Unverified Voracity Gets Heavier Over Time Comment Count

Brian

The last walkoff goal line stand. Via Wolverine Historian, Illinois 1982:

Health bits. Rudock should play Saturday. Smith's having issues, he will continue to have issues, he has an injury you can play through but always hurts and won't stop hurting until the offseason.

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Excellent, responsive, transparent. The athletic department surveyed 4,500 season ticket holders and is releasing that information over the next couple weeks. I love that. It shows the department is listening to fans and allowing us to talk about the data they gathered in public. That is something I've wanted them to do for a long time. So:

Question 4: Did you enjoy the balance of piped-in music and band during the game (not including pregame or halftime)?

• It was a perfect balance (43%)
• Would prefer a lot more band, a lot less piped-in music (20%)
• Would prefer a little more band, a little less piped-in music (28%)
• Would prefer a little more piped-in music, a little less band (6%)
• Would prefer a lot more piped-in music, a lot less band (1%)
• Didn't care (3%)

That's about a 50/50 split between people who think the music is fine and those who want it toned down. (I am obviously in the 20% group.)

I'm disappointed with this answer:

Question 3: How would you rate the overall video board presentation (highlight videos, replays, prompts, information, etc.)?

• Excellent (49%)
• Good (44%)
• Fair (6%)
• Poor (1%)

Alas! Have I not yelled about pore-o-vision sufficiently to move the mass of public opinion?

I'll say this much for Dave Brandon. He didn't land Michigan in a congressional report about how many of the military patriotism events at sport events are bought and paid for. The NFL, of course, is the biggest offender here, but Wisconsin, Indiana, and Purdue are the college programs that managed to show up. In those teams' case they seem to be selling a bunch of game tickets to their local National Guard units, which 1) is not a good use of taxpayer dollars and 2) in the case of Indiana-Purdue football is just not nice to our military reservists.

But mostly it's just NFL teams taking millions of dollars to pretend like they care about anything other than millions of dollars. Which is the best! It is infinite NFL.

Speaking of things we aren't getting paid for. Flyover this weekend:

The answer is "most deserving." Chris Brown asks what the goal of playoff rankings should be:

What criteria should we use to determine who gets the title?

One answer is that the champion should be the season’s “best team,” possibly defined as the best overall team or the team we think would be favored to beat every other team on a neutral field. Another answer is the “most deserving team,” loosely defined as the team that produced the best overall season. These two things are not always the same. It’s perfectly possible for the best team — i.e., the most formidable — to lose a close game or even two on a bad kick or a fluke play, while another team runs the table by winning close games.

Alabama lost a game to Ole Miss in which they had an avalanche of fluky turnovers and this happen to them:

That doesn't really impact my opinion about how good Alabama is. I think they're better than Ole Miss, probably a lot better. But that is just, like, my opinion, man. Once you start talking about "best" because team X has fancy S&P stats or a bunch of NFL first rounders you lose the reason we even play the damn fluky thing that is football. You play to win the game. Bama didn't win.

Now, in a sport like college football you can't just add up wins and losses and call it a day. Schedules are imbalanced and short. Style points have to come into play because a lot of teams will have similar records. A 58-0 blowout of a team should matter more than a 21-20 win. But once you start looking at the why you start eroding the fundamental reason I should care about, say, a one in a million punt drop disaster.

Moving the game to a Vegas-style "eh, don't care about results" model is not good for the sport and is fundamentally a guess that football keeps proving us wrong about, and thus we should dump why and how from playoff rankings in favor of a deeply researched take on what.

I demand a Drake Johnson television show. He killed it at his press availability oh and also

Skyrim bartering is bad but I'll allow it.

On that one site with all the liars. Hey. So Chatsports just lies about things, all the time, in search of traffic. Don't pay attention to them. This was Georgia QB commit Jacob Eason's dad in the aftermath of another Chatsports fiction piece:

The “story” that came out yesterday about him contacting multiple schools really struck a nerve.

Tony Eason called me on Wednesday morning and he was not happy about it.

“Who the h$#** is Marc F&%*% and where did he get that Bull Sh$%$# story at?”

Marc Furballson is the updated nom de plume of Ace Williams. If you post a chatsports link to the message board we will delete all your points. AND THEN WHAT WILL YOU DO

They won't listen. Mike Freeman on Harbaugh availability:

I asked one general manager about Jim Harbaugh returning to the NFL. His response: "He's going to have at least six teams come after him. He'd be able to have any open job he wants." The GM didn't name the teams, but it's not hard to figure out who some of them will be.

Then, the general manager said some NFL teams have already reached out to Harbaugh's camp to see if he'd be available once the season ends. Those teams, the GM explained, weren't told just "no." They were basically told "no freaking way."

Harbaugh isn't going anywhere.

Not that you needed to be told that.

I get it. Bruce Feldman on the Minnesota job:

For one, they don't even have an AD right now. Getting a new coach without a permanent AD is going to be very hard unless you have a Harbaugh; Minnesota doesn't. For two, cheap. For three, this is not a job market Minnesota particularly wants to be in, and you can make a long-term decision on Claeys after a year or two since there should be staff continuity.

Heavier now. MVictors went back and found the average weight of Michigan's starters since the beginning. After a plateau to start weights have crept upwards at a near-constant rate for around 100 years:

AverageWeightbyseason_thumb1[1]

Things have leveled off a little bit since the 1990s.

Etc.: Rainman previewed. Dylan Larkin is good at hockey /weeps about last season. Exit Frank Beamer, real good dude. Bill Daley remembered. Rutgers blog is doing a 68-coach bracket to determine who their next dude should be and John Baxter makes a play-in game. Spike profiled. Blake O'Neill and a small child. More of a medium child, actually.

Nebraska's athletic director is… working on extension? That's one way to approach things. Things are going down at Georgia. Chaos there helps Michigan with Isaac Nauta and Mecole Hardman. OSU/M tickets next year will be expensive, still under demand.

Comments

True Blue Grit

November 6th, 2015 at 2:13 PM ^

were among the dirtiest teams of the B10 in memory.  They always got tons of penalties.  White's rosters always had a liberal number of JUCO's as well. 

I remember watching that game on TV after I had moved to the West Coast.  Does anyone think (besides me) that Frank Broyles sounds eerily similar to Phil Simms? 

mGrowOld

November 6th, 2015 at 12:20 PM ^

But not necessarily for the better.  Watching #3 (Body?) high step after that stop, a-la Anthony Carter, made we wonder when and why we stopped doing that.  AC was the first (and will always be the coolest) at the high step but damn he did a nice version himself.

That used to be a uniquely Michigan "thing" thanks to Carter.  I wish we still did it every once in a while.

LJ

November 6th, 2015 at 11:57 AM ^

If you watch that Illinois goal line stand, guess who makes the catch to get it down to the goal line?  Tim Brewster.  Yep, that Tim Brewster.  Everything comes full circle.

TrppWlbrnID

November 6th, 2015 at 12:04 PM ^

Minnesota's harbaugh
Is Tony Dungy. I talked with a few fans at the stadium. They were not unserious and I thought they were crazy and then I thought of our coach and said "could happen."




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Big Brown Jug

November 6th, 2015 at 1:32 PM ^

Tony Dungy is 60 years old, hasn't coached for six years, has never coached college football, and has some non-football "opinions" that would make him unpopular on campus before he ever coached a down.  He would be an incredibly stupid hire even if he were willing, which based on the post-Brewster events, he is not.

JeepinBen

November 6th, 2015 at 2:51 PM ^

For B/R in my mind at least it depends on the article and writer. They've been more legit since their purchase by Turner Sports and they've hired some better writers.

That said, "Slideshow of hot girls from classes of Michigan Football Players" probably shouldn't be posted no matter the source. Actual articles from B/R with content as opposed to #Content and HOT SPORTS TAKES are good at this point.

julesh

November 6th, 2015 at 12:05 PM ^

There have been a couple stories in recent weeks that have been chatsports links and people defended it with "it's not Ace Williams." So to clarify the rule, ALL chatsports is banned, yes? (Please say yes.)

MI Expat NY

November 6th, 2015 at 12:07 PM ^

Why are we calling the Illinois game the last walk-off goal line stand?  There was still time left on the clock, and they weren't exactly on the goalline.  If we're calling this game a goalline stand, then the real answer here is (unfortunately) Akron.  It wasn't quite at the goalline either, but it at least was an actual walk-off.  

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

November 6th, 2015 at 1:22 PM ^

I also call shenanigans.  This isn't a walk-off goal-line stand, the offense still had to run time off the clock.  Nor is this the "last" instance of it.

I'm OK with "inside the five" as a cutoff for goal-line stand, so Akron qualifies.  So, I think, does the Illinois basketfootball game during RR's tenure.  2PCs are goal-line stops too.

MI Expat NY

November 6th, 2015 at 1:47 PM ^

I'd be ok not counting overtime (but agree that two point conversion attempts should count).  It's a bit artificial, with the back and forth and chosing who gets the ball last, it might seem a little unjust throwing that in with games that naturally come down to the last play of regulation with the defense's back against the goalline.  There's also the element of every OT goal line stand of really just playing to prevent a tie.  Not a win or lose situation like the 1982 Illinois, Akron or Minnesota.

BlueInWisconsin

November 6th, 2015 at 12:09 PM ^

The key finding for question 4 is that there is basically zero support for more piped in music and there is basically no one that didn't have an opinion. People either want less or can live with the status quo. But given the lack of support for more I believe it would be wise to error on the side of scaling it back.




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LJ

November 6th, 2015 at 12:13 PM ^

That's an odd way of reasoning, since 50% of respondants either said they like the current amount or would like more (and 48% said they would like less).  Like Brian said, it's a wash.

You changed "perfect balance," which is what the survey says, to "can live it."  Those are a little different.

BlueInWisconsin

November 6th, 2015 at 1:37 PM ^

Their numbers don't add up to 100, so that's a little confusing, and I think you are maybe not understanding what I was trying to say.

48% say they want more band and 7% say they want more piped in music.  That's a huge difference.  Which is another way of saying that there is very little support for more piped in music, but nearly 50% or respondants want less.

 

LJ

November 6th, 2015 at 1:55 PM ^

And exactly 50% of respondants want the same, or more (7% want more, 43% said the balance is "perfect").  How does that lead to the conclusion that it should be scaled back?

I want it scaled back too, but the numbers don't bear that out.  More people want piped in music reduced than want it increased, but they don't have to change it.  They could leave it the same, which was what the plurality seems to want.

Mr. Yost

November 6th, 2015 at 12:16 PM ^

GETS IT.

Hope the bitching and moaning stops...it won't, but I wish it would. Clearly the athletics department cares enough to allow folks to voice their opinion even though they don't have to do anything (and no, you don't have to pay money for their games either...so it's probably in their best interest to appease you, the ticket holder).

BornInAA

November 6th, 2015 at 12:21 PM ^

I assume Harbaugh got a gentlemanly agreement from all of his coaches that they would stay for at least (3-4?) years to help build the program. I would be very suprised if any of our coaches leave after one year.

stephenrjking

November 6th, 2015 at 12:41 PM ^

Unfortunately I think you might be right here. This is an absolute seller's job market--there are tons of solid jobs open right now, with more on the way at the end of the season. And then some guys will get hired to a new school, leaving an unexpected vacancy at mid-range Power 5 schools that we weren't necessarily expecting. 

And there aren't a lot of slam-dunk candidates around. So by the time you get to mid-level schools that are still good opportunities, you're looking at total retreads or at coordinators. And DJ Durkin has to start getting some play when that happens.

The only glimmer of counterfactual hope here is that if Durkin is convinced he's a big-time guy he may wait to build up a bit more rep so that he can be a leading candidate for a top-line job. Right now he would be a good candidate for an also-ran power five team; turn out another defense or two like this and he may have schools on our level looking seriously at him.

LJ

November 6th, 2015 at 1:08 PM ^

Yeah -- I think he'll be hesitent to take a bad Power 5 job like Maryland.  But I also doubt he's going to get a really huge Michigan/USC-level job without HC experience.  His perfect landing spot is a place like VT or Miami, good Power 5 jobs that still might have a hard time attraching the very best candidates.  In a normal year, he's probably still a year or two away from getting those jobs (think someone like Kirby Smart).  But this year, who knows.  Add the fact that he's got mega recruiting chops in Florida, and it's a scary thought.