In such a cynical, sarcastic society, oftentimes looking for the negative on anybody or anything, if you're fortunate enough to spend five minutes or 20 minutes around Tim Tebow, your life is better for it.

-Thom Brennaman

"DECISION TIME! DO YOU GO FOR IT?"

"Go. Go. Go. Go. Go"

-Brennaman and Charles Rogers. On third and goal.

Ideally, football games are not opportunities to reflect on just why everyone under 35 has a protective shell of cynicism and sarcasm between the world and everyone's inner Beaver.* But this one was the BCS championship game on FOX, so it was either that or picture Thom Brennaman massaging lotion into Tebow's feet.

Anyway, the reason most of my generation raised outside the state of Utah and I are looking for the negative so often is people like Thom Brennaman, corporate robots who relentlessly praise anyone and anything they're directed to.

The annoying shilling doesn't stop at the commercial break's edge these days; in fact, that guy with the Boomhauer accent saying "that thur is purty dern cool" during one of the six hundred commercials for a pickup truck was probably the most genuine moment of the night. That guy actually believed tool boxes in the side of your pickup truck were purty dern cool, and he communicated that without sanctimony or idiocy. At no point did he turn to the camera and say that if you didn't think tool boxes on your pickup truck were purty dern cool then you are destined for the lake of fire.

If only we could say the same for FOX. I could write a bunch of stuff about what an embarrassment that whole thing was, but other people have taken care of this for me. Fanhouse:

Brennaman was so far over the top in his pro-Tebow hyperbole on Thursday that the game became darn-near unwatchable unless the volume was off.

Orson:

Assumptions one should not make about this game: … 3) Fox puts on an incompetent broadcast. No. Incompetent doesn't cover how inept their clodfooted work on the BCS has been.

Awful Announcing, which must live for moments like this:

This is so bad, I really don't even have words to describe it.

Deadspin:

According to Fox announcer Thom Brennaman—and if you don't agree with him, you must be some kind of deranged lunatic—Tim Tebow just may be the finest human being to ever live on this planet or any other.

Etc, etc, etc. The presentation was such a disaster that a lot of people have been complaining about how bad the game was when, really, it wasn't too bad. Julio Iglesias was nearly decapitated, and there was a critical fourth-down stand and a couple of miraculous interceptions and all in all it was a tense, well-played football game but for the context.

At some point, being directed to interpret everything as history in the making has a downside. Now we expect the Greatest Game Ever Played between the Greatest Players Ever Assembled every time out. And when that's not happening—which it wasn't—no one backs off. They just lie to your face.

So, yeah, I'm tired of all hype. I'm tired of having the "national championship" game between two teams virtually indistinguishable from a half dozen others on a random Thursday night in January on a network that never shows college football. I'm tired of how stupid it all is.

And I think I'm detecting a seismic shift in opinion out there. Bowl defenders outside of newspaper columnists who love them some junket are few and far between—and frankly, I'd rather have Stewart Mandel on the other side of any argument I'm having, thanks very much. Every year some coach and some president gets screwed and converts to the church of playoff. Last year, weirdly, it was Georgia. This year, obviously, it's USC and Utah and Texas. At some point things have to change, because last night felt more like a farce than a championship.

*(60s television version, not unwise quarterback version.)

Tebow must have raptured up some poor sap driving the Zamboni:

The University of Michigan ice hockey team's game against Miami University tonight (Friday, Jan. 9) has been postponed until Sunday (Jan. 11) at 4 p.m. Yost Ice Arena suffered weather-related damage during the recent snow and wind storms over the holidays.

Don't be there or be square.

I was going to let the enrollment of Ann Arbor Pioneer quarterback Nader Furrha, who's a preferred walk-on, go as just a sidebar link but then someone linked some video…

…and my friend who knows way more about local high school football than most people because he used to work for the Saline Reporter actually sent in a scouting report, so here you go, in the rich tradition of "hey, Eric Puls," and "hey, guy who's behind David Cone on the depth chart": hey, Nader Furrha.

The scouting report:

So I saw Furrha play three times against Saline the last couple of years and if any of you care what I think, I think it's not inconceivable he'll wind up contributing at Michigan.

He doesn't have a rocket for an arm and he doesn't have out-and-out sprinter speed, but his arm's definitely better than Sheridan's and he's a much, much better runner than either Sheridan or Threet. He's quick and slithery, really good in traffic, good at buying time in the pocket. His biggest problem is that he'd be a pocket QB only in the sense that he'd fit in your pocket: I had a laugh when I saw Scout had him listed at 6-1. I can't imagine he's any taller than 5-10, and he might be shorter than that. The first thing I thought when I saw him was "That dude's short," and I'm not even six feet.

It's too bad--his combination of legs and arm, if not spectacular, would be easily good enough to get him a D-I scholarship if he was 2-3 inches taller (he's also a little on the slight side at the moment, but Barwis should fix that).  For whatever it's worth I can't possibly imagine him beating out a guru-approved dual-threat like Forcier, Threet's always going to be a thousand times better passer, and Feagin's the more explosive runner. But, if Forcier hurts himself and the coaches decide they're never going to let Feagin throw a pass, he might be a once-in-a-while change of pace from Threet as a kid who's a genuine threat to run but could also spring a SURPRISE throw further than 10 yards downfield. If Threet--who wasn't substantially more impressive than Furrha when I saw him in college, I didn't think--can become RichRod's starter, I would think a guy who more snugly fits the offense would have some kind of outside shot at at least seeing the field someday.

Much more likely, of course, is that he never earns a scholarship or makes the traveling 85.

J

And now I hope to never think about him again, no offense to the young man. It's just, well… you know.

Holy pants. I can't be the only person who exclaimed "WTF!"—yes, I speak in internet acronyms IRL LOL—when Beadie Russell from The Wire showed up on The Office. For some reason I expect that people on The Wire are real and that seeing, for instance, D'Angelo Barksdale's mother on an episode of NCIS* means Pure Evil has undergone a shocking career change.

So, yeah, this from reader Ba Orao was pretty freaky:

Clockwise from top left:

• DT commit Pearlie Graves, a dead ringer for Marlo muscle Chris
• WR commit Jeremy Gallon, who could not possibly look more like Marlo muscle Snoop despite the fact that Snoop is, you know, a girl
• DE commit Anthony LaLota, a pretty good facsimile of Nick Sobotka
• RB coach Fred Jackson, a less scarred version of Norman Wilson, the mayor's right hand man

The first two are astounding.

*(Watched involuntarily, in case anyone has actually seen that abomination and is now reconsidering their allegiance to this blog.)

I want your… nah, too easy. Penn State defensive line coach/recruiting ninja Larry Johnson is under consideration for the Illinois defensive coordinator job, which strikes Black Shoe Diaries as very bad news:

I don't have to tell you this is bad bad bad. With an 82 year old head coach who can't spend more than two hours sitting down in a car or airplane, the assistant coaches are our greatest asset when it comes to recruiting. And Larry Johnson is one of the best of them. … To lose him would be, in a word, disastrous for our program.

Johnson's a Penn State lifer—he's been there since 1993 and both of his kids played for PSU—but cash rules everything around us:

…as a defensive coordinator, Johnson would receive a salary increase from his estimated $200,000 salary. Penn State is not known for boosting its assistants' pay, and Illinois is apparently willing to pay what's necessary in the increasingly competitive world of assistant salaries. That might be even more true after it lost offensive line coach Eric Wolford, who will make $325,000 a year with his move to South Carolina.

So I'm thinking to myself "this would be a really good idea for Illinois; Johnson is a killer recruiter and have you seen Penn State's defensive line at any point in the past decade?" And it occurs to me: hey, would that be a good idea for us? Yeah, maybe. And maybe we're in on it. Same article:

Illinois is in discussions with Penn State defensive line coach Larry Johnson about becoming the new Illinois defensive coordinator, but Michigan also could be interested in hiring Johnson, sources said.

With Tom Bradley's status as the real ultimate power at Penn State, Johnson is going to be locked out of a coordinator spot until such time as Joe Paterno finally steps down, which could be never-ever-ever. Now might be the time to move.

I'd be a happy man if Johnson was the new DC, though the chances of that seem low. Dollars to donuts he uses the leverage to squeeze a raise out of Penn State.

Bob Knight, ladies and gentlemen. Zack Novak on the General:

"He'd usually tell us, girls are going to tear you down -- if you see a nice-looking girl, turn the other way because she's going to kill you," Novak said. "I remember thinking, I'm in third grade and he's telling me about girls. But I think that's kind of why you've got to appreciate him."

I always thought Knight would make a good Batman villain, no?

Yikes. I didn't mean for this to be Basketball Downer day, but, eh… yeah. Luke Winn busts out the tempo-free stats to evaluate overvalued and undervalued teams based on, you know, reasons. Key findings:

No Final Four team in the past five years has been ranked outside the top 25 in adjusted defensive efficiency (a competition-adjusted figure). And only two Elite Eight teams in the past five years have ranked outside the top 50 in adjusted defensive efficiency. It's unlikely that a team will make a deep NCAA tournament run with just a good offense, and only a mediocre D.

The good news, such as it is: one of those two Elite Eight teams to flout Winn's cutoff was 2005 West Virginia, which finished 78th in adjusted D efficiency and was an overtime away from the Final Four.

The bad news:

Which teams in the AP's top 30 might be suspect in the postseason because of their lack of a quality defense? Eight ranked schools had adjusted defensive efficiency ratings outside the top 60. Unless they shape up over the next few months, the odds are stacked against them making deep NCAA tournament runs:

Team AP Adj. OffEff. (Nat'l Rk.) Adj. DefEff. (Nat'l Rk.) Oklahoma 6 117.7 (8) 93.8 (66) Notre Dame 13 119.7 (3) 99.1 (146) Boston Coll. 17 112.2 (32) 96.1 (86) Minnesota 22 109.4 (51) 96.1 (88) Baylor 23 117.0 (11) 95.4 (78) Michigan 26 116.6 (13) 101.2 (185) California 27 115.6 (20) 93.5 (63) Arkansas 28 106.2 (79) 96.8 (103)

That's pretty frightening right there: Michigan has by far the worst defense of any team in the AP top 30. That bodes unwell for the short term.

For the long term: I'm slightly concerned. Beilein's last two West Virginia teams were 53rd and 57th in AdjDE, and I think they're slightly underrated because his teams force a lot of turnovers, which in theory should lead to a larger than normal proportion of fast break buckets and higher offensive efficiency. The higher-quality recruits he hypothetically has access to at Michigan may allow the team to play better defense than he's thrown out there before.

But the concern comes in when Huggins arrives at WVA. In year one, defensive efficiency moves from 57th to 24th, and in year two they're second, using mostly the same players Beilein recruited. They're older and better, certainly. Is that the only difference? Probably not.

Etc.: Chalk talk on zone blitzes from Gsimmons; Orson obliterates Rick Reilly and Dr. Saturday does likewise with John Feinstein.

Well, at least we've been spared four years of tortured puns:

"To tell you the truth, I wanted to play wide receiver," Peace said. "I told the Michigan coaches that I wanted to play receiver. At the beginning of my commitment they said I could play cornerback or receiver. Then as time went on, I went on my visit and told them I just wanted to play receiver and if I could only play corner then I would look for another school to go to. They told me that it was fine and I could play receiver. Then something came up where they didn't land enough corners so that is where they wanted me."

And that is where he not wanted… him. Self. Or something. So he decommitted and is now favoring Kansas.

As usual, there are multiple ways to spin this:

• Michigan would rather have Travante Stallworth and Je'ron Stokes and Willie Haulstead instead of the #100 player in Texas, or
• They really really need corners.

Neither makes perfect sense, as Michigan isn't exactly overflowing with 2009 receivers of the not-slot variety and none of the receivers above look like locks or anything. But it's hard to interpret a conversation like "I know you told us if you had to play corner you would decommit, but we want you at corner" as anything other than a polite way to say goodbye.

That's fine if they replace Peace with an equivalent prospect. On the surface that shouldn't be too hard since Peace is a replacement-level Michigan recruit, but Chitownblue makes a good point when he notes that Michigan currently has no replacement-level recruits available at corner and will likely be offering a sketchy player or two at the position. The best case scenario appears to be an Adrian Witty (two star CB with KSU, FIU offers) commit that induces a Denard Robinson (big-time QB/ATH/DB recruit) commit. Then Tate Forcier becomes Colt McBabyJesus and Robinson is free to be a kickass corner.

That's a lot to ask for.

1/7/2009 – Michigan 72, Indiana 66 – 12-3, 2-1 Big Ten

image via jcmcmann @ flickr

 Maybe Assembly Hall does have some sort of weird voodoo hex power that it uses for evil whenever Michigan shows up. After all, the last time Michigan won at Indiana there were actual Fab Five members still on the floor.

But it's more likely Michigan fans were just handed a harsh dose of reality made barely palatable by a Laval Lucas-Perry three that caught the front iron only to bounce straight up and through. Moments before Michigan had been down six to the worst team in the Big Ten and were fortunate to be that close. Then Manny Harris launched an ill-advised three, one of eight on the night, that went in, and Lucas-Perry launched a desperate three, one of nine, that got a friendly roll, and overtime was a mélange of more deep chucks and many, many missed IU free throws. At the end of everything they were up six, somehow.

Don't ask me how. It got so bad at one juncture in the second half when back-to-back possessions ended in horrible contested threes at the end of the shot clock that I thought to myself "this looks like an Amaker team." (I then immediately crossed myself and said four Hail Marys in penance.)

At one point they had launched 27 threes and made six. By the end of the game they had chucked up a prodigious 40—to only 21 two-pointers!—and made twelve. If they weren't playing the basketball equivalent of this year's Michigan football team they would have lost by double digits.

You can play this off as a hiccup, I guess, like rough games against Eastern Michigan and Savannah State and a housing at the hands of Wisconsin, but, man, has it ever occurred to you that maybe Michigan's shocking leap forward was at least somewhat illusory, man?

No. No, that had probably not occurred to you, unless it had. This is the same point I was trying to make about Michigan State football last week: we've been damn lucky. I didn't want to  bring this up because it seemed like an unnecessary, party-pooping move, but Ken Pomeroy hates us. It's nothing personal, I promise. But the following graph from Big Ten Geeks, which measures the difference between a team's Pomeroy Rank and its average rank according to voters, was assembled before Michigan failed to achieve even in the modest goal of outperforming Lipscomb at Assembly Hall:

Yea, verily, on a difficulty-adjusted per-possession basis Michigan is one of the most overrated teams in the country. Two stellar games against UCLA and Duke coupled with a nonconference schedule featuring a wide array of teams not merely bad but outright awful have obscured the game-in, game-out struggles of the team. How many times has the general opinion after a game been "well, they won, but they really need to play better in the future?" By my count, about six.

Things get grimmer still when you focus on the Big Ten, where Michigan is not dancing with the angels, or the committee:

See, this is why I didn't want to bring it up. I sound like a negative old crank. Michigan is 12-3 with its first tourney bid in a decade in its sights and I'm sitting here telling you to turn off the lights, turn down the music, and go to bed.

And there are, of course, many disclaimers to that go here. Kenpom ratings are not perfect, they don't predict particularly strongly, and you can quickly pick out a half dozen "but what about…?" results if you want to. However, I do think they reveal something box scores and win/loss doesn't, and what it reveals is scary for Michigan fans dreaming of an eight seed in March.

What I'm trying to get at is this: this team is still painfully young, and is not as good as their record. They were extremely fortunate to scrape by a couple of very poor teams and also fortunate to catch Duke on a day when they were ice-cold from outside. They've not lost a close game and have won four. Brace yourselves, because it's going to be bumpy. I'm telling myself this as much as anyone reading this. I caught myself checking out Bracketology this week and thinking to myself "only a nine seed?"

Only a nine seed? Who am I, Jay Jacobs? The only senior who did anything yesterday was CJ Lee, a walk-on. Underclassmen sucked up 73% of the minutes. There are two players taller than 6'5". With Cronin redshirting, Michigan is playing short four scholarships.

"Only a nine seed." Does Michael Douglas sit around thinking to himself "if only I could have hooked up with Scarlett Johannsson?"

Bullets of EXTREME REASON

• I freakin' knew I shouldn't have talked up Manny Harris, because he's fallen apart since the Big Ten season hit. Yeah, 17 points yesterday but a lot of those were end of game free throws. He was 4/12 with four TOs. He's shooting 33% and has an A:TO ratio of 10:12. In this game he took a whopping eight threes and just four two-pointers, which is at least reversed. If Harris takes twelve shots nine of them should be twos.

  What happened? You could see the frustration building in the Wisconsin game and after the third time he drove the lane and got hacked with no call he started going nuts, driving wildly and forcing the issue. Similar things happened against Wisconsin, and then tonight he gave up and started chucking. Late in the game Harris got yanked for CJ Lee and the team's performance actually picked up.

  I'm not sure what you do if you're Beilein other than jump down the ref's throat every time they miss a foul call on a Harris drive. Harris really needs a 8-10 foot pullup jumper, because without it you just pack the lane and wait for chaos.

• One thing Harris hasn't fallen off in is rebounding. Eleven against IU, the last a monster board that sealed the game after a turnover and comical blocking call brought Indiana within three.
• What happened to Shepherd? I don't get it. People say he wasn't performing offensively; the stats don't bear it out. Small sample size and all that, but Shepherd has a higher offensive rating with more usage than either Novak or Douglass. He's 20-30 from 2 and almost 70% of his shots are from there. In a game where Michigan couldn't or wouldn't go inside, his game could have been used.
• Sims was the only player with more than two two-point baskets; he was 7/11 from inside the arc.
• I agree with The Hoosier Report's take: "I would have rather [Indiana] lost by 20." Also, this is nice:
  

  As I was going to say in my gracious post-game victory post, it's an odd sensation to have a 17 point home lead and yet fear that Michigan's coach might engineer a comeback. I didn't feel that way when Michigan was good, let alone the last 10 years.

  That may say more about Indiana's team this year than Michigan's, but I'll take it.

• No, the picture above isn't from the game. You can tell because of Thad Matta. And it's at Crisler. And David Merritt's wearing #11—apparently he changed numbers, who knew? I usually try to find an appropriate image from the game itself but I couldn't find one that summed the game up very well. At least the opponent is wearing red.