football

Rivals has put out a few articles in which they have been in contact with a few 2010 signees. They have mentioned things like their workouts, when they will try and arrive to UofM, and their current weights. When Richard Ash signed with us, we all thought that at his listed 263 lbs, he would be a 3 tech or more "outside" D-Lineman..... This article quotes Ash as saying that he weighs around 310. He also says he is not "fat" and that he has been following the Barwis plan very well...If he is 310!!! that is crazy... That can add some more depth to nose tackle and add even more size to our D-Line.......Sounded like pretty good nes to me

 

http://michigan.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1085888

According to the front page of Rivals Kinard must pass a test before enrolling for summer classes.   I do not have premium so my best guess is that we are looking at the same Ohio exam that delayed JT Turner last year.  Here's hoping that Antonio gets the job done because I think he may be an asset at inside linebacker.... or Max Back?

So all the MSU head coaches are visiting a couple of the inner city schools here in Chicago to discuss teamwork with elementary level children and my wife's school(yes, she is a teacher) just happens to be one of them.

And as luck would have it, good ol' Mark Dantonio was chosen to visit my wife's class and teach along side her this afternoon. The good news is one of her students is a big UM fan and wears a Michigan sweatshirt most days, so she is sending him to greet Dantonio as the class representative. In addition, I gave her class a Michigan football a while back that will be proudly on display to greet Mark D when he arrives. 

GO BLUE!

Coach Schiano here. You might remember me from such fine diaries as MGoStatistics, Visualizing the Hennechart (aka the Hennegraph), and some other forgotten gems (the last being a drug-induced haloscan rant of epic proportion). Or you might not. But at least those stats got some front page love from blogmaster-in-chief Brian, despite the purported "diss". PYTHON RULES!

In last week's post, we summarized some word counts over the years to definitively show that Brian is awesome, which he is. What left a bad taste, however, was the weak attempt at the end of that diary to summarize word usage via a single Wordle. Yes, Wordle is awesome, but no one Wordle can this blog describe, as someone famous once said; probably not somebody associated with Wordle, though.

Thus we bring you a deeper analysis of the blog via the simple tool of Word Frequency Analysis (WFA). By simply counting how many times a word is used, great insight into this blog and its content can be achieved. Or, at least, mild amusement can your way be brought. Minimally, sentences can in Yoda style be written.

The results below come from (somewhat arbitrary) comparisons of the frequencies of different words. The conclusions come from my brain. Thus, the former can be trusted, and the latter should likely be dismissed. But hopefully each analysis is clear: a table, with a list of (frequency, word) pairs, where frequency is the number of times that particular word appeared in mgoblog over its entire lifetime, 2004 until present.

And now, for the results! Brace yourselves, this gets ugly.

First, we analyze how often particular sports are mentioned:

3252	football
1119	hockey
1118	basketball
300	baseball
111	soccer
1	soccer-sucks-no-it-doesn't

The word football is mentioned over 3000 times in this history of articles on this blog, or three times as often as hockey or basketall. This is a football blog. Proven, BOOM!

Now, an analysis of how often various places are mentioned:

617	ann
613	arbor
156	columbus
119	pahokee
64	lansing

It's just as you thought: even Pahokee rules over Little Brother's home.

Now we study the popularity of various coaches:

2394	rodriguez
1332	carr
262	bo
248	tressel
183	ferentz
129	paterno
124	berenson
123	schiano
93	schembechler
55	woody

Rodriguez not surprisingly is mentioned more times than anybody else. More importantly, Schembechler beats Woody again. 7-5-1 you Ohio lover! And we put Schiano in there, well, because, you know.

You might find yourself wondering about the dominant mgoblog receiver. If so, we give you the receiver analysis:

1002	manningham
721	breaston
469	avant
193	braylon
48	tacopants

Tacopants: Thrown to more often than you might like, but not the main target of mgoblog, with only 48 mentions. And Manningham for the win - who can forget his PSU or MSU performances?

Who is mgoblog's favorite running back? Well, this was an easy one to guess:

2447	hart
1606	minor
691	mcguffie
11	biakabutuka

Mgoblog harts Hart, and associated T-shirt sales. And Biakabutuka may only have been mentioned 11 times by Brian, but each time he was mentioned, he went for 313 yards. There is a t-shirt idea, by the way: "Biakabutuka 313" and nothing else on it. He should start the 313 Foundation too; are you reading this Tshimonga?

Onto the quarterback competition:

1720	henne
1305	forcier
734	tate
301	denard
261	devin
218	brady
101	navarre
10	dilithium
1	tate/denard

Henne for the win (also no surprise). Prediction for the year: the Dilithium count goes up quite a lot. And a note on the high count of Forcier: Remember, said Yoda, there was another.

And now we study two particular schools of football philosophy: Lloydball and Tresselball.

19	lloydball
5	tresselball
1	lloyd/tresselball

Lloydball for the win. Unfortunately, the dominance of Lloydball on this blog turned out not to predict their head-to-head record (we would have settled for 19-5-1, yes).

Speaking of football philosophy, we also study the dominance of the spread:

688	spread
31	spreads
13	spread-option
3	spreaders
3	spread-type
3	spread-offense
3	non-spread
2	spread-to-run
2	spread-n-shred
2	spread-mad
2	anti-spread
1	ur-spread
1	spreadmania
1	spreadfather
1	spread/zone-read
1	spread-zone
1	spread-run-throw
1	spread-option-happy
1	spread-o
1	spread-ish
1	spread-hating
1	spread-happy
1	spread-happiness
1	spread-friendly
1	spread-first
1	spread-dominated
1	spread-crazy
1	spread-combating
1	spread-and-shred
1	pseudo-spread
1	hyper-spread

The spread rules mgoblog. Note: I am pretty sure most of these were football related.

Now we move onto more important matters, like the study mascot names:

1312	wolverines
462	buckeyes
400	spartans
272	gophers
225	badgers
130	hawkeyes
104	wildcats
109	illini
77	nittany
77	hoosiers
29	boilermakers

There were three references to gopherholes (which we didn't count for the gophers). Either way, the Boilermaker is the least desirable mascot, which we knew already. Even less mention than a Hoosier!

Finally, if you'll indulge, we'll get into some slightly more off-topic terms. Let's start with food. What about the food preferences of mgoblog? Sadly, not much data here, making us wonder if Brian eats very much or is rather some kind of blog-creating Cyborg sent from our future UofM overlords to get us through these rough times (possible, no? hmm? HMMM?). But from what we could find:

34	bacon
9	sausage

10	hamburger
4	hotdog

33	pizza
1	pppppizzaaa

13	coke
4	pepsi

So Brian likely eats bacon for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch, pizza for dinner, and prefers Coke over Pepsi. ENQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW, AND NOW THEY DO.

Being a blog of international repute, mgoblog also mentions some people of differing nationalities:

28	germans
26	french
18	russians
4	greeks
400	spartans

What is this, a blog of the ancient era? Oh yeah, right, those Spartans. Let's not remember them.

Brian also uses his fair share of saltier language. For example:

1	breast
2	breasts

Well, he's got those counts right, at least. And then there's:

182	ass
48	badass
29	asshole
27	kickass
23	asses
1	ass-kickage
1	ass-raping
1	ass-shaking
1	ass-tasting
1	asshat-wearing
1	asshatted
1	asshole/prick
1	asswhooping
1	crazyass
1	scary-ass
1	shiny-ass
1	silly-ass
1	skinny-ass
1	slow-ass
1	smarmy-ass
1	smartass
1	stupid-ass
1	wack-ass
1	whiteass
1	freekbass

So you can definitely tell your mother, there is lots of ass on this blog. If you're wondering where "ass-tasting" came up in Brian's writings, see Blogs with Balls Recappening. That is one crazy recappening. Finally, the F word:

68	fuck
48	fucking
7	motherfucker
6	motherfucking
5	fucked
4	fuckin
3	fuckers
3	motherfuckers
2	muthafucka
1	fuckchrist
1	fuckeyes
1	fuckity
1	mothafuckin
1	mothafucka*

A reasonable number of fucking going on here too, but probably not by the readers (ZING!). The last one, mothafucka*, is used in the following gem, in which some guy on Tulsa named Germany is repeatedly called "the Germinator" by the announcers. Brian writes:

"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."

Classic.

Sorry, one last set of bad words:

115	appalachian
108	horror

Just keep moving folks, keep moving. And let them never be mentioned again. Speaking of which:

60	kitten
56	kittens
1	demon-kitten
1	kitten-strangling

Just keep moving folks, keep moving. And let them never be mentioned again. Speaking of which:

60	kitten
56	kittens
1	demon-kitten
1	kitten-strangling

Hopefully fewer kittens are in our future. Or we will have to strangle them all.

We end with some fairly random studies. First, a gender study yielded the following information about the different types of "boys" mentioned on the blog:

203	boy
26	cowboy
7	fanboy
6	boyfriend
4	ballboy
3	playboy
1	boy-band
1	ex-boyfriend
1	fratboy
1	georgiaboy
1	mgowhippingboy
1	nancyboy
1	non-fanboy
1	posterboy
1	sissy-boy
1	wonderboy

and about girls:

126	girl
41	girlfriend
2	14-year-old-girl
2	cowgirl
2	farmgirl
1	batgirl
1	ex-girlfriend
1	girl-men
1	girl-on-girl
1	girlish
1	girly
1	then-girlfriend
1	mgogirlfriend

The boys still outnumber the girls, alas. You'll have to look up the "girl-on-girl" quote on your own, playboy.

And we conclude with some word counts that we noticed "coincidentally" ended up at the same frequency. Or did they?????

64	lansing
64	oops

123	hopson
123	mistakes

128	harbaugh
128	mom
128	penetration

These results probably mean nothing. But if true about Harbaugh, it may be a more difficult road for him to climb if he wants to coach here someday. Just sayin'.

RichRod talks about the quarterback competition at the Big Ten meetings.

Michigan’s quarterback battle seems destined to drag late into fall practice, and coach Rich Rodriguez doesn’t mind the competition one bit.

Rodriguez reiterated at the Big Ten spring meetings Tuesday that incumbent starter Tate Forcier and fellow sophomore Denard Robinson are neck and neck atop the depth chart.

“It’s wide open, it’s not just coach speak,” Rodriguez said. “Denard and Tate are right there battling for it. Denard made a lot of steps in the spring and then Devin (Gardner) coming in for the first time did pretty well. He’s still behind the guys, which you would expect because it’s his first spring. But it’s going to be an interesting battle.”

“I thought they did a pretty good job as true freshmen, but our expectation in their second year are a whole lot higher,” Rodriguez said.

So how does Rodriguez see the quarterback battle shaking out?

“I don’t,” he said. “What I hope it does is elevate all of those guys, and if all of them get elevated because of the competition within each other but still understand the team concept then it’s all win-win.”

Prediction based on flimsy evidence: Coach Rodriguez will employ a more deliberate quarterback rotation system in 2010 to get Tate and Denard a more equal number of snaps.

---

Meanwhile, Coach Beilein put out a little more information about a possible European tour this summer for the men's basketball team. Beilein said:

...he expects to make an overseas trip with his basketball team this summer.

"We’re working through some of the possibilities there right now," Beilein said from the Big Ten spring meetings. "We can get games, it’s where we can get them because the Italian leagues are just finishing, the German leagues are just finishing, the Belgian leagues are just finishing. It’s hard to get a coach to make a commitment for Aug. 23, so we’re working. That’s what we would like to do."

Beilein said Michigan would have to travel overseas the week of Aug. 22, after summer semester classes are finished but before the fall term begins.

Prediction based on flimsy evidence: LLP does not get a fifth year and Michigan signs a European player in the 2011 recruiting class.

http://www.maizenbrew.com/2010/5/18/1476932/fun-with-numbers-michigans-2...

Interesting write up analyzing Red Zone Touchdowns.  Its crazy how Michigan was 41st overall in scoring offense but 116th in red zone offense.  Between Denard's quicks and Hopkins power hopefully this number can improve dramaticallly in 2010.  Go Blue!