1991 michigan state

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Previously: 1879, 1901, 1918, 1925, 1932, 1947, 1950, 1964, 1973, 1976, 1980, 1988, 1999

Special Guests: We've got both defensive captain/Butkus winner Erick Anderson, and 1991 scout team running back of the year Tyrone Wheatley!

1. SETUP AND PAYOFF

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Year 2 of Gary Moeller, coming off a year Iowa went to the Rose Bowl after Michigan lost to them and MSU by a point in consecutive weeks. Stadium renovated, back to grass! This one's personal.

2. THE TEAM

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Offense: Elvis Grbac is Dr. Touch. Stacked backfield; Ricky was the cutter, Jesse had the feet, Wheatley had the speed, Legette had no neck. Desmond went into the season #2 to Derrick Alexander, who got hurt and walk-on Yale Van Dyne stepped up. Big, mean, versatile OL. Ty Wheatley's recruiting story.

Defense: Mike Evans is a walk-on from Massachusetts, Lance Dottin's another big time athlete from there. Hutchinson makes everyone look good, Buster Stanley and Tony Henderson were young for NG but great. Athletes in Brian Townsend and Neil Simpson rotate with big Martin Davis. Young corners Dwayne Ware and Alfie Burch and new safeties Otis Williams and Corwin Brown replacing longtime starters. J.D. Carlson's XP streak.

3. THE NONCONFERENCE

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Slow BC start and constant big plays getting called back: no panic, just a setup for the Massachusetts guys to shine. Two big-time games: not gonna lose a 5th in a row to Notre Dame, total confidence even on the 4th and 1 call, but ND was full of talent. FSU threw out all the trick plays, including the Transcontinental, had some All-Americans, but Michigan was just as good.

4. THE BIG TEN AND ROSE BOWL

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Team finds itself, offense redesigned not just for Desmond but for scoring quickly so they don't have another FSU. Dangerous MSU and more dangerous Indiana, which needs a goal line stand (suck it Erick's brother!). Sleepy midseason—freshmen hit a wall, coaches keep them motivated for blowouts of Minnesota, Purdue, Northwestern, and Illinois. Ready for everything Ohio State had. Washington was another story—most talented team they played. Cornerbacks playing linebacker, linebacker playing end, and one of the best players of the era at DT.

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MUSIC:

• "Scenario"—A Tribe Called Quest
• "Lithium"—Nirvana
• "Breakdown"—Guns 'n Roses
• “Across 110th Street”

THE USUAL LINKS

• Helpful iTunes subscribe link
• General podcast feed link
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• What's with the theme music?

How many times have you been mistaken for Eddie Azcona, Tyrone?

The weekend. Via MGoVideo:

The Axe effect. Remember these guys?

Since they executed the above, Michigan is 18-7 in the Big Ten. Thanks Axe guys! Thanks, Tony Gerdeman! (Attention Tony: please don't do that again in the next couple weeks. Ace's blood will be on your hands.)

A brief digression into faulty math. By the way, Gerdeman, your numbers are horsecrap since they include a bunch of players who list offers from Michigan who Michigan had ceased recruiting. No one buys your head fake about Tommy Schutt when you include a guy (Pittman) who tried to commit to M and was rebuffed plus a bunch of OL Michigan had moved on from by the time Meyer was hired. 2012 head to head Meyer wins: Armani Reeves. End of list.

Of course, the head to head thing is beside the point. Ohio State is always going to win most of its recruting battles with Michigan because most of them will be for Ohio kids. This has not prevented Michigan from being good at football.

And this will be the future. Via WH, the future of the M-MSU rivalry if recruiting keeps going like this:

Look at the mauling on the line. Also cough cough infinite Desmond Howard bubble screens.

The bracket of storyline. Lunardi's latest has Michigan on the three line playing the Drexel Dragons in the first round. After that, the bracket is all storylines:

• If high seeds win the second round opponent would be Notre Dame
• Hypothetical Sweet 16 matchups would be against Duke (played earlier, semi-rival), San Diego State (Steve Fisher), or Alabama (footbaw matchup).

He's got us in Nashville right now; Marquette is the protected seed in the other Columbus pod. I'd hope we land either there or Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, Northwestern fans are pointing at tomorrow's game as perhaps their make-or-break moment for a first-ever NCAA bid. Bill Carmody is scoffing at the idea this is the biggest game in program history. Welsh-Ryan will be hyped.

Five star bump. Glenn Robinson is getting one. He's #1 on a recent Rivals list of the top ten players likely to move up when Rivals releases its final 2012 basketball rankings:

1. Glenn Robinson III
School: St. John (Ind.) Lake Central
The Buzz: The 6-foot-7 wing was knocking on the door of five-star status coming out of the summer. This winter, he appears to be well on his way to busting that door down. He has size, a complete game and high level athleticism that all translates at a high level. His impact at Michigan should be immediate and sizable.

Someone learned their lesson about John Beilein's talent evaluation skills after dropping Burke in their final rankings last year.

Brief position paper on "chink in the armor." ESPN fired the staffer who wrote the headline and suspended the anchor that spoke it aloud, causing some folks to question the inconsistency. I think it's the right call: a headline is something that is written down and considered. More importantly, it is also a place where double meanings and puns are crammed in as often as possible. A headline invites you to read it in all ways possible. If the staffer is too dumb to know this, he should be fired. If he's not, he should be fired.

The anchor probably should have gotten off with nothing other than a clarification that he was using the "chink in the armor" idiom in a way that is completely natural. They're talking about a big hole (turnovers) in Jeremy Lin's game. The idiom fits that conversation like a glove. These days a lot of folk use "unfortunate" to mean "awful" but in this case it is appropriate: the anchor's choice of words was unfortunate but not offensive.

How they do it. This Sporting News article on a mock bracket selection various members of the media went through is a fascinating insight into how the sausage gets made:

They stressed, time and time again, that there must be a way to organize the data — a true, valid point — and the RPI is just the way they chose. The relationship with the RPI dates back to 1981, when it was first used to provide “supplemental data” for the evaluation of potential at-large teams. As individuals, committee members have access to whatever ratings are available — including but not limited to the Pomeroy ratings, the Sagarin ratings and the LRMC results. But, the fact of the matter is everything dealing with ratings that was provided to the media members in the mock exercise was filtered through the RPI. The team sheets showed records vs. RPI top-50 teams, vs. teams ranked 51-100 in the RPI and so on. The RPI isn’t the gold standard and it might not even necessarily be the preferred ranking, but it’s the way the NCAA chooses to organize the information, so it’s definitely the most front-and-center data.

I think the committee generally does a good job at picking out serious RPI outliers; at points where they disagree with Kenpom seriously I tend to side with the committee. That Wisconsin bank shot last year was devastating because the committee mostly considers wins and losses. If it was just an infinitesimal hit to Michigan's defensive rating a lot of the drama gets sucked out of the season. Kenpom is designed to be predictive, which is not necessarily the best model for making a bracket that makes the sport entertaining.

Kovacs! Jordan Kovacs headlines Andy Staples's all-two-star (and under) team:

S Jordan Kovacs, Sr., Michigan (Zero stars in Class of 2008): Kovacs, another walk-on who came out of nowhere, joins Whaley as a co-captain. I first wrote about Kovacs in 2009 after he filled in admirably during the Wolverines' win against Notre Dame. Since then, Kovacs has developed into one of the Big Ten's best safeties. The kid who made the team from a student-body tryout has started 33 games, and he still has one more season to play.

Patrick Omameh and Nathan Brink also feature. Get your fill of this stuff now, because Michigan is about to be a rumor to this annual exercise.

Also let's keep the RR walk-on program going strong, yes? Even in a year where Michigan has a lot of guys on the line a Heininger would have ended up being a useful rotation piece. Kovacs starts on damn near every Michigan D in the past 20 years.

In your head. Michigan's weekend got not one but two coaching-type guys on the OSU staff to indirectly reference it. First someone who seems like their Singletary equivalent:

Slow and steady wins the race

And then:

Old coach told me one time... Don't trust false enthusiasm. Don't worry, I'm not. I trust @markpantoni

Again with the "these guys don't really mean to commit to Michigan." I'm sure it's an accident, yes. Don't forget "long way to signing day."

Program culture. Beilein on his seniors and the baseline they've established:

"I think in recruiting, people don’t understand the part about those four years, how much better they’ll get if they have really good work habits. Their work habits have not only made them better, it’s made the rest of our team better. Trey Burke comes into the gym and he sees Stu or Zack working extra before or working extra afterwards, he then realizes well, that’s what I’m supposed to do, and he’s always done that. But if he came in and saw two seniors that were late for practice or complaining about practice or didn’t work in the off-season, he may go more toward that way. They’ve helped us create a culture here that I hope is everlasting."

I cut the evaluators a break there because that's impossible to judge. Also it's not like a bunch of colleges were banging down Douglass's and Novak's doors. In any case, the point about the work ethic of the program is one that looms large in the aftermath of the Lee/Merritt departures blowing up the program. I think Burke will be a guy who helps keep that around this time. Morgan, too.

Etc.: SI declares the Big Ten the best conference in college basketball. DGDestroys has a miraculously-still-relevant recruiting post from before the weekend about the WR recruiting landscape. Surprise: Gordon Gee says something dumb.