dear diary

Quick reminder: you've got one week to get it at the lowest price ----------------------->
so if you were waiting to get 13 more for grandma, better act fast.

So in preparation for Brian to be laid up on a cocktail of drugs they won't let you take while operating devices with internet connections, we underlings were fully prepared for one of those M.A.S.H. episodes when Colonel Blake has to leave the base and Hawkeye and Trapper hire a circus or something. Alas before Ace and I could declare ourselves the Pros from Dover and infiltrate the alumni golf game Brian turned out to be mostly lucid, meaning we now have loads of weird unpublished things taking up space in the hopper.

Here's one of those on Burke's return, which if you're old/young enough to get the phrase "The Cake is a Lie!" you'll get it; if you don't, don't bother.

A one-man advantage. If you like hockey and/or wanted to know what was up with Michigan's power play, I mean like really wanna know, your Diarist of the Week is JeepinBen for the first two parts of a three-part series on special teams strategy. Part the 1st, which got the bump, covered the basics and Part II got into penalty killing and controlling the neutral zone. Sample:

The powerplay is a lot like football plays – constraints are huge

This will come into view with the “Penalty Kill” diary, but depending on what the offense is doing, the defense does something and vice versa. There are ways to break kills, kills designed to stop specific powerplays, etc.

Learn what you were actually doing when you selected "umbrella or something" in NHL '99, and you too will be able to offer intelligent criticism when Michigan uses 25 minutes of man advantage in an elimination game to stand around with the puck. Not sold yet? There's Slapshots clips in those links.

Stray thought re Slapshots clips: Do you think Valeri Bure used to skate behind guys' nets and exclaim "I'm doing D.J. Tanner!" because that would totally screw with pretty much every guy in my generation.

Spring's springing. We have this one week to sample this year's line of football. It's not a real game so there won't be predictions and MonuMental backgrounds for this one coming, but Lanyard Program came out with one of his programs. The part that is totally real is the lacrosse game immediately after the fake football: Michigan will finally face Ohio's state university letterman to letterman. MaizeAndBlueWahoo, our resident LAX man, got his lacrosse primer bumped.

Winter's coming. By which we mean the cessation of football hostilities and many peaceful months pockmarked by commitments before fall football begins and the wars resume. User Silly Goose compares various programs to Game of Thrones houses. When describing Michigan as the Starks he left out the part about how we chop off the heads of deserters, which teaches us important moral lessons about leadership. And instead of all of the houses battling it out in a single playoff they decide things by getting into ill-defined wars between each other. The allegories fit pretty strongly, which probably says something Campbellian about ascribing character archetypes to sports rivals (if you make this your essay for Rabkin's class I wanna see it!). Blazefire seems to think when winter comes it will be zombies from Ohio THE Stadium.

Etc. Ace's weekly rankings. The Gedeon announcement will bump next week's but if you want to get a jump now to see Midwest power programs filling up—not like 16 commits in April filling up, but 7 to 10 each—it's here. Tennis wins. Blockhams are reliving the best 1:17 of their lives.

#Best of the Board

OHIO WANT IT THEN THEY SHOULDA PUT A RING ON IT

Oh no did Jared Sullinger just pose in drag in front of a light, easily crop-able background? Photoshoppers, start your graphics engines:

The more I learn about the methods people were using to lure Trey Burke to the NBA…

NOTRE DAME IS QUARTERBACKLESS, USING A RECEIVER AS THEIR HB, HAD ONE OF THEIR BEST PLAYERS RECENTLY RETURN FROM A VISION QUEST, AND OF COURSE ARE GOING TO WIN A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP BECAUSE IT'S NOTRE DAME.

Those are the key points from hart20 on the state of things in the town under our state.

#HASHTAGS CREATE BUSINESS SYNERGY

This doesn't have anything to do with anything but this blog by friend of MGoUser antoo had six rounds of ideas for hashtags Dave Brandon should copyright in order to better use technology as a competitive advantage to engage and connect to fans who use hashtags.

HE'S GOING TO EASTERN MICHIGAN!

The moderator sticky is a serious place where the moderators and editors and other site personnel solemnly explain why your post was deleted, your points were docked, and your avatar is suddenly a pretty pink pony. We take this very seriously and are totally not making fun of you in there.

From the Z to the O to the double-R O, he's the dude in the mask from Chem-Orgo. I love the mariachi band, and that the professor turned the "Z" slashes into a carbon chain, and that people are having a heated discussion regarding the professor's added hydroxyl group between the typical amoebic Youtube commenters.

It was a light week, by which I mean the board was mostly obsessed with Burke and the diaries, well, there's only one real "diary." It's about the Director's Cup and where Michigan stands right now, c/o WolverineBlue. Etc. The Blockhams, and Not Michigan Replay video—if you haven't before, now's your chance to learn the words (there's words!) to the Michigan Replay/MGoPodcast song. Let's move on to…

Best of the Board

…YOU'VE ACTUALLY GOTTEN EXCITED ABOUT BEING MENTIONED IN 'DEAR DIARY'

Boom: Jeff Foxworthy'd! The "You might be a _______" meme finally found its way to the board. A collection of some of the more pos-banged follows. You might be an MGoBlogger if…

• …your loved ones will only let you watch Michigan sporting events in public if you promise not to correct all the stupid people this time. (funandgun, paraphrased)
• …you've both wanted to punch Magnus, and greatly appreciated the insight he's provided... at the same time (Nick Sparks)
• …you are as star struck when you see Lloyd Brady or Mitch McGary Picture Guy as if you were to see someone like Charlie Sheen etc. (Raback Obama)
• …you yell "Tacopants!" when a pass sails over a receiver's head (Nick Sparks)
• …you respond to this post so that someday you can get to 100 points and be able to start your own thread. (Michigan Moonman)
• …you scream out "MUPPETS!" in real life when minor things go your way, like finding bacon half price (maizedandconfused)
• …you know who Ohio is, and who OHIO is, and what (NTM) means (ST3)
• …you can find the F5 key in the dark in under 5 seconds (Lionsfan). Replies:
  "lol, you guys measure it in seconds. That's cute." –BlockM
  "You still have an F5 key? That's cute." –Michigan_Mike
• …a cute girl at a bar says "Hello" and you wonder who's going to commit at the Spring scrimmage.
• …if you have MGOBLOG set as a bookmark, click it, scan the page for updates, then decide to continue surfing the web and without even realizing it, click the MGOBLOG bookmark again instead of going to another site, and then scan the page for a second time in under 30 seconds (Chobee215)
• …you could care less that you're a pre-madonna, a moran, or a looser for all intensive purposes. (OMG Shirtless, who is going to die for putting me through that again just now).
• ...before posting, you ask yourself, is this safe for Mrs StephenRKass? (ST3)

…YOU'RE AN ALABAMA FAN WHO CAN'T RELATE TO OTHER TIDE FANS BECAUSE YOU DON'T SPEAK YOUTUBE COMMENTS

Via

Fact: 90% of Youtube comments are written by people from Alabama. Fact: the longer RollDamnTide hangs out around here the worse you feel about all of those great Alabama jokes. RDT wins Diarist of the Week without writing a diary because his work on the board did more for how people perceive people from Alabama than anything since Lynyrd Skynyrd (I'm including Forrest Gump.) Post the first is a rundown of how Bama boards view Michigan. That they think Pipkins is going to be a factor 4 weeks after arriving on campus shows they're probably even more 5-starry eyed as a fanbase than we are.* Post the second is about academics in the SEC after Morris Claiborne apparently scored between single-celled organism and Youtube commenter. Question: does the Wonderlic ask questions about organic chemistry and/or 18th century Alta California, or, like, other stuff you would learn in regular college courses?

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*I realize this is the second time I've knocked Pipkins recently. Please understand that this is not some personal vendetta but an agreement with my doctors to reduce expectations for 5-star recruits and be pleasantly surprised if they succeed, which even in cases of Charles Woodsons is hyper-rare before the Big Ten season begins.

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…YOU KNOW WHERE MOST FORMER M PLAYERS ARE COACHING

James Burrill Angell started a thread to track guys formerly in winged helmets who now wear headsets. I went on to post about Kastl but someone beat me to it. I don't know who "Admin" is who posted the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association position paper on recruiting (an interesting read that provides unintentional insight into things like private recruiting services, combines, and AAU events), but his profile image is this:

…so maybe one of our guys? Among FBS schools in the state Central and MSU have signed on. Also if you think your kid might be an NCAA athlete you should know by the time they graduate middle school:

"Understand the NCAA and NAIA Academic Eligibility rules before the student athletes ninth grade year begins.  The NCAA continues to add more restrictions to their eligibility process.  The Class of 2013 will now need 16 core classes to qualify as a D2 athlete.  The Class of 2015 will need a 2.3 GPA to qualify as a D1 athlete.  Academic eligibility begins with the first semester report card in the 9th grade.  All students and parents need to calculate the students NCAA CORE GPA every semester beginning with the 9th grade.

I'm drifting from the topic. Also: two spaces after a sentence means you probably learned to type before 1995, amirite?

ETC. To the people at UM Hospital: thanks for, you know, what you did to make sure I can keep having a dad for awhile, after three other hospitals on two continents couldn't/wouldn't. From "leaders" to "best," whatever superlative you use to describe yourselves it is probably 100% applicable.

Your Moment of Zen:

By now you've read the Burke tweet, which needed three full-sized threads before everyone could get their Ha-Ha's out: One to point out its irony, one for when big brother slapped him in the face for it, and of course the wicked hangover. The oddity I saw was "People u seek out is better than those that seek u" and "EVERYONE got something to say... smh I thought this was my life!" are in a dialect totally incongruent with every tweet I found in 20 minutes of scrolling through Hollis tweets. Dude wasn't just giving Trey Burke sage advice, he was delivering it in a language that young people understand. Allow me to translate:

This will all blow over soon enough but should serve as warning to young people everywhere: NEVER under any circumstances give your handle out to old people; they think you speak Jive!

Please tell me you got that. It's somebody's general rule that people won't watch movies more than 15 years older than they are.*† ‡ By this rule you'd have to have been born in 1995 (a high school senior) to be excused from Airplane! I'm looking at you, people who didn't get dragonchild's cockpit full of Michigan defenders.

Funny thing about Airplane!: I respect that flick as a classic to the point where I'll be condescending toward someone who hasn't seen memorized it, but until recently I didn't even know it was an almost perfect spoof of Zero Hour! (1957). It's a testament to how good Airplane! is that it stands up even if you don't get the main joke; to be fair, the diary kind of doesn't. It's also ironic that I would make fun of people for a movie reference going over their heads when what that movie referenced totally went over my head.

Everything You Need to Know About Airmen. So I checked out Zero Hour! and now one of the Airplane! jokes I never really got totally makes sense. You know how Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's character is obviously Kareem Abdul-Jabbar but the narrative keeps trying force this "he's Roger the co-pilot!" thing, to the point that when they pull him away he's got his Lakers shorts on? In Zero Hour! the co-pilot was played by Elroy Hirsch.

ie Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsh…

…and when Kareem appears we're supposed to get how crazy it was that a kid could see Crazylegs in a pilot's uniform and not be like "OMIGOD YOU'RE ELROY HIRSCH!"

Crazylegs was a Badger who got moved to Michigan when a lot of WWII servicemen were transferred as part of a program to give in-training Navy and Marine officers a college education. Hirsch on the transfer:

"But I was to learn a far more important thing about Michigan. It's not something you can hold or see ... but you sure can feel it. I'm speaking about the great Michigan tradition. Corny you say? Not on your life. It's there ... it engulfs you."

Today the service academies don't get first dibs on any draft-age citizen they want, but they do have virtually unlimited scholarships, bringing in 40+ recruits a year (that makes two oversigners on the 2012 schedule). This and many more interesting facts about Air Force can be found in the very early preview by Rabbit21. The whole thing is fascinating. Diary of the Week!

Lines! The bats, oh the bats. They are home and hot, as softball swept their five-game homestand by 10-2, 11-2, 12-4, 6-0, and 12-2 scores. Outfielder Nicole Sappingfield had five RBI last night, including a walk-off grand slam. Shortstop Amy Knapp owes a girl in my section an apology for her put-away homer on Sunday vs. Penn State, which hurt the girl's wrist when she tried to catch it.

Etc. CenterIce's writeup on the incoming hockey recruits. AC1997 updated the basketball offseason outlook for departures; now with 100% more ohgodBurkestay! Helle had a board-bumped travel diary for this year's road games. If you're going to Minnesota, try the Jucy Lucy [sic]. Pro-tip: let it cool first.

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* There's a corollary rule that states you will think anything made in the 15-year span around when you were born is pure genius, but this rule is really just an observation by people my age that most of the best movies (Godfather, Star Wars, Back to the Future, etc.) all came out around then.§

† Trekkies are of course excluded.

‡ It's at least 17, since my wife agrees with me that The Lion in Winter with Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn is way better than the remake with Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close. Reminder: Angevin discussion is not OT in comments. Someone's going to take me up on this eventually.

§ Which is to say if some kid thinks Harry Potter and something with Russell Crowe in it constitutes the golden age of film, they should be beaten.‖

‖ Yes I'm doing the Alt85 thing again.

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Best of the Board

YEA HE STRIKES AND HIS WRATH IS EVER VENGEFUL

Guys, we're friends. We like each others' blogs. We snark at each others' Neanderthalness. We trade ADs and sit in press boxes together and provide shoulders to cry on when clever un-hateable people in purple get pretentious in our homes. So, as a friend, you gotta get this shit under control, man. Do whatever it takes; run a passing spread, raze a heathen temple, sacrifice the virgins—use Nebraska's if you don't have any—hire a total outsider who hates defense and lose for three years; you must placate this thing before it escapes and wrecks every ballcarrier within 800 miles of a cornfield.

Also you may want to check the bottom of your RB depth chart to see if some weird voodoo is trying to find carries for the most surprising Heisman candidate ever. You're looking for something about 5'6", and looks at you funny if you touch his water bottle.

THIS IS NOT THE GREATEST GOALIE IN THE WORLD (THIS IS JUST A TRIBUTE)

Wolverine Devotee put this together. I'm not a fan of great big dramatic music but I'm a huge fan of little goalies getting lifted by Vaughn then getting hardware from a guy a foot taller than him even without the skates on. I've never been so happy for a guy going to Columbus. He's definitely on the first ballot for the…

PANTHEON OF GRIT

Ezeh-E wants a two-miracle limit for guys to get in. Then he includes Woodson and RVB. On the one hand it's one of sports' ironies that often the guys who work hardest and put the most time and effort into playing their sports well are the biggest superstars. I'm all for this miracle thing if you remove the sandpaper and just call it the Pantheon of Wolverines with Paranormal Abilities. The obvious guys will get in but need to have moments that defy the laws of nature to do so. For example, running 85 yards after Patrick Omameh used an NFL-bound linebacker as a safety-hunting projectile just takes speed. Doing this on your first play ever…

Now that is a complete, out-of-the-sky miracle. Speaking of things falling out of the sky…

OHIO SUPERFAN BUCK I GUY HOSPITALIZED AFTER FREAK TURKEY VULTURE ACCIDENT

I just…that's the title. I'm still reading the title. He's going to be okay. Weird thing about Buck I Guy is Bolgen Gobcat fans think he's a dick but the Michigan fans seem to think he's a good guy. We now know where Turkey vultures stand. Stand…segue from stand.

LOOK, THEY STAND

Those figures: MSHOT92 made those!

And now for your moment of zen:

(Quick site note: Museday is moving back to Wednesdays. I know that makes a ridiculous name more ridiculous but "Musenesday" sounds like nasal congestion)

In the calm before the storm of spring football, the diarists and board took the week to honor the other pieces of M athletics.

The Wrestler. Now I know two things about wrestling: that horrible call a few months ago, and that winning TWO (!) national championships is like, well, winning two national championships. Michigan's 141-pound wrestler Kellen Russell has done this. He's the sixth wrestler to do so for Michigan. The rest: Norvard Nalen (1953-'54), Jarrett Hubbard (1973-'74), Mark Churella (three times! 1977-'79), and Ryan Bertin (2003 and '05).

The Hockey Players. This incomparable diary by stephenrjking is hands down one of the best and most well written articles I've ever read about Michigan sports. He takes us back to the 2002 NCAA Playoffs and I can't write a better introduction than this:

It was the weekend Jed Ortmeyer achieved greatness. It was the weekend a mascot was ejected. It was the weekend Ron Mason coached his last game, and Ryan Miller played his last game. It was the weekend the CCHA Humanitarian of the Year almost murdered a dog. It was the weekend Denver stole Michigan’s locker room. It was the weekend the NCAA reconsidered its regional hosting policy.

It was one of the greatest sports experiences of my life. And incredibly, it was ten years ago this Friday.

It was also the year of the Cold War, and when the university decided swearing at opposing players on their way to the penalty box wasn't very genteel. If the tourney weekend was the loudest Yost ever got, a few weeks earlier against Michigan State has got to be up there. SRJK won Diarist of the Week and got his points about 5 minutes after this was front-paged.

For the rest of you ice junkies, there's a Picture Pages from the BG game by CenterIce, including one where Brown shows us how a screen's set in Texas. Also if you give Michigan 5 minutes of powerplay the Wolverines actually may gain the zone and score.

The Basketball Players. Right before three and a half guys bolted from next year's team, AC1997 wrote a fantastic diary going over the 2012-'13 basketball roster and what he expects from the returners. It's still mostly useful if you can mentally replace Smot's minutes with what I'm guessing will be a rotation of Morgan and NBA heirs at the 4.

East Lansing is Burning. Of course. Of course.

Multiple reports of couch burnings, rowdy activity in E.L.

10:20 p.m. Police scanner traffic and eyewitness reports indicate that there are multiple reports of fires, fireworks and arrests in East Lansing. Staff reports indicate that there are fires in the the Cedar Village neighborhood, Harrison Road and Elm and Milford streets. Fireworks were reported near Abbot Road. Police officials reported that “there’s not a lot going on right now.”

10:30 p.m. Residents are gathering on Elm Street. Mechanical engineering senior John Lusczakoski said the East Lansing Fire Department is watering down couches on the street to prevent residents from burning them. “I saw a lot of broken alcohol bottles,” he said. “They were watering down couches so we could not burn them.”"

You were expecting general shrugging of shoulders, sanguinity, and hope for next season, son? Let me introduce you to your uncle. Image HT: Blue in South Bend.

The Tennis Players. Beat Michigan State 7-0. Evan King got to 6-0, 4-0 and a break point before dropping that point and the 6060.

MGoBlue.com

The Softball Players. My mission to make everyone softball fans continues for realz starting this week. You know about the northern team problem by now: they play the first six weeks of the season in various southern tournaments. This time it meant having two games canceled for rain while Ann Arbor soaked in sun and 70. To stay warm, the team scheduled an impromptu match against Eastern Michigan (you can do that? You can do that!). As EMU warm-ups go, Michigan looked a little sloppy at first, then hit a grand slam and forced the Eagles to cry uncle in the fifth.

For those of you trying to wrack up Priority Points for better football seats this year (don't deny it – you're the same people with airline status in the lanthanides) the $70 for softball season tickets is by my calculations the cheapest way to jack up your number. They're cumulative too. Just sayin'. By the way, the most expensive way to earn Priority Points is to earn a 4-year degree from the University of Michigan.

The Big Ten season begins tomorrow as Michigan hosts Penn State. Forecast says rain for the doubleheader.

The Man Who Stares at Borges. You've met Heiko but have you really met Heiko? Six Zero's MGoProfile Series came back this week with one of the most interesting interviews, and interesting subjects, yet. Heiko answers questions about what it's like being a member of the Michigan media, from the press room experience and other members of the media, to asking Borges questions about the bubble screen and the underappreciated medical art of properly framing a question. See for yourself why we send a doctor instead of a journalist to press conferences.

The Men Who Embed Videos. Other than ruining the UFR backlog and other heinous crimes against fair use, T.E.M. has now killed off the great Brady Quinn for Heisman Video, but for now you can still have the other without the one. You can also have Denard's magical first snap at Michigan, Denard to Roundtree, Wangler to Carter, Grbac to Howard, Desmond Howard's return, Charles Woodson's return, and much more in a thread of all-time favorite Michigan videos. Watch them all before people I despise with the hatred of a thousand supernovae manage to register enough baseless complaints to trip YouTube's level of "it's not worth it."

Etc. ZooWolverine started a thread to discuss the outlook for Michigan maintaining the Winningest Program title (note: except for Yale and Notre Dame pre-2002 or whatever year that was when we took it for good nobody else really talks about this). MMB drum major tryouts has to be coming up real soon right?

Your Moment of Zen:

User 'jonvalk's tribute to the seniors. Anime Novak needs moar blood. And blue hair. Gotta have blue hair.

First to anyone in Ann Arbor, I hope you're safe from the heavy stuff last night, when mother nature decided to go all Notre Dame on State Street while drafting Haylie Wagner to hail softballs upon ye. That thread also has a video of people watching a tornado from the disc golf course at Hudson Mills. I'm sure the bathroom's safe guys.

Of the century all time recently. The storm of the century is the worst segue ever into the last week's two weeks' three weeks' (sorry: vacation) discussions of all-century things that took place in the last 30 years or so. The all-times are collected by 'justingoblue', who went around the internet to collect a comprehensive list of Michigan championships in all sports. Brian's query on an MGoBlog Hall of Fame led to a diary by 'Tom from AA' with year by year nominees. And 'saveferris' took us back to the year Ferris Bueller came out (1986) to relive the Super Bowl Shuffle, Never-Nervous Purvis, and one of Bo's best teams, featuring Harbaugh and Morris and Rivers and Elliot. I've got three Diarists of the Week(s) to give out, and one goes to saveferris to encourage him to keep doing these.

The basketballs. Hoops nerdery these days seems to revolve around two questions: can I write the definitive piece on Rasheed Wallace, and three-pointers. On the second we've got you covered by ehatch who absolutely drained a Diarist of the Week(s) by parsing through available data to find out if more than 20 treys starts to negatively affect your offensive efficiency. Conclusion:

So as we go into the post season:

• Cackle with knowing glee if Michigan is driving the basket
• Worry if we draw a zone team that forces us to shoot a lot of 3 pointers.

There was also a temporally useful rooting guide for selection sunday 'mistersuits' deserves some credit for. OHIO, or THE University of OHIO, or whatever you know the green one, was one of the cackle with glee draws.

All the recruits.

It is a period of in-state war.
   Michigan staffers, striking from an arboreal
  hidden base, have won their first victory against
  the evil empire of Port-a-Cool defecators. During the
   battle, Rebel spies managed to steal highly rated recruits
from the heart of the Empire with enough talent to destroy
the entire Big~Ten Conference.                                                       
    Pursued by the Empire's sinister lackey, Darthtonio, King Hoke races home
    aboard his starship (hey we have to spend the budget on something), custodian
of the stolen talent that can save the Wolverines and restore freedom to the galaxy…

Let's let 'maizedandconfused' tell you what happens next. I promise no gungans or Jake Lloyd.

Michigan has locked up what's already an end game Top 5 class (Ace's conf update) almost a year before NSD. I'm at a loss for appropriate metaphors and thus devolving into a puddle of ectoplasm that relates everything to Star Wars. This is eee-cause if you put the last year in recruiting against your expectations, the only thing comparable is Memorial Day Weekend of '77. At least there's 'turd ferguson' to provide composite rankings from the sites that have bothered to even rank guys this early.

At this rate we're going to have to put up the 2014 Offer Board pretty soo…what? 'Bluestreak' already did that.

The hockeys. There's four great articles, all by the last Diarist of the Week(s), CenterIce, most linked to and discussed already by Brian in his hockey columns or bumped by me. But here they are again in case you missed them.

: A look at the line combinations and whether they're working.

: A recap of each player's performance during the regular season.

: Notre Dame Picture Pages

: A preview of that game.

The LAX. Here's 'MaizeAndBlueWahoo' with Michigan Lacrosse at the half-way point of its inaugural varsity season. He has efficiency stats. Efficiency stats? Srsly? Siri: set reminder, watch a friggin' lacrosse game already.

Etc. At first 'BlueDragon' was like "tennis?" and then he was like "tennis!!!" If you can Google things, please help The Mathlete. We will all benefit. Blockhams can't tell the difference between Ohio and OHIO; Blockhams get romantic after B1G titles, Blockhams rock the RVB flow. Silly Blockhams.

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Best of the Board

ALL THE BANNERS (ALL THE BANNERS!)

'Wolverine Devotee' is trying to redesign Crisler's banners to go with the new digs. I like the idea of offsetting Cazzie (the only retired number) and putting Sweet 16 and Elite 8 appearances on collective banners. These were emailed to Dave Brandon who promptly wrote back "NEEDS MOAR Ms!!!!"

WD also stumbled upon the '98 Big Ten championship banner that upperclassmen held over my head for matriculating after the year of money sport awesome. Since basketball was wiped from the books* the search is on for the best year ever. 'AC1997' is defining this as football/basketball, so I guess the standard is '88-'89: 9-2-1 with close shouldn't-a-been losses to #1 and #2, and won the Rose Bowl, plus the hoops NC.

Lastly in banner bannerism, some guy thinks the "Hoke Springs Eternal" banner is due for a three-sport update. If you come up with a good one the dude will abide.

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

The limits of my computer skills are I subscribe to the NewEgg newsletter and once installed Ubuntu: not high. But even I got this xkcd:

… so it's scaring the hell out of me that the people who are actually in charge of machines that everyone in the world wants to break into are all like "dude, Microsoft Security Essentials—it's free!"  Fortunately for democracy the University of Michigan is here to hack through the hack software they put in e-voting machines. I'll let 'DubbaEwwTeeEff' take it from here:

The news articles at the time reported that they had hacked the system to play "The Victors" after a vote was cast - but that was only the first sign of infiltration. They also managed to add an "OWNED" picture to the logout page, discover the authentication codes for every DC voter, and modify every ballot to be write-ins for fictional computers and robots.  (Bender beat Skynet for head of the school board.)

Several other schools were trying but were fended off by the Michigan students, proving once again that the best way to protect the sanctity of our republican system is to have Wolverines protecting the voting machines. I've been saying this a long time.

A BETTER SON OR DAUGHTER TO A BETTER SON OR DAUGHTER

Sometimes when you're on, you're copying When You're On:

That's Catholic Central with the homage to Paul's preview of 2009. HT 'Denarded'.

PAIRWISE PAIRWISE PAIRWISE AHHAHAHAHAHAH

If you're obsessive over figuring out scenarios for College Hockey Plinko Tournament 2012, or you just get perverse joy from having Michigan come up a 1 seed all the time, USCHO has the pairwise predictor up. User 'goblue7612' puts up a worst case scenario and challenges you to see if you can knock us from the 1 seed. User 'turd ferguson' could drop us as low as 6th in a world where Miami beats Bowling Green in the CCHA championship Saturday. I'm planning on being at the Joe tomorrow night so please let's not (Michigan plays BG in the semifinal at 8:00 tonight).

STILL ADDICTED TO SOFTBALL LINES

Wagner/Speierman/Driesenga: MGoBlue.com

Our ridiculous (read: awesome) pitchers are ridiculous (read: awesome):

I didn't update after the Oklahoma game last night but these stats are good through the 2-1 victory over Notre Dame in Game 1 of the Judi Garman Classic. (Update: they lost to Okla, but the stats are hardly different). They need the bats (including Wagner's) to give them some support. Next week the gals come home to start Big Ten play.

ETC. Check in with your football background on this thread by 'jasputan.' Sparty copped "Facepalm" guy with "Owmyoccipital" guy; he gets photoshopped. People with umich.edu accounts spent a night ignoring Reply-All email etiquette to pass around MGoMemes. Kids these days—I went to school before people respected the awesome power of reply-all. And we used PINE.

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* In light of UNC and Ohio State recently joining the ranks of teams which O'Brien is helping me remember anew, it's as good a time as any to remark again that I hate this particular form of "punishment." I get that it's shaming for the ineligible player and the program but in essence it's a group of America's best academic institutions rewriting history.

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New Weekly Feature: Your moment of zen:

On the right is something I made from this week's Blockham's by Six Zero.

The left is a screen-cap from the pinnacle of awesome. Threads existing in the shot are as follows: WOOOO-HOOOOO!; Hello: Chris Fox; MUPPETS!!!!!!!; Sullinger: post-game words to Burke; Hello: Taco Charlton; official greatest day of ever thread; Ozone: Meyer > Hoke on Recruiting Trail = Egg in Face; The Announcers; Brady Hoke; Senior Night Video?; Life, in General; What just happened???; and Super Saturday (2-18-2012) Recap. That last by YakAttack has the play-by-play for everything that went down but here's Saturday:

• 12:00 p.m. Football: Kyle Bosch commits
• 1:00 p.m. Lacrosse: Begins first-ever road game as varsity (would lose to PSU 16-9)
• 1:05 p.m. Football: Wyatt Shallman commits
• 1:55 p.m. Track & Field: Trio of Wolverines finish first at Silverston Invitational.
• 2:25 p.m. Football: Jourdan Lewis commits, whiddle-guy Cass Tech CB mantle deployed
• 2:25 p.m. Football: David Dawson commits.
• 3:36 p.m. Baseball: Logan McAnallen pitches 2 scoreless innings to preserve Bobby Brosnahan's gem (7.0 innings, 4 hits, 1 run), and Michigan beats Setaon Hall 2-1.
• 4:21 p.m. Softball: Freshman LHP Haylie Wagner completes shutout of No. 22 Kentucky
• 7:25 p.m. Hockey: A.J. Treais scores in OT to beat Northern Michigan and sweep weekend series.
• 9:20 p.m. M Gymnastics: Season-high 345.700 score hands Ohio State their first loss
• 9:39 p.m. Softball: Freshman RHP Sara Driesenga completes shutout of FAU
• 11:00 p.m. M Basketball: Michigan upsets No. 6 Ohio State 56-51
• 11:01 p.m. Kate Upton: Kate Upton is all Kate Upton.
• 11:05 p.m. Football: Chris Fox commits
• 11:30 p.m. Football: Taco Charlton commits.
• ~11:59 p.m. Jake Butt and Logan Tuley-Tillman enter REM sleep, where their dreams are invaded by GHOST OF NINJA RECRUITING SHANE MORRIS, who gives them helmets with wings and beckons they fly with him to the land of a thousand trees.

Tennis lost to Notre Dame (BlueDragon's comprehensive paume update) at some point in there, but you get the idea. Lets_Go_Blue put up an imaginative photo recap of the weekend in the diaries. Posbang thread? Posbang thread.

I'm So Softball Right Now You Guys! The shutout streak is now up to four games, thanks to Michigan's magnificent freshmen starters. I suddenly feel like doing lines!

Haylie is a clone of Jordan Taylor (even played for the same league in Orange County) and is the crafty lefty complement to Driesenga. As such Wagner wasn't supposed to have a lot of strikeouts but, uh, well look above. The other shutout was Junior Stephanie Speierman, who was 18-1 last year with a 1.88 ERA in 122 innings. I had to look at several other top teams to convince myself these rotational riches are as ridiculous as they look. They are.

Ensuing Diaries

The Quantum of Verisimilitude. After watching smart people commit to Hoke in droves over the weekend, Urban Meyer, Legendary Recruiter™ put up a sign so full of deceit people thought he was running for office (hyuk!). Accordingly, people who take twit pics of things made by twits at face value sent it around the internet. Enter Diarist of the Week Michael Scarn, who took the crucial step of, you know, a few cursory Googles to pull the real numbers from the teams' respective media guides.

Yes, our readers with Office Space The Office joke names are better at research than whoever's doing the signs for Ohio State's head coach. I'm sure this has nothing to do with which school is a better research institution.

Which school is the better research institution? U.S. News & World Report has its new rankings for "Worlds Best Universities" and M is 14th in the world, 10th in the nation, and 2nd among FBS schools. Ohio State (111th in world, 35th in U.S.) isn't so hot, though they'd still be middle of the Pac 12, upper quarter of the ACC, and only behind Texas-Austin anywhere else. The Big Ten is back ahead of the Pac, more because of the Oregon schools than what they added. Other bits of interest I put in a table-tastic diary.

Every Goal Against Northern Michigan. This is one of my favorite  new regular column, a weekly picture-paging of M scoring by CenterIce. Since most of my hockey knowledge comes from watching Lidstrom, the one I was instantly nodding at was the scoring opportunity created by Merrill having an NHL head on his shoulders:

Head up the whole way Merrill gets the puck from Moffie and finds Deblois cutting through the middle.

The Northerners are all kinds of confused, obviously since the blueliner has closed his legs like he's in shot blocking position.

It's Aaaaaalive! The 2013 Offer List has been updated.

Etc. The Mathlete clarifies his maths, but this doesn't make sense unless you read Bill Connelly (of SBNation blog Football Study Hall)'s response to the Mathlete original. Video of last week's defeating of Ohio State, and the Sugar Bowl.

Best of the Board

GO SOUTH ON U.S. 23 AND LOOK FOR THE GIANT TOILET BOWL

Remember kids, helpful Google Maps reviewers should always get upvoted. Unfortunately this well-executed trolling has been found and restored back the THE College of Performing Bears.

When you search for directions to Ohio Stadium on Google Maps…oh I'll let you try it.

Etc. Salute to Percy Bates, retiring after more than two decades as the AD's faculty rep. HT Section 1.