As expected, the walkon-laden Wolverines got waxed by CC in the GLI. They did manage to squeak by Michigan Tech with a third-period rally to finish third, again. The good news is that the split did not heavily impact Michigan's PWR ranking, which remains a surprising third. How is this the case?

Michigan has played a ridiculous schedule to date. Michigan has a Teams Under Consideration (abbreviated TUC and defined as anyone with an RPI of > .500) record of 6-6-1, which is fairly good. Of note is the sheer quanitity of TUC games, though: fully 13 of Michigan's 19 games to date. That coupled with the CCHA's much stronger performance (more on that later) out of conference has buoyed the Michigan RPI to third in the country--and the PWR is really just an RPI adjustment scheme.

The good news for Michgian is that the CCHA continued it's strong nonconference play during the holiday tournament season. Ferris State was credited with a tie by NCAA rule after losing a shootout to BC in the Denver Cup, then beat DU in the consolation game to take home a 1-0-1 record against two teams that would have laughed Ferris off the ice last year. UAF swept UAA. UNO won against Alabama-Huntsville and Yale. Previously inept BG went 3-1 against a nonconference selection of eastern teams, including a win over PWR #4 St. Lawrence. Northern and Western both ate it versus Wisconsin, but just about everyone is doing so thus far. With nonconference play just about over, the CCHA appears to be the premiere conference in the country to computers who can't actually see WCHA teams play.

To say this is a surprise is an understatement. The CCHA has gone from the ECAC + Michigan to a conference with 5 teams--Miami, Michigan, Ohio State, Nebraska-Omaha, and Lake State--in the top 14 of the PWR (14 is generally the cutoff since the CHA and Atlantic Hockey teams get autobids) and the first two teams out--Ferris State and Alaska-Fairbanks. No fewer than nine CCHA teams are TUCs. That probably won't last when conference play arrives--expect at least one and probably two teams to drop from the TUC ranks--but in any case, Michigan is almost certainly going to end the season with the nation's toughest schedule. That will buy the Wolverines a significant amount of leeway when the tournament is seeded.

Meanwhile, Jack Johnson is public enemy #1 in Canada after cheap-shotting Canadian Steven Downie after a late game EN goal gave Canada a 3-2 win in the group stage of the WJC. After exchanging slashes, Johnson gave Downie an elbow which was either vicious or glancing, depending on how you feel about A) the USA and B) the University of Michigan, and got booted. I didn't see the play in question and thus can't comment, but both Jack and Andrew Cogliano did. Jack:

"I saw the way Downie had played all game and I knew he was a player who played with an edge," Johnson said. "We exchanged slashes, I saw him skating toward me and I was trying to be prepared. I didn't want to put a guy out of the tournament, but I didn't want him to pull anything on me."

Johnson said he didn't connect with the full force of his elbow/forearm, and Kyle said video supports that. "It wasn't like his head snapped back," Johnson said.

Cogliano:

Canadian centre Andrew Cogliano, who is Johnson's teammate on the University of Michigan team, had a different view.

"I don't think he should have done what he did and I think he should have been punished," Cogliano said of the third overall pick of the Carolina Hurricanes last summer.

"He's a top defenceman and he's going to be an NHL player some day, but I think sometimes he has to control his emotions. But that's him and that's what kind of person he is."

The incident prompted a flood of bitching from Canada, which is amusing given that the guy on the receiving end of the glancing/vicious elbow crosschecked a teammate in the face after he refused to be hazed and some guy named "Bertuzzi" is going to be playing for Canada in the Olympics, but expecting a Canadian to be rational about hockey is like expecting ninjas to not flip out and kill stuff. Second chances for all! Unless they're American!

Johnson was not suspended and assisted on Phil Kessel's opening goal against the Czechs in the USA's 2-1 victory yesterday. Tonight the US takes on Russia in a semifinal at 11 PM; if you have Comcast it should be somewhere on your (free) Center Ice package. Canada plays Finland in the other semi; a Canada-USA rematch for the gold would be straight dope, especially given the whole Downie debacle.

Exhale about those forwards for next year as Michigan picked up a commitment from the USHL's Trevor Lewis. They also picked up an '07 commitment from Lewis's teammate Aaron Palushaj. Michigan College Hockey has an article on the pair (and a teammate heading to Vermont):

Lewis, a native of Murray, Utah, will join the Wolverines for the 2006-07 season. He is currently leading the Buccaneers in goals (19) and points (35). He is also second on the team and in league with a plus/minus rating of +20.

"This was one of the toughest decisions of my life," said Lewis of his decision to go to choose Michigan. "All of the schools that recruited me (Boston College, Maine, Minnesota, Ohio State) have outstanding hockey programs, but my gut feeling was to go to Michigan."

Bob Miller of the Wolverine has scoop on both new commitments, digging out this article from the USHL's website on Lewis...

During the Buc Bowl, when scouts from all over the country came to scout the USHL talent, nearly every scout and coach noticed Lewis' play. Head Coach Regg Simon said that he took about 100 calls about Lewis after the three-day tournament.

... and this snippet from Hockey's Future ...

9. Trevor Lewis, C
Ht: 6'1 Wt: 195 Shoots: Right
Born: January 9, 1987, Murray, Utah
Des Moines Buccaneers

Des Moines has yet another player in the top 10 in center Trevor Lewis. Similar to Nodl in that he had an underwhelming rookie season in the USHL, at least statistically, Lewis has made a major impact in 2005-06 as one of the leading goal scorers in the USHL. After 19 games Lewis has 12 goals 13 assists, tied for fifth in the USHL with Nodl. Lewis has good hands and a hard shot, but a lot of his goals come down to hard work and a willingness to venture into the crease and take a beating from opposing defenseman. This is even true on the penalty kill, where Lewis as a USHL-leading four shorthanded goals.

Lewis is not just a goal scorer though. He's a crisp passer with good vision and can use his speed to create space. At 6'1 195 pounds, Lewis has decent size, which he uses both offensively and defensively. Like Okposo, Lewis is a st
aple on the Des Moines penalty kill, a testament to his commitment to a solid two-way game. Lewis also has a physical edge, be it the occasional open-ice hits, finishing his checks along the boards, or even dropping the gloves. Leading by example, Lewis is one of Des Moines' alternate captain.

Lewis will be joining Okposo and Buccaneer goaltender Brian Foster on Team USA for the Viking Cup. An older '87, Lewis was barely eligible for the team, and he may still be a longshot to be drafted in the new seven-round draft. However, an NHL team looking for a player with a good combination of speed, skill, awareness and effort, who has a few years of college hockey to develop, may look to Utah's best prospect yet.

INCH had a Buc Bowl feature its own self and it contained this brief, tantalizing scout quote:

"This kid's amazing. He's the total package. He competes, he has a nose for the net, he's physical, and he has the ability to finish."

Miller also offered something on Palushaj:

From Paul Shaheen's Research on Ice:

Formerly with Honeybaked, Palushaj has six goals and 21 points in 26 games thus far for the Bucs, who keep playing impressively and presently stand 19-5-4 (OTL).

"He's a deceptively strong player," said one scout ROI ran into while watching this year's Great Lakes Invitational in Detroit. "He may not look like a great skater, but he has a very good shot, can pass, and knows how to find people. He has all kinds of upside."

There's also some more in this thread. So yay and stuff. Michigan is likely done with the '06 class and is waiting on Pat Kane's word to wrap up '07.

Yeah, this one's shorter.

Steve Stripling. This may be in direct conflict with the whole run-defense-bad thing, but I think the defensive line showed much promise. Stripling can't make Massey four inches shorter and thirty pounds heavier or turn Gabe Watson from a teddy bear into a pitbull, but under his tutelage Alan Branch went from freshman role player to breakout star at both DT and DE, Lamarr Woodley improved his TFL and sack numbers despite missing about a quarter of the season, Shawn Crable became useful, and Tim Jamison flashed major potential in his limited time.

A first glance at the sack numbers is not impressive (Michigan finished with only 24) but as noted in the OSU preview, the imposing Buckeye defense got most of its sacks from non-linemen--they blitzed extensively. Michigan was allergic to the blitz, getting only six sacks from linebackers and defensive backs all year. The first year of the "actual defensive line coach" era was a success, and a line like Jamison-Branch-Taylor/Johnson/Slocum-Woodley should get a ton of pass rush without having a big sign that says "RUN HERE" between the DTs.

Freshman wideouts. Mario Manningham and Antonio Bass can play, and play they did with unprecedented frequency for freshmen wide receivers at Michigan, Manningham in particular. The New Math finished the year with six touchdowns, one short of Anthony Carter's Michigan record. Bass played the occasional snap at running back, wide receiver, and quarterback, even completing a wounded duck to Jason Avant against Iowa. Both are faaaaast and are the leading candidates to replace Jason Avant's catches next year.

Ross Ryan. If Ryan has been around for four years already, what was Troy Neinberg doing kicking off? Neinberg's kicks usually landed somewhere between the ten and the five; Ryan's usually ended up five yards deep in the endzone. We all enjoyed Neinberg's science-dork body flying downfield a lookin' to pop someone, sure, but surely Ryan's kickoffs did not drastically improve over the span of a single offseason three years into his collegiate career, so why give up the field position? Who knows?

Ryan's punts, a testament to how overrated gross punting yards are as a statistic, were also a welcome breath of fresh air. They were all about 38 yards long, high, and unreturnable, a welcome change from Adam Finley's 45-yard bullets that were touchdowns in waiting. The difference is stark:

(Disclaimer: the Ginn fumbles are a major source of noise in favor of Ryan, but just look at the return percentage, and even before the OSU game Ryan's return average was about half of Finley's.)

They were ugly, dying quails that no one will mistake for NFL production any time this century, but they worked. A salute to Ross Ryan! (You know your team's in trouble when the punter comes in for a salute.)

The interesting case of Shawn Crable. Strange that Pat Massey's deployment as the world's least effective DT would come in the same year when Crable, a guy who's even lankier than Massey, gets deployed as a standup DT on passing downs (and even the occasional run play) to great effect. Several Crable stunts got pressure on the quarterback in fairly short order, he batted down a number of passes, and the one time they tried to run at him he dashed around the lumbering guard assigned to block him and made a tackle for no gain--one more play against the run than Massey had all year. Crable now has a role and a future.

Fourth and short is go time. That aspect of Carr's game coaching skillz did improve vastly, even if it backfired from time to time (like fourth and goal against Wisconsin). Henne even badgered Carr into letting him QB sneak it on fourth and short from his own 40 on a drive that ended with what appeared to be a game-sealing field goal. Let it be said that Carr's football thinking is evolving as time passes, however glacially it may be.

Jason Avant.

Hell, you know. The worst part of the whole Alamo Fiasco was watching Avant go out like that. I hope you won't think ill of me if I say that there aren't any players leaving other than Avant that I will think about next year (unless it's to think "wow, this new guy is much better than X"). It'll be strange not seeing #8 out there.

I probably missed some... any thoughts, commenters?

Many... most... hell, all Michigan fans have skipped right to the wailing and gnashing of teeth thing in the immediate aftermath of the Merry Alamo Farce and the Season of Infinite Pain, calling for everyone from Carr to Herrmann to Mike Gittleson to the kittens to me(!) to be fired. The indictment against me reasonably stated that Michigan has lost five or more games every year since this blog's inception--food for thought.

However, I think before heads roll (at least in the Kids in the Hall "I am crushing you" sense) we should review the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that brought us to this low point in our collective sporting lives. Herein and forthwith, the 2005 Enemies List.

Worst Book Report Ever. EVER!!!

An unprecedented, mind-flaying bouquet of injuries. Michigan got about 1.5 fully healthy games between Jake Long and Mike Hart, two guys who were running neck-and-neck with Lamarr Woodley for the title of best player on the team in the preseason. Long's backup, Mike Kolodziej, woke up tingly and unable to move one day, forcing natural guard Rueben Riley out to right tackle, where he attempted to ward off edge rushers with two broken thumbs. Leo Henige, already limping around on knees from hell, broke his leg. Adam Kraus missed the last few games with another knee issue. Tight end Tim Massaquoi broke his hand and then missed most of the last two games of the year with... yet another knee issue.

And that's just the offensive line. Steve Breaston wasn't right early in the season, missing the MSU game. On defense, exactly one defensive end (Pierre Woods) avoided missing a chunk of the season. A cheap chop block knocked Rondell Biggs out for a number of weeks. Tim Jamison had a sprained shoulder that lingered several games into the year. Lamarr Woodley's mysterious arm issue caused him to miss two games and sit out critical portions of the OSU game. Jeremy Van Alstyne missed the first half of the season. In the secondary, Ryan Mundy went out for the year with a nerve injury. Both Willis Barringer and Brandent Englemon missed large portions of the season simultaneously. WLB Chris Graham contracted a case of Rueben Riley's broken thumbs. Morgan Trent missed the Alamo Bowl.

Uh, yeah, I think that had something to do with it.

Stupid coaching decisions. The Minnesota game was lost when Jim Herrmann called a stupid defense that left inconsistent linebacker Prescott Burgess lined up as a defensive end opposite mammoth Minnesota TE Matt Spaeth. Burgess lost contain and an irrelevant blitz from Jamar Adams from the other side of the field drew Brandon Harrison to the center of the field, leaving no one between Gary Russel and Michigan's demise.

Time and again this year Michigan found itself leading narrowly heading into the final minutes of the game with the ball in hand, changed its playcalling in an attempt to grind out the clock with a terrible running game, and punted with an opportunity to strangle the game. Six times this year Michigan failed to close out a game it was leading in the fourth--often by two scores. Overtime against Iowa and a miraculous last second against PSU meant that Michigan managed to pull out two of those blown leads (and you can't really blame the coaching decisions for the result of the Alamo Farce) , but... six times! I think that's fair evidence that Michigan's "sit back and let 'em screw up" strategy is totally out of place in today's offense-oriented college football world, especially when teams must score or die and use fourth down to do so. The days of dominant Michigan defense are over; Carr has not adapted his strategy.

Henne failing to live up to expectations. More balls whizzed two yards in front of open receivers than I care to remember. His mindblowing interception to Tom Zbikowski was a nail in Michigan's early season coffin; his inability to hit Jason Avant on a corner route plagued Michigan all year; his haircut did remain hilarious. At times he played well, often right before or after doing something Stooge-worthy, but he was nowhere near the All Big Ten performer many expected him to be. It's no exaggeration to say that he was the main reason Michigan lost to Wisconsin.

(DISCLAIMER: Obviously Henne has a world of potential and is only a sophomore. If he ends up throwing straight and reading coverages better, look out and stuff.)

Totally useless guard play. Henne's performance came with a ready-built excuse. Maybe if I was paying as much attention last year as I did this year I would have regarded the loss of David Baas much more ominously. Without Baas, fifth year seniors Leo Henige and Matt Lentz were exposed as intimidating-looking revolving doors. The Notre Dame game featured a bevy of blitzes up the middle that turned Henne into a jittery incompletion machine. Fourth and goal from the one against Wisconsin was stuffed when Henige was shoved backwards into a pulling Lentz, leaving Kevin Grady tasked with plowing through two guys at the point of attack. Ohio State... well, our longest run of the day was 8 yards from Alijah Bradley on a "who is that guy" play.

Hart's absence hurt the run game, certainly, but even when we had him it was clear that he was working with scraps. Anything that would prompt this assessment after the MSU game...

More concerning is the run blocking, which was awful. Yes, awful. It was possibly the worst run blocking coupled with a 200 yard day from the accused team's running back in the history of NCAA football.

...has to be deeply broken, right? The surprising performance against PSU stands as an aberration in a season of massive disappointment.

Run defense charitably described as "nonexistent." Last year the run defense was, despite appearances, very good if you replace Mundy and Shazor with non-ciphers. Running against Michigan was a generally futile exercise in 2004 aside from an 80 yard touchdown run per game. This year, not so much. Not so any. If you remove games against hapless IU and EMU and combine the three-headed MSU backfield into one person, Michigan allowed eight of ten tailbacks it opposed to exceed 100 yards. Only Northwestern's Tyrell Sutton and OSU's Antonio Pittman failed to beat that milestone, and in Sutton's case it was more due to a lack of trying: Northwestern totalled only 17 rushing attempts the entire game. (Yes, Northwestern got 110 yards on those carries.)

What happened?

• Gabe Watson underperformed. We has still good, but he wasn't an All American.
• ...and thus he couldn't make up for Pat Massey. If only Massey played as purty as he talked. He's 6'8", and there's a reason you've never heard of a 6'8" DT before: every play someone gets under this hypothetical giant's pads and drives him five yards backwards. Massey's only contribution this year was pursuing on screens.
• Chris Graham was a nonfactor. The official winner of the 2005 Grady Brooks Memorial "Practice Field Superstar Award," Graham took bad angles, couldn't shed blocks, and totally disappeared from the UFR reviews after the NIU game except fo
  r brief cameos generally accompanied by something like "AAAARGH CONTAIN CONTAIN WHY GOD WHY GOD."
• Prescott Burgess was the Henne of the defense last year, alternating good plays that get NFL scouts clinking glasses of baby blood together with moments even his momma can't condone. His inconsistency combined with Graham's poor play to make bounceouts a guaranteed 15 yards.
• Grant Mason couldn't replace Marlin Jackson's run support, though to be fair it's hard to support the run when you're lined up ten yards off the line and moving backwards at the snap. The hidden damage of Michigan's Cowardly Lion act in the secondary this year was in all those outside runs that the linebackers actually strung out properly but went for seven or eight yards anyway because the corner was late.

This is the magic formula for suck.

Mind-bendingly awful refereeing. No one likes it when the referees come in for a bitchslapping, but it must be said. The Alamo Bowl was a total screwjob, and the lack of review on the first-down sneak against Notre Dame before the fumble was costly. Michigan did receive a slight edge from the blind mice against Iowa (as discussed here), but the ludicrous calls almost evened out in that one and the resulting edge (two bad PI calls) did not result in Michigan points. In total, Michigan was totally robbed of one game and was badly hurt in another, to say nothing of the "fumble" against Michigan State.

(Penn State fans should reserve their bitching for JoePa, who got two extra seconds put on the clock with three minutes left in the game just like Lloyd.)

So what does it all mean?

Just like every other fanbase in the world, Michigan fans (at least those who bother to post on message boards) have fractured into two equally insane groups. The RCMB would call them "Demand Excellencers" and "Sunshine Blowers"; EDSBS broke them down into the St. Fandrew and Master Shake genres.. The Master Shakes declare that Michigan was OMG 3 plays from 4-7 and no bowl this year; the terribly-scarce St. Fandrews (hi deanwerner!) declare that Michigan was OMG 3 plays from 10-2 this year. Well... yeah, that's what happens when you play 7 games that are decided with under a minute left to play. Unless you are a gigantic lucksack like the 2002 Buckeyes, you lose half and win half. If you were to take this Michigan team and have them play this season over and over again against the same teams, what would their final record be? Probably around 7-5. This was a crappy, frustrating football team that deserved most of what it got.

But not all of it. Said outrageous fortune descended heavily upon Lloyd Carr this year, playing up every weakness of his (a tendency to reward hardworking, useless players, terrible late game management skillz, a charming inability to phony his way through press conferences after getting jacked by referees) and minimizing the positives. The plagues of injuries and simian referees were at least a standard deviation above the norm.

I don't see how the coaches can be blamed for the offense's implosion. Chad Henne's lack of progress was crippling in early losses against Notre Dame, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. That combined with the injuries wracking the running game to grind the OMG Michigan Scoring Machine to a halt. We were left with a team incapable of running or passing due in large part to the players Michigan were forced to put on the field. In response Terry Malone went WR-screen mad, which kept Michigan afloat until late in the year when teams had scouted the screens and our general inability to do anything else. There's much complaining about the lack of creativity displayed by Terry Malone, et al, but what exactly are you supposed to do when your guards can't block, your two best players are out, and every clever route you pop someone open on sees Henne wing it yards wide of the helplessly open receiver? I still like Malone. I like the obvious change in Lloyd's fourth-and-short strategy. I like the adjustments that attempted to take advantage of our leetle fast guys at WR without putting undue stress on Henne's erratic accuracy. I don't see a way that Michigan's offense could have been anything other than crappy given the execution of the players in all phases of the game. You have to be able to do something right to set up the other phase of the game--Michigan could consistently do neither, thus the bupkis.

The defense, on the other hand... I think my judgment may be excessively biased by my anger at the killer play against Minnesota. That one incident and its cosmic stupidity color every thought that crosses my synapses about the defense. How could you put yourself in that position? Minnesota is trying to kill the clock, has some redshirt freshman that Glen Mason is clearly terrified of, and is in third and eleven... let's blitz a safety! Let's make the entire defense on the strong side of the formation Prescott Burgess and Grant Mason! Look at all the exclamation points!!! I'm pissed!!!

Seriously, I am. I think that play is representative of two major failings in the Michigan coaching staff. They don't understand math, and they expect players to play like they should, not like they do. In two bullets:

• Math: dude. Seriously. Punting on fourth and four against Penn State when a first down kills the game. Continually playing soft on end of game drives. And deciding that you were going to leave one area of the field extremely vulnerable to a big play when it's the only way you can lose in regulation. All these fly in the face of simple probability... the punt most obviously. What are the chances of making a fourth and four? Well, third and four is about 45%. You make it, you win. Thus unless your punt almost halves your opponent's chance to score, it's the wrong move. But the coaches think "our defense should hold them" and then when they don't they get to sit at press conferences, pissed off and confused that anyone would even ask about the strategy they employed.
• Playing like you "should": The infamous summary for this attitude is "the expectation is for the position," which is nice to say and dumbtarded in practice. You can expect Prescott Burgess to perform well when you line him up at defensive end opposing two separate giant, angry, runblocky Minnesota hulksters all you want, but that doesn't mean an inconsistent linebacker who is allergic to the idea of containment is actually going to perform well. Said another way, "the expectation is for the position" is "we put players in a position to fail because gameplanning is hard and stuff." Michigan's attitude that we will out-athlete you without any of that thinkin' stuff is getting anachronistic right quick. The offense does seem to adjust when faced with personnel deficiencies, but the defense defies them to matter... until they do. The flip side of this is a refusal to take advantage of a player's abilities if they don't fit into the scheme of the defense. (A side note: the unique, creative, and effective deployment of a strange player like Shawn Crable is the exact antithesis of this attitude, so "the expectation is for the position" has exceptions, especially when you're a 6'6" lighting bolt with chicken legs and there isn't a position for you to be expected at.)<
  /li>

It's been pointed out here and elsewhere that Michigan hasn't ceded less than 28 points in a bowl game since magical 1997, and I wonder if that has something to do with Michigan's bullheadedness lending itself to being scouted into the ground when teams are given ample time to prepare.

We take a break from your regularly scheduled recriminations and bitching...

Um, okay. So I'm watching the Liberty Bowl. Tulsa has a guy named "Germany." He comes on a blitz and hits Pinegar as he throws. This prompts the announcers to say...

They call him "The Germinator."

Obviously I have far too much knowledge about botany, because this causes great galloping guffaws. This is why:

ger·mi·nate (jûr'mə-nāt')

v., -nat·ed, -nat·ing, -nates. v.tr.

To cause to sprout or grow.

v.intr.

1. To begin to sprout or grow.
2. To come into existence: An idea germinated in his mind.

Say it with me: "I do not think that word means what you think it means." I suppose it is possible that Germany is a plant biology major and spends his time before the snap screaming "I gonna sprout all up in your ass, mothafucka*" at the quarterback, but it seems unlikely.

However, the real tragedy here is one of omission, not commission. The dude's last name is Germany. Is there a richer field to mine for potentially inappropriate nicknames? They could call him Panzer or Luftwaffe or, I dunno, anything that doesn't reference the Holocaust. He could scream stuff about the offensive backfield being lebensraum he's about to annex for the motherland (muthafucka, natch). Whenever something bad happens that gets him fired up he could scream "this is Versailles, muthafucka!" Instead he's stuck sprouting all up in someone's ass. Alas.

(For those of you who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, rest assured that the previous paragraph is hilarious.)

Of course, this brings up an interesting point for Michigan fans: if freshman DE Eugene Germany manages to find his way on the field after that stupid cell phone incident, it's our responsibility as fans to come up with something appropriate and History Channel-themed.

*(attempted football player vernacular not racist. I heard Garrett Rivas say this exact same thing before missing a 27 yard field goal.)

Also, a programming note: A multipart season post-mortem--emphasis on the mortem--is on the way starting Monday. Also, if I can stand up without the room going all "Dancing With The Stars" on me, I may liveblog some NYD+1 bowl action.

12/29/2005 - Pistons 106 - 101 Heat - 23-3

I have this theory, you see, about the Pistons. It took them some time to learn about the magic rings that were mysteriously bestowed upon them by Joe Dumars upon their arrival in Detroit, but now they have mastered their respective domains. At the beginning of the year they gathered at center court, screamed 'let our powers combine,' and summoned forth Captain Piston to wreak havoc upon evildoers and floppy, charging Mexicans leaguewide. Rasheed is obviously fire--ask his Nike commercial. Always running Hamilton is air. Steadying Billups is earth. Prince and his suffocating, impossibly plentiful, tentacle-like arms: water. And Ben Wallace defines the concept of heart as it applies to sports.

This occurred to me--

Goddammit. Fine. Here... but don't expect it to be noble or kind or stoic or really anything except a screed. I tried to wait for coherence. It didn't work.

12/29/2005 - Alamo Farce - Michigan 28 - 32 Nebraska - 7-5

I haven't read a thing about this game. I turned it off after filling the halls of a friend's house with enough swearing to build a medium-sized pirate vessel (hyyyarrrrr!), went home, played Civ 4 in a futile attempt to prevent my fists from clenching and unclenching at random, and watched Michigan get annihilated in the GLI, like, again. But I assume that the random squad of barely trained monkeys that were assigned to officiate the game have been rounded up and shot into space, never to trouble college football again, right? And then the Sun Belt was summarily dropped into Division II where it belongs, right?

The tragedy of the final play is that it overshadows the real final play when Mario Manningham was blatantly interfered with on fourth down. Or that Michigan was forced to use timeouts because the ape-men did not realize that they could review plays, including an obvious fumble that was not called as such earlier in the game. I'm at a loss as to why the Alamo Bowl couldn't have found some illegal immigrants from Botswana who thought they were watching a bizarre form of rugby to officiate. Or a pack of ravenous hyenas prone to consuming wounded participants. Or people who enjoy "Everybody Loves Raymond." I don't want to go too far: none of these three groups of totally incompetent, unqualified people would have been an improvement. But they wouldn't have been any worse, and they would have come cheaper.

I'm sure there are a myriad of reasons why Michigan lost that game unrelated to the refereeing. I cannot be bothered to think of them right now. (Okay: 27 yard field goal miss, run defense reliably awful even without much Massey, Henne's inability to find anyone downfield.) All I can think of is truly going off the Penn State deep end and executing the Keyser Soze Manuever on anyone even vaguely connected with that... that... whatever it was.

I hope you'll forgive me: I ain't watching it again. Here's your UFR: screw 2005. The one redeeming feature of the last play of that game was I got to say "it's over" and put Michigan football, 2005, from my mind forever. In retrospect, even the run of success, or at least non-incompetence, that got us to 7-3 only served to raise our hopes just in time for the final two games to dash said hopes broken upon the rocks. Every step in the season seemed to raise the factor of cruel mockery to yet another level.

So: here lies 2005, killed by its own incompetence and that of others. Its gift to future generations is the phrase "well, at least it wasn't 2005." Try it: "well, we may have lost to MSU, but at least it wasn't 2005." "Well, I may have inoperable pancreatic cancer, but at least it isn't 2005." "Well, that rapture thing happened, my bet on Hinduism came up craps, and now I'm faced with hell on earth during Armageddon, but at least it isn't 2005."

We beat Coppin State, though, right? Seriously: did we?

This is by way of notification that the blog is off until the 28th or 29th. Or 30th. Do not despair.