big lebowski

Site business. Two things:

1. I am getting married this Saturday in a top-secret location far away from any images of Fielding Yost. I am taking Friday and Monday off; Tom and Tim will produce content as per usual. If you've got a diary you want front-paged this would be an opportune time to post it. Content from me will be light this week because a bunch of friends I don't get to see will be in town, etc.
2. I'm warning you about this a month ahead of time: honeymoon is in late July for about ten days and I am probably not even going to take my computer.

Your understanding is appreciated.

I'm partial to the rally pickle myself.

Mascot business. I took a rage day so that I wouldn't say anything regrettable in the aftermath of the mascot trial balloon, leaving the rest of the world to offer Dave Brandon a raspberry and Brandon to quickly clarify that while he is all seeing and all knowing he is very very wily and no mascot is pending. Even while doing so he leaves himself an out, saying it "may never happen."

Q: In retrospect do you believe that Brandon announcing the OSU game would be moving to midseason was really a super-clever way to get everyone outraged about it and therefore ensure it doesn't happen?

The M-Zone makes a compelling case that we should not. After that fan explosion we've had the uniform business and the mascot business and at about the same time we've had the night game business. (While I don't care that much about having a night game, it is a departure from tradition.) The evidence points towards Dave Brandon being so intent on "creating the future" that he has absolutely no grasp on what's important to the fanbase until everyone's freaking out about it.

Worse, he spends time belittling the kind of people who do really care. From the inbox:

Below response to my (very short and very respectful) email to Dave Brandon today asking him to reconsider a Michigan mascot.  I actually responded to this, against my better judgment, and said that if there's a man in a furry wolverine costume on the sideline than it'll wind up being more life-changing for him than for me.

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Please don’t be too concerned over this life-changing topic!

All will be OK…

Have a great weekend!

Dave

I'm not sure how this happened since Dave Brandon was actually on the team under Bo, but the current athletic director appears to have no more connection to Michigan's traditions than—wait for it—Rich Rodriguez.

I really care about what goes on inside Michigan Stadium; Brandon thinks this makes me a sap.

At least he's not alone.

Convenient timing. Meanwhile, one of the main counter-arguments against Old Testament kind of guys who like their coffee black, parole denied, and Michigan Stadium old-timey is that if we don't get that cheddar Michigan will be left in the dust by its rivals.

Presenting Michigan's 2012 budget:

For the proposed FY 2012 Operating Budget (described in detail on the following pages), we project an operating surplus of $11.4 million based on operating revenues of $121.2 million and operating expenses of $109.8 million. The budgeted operating surplus will be will be used to fund our ongoing capital needs and facility renewal projects.

Bill Martin's great accomplishment was killing the immediate cheddar issue dead without compromising the brand that packs the largest stadium in the country. Further squeezing starts to impact the uniqueness of the Michigan experience and erodes the reasons people shell out as much as they do.

Unfair and true and BERGKAMP. Here is Denard Robinson's 87-yard touchdown against Notre Dame last year, first narrated by Tom Hammond, then your inner monologue:

It's not fair comparing Tom Hammond to whoever the BERGKAMP guy is, but he does have a point. Maybe Americans get more confused about whether sports is serious business worthy of objectivity or not.

For a counterpoint EDSBS immediately goes to Sean McDonough, who's the first guy I thought of, too:

Q: Franklin is retired and Nessler is now on the NFL network, so is McDonough now the undisputed #1 college football announcer? I can't think of anyone I'd rather have doing a Michigan game.

Welcome to the field. The O-Zone reports on the latest edition of the Big 33 PA-OH All-Star game, in which Ohio annihilated Pennsylvania. Featured amongst the players of interest is WLB signee Antonio Poole:

Antonio Poole, LB Cincinnati Winton Woods 6'0” 195 (Michigan)

I think Poole may have been the most impressive defensive player on the field. He's only listed at 6'0” 195 pounds, but he sticks ball-carriers right between the numbers and they stay stuck. When he's in pursuit, he looks much bigger than he is. He certainly hits much bigger than he is. He may not be big enough to play linebacker in the Big Ten right now, but the Wolverines may not be able to wait.

That's true—WLB is currently Mike Jones and maybe Brandin Hawthorne.

Goalie zen part XVI. Red Line Report is down on this year's crop of goalies but they do have a solid #1. Prepare for the same scouting report you've heard several times before:

The clear-cut No. 1 guy is John Gibson, who combines excellent size and a calm demeanor in the most important games. He plays economically and is strong in the butterfly, using his long legs to take away the bottom half of the net. Gibson is a big netminder who plays big, challenging well and not leaving much space for shooters to look at. He's also calm and patient and allows the play to come to him. We like his mental strength and focus in clutch situations.

They don't like the other Gibson, so John is the only goalie they give a first round grade.

Etc.: Penn State blog Linebacker U interviews Tom for his perspective on Michigan and Penn State recruiting.

FINAL VICTORY

Bwahahaha. Total victory complete. Corey Tropp's last act as a college hockey player was to step on a puck and watch from the box as Michigan's hockey team ended Michigan State's season and permanently established ownership of Munn. He's signed with Buffalo, completing the storyline written by Steve Kampfer's neck, Steve Kampfer's dad, and Steve Kampfer's emphatic "THAT IS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT."

Other than another three wins at the end of the season, that could have gone no better. As a bonus, State has now lost Jeff Petry, Andrew Rowe, and Tropp early. That's three of their top four scorers. With only one player of note graduating (Nick Sucharski), a Michigan State fronted by senior versions of the above three guys could have been dangerous. Without them, the conversion into Northern Michigan is essentially complete. It'll be interesting to see how that goes; Comely did win a title there.

Karma gets full marks here. I am going to drop an actual bill in the bucket of next Mott panhandler to accost me OH GOD THERE'S ONE INSIDE THE HOU—

Meandering sentence in which your dad tells you what character is. I had one more thing I wanted to get around to when the university announced its self-imposed sanctions for the stretching stuff, the impermissible offseason workouts, and the QC staffers overstepping the NCAA's limits on their activities. It was something about how the newspaper meme about the day of Great Shame to the university was ridiculous given the picture painted by the documents. Don't take my word for it:

Football sanctions bring Michigan down to the level of other programs

It was painful and sad and historic, and depending on your point of view, maybe a bit appropriate, too.

A bowl ban and scholarship reduction are unnecessary now because the University of Michigan took something from its own football program today that it spent the last few decades espousing: It stripped away its own boast that it never committed major rules violations.

At the very least, Michigan's limited admission of NCAA violations is historic. This university has long held itself above all others for running a clean program, at least in football.

Even Wojo can't resist dipping into the Lady Macbeth pool:

There's no denying the everlasting mark on Michigan's program.

Out, damn blue dot. And that's without even touching the Free Press reaction.

Today Georgia's getting some degree of that heat after athletic director Damon Evans was stopped for DUI, pulled the Steve-Buscemi-in-Fargo ("I'd like to take care of this right here… in Brainerd"), and was discovered to have both a comely 28-year-old lass in the passenger seat and what were presumably her panties in his lap. If Gary Moeller's restaurant blow-up was Little Boy, Evans' was the 50s-era H-bomb they blew up on whichever Pacific Island had gotten uppity at the latest UN meeting.

In the aftermath, the usual. From a Dennis Dodd column that loathsomely invokes the DUI-related death of the Georgia governor's intern:

It is not the state university of Georgia’s best day, but don’t cry for the Bulldogs. Your pity and prayers are better directed to the Griner and Scott families. The only damage done, in this case, was to the school’s reputation.

Get the Picture's response to that:

The school’s reputation?   Damn, why not blame the school for the George Zinkhan murders?  After all, he was an employee at the time the crime was committed.  That crime didn’t involve hypothetical deaths, either.

I don’t think it’s any secret that I’m not the biggest fan of Michael Adams.  But it’s hard to fault him or the University for how he handled the situation after Evans’ arrest became public news.  Would it reflect badly on the school if Evans remained employed by it?  Sure.  But that’s not how things played out.

Institutions are comprised of people that take actions, at which point the institution judges whether those actions are compatible with the values of the institution. Surprise: Damon Evans is so beyond fired.

I didn't get around to the column it because I'd said it plenty, especially in comparison to the Free Press's strategy of obfuscation, and it seemed redundant. I did gather up the above links to the running around and screaming, though, and found the apropos Big Lebowksi quote:

                                     LEBOWSKI
                         What. . . What makes a 
                         man, Mr. Lebowski?

                                     DUDE
                         Dude.

                                     LEBOWSKI
                         Huh?

                                     DUDE
                         I don't know, sir.

                                     LEBOWSKI
                         Is it. . . is it, being prepared to 
                         do the right thing?  Whatever the 
                         price?  Isn't that what makes a man?

                                     DUDE
                         Sure.  That and a pair of testicles.

This is getting long enough that I might as well have split it off so to summarize as briefly as possible: if the university has shown a character flaw in the interminable period of the Jihad it has been that of McLovin. Incompetence in a minor offense leads to flop sweat, proving that the entity in question doesn't have the stomach for hardened criminal activity.

Michigan's prompt, un-redacted release was a step that no major school had undertaken. Maybe the school's transparency was a defensive move against the inevitable FOIA, but that would have come after everything wrapped up and no one cared anymore because the announced penalties were essentially nonexistent. If other universities are any guide, could have come swathed in black ink worthy of Newspaper Blackout Poems. I'm a little pissed that I can make a reasonable comparison between McLovin and something I would like to be good at doing things, but that's what David Brandon is for.

In related extremely necessary expenditures. Michigan's bill for the investigation is hefty and growing:

According to invoices from the law firm Lightfoot, Franklin and White released this week as part of an open-records request, Michigan has paid $446,951 in legal fees and other expenses since contracting attorney Gene Marsh and others to handle its internal investigation last September.

That's for expenses through April. The university's bill is going to easily crack a half-million dollars and might end up close to a full million by the end of everything. Birkett compares that bill with some other recent investigations and finds that Michigan is on the high end of the range. UConn's paid out almost 700k, Indiana about 500k, FSU 300k, Alabama 200k. Is that a reasonable expense to get Marsh, a former head of the Committee on Infractions, so you can go in front of the committee as seriously as possible? Given the surplus the department runs, probably. Kowtow and get it over with. The committee does not like non-serious people.

Individual ticket extravaganza. With Penn State, Notre Dame, and Ohio State on the road Michigan is facing down its semi-annual lack of sex appeal on the home portion of the schedule, no offense to Iowa or Wisconsin. As a result, ticket sales are actually open to the public for the first time in a long while, though you've got to suck it up and get packages if you're going to get the good games because actual games against real opponents have to subsidize the purchase price of a I-AA.

This does not mean the season ticket waiting list has evaporated, by the way. Michigan will be done with the luxury boxes this year but the renovations to the bowl will take place next offseason. Seats and aisles are getting widened, and since moving anyone anywhere has the potential to result in mass panic the AD is holding vacated seats this season to help ease the transition. "Hot seat" prognosticators can look elsewhere for their evidence. Suggestion: 8-16.

Etc.: MI OL Jake Fisher will be dropping a decision($) soon, possibly today. Watch for the "Hello" post. A 1997 championship ring has found its way to eBay. In a move that gets a .5 Tropp, Tennessee pirates USC DE Malik Jackson away.

Warning: post rated PG-13 for f-bomb drop.

11/6/2009 – Michigan 1, Miami 3 – 4-3, 2-1 CCHA
11/7/2009 – Michigan 36, Purdue 38 -  5-5, 1-4 Big Ten
11/7/2009 – Michigan 1, Miami 5 – 4-4, 2-2 CCHA

In the aftermath of The Horror, my coping strategy was to shut off the blog—which was then still on Blogger and subject to the chaos of Haloscan's free-for-all—to avoid any emo suicides and watch The Big Lebowski. (Kittens would show up Monday.) Yes, I am one of those annoying people who thinks The Big Lebowski is the pinnacle achievement of western civilization. I haven't gone to a bowling alley dressed up like Saddam Hussein or the police chief of Malibu, at least.

I didn't do this for any reason related to football. I just like the movie. It makes me laugh to beat the band. I'd never thought there was any sort of overarching philosophy in the movie worth starting a religion over. I was in a mood to reflect on the underpinnings of my life, though.

As the movie unfolded I belatedly realized—or maybe it just seemed way more relevant given my mental state—that the Dude is a spectator throughout. At no point in the movie does the Dude actually take an action without being badgered into it by Walter.* Even the cabbie who likes the Eagles ends up taking a decisive action at the expense of our hero. By the end of the thing, Lebowski's rug is gone, apartment destroyed, car burned to a crisp, and friend dead because an inexplicable series of events he had almost nothing to do with.

My girlfriend says that the reason there is not an academic paper about the Dude's shocking lack of "agency," as the smart kids say, is that it is "too obvious to be interesting." So, too, are the parallels to Michigan fandom**.

I didn't intentionally configure my hair to match the Dude but it does and goddamn if big, incompetent misery factory Walter isn't a good stand-in for Michigan athletics at the moment:

(Sorry about the Turkish(?) subtitles. Woo inadvisable copyright claims.)

"Everything's such fucking travesty with you" was my weekend.

I'm worn out after the last two weeks of football and the fiasco at Yost this weekend; when Miami scored to make it 4-1 with maybe 15 minutes left in the third period I reached a breaking point and just left. Other scenes from earlier this week: some guy tells me not to swear so much in front of his kids at the Friday Miami game, I get in a verbal fight with some guy who wants Rodriguez fired and is complaining about Tate Forcier, cousin of mine gets in separate verbal fight after the game when a different guy is yelling "you suck" at Forcier as he runs off the field, and an adorable child in the row behind me at the Saturday Miami game screams "Mich-i-GAN" the whole game—which was cute the first 50 times.

I've got no real analysis of either team other than they're both worse than I thought. I'm burning out after two years of almost unrelenting misery, and looking forward to football season being over for the third straight year. I mean, when Michigan was down to Purdue in the second half, some fan ten or twenty rows behind me kept shouting "they've got no heart" over and over again as the guy in the row in front of me called for Rodriguez's firing. Having a conversation about Michigan football right now is trying to remember that episode of GI Joe where Destro finds a secret ninja manual in a volcano*** that allows him to kill people with precisely-applied touches: if you can just remember where the red dots are you can spare everyone a lot of pain.

I'll address the question I've gotten in a thousand different forms the past couple weeks—"when can we fire this guy?"—in a separate post. It's been that kind of era.

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*(The movie opens with a couple guys peeing on his rug because someone else's wife owes money to Jackie Treehorn. The Big Lebowski directs him to make a ransom drop. Walter screws up the drop despite the Dude screaming at Walter not to screw it up. Walter leads the Bay of Pigs invasion of Larry Sellers's home. Jackie Treehorn invites him to his beach party, so he goes. Maude directs him to show up at her place and directs him to sleep with her—"love me". When the nihilists confront the dude for his three dollars, Walter re-enacts Hill 368 as Lebowski attempts to throw money at Amie Mann's boyfriend.

About the only action Lebowski takes in the movie is telling Brandt that he can have a rug.)

**(Freudian slip: spelled that "fandoom.")

***(This may not be the right character, or even the right cartoon.)

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BULLETS

• I wonder if the gameplan on offense was specifically designed to piss Joe Tiller off. Probably not. But dang Roundtree is going hold onto his spot in the lineup when Odoms gets back. He is a Purdue wideout in all ways: physically limited but precise, fearless over the middle, and a guy the quarterback clearly trusts.
• Mouton got pulled for JB Fitzgerald after his (-3, cover –3) on Purdue's first drive but re-entered in the second half; Leach got yanked for Obi Ezeh late, too. So much for the hope that either of the two backups could prove clearly superior to the guys who started the season.
• Carlos Brown had one carry. Injured? Or doghouse after Illinois? Not that I mind: Minor is clearly superior when healthy.
• Omameh played RG the whole game and Dorrestein never came in. If guys like Brown and Dorrestein aren't even on the injury report, why bother having one? Not even "probable"?
• Related: it was really frustrating how many times it seemed that Purdue's offensive line had gotten blown back and Bolden would pop through a hole after taking a circuitous route around a mess. I bet there are some major minuses for the LB corps on the UFR.
• That damn rollout play was shades of the Toledo game. Surely there's an adjustment that can be made there, isn't there?
• Warren doesn't seem good enough to go to the NFL this year anymore. He was mostly a spectator as Purdue complete a ton of routes in front of him.
• With Banks out, Sagesse slid over to act as RVB's backup and Campbell got 20-30 snaps as Martin's backup. He seemed to do a little better.
• I would have gone for it on fourth and ten, too. Michigan had one, maybe two more possessions and needed eight points. Kicking a field goal there only helps you if you get the ball back and score a touchdown, events that seemed unlikely given the defense's performance to that point. It think it's a close decision because it was long yardage and a field goal is a defensible option, but I would have gone for it. That's a real gray area.
• I did have a problem with how much time Michigan took on their final touchdown drive. Scenarios there in the event of a touchdown:

  You get two: If you hurried up, Purdue has three or so minutes on the block. If you didn't, Purdue has two. Either way they have an opportunity to drive for the win; the minute there doesn't make a big difference.

  You don't get two: If you don't hurry, you've got one timeout and two minutes left and have to try an onside kick and get the ball back with 30 seconds when that fails. If you do, you can kick it deep and hypothetically get the ball back with 1:30 needing only a field goal.

  Michigan should have been in jet tempo on the final series, and should have thought about throwing for the touchdown instead of running for it.

• Michigan breaks out the triple option—though I bet the dive is not a read yet—for the first time all year and gets a negative play and a crippling fumble out of it. Two initial thoughts: how is that fair when we haven't run that in the history of Rich Rodriguez, and if Purdue can defend it why the hell can't we?
• The Higgs boson theory from the Purdue preview might be publishable after Michigan lost to Purdue because the kicker missed an extra point in the same game he hit a 51-yard field goal.

ELSEWHERE

Danny Hope introduced Rich Rodriguez to Zack Reckman, the Purdue lineman who got suspended in the wake of the Jonas Mouton Suspension fiasco, in a pissy drama that promises to make future Purdue games more interesting. MVictors has the relevant audio clip from the post-game press conference where Rodriguez complains about the incident.

Obligatory "take" I will bring strong: short of slapping yourself, press conferences don't matter. People use them to support/hate a coach they already support or hate because of on-field events. Nothing from Rodriguez's press conferences has ever made me think he was more likely to succeed or fail at Michigan. It is just talking, and that's a skill that a lot of coaches don't have.

As for the act itself: bush league, but I like bush league. It makes things spicy.

MVictors also reproduces an interesting statement from the officials who did the game about what went down on the crazy Carlos Brown lateral review:

What was the interpretation on the fourth down review with the forward lateral? What was it that the replay official saw?

TODD GEERLINGS: “The replay official saw that the ball, when it left his hand to the point where it touched the receiver’s hand, was clearly forward from the 13 to the 12 yard line. That’s why we had an illegal forward pass from the spot of that pass.”

Who called for the review?

GEERLINGS: “The booth called for the review and I announced that on the field prior to. The coaches on the field were trying to but Purdue did not have a challenge left so they couldn’t have. They were trying to but just as I got the buzz on the pager, I just turned to Purdue and said ‘We got it’ but I think people thought they had challenged it. They were trying to, but they did not.”

This is great. I haven't seen it on tape yet but given the lack of bitching it's probably the right call, and having some clear explanations for what happened in the heat of a critical moment is a much better way to go about defusing potential controversy's than the SEC ham-handed—nay—Delany-esque handling of its ongoing and never-ending refereeing fiascoes.

There's a press conference torrent, too.

a couple complaints about yesterday's technical difficulties. if you're an non-michigan fan, whatever. if you're a michigan fan... sorry. but what is there to say? and why the fuck are you on the internet? this is what you should do: get drunk and watch the big lebowski. seriously. we are all the dude. that's what i did yesterday. or like go outside. the internet is not your friend. i'll be back tuesday.

now... KITTENS!