playoffs

Old McPointsalot had a farm, E-I-E-I-Oh. And on that farm he had…

A Rainbow-Pooping Unicorn. This isn't going to do us any favors with the New York Times. Also you should mentally add "unicorn pooping rainbows" to things you should never search for on Google Images.

What you are seeing (other than a unicorn pooping rainbows at a post-Apocalyptic Gowanus Canal) is the opening salvo of BlueSeoul's last game wrap of the season:

This week's love-hate relationship status with Al Borges is .... .... Love? That's odd, because during the game there were times when the needle was strongly tilted towards hate.  But after a second look at the game film, the final analysis, just like the outcome of the game, is slightly positive.

Much like the Iowa game, the lack of production on offense wasn't really his fault so much as it was a combination of a lack of execution, personnel limitations, and a darn good defense.

So ends 2011, the year of the oxymoronic fecal substances. On to 2012, the year that is the year we play Alabama in Dallas.

Unto this breach goes hart20 to give an early and detailed count of returning starters for next season's opponents. He wrote this before Coker quit Iowa but for future reference whenever you preview Iowa always count at least one extra sacrifice to the Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God. Ohio State returns the most starters (they lose 5 on offense and none on D) while Air Force has to replace 17 starters and their backup QB. Diary of the Week, this.

And in That Future Was a Playoff, F-U-O-Hi-O. Playoff the first is by JeepinBen and takes parts of the basketball tournament that might work for football. It has 11 teams. The MWC and Big East champions plus four at-large teams play a week after the conf. championship games, then face three of the five big conference teams in Round 2. It would see Bama playing at TCU on December 10. I would give the at-large teams the home field instead of the crappy conference champs. Boise State fans will say different but Boise State's president probably won't be too hurt about splitting half of 110,000 tickets rather than half of 10,000 to have the game on blue turf.

The second is by Seattle Maize and isn't a playoff, more like "move the BCS decision until after the bowls." Ten teams go to BCS bowls based on tie-ins, and then we recalculate the BCS to pit the best two of the remaining five (the Cotton gets an upgrade) against each other. Upside: the only fans traveling on short notice are going to the National Championship game (which should be two weeks after). Downside: doesn't really solve anything – it's just another BCS, albeit a better one than we have now.

And in Those Playoffs Were These Recruits. I can't believe umhero wrote this composite ranking chart of three sites' Top 100 on the boards. Michigan's seven players who make someone's Top 100 is tied with Florida State for 3rd. Texas has 11; Bama 10. Our reality is the one that exists in some Alabama freshman's NCAA 2004* dynasty (his roommate plays Boise State and created Cam Newton as payback for the entire pack of Fig Newtons that disappeared from the fridge). Also in this universe he can edit recruit names to funny things like 2013 S.C. receiver, "Uriah LeMay," and Ace would interview them. Ace also spoke to PA tight end Adam Breneman.

If you are a recruit in RollTide06's reality, before choosing a school based on NFL potential, best to read docwhoblocked's study on your chances first.

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* If it was '05 nobody would be able to catch; if it was '03 he wouldn't know to hire name his generic middle-aged coach Saban.

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And the Basketball Was Back, but it Never Left, Yeah It Did, No It Didn't, Yeah It Diddanoitdidn't. We join ClearEyesFullHart in an appreciation fest of where Michigan basketball has come from Dom Ingerson. However far this goes, it feels like the cagers have now crawled through the shit pipe to clear the program from the prison of the '90s, carved our name in the half-way house that claimed SMU football, put in our time at Amaker Grocery in the aughts, and now we're on a road to paradise. It makes a much better story than an ellipsis between tournament appearances:

I suppose that's 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.

The argument is semantic, and on the Ellerbe years I'd rather forget too, but in ways I'm with CEFH. There were times in the lost years that Michigan was reduced to a 3rd string walk-on Jewish kid playing guard with literally no ligament in his elbow, but I'd still take any five of Dani Wohl's vital organs over this year's Penn State team.

More Blockhams by Six Zero and the Sparty hate gets going on his home site:

The artwork is fantastic, and Six is really one of the good guys. You sense a 'but' in there. Okay there's a but, but first repeat the caveat about Six Zero being awesome in 99% of ways. But: social messaging future Buckeyes and trolling Spartan offspring when they ask an answerable question are acts that make me not like the Michigan fan characters. The Sugar Bowl one was great. He's got "Tom" down. "Desmond," the collegiate Blockham, appears annoying and probably got his MGoBlog account suspended for copious use of the word "Stud." Grandpa Glenn's an asshole. Needs MOAR character development. Am i being overly harsh on a comic that's six strips old? Yes I am.

And in Etc. There Was a Yak. Seriously, There's a Yak in This Diary! CRex's personal life and what the dry ear wax phenotype has to do with the bar scene in Ulaangom. And a shout-out to everyone who helped the Mathlete complete the now comprehensive list of D-I coaches and coordinators since '03.

Best o' th' Boards

THE SECRET AND ASTOUNDING ADVENTURES OF ACE, THE MAN WHO BLOGGGED

Using the sneaky but effective ploy of posing as a mild-mannered classmate of Ace, patstansik, better know as "Pre-Game Pat," scored the exclusive interview with the elusive Anbender. What mysteries lie behind the only person doing actual work around here? What improbable twists of fate and snappy dressing led a young man of San Francisco to climb to the heights of bloggerdom, and reach fame so great his mom gets questions from the checkout guy at Kroger's.* It's all there in Ace: The Podcast.

If you'd like to share your own story on how you became a Wolverine, you can do so in the thread by Mr.Mario86.

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* There's no apostrophe-'s' in 'Kroger' you say? Well I say this is Michigan fergodsakes's

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OHIO: BIRTHPLACE OF WOODSON, HOWARD, AND SCHEMBECHLER

Voting has concluded on the new Ohio license plate voting with "Bo" and "Worst State Ever" notable write-ins. Well trolled my friends.

NUMBERS TOO OR JUST WINGS?

The battle lines are drawn. Of things I don't like changing, the numbers on the helmets are somewhere between the fact that keys don't look like keys anymore and my hair line, i.e. doesn't bug me that much but if I had a choice I'd go back to the way things were.

HAPPY HOKEIVERSARY!

It was this week last year. Who's awesome? You're awesome!

people who like the BCS: no people

Would be this: A dull blowout that invalidates the regular season and proclaims a second-place finisher in their own division a national champion when other one-loss teams are shut out because of… stuff. And things. Afterwards, a system designed to protect the sanctity of the regular season above all causes the winners of that blowout to print up shirts declaring "we won the one that counted."

This makes people upset. A foaming Dan Wetzel is still being chased by a helicopter containing men with tranquilizer guns:

Miles even made the case postgame that LSU should be in consideration for the AP title based on its season-long body of work, including the previous triumph over Alabama.

“That’s for the voters to figure,” Miles said.

When the coach of a team that was shut out in the championship game is arguing that he should win the championship anyway, the system is an unqualified disaster.

The sport’s power brokers will meet here Tuesday to discuss the future, and many have predicted significant changes. If there is one positive from this tractor pull, it’s that it should help continue the groundswell toward a playoff, even if it’s just four teams to start.

See also a suicidally depressed Michael Weinreb and a puzzled Brian Phillips.

BCS ratings are collapsing along with attendance in an era when football is thriving. Average bowl attendance hit a 30-year low, and that's based on increasingly fictional announced numbers. Clemson and West Virginia played the least-watched BCS game ever. Moving to ESPN has caused ratings to shrink 21% from two years ago. The BCS has finally pissed off too many people to be permitted to live. So says just about everybody.

Except Jim Delany, obviously.

“There’s a real concern about a slippery slope and what a playoff means to college football,” Delany said.

If he said it again, I'll say it again: you should have thought about that in 1998. It doesn't matter. Now that college football postseason's horrendous structure is hitting the big guys in the wallet, change is coming.

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The NYT says "change to the current structure of college football's post season [is] imminent" based on interviews with everyone, with a four-team playoff the most likely outcome. Matt Hayes quotes the usual high-ranking official saying simply "It gets done."

The logistics are uncertain since there are apparently "50 to 60" ways you can structure a four team playoff, and by God these bowl games fleecing us yearly are valued partners. The way to do it is to cut them out of the picture and maximize the piles of revenue by assuring sellouts: home games. On New Year's day, if you like, with Pasadena waiting a week or so later, on an actual Saturday maybe.

That won't happen because the Fiesta Bowl will throw a hissy fit, but whatever half-ass change to the BCS college football's power brokers come up with to prevent the torches and pitchforks from reaching their door will actually, finally be a meaningful expansion of opportunity for the two to three schools that get screwed every year there isn't a USC-Texas matchup, which is 90% of years. It will be maybe three quarters of an ass.

As long as they start detaching themselves from their parasites, this is a major step towards sanity. If the boring regional wank-fest that was the national championship game had been preceded by LSU and Alabama wins over Oklahoma State and Oregon or Stanford, oh well. They earned it. Instead they were handed it. That's a bridge too far for a sport already under siege for being fraudulent.

In 1997, back when 7-point leads were comfortable and safeties were meant for hitting people while corners did the covering* undefeated and no-brainer No. 1 Michigan went to the Rose Bowl. That was pretty cool. We faced Washington State and Ryan Leaf back when he was Ryan Leaf and not Ryan Leaf, Woodson made that interception to stop the comeback keep Michigan in striking distance (wow I forgot that context), and woo forever.

Meanwhile the conferences that weren't the Big Ten and Pac Ten were into their third year of a "bowl coalition" to match up the best two teams possible. Undefeated kick-ball-in-OT-vs-Mizzou Nebraska went to that and beat the tar out of Tennessee. The AP declared the next day's Daily cover something to hang on your wall forever, the coaches gave Osborne his send-off gift, and it didn't matter that there was a co- because starting next year there would be the perfect championship system to determine an unquestionable champion…for 1997.

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* This wasn't at all true unless you literally had Charles Woodson in your backfield. Dude should win an award for that or something.

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Getting' Jiggy With It isn't working. This has been the BCS's problem since its inception. In 1998 it was the perfect system to pit the last big conference undefeateds against each other, but then it left out an undefeated minor conference team and arbitrarily selected one of several similar 1-loss teams to face unquestioned numero uno Tennessee. Every year there was at least some complaint they patched with an overreaction on the next one. Team A beat Team B beat Team C who got in? Overrate head-to-head and dump half the computers. Too influenced by pollsters? Let's get more computers. Teams running up the score? Dump the margin of victory. AP and Coaches No. 1 USC left out of a three-horse race? Overrate the polls. Undefeated SEC team left out of a three-horse race? Overrate schedule strength. Boise State keeps going undefeated by playing Wyoming 12 times? Autobid the little guys. Two Big Ten teams about to rematch? Oh the pollsters can jig the system. Wait the pollsters are jigging the system? Kick 'em out and get our own pollsters. Two SEC teams about to rematch? Dammit.

This is what a process looks like when it has no forethought. I could say the same about many playoff proposals. Every year there's a perfect system that would be perfect for that year if we had that system. What we should be asking for is a system that would be good enough every year.

Good enough is good enough. Math says if you found the best team in a 120-team league after 12-13 games of unbalanced schedules, you just got lucky. What we're shooting for here is something where only the homeriest homer of Domer will be claiming their team got duked. The last team in should have an ironclad case, were they to emerge victorious, to be the No. 1 overall team, but the first team out should not have a very good case to be given that chance.

Autobids are bad (for this). This includes conference champions, sorry. The championship games help clear things up by giving contenders an extra bellwether. However a two-division format means 8-4 teams can beat 12-0 teams they lost to the first time. The Big Longhorns Conference still technically exists. So does the Big East. Bowl tie-ins for conference champions are great and should stay but nothing should be automatic about a playoff.

The right process is some kind of playoff. I'd be fine if it just went back to bowl games and polls to determine the National Champion, but the game has gone national and there's money to be made.

The question is how many teams should be in it. The current system has two teams. The Plus-One proposal discussed by the conferences last year is basically four with some measure of flexibility. Brian wants six, which is the fewest that will accommodate undefeated mid-majors most years. Hinton proposed 10, which reasonably fits most of the good 2-loss teams.

What I'd like to do here is UFR the BCS years past and see which of these playoff systems, the BCS, a Plus-One, Brian's, or Doc Saturday's, would have been best.

1998: Slightly similar to this year, with one undisputed team on top, then lots of 1-loss teams to pick from. Four-teamer is #1 Tennessee (12-0), #2 FSU, #3 Kansas St, and #4 Ohio State. Six teamer includes #5 UCLA and #10 Tulane. Ten teams nets #6 Texas A&M with 2 losses, #7 Arizona with 1 loss, #8 Florida with 2 losses, and #9 Wisconsin with 1 loss (the Big Ten Champ). Ideally: Brian.

1999: The first obvious matchup of two undefeated BCS teams, #1 Florida State, and #2 Virginia Tech. Clear #3 Nebraska stands apart from a ton of 2-loss teams like Tennessee, Bama, Michigan, Wisconsin and MSU. 1-loss KSU is in there too. 10 teams works if you take Marshall over 3-loss Florida or Penn State. Ideally: BCS

2000: #1 Oklahoma, #2 Florida State, who lost to #3 Miami, who lost to #4 Washington. #5 V-Tech, and #6 Oregon State also had 1 loss each. After that is a lot of 2-loss BCS teams. The BCS system generated all sorts of controversy for teams 2-4 being mostly indiscernible, and lo more overreactive rules were written into the BCS codec. Ideally: Brian.

2001: Another year where 1 is clear but the rest ain't. #1 Miami, then #2 Nebraska, #3 Colorado with 2 losses but who just beat Nebraska, #4 Oregon with Joey Harrington. Getting to six includes 2-loss SEC teams #5 Florida and #6 Tennessee. You're leaving out 1-loss Illinois and 2-loss Texas here but 2-loss Tennessee was a shoe-in for the national championship game until falling in the SEC championship. An expanded field of 10 also draws in Stanford and Maryland. Ideally: Plus-One.

2002: #1 Miami, #2 Ohio State, HUGE GAP, #3 Georgia, #4 USC, #5 Iowa, #6 Washington State. This is the year you want to just skip to an N.C. game because the top two are undefeated and everyone else has 1 or 2 losses against easier schedules. A 10-team playoff includes Oklahoma, Kansas State, Notre Dame, and either Texas or Michigan. Could you really build a strong argument that the 2002 team is a national title contender? Ideally: BCS

2003: A top tier of three 1-loss teams: #1 Oklahoma, #2 LSU, #3 USC, then and easy cutoff between #4 Michigan and #5 Ohio State, #7 Florida State. Again you're picking between 2-loss teams for the 6th spot. Here I drew in FSU over Texas for winning their conference (not an auto-bid but it can count). Whichever team that is would have to play in Ann Arbor under the Brian plan to avoid having a repeat of M-OSU in the same place a week after The Game. The next four teams would include Texas, Tennessee, Miami (YTM), and either K-State or 1-loss Miami (NTM). This is a great case for a 4-team playoff, a decent case study for a 6-teamer, and shows how a 10-teamer is getting down to 1-loss MAC teams. Ideally: Brian.

2004: Again a clear top tier: #1 USC, #2 Oklahoma, #3 Auburn. A fourth is #5 Cal or #4 Texas, a sixth undefeated #6 Utah. Undefeated #9 Boise State is out there too. Expanding to 10 includes 2-loss Georgia, Virginia Tech, and 1-loss (not Big East yet) Louisville. Ideally: Brian.

2005: #1 USC, #2 Texas, BIG GAP, #3 Penn State, #4 Ohio State, #5 Oregon, #6 Notre Dame or maybe #11 WVU? Like '02 this is a "just play the NC" year. Twice in four years is enough to write a fix into the system for this sort of thing (more on this below). A 10-teamer includes Georgia, Miami (YTM), Auburn, and either VT, WVa., or LSU, or ??? – there are fully 10 two-loss BCS teams. Ideally: BCS.

2006: A one and many situation again. #1 Ohio State, then pick one from #3 Michigan (no need for shenanigans), #2 Florida, #5 USC, #4 LSU, #8 Boise State. I slotted in undefeated Boise over 1-loss Louisville and Wisconsin, and also moved USC over LSU for winning their conference. Going to 10 includes them plus probably Auburn and Oklahoma; after that is Brady Quinn's 10-2 Notre Dame who don't belong near an NC game except in ND fans' minds. Ideally: Brian.

2007: Sixer would have #1 Ohio State, #2 LSU, #3 Virginia Tech, #4 Oklahoma, #5 Georgia, and #10 Hawai'i. This might as well be 2011 with another pretty sure-fire #1 and some confusion after that. This would be a hard call between a BCS game (LSU's a strong #2 while the other 1-loss team is #8 Kansas) and a 6-teamer. Going to 10 includes Mizzou, USC, Kansas, and West Virginia, who are indiscernible from Georgia and VT but cuts off before 10-2 Arizona State. Ideally: Doc Sat.

2008: This was the season that wasn't played. Henri the Otter of Ennui wins. Okay fine this is a mess of seven 1-loss teams at the top and two undefeated mid-majors, one of which played Michigan and respectable MWC schedule. Sixer ends up with #1 Oklahoma, #2 Florida, #3 Texas, #4 Bama, #6 Utah, and #5 USC. Sorry #9 Boise State. After that there's 1-loss Texas Tech and Penn State and 2-loss Ohio State. If you're okay with leaving out Boise for USC it's Ideally: Brian.

2009: It's not 2004 despite three undefeated BCS teams since the Big East was by now a mid-major. #1 Alabama and #2 Texas in easy, and #3 Cincy and #4 TCU after. Going to six includes #5 Florida and #6 Boise State. Only Florida among the six has a loss. The next four are Oregon, Ohio State, Georgia Tech and Iowa, all with 2 losses so 10 teams would only muddle things that are fine, but this year would work well as BCS, Plus-One, or the Cook Six Plan. Ideally: Brian.

2010: Top two are easy #1 Auburn and #2 Oregon. Top six hauls in #3 TCU, #4 Stanford, #5 Wisconsin, and #6 Ohio State. Again this is tailor-made for six teams (three undefeated, three with one loss). It's tempting to go with the NC format, TCU be screwed, but six is just fine. The 2-loss Sooners and Razorbacks, and 1-loss MSU and Boise would draw into a 10-team field. Ideally: Brian.

2011: Two is a rematch of #1 LSU and #2 Alabama. Four is #3 Oklahoma State, plus either #4 Stanford or #5 Oregon who beat them. And #7 Boise State, now with BCS scheduled teams and TCU. I'm giving Boise the entry in a six-team system over Arkansas so we don't have half the field from one conference. Ten teams would be a bitch (Hinton includes Clemson in there—the BCS standings would have four SEC teams in a 10-team field). Ideally: Brian.

So you're saying the boss's system is better?

Yeah, I…wait I have a bolded subconscious alter-ego too now?

No I'm Ace's bolded alter-ego, filling in.

Where's mine?

The coaches like me better. Boom BCS'ed!

Really?

He got bored right around the time you started going over every year since 1998.

:( So final score is Brian 9, BCS 3, and 1 each for a Plus One and Doc Saturday's 10-team bowlstravaganza. So six is the best solution, but far from a perfect solution. This makes sense when you look at an average season. For this I can even give you a

Ch..

..art of how many of each type of contender we've had in 14 Final BCS Standings:

This is a loose argument for a six-team playoff. There's a reasonable chance of having four or five undefeated or 1-loss BCS teams, plus one perfect mid-major, every year. Those mid-majors aren't going away with TCU and Boise joining one of the recently pilfered BCS leagues; you can see Marshall and Tulane popped up before they did. However any given year should expect plenty of 2-loss BCS teams, more than you want to pick from to expand to a field of 10. Six draws an imaginary circle around the top three rows and suggests most years you can get between 5 and 6 comfortably competitive playoff contenders.

But then you still have 5/14 years when that's not ideal in just this little sample. Is that acceptable?

No it isn't. Even if you figure the perfect Plus-One year and the perfect Doctor Saturday year wouldn't bother too many people if we rammed them into a six-team field, what's unacceptable are those three BCS wins. It's better than the BCS's 3/14 but hell some years you just wanna see Ohio State versus Miami (YTM), or Florida State versus Vick, or the Pete Carroll's Hollywood All Stars versus the Vince Young Show. So:

Let's have that!

Let's propose the six-team playoff system I'll call Brian-Plus:

• Six-team field chosen by a select committee/cabal like in basketball
• #3 and #4 hosting #6 and #5 respectively in home field quarterfinals the week after the conference championships (mid-majors who get in will almost certainly fall in that that 5- or 6-seed range to preclude too much blue turf in Round 1)
• Semifinals in Sugar and Orange Bowls on Jan. 1.
• Final a week later in the Rose Bowl.
• All other bowls left alone; bowls can schedule Round 1 losers. Rose Bowl can have its regular game a week earlier with the parade.

…but that seeding committee can also choose to declare a clear national championship game. So basically when they meet they decide a.) Is it two or six this year, and then b.) If it's six who gets in and how are they seeded? On years when there's a clear two-team BCS game we revert to something like the current system, with bowl tie-ins for the regularly scheduled bowl games.

I would also suggest removing one game from the regular season schedule (if only this would solve the FCS problem) so that the conference championships are played over Thanksgiving and Round One of the playoffs be a week after. Maybe that's pushing it.

With one night game and two ESPN fan reaction shots "Facepalm guy" made his way into our MGohearts in 2011. But who can forget the one fan whose visage got us through the years previous? Six Zero wins a Diarist of the Week for reviving the MGoProfiles to introduce us to the original fan we obsess over, one Lloyd Brady.

Because this is college football we cannot simply declare a champion of fans. No. We need a regional championship game. Then we need a national championship game. And then maybe a Plus One just in case Victor Shirtless (below) is the real deal. Yes, it's that week again. Not bowl week, but bitching about the bowls week.

Between the yummy Sparty NO schadenfreude (michelin) and the faint ignorable buzz from the Fredo schools passed over for their inability to make the family rich, there is a sense among us that something is terribly wrong with the BCS. Gameboy points out what the bowls are really supposed to be (they're exhibitions, not rewards). Eye of the Tiger has a rundown of some but not all of the criteria a playoff has to meet:

What an alternative to the BCS would have to look like:

Any viable alternative to the BCS, and by viable I mean palatable to ADs and school presidents, needs to do the following things:

1. Preserve the bowl system

2. Not extend the season far beyond its already extended point

3. Not threaten to engulf the regular season by morphing into an actual tournament

And lo the diarists had solutions:

POSTSEASON REFORM THE FIRST: Eight teams, ends January 21st. Gajensen's is an 8-team, 3-round playoff that confuses the hell out of everyone in order to try to appease everyone. I think the Top 4 BCS teams are automatic qualifiers and the rest goes down the line of conference champs.

POSTSEASON REFORM THE SECOND: Sixteen teams, and I'm 90% sure this guy likes the names of the Big Ten's divisions because he has a 7-step plan. Bluestreak expands this to 16 teams, with automatic qualifiers for every conference (Join the Sun Belt!) but a consistently weak conference loses their autobid (bye Sun Belt). He gets rid of some regular season games to make room so Michigan plays Ohio State in early November. There are tiers called "Champions" and "Contenders" and…this idea has lost me.

POSTSEASON REFORM THE TRAID: Six-teams, Round 1 at home instead of conf. champ games, Round 2 in the Bowls, Championship in the Plus 1 game a week later. Wolfman81 starts off by getting rid of conference championship games, and shows very good reasoning (they're more apt to repeat a game already decided than actually determine a champion). He makes an even stronger case about the BCS rules as it stands being a patchwork of reactions to things that went wrong before, basically an entire ship made of caulked holes and no foresight. The he suggests the Brian playoffs, end diary. I want this guy to write more diaries.

POSTSEASON REFORM THE ONE AFTER TRAID: Get rid of conference divisions but still have conference championships.Vasav read Wolfman's thing and then tried to replace the conference championships we just got rid of with a system that isn't very clear except don't replay games. You're still having 11-1 teams needing to play 9-3 teams to win their conference championship.

POSTSEASON REFORM THE MINE: Instead of an official conference championship game have a "Showcase" game that matches the best two teams from each division that haven't played each other yet. Occasionally you'll actually get to have a championship game. This year MSU would get the Rose Bowl bid and Michigan could play Wisconsin over an almost certain BCS bid. No automatic anythings: the conference chooses to game. If you ever do need to settle the score between two teams that didn't play each other, this becomes the Big Ten championship trophy.

Bwgrudt1484 notes that the Big Ten is playing 5 of our 8 bowl games within an hour's distance of our opponents' home fields (EDIT: within the home state) of our opponents. What else is new?

The Year In Review (Like How We Beat Ohio State)

Upchurch

Some of your favorite weeklies recap the year that was following Michigan's season-ending defeat of Ohio State, not counting the bowl game that comes after the game where we beat Ohio State. First, I bet you're wondering, after we beat Ohio State, what the final turnover margins and effects were for Michigan. Enjoy Life shows the year at +6, ranked 26, which is a GERG-to-Greg level recovery. A new metric that measures fumble recovery rates also shows this may be a little bit lucky:

Also abnormally lucky: 2006. Brian is convinced this is random except for offensive experience and pressure but I believe in non-random parts that come from things like good pursuit angles and attacking holes. When you don't touch the other team they don't fumble as much; good defense gives you more chances to knock something loose.

Stubob's Ugly Game of the Week hands out postseason awards for Ugliest Team of the Year and other doily awards. That one MST3K clip appears again.

Maize_in_spartyland has grades for everybody. I mean everybody in the Big Ten. What's with failing Indiana? Don't they at least deserve a "thank you for participating" ribbon or something?

Etc.

CRex got to the end of Three & Out and wrote a long thought on Carr and living up to Bo—pretty much exactly what you were thinking and feeling after reading Three & Out. Like so:

That's what we need to take away from the RR era. Our dad [Bo] died. Uncle Lloyd turned out be a distant and cold paternal figure. Uncle Rodriguez went through a rough time and had a meltdown. Uncle Martin was busy clicking buttons in excel. So a lot of the fanbase regressed from Michigan Men into bitchy children who said mean things on the radio or wrote them, despite the negative impact they had on The Team.

That was similar to my 3&O reaction except I also found myself wondering "I wonder if you can buy those Twin City socks on the internet?" Turns out a.) you can, and b.) THEY REALLY ARE THAT AWESOME AND I'M WEARING THEM RIGHT NOW (not yours Rimington winner David Molk).

For recruiting junkies, Ace put up the post-Darboh recruiting rankings. Ohio State got a 3-star from Florida I guess Urban knew and Adolphus Washington. Nebraska, Michigan, and Penn State had decommits.

And hockey plays Michigan State this weekend. Yesman2221 has the weekly preview but the short version is Michigan hasn't been playing as well as we'd like and MSU is coming off of a good series against the Gophers. Then again they're kind of like Michigan (one good defensive pairing then guh), except without a real head coach.

So, that's it for the diaries. Best of the board after a jump I guarantee you want to make.

UFR will go up tomorrow. FYI.

It's raining wallpaper. As per usual. This one is from jonvalk:

This week in bowl parasitism. Bowl games are parasites on college football designed to bleed as much money from the system as they can get away with. Thanks to the interest levels provided by the teams—not the stadiums or locations—some of them do actually pump money into the system (although far less money than an NCAA controlled playoff would). The latest example of this:

The Fiesta Bowl has a deal with the Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau that pays the bowl hundreds of thousands of tax dollars a year in return for requiring participating teams to stay in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley resorts.

The bowl says the agreement is strictly legal and good business for all parties involved.

But it may increase the cost for schools playing in the Fiesta Bowl and BCS Championship Game, because they are required to stay a certain number of nights at high-end hotels.

The bowl, according to records obtained by The Arizona Republic, received $491,340 from the Scottsdale CVB this past college-bowl season when the Connecticut, Oklahoma, Oregon and Auburn football programs stayed in Scottsdale-area resorts for the Fiesta Bowl and Bowl Championship Series title game, respectively.

Legal or not, that's a half-million dollars of overhead from the payment alone and however much more from the monopoly lock in the payment provides. We can ballpark how much this is from UConn's trip to the Fiesta last year:

UConn also has a hotel obligation — a total of 550 rooms at three different hotels ranging in price from $125-225 a night, not including tax, with blocks reserved for either three or seven nights.

Without the lock-in teams could put the band in six rooms at the Super Eight and save themselves a bucket of money. The Sugar does this as well. Their defense is "this is legal," which is true but beside the point.

If bowls are going to exist they should be worthwhile businesses without heaping unnecessary expenses on the participating teams. This is a relatively piddly expense relative to ticket guarantees that erase payouts and leave cash-strapped programs with a net deficit, but it just shows how much of a racket bowls are. Not that you needed to be told that when the Michigan-OSU game featured Rose Bowl reps when the combined chance of either team making it to Pasadena was zero percent.

Crose enough*! Andy Staples has an article about the Big 12's sudden, unsurprising opinion flip in re: an expanded playoff field. It promises change:

Monday, Big 12 athletic directors voted in a straw poll to get behind the idea of a plus-one format that would allow four teams to compete for the national title. Such a format would have allowed USC to play for the national title in 2003, Auburn to play for it in 2004, Texas to play for it in 2008 and Oklahoma State -- which finished behind No. 2 Alabama by the slimmest of margins in the BCS standings -- to play for the title this season. If the league's presidents choose to agree with their athletic directors, the Big 12's support would be a huge step forward. The Big 12 was one of several leagues that blocked SEC commissioner Mike Slive's 2008 proposal for a four-team, seeded tournament. The ACC was the only conference that supported the plan.

With Larry Scott now creating the future in earnest in the Pac-12, the major remaining obstacle to a playoff is one of these two men.

Left: Lando Mollari. Right: Jim Delany

Jim Delany still hates the Narn with all his heart.

“Our view is we’d like to stay where we are,” Delany told the Tribune. “We do believe in the slippery slope theory.”

You should have thought of that before you joined the BCS, dude. As soon as the dumbest playoff in history was instituted, outrage started piling up. As soon as the sanctity of the Rose Bowl was undermined, erosion got busy. The levees are about to break.

Staples is on board with big chunks of the MGoPlayoff, not quite arriving at six teams but still proposing something I'd love:

If conference leaders are smart, they'll design a plan that allows for the two semifinal games to be played on the home fields of the No. 1- and No. 2-seeded teams. If they wanted to appease the must-win-your-league crowd, they could require that a team must win its conference to host a semifinal. Home-site semifinals would eliminate concerns about fan bases traveling twice -- a non-starter -- and would help reinforce the importance of the regular season. Teams would go into the final week fighting for a home game in a sport where home-field advantage means a lot. Just imagine an LSU-Stanford semifinal at Tiger Stadium or an Alabama-Oklahoma State semifinal in Stillwater (using the must-win-conference rule). Also, to remove the negative consequences of a semifinal loss, the two losing teams would be placed into premium bowls, where they could take a well-deserved victory lap for a great season. This would appease bowl executives, who for some unknown reason strike fear into the hearts of the people who run the sport.

One day people will wake up and realize that doofs in yellow jackets getting paid is not in the best interests of the sport. Think Of The Children.

*[This.]

Not fair. UMHoops has David Merritt breaking down some of Michigan's pick and rolls from Maui.

Hard Hedge
As Witherspoon jumps out to hedge, Trey Burke puts on the brakes and changes direction with a between the legs dribble. All within a split of a second. This makes the play right here. The change of direction gives him another screen but also has his defender back up and lose attachment.

All Trey has to do now is get to the outside of Barton’s left leg and he will get in the lane.

It's Picture Pages for basketball. All we've got now is a superior use of the crop tool.

So exactly right. There was a point a few years ago when I railed almost weekly against the relentless stenography that mainstream coverage had degenerated into. It was the bubble screen of 2007. I dropped six months after that hobby-horse expired, but when an ESPN vet like Tim Keown lays into the modern press conference I cannot resist a very long blockquote:

The death of the interview has spawned a generation raised on generalities and clichés. Caution is a lesson [Titans QB Matt] Hasselbeck has learned many times, most recently after the Titans beat the Colts on Oct. 30, when he was asked -- or told, he can't remember the phrasing -- to compare current teammate Chris Johnson with former Seahawks teammate Shaun Alexander. In Hasselbeck's view, it was a question with "a negative vibe" -- his pet peeve.

What followed was an instructive look into the void left in the interview's wake. Hasselbeck, attempting to answer the question honestly, said he did see similarities: two great running backs who followed MVP-caliber seasons with "normal" years. He was attempting to make the point that both players were victims of unfair expectations, because nobody can be expected to perform at an MVP level every season. "It's hard to be elite every year," he said.

Predictably, he was seen as "ripping" Johnson and "throwing him under the bus." … The question was legitimate. Johnson, a former offensive player of the year and recent signee of a huge contract, had been booed at home in much the same way former MVP Alexander was when his production dropped off after he signed a huge contract. The answer, as far as it went, was legitimate as well. What was missing was context, and before Hasselbeck could massage his message, he was hit with a new question and the group conversation -- such as it was -- moved on.

"If I were Chris Johnson, I would have wondered, 'Why is my quarterback saying this about me?'" Hasselbeck says. "Everyone knows how the Shaun Alexander story ended in Seattle, so it looked like I was ripping Chris Johnson." The subsequent coverage centered on Hasselbeck's "unflattering" comparison between the two running backs. "I was asked a negative question, and instead of being a jerk I gave an honest answer," he says.

His solution? Be boring. "It's a headline-driven world, and what I said provided a headline," he says. "That's why I'm guarded, cautious. I don't want to accidentally give bulletin-board material. If someone asks me about a player, I say, 'He's a great player.' If they ask me about a coach, I say, 'He's a great coach.' "

The problem is finding which section to blockquote since all of it is deadly accurate. It starts "BEHOLD THE DECOMPOSED REMAINS of the sports interview" and is probably 3000 words long. It's worth the read.

The local spin comes in two parts. Part one: boy is it nice to have a coach with his banalities down pat. Rich Rodriguez may have gotten unfairly pilloried for his "get a life" statement, which was ripped out of context like Hasselbeck's statement was, but he was a magnet for that kind of stuff. Hoke hasn't had a misstep yet; he's settled into a comfort zone where the media is his lapdog, and that won't change. If things start going poorly the media will be defending Hoke and scorning fans until it's over.

Part two: Michigan's suddenly better about this than most schools with their coordinator pressers and the relatively straight answers given in there, especially from Mattison.

Etc.: Gobbler Country profiles Michigan, which is us. More on this later, but Chris Brown's long-ago profile of the Hokie D is remarkably useful since it's about how they've adapted to the spread. UMHoops talks Oakland with a Summit League blogger.

The conference championships are completed and it's not that one year Vince Young played USC, so the BCS's answer is a stupid one. Yes. Yes, it is that time again.

this "On Notice" board from 2006 is remarkably apropos today save for the hatred directed at random SEC mediocrities who failed to beat Florida

If the BCS hadn't popped out of its mother in midair above a dorsal fin, this would be the moment when it jumped the shark. Since it did we have to invent a new term for a terrible thing everyone hates reaching maximum troll. The BCS just Clay Travised all over us.

Anyway, every year at this time I pull out the MGoPlayoff proposal. I don't do this in any real hope it will make a difference, since anyone who could assemble our current system will botch a playoff just as badly. I don't really know why I do it. Maybe it makes me feel better—yes, there is a hypothetical version of college football that makes a goddamn lick of sense.

The goal!

CREATE A SINGLE TEAM WITH THE DEFINITIVELY BEST RESUME. College football is unique amongst sports in that the national title is essentially decided by eyeballing it. The only thing the BCS changed was to take the one team people used to eyeball and turn it into two. Hinton:

What we should be asking instead is, why does college football and college football alone insist on wedging itself into this ridiculous corner year after year? When did we concede to leave the results of a sport to a cacophonous, ill-informed debating society? How have we convinced ourselves that dragging statistics and resumés and eyeball tests to the podium — along with preconceived biases that trump them all — can possibly deliver a satisfying answer?

Obviously, it can't. Any answer to an unanswerable question is the wrong answer.

Literally every observer who has ever laid eyes on the Bowl Championship Series has mocked it as an absurd anachronism, and continues to mock it to this day. Rightly so. Every sane observer within the sport has mocked it as an absurd anachronism. Seriously: Voting on the better football team? Are we still doing this? We're really going to do it again? Deferring to polls and algorithms in a competition that keeps score? Why are we still doing this?

Because of the unique structure of college football, a playoff can be constructed to be inherently satisfying. That is: you can make something that always leaves one team alone atop a pile of skulls no one else in the country can match. This is obviously not the case right now.

The key components!

RESTRICTED FIELD. No 9-3 teams. Maintain as much of the importance of the regular season as possible. Keep out anyone who could win three straight and still reasonably have an AP vote go against them.

HOME GAMES. Helps with attendance, prevents people from having to travel multiple weeks, helps maintain importance of regular season, makes the guys at the bottom wade through a tougher task and helps bolster their pile-of-skulls argument.

BYES. Again, importance of regular season and pile-of-skulls argument.

NO AUTOBIDS, MAX TWO TEAMS PER CONFERENCE. Autobids can suck it. So can third place teams in their own conference. Also no first round intraconference matchups.

FINAL AT THE ROSE BOWL. Iconic. Would become one of the great traditions in American sports.

This year's version based on the final BCS standings:

1. LSU vs winner of 4. Stanford and 7. Boise State
2. Alabama vs winner of 3. Oklahoma State and 5. Oregon

Arkansas is left out because of the two-teams-per-conference rule; Boise and Oregon flip to prevent a conference matchup. The first two games would be this weekend with the second round on January 1st (2nd this year) and the final a week after. Anyone outside of the final four can go to whatever bowl they want, so this hardly touches the bowl system. The net result is removing one BCS bowl in favor of the playoff.

An eight team version of this is less ideal but also acceptable; that would see Kansas State and Wisconsin on the road in the first round against the SEC teams. Autobids are awful. Clemson and West Virginia can win three straight games here and still not be as worthy as LSU.

The pointlessness of existence!

Don't bother telling me it's not happening.  I know.

After the jump: blogpoll ballot time. Sure to endear me to Alabama fans even more.