brady hoke points at things

Football is back, and major props go to drum major—and Belleville native—Jeff Okala for nailing the traditional back-bend in his very first game:

I love that the BTN showed large portions of the pregame show; they had three(!) different camera angles of Michigan touching the banner. This one's my favorite:

Of course, I'm sure you want to see GIFs from the actual game. For Kyle Kalis and Devin Funchess setting their phasers to "kill", Taylor Lewan dominating with however many arms he pleases, epic ninja Hokepoint, and much more, read on below the jump.

[JUMP!]

I didn't have the heart to remove Becky's photo from the top of the front page. Weird thing: the (presumed) student equipment manager is in shorts and a tee but Brady has both slacks and a jacket on. I clearly remember Carr was wearing just a white polo all game. Was Brady really jacketed while the other coaches remained unfettered? At 5:27 on the tape you can see long-sleeved Brady walking behind angry Lloyd trying to explain to SEC officials that hitting is allowed in football. Weird. Diaries.

Must Read: Eight Plays and Counting. I'll let EGD announce his latest thing:

This series examines the probable individual matchups Michigan would face against particular 2013 opponents on one of Michigan’s key running plays and one of its key passing plays, as well as defensively against a couple of the opponent’s key plays

So for example he'll take the play at right—the base 26 Power R, a common variation of Michigan's "Power O" (2 means RB carries it, 6 means they're going in the 6-hole, ie between the T and TE, and R means right)—and go through the personnel matchups on that play to see which team has an aggregate advantage. On the above Michigan's likely wins: Lewan on Prince Shembo. Things that seem to favor ND: Braden pulling to find WLB Dan Fox, down-blocks of Jack Miller on Sheldon Day, Kalis on Louis Nix, and Schofield on Tuitt, Joe Kerridge finding Danny Spond for a kick-out block, and Funchess executing a double-team on Tuitt then moving to the 2nd level to get to ND's middle linebacker. Advantage: Notre Dame, though I should point out a down block is one of the easier to accomplish since you start with leverage.

The Notre Dame one has three more plays: a PA pass from our offense, and then Michigan's D versus the Irish's base zone run and one of Kelly's favorite passing plays that we're guaranteed to see because it picks on Jarrod Wilson. Yesterday he posted a second one, which goes over UConn (M's power left and PA deep flood, and UConn's curls vs. Cov2 and 4-verts vs. Cov3). Again, these are things that schematically try to pick on Wilson. Part of that is there aren't many other unknowns on the defense, but I think it's becoming pretty clear where a lot of our attention is going to be early in the season. Prophesy: Wilson will look bad early in the season as offenses consistently do things that try to make him look so. In fact if he doesn't we may have something really nice there.

By the way EGD also updated his Non-Conference Recruiting Watch series a few weeks back. The guy with the Hail to the Thief avatar wins a trophy.

ESS-EEE-SEE! In people having fun with numbers you can find online, stopthewnba pulled January bowl data to show how the Big Ten has fared overall and against the SEC in all those virtual road games. It's not as bad as you might think, except when it comes to Rose Bowls (2-12 in the documented span) and times when a national championship is on the line or an erstwhile title contender dropped down into our range (USC vs. Michigan twice, MSU vs. Alabama). Something isn't right in his spreadsheet since I know for a fact that Northwestern isn't 2-and-anything in bowl games unless the data go back to the 1940s.

More interesting perhaps was maizeonblueaction's look at demographics since 1990 in Big Ten states versus SEC ones. In the comments EGD (man, that guy this week) suggested dividing the numbers by how many major conference (ACC/Big Ten/Big XII/Pac12/SEC plus Notre Dame) teams it has to support. So I did that, except I combined Indiana and Illinois since Chicago is really home territory for the Indiana schools. Result:

State	Conf	Big5 Teams	2012  Pop (est.)	Share
Ohio	BigTen	Ohio State	11,544,225	11,544,225
New Jersey	BigTen	Rutgers	8,864,590	8,864,590
Florida	SEC/ACC	Florida, Miami (YTM), FSU	19,317,568	6,439,189
Pennsylvania	BigTen	Penn St, Pitt	12,763,536	6,381,768
Missouri	SEC	Mizzou	6,021,988	6,021,988
Maryland	BigTen	Maryland	5,884,563	5,884,563
Wisconsin	BigTen	Wisconsin	5,726,398	5,726,398
Minnesota	BigTen	Minnesota	5,379,139	5,379,139
Texas	SEC/B12	Texas, A&M, TT, TCU, Baylor	26,059,203	5,211,841
Georgia	SEC/ACC	Georgia, GTech	9,919,945	4,959,973
Michigan	BigTen	Michigan, Michigan St	9,883,360	4,941,680
Louisiana	SEC	LSU	4,601,893	4,601,893
Illinois & Indiana	B1G/Ind	ND, NW, Ill, Pur, Indiana	19,412,589	3,882,518
Tennessee	SEC	Tennessee, Vandy	6,456,243	3,228,122
Arkansas	SEC	Arkansas	2,949,131	2,949,131
Alabama	SEC	Bama, Auburn	4,822,023	2,411,012
South Carolina	SEC/ACC	S.C., Clemson	4,723,723	2,361,862
Kentucky	SEC/ACC	Kentucky, Louisville	4,380,415	2,190,208
Nebraska	BigTen	Nebraska	1,855,525	1,855,525
Iowa	B1G/B12	Iowa, Iowa St	3,074,186	1,537,093
Mississippi	SEC	Ole Miss, Miss State	2,984,926	1,492,463

The demographic shifts matter but not as much as people seem to think: the part of the population that will disproportionately devote their lives to football isn't the part that recently moved to Atlanta or Nashville to work for an insurance company or relocated to Florida because the weather's easier on their joints. Mississippi can support more and better football programs than New Jersey can because life in Mississippi is more likely to suck so hard that people are willing to do anything to their bodies to get those bodies out of there. Not so much for recent Jersey/St. Louis/Philly transplants, but Ohio State's position in Ohio is a major advantage indeed.

This is bound to change now. LSAClassof2000 looked at red zone offense in the Big Ten since 2008: Michigan is second to last in overall success rate to the Hoosiers until you add Maryland and Rutgers, both worse. Less than a quarter of Michigan's red zone trips ended with a passing touchdown in that time. Our 2009 (converting just 2/3rds of possible points) matches Indiana's 2008 for most brutal ever. However this has improved dramatically every year since, and the 2012 team was really good at converting red zone trips into points (5.28 per drive), though getting there (3.54 times per game, about 40th percentile among data points) was a problem. In the comments I resorted the data to see where Michigan's teams fell. Wisconsin had the top three red zone teams. Michigan's 2012 was 12th out of 70. Suggestion for further study: I bet you this correlates to experience of the starting quarterback.

Etc. The Big Ten meets the Big Lebowski—I didn't find the comparisons all that close. K.o.k.Law is reminiscing about going to the basketball championship game. Moderator JustinGoBlue is MGoProfiled by M-Wolverine. Solar team's new car and discussion of semiconductor theory.

[Jump: Best of the Board, Zen]

This was sent to me from HTTV volunteer copy editor Becky Long, who in 1998 was on the sidelines as UM cheerleader Becky Long. The wide-angle:

Click gets you full size, which is just 300kb or so (to a 1998 hard drive that's huge) but plenty for your need. That need is to cast this image in your head until the most Brady Hoke thing ever has claimed its rightful place next to Don't Make Lloyd Angry, and the Bo-Canham-Bump Press Conference in the Hall of Before-He-Was…

To my knowledge, until now the best Hokepoint from the Before-Time known to the internet was that overused thing with the uncharacteristic headset. Bonus: We now have a photo to use when we talk about Rob Renes and genetic nose tackles.

That is all.