2014 schedule

…more day till the scrimmage that's a week till football [SI]

21 versus 1. Three weeks before the season is when I start getting amped. Three weeks is that it-doesn't-feel-that-far spot when you realize you have that thing this weekend, and you get next weekend, and after that the weeks have numbers.

I had this question posed last night: Who's the most exciting player you've ever watched?. Obvious first candidate was Denard. Then the people old enough to remember Carter were like "It's Anthony Carter hands down!" Nobody bothered to listen to my feelingsball about when you'd scan a Grbac ball's trajectory, hoping, and then you'd see it was in fact Desmond, and that moment you realized you are once again about to be treated to things that happen when Desmond Howard interacts with a football. No, I am told: that was AC. With 21 you feel it coming; when it's 1 you can almost touch it.

Announcements

Playing time. HELLO to a 10-pound baby-in-South-Bend (not actually in South Bend). Bry_Mac's (2nd) kid joins mine, Fuller's, and Schnepp's to round out MGoBlog's huge 2014 class. That should close out the year in MGoOffspring.

Tickets are going cheap. You may have noticed a slight reorganization of the menu bar this week:

We're partnering with TiqIQ this year. They're an aggregator so they'll pull listings from a bunch of secondary markets plus direct from the box office. The current schedule will link to tix. The nice part about them is they have a free, Facebook-based fan exchange (SellerDirect) we can incorporate into the spreadsheet. Hopefully that should clear up some of the security problems the open google doc had. Right now the App State tix are going for $27; the Miami (NTM) are $23 and Maryland is $30. #thisseasonman.

Diaries

2013 in Gifs. Drkboard is now Red_Lee. Last year he was giving us a spectacular gif per game until everyone switched those off, and those are collected in one diary. Along with, well… Well since the point has already been made and bandied about how the fanbase feels about the AD we've been making a conscious effort to save the griping for gripes. Also the free, open scrimmage a few weeks ago was very appreciated by the hardcore fans who attended, despite the abandoned attempt to get people to register for it. We're trying to be good, but you know what: it's the day before an opening game that only an insane person would schedule, and the gif guy makes it so easy to be bad! Compromise: it's after [the jump].

Quite possibly M's second-best home opponent in 2014. No, not Wake Forest.

The Big Ten released the 2014 football conference schedule this afternoon, providing our first glance at how the conference slate looks when Rutgers and Maryland are added to the mix. The .pdf with every team's conference schedule can be found here, or you can just click the picture below to embiggen:

To make things a little simpler, here's a (chart?) chart of each team's crossover games:

	Crossover Games
Indiana	at Iowa, Purdue
Maryland	Iowa, at Wisconsin
Michigan	Minnesota, at Northwestern
Michigan State	Nebraska, at Purdue
Ohio State	Illinois, at Minnesota
Penn State	Northwestern, at Illinois
Rutgers	at Nebraska, Wisconsin
Illinois	at Ohio State, Penn State
Iowa	Indiana, at Maryland
Minnesota	at Michigan, Ohio State
Nebraska	at Michigan State, Rutgers
Northwestern	at Penn State, Michigan
Purdue	Michigan State, at Indiana
Wisconsin	Maryland, at Rutgers

Fans of the Little Brown Jug will be happy to see Minnesota as one of Michigan's crossovers; an ever-improving Northwestern squad should be a tough test. Ohio State, meanwhile, gets to feast on the conference's two worst programs—unless you want to make the case for Iowa, which... go right ahead, actually—and woe be upon the Gophers for drawing the Big Two.

MICHIGAN'S SCHEDULE

Home games in ALL CAPS:

Date	Opponent
Aug. 30	APPALACHIAN STATE
Sept. 6	at Notre Dame
Sept. 13	MIAMI (OH)
Sept. 20	UTAH
Sept. 27	MINNESOTA
Oct. 4	at Rutgers
Oct. 11	PENN STATE
Oct. 18	BYE
Oct. 25	at Michigan State
Nov. 1	INDIANA
Nov. 8	at Northwestern
Nov. 15	BYE
Nov. 22	MARYLAND
Nov. 29	at Ohio State

Yeah, the home schedule suuuuuuucks. This is in part because...

THINGS OF NOTE

• The Michigan State series has flipped, so the Wolverines now travel to East Lansing in both 2013 and 2014. Michigan playing in East Lansing in back-to-back years is unprecedented, and the last time they faced both MSU and OSU on the road was in 1966.
• With the Notre Dame game in South Bend in 2014, that leaves Penn State—a team with 65 scholarship players—as the marquee home game. Utah isn't very good anymore, so the next-best game at the Big House is probably... Maryland? Ugh.
• In related news, it's very possible that Michigan will face their four toughest opponents on the road. That is less than ideal, though at least it sets up for 2015 to have a favorable schedule—especially sans Notre Dame—just as Hoke's juggernaut-laden recruiting classes really begin to take hold.
• It really can't be stressed enough how much Minnesota got screwed. Also getting unusually difficult crossover games: Illinois (at OSU, PSU) and Northwestern (at PSU, Michigan). The Illini will probably be bad no matter what, but that's an especially tough break for the Wildcats, which have a legitimate chance to contend in the West.

The biggest takeaways for me are the home schedule, which is the worst in the history of ever, and the unfortunate year-to-year imbalance created by playing MSU on the road for the second straight year. These are related, obviously—since the late '60s, Michigan fans could look forward to a home game against either MSU or OSU every year. Now there's a serious vested interest in Penn State's program somehow remaining strong through the sanctions, if only for the hopes of one interesting home game in even-numbered years.

All in all, things could be far worse for Michigan—the crossover games are reasonable, at least, and odd-numbered years are now set up for some great home slates and generous schedules overall. I can't help but look at that home schedule and feel deeply disappointed, however. Tougher non-conference scheduling can't kick in soon enough.