dear diary

Nice try, Jean de Valk, making the blue of your background a greenish gray, as if we wouldn't recognize le drapeau tricolore as anything but a call to arms against the Bourbons of college football.

Didn't realize the French national anthem was a bloody minded board rant did you?

This plus a wallpaper about the cheat-sheet gloves are available in the thread. Allons enfants de la Michigan, le jour de gloire est arrivé!

Every Time Michigan Loses, George Lucas Writes a Love Scene. The annual if:then prediction thread by L'oeil du tigre gives six different scenarios for the 2012 season rated from Empire to Jar Jar. I'm in agreement on the order of quality, but not that an 8-4 season, even with a fifth loss to MSU, could be as painful as Attack of the Clones. Go with me here. I could see 700, maybe even 800 more Michigan games in my lifetime, yet in all of human history we've had six Star Wars movies. And to wait for two decades of hype to get that… Argh. Honestly, if I was told I had a chance to go back and fix Star Wars Episode I or change the outcome of Football Armageddon '06, I don't know man…

…but I co-sign SO HARD on this, especially Anakin being a teen and a Vader-Padme-Obi Wan love triangle. And Mace Windu…I digress.

What Shall We Do With Fullbacks? A short but potent message by Renault en Ben: We should all start thinking about Hopkins and Houma and future fullbacks recruited by this staff as less like Kevin Dudley and more like Aaron Shea because Al Borges is a West Coast guy and West Coast offenses use their fullbacks as passing options in the flat. Sometimes they can run block too. Short-term I think Hopkins doesn't have the hands or the hop to be a scary passing threat like some TE-ish fullbacks, however he does have a running back's rushing skillz, so they'll use those. As for the future: eventually we'll have a U-Back to be that. Borges and Hoke say they like a low-altitude kind of player who can pop a guy low and get North-South quickly on the FB dive. Watch Houma's highlights—the second half is almost entirely dive runs. That's not necessarily a Dudley, but it's more LeRoy Hoard than Aaron Shea. Hoard was 5'11, built like a tank, and accelerated like a 1970 Boss 302 Mustang V8.

The Defenses are Back. The series that won Monsieur Couer-Vingt a DotW (plus the inaugural "hero" points) continued this week with the Returning Defense of 2012 Opponents part the first and second. He used blanket stats, which I think makes bad defenses look like they're returning more (Purdue & Minnesota) because it doesn't check for how many plays faced. Helpful user euh-tay-ah mille-vingt-deux notes Phil Steele does a similar analysis.

There was also a nice little diary by the same on Bama, ND, and Ohio State, and recent updates on those teams. I'd like something like this—better formatted—to continue throughout the season. You know, like a weekly around the opponents news thing to round up what their blogs are saying about them. Again, monsiuer couerVingt is your Diarist of the Week.

Elsewheres in analysis  LSA class de deux-mille is goofing around with a spreadsheet of Big Ten player weights and heights. Part two is by position and I'm just linking to that one because the first doesn't break it up by contributors and thus will just call whichever team with the most lineman walk-ons the biggest.

Where Legends' Jockstraps Lie.

Thanks to phjhu89 (I can't translate that!). That's locker #21 in wood panels and there's a close-up of it and more in the diary (bumped from a thread). The special locker makes it all but certain they're not giving Legends jerseys to young players but using them to reward old ones. I'm with the people against this, but I'm sure it will look less weird when 11 and 48 etc. are all teaked out as well and if it's good for recruiting…

Preseason Polls Have Been Meaningless Since the Time of Louis VII. In 1149, the Associated Scribes submitted a poll claiming the Glorious Franks* would sweep the next season's European battles. Then a coalition of kings released their own poll claiming that no, it was the Holy Notre Dame Empire that would prevail by winterfell. So began pre-season polls. Actually they go back to 1950 and usually rate Michigan too high. Thou hast perform'd well in gathering us this parchment good Sir Dévot du Loup Glouton.

Etc. The Twin City socks mentioned in Three &Out are comfy, but to be honest they're less comfortable than my ski socks. Anyway I don't think the socks in the Northwestern photo are the TCs, but horray to Section Une for finding M's on socks of M history. And in things less important than socks: two meta articles on an MGOpoints system that isn't used anymore, because there is no such thing as data that our readers won't put in a spreadsheet.

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* Yes "Franks." Louis's son Phil was the one who started calling it France.

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AARON SHEA PLUS ALL THE POINTS. UMdad wanted to find video of this one play where Aaron Shea blocked three guys at once…you know, that one:

"… But that's my job, to go out there and block a linebacker, or, you know, all of them."

The hero of the day is helpful reader Carcajous, who found not just the Daily excerpt above but the video too. I highly recommend poking around in the video to relive the setup before the triple-block run and Clarence Williams at his Clarence Williamsiest. I don't recommend poking around in that issue of the Daily because I was 18 and had only recently discovered the long dash.

BETTER NOT TO SHOW THE OPPONENTS

That day once a year when your season tickets come, and you get really excited and put them out on the kitchen table to stare at them until you realize the last four are the only ones you really give a damn about. Sigh, even years.

UNOFFICIAL OFFICIAL TAILGATE MIX. Mine has a lot of the band plus the UM Hospital's cool version and Across 110th street (the Michigan Replay song). I say mix more of those in.

HELLO: MICHAEL FERNS!! HELLO: MICHAEL FERNS!! HELLO: MICHAEL FERNS!! HELLO! Before he (I'm guessing accidentally) somehow turned his account into a function that auto-posted Hello: Michael Ferns posts to the board every few minutes, user kaykay put together a "Projected Depth Chart for 2015" thing every fan base puts together in the depths of the offseason when every incoming freshman and recruit is going to reach all of their potential. I rescued the thread from that smoldering account to save my response, a Projected Depth Chart for 2012, as we thought it would be in 2009.

ETC. Lacrosse rules seem to favor more offense and less standing around, which as a casual fan who knows nothing about the sport I say thee yea.

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Your Moment of Zen:

Can somebody with a uniqname go to the Music Library and get them a better soundtrack?

From time to time people from the less-heralded sports/activities at Michigan provide detailed diaries of their teams and their exploits. Sometimes they actually succeed in making us turn our heads and get into something other than the big five of hoops, hockey, football, football (teams we play), and football (Penn State).

This week we witnessed the Other Sports Diary to End All Other Sports Diaries by Bronco648, a running, day-by-day recap of their week-long race with a national title on the line, kicked off with a entire media guide that includes photos/profiles of each team member. Example:

Feight was raised by a family of wild Spartans then imprisoned by a mad skiing coach before discovering his mutant meteorological powers could help him escape to Ann Arbor.

It's like NASCAR except with clean energy and electrical engineering and a team meteorologist, so of course Michigan is awesome at it. The car's name is Quantum (who voted against Dilithium?) and it built a strong lead in the early going before the team got caught using Denard Robinson's smile to boost the radiant flux, a 90-minute penalty. To discover the ending, read the thing, or else find a freshman WLB or CRex family member to translate this for you:

2012 전국 챔피언을만 세!!!

Family members of CRex? Like another recent epic tale about a ring, the latest installment of CRex's great adventure begins with a flashback, where we discover how two Chinese gangsters and a deity named Guan Yu (go blue?) brought about the fall of the Sweatervest Lord. The action then shifts stateside, where Little Sister has gone from heartbreaking debutante to Warcraft addict to Marmot Rambo to Ricky Bobby in the span of two weeks. Q: How is it that vampires and obnoxious people from New Jersey have so many TV shows but this guy doesn't? A: Because CRex Family Hour's target audience would skip it anytime they can instead watch…

Footbawwwwwwww. Thank hart20 for diving into reams of stats to come back with data on how much production is returning from each of our opponents. Part the First puts all that data into tables that say things like 15 percent of MSU's receiving yards are returning, and 100% of Justin Siller isn't(!). Then the rubber hits the chart in Part II which you must read because we are going to quote from it all year. Sample? Sample.

II. Rushing Offense

The formula that I used to calculate the total returning percent for each team’s rushing offense was to give a 33.3% weight to each of returning carries, returning rushing yards, and returning rushing TDs.

Hart20 is your Diarist of the Week, plus 200 "Hero" points (I just made those up).

Great Scott, our freshmen are heavy. Just in before press time, LSAClassof2000 has put the weights and heights of Big Ten players into a spreadsheet. Included is a comparison of our freshmen versus the conference's mean, where we find our WRs, TEs, DTs, DEs, and DBs are already larger than the average B1G (which averages presumably include walk-ons). MSU is the heaviest in our division by a large (ha!) margin; Nebraska is the shortest, though they rate highest in the conference in returning rushing punch, which was quite the punch.

Quite the punch? Then why do I remember it more like an 8-year-old girl? Well, sonny, you just sit down right there and let Uncle BlueSeoul tell you about the greatest all-around performance by Michigan since 1997 Penn State. It (the diary) got bumped, and not just because somebody whose name rhymes with "Eyeco" left a pic of Urban Meyer bicep flexing on top of the front page all weekend. Actually these always get bumped, but you may not remember that because BlueSeoul hadn't done a GW(WPs!) since the middle of last season. The most anticipated MGoArticle you'd completely given up on not named "Upon Further Review: Virginia Tech" is finally available. And yes, m'boy, a man DID once force a pitch from the back side.

Geography. After I had already put last week's DD to bed TSS posted his next Michigan-Alabama Roster analysis and this one is just so cool: a chart of distance from campus for players on M/Bama's rosters.

The difference really highlights the regional strength of the South. Whereas Michigan recruits a bunch of guys from really close by and then a bunch of guys from all over the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, Alabama's players are primarily regional. If the mass you see at about 230 miles from Tuscaloosa is Atlanta and Mobile, and the cluster 200 miles from Ann Arbor is W-Mich and the Ohioans, then the big difference between us and them is their Floridians (cluster around 600 mark) are closer to home than ours (1200 to 1300 cluster).

Football (Penn State). NCAA's nuclear bunker-buster fell upon Happy Beaver State College Valley Whatever this week. Fallout diaries include jmblue suggesting a realignment of Big~Ten divisions, a "don't you get it?" message to PSU fans that probably qualifies under the definition of rant, and oakapple describes the path that will lead the nittany lion-beavers back to five/six stars of program strength.

Travel guide for Dallas. Eat BBQ, skip everything else. Dallas sucks. And America hates all of your teams.

Etc. Michigan Stadium brought to you by McDonArby's Dunkin' Save Mart Lanes and Shredder. Brian is entranced by David Brandon playing golf. Blazefire puts the 2012 season and Jerry Sandusky to Hotel California, though not sure I liked the result. The Blockhams visit football's Valhalla. This is one of my favorites so far, though I waited in vain for Fielding Yost to tap Bo on the shoulder and (with Bob Ufer standing behind him), say "you still haven't thanked me for AC and Indiana!"

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A REENACTMENT OF THE BUMBLEBEE MURDERS OF 2011

This is a reenactment of WH responding to an Adidas promo video of (Devin Gardner?) jumping around in the latest Michigan uniform that isn't as good as the regular uniform:

Michigan was always up there with schools like USC and Penn State (though I hate mentioning anything PSU now) as being football uniforms you don't screw with.

I know this is a fad in college football that I'm just going to have to get used to. But I always liked the whole, "If it's not broke, don't fix it," thing.

Fonts are Akka, Flynn, SuperMario256, and Shrek; if you don't get some of these references that's because a future created only lasts as long as the marketing campaign for it. If that is Gardner (can anyone tell?) in the video, it's at least no more ridiculous than the show he put on in the last ones.

SHANE MORRIS PHOTOSHOPPING

By the time he steps on campus he'll have more content on here than any 4-year player on the roster. Still, photoshop thread is insta-linked:

PAT'S GONNA PUT YOU IN THE MOVIES

Pre-Gaming With guy is shooting at 1p.m. on Sunday on the Diag if you want to be in the "I Love You Denard" music video. I do not believe he is accepting lyric suggestions.

Your moment of zen:

Yay ticket arrivals! If you're signed up to get the emails/texts/FB/twitter from MGoBlue, you can order individual tickets for AF/UMass/NW/Iowa ($75 each), plus the UMass family pack thing, starting about 8:30 this morning.

Gave up trying to find shapes that look like states after MI. Click embiggerates.

Cartography week. Unless you're Ricky Stanzi, in which case this is every day, the 4th of July was for honoring America. Since this is a thing named for a cartographer, what better way than mapmaking. Randall Monroe (of xkcd) chose to take the Michigan=mitten thing and come up with objects for the other 49 that's worth a 'brief' look just to see what Ohio is and shall hereafter be referred to as for all time. Maize.Blue Wanger decided to pen a 7,700-word thesis about the best Michigan football players from each state. My map above used his work for most things except I used Spencer Brinton for Utah, split Michigan between his choice (Braylon) and mine (Harry Newman, but coulda been Oosterbaan), counted the little New England states as one Jamie Morris, and put a Block M over the ones I didn't care to do Google image searches for since I almost didn't return from my last quest for a representative photo of Brandon Williams. Anyhoo, for such a Herculean effort in service to his country, MBW is awarded Diarist of the Week.

The author also discovered the mess that is Bentley's enter-the-data-then-forget-about-it player database, which is more comprehensive than any other team's database in the country yet manages to do horrible things to Opong-Owusus ("F13" is not a football position!) In spite of such hazards, justingoblue followed MBW into the archives to chart up which states/regions have been dutifully paying their tributes of football talent.

Here's the context then. At the HTTV release after-party we had a long discussion about the '99 Penn State team, to the point that Brian was surprised everybody remember Penn State so damn well. For my part I learned everything I could about them when they joined the Big Ten. It all said they were a true national power, and nothing they did in the interim—like going undefeated in '94—suggested otherwise. The conference might have tried to shoehorn them in to a rivalry with MSU because they both got Morrill Act grants when the SEC seceded from the union, but it was the Michigan games they got up for, and vice versa.

The 1997-'99 series was among best of those. They'd won the last three. Judgment Day marked the point when the national championship run became real. The Sunday morning after—still fresh acceptance packet folded up in my cargo pocket—the glow of that win was still palpable in the chill air, cup-strewn lawns, and weary students stumbling home trying to decide if they'd really been partying at Bollinger's house. In '98 the student section was so loud it turned back multiple Lion goal-line and field goal attempts.

And 1999, when Florida State and its weak-ass ACC schedule was the runaway AP favorite, but No. 2 Penn State the best team in the country. The Nittany Lions had Courtney Brown and LaVarr Arrington, and strength everywhere else. Then they ran into Minnesota (at their Mason peak) and lost in one of those final play games any team can lose any time to a decent team. We laughed, but we knew our offensive line was too hobbled to give Brady time or Thomas lanes, and our cornerbacks were Future Stars of the SmurfFL, and Minnesota's upset was just luck.

Then that game, which you can re-live thanks to footage by Gordon (and photos via DeSimone) The score was close but true to the short-lived rivalry, Michigan beat the snot out of them. A-Train knocked out Arrington and bruised up Brown, and by the end we'd seen something nobody thought could happen that year: Penn State beaten and broken by a better team. The next week they limped through a loss at Michigan State that Spartans remember as the debut of T.J. Duckett, and everyone else remembers as the result of Michigan softening 'em up. Penn State ended with the most sour Alamo Bowl bid ever, Michigan took care of Joe Germaine to earn a trip to the Orange Bowl, MSU whined because they got only a Citrus invite despite winning the head-to-head, and Saban bailed for the Bayou because he realized no matter how many Plaxicos you rent this will always happen at Michigan State. That's the context by which I remember the '99 Penn State game. Also for Penn State it was the goodbye game for their longtime defensive coordinator, meaning when you re-watch there's a way different context. /Penn State memories week on MGoBlog.

Elsewhere in old video, watch the 2003 team trounce Houston.

Search: "Quarterback Depth."

Found" "Devin Gardner" autorun "peanut_butter_jelly_banana.exe"

Found: "Russell 'Not Quite Tate but Doesn't Need to Be' Bellomy's Spring Game performance"

Actually from this he seems to be the opposite of Tate. Tate would make bad decisions, then could get away with them thanks to his accuracy and moxie and winning smile (or not get away with them). Bellomy makes the right reads then throws a slightly bad, slightly fluttery ball that gets the job done and no more.

/remembers 2008

/reads again.

Speaking of 2008 I think that's when the Mathlete first introduced the famous (for an MGogiven definition of that) "Michigan Helmet" chart about proper 4th down etiquette based on down and distance. In 2010, with a top 5 offense and no kicking game, the "go" region essentially became anything after the 50-yard-line. This has now been updated for the 2011 offense, and comes with a Googledoc spreadsheet you can use to decide when to go and when to kick. I'm going to keep this handy during live blogs so I can sound smart.

Etc. World Cup 2014 favorites. U.S. Olympic Track and Field. Don't let the fact that the NCAA just instituted a playoff stop you from posting your idea for a D-IA playoff. And do not, under any circumstances, follow recruits on Twitter.

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THE FRESHMEN HAVE NUMBERS (SORTA): Okay, fine, Heiko can follow recruits on Twitter, but only because people have EA Sports dynasties starting this week and need to know which digit to put Wormley in, etc. I'll have a post up when the media guide is released with all of them, but for now Heiko managed to track down most of them from changed @names and twitpicks of lockers/gear.

PHOTO BATH! Brian last week put a link to the favorite football pics from 2011 thread in UV. If you missed it then, go back now because there are so many great images. Max followed up a day later with a favorite all-time photo thread. Leaders And Best added a Sports Illustrated Cover review in there which alone could have been its own diary. Can somebody who knows the history stuff explain:

?

PICKING YOUR POISON: Who would you like to see added to non-conference schedules of the future? This offseason thread generated a bounty of responses (note: playing Delaware won't make them stop wearing our uniforms), but little in the way of feasibility. We're really talking about three different tiers: Home-and-homes to replace the ND Series during that hiatus, one-offs with BCS schools we can convince to come to Ann Arbor, and then those filler games with MACrifices and I-AA opponents that won't make you gag when Michigan needs a quick pansy to round out the empty weeks.

Tier 1 should be someone everyone wants to watch on TV and would be worth visiting just to see their game day atmosphere and city: Auburn, Georgia, Bama, Tennessee, Texas, Cal (or Stanford though Palo Alto is pretty boring), Virginia, and Clemson. Ole Miss I'm told has an interesting game day, but busing Ann Arborites to Oxford necessarily brings up some nasty history. Tier 2 is pretty much any BCS opponent. The bottom of the Pac12 is nice however I'd love to see Vanderbilt again to pad our historical record versus the SEC, and I believe any Big XII team not named Texas or Oklahoma will take our calls right about now. Tier 3 I'd skip entirely except this is the place I can use to begin an annual pre-season exhibition against Slippery Rock. I personally don't mind playing directional schools because everyone has family there.

THE OPENING: THE THREAD: This thing had some 17,000 views. It's mostly pics from twitter feeds because people are…HEY I TOLD YOU… Related is a thread where everyone posted about that time they met a celebrity. Beat getting kissed on the cheek by the bride from Father of the Bride.

VALLEY OF THE LOST HELLO: ____ POSTS: Bronxblue was wondering what happens when Ace or his predecessors heads into the Super Secret MGoRecruiting Chamber to produce one of those "hey a guy committed!" posts, only to emerge and discover the kid in question chose unwisely. Answer: if the whole thing gets written for naught a respectable blog for the winning fanbase is offered the thing, which is then torn apart for the links and left to rot in the internetherworld. The rest of the closet of unpublished MGoContent is mostly junk nobody ever got around to throwing out. Sorry to burst anyone's bubbles.

Your Moment of Zen:

Party at Bollinger's! The Michigan Daily

Reminder: MGoEvent is Tomorrow, 3pm, at Underground (1114 South University, Ann Arbor) to launch HTTV. RSVP here. Also this goes right to book order------------------->

Sadly the most recent 2013 commitment did not come with a pair, so the diarists decided they'd do the doubling for him. Not even counting two weeks of Blockhams, four other diarists penned not one but two articles each.

Michigan's Defense Again. Let's start with hart20 since I've been jonesin' recently for a little Mattison appreciation. This is a comparison of Mattison coordinator stops past to find out whether there's a clear Mattison effect. This sort of thing can never be conclusive but there's a pattern emerging of immediate and dramatic improvement against the run in the first year, and holding serve the second (though in early stops the pass defense was more variable).

Hart's second diary is a follow-up to the ND preview he was penning before, this time with more OSU and Bama, wrangling up what the interwebs have been saying on things like the ND QB situation, and whether they're headed for their own Never Forget backfield poster. Ohioan recruiting and Eddie Lacy's injuries also feature. I wonder how the ND fans reacted to Brian Kelly saying the goal for Year Three is 8 wins. Purple faces? Diarist of the week.

Defining the Debate. If you think that game at the end of the 2012 season is a culture-clash, wait'll you see the one at the beginning. The blue-blooded TSS tossed out the opening salvo with Michigan's signature weapons: variability charts, and contingency tables.

That's taken from Part I, the roster comparison. He followed up this week with Part II, which accounts for a lot of the headaches caused by Alabama roster analysis* then gives us a comparison of early enrollees and redshirts. The statistics are a bit dense for the non-statistical, but there's a lot to learn there. A few Bama fans arrived in the comments to debate the existence over-signing because Les Miles is a Michigan man, see? A Part III comes, and more subjective analysis is promised. Also promised—as regular readers of This Week in Schadenfreude can attest—rising tensions as our pretentious selves prepare to meet a particularly notorious (notable exceptions noted) internet fanbase that's guaranteed to push every single one of our buttons.

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* As I learned with Decimated Defense, Alabama's roster is a bitch to analyze. Oversigning and the corresponding attrition rates mean there's so many guys to track down, recruits appear in multiple classes since so many are shuttled off to friendly prep schools and JUCOs. And then there's the names, which as TSS discovered have so many hyphens, variant spellings and repeats it's harder on a VLOOKUP function than a list of Roman generals. #lateantiquityexcelreferencesFTW

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Quarterbacks and Rivalries. Okay, Son of Lloyd Brady, I love your diaries but the tables—can't we do something about the tables? Copy into Tableizer, paste into Notebook, remove the first paragraph, paste into html, voila: pretty, perfectly width-ed tables.

Complaint registered, Wow! The first he penned is a comparison of dual-threat QBs Denard, RGIII, Collin Klein, Taylor Martinez, and Braxton Miller. SoLB on Robert Griffin:

If it seemed like RGIII was putting up video game numbers to open last season, well he wasn’t because you can’t put up numbers like that in video games. He started with amazing proficiency and I got all too well known #DIV/O! error message for his OOC ATT/INT & TD/INT because he didn’t throw any picks until conference play. Although his stats weren’t as gaudy in conference, I’m sure any QB in the nation would have accepted that level of play as he was still extremely effective.

It's a lot of information but difficult to compare with the big charts. I suggest you dive in anyway for the splits: conference/OOC, 1st 6 games/last 7, home/away&neutral. Lol away at Taylor Martinez once D.C.s realized they just have to make him throw.

His next diary is shorter and easier, and covers great rivalries by series record, average score, differential, etc. I'm not as big a fan of this one because not all rivalry games are created equal (find me someone not from Alabama who never misses an Iron Bowl). The Red River Shootout may be an historical pick 'em, but Michigan-Ohio State is the kind of rivalry where a 36-point spread can still manage to immortalize the number 50. Point spreads don't matter that much (side-note: I'm pretty sure this page on Bentley didn't call them Ohio in the end notes before).

CRex and the Korean Hallows. The CRex saga continues this summer. In his latest OT blockbuster, (now-) Mrs. CRex and the Pentagon team up to defeat the INS, Little Sister throws a stag after discovering vodka is not a wine cooler, and on the opposite side of the world from Columbus a Buckeye can still get trolled by four hookers. Between you and me, Brian is going to throw a fit once he learns a perfect opportunity to re-enact the K-Pop Girls' Generation video with a Michigan helmet was missed in favor of Lollipop. For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, through the powers of M-Wolverine's copy/paste function and superb foresight, the collected works of CRex are now available in their own diary. Congratulations to the young couple. May your marriage be as entertaining as your courtship.

Etc. User wallaby created several classy options for Legends patches like the one above. Compared with the real one at right, well there's no comparison. rman247 made his own recruiting rankings by watching highlight videos of each prospect. I mean to do something comparing his ratings versus the major sites' unless he does it first. And someone who I'm surprised would remember Diallo Johnson that well given his stated age (mid-college in 2006) is nevertheless handled DialloJohnson and wrote about Bo's death being that reality-slap that comes when your adulthood synapse decides it's time to activate.

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I'M RDTICUS!

This new board meme bores me: You are all Roll Damn Tide's new account. If that went whew we had one of those notable exception Bama fans around who posted well-written and considered recruiting info from time to time until he got one wrong and took offense to people who took being wrong the wrong way. Now asking if the OP is RDT has become the new "First!," and almost as annoying. Less annoying: user I Only Reply in Gifs is tautologically up to 115 posts now.

MILKSTAKE'S BROTHER MADE A UTL HIGHLIGHT VIDEO

Milkstake's brother's highlight video of Michigan-Notre Dame 2011. Keep trying Kapron; I'm sure you'll get Denard down before Milkstake's brother puts 2010 Illinois to Sigur Ros. Or anything to JDK & Rey, i.e. Michigan quarterback Jack Kennedy and receiver Joe Reynolds. This is them:

OFFSEASON BORED LET'S START AN ARGUMENT THREAD

Wot it sez on the tin. Space Coyote added question 8: toilet paper wrapped over or under, and that's how I discovered this site. Consensus is over unless you've got a cat or young children. The rest of my answers: 1.) Tank, 2.) Always lose unless called upon to perform a service (like knocking off a potential B1G tie). 3.) Which Navarre argument are we having, the one from 2000 when he slaughtered MAC schools then was overmatched vs. UCLA, or the one from 2003 on whether someone in the NFL can teach him touch? Guy was a good quarterback and a great person. He also read this year's HTTV before you did so nah! 4.) Trick question: Ditka doesn't exist. 5.) I'll take a mascot if students come up with it on their own; if the marketing department is involved no thanks. 7.) Ale [full stop]. 6.) Tomorrow, all identities will be revealed. Also it will be revealed that the MGoStaff are really the cast from SilverHawks (dibs Bluegrass). Tally ho!

Your moment of zen:

HT redwhiteandMGOBLUE

Upchurch / "We don't need to drink blood to know what it tastes like"

My favorite day of the year growing up was right about now, a morning in mid-June when I woke up and it was still sunny as it had been when I went to bed, and I'd sit up and go through the painful transition from a reality where the Care Bars (or post-1991 Desmond Howard) and I solve crimes, to one where Number 2 pencils are a thing. Then mid-boot it would suddenly dawn on me that yesterday was a half-day and today is…

Then there was a morning when I was already working but still living in my college house and realized that school and the first day of summer vacation were a package deal. This is young adulthood: trying to find meaning in everything because that which used to have meaning is gone, and you don't yet know what having kids is actually like. That day my buddy convinced me to see a local post-punk band based on the challenge of how much crap the lead singer could threaten to break before the set ended/he actually broke something important. And they sang something about losing that first day of summer, or I thought it was about losing that day. Anyway fast forward to that train track-ity walk home from the Blind Pig and two recent grads calling the world insufficient when I brought up, "well, we beat Ohio State this year." And that worked, because I had no idea we wouldn't beat them again for eight years.

Since November I've had another pinprick thought to convince me to leave a dream just on the edge of lucid and reenter this plane of existence: Guys, we beat Ohio State this year. This is the payoff for all of those years of traversing the darkness rather than sucking it up and hiring Les Miles or something. We get this little ray of first-day-of-summer-vacation-level happy that we can access any time, and it doesn't even poop itself!

Doing lines. From his opening paragraph I can tell jamiemac has been doing the same thing. The post itself covers the Vegas lines for highlight-able Michigan games this year. I'm not much of a gambler (I like picking but not risk-taking) but I love reading their stuff. People trying to play the margins necessarily have to cut through all the fluff, including their own biases. Movement of the lines set by casinos trying to entice people to bet, and where that movement ends, is a far more accurate power ranking than that produced by columnists with 30 logo pictures and 30 snark remarks.

This one is especially well written and speaks volumes about what the smart money thinks our chances are against rivals and power programs. There's wonkiness too—like a poker player who always plays Jack-Nines because he won big on those a few times, he always takes the underdog in Michigan-Notre Dame. Then again you've got two programs who often enter seasons ranked above rationality—especially ND—and presumably this affects the higher ranked of the two each time, so maybe that's the effect? Anyway Michigan's the dog so yay. If you were handicapping Diarist of the Week, the smart money's on jamiemac.

The smart football. There will be more on this over the summer but Chris Brown has collected some of his best works into a book, something Brian thought of doing before we realized nobody wants to relive either of the eras his best works were written in. You can buy the book, which is like $5 for an Amazon download, or read the columns on his site and Grantland, or get the Cliff's Notes from a friend. This friend is DonAZ, who added his own thoughts as to how the lessons relate to Michigan. They're in the form of questions, some of which are answered well in the comments. Also in the comments is a jackass complaining about improper conjugation of forms of "thee."

Hey Rube, easy on the bears. Hunter S. Thompson once shot his assistant while trying to shoot a bear. If you guessed this my lead-in for a jhackney diary, you know your diarists too well. His dream is similar to mine but with more members of carnivora:

Unfortunately, I missed half the game studying an accordion type device that promised to send you to a planet of unicorns, badass grizzly care bears, and a bottomless plate of fat free/vitamin rich BBQ spare ribs. I did return from the outer reaches of the universe to see an anemic offense get in a position to win the game with a field goal. At first I thought I ended up on an episode of Sliders, reaching a parallel universe.

The Sugar Bowl was real! Ohio State was real! Trouncing Nebraska was real! Bears are real!

Going for the jugular is real. The Mathlete says so, or I should say his database says so. By this I don't mean a bear trying to make your trachea dangly, but a coach trying to "capitalize on momentum" by attempting a +20 yards pass on 1st down after a turnover/punt/momentum shift. I'll go ahead and ruin it because you're going to read it anyway math junkies: coaches absolutely do this, and it doesn't seem any more effective than the rest of the offense. In the book a poker-loving roommate used to leave in the bathroom I remember it saying players who just won a big hand will bluff immediately after (the loser will fold something decent, then go on tilt). Whatever the poker move, as anyone who spent a significant part of their adult life with Carr teams, if it gets them throwing deep, fine. But since coaches seem prepared for it, the best move would be a short and easy pass. Get 5 yards, keep the crowd into it, get the QB comfortable in a rhythm, and wait to catch the defense on tilt.

Half-way through high school. The 2014 offer list is out, courtesy of Sinsemillaplease. Needs more list of competing offers. Also MOAR of these guys:

That's Mr. Blue, Happy Teeth, Data, Nefarious Eduardo, and Sad Josh to those of you with precisely manicured MGolawns. If you weren't a recruiting board follower pre-2009, these are what recruits looked like before kids committed to their schools before 4th grade. Most of the players on that list have drivers licenses, though not all. If you want to just skip to the part where the Class of 2014 are graduating with multiple Big Ten Championships, ask the guy from the future, if you can get him to stop predicting Heismans for Houma.

Etc. TSS was breaking the server late last night, so I imagine he'll have something about comparing Alabama's roster to Michigan's in the near future, if it's not up already. The little he had uploaded as of 1 a.m. had me refreshing in hopes of more.

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IN A WORLD WHERE LES MILES CHEWS FIELD TURF.

This is one of those posts that goes to a link but the MGoDiscussion is better than that on the site with the article (happens all the time with Yahoo). This time Andy Staples pretends the world hinges on one 3rd down scramble by Chris Leak that saves Zook's job in Florida. From this point the timeline skews into a tangent, creating an alternate 2012 in which Bobby Petrino is rich, and powerful, and married to your mother, and where this has happened to me:

When the bracket is announced the following day and Stanford and Florida make the playoff as at-larges and Michigan doesn't, Miles delivers an impassioned speech on ESPN that will be studied by linguists for decades. His message? Who really knows? But he uses the word "chest" 57 times in seven minutes.

But hey we win the 2006 national championship all Alabama style and somehow this reminds Crable to block the guy so no Horror, no Peanut Butter Jelly Time and, uh, Denard Robinson at Florida State with Chip Kelly? Like people who've been through actual horrors, I'll keep the guys I survived hell with.

IN A WORLD WHERE DENARD HAS LOWER ACCELERATION THAN LEWAN

Alternate title: OUR QB IS ODDJOB!

Every year EA Sports gives us plenty to complain about, and every team that isn't us way more to complain about (I still hear it from my brother about Greg Jones being rated under Will Campbell in NCAA 2010, which is for 2009, which are they ever going to fix this?) Mr. Yost put together an extensive formula for re-rating guys, then stuck Ricardo Miller on the WR three-deep, starts Funchess, and Gallon's not even the slot receiver. I'm sad this is the last year 12-year-olds will be asserting a neighborhood rule against using Michigan because Denard plus EA game mechanics is "unfair."

IN A WORLD WHERE TACKLES CAN WEAR 11 AND CENTERS CAN WEAR 48

Informal poll: un-retiring numbers or no? This was a prevailing theme over several threads as further Legends jerseys were leaked. This is one of those places where I don't care what a majority of fans think—I want it given to freshmen, redshirt freshmen, sophomores, or at the latest a redshirt sophomore. I want them to be recruiting tools and to not interfere with already purchased jerseys and databases and most importantly my dreams of long-term Michigan starters riding around in their signature numbers on unicorns and helping me fight crimes. I find this very important indeed.

IN A WORLD WHERE COUNTING SYLLABLES IS CONSIDERED HIGH ART

Offseason Haiku.

IN A WORLD WHERE WILL CAMPBELL AND "SLEEK" ARE IN THE SAME SENTENCE

This is Wendyk5's description of BWC. See this and other snippets from the Women's Football Academy. Things in that video: Borges's arm is in a cast:

Darrell Funk looks like a Law & Order policeman. Several times the girls ran Denard Power from the shotgun spread.

Your moment of zen

I'm back. To all three of you who missed the weekly user content post thank you for your patience as we got HTTV shipped, and then I unplugged and spent five days in the Canadian wilderness. There were loons, a bear, a moose and a bazillion bitemes, then I spent the ride home with a Space Coyote. This diarist of the week issued Part the Third of his awesome series on DG's spring game performance. A sample:

Play 13 - 4:50

Slants with a play action fake to get the LBs to clear out from the underneath zones. Very simple play…

…

The backside is actually more open on this play, but DG can’t know that because he is accurately going through his progression, which reads that the first man is open (which he is for a TD, good read).  On the field side, the slot is more or less intended to clear out that underneath zone from the nickel back/ LBs/ safety by running an initial slant.  He doesn’t run a great route but it isn’t too important. The outside WR then runs behind that to a news vacated area, which is also wide open.

These seem to be developing a theme: defense has the 3rd read wide open and gets pressure but the play never goes to the open guy because something short with a small window but higher in the progression order opens up first. I wonder if this is an effect of the defense knowing the offense, or an effect of Gardner's progression being slow, or as the OP seems to suggest, just one of those things. Coyote goes easy on Devin for doing what he's coached to do but I wonder if a senior with a lot of game experience will be more apt to go off the page and punish the defense for catching tendencies. It's may be irrelevant since our senior QB is a sophomore in West Coast passing schemes, but as Space Coyote notes a sophomore Henne once threw to the 2nd read on a very similar play to cap a last-play comeback win against Penn State.

Oy Boy! Last time saveferris penned a roll back the clock I asked for more, and we received. This time the quantum accelerator put us in the pads of Bill Taylor, c. 1971, when Michigan conquered space and Ohio State but couldn't defeat Stanford in the Rose Bowl. As could only happen here, there's an argument in the comments between a historian armed with knowledge of the weather that week and a member of the band who was on the field that day about the grass conditions in Pasadena. Upon further review:

Looks pretty dry guys. How the hell did you remember that? My mom was a junior at Michigan that year and swears she can't remember anything except studying and getting good grades (and how cheap coffee was at Blimpy's). Also trying to imagine MMB choosing a selection with such strong political overtones today.

A second leap was made by Blazefire to 2007 so he could warn us to not get too confident over last year's leap, but Henne/Hart injuries didn't make the defense give up 36 points to an I-AA team man.

In other postseasons that Michigan can get screwed in/out of, Stephenrjking and oakapple are playoff wranglin'. The former is a worth-reading discussion on poll bias and how any system that leaves the least up to human pollsters is probably the best for determining a champion. The latter also discusses qualification models like polls, a selection committee, and autobids, and makes a good point about this being a very different animal from basketball's selection committee, which has never seen a champion from the lower 50% of seeds.

Getting crowded down there. Our resident UMgradMSUdad says Nebraska recruiting is starting to shift from Texas (17 players in Pelini's first two seasons, 7 in the last two full classes) to Ohio with the move to the B1G. Since it's mostly 3-stars they're going after, long-term this probably affects Michigan State, which under Dantonio took a lot of the guys Ohio State passed on and fought Nebraska the most in this study, more than Michigan, which is competing more directly with the in-state juggernaut. It helps them that Pelini's from Cardinal-Mooney (Ray Vinopal) in Youngstown, which in my study last year came out very Penn State-ish. This was bound to happen to some degree by letting them in. Nebraska is a traditional powerhouse from a state that doesn't produce a lot of talent, so they're going to pull more from their conference footprint than contribute to it. If the net result is it hastens the Spartans' inevitable return to Spartiocrity I'm okay with it, but the Cornhuskers have traditionally built from the Big XII's footprint; if these players are more and more coming from the Midwest it's going to thin the ranks of the Big Ten. File under obvious.

Etc. The Blockhams is tackling the dog. Soon the dog will be killed by the baby tackler's perfect Kovacsian form and replaced with a shaggy dog named Brian who is working on his blog all the time (MAKE THIS HAPPEN!). Space wallpaper (of Space!).

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FAMOUS PEOPLE SIGHTED, INDUCED TO SAY STUFF

We had a few people attend the myriad traveling events football players and coaches do during offseason and come back reporting on the proceedings.

• Hoke at Agonis. Correspondent hart20 recorded Hoke's comments to a group of people in Dayton, Ohio, mostly on things from in and around Dayton, Ohio, that people from Dayton, Ohio, care about, like Ball State, Kaleb Ringer, and Roy Roundtree, but also the Gentleman's agreement (something about golf) and conference realignment.
• Woodson at Sunda. Reporting not-live from Chicago, we go to samsoccer7 and coverage of Charles Woodson's new wine. This was originally published on the boards on May 18 but I re-set the clock so it can get its time as a deserved diary. Some good stuff in there, my favorite being why he didn't do the Heisman after the punt return v. Ohio State. Sorry grapenuts, nothing about the wine.
• Steve Everitt at Golf Tournament. Brady Hoke's Pet Viking (glad I contributed at least one MGoMeme around here) in an MGoShirt: Ja!

WHENCE THE DUAL-THREATS OF YESTERYEAR?

Whatever happened to all the 2009 (Class of 2010) Elite 11 QBs? Leaders And Best tracked them down and found way more washouts and transfers than projected starters. Devin Gardner is second only to Tennessee's Tyler Bray in guys on this list you'd want to have at this point.

FIFTH IN HEAPING PILES OF SCRATCH

This year's athletic department budgets as reported on their Title IX forms. I think the "subsidies" in there relate mostly to major stadium improvements. Anyway Michigan raked in over $122 million in revenue and spent about $112 million. Alms for the band indeed.

NON-POLL QUESTIONS

Join the following discussion points. My two cents added here as examples, and because I can get away with it!

• What the hell is Devin Gardner's number now?
  Seriously, is it 12 or was that just a very mean joke to play on someone who has to pay per page edits to a printed preview book? I've heard Funchess is 19 too. People with information, please inform
• What would you do if you were Brian for a day?
  Bring back negging so I could neg-bang everybody who complains about the lack of neg-banging.
• Which Big Ten team are you really glad you're not a fan of today?
  MSU – Too good to not care, always knowing you weren't good
• What was your most memorable Big House experience like?
  Imagine if you could wrap all that is Desmond Howard and being 11 years old into one afternoon.
• (It's too late but…) Think of funny names for the sponsor levels
  Come for the humor. Leave for the lack of relevance to your life.
• Six funny press conferences
  I approved this guy's concept for a daily board post even though the first was very Bleacher Report-y, figuring he had the drive to keep improving. Then it ended after two I guess. The first, eh, forget about it. The second: Tune in, if only for the chance to remember John L. Smith's pouty face. Every time I watch that I see my little brother, age 8, staring straight ahead, explaining how he's pressing the right buttons but the Nintendo's screwing it all up!

FINAL SOFTBALL UPDATE

The season ended against Alabama in the NCAA Super Regional (i.e. Round 2). But this is a game where pitchers dominate and we had two dominant freshmen. Memories: Everybody dancing to Amanda Chidester's "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" coming-to-bat song, Caitlin Blanchard getting hit by a pitch to beat Louisville in the regional, going perfect on the season against OSU/ND/MSU, including a weekend shutout over Michigan State, and this:

YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN

(warning: may cause you to become trapped in amaranthine contemplation of Les Miles. HT: Orson)