dear diary

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)

BlueReign / The Diaries / Lattimer

Maybe I was asking for it by demanding more diaries last week but 346 characters in the diary tab, and 108 of them you people caps'ed. That includes the " – x days ago" parts which you would have rendered in 18-point bold if you could have. With all the shoutin' these better be good.

This one's good. It's a sports in general diary about the mindset of athletes and how they can be driven to use performance-enhancing drugs by stephnrjking. He doesn't excuse anything; mostly he demonstrates that strong control by the leagues is an imperative. However I disagree with his assertion that benefits…

PEDs can increase strength. They can increase speed. They can increase endurance (cyclists don't use anabolic steroids, but directly alter their blood chemistry to increase their cardiovascular efficiency to astonishing levels). What are sports if not tests for speed, strength, and endurance? PEDs can give a soccer player the endurance to win a corner in the 87th minute, a baseball player the extra length on a fly ball to hit a home run, or a running back the extra kick to make it to the second level. A basketball player gets extra height on their way to the basket, a hockey player recovers quicker for the next playoff game, a swimmer has the extra wattage to win at the wall.

…incentivize steroid use for football players as much as baseball or cycling. A commenter mentioned soccer, where endurance again is a major factor of success. The reason is because the PEDs that don't show up in a test only give you a marginal edge. In cycling that tiny margin makes a huge difference as you expend your endurance to near its absolute maximum. In baseball it makes a difference because hitting or pitching you will accumulate so many trials that even marginal changes will appear in the stats. Remember what Crash Davis said's the difference between hitting .250 in the bushes and playing in Yankee Stadium: one hit a week. We tend to think of juiced up sluggers hitting copious amounts of dingers, but they started catching guys with the spot checks or investigations and a lot of times it was dudes in their mid-'30s trying to quickly come back from an injury.

MLB in particular compounded their problem by purposely turning a blind eye after the lockout. Whether it was because they didn't want to go 20 rounds again with the players union or just got distracted by Mac's dingers, it created a scenario for a lot of guys where you juiced or fell behind guys who did. The numbers of ballplayers at the end of a needle doesn't apply to college football because college football never tacitly allowed it.

In football it's going that extra inch with Al Pacino and whatnot, but the rewards of a little bit extra, if extant, are hard to see. I don't doubt that there are players who use PEDs in college football, but the edge isn't going to show in practice or in stats, making it a dumbass risk to take without the promise of rewards. So then it's go big or don't bother, therefore fewer will bother.

More has gone into educating these guys about the risks of steroids than any generation before them, so I'd imagine they realize the increased risk of injury, which in a contact sport is closer to guaranteeing you'll get injured. I'd be way less surprised if they're taking brain drugs, e.g. Sammy Watkins, because those are widely available on a modern college campus and a full coarse load on top of the amount of study the game requires more concentration than physical endurance.

There's the few guys who go all Steve Lattimer, taking 1,000 to 10,000 times safe amounts of anabolic steroids to turn into starters. Brian Cushing (above, moments after owning Jake Long) had those rumors around him since high school, but only failed a drug test once, after he was in the NFL, and he disputes it. I'm not accusing Cushing—I'm saying if you start growing outside the bounds of the usual athlete growth rate (which is pretty high to begin with) people will notice. Also they test everybody on entry to the NFL. I think the risks for college football outweigh the benefits more than for other sports. I'm sure there's still dumbasses who do it anyway. I don't think you need to hedge your fandom for it.

Two stars. Modder BiSB tried to look at recruiting from the angle of two-stars. The update to this included some rubber hitting road when he showed the draft picks who came from higher stars seemed to have more successful teams than those who came from nowhere, but then Ohio State screws up the 5-star thing by going 7-6 with lots of them. I would guess the reason a 4-star who becomes an NFL player has a better team in college mostly because his team had more 4-stars who'll be future NFL players on it while lots of lower-ranked diamonds share the field with plenty of 2-stars who don't work out.

Etc. Blockhams go green for a week. Not shown: Chalmers (the MSU brother) covering the family home with a spray-painted bedsheet.

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WE NO SHANE A MORRISCANO

Blue had me on the fence on the diary but then add this and it's Diarist of the Week. That became the opening salvo of the Shane Morris Photoshop Thread he started. And did the cropping. Give yourself 200 points sir! The rest of you, click to find Shane joining the ranks of the Photoshop HoF, trolling fascists (and Ohio State, if you see them as not fascists), held aloft the Titanic by Lewan, tempting bulls, flying through space, catlabbing, and doing the Up and Over It hand dance. Hard to believe it's been over a year since he committed.

IN A PINK LOCKER ROOM

Michigan Replay / Inside Michigan Football (dramatization).

About the time you're reading this I'll be off to have breakfast with the guy who made Michigan Replay happen (this is a great gig!). To fill in the blanks and refresh my own memories I enlisted the board's help and the result was a LOT of people with fond tales and uncanny knowledge about the weeks when the hosts were in flux. Also: lots of YouTubes of old episodes. Prepare to lose all productivity to the irresistible combination of '70s funk rock and Bo Schembechler doing UFRs. IMF is not a replacement. I don't know what could be.

HORSE EXHUMATION

A new user stumbled upon the thread where Brian told people not to freak out about recruits every time they lean in one direction and fart another, because the recruit at the time was a certain legacy from Columbus with a snowplow business. This led to exhumations of many a dead thread and prediction. Like the banana dancing about peanut butter because the alternative was hiring the guy from Ball St…oh. This then became the great threads of the past, e.g. "Things you're man (or woman) enough to admit."

I followed some of the links and ended up reminiscing more about some of the commenters of yesteryear. I've long wanted to do an article bringing up some of the great threads from BITD, not just the ones that go in the hall of fame but those with five punting Zoltans, or the Paint of a 24th century Michigan Stadium with maize jerseys and planets for video screens that launched Midnight Maize.

BEAT OHIO IN 2013

A law professor goes over the most recent case of Ohio State and its predilection for lawyerly hypocrisy in defending its interests (as in they act like they're defense attorneys, not that lawyers are all such and what), particularly with how they claim the utter sanctity of student records to fend off investigations but then disclose personal information. I didn't want to delve too deep into the grad student's claims in this is better aired, but there's some good discussion in there about institutional ethics. From a football standpoint, there's a good and evil narrative. From a reality standpoint I wouldn't doubt for a second that Michigan has been two-faced to serve its own needs, if not so obvious about it.

For a case example of how people can justify their actions in their own heads see Terrelle Pryor believing his extra benefits at OSU were the work of divine providence. Emotional problems, remember?

Beating them is the important thing. In college athletics, it's when you lose that people get dissatisfied and everything comes out. Sustained success with sustained ethics only happens if the program uses that as its foundation.

Sam Webb's interview with the 2013 commits who camped at Columbus includes a "Beat Ohio!" cheer.

Image above is umhero getting wwaaaaaaaayy ahead of things.

Your moment of zen:

It is spring, the time of renewal, by which I mean today is the last day you can renew your football season tickets. In order to do this you were supposed to get your "points" by donating earlier—by Jan. 30 even—but like any other money-taking organization, so long as they have inventory and you are willing to give money for that inventory, a deal may be struck. According to MGoSoftball they won't even tell you the minimum donation you need to get the tickets, because then you might not bid too high. This is starting to sound more like buying a car than access to see Michigan play Air Force, UMass, Illinois, MSU, Northwestern, and Iowa.

JeepinBen posted a link to an attendance visualizer for 2006-'11. The money shot:

Things that don't affect attendance: major scandals (OSU), or fleecing your fanbase with mandatory donations (M). Things that kill attendance: major scandals AND fleecing your fanbase with mandatory donations to buy football tickets. Penn State had their scandal at the same time as Ohio State. The "adjusted season ticket pricing guidelines" were instituted in Happy Beaver Valley State College for 2011.

Meanwhile Indiana and Kentucky won't play each other in basketball for the first time since 1969 because Indiana didn't want to turn it into an NBA game and Kentucky was all like "screw you guys, I'm S-E-C!"

SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS GAME

(The Helmet Hut)

Now I love college football, so much so that I have knee-jerk reaction when somebody says it's barbaric, even if it's a former linebacker. We don't know what caused Junior Seau to commit suicide, or Dave Duerson, or Ray Easterling. What we know is that multiple concussions can create severe, suicidal depression, and when you start going down the list of former football players to commit suicide it's exactly the dudes you remember as your favorite hitters. Football is still the sport that killed participants and will always be about breaking the other guy's will by flinging your body at him. But I'm ready to overreact now.

That Virginia Tech study which came out last year that ranked the helmets on the market based on safety also taught us a lot about helmet design. Last time I had this conversation with someone it was at the plastics show in Orlando with a guy who makes the padding in the helmets. I asked what's holding them back from making a helmet that cuts down on concussions and got two points back: One, there's an aesthetic problem—people have a general idea of what a football player ought to look like, and some of the danger points (like the top of the forehead) when you put more padding over them, make the player wearing the helmet look less dangerous. Two—and this was just anecdotal—the helmets are already ridiculously safer than they were just 10 years ago, but the safer they make the helmets the more recklessly the players will attack each others' heads. He said when he played ball (in the '60s and '70s) they knew their helmets weren't infallible so players held back, even against hated rivals.

Like I said, I'm ready to overreact, but how? I really have no idea. This is cumulative so the NFL is going to feel the brunt of this, but the concussions don't care if the players were paid when they happened. At the very least remember this when you're complaining about how they effectively got rid of kickoff returns this year. They're obviously trying; there's no such thing as an easy fix.

PRACTICE? PRACTICE? PRACTICE!

Thank you Matthew for discovering a bevy of footage from former slot receiver Terrence Robinson. T-Rob was the first starting slot bug in the Rodriguez era, but injury and dropsies buried him under the thickest part of the depth chart and he ended an unrenewed 5th after last year. He put his practice film on YouTube because what says Michigan 2008-'10 more than a backup slot receiver burning a who's who of terrible defensive backs. Watch as Teric Jones is knocked on his butt by a 5'8 dude, and J.T. Turner stands around then sort of waves at a pass that's going behind him—exactly the way my brother plays EA NCAA defense. Between hilariously bad bites by a clueless Cullen Christian you can also find a bunch of perfect-touch downfield passes by Devin Gardner. Practice hype: not all fairies.

#EATING

Double-post on this one but we haven't mentioned it yet on the front page that I can tell: the 2nd slot bug of the Rod era—Odoms—has an organization to help the town that gave Michigan its Florida flavor. I'm contacting them about how we might help (and about their spelling of "Vegtable" [sic]). Brandin Hawthorne wears No. 7 because that's the number of their high school teammate who was shot. Vincent Smith is the team's smallest back and yet the best pass blocker among them. There are towns who have done less for us.

Meanwhile in former player charities, Space Emperor Zoltan is still unfamiliar with human humor, and thus has asked his minions of Earth to tweet him a good name for his celebrity karaoke event.

IS THERE A DRAFT IN HERE OR AM I JUST IN KOREA?

Draft-related items littered the board the past few weeks. The coolest is that from blueherron, who created a spreadsheet of Michigan draft picks. The last three years was unsurprisingly our lowest output since the '80s. Rivals did a two-part series comparing their rankings to the draft and got a good discussion going. And brooktrail posted the inevitable discussion of M's next crop.

COACHES TO AISLE MAGNUS

Magnus's program is a little light at defensive tackle, facing a run-heavy schedule, and looking into going with a 3-3-5 to make up for that. Degree of difficulty for snarky responses applies—I'm sure he's already purchased a stuffed beaver. CoachZ's response is enlightening. Coaches: plz write more diaries.

ALL DIARIES ARE TENNIS DIARIES

BlueDragon is keeping us updated on the tennis things in the diaries: The Men played well but didn't win the Big Ten Tournament; the ladies won their 3rd conference title in a row.

ETC. Blockhams are trying to help their Sparty brother. You can help Six Zero by suggesting ways for this not to become RCMB-blue. THE_KNOWLEDGE has discovered our WYSIWYG has a feature to make text bigger and wants his own tab.

In 1961 IBM Labs made the first computer talk. What it said was "Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy, all for the love of you! It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two!"

My grandpa loved that song to the point he would be constantly finding socially acceptable excuses to show off he knew the verses. That this song has been trapped in my and every person in Ann Arbor's heads this week would tickle him to no end. This is your fault Taylor Lewan.

Twosie Mania struck Ann Arbor this week when Lewan parked his bicycle built for two in front of Lamda Lamda Lamda.* User morepete the Great kindly did the cropping and released the PhotoshopGiMPCracken. Taylor promptly appeared at Iwo Jima and Tiananmen Square, Gettysburg, and V-Day parades. He crossed the moon with E.T., crossed Abbey Road, served as centerpiece for a Michelangelo [some other ninja turtle's] masterpiece, and kindly shuttled Amira Gulch around Kansas. He's in ur Windows XP, playing as ur paperboy, and much much more. Then Chunkums put him in Punch Out and won the internet:

You have no idea how close this came to being front-paged twice, complete with music bars. Keep training, Denard: next up is Saban Popinski.

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* I know it's Chi Psi, and that they don't like being called "Chipsy." They were the likeable-nerdy frat in my day and from the looks of the photo that hasn't changed.

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Diaries

How did Devin really do? My "football hmmm" series was partly inspired and in some part informed by Space Coyote's football fundamentals course offering from a few years ago. I was ready to wistfully mention him among the MCaliburs of yesteryear when suddenly a Spring Game Breakdown of Devin's pass plays appeared in the diaries. Sample? Sample.

DG’s footwork is pretty good here.  It’s a 3 step drop and he gains depth with his first step.  His next two steps are shorter and more compact to gather his body.  His shoulder look good and his eyes are down field.  He steps into the pocket, but seems to relax and doesn’t use his legs in his throw (even though he steps into it a little).  This is why it looks like he is just playing catch in the back yard.  The ball goes where his shoulders are pointing, and thus the result.  Let’s break it down a bit further.

I'll have it front-paged sometime this week but you can read it now. Professor Space Coyote (of Space!) is your Diarist of the Week.

The icers you really really really missed. Maybe not to the degree of the program-redefining seniors of the 132nd football team, but there was something special about last year's hockey seniors, from Hagelin's flag to Louie's love expertise to Rust's checking, etc., even before a goddamn early whistle stole the national championship from them. Your hockey man CenterIce took the opportunity of the NHL playoffs to catch up with last year's seniors in their rookie seasons. Hagelin obviously has made his mark with the Rangers as another non-Gaborik Gaborik, most recently drawing a three-game suspension from confirmed Swede-hating Gary Bettman. Rust's AHL line doesn't do justice to the force he was on the ice for the Scranton Baby Pens a misnomered Columbus affiliate (ed-S: wow that was stupid). Love Expert Louie had a good season in the minors, two thirds of that in the ECHL. Scooter, Burlon, Langlais, Hogan, Winnett, Llewellyn, and even Fallon are found.

Etc. Video of the Spring Game is broken up by QBs by Thorin. Go16blue created estimate rankings for unranked guys and added them to Ace's Big Ten recruiting roundup. Tennis update. Blockhams discover how Twitter works in an information vacuum.

Best of the Board:

WE'D TAKE THEM TO WAR, BUT NOT FORT WORTH

via and triangle_M

So the Michigan Marching Band was notified they would not be going to Dallas, because there's the barest justification for not doing so, and because no matter how much you're making, the quoted $400,000 or the actual $200,000 it would cost to fly to band down and bus them around and put them up in some halogenated Radisson in that soulless outlet mall of a city is a lot of money that could be flipped to profit if those seats are sold to alumni. MMB is pissed, fans are pissed, and the internet is all "Don't Stop Us Now!" Obligatory MMB pantomime of Queen:

To MMB: srsly, there are worse things in life than missing a chance to see a city whose top cultural attractions are "the largest collection of Spanish art outside of Spain" and SMU. If you guys can parlay the outrage into a deal to travel to ANY Big Ten town this year instead, my advice is to take it, unless you're really into investigating the Kennedy assassination and/or seeing what a city looks like if it was designed by the same people who came up with cubicles and think goal-oriented dolphins are inspiring.

Obviously Dave Brandon is one of those people. He probably thinks Dallas is awesome. Dallas thinks Dave Brandon is awesome. I think Michigan football is awesome so I can't boycott it on TV even if they come out in maize helmets and white pants and bumblebee jerseys, and I wasn't going to the game anyway. Giving your customers less for the same price is  a tried and true business strategy, as is offsetting expenditures by cutting something else, in this case Borges's raise. We're in favor of paying coordinators SEC coordinator prices (though when you realize they could cover 10 more starting annual salaries or five really good jobs for the same cost it's a little jarring) and DB is in favor of running Michigan with business acumen. I guess what I'm saying is I can only criticize so much when I benefit from Michigan being flush with cash. It's galling, but it's part of the bargain that got us a stylish carriage instead of a twosie.

THE ALL-2000s TEAM

Archived from MGoBlue.com

Brian did something like this in 2010 but Wolverine Devotee took the concept to a three-deep, which means you get to argue whether Zach Kaufman or Lawrence Reid gets that last LB spot instead of whether Brandon Graham or Woodley was the best DE. His has Mallett, Jerome Jackson, Carson Butler, Carl Tabb, Calvin Bell, Alex Mitchell, Pat Massey, Chris Graham, Scott McClintock, Markus Curry, Grant Mason and Jeremy LeSeuer, all of whom I'd drop in favor of Tate Forcier, Kevin Dudley, Martavious Odoms, Greg Mathews, Martell Webb, Dave Pearson, Stevie Brown (as a SAM), Lawrence Reid, Donovan Warren, Troy Woolfolk, and Jamar Adams, respectively. I'd also lose Ron Bellamy to give me Adam Finley, who could kick or punt if either Rivas or Zoltan go down.

PUNKED BY WOODLEY

Don't miss this opportunity to see Breaston back in maize and blue. No not that maize and blue, I mean the one George Washington would have worn if he had fabulous pecs.

ETC.

This is go16blue's response to Dantonio offering our long snapper a scholarship:

Guh, another head to head recruiting loss to MSU. When will it end? And don't give me any of that "It's because MSU is desperate enough to spend a scholarship on a long snapper" bullshit, we all know it's because Dantonio is a master recruiter.

Two threads on RCMB completely agree. Coming soon: a list of the top 30 recruits in Michigan in 2013 and how MSU has way more guys from that list than Michigan.

Edit: I forgot your moment of zen.

It's this again, of course.