surprising discovery: a time capsule of items dating back more than 100 years.
Jesse Leitch said he hired a crew for repair work after the heater failed at his Grand Rapids home and the workers had to cut through the bathroom ceiling, where they found the stash of items.
“Just basically as they were cutting into the ceiling above the bathroom — it wasn’t in a box, it was just all this stuff kind of set in a pile basically,” Leitch told WZZM-TV.
The 12 items found inside the ceiling included a handwritten note with a drawing, a tiny cast iron pan, a small percussion instrument, a marble, a couple of dominoes, a picture of Jesus and newspaper clippings from 1915.
“I knew this place was built in 1910. And so it’s just a really old building and made me think about, you know, obviously, some kid living here thought this stuff was important to stick around for the next guy,” Leitch said.
Demolition crews tearing down the Richmond Mall in Forest Acres, S.C., found a time capsule of their own last month.
Officials said the capsule, buried when the mall opened in 2000, will be reburied in a park set to replace the mall until its scheduled opening in 2033.
Michigan
Why Michigan’s quarterback competition between Bryce Underwood and Mikey Keene is legitimate
Michigan’s quarterback situation in 2024 was abysmal at best, ranking No. 129 in passing offense. However, better days are ahead at QB for Michigan. The Wolverines added 2025 No. 1 overall prospect and No. 1 quarterback Bryce Underwood to the equation as well as Fresno State transfer quarterback Mikey Keene.
Underwood’s an early enrollee and practiced with the Michigan team during their ReliaQuest Bowl prep against Alabama, and both he and Keene will be with the team for offseason conditioning and spring practices. While many assume that Underwood will be the starter in 2025 due to being the cream of the crop in his recruiting class, that is far from being decided — a legitimate competition between him and Keene will unfold.
“It’s open competition,” Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore said this week. “Nobody is promised a certain spot. Everybody has got to earn it, and he really understands that, even with the guys we’ve brought in. So he’s really excited to push the whole room.”
Keene has plenty of experience, and will be entering his fifth collegiate season after stops at Central Florida and Fresno State. Keene had a 70.5 completion percentage in 2024 at Fresno State with 2,892 yards with 18 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. Keene has passed 8,245 passing yards in his career with 65 touchdowns and 28 interceptions with a 67.8 completion percentage.
Moore noted that Keene’s familiarity with new Michigan offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey’s scheme was “huge.” Lindsey was Central Florida’s offensive coordinator in 2022 while Keene was at UCF — Keene threw for 647 yards, six touchdowns and one interception with a 72.3 completion rate that season.
“Heard great things and tactical things about him as a leader,” Moore said. “Really excited for him to push that room and give us an experienced guy that we feel that he can win us games, and that was the most important piece of it.”
Bringing Keene into Michigan is the type of addition that Michigan needed and Underwood wanted. Underwood realizes that the only way he’s going to get better is by having good competition day in and day out in Ann Arbor.
“You just want to make sure you have enough guys in the room who can push each other,” Moore said. “A big thing when we recruited Bryce was ‘who’s going to push me, who’s going to make me better?’ All his life he’s been pushed to be made better, he doesn’t want to be given anything.”
Underwood has the highest of ceilings, and Keene has tons of experience and familiarity in Michigan’s new offensive scheme — who winds up starting is currently anyone’s guess. The fact we don’t know should serve both Underwood and Keene well in the months to come.
Michigan
Recruiting Roundup: Five-star RB says Michigan is his top school at the moment
2025 is officially here, and with this most of this recruiting cycle signed and bowl practices now over, the majority of recruiting energy for the Michigan Wolverines shifts towards the 2026 class.
To kick off the first edition of the Recruiting Roundup this year, we discuss one of the top ball carriers in the 2026 class showing interest in Michigan.
Five-star RB has Michigan at the top of his list
Five-star Savion Hiter, the top running back in the 2026 class who is ranked 14th overall in his class, told On3’s Steve Wiltfong Michigan is his top school at the moment, with Georgia, Ohio State and Tennessee also being top contenders.
“Michigan, I’ve built a good relationship with coach (Tony) Alford and the entire staff really,” Hiter said in August when he put Michigan in his top five. “He first recruited me back when he was at Ohio State and he’s been solid ever since. He’s already been showing me how he could use me in their offense, develop me for the next level and gave me tools to work on and get better.”
Michigan has been a top destination for running backs, with Hassan Haskins and Blake Corum headlining what has been one of Michigan’s most talented position groups. When you combine that with the connection Hiter has made with Alford, things are certainly trending in the right direction.
Per Brian Dohn at 247 ($), Hiter plans to make official visits to all the schools listed above before making a decision. With official visit season several months away, be on the lookout for more news when those visits get scheduled.
Michigan competing with Texas for four-star RB
Hiter isn’t the only 2026 running back the Wolverines are pursuing, as Michigan is also going after four-star Javian Osborne.
Osborne was in Ann Arbor for the Texas loss in September, and while he’s got a 247Sports Crystal Ball prediction to commit to the Longhorns, he told On3’s EJ Holland last month he’s still high on the Wolverines.
He expanded on his Michigan interest earlier this week with On3’s Steve Wiltfong ($).
“No. 1, I love that they run the ball,” Osborne said. “They utilize their running backs. They use different schemes, zone, power whatever it is. I feel I can fit in. Since coach TA (Tony Alford) came in the building, he’s been on since the first day he came into the office.”
It appears Notre Dame, Alabama and Florida State are in the mix for the Texas native as well. After attending that game in September, the sheer size of the crowd at the Big House impressed Osborne. Another visit in that environment this fall for Osborne is — I would imagine — on Michigan’s to-do list.
“Definitely playing in front of 110,000 every game,” he said of what stands out about Michigan. “You know, that’s big time.”
Wiltfong wrote that Michigan “hold(s) the slightest of edges in a fluid process to date,” so it doesn’t sound like getting both Hiter and Osborne is out of the question.
Michigan among trio of visits for top uncommitted 2025 prospect
Four-star edge Zahir Mathis, the top-ranked uncommitted player in the 2025 class, has been a Michigan target since he de-committed from Ohio State in November.
He did not sign in December, so he is now set to take some visits before signing at his future school in February. Mathis told Dohn ($) Michigan is one of the three official visits he’ll be taking this month, with Michigan being his final destination from Jan 27-29. He will visit UCLA and Florida State prior to Ann Arbor.
“I have a real good connection with them,” Mathis said. “I’ve been having good conversations with them since the decommitment so everything has been going smooth.”
Holland ($) said head coach Sherrone Moore and defensive line coach Lou Esposito are leading the recruitment for the Wolverines. Mathis noted the production Michigan has gotten with that position is enticing for the Philadelphia native.
“With the edges they have there and the edges they had there, they all develop well,” Mathis said. “Each guy has high explosion, quick hands and fast feet like myself.
“I want to see a good bond between the players. I want to see how I can be evaluated with those players and break it down and make sure I’m getting playing time and make sure I’m doing the right things to get on the field.”
Michigan
CBS Chicago Vault: New Year’s Day diving in a frigid Lake Michigan with Bob Wallace
CHICAGO (CBS) — Every New Year’s Day as sure as noisemakers at midnight, the Polar Plunge makes the news in the Chicago area and beyond.
The Polar Plunge has been around for a long time. But back in the 1970s and 80s, a Chicago diving club had a different take on the general idea. They didn’t race into the water in Speedos and swim caps—they put on dry suits or wet suits, donned scuba tanks, and submerged themselves in the icy waters of Lake Michigan, no matter what the weather on New Year’s Day.
And in what became a New Year’s Day tradition for a while, the late reporter Bob Wallace used to go on that frigid dive too. For Channel 2 News.
The 20 Fathom Club practiced at the old Lawson YMCA on Chicago Avenue, and took open water diving trips everywhere from Lake Michigan to the Caribbean. The late CBS Chicago sound man and video editor Bob Gadbois, and cameraman Jim Mulqueeny, were both members. In the interest of full disclosure, the parents of the author of this digital story were also members of the 20 Fathom Club, but they never took part in the icy New Year’s Day dives.
Wallace, however, did so numerous times—the first of which was on Jan. 1, 1981. The dive always took place just south of Navy Pier, and on that particular New Year’s Day, the video shows overcast skies, but no snow coming down.
The water had turned murky from recent storms that New Year’s Day. Yet Wallace said divers were cavorting in the water “like bunch of playful seals.”
“I tell you, we practice here so that we can dive in places like Jamaica—and all those exotic places,” the late LeRoy Winbush, then president of the 20 Fathom Club, told Wallace that day.
Wallace didn’t put on any scuba tanks, but he wore a wet suit, fins, goggles, and a snorkel as he lowed himself into the water. He said after a while, it was “kind of fund, just like a summer’s day… in Antarctica.”
A year later to the day, Wallace returned for another New Year’s Day dive with the 20 Fathom Club on Jan. 1, 1982. Conditions were sunny that day, yet weather records indicate the highs were in the 20s. Wallace again put on a wet suit, and found the rocks just below the surface of the lake a challenge when trying to walk around.
But the event was growing by 1982—with about 20 divers out that New Year’s Day compared with 10 the year before. Some of the divers called it a perfect hangover cure for anyone who might have overdone it a bit on New Year’s Eve.
There is video in the CBS Chicago archive of the 20 Fathom Club dive on New Year’s Day 1983, which fell on a Saturday, but Wallace seems not to have joined them that year. Wallace did, however, return a year after that on Jan. 1, 1984—a day on which the video makes clear the weather was quite miserable.
Snow was coming down on New Year’s Day 1984, and the water in Lake Michigan was covered by ice. So the divers—and Wallace—had to go out a ways and find a hole in the ice at the end of the breakwater south of Navy Pier.
This kind of weather required some extra safety measures. The regulators for the divers’ scuba tanks were freezing up, resulting in a hiss of compressed air. A little hot water solved that problem—at least temporarily.
Also, Wallace accidentally broke off the ice floe the divers were all holding onto—making the diving hole even bigger.
But every time, a grand—if chilly—time was had by all.
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