dave brandon prince among men

Elvis says: don't do drugs. Because you'll totally overthrow Desmond Howard if you do.

One offs FTW. That Colorado game has no return date scheduled according to CU's official site:

Colorado and Michigan will renew their short but exciting rivalry with a single game in Ann Arbor on Sept. 17, 2016.  While not officially part of the Pac-12/Big Ten schedule series set to commence in 2017, it will mark the fifth time the schools will play, the first since 1997.

And neither does the Oregon State official site mention a return game:

The Oregon State University football team will travel to the University of Michigan to play during the 2015 season, Beaver Director of Athletics Bob De Carolis announced Wednesday. …

“This is an exciting opportunity for our student-athletes, staff and fans to visit not only one of the great venues in college football but all of sports,” De Carolis said. “But make no mistake, we will make this trip with the goal of winning a football game.”

So… that ND gap can be filled by a marquee opponent instead of road games against middling to not so good Pac-12 teams. Take a picture: GOOD JOB DAVE BRANDON WOOO! Also good job Bill Martin for having luxury suites that make it important to not have home schedules like this year.

Now, about canceling the Horror II and pretending that never happened…

Notre Dame hiatus just that. Whenever Michigan and Notre Dame take a break in their series there's a small cadre of folks suspicious that it's a front for an end to the whole thing. This does not appear to be the case, tinfoil hat folk. From the Tribune:

"This was either in place when I got here or it was a request that came shortly after I got here," Swarbrick said in a phone interview Wednesday. "I didn't even know it wasn't known, frankly. It had been cooked into our scheduling model for at least three years.

"I don’t think somehow (Michigan athletic director) Dave (Brandon) had been informed when he came aboard. When he called and we started talking about dates, I said, 'You know Dave, we had this bye built in and I scheduled games.' He was great. We just made it work.

"We're going to keep playing each other. It's important to both schools. This initiated with a request from up there years ago, and we said OK."

Since this is Notre Dame there is the slight but real chance Swarbrick means "heaven" by "up there." In any case, ND is coming back after the break. On the schedule. Not to the realm of teams that win a lot of football games.

And then he gave you the finger guns. Brandon on the ND hole:

But what does Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon intend to do with those two open dates on the schedule?

"Stay tuned," he told AnnArbor.com by phone on Wednesday.

You're too small. This is something that is true about Chris Wormley and Tom Strobel despite being people of this size:

Football is weird.

BONUS: Well done, photobomber who must be Wormley's younger brother or something.

ZomBCS lurches on, makes more sense. There will remain some semblance of the red carpet bowl tier that fans have gotten used to over the past decade or so, as Stewart Mandel reports that the as yet undefined selection committee will also hand-craft the four bowls that are super special but not hosting playoff semifinals. The top twelve get in, no exceptions—you're still not in the top 12, Michigan State, go away—and there will be some restrictions due to Rose/"Champions" bowl business. As a bonus, they've also decided to un-screw the bowl schedule by playing all six of the red carpet bowls on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

That's good. Less good is that the selection committee will start issuing a top 20 at midseason:

"We didn't want the top four teams to just come out of the blue at the end of the season," Swarbrick said.

This is to provide some transparency, I guess, but if they are prioritizing conference champs that's data you don't get until the season's over, making the previous polls a pointless exercise. I'd rather do away with the whole poll mentality in case some of the dumb from previous systems leaks into the new one.

Budget bits. Michigan's released its 2012 athletic department budget, which is the usual: about 10-12 million in the black with 4-5 of that set aside for a capital reinvestment fund. Things that jump out:

• Michigan is budgeting $2.4 million for "hosting, food, and special events" in the 2013 FY, a threefold increase on FY12. Alabama game effect?
• Premium seating is sold out for football and "essentially sold out" for basketball. Someone high five Brady Hoke and John Beilein.
• Despite having two fewer football games, "spectator admissions" are projected to drop only slightly, from 43 million to 39 million. Ticket price increase is a part of that and they must be including their 4.7 million from the Alabama game in that item.
• They made $3.9 million more than they expected last year.

More OHL rumblings. It's the incredibly annoying part of the year where OHL teams try to swoop in on committed players just for the hell of it. Plymouth traded for incoming defenseman Connor Carrick's rights, and then signed him. (Apparently. I can't find anything other than the link-free MHN article.)

Carrick committed to Michigan as a sophomore in high school and as a small defenseman who was a mid-round draft pick he's the archetypical guy who should play in college, so the only way this makes any sense at all is if Carrick was concerned about playing time. Michigan does return six guys who had a regular-ish shift last year and adds Trouba. But this isn't John Gibson bugging out at the idea of backing up Hunwick—Carrick only has to beat out one of Chiasson, Serville, or Clare to get PT. Stupid move for a guy who has about a 12% chance of playing 200 NHL games.

Meanwhile, an OHL source telling Matt Slovin that Jacob Trouba is 50/50 to be in Kitchener this fall is something to mention, but my initial reaction to that is eyerolling given anonymous OHL sources' tendency to play up their chances at everyone. Trouba has been more insistent that he'd be at Michigan than anyone save Jack Johnson. If he backs out that would be an all-timer. I need a sufficiently condescending youtube video to embed in these situations.

As far as Phil Di Giuseppe goes, Rivals' Michael Spath seems to be a little more optimistic as of yesterday's Inside the Fort post. 

It doubles as a tombstone. The CCHA's final year will be commemorated by patches.

I'll be vaguely sad about the lost tradition until I see some good old fashioned CCHA reffing in November. Or remember Shawn Hunwick, second-team all-conference.

Mikulak killing it. Michigan's men's gymnastics Olympic hopeful is crushing the trials:

So much for the U.S. men's gymnastics team being a two-man show.

Sam Mikulak was impressive during the first day of the U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials Thursday, threatening to break up the grip national champion John Orozco and Danell Leyva have on the role of top Americans heading into the London Olympics.

Looking as relaxed as if he was competing in a college dual meet for Michigan, the 2011 NCAA champion posted an all-around score of 91.80, the best on a day many of the other contenders to make the five-man Olympic team faltered.

Leyva moved past Orozco into first place in the overall standings, which combine scores from nationals and trials, but couldn't top Mikulak, at least for a couple of hours. Mikulak remained third in the overall standings but drew closer to the top two heading into the finals Saturday.

Mikulak was also interviewed by espnW. If he makes the team he is a lock to have an NBC equivalent of Tom Rinaldi narrate a sepia-toned profile, what with the broken legs == broken dreams angle.

Etc.: John Bacon on the recently departed Bob Chappius. The Ex-Peach Bowl wants to be the #6 bowl in this new rotation they've got going. Indianapolis, you're our only hope. TOC's Chris Vannini on Detroit FC. Shut up, I like it. UConn joins Hockey East, prompting BC blogs to advocate secession into a new six-team conference styled on the Big Ten. New BHGP podcast intro song.

Lloyd meets the peregrine falcon named after him, asks "why is that one not named Fielding?" He does not actually ask that.

The worst thing is when you know you saw something useful somewhere obscure a long time ago and stare at the Google box certain it will not help you. So it was yesterday when I tried to dig up a scoreboard comparison graphic that I thought I saw on a Mississippi State blog sometime in the murky past. Never found it, [UPDATE: It was on an Auburn blog; we are basically going from South Carolina to Tennessee] but the Daily did this:

So there you go. Bigger than a blue whale. IIRC, this is a standard Daily graphic they use whenever they have to compare the size of anything to objects in the world. I remember that elephant.

The actual viewable area for the boards is 47 x 85. This is large. When I went to Auburn a few years back I reported their single HD board was "killer" and that Michigan fans had "no idea" how much they needed one. That board:

That board was packed with frippery and advertising—about every fourth play instead of a replay you'd get a frustrating ad—that Michigan's boards will presumably be free of. This is going to be life-changing. Serious. Your life will be different. There will be a band hype-up video that actually gets you hyped up. You will understand what is happening in football games better. You will have up to date stats. Also grapefruit will taste better.

Let's explore in the universal language of Mike Hart pictures. I could not find dimensions for the existing scoreboard but I remember Michigan State's setup, also installed the late 90s, as nearly identical. The size of that increasingly vintage board:

The size of Auburn's board:

What you'll see this fall:

Very big. Somehow still considerably smaller than Minnesota's. And just for the hell of it here's Godzillatron:

Ah but wait:

In its first usage, the portion of the new screen that was typically used for showing replays and film highlights was approximately the same size as the old video screen. More recent games have featured a 16:9 format image centered in a ring of advertisement and score/clock related information. Nevertheless, complaints continue about the advertising, with some fans shouting out "We won't shop/eat/bank there" when advertisements are played loudly in the stadium.

This is wikipedia so it's true. With ads…

…Godzillatron loses a big chunk of its advantage, especially if they blare as loud as the ones at Ohio Stadium or Memorial Stadium. Michigan's going to have the best combo of replay and lack of annoyance in the country. Point Dave Brandon.