Diaries

Michigan Hockey: Ohio State Preview

#13 Michigan (12-8-4) at #2 Ohio State (14-4-3)

1-13-12 7:35pm (BTN)

1-15-12 5:05pm (Fox Sports Plus)

Forward Overview:

We come into this series in the exact opposite positions than the last time. OSU is ranked high but coming off a series sweep in favor of Bowling green and Michigan climbing back into the rankings hot. Like I predicted in the last preview this is the once in a decade Buckeye team, only much better then we have seen before.

Led by Crane and Dries the Buckeyes come into the series with a respectable 3.14 GPG which is good for 19^th in the country and a not so good powerplay unit. This is not a team who is going to wow you with their offensive ability and the production drop is huge when the first line is off, but they're the kind of physical grind it out unit that we have had trouble with all season long.

The key matchup will be who plays harder in front of the net. At times this our defensive pairs have been so soft, screeners have stood in front of Hunwick and nothing happens to them. It's as simple as this, if we let them push us around they will score.

Defensive Overview:

Although the offensive numbers are not so great the defense has been outstanding for Ohio this season. They come into the series with the 4^th best GAA in the league at 2.05 GPG and .10 of a goal is the only thing separating them from being #1.

The matchup will be taking advantage of the weaker pairs Ohio puts in the ice, specifically Gallacher or DaSalvia. It's hard to see strengths and weaknesses without video but by the numbers you can assume that Krough and McLean play great defense, and even with the supreme awesomeness of Cal Heeter in goal Gallacher and DaSalvia do not.

Goalie:

It's Cal Heeter, everyone knows who he is. He's the above average goalie who turns into Brodeur when he plays us. His kryptonite was discovered in the last series but Michigan was not able to take advantage of it, that is why the key matchup will be shooting high. Heeter's tendency for whatever reason is to drop early, so we need to try and get some lift on the puck. It sounds easy but if it was we would have scored more than 1 in our first game with them.

Michigan Overview:

Forward Overview:

It looks like the offense may have finally turned a corner. After going the entire season without being able to score on Fridays or on the road they took Alaska and MSU at home, Boston College at a neutral site and notched two more Friday night wins. We are red hot right now and Ohio State is as cold as a team with four losses can be, it only helps that one game is in Columbus and the second is in Cleveland; an Outdoor game at Progressive field I'm sure everyone forgot about.

Some minor notes: Kevin Lynch has quietly posted a 4-4-8 scoring line after not recording any points for much of the season. It has been the opposite for Lindsay Sparks, after starting the season hot he has cooled off to the point where he isn't going to see the ice. After posting thirteen points in ten games Sparks has not recorded a point since November 5th, and with his sub-par defensive ability if he isn't scoring he isn't going to play. The Lindsay Sparks show is officially over.

Defensive Overview:

The defense had started to play better after the break, but what a difference it makes having Merrill back. I really saw a different unit out there during the GLI holding Boston College to two goals, it's a major improvement over the same group who got embarrassed by Northeastern on our own ice.

We knew Serville was going to have growing pains this season but we didn't expect it to be anything like this, his neutral zone turnovers are awful, which makes Merrill's return even more important. I've been down on this group the entire season but I really feel like they are trending upwards, this weekend will give us a good indication of how much things have really changed.

Goalie

Like the defense he had his shaky moments during the first half, but has picked up his play lately. Like I said before the defense didn't help him very much so he shouldn't be shouldering any blame.

Predection

I really think this team is turning the corner. I think a sweep is definitely possible, I would imagine Saturdays game not having very many Buckeye fans so this can almost be like a home and home series. Michigan speed on a bigger sheet like the Big Chill is a major advantage for the good guys.

[Ed-S: Bumped from boards]

Which team/conference should a high school recruit choose given the a desire to reach the NFL. Here are the tables that I abstracted from databaseFootball.com.  They are only through 2010 so they would not include this years rookies.  Starred teams have moved conferences recently.  ( I gave up trying to star all the past and future moves the Big East is making.)  This was a bit of a project with lots of cut and paste into a set of spread sheets.  It would appear that one might want to play college football in the BIG 10 if you want to maximize the likelihood that you will play in the NFL although it will still be a long shot that you will play very long even if drafted.

As you look at the databaseFootball.com tables it's obvious just how short the careers of NFL players really are.  By the eyeball it is about 4 years on average over the history of the NFL but here is the official NFL line from NFL Communications:

"One fan on the conference call said she has read many times that the average career length of an NFL player is about three years, adding it seemed so many played much longer than that. She asked Commissioner Goodell about his knowledge of NFL career length.

“There is a little bit of a misrepresentation or a misunderstanding on that.  Frequently, it is said that the average career is about 3.5 years.  In fact, if a player makes an opening day roster, his career is very close to six years,” Commissioner Goodell said. “If you are a first-round draft choice, the average career is close to nine years.  That 3.5-year average is really a misrepresentation.  What it adds is a lot of players who don’t make an NFL roster and it brings down the average.”

According to a recent NFL Management Council analysis of players who entered the NFL between 1993 and 2002, the average career length for a player who is on his club’s opening-day roster as a rookie is 6.0 years.

That 6.0 average is 88 percent higher than NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith’s recent claim.

“The fundamental principle of our business model necessarily includes that every player only plays for an average of 3.2 years,” Smith said in a March 31 forum with MBA students at the University of Virginia .

Following are the facts from the career-length analysis (using regular-season and postseason rosters):

• The average career length for a player who makes a club’s opening-day roster (active/inactive roster or injured reserve) in his rookie season is 6.0 years.
• The average career length for a player with at least three pension-credited seasons* is 7.1 years (*a player receives a pension credit for each season in which he spends at least three games on an active/inactive roster and/or injured reserve).
• The average career length for a first-round draft pick is 9.3 years.
• The average career length for a player who is selected for or plays in at least one Pro Bowl is 11.7 years.  Of the 318 players who began careers between 1993 and 2002 and made the Pro Bowl at least once, 113 of those players – 36 percent – were on a club’s roster in 2010."

As usual there is a disagreement between management and labor on the facts.  Charts? Charts....

PS for laughs I looked up the MAC teams too.  Temple got most of their player into the NFL while they were in the Big East.

Hi everyone,

Let me start by prefacing this with a warning: This will not be a revolutionary or even original way of thinking about the BCS and a potential playoff system in College Football.  This is merely one mans attempt to waste time and figure out what he believes should be the system to determine a champion in the sport that he loves.  Also, unfortunatley there will not be any fancy statistics that prove that what I am saying is better than the BCS or anything like that.

So, I believe that there are 3 major considerations that need to be undertaken in forming a college football postseason:

1. To determine a fair and correct champion

2. To keep the integrity of the regular season alive

3. To keep the tradition of the Bowls alive

The reason why I like the BCS in its current form is because it accomplishes objectives 2 and 3, while usually (but controversially) accomplishing objective 1.  However, as time has passed, I believe that objective 1 has become less and less acheivable in the BCS system because, among other reasons, the human bias for and against certain conferences.  There is no doubt that the SEC is the top conference in the land.  Is it however, so far and away better than the B1G, Pac12, Big12, ACC and Big East that there should be an in-conference rematch for the national championship?  I believe that the answer is, in almost any case, no.  

Now that we have determined what I believe to be the most glaring flaw in the BCS system, we move to creating an alternative.  This alternative must complete all 3 objectives in a significantly better way to be worth a change in format.  

The way I look at college football, the regular season is in fact, a playoff.  To add a full playoff system like that off the NFL would greatly diminish regular season games and would take away a fundamental element of college football that differentiates it from the NFL: The importance of every game.  I dont think that a team should be able to lose more than one, or in rare, rare cases 2 games and be in consideration for a national championship.  If we lived in a world where a team could simply win its conference and be into the playoff system, we would see OOC games be rendered virtually meaningless.  We would also see teams that lock up a birth in their conference championship games be less motivated to win on that special rivalry weekend that closes out the regular season.  This takes away the passion, intensity and importance of every week and would be a travesty in my opinion.  

Similarly, the Bowl season is one of the greatest postseason experiences in sports.  Charles Woodson clenching that rose between his teeth after beating Ohio State in 97 and all such experiences would disappear in a full playoff.  Also, New Years Day (or this year 2-Jan) isnt the same without a full day of important Bowl games.  

So onto my proposal...

Add one more BCS game to the mix with the Cotton Bowl.  The two teams that play in this game are at large teams from any conference.  We use the BCS formula and existing conference tie-ins to determine who is sent to the 5 BCS Bowl games.  These 5 games are all played in sequential order on 1-January every year.  The morning after these games, some type of formula similar to the BCS determines what 2 teams play for the national championship.  What this formula looks for is strength of schedule through out the season combined with a heavier emphasis on the teams preformance in its bowl game.  This makes sure that every game is still important, makes sure that the bowl games keep their tradition and importance and gives us one more ulta significant data point per season to determine who plays for a national championship.  The 2 teams selected then play for the National championship a week later in a rotating stadium among the 5 BCS games.  

The BCS bowls would also be picked by a comittee who tried to create matchups we would like to see.

So in this system the BCS would have played out something like this in 2011/2012:

Rose Bowl: Wisconsin v Oregon

Orange Bowl: West Virginia v Clemson

Sugar Bowl: LSU v Michigan

Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma State v Boise State (or Alabama v OkSt)

Cotton Bowl: Stanford v Alabama (Or Boise State v Alabama)

If I had to guess the National Championship, it would still probably be Alabama v LSU in a rematch but we would get to see how they fared against other opponents before sending them to an automatic rematch.  In all honesty, they were the 2 best teams this year.  This scenario does make a rematch a little more interesting this year, I think, and in most years would pick the 2 best teams overall to play for the championship.

Obviously this sytem has flaws as well but this was mainly an excersize to explore another option. 

Brian's front page post got me riled up enough to try to bang out a diary over my lunch hour. Please critique and suggest ways to make it better in the comments, I might mess up some numbers as I'm doing this quickly from memory. Here we go:

What is the most entertaining playoff in all of sports? March Madness. (MM for short in the diary) The NCAA already hosts (and keeps the revenue from) a ridiculously exciting tournament every year that has huge interest and kills productivity all over the US. It leaves us with an NCAA National Champion - something we don't currently have in football. So, since the NCAA has a very successful playoff structure, my playoff proposal is to simply scale it down and apply it to football:

BCS Problems: Small group picked, way of picking extremely messed up (see coaches' poll numbers etc.) Voters decide only 2 teams to "decide it on the field". Teams 3-8 in any given year are pissed, Ticket sales are down, TV #s are down, the NCAA receives no money from it, conferences lose money on it, etc.

MM Problems: Low attendance at early rounds, the refs still love Duke, Teams #65-68 (or whatever, I think of it as a 64 team tournament) are pissed and... ??? Please add more in the comments, I'll add them.

Remember, the NCAA takes 430 some BBall teams and slots 64 (ish) into a tournament. I'm going to attempt to do that with 120 football teams into 8-12. (Once I drew up my proposal I had 11... which seems like as weird a number as 65 or 68). May I present... December Madness

Schedule: Conf Champs all decided 1st week of December. 2nd week is Bye week/play in game. December week 3 is 8 team tourney. Week 4, 4 teams left. New years day (ish) Champ Game. December Madness

What works well from March Madness and we're going to try to take with us:

Conference Champ Auto Bids - 33 in Bball, we'll take 5 in Football. B1G, SEC, ACC, BigXII and PAC12 Champs - you're in the tourney. Lets the Conference championship game matter (Like the BBall Conference tourney). I also wouldn't be adverse to a "play in game" or two for the little-guy conference champs.

Selection Committee: They do it in hoops, do it here. The polls still matter as that'll be part of the "resume" like RPI and Sagarin ratings are in bball. You could use the polls to help rank the tournament (like in basketball). There would be 3-6 "At Large" bids used here to get your 8 - 12 teams. Would the last team left out be pissed? Yes sir. Sucks for the 65th basketball team too. One week into an awesome tournament no one cares.

Site Locations: Here's where I'm not 100% sure on what to suggest. I've been to NCAA Regional games and they're always half empty. It's hard enough to have fan bases travel to 1 bowl game much less the 3 it'll take in my proposal so at least Round 1 is a home game. Conference Champs get to host the home games, rotating 1 every 5 years on the road (Pic below). The big Bowls will host Round 2 and the Championship rotating every year (I realize that's 3 games for the current Big 4 Bowls... but the last bowl can choose any two teams not in the tournament to invite. the 1 bowl can get shafted every 4 years).

Remaining money grabs bowl games are free to invite whomever they want to whatever they want. I love that Lloyd got carried off after we beat florida, teams not in the tournament should be able to end their season with a win. Hey, there's still an NIT out there.

Hopefully this graphic works and sums up my proposal nicely. Why is this a bad idea? The NCAA already does most of it. What do you think?

     Hearing Daniel Horton speak on "Inside Michigan Basketball" brought back some memories, good and bad.  It made me think about how far the program has come, and the obstacles that they have overcome. 

     Inexplicably, my Michigan basketball fandom originated from watching this guy

Jack up contested 3 pointers that would make Tim Hardaway Jr. blush.  Dom Ingerson was like the NFL Braylon Edwards of college basketball.  He couldn't hit a 3 pointer for his life unless he was falling out of bounds with three guys draped over him.  My fandom grew out of free tickets and a love for the University of Michigan.   I suppose thats why Brian's wording, "Right now we're going through the last vestiges of having no expectations because we have no program" made me just a little bit angry.  Because I can remember when we had no program.  I remember when beating Bowling Green was a big deal.  I was there, and it was actually quite a while ago.

     There were starts and stops along the way.  When Daniel Horton came on the scene and ripped off 13 wins in a row including Michigan's only contest against baby brother

finishing third in the big ten conference, I thought the program had arrived.  Several thousand key injuries, a costly suspension, and several broken promises from Bill Martin later, and hindsight tells a different story. 

     That beautiful sparkling player development center standing next to Crisler.  That tells me that the program has arrived.  You see, that practice facility was promised to Tommy Amaker in 2001.  And when Daniel Horton came back to Crisler and remarked, "This was promised to us as freshmen.  We were going to be using this facility as juniors" it brought back all the old anger.  I cannot blame Tommy Amaker for telling him that, as it was the same line of garbage Bill Martin was selling him.  Years later in a rivals article about the big house renovation, Martin would comment on the (then)dilapidated state of Crisler Arena, stating "I know what side my bread is buttered on.  If basketball recruits care about facilities, they wont come to Michigan." 

Oh how far we have come.  Can you imagine David Brandon saying that?  Just look around that arena.  Look at that gorgeous scoreboard, every inch of it flat panel display.  At the brand new block "M" adorned seating.  Look at that shining glass-encased practice facility.  Go ahead tell me that Martin layed the groundwork for it.  Then I'll remind you that he promised it a DECADE ago.  Think for a second where the program would be if he had kept his promise.  I know, I know, he had the Ed Martin scandal to think about.  But look at USC.  Look at OSU.  If I'm not mistaken, OSU's basketball program actually got STRONGER in the wake of their scandal.  USC's football team seems to be doing just fine.  You are blaming the wrong Martin. 

     But enough of the old anger.  Four years ago this young man stepped onto the Crisler floor for the first time

I'm going to say that the moment Novak walked out onto the floor, that was the moment Michigan had a program again.  That team went on to beat #4 UCLA, #4 Duke, beat Clemson in the NCAA tournament, until finally conceding a tight game to the #2 Blake Griffins and their ridiculous officiating crew.

     Just look at where Michigan Basketball is today, and what they have overcome.  I dont think they have played a home game this year in front of less than 10,000 fans.  Thats a testament to both the marketing department and the team on the floor.  Just standing there in that mostly-dead crowd at the Wisconsin game.  Having witnessed Michigan totally embarrass a ranked Wisconsin team.  And it didn't even seem like a big deal.  Like it was expected.  How far we have come.  And what fun we have to look forward to in the coming years.  I guess what I am trying to say is...

  How much fun is this? 

As we approach the finish line for recruiting, I thought it might be interesting to compare the Top 100 players for each of the top 3 recruiting sites.

As fans, we tend to favor the particular site that ranks our recruits the highest.  I thought it might be interesting to see how many players are universally lauded.

Seven of our current commits are in the Top 100 of at least one site, but surprisingly only two* of our current commits made all three lists.  Scout would seem to be our favorite service this year since they have five our our current commits on their list.

Other schools of note for their success:

- Alabama has ten recruits that make at least one of the lists.

- Florida State has seven recruits that make at least one of the lists.

- Texas has eleven recruits that make at least one of the lists.

- Miami (YTM) has six recruits that make at least one of the lists.

B1G Members & Notre Dame:

- Iowa has only one recruit that makes at least one of the lists.

- Michigan State has only one recruit that makes at least one of the lists.

- Northwestern has only one recruit that makes at least one of the lists.

- Notre Dame has seven recruits that make at least one of the lists.

- Ohio State has five recruits that make at least one of the lists.

- Penn State has two recruits that make at least one of the lists (one is Armani Reeves).

- Wisconsin has three recruits that make at least one of the lists.

With just a few weeks until signing day there are still 35 uncommited players that make one of the three top 100 lists.

The composite list in alphabetical order by School of interest:

* Edit - Corrected an error in the Rivals list and resorted by School of interest.  Thanks to RickH for pointing out the error (I left off two players on the Rivals list which moved all the players below them up two spots.)