darrell funk

YOU'RE GONNA HAVE A BAD TIME

Brian:

You asked today “how Borges is Nuss?”   I think equally appropriate is “how Gibson is Funk?”  It seems to me that their respective backgrounds, personal ties to the HC and seeming invulnerability in the face of terrible performances on the field are quite similar.  And, my fear is that loyalty to Funk – like RR to Gibson before him – will ultimately lead the HC’s demise.

Do you agree?

Don

I am about to conjure forth a firestorm of controversy and despair. Be warned.

Gibson's miserableness is likely overstated. Back when everyone was like "this secondary is the worst secondary in the world" I went back and looked at WVU's passing D performances under Rodriguez and found that they were decent. Tony Gibson coached Ryan Mundy well enough to get him drafted by the NFL—something that did not seem in the cards when he was at Michigan. Tony Gibson is… possibly not a complete twit.

/rain of blood

/skies turn black

/rabbit graveyard sees rabbit corpses assemble itself into evil zombie rabbit voltron

He is obviously not great, as secondaries he has been around since tend to be disaster zones. But the things that made him look like a twit at Michigan are some of the same things afflicting Funk: his coordinator doesn't know what he's doing week to week and therefore his players don't know what they're doing, everyone is confused and miserable.

Then someone shoots the glass in your underwater research lab. When the structure is so broken there's only so much you can tell about which part of the rubble was marginally less sound than other parts of the rubble.

You are right that we can take a look at heuristics in an attempt to find out if there are reasons other than perceived competence that Funk is around. Funk does not appear to meet Good Ol' Boys standards. Whereas Gibson came up with Rodriguez all the way from Glenville State, Funk has bounced from coaching staff to coaching staff on his way up the ranks. Hoke hired him from Colorado State just before his last year at Ball State, whereupon the Cardinals rushed for nearly five yards a carry. San Diego State went from 115th(!) in yards per carry to 28th in the two years Funk was there. And he did rather well to start at Michigan before the full weight of Rodriguez's recruiting came to bear.

Funk's track record with Hoke is pretty good, and he is not a guy who has been around forever-forever. I'm not sure we're going to get much clarity about whether he's a good coach this year given the issues with personnel, but it's put up or shut up time no matter what.

Brian,

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on using an opt-in system for student tickets. In my opinion, this would solve several problems. First, it would immediately reduce the number of empty seats by identifying non-attending students and allowing the University to resell their tickets. Second, it would condense the student section which--in the opinion of a recent alum (2006-2013)--would improve the stadium experience for students and, in turn, encourage more students to show up.

Under the system I envision, you would pay a fixed amount (approximating the price of season tickets) which gives you the right to opt-in to each individual home game for no additional fee. During the week leading up to each game you have the ability to "claim" your ticket online, up until some cut-off period. For example, maybe you have until 12:00am the night before the game.

If you don't claim the ticket by then, you cannot attend (I have mixed feelings about whether you should get some sort of small refund. maybe $5). Any unclaimed tickets would then be assigned the upper-most seats in the student section and  then be resold by the university the morning of the game. The students would have to be alerted, somehow, as to which rows of the student section have been resold and are no longer part of the general admission section.

There would also have to be some penalty for students who claim their ticket but are no-shows. For instance, if on two separate occasions you claim your ticket and don't show up, you lose your right to claim tickets for the rest of the season. Obviously the University would have to start tracking student attendence (maybe by putting the tickets on the MCards like in bball), but I dont imagine that would be difficult.

-FingerMustache

This is what Michigan did for basketball this year except presumably Michigan will not be overbooking the student section by 50%.

I'm opposed. A claim system does allow the university to sell seats that would otherwise be empty; it's a pain for people, though, and as part of my withdrawal from the field of the War On Students I'm in favor of making the process of going to games as easy as possible for everyone but especially the fickle next generation.

The question then becomes: how do you reward loyalty without annoying overhead? Michigan's revised student section policy is a major step forward:

By 2015, seat reservations will be based entirely on loyalty. Attendance points will be accumulated the following ways: each game attended is three points and arriving 30 minutes prior to kickoff earns an additional three points per game, for a total of six points per game.

Groups of up to 100 students can reserve seats together.

Groups get the average priority of everyone in them. That's simple and effective; it does not put any onus on the students except to show up early, and it was obviously concocted by the student government because I mean seriously the guys in suits have been trying to fix it and came up with HAIL and the world's worst GA policy. (I hope that my repeated rants on the subject had some influence there, but probably not.)

It's a step forward. Others can be taken. The new priority system does not solve one of the main reasons the student section ends up  looking empty: it is extremely difficult to flip tickets. The university decided it wanted full price for a student ticket not used by a student way back in the day and put a cumbersome validation process in place; if that was ditched most of those tickets not being used would get sold and deployed.

This brings back the unpleasant specter of the dudes I knew in college who bought tickets just to put them on eBay. I don't think that's going to be nearly the problem it was when student tickets cost $295 for the privilege of watching Penn State and nobody else. If Michigan's not capturing full value there they have to be close. Michigan should let tickets be sold normally while still scanning M-Cards for priority, and if you don't go to at least three games you no longer get to buy tickets.

Ugh. Capturing full value. I'm going to go take a shower now.

Brian,

What's your solution to the Bag Man?

I put up a post on this on Bag Man Day that was immediately stepped on by the Horford transfer; I wanted to expound on some questions I got in the mailbag and picked this guy's email from about a half dozen.

Part of college football's draw is amateurism; kids playing for education not money. Obviously this is all smoke and mirrors anymore, but it's hard to let go of that aspect of it (if for nothing other than nostalgia's sake). I have a passing interest in the NFL as compared to college football. There's just a sense of cynicism when everything is commercialized and athletes are getting paid big money to play a kid's game while the "rest of us" slave at work for crumbs. Here are some questions you may be able to give your opinion on assuming some sort of compensation is awarded to student athletes.

Shouldn't we just make college football a D-League or create one for those who want to skip college?

Is the draw amateurism or the fact that these guys are students like the other students? Amateurism proponents are quick to mention the Insane Dollar Value of their scholarship. Some even go so far as to include all the world-class training and such in their effort to portray the college athlete as already well-compensated. If they're successful in their arguments, don't they just defeat themselves? They're already being compensated. Now we're just discussing the price.

Might as well go all in and not try to walk some line between amateurism and professionalism right?

Walking a fine line is dumb but neither should we upset the entire apple cart if we can at all help it. College has a lot of good effects for players even if they're not getting engineering degrees, and with most of them headed for brief pro careers at best the current model does a lot of good for a lot of people. We've done a half-dozen events  with Carr-era players, and man they make you glad that college football is the way it is instead of being minor league baseball or the CHL.

Why stop at a fixed stipend? Should there be some kind of salary cap? If there is a stipend or other form of compensation, won't there still be bag men to get top recruits extra money to attend certain universities?

A stipend is only one way to approach it. The Olympic model is another. If the NCAA was to say "we won't pay you, but we don't mind if you get paid for your likeness" that sidesteps Title IX issues and mitigates bag-man issues. The difference between ten grand and zero dollars is a lot more compelling than 40 grand and 50 grand. While it'll still have some influence, other factors actually become more prominent.

I mean isn't this really just bidding wars for free agents that we see in pro sports?

Even if this is a negative, and I'm not sure it is, it is already happening.

Should all the athletes get the same wage and who decides the pay scale? Wouldn't there then be problems with different "salaries?"

We seem to have figured this out for everyone else in America. I don't understand why this is a particular issue for athletes.

Do "student athletes" also get a scholarship?

Yes. I mean, it's a perk that costs the university almost nothing and has great symbolic value.

Is competitive balance a casualty? Poorer and smaller schools certainly won't be able to afford top recruits, and maybe not even the stipend, so do we just have the same handful of teams who can  actually afford to be competitive and get national exposure, eliminate the "Cinderellas" and certain universities' football programs altogether?

Unless you can find a kid who chose the MAC over the Big Ten right now this is just the status quo.

I guess I just don't see a fix to an already broken system. There's a ton of money to be made and everybody wants a cut. Paying the athletes, which I'm not totally against and there are legitimate arguments for, isn't going to solve the problem entirely because the NCAA doesn't have any teeth to enforce their rules. Athletes will get a stipend but then there will still be bag men steering athletes to certain schools. In essence, they'll be getting paid twice.

-Anthony

There isn't a fix, other than dropping the Victorian-era approach to amateurism. Probably the most ludicrous regulation of all is that athletes can't sign with agents and maintain their eligibility. An agent! Someone who's job is to be an advocate and aid for your career, and you can't even say "you will be my agent" even without getting money and the NCAA yanks your eligibility. It's ridiculous.

Simply, the NCAA needs to look at the rules and decide which of them are even vaguely enforceable, then dump the rest.

SOUNDS ENCOURAGING. Oy.

Michigan OL coach Darrell Funk says young linemen must move forward, 'we don't have any choice'

I already bombarded you with grim news about the OL yesterday, so I'll forgo that today.

Ten second impact: minimal. Patrick Vint went back to a few games of a hyperspeed nature to find out how many penalties would have been issued if you couldn't snap the ball until 29 seconds were left on the shot clock. Answer: a few. Auburn would have gotten hit four times in the Alabama game, presumably just by a second or two. It's really hard to get a play off within ten seconds of the previous one's end.

It still seems virtually guaranteed that the rule won't pass; even if it does it's not a huge shift in the game.

Stats by conference. They now exist on Kenpom and validate the steep drop in shot-making you have probably perceived in Big Ten games this year. The league is 30th of 32 leagues in eFG%. They're also 28th in FT rate. Even last year's Best League Ever was 28th and 25th in those metrics, but in 2012 the B10 was 8th in eFG.

The moral here is probably that these margins are very thin. The difference between the top power conference in eFG, the Big East, and the bottom, the SEC, is about two percentage points. IE, you'd see one extra make in 50 Big East shots.

One other notable thing: home dominance has plummeted this year. Home teams are at a 55% clip compared to 64% last year and 62% the year before. That's a big ol' swing.

The other side of the pit. Bill Connelly's OL stats applied to the defensive line reveal that Michigan was slightly below average at rushing the passer, good at preventing runs of more than five yards, and bad at holding up in short yardage and getting TFLs.

IE: their defensive line was bad. That's not a huge surprise given the obvious things like playing former WDEs at nose tackle and the still-inexplicable absence of Quinton Washington.

It's not good. Gasaway's Tuesday Truths have one over-arching truth for Michigan fans:

                      W-L   Pace    PPP   Opp. PPP    EM
1.  Iowa              8-4   68.5    1.13    1.00    +0.13
2.  Michigan St.     10-3   63.7    1.10    0.98    +0.12
3.  Wisconsin         8-5   62.9    1.12    1.03    +0.09
4.  Michigan         10-3   61.8    1.15    1.07    +0.08
5.  Ohio St.          7-6   63.7    1.02    0.97    +0.05
6.  Minnesota         6-7   62.9    1.06    1.07    -0.01
7.  Purdue            5-7   64.7    0.99    1.03    -0.04
8.  Indiana           4-8   64.9    0.97    1.02    -0.05
9.  Nebraska          6-6   63.9    0.96    1.02    -0.06
10. Penn St.          4-9   66.2    0.99    1.08    -0.09
11. Illinois         3-10   63.8    0.94    1.04    -0.10
12. Northwestern      5-8   60.9    0.88    1.02    -0.14

AVG.                        64.1    1.03

That is: they are the worst defense in the league save for Penn State.

Oh no. Please don't. No one else can possibly wear a suit. Iowa's athletic director preserves the Big Ten's most precious tradition: making grandiose promises to quit if players get a larger slice of the revenue pile.

Barta suggests a pay-to-play system would force schools to put a monetary value on the different levels of competition in all collegiate sports.

"And I'll probably choose to do something else for a living if we ever had to go that route because it's so complex," Barta says. "Do you pay the Division III football player as an employee? Do you pay the tennis student athlete as an employee?"

I should probably be his replacement because I can figure out those two answers immediately: no, and no. Neither is involved in economic activity for their school since their programs are not making money and are therefore charity cases instead of employees.

[HT: Get the Picture.]

Defensive rotation. With Michael Downing and Andrew Sinelli both suspended for Friday's game after hits to the head against the Gophers, Michigan really needs some help. They will get it in the form of Kevin Lohan, who returns from injury after missing 19 games. Mike Chiasson will also draw in to a struggling blue line. Also returning is Alex Guptill and his wildly varying levels of involvement.

Etc.: Women's gymnastics beats Nebraska to take the Big Ten lead. Softball kicks off their season with a 4-1 trip. Dee Hart booted from Alabama for a pot possession charge. Lists of top recruiting classes over long periods of time always point out Michigan as a good recruiting school that sucks despite the recruiting; there really needs to be a recruiting + attrition study.

the solution to Michigan's OL issues is clear: get the mustache back

Yeah but all those other guys.

Brian,

I am shocked that a discussion regarding Nussmeier working with last year's assistant coaches has not yet been brought up.  Besides being forced to run a system for which they were unfamiliar, one of the assumed major downfalls of Scott Shafer and Greg Robinson's tenures was that they did not pick their assistants.  

First, would you assume that Nussmeier was given the opportunity to make changes to the offensive staff?  Why wouldn't he choose assistants he has worked with in the past?  Are Borges's and Nussmeier's offenses similar enough that the assistants' philosophies are in line?  Why are we putting so much faith in assistants (esp. Funk) that fielded such underwhelming position groups?

Looking forward to your response,

Dazed and Confused (Brad)

Most coordinators do not sweep out the assistants en masse and replace them. OSU just hired a new guy after Everett Withers left, but hired their DL coach before the DC and then picked up the DC. Alabama did not make Nussmeier-initiated changes when they hired him and did not make Kiffin-initiated changes when they hired him. Notre Dame is replacing both coordinators; neither will bring in a new staff with them. For whatever reason, the "mass firing followed by a totally new regime" thing is just not done.

Those reasons include recruiting, which is somewhere between 20% (OL coach) and 80% (RB coach) of any particular position coach's job, as well as familiarity with the players, continuity, and the difficulty of hiring four or five coaches all in one swoop who will all work together well and get along.

Meanwhile, the OC is near-irrelevant for Jackson and Hecklinski, who will teach their guys the same things (don't fumble, catch the ball, run to the hole, follow these rules on zone runs) in just about any system. There is an art to the zone that is different than running power, but Jackson's coached an awful lot of stretch and inside zone over the last decade—the fit is fine. I'm not even sure what Ferrigno does with the tight ends that couldn't be split between Hecklinski and the OL coach, so whatever.

The big fit thing is with the OL coach and the OC, as the things the OL can do affect the things the OC can call and how he structures his offense. All offenses do everything and teach everything; all offenses should have a bread and butter that they stick to. Nussmeier ran a lot of shotgun power and inside zone at Washington, and did much the same at Alabama, albeit with more under center stuff. When Funk goes to coaching clinics he gives three hour presentations on inside zone minutia. I think the fit there is good.

As for the thing about firing the OL coach after a couple of years of really disappointing performances, I don't think you'd find a guy who would object if Funk was cut loose after this season. Hoke's hanging his career on his evaluation of his OL coach. I liked the guy myself and shudder at the hand he was dealt; even so, last year's performance was alarming. We'll have something definitive either way next year.

Yeah but what about the defense?

Brian,

I'm as excited about the new OC hire as everyone else, but I think it may be overshadowing an equally concerning issue.

In the last 2 years, Michigan's defenses have not done that well against good offenses, and sometimes have been lit up by mediocre offenses. To my untrained eye, it appeared that in the bowl game we consistently put overmatched CBs on an island against their sole elite WR with disastrous effects. Isn't that the DC's job to get them some help? In his first year, Matteson used the blitz masterfully when he had a front 4 that couldn't get consistent pressure, but since then it seems that he's often content to rush 4 and get no pressure. I realize that the leading edge of our top notched recruiting classes were only true sophomores/red-shirt freshman last season, but it seems like seeing player and scheme development this next season is just as critical on the defensive side as the offensive side.

Rod [ed: not that Rod]

It is the DC's job to get them some help but that's the thing about offenses that consistently threaten you with the QB as a runner: it's hard to give guys help. If you put two safeties back you're asking your overmatched defensive line to hold up short a guy. If you bring a safety up he has to stay in the center of the field and Tyler Lockett can roam down the sideline with impunity. That is a choice you have to make. Michigan went into that game betting that their corners, who had performed well all year, could handle Lockett and tried to cover up for the issues in the front seven. They chose… poorly.

When you have a guy who can cover Tyler Lockett, you're good. No one has that. When you have a front six that can beat seven guys, you're good. Michigan did not have that. The spread is relentless. It forces you to win one on one matchups. Michigan did not.

I'm disappointed, sure, but Michigan just did not have the horses in the final two games against the best rushing offense in the country and the best WR in the country. Before that the schemes were holding up as well as you could expect the personnel to do so.

While I'm as disappointed in the passivity of this year's defense as you are and as concerned about Michigan getting ripped by spread teams as you are, on defense it was more about a severe personnel deficiency at defensive tackle and safety (remember Jarrod Wilson was out for the OSU game with disastrous results) than the chaos that reigned on the other side of the ball.

Head asplode rating.

On a scale of 1-10, how much did the Borges firing blow your mind?  I would have bet good money against it.

Thanks,
Jerry

I don't know. On the one hand, Michigan finished last in TFLs allowed this year and rushed for negative yards in consecutive games and that's aside from that game where the top tailback ran 27 times for 27 yards. So 1.

On the other, I'd heard from various people that a change was not likely, and Hoke said he didn't anticipate any changes a month ago. So, like, 8. I do wonder if Nussmeier's unexpected availability moved the needle there, that Brady was grudgingly content to move forward with Borges until a confirmed QB guru who'd run pro-style offenses (shhhh) was suddenly on the market.

No.

Can Heiko ask Nuss about bubble screens.

No, because Heiko is going to be a doctor. And given what I've seen from Washington's 2011 campaign (post on this forthcoming) there will be no need to badger the OC to throw a WR screen from time to time when the OL is terrible. Washington's 2011 OL was and Washington tried to run every WR screen in the book.

NO.

m a sports debater person on the University's student radio station WCBN. Yesterday on our daily sports report we discussed the possibility of Gardner switching back to WR next year to prep for the NFL and then a QB battle would ensue between Morris and Speight (one of the guys on our show also threw out the idea of wildcat sets and all the yummy trick plays that go along with having 2 or 3 really good QBs on your roster).  Does the Nussmeier make the possibilities of the Gardner move more or less likely?  Does Michigan stay their current course with DG as the signal caller and then transition after he graduates or do they make that jump during this offseason?

-MGoTribe

Seriously did we not learn our lesson about going into a season with like 1 quarterback on the roster last year? And I mean seriously what about the six points Michigan scored before the bowl game was over makes you think that Devin Gardner is a worse option? Do you know how hard it is not to put this response in all caps? Super hard.

Over the last one and a half years, Devin Gardner:

• Completed 60% of his passes.
• Averaged 8.9 yards an attempt.
• Had a 32:16 TD:INT ratio.
• Had this combined statline against Notre Dame and OSU this year: 53 of 78, 68% completion rate, 9.6 YPA, 8 TD, 1 INT.
• In 2013, ran for 751 yards on 130 attempts, 5.8 yards per.
• Did this behind a line that gave up 36 sacks.
• Did this without any run game whatsover.
• Did this with a damaged shoulder, hand, rib, foot, and soul.

Devin Gardner is not getting replaced by a true sophomore. Repeat after me. Or I swear to God I will come to your radio station with a posse of boxing kangaroos, and you will be sorry.

"I hope we're all up on the latest changes to the NCAA rule book." [Fuller]

Wait, substitution. Wait. Wait, what?

Yo Brian,

So when the bearded lady rushed into the center ring to launch the football out of the cannon through the flaming uprights at the end of the Evanston Circus, Michigan obviously made a substitution.  Northwestern did not make a substitution, but they, according to the Rules, could have.  If they did, it seems like that would have taken more time before the official gave the ready for play, and potentially wasted enough time to run the clock out.  In this parallel universe game which is crazier than the actual circus which unfolded, does Michigan get to attempt the field goal? How are the rules applied in that situation (which thankfully did not happen)?

Eddie

UPDATE: NEVERMIND the below, as I missed this section in the rulebook:

Late in the first half Team A is out of timeouts. A pass play on third down ends inbounds at the B-25 short of the line to gain with the game clock showing 0:10. Facing fourth down and three, Team A immediately hurries its field goal team onto the field. RULING: Team B should reasonably expect that Team A will attempt a field goal in this situationand should have its field-goal defense unit ready. The umpire will not stand over the ball, as there should be no issue of the defense being uncertain about the next play.

Thanks to Maize and Blue Wahoo. I will self-immolate now like a Northwestern fan observing his team playing football.

-------------------

We should have been screwed. The NCAA rulebook has a specific mention of this very scenario:

Late in the first half Team A is out of timeouts. A pass play on third down ends inbounds at the B-25 short of the line to gain with the game clock showing 0:30. Facing fourth down and three, Team A gives no indication as to its next play until the game clock reads 0:10. They then rush their field goal unit onto the field, and Team B then hurries to respond.

RULING: The umpire moves to the ball to prevent the snap until Team B has had a reasonable opportunity to get its field-goal defense unit onto the field. The umpire will step away when he judges that the defense has had enough time. If the game clock reads 0:00 before the ball is snapped after the umpire steps away, the half is over.

That is in blue along with various other new rules (like "minimum time for spiking the ball") this year, so it must have just been added. If Fitz tried to substitute, the rulebook says that the refs have to let him and the clock would then run out.

This is of course terrible since it prevents the sort of exciting thing that happened against Northwestern and replaces it with the clock running out because the defense can't get aligned in time and should be immediately stricken in the name of fun… except maybe it doesn't exist?

Game ref Bill LeMonnier:

“When a team is coming out and it’s the last play of the game and they substitute with their field-goal team, the defense is not given the opportunity,” referee Bill LeMonnier said. “Usually there’s match-up time on substitutions. When it’s the field-goal attempt like that on the last play of the half, then there’s no match-up given.”

This is in direct contradiction of the rulebook. So… yeah. I don't know. The only thing that may reconcile these two points of view is the rulebook stating that the team getting the FG unit out there spent 20 seconds doing nothing, whereas Michigan was clearly going GO GO GO as soon as Gallon was tackled.

Spiritually, if you can't get your FG block team on the field in that situation and the other team can get the play off, screw your field goal block team. Fire drills forever.

[After THE JUMP: talking Funk, safety rotation, and the latest bizarre email.]

GIS throws this at you when you google for Darrell Funk, so congrats Firstbase

It would seem obvious

Event reminder: MGoBlog is coming to Chicago next Friday. Moe's Cantina, River North, 6-9 p.m.

The coping mechanisms kicked in about Tuesday, and the diaries flowed. The best, I thought, was by Ron Utah, who took this base alignment

…from the UFR and pointed out why it's hard to attack this in myriad ways because MSU's defense is good. That is true, but it doesn't invalidate the primary complaints: it isn't cohesive. Indiana faced the same defense and their OL isn't all that great, but they have committed themselves to running option routes and tempo, and it works because it puts the offense mostly on the shoulders of three really good receivers to execute. A short list of some of the hands Michigan gambled on:

• Toussaint's pass blocking vs. Denicos Allen blitz
• Funchess's threat as an inline blocker vs. MSU having watched Funchess this season at all
• Half-hearted play-action on 2nd and 15 when Michigan hasn't shown a run out of that formation in ever vs. MSU safeties' ability to read play-action.

State's defense is great, and that gives teams limited options for beating them. But the offensive coaching was awful independent of that, on the game level more so on a macro level: They haven't been able to figure out from week to week what the hell kind of offense they are, let alone who's going to be playing it. Eventually they want to be a TE-mismatch outfit but right now there isn't a single TE or RB on the roster who can block. I get it, but it's not getting better because in three years nobody on that staff has been able to answer "what are we going to do about it?"

The OL can't block either. Well the freshmen can't and hey, they're freshmen. But since OL coaches are particularly difficult to judge (especially when their oldest recruits are all redshirt freshmen this year) Erik_in_Dayton went over all of Funk's previous OL charges going back to Ball State. No conclusions—almost everybody was a 2-star recruit—but interesting read.

Meanwhile Gameboy has been trying all sorts of ways of assessing Michigan's O-line experience versus that of other teams. In three attempts he's got a bunch of data and no sense to make of it still because Michigan has two extremes and the coaches don't do things to cover up for their weak points. The chart at right shows O-line starts and game experience. His big mistake I think is averaging: Team One has a tackle with thirty starts and a left guard with none; Team Two has a tackle and guard who've started next to each other for fifteen games. Both average fifteen starts, but Team Two has a big advantage that is hidden by your method.

Chunkums put up a survey to ask if you want to fire which coaches, but your feelings are irrelevant since this staff won't be budged unless there's wholesale failure the rest of the year and Dave Brandon's pimp hand has to step in. Even then, what are the chances Michigan grabs the soon-to-be-unemployed Nebraska OC we're pining over? What's that guy going to do with Morris and Speight? It's clear now that Borges should never have been brought here in the first place, but then a world where Michigan hung on to Calvin Magee for a few years (as OSU did with Fickell) comes with its own negatives. Either way the future is what matters now; if we're going to advocate anything maybe it's a consultant who can teach Borges constraint theory.

While you're assessing, here's a handy chart of Michigan's games under Hoke by dnak438, with the betting lines included. I think jamiemac once told me that Michigan's final lines, like ND's and other power programs, are worse predictors because they're responsive to the huge number of people who bet knowing nothing more than that Michigan is traditionally pretty good. Early lines are more accurate. By the way dnak took my suggestion of rotating the chart 45 degrees. This week I'm suggesting overlaying last week's to see progression:

[Jump to find out how Brian got banned, and you can too!]

SHOW ME THE HENRY

How to resolve the NCAA being terrible thing.

Brian,

My friend and I were having a discussion about the best way to compensate college players, and he came up with the idea of paying players based on performance, sort of how incentive laden contracts work in the NFL, with the stipulation that the players will not receive the money until they graduate or go pro. I thought his idea was awful and unrealistic, because the “student athletes” would now become paid employees of the university and we essentially would have a semi-pro league on our hands. BUT, that got me thinking about a possible solution…

The issue we have here is the balance of compensation between stars and bench-warmers, large schools and small schools, men’s sports and women’s sports (which could also very well be a legal issue), revenue-generating and non-revenue-generating sports, etc. Instead of trying to figure out that mess, let’s take the decision of compensation out of the universities’ hands.

The solution: allow the student athletes to sign endorsement deals. If a corporation is willing to pay for a player’s likeness, he deserves that money. However, the stipulation here is that all money earned by a student athlete through endorsements would have to be held in an escrow account, and the release of the money would be contingent upon the completion of the player’s eligibility or his/her declaration to go pro, whichever comes first. Now if a player is caught accepting benefits beforehand, the NCAA would not look hypocritical when laying down punishments. Student athletes get compensated, legal issues are avoided, and you won't have a bunch of teenagers running around campus with millions of dollars to blow/get into mischief with.  What do you think? So crazy it just might work?

Go Blue,
Stephen Y

That's fine. It's a little paternalistic to tell the kids they can't have money until they get their degree, and that will be less effective at legitimizing the stuff under the table, because poor college kids will still want walking-around money. It's still fine.

I'm not sure why there's this widespread opposition to giving people money in exchange for services, but whatever middle ground you want to stake out that gives the kids their image rights and avoids Title IX issues is fine by me. Sign whatever you want, get whatever money you can acquire, and everything will be the same except compliance folk will have to find less mindlessly pedantic jobs. Worries about booster involvement are naïve—they're already involved.

The other major thing that the NCAA could do is get rid of their inane opposition to agents. If you're a legit agent with X number of current pro clients you can sign players regarded as prospects, and give them some advance on whatever they're going to make in the pros. (If you don't make the pros, that's just tough luck for the agent.) The NCAA doesn't even have to redirect any of the buckets of cash they're currently making to make the system

• less impossible to manage
• a more even playing field
• fairer to the players

Yeah: a more even playing field. Right now no one is going to MAC schools over major offers, but schools willing to do under the table stuff—or just not stop it—have an advantage over schools that don't. And it's tough to figure out what the more moral position is there these days.

DL moves?

Hey Brian,

Sometimes in football, it seems that you just want to get the best guys on the field right?  Do you think we might see a DL consisting of Beyer, Henry, Qwash, Black?

I would think Black could flip back out to SDE pretty easily and could fold back in to 3 tech occasionally depending on the substitution patterns.  To me that gets your best pass rushers on the field more regularly and is the most likely combo to soak up OL in the run game too.

You mentioned that you expect Beyer to take Clark's job when Ryan comes back, but why not just make that switch now?  Wouldn't you rather get Gordon out there with Beyer than Clark at this point?

Thanks,
Daniel

(This was sent before Clark played well against UConn.)

If Michigan was going to put out its best line for one particular play against an I-formation that might well be it, but with opponents running out all kinds of spread packages and Michigan responding by lifting their nose tackle, Black's snaps are mostly going to be spent as an interior rush-type against shotgun formations. It's probably not worth moving him midseason to get a marginal improvement. While I like what I've seen from Henry so far, there was a play against UConn where he got obliterated. (Michigan was fortunate that UConn didn't block the second level well and held the gain down.) He's a work in progress.

Meanwhile on Cam Gordon: for whatever reason they're not playing him, and it's to the point that his lack of playing time speaks to a lack of performance. Beyer's been good, but mostly as a guy with his hand in the dirt. When Beyer's been put in coverage he's shown some flaws. Gordon's not getting more time is probably just his fate at this point.

I don't get it, either. They've been giving him seemingly genuine praise for years now and when it comes down to it they just don't put him on the field.

[After THE JUMP: evaluating Michigan's coaching staff, plus Bo Pelini axe murder.]