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11/6/2021 – Michigan 29, Indiana 7 – 8-1, 5-1 Big Ten

One does not want to be too much of a mopey downer, so it was a relief when we were recording the podcast and Seth said that Saturday's game was boring. I had thought it was boring, too, but when I say things like that these days people are always like "oh man Brian is in a dark place." Okay but also he retains a shred of objective reality, right? Right? One can be bored and have that not be about other things but, oh, I don't know, a commercial break followed by zero plays before another commercial break? I thought maybe I was just being a mopey downer and other people were like "I found this pretty enjoyable."

Apparently not. I feel like this is reasonable.

But anyway, Seth was in the box, and I was in the stands. And Patrick was on the field:

Well, actually pic.twitter.com/HKEzZ8oND1

— Patrick Barron (@BlueBarronPhoto) November 8, 2021

In retrospect my fears that my opinion about the sporting event on Saturday night, November 6th were an outlier were ill-founded. In the cold light of morning a couple days on what's remarkable is how dead that stadium was for a Michigan Night Game(!!!). Michigan Night Games used to get fancy names and caused the normally placid Michigan fanbase to spontaneously combust. Aside from the steadily dropping temperatures, the atmosphere on Saturday was more "September MAC game" than "dismembering Notre Dame with bloodlust in your eyes."

It was hard not to be personally offended as the temperature dropped. Nor did I try. Saturday was a lovely, sunny fall day that would have been downright pleasant to experience a football game in. For reasons that remain unfathomable, FOX decided to move an obviously uncompetitive game between Michigan and the battered shell of a 2-6 Indiana to prime time. Then they proceeded to jam the FOX-usual number of commercials in. When they announced the final score of the hockey game, which started at the same time the football game did, there were nine minutes left in the third quarter. Vociferous booing of every announced FULL MEDIA TIMEOUT started shortly after.

It is for these reasons that I had a very hard time getting into the game. It was boring, and it was cold, and there were commercial breaks at almost literally every opportunity until even Flo said "lo, I am sated" like Vladimir Harkonnen pushing himself away from the table.

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I already wrote one of these columns a few years back, after Michigan played SMU in the opposite weather conditions:

The sequence that really, truly broke me was in the middle of the second quarter. For some reason, Sonny Dykes thought that if his team was prepared it could stop a Michigan fullback dive. So he called timeout. Then he saw Michigan had cannily lined up in the exact same way they had before the timeout. Sensing a trap, he called timeout again. This became the dreaded Full Media Timeout.

In the stands, I baked. Because Michigan has made no attempt to improve connectivity in the stadium I held up my phone as it told me it could not retrieve tweets. The clock ticked down.

Michigan took the field again and lined up in the exact same way, but Dykes could not respond—he'd used all his timeouts. Ben Mason scored from the one-inch line, extra point... Full Media Timeout.

I baked further. It sucked. It was hot and boring and also hot and also boring.

Nothing's changed since, unless it's gotten worse. (It has gotten worse.) This is in contrast to basketball, which has deleted some timeouts and is thinking about deleting more, and hockey, which shortened intermissions to 12 minutes and cut out a commercial break. Heck, I used to assume that any Michigan basketball game that was preceded by another game was going to be pre-empted, and now a game that doesn't end in the two-hour window is a surprise.

Those sports have the advantages of being 1) close to a neat and tidy length of time (in basketball's case) and 2) completely unable to sell existing ad inventory (in hockey's). Football faces none of these problems because games can go forever and there appears to be no national insurance company in the world that desires anything but to toss all of its marketing dollars on the pyre. So I don't think there's any sanity coming here.

I do worry about the long term, apparently unlike the people actually running the sport. We're already in a world where being on the Michigan mailing list is somewhere between "doing Duolingo once" and being Stacey's ex:

Michigan's ticket office going full Duolingo on everyone's inboxes https://t.co/Vjl49RZtrr

— mgoblog (@mgoblog) July 13, 2021

I can't imagine anyone who went to that game emerged from it thinking that it was an advertisement to go to more. People started emptying out of there early in the third quarter, when the score was 20-7. And they were the sane ones. What happens when people like me, chained to their seats more out of a sense of momentum than anything, either drift away or up and die?

Maybe we'll have been replaced by badly-functioning AI robots by then. Then you can have the game whenever, and you can make viral posts about the crazy chants they came up with.

AWARDS

Known Friends and Trusted Agents Of The Week

[Bryan Fuller]

you're the man now, dog

#1 Hassan Haskins. With Corum and Edwards largely sidelined, Haskins got true feature-back carries for the first time all year. With them he added another 168 yards to his total, hurdled another fool, and also picked up several blitzes with crunching authority. Truly a recruiting find.

#2 Aidan Hutchinson/David Ojabo. The inseparable duo of destruction. Hutchinson somehow came out of this game without getting a sack credited to him despite seeming to be in the quarterback's lap on any passing down; Ojabo got another sack-strip for a key turnover in the first half. Full points for both because why not?

#3 Cornelius Johnson. Displayed some route wizardry on his long catch, and probably would have added another 30 yards and a touchdown on another route where he turned his defender 360 degrees if JJ McCarthy didn't get lit up on the throw. As it was, 100 yards and six catches for him. Nice bounce-back after a couple of rough drops against MSU.

Honorable mention: Junior Colson flashed his sideline-to-sideline speed; Taylor Upshaw had a sack and another TFL; Cade McNamara had some misses but hit his deep ball and averaged 9.3 YPA.

KFaTAotW Standings.

(points: #1: 8, #2: 5, #3: 3, HMs one each. Ties result in somewhat arbitrary assignments.)

36: Aidan Hutchinson (HM WMU, #2 Wash, #1 Rutgers, #1 Wisc, HM Neb, #2 NW, T3 MSU, T2 IU)
25: Hassan Haskins (HM WMU, T3 Wash, T2 NIU, #2 Neb, T1 NW, #1 IU)
18: The OL (#1 Wash, #1 NIU, HM Neb, HM NW)
17: Blake Corum (#2 WMU, T3 Wash, T2 NIU, HM Neb, T1 NW)
13: David Ojabo (#2 Wisc, T3 MSU, T2 IU),
9: Cade McNamara (#1 MSU, HM IU)
8: Ronnie Bell (#1 WMU), Brad Hawkins (#1 Neb),Dax Hill (#3 WMU, HM NIU, HM Rutgers, HM Wisc, HM Neb, HM MSU)
6: Nikhai Hill-Green(HM NIU, #2 Rutgers), Jake Moody (HM Wash, HM Wisc, #3 Neb, HM MSU)
Brad Robbins (HM Wash, #3 Rutgers, HM Wisc), Josh Ross (HM Wash, HM NIU, HM Rutgers, HM Neb, HM NW),
5: Cornelius Johnson(HM NIU, HM Wisc, #3 IU), Andrel Anthony (#2 MSU)
4: AJ Henning (HM WMU, #3 NIU)
3: Donovan Edwards(T2 NIU), Roman Wilson (#3 Wisc), DJ Turner (#3 NW)
2: Erick All (HM NW, HM MSU)
1: Andrew Vastardis (HM WMU),Mike Sainristil (HM WMU),  Mazi Smith (HM Wash), Gemon Green(HM NIU), Chris Hinton (HM Rutgers), Junior Colson (HM IU), Taylor Upshaw (HM IU)

Who's Got It Better Than Us(?) Of The Week

Michigan responds to the IU TD drive to go up 17-7 and that's all she wrote.

Honorable mention: Uh, Haskins going for 60, Johnson going for 50, and Ojabo terrorizing McCulley.

​MARCUS HALL EPIC DOUBLE BIRD OF THE WEEK.

Timeout, commercial, Michigan farts around on a fake fourth and one, timeout, commercial.

Honorable mention: IU's TD drive makes it 10-7 briefly and induces some Here We Go Again thoughts; JJ McCarthy runs around like he's in high school and chucks a bad idea throw; redzone breakdowns force another 3 short FG attempts.

[After THE JUMP: palpable routes]

This is going to be a little Simmonsy, but: friend of blog Domicile wanted a Cake Wrecks-inspired celebratory cake and the MGoGirlfriend obliged:

We're in. Death to Clemson.

They made us wait, didn't they? Bastards. 

UPDATE: Oh, yeah:

And you can't have one without the other…