dear diary

Everywhere else has reposted already so I might as well throw this up top. 'Pre-gaming with' Pat Stansik posted this ode to a valentine of untied laces, performed by a band called Mind's Eyes. The lyrics you will recognize, since you made them.

Sorry to be a bit of a wet towel on this but if you've played guitar for longer than 9 months a I-V-ii-vi progression in G is something you only do if you're an Oasis knockoff for ironic effect, or as a secret track filled with dick jokes at the end of your album. Then again I thought Donkey Punch was overrated, that Tally Hall just plain sucked, and if anyone of that generation was going to "make it" it oughtta be Six Clips, so what do I know?

I know Six Clips rocked.

What I don't know is how to play lacrosse, except in that it seems to be like hockey. But hey the Canadian sports haven't missed with me yet so let's learn this. Let's see, where would we find…oh hey look it's Brooks with the beginner's guide to the rules of lacrosse. [Read read read]. Sweet, I'm now familiar enough with the regs to criticize the refs and ready for some L-A-X. Let's see, where would we find a game…oh hey look it's MaizeAndBlueWahoo with the details for M's first televised lacrosse game (plus a long recap of the first game as varsity, a 13-9 loss to Detroit-Mercy in Pontiac). Surely it's some weekday when I can't...oh hey look it's right after the Spring Game in the Big House, and versus Ohio State. And there's to be a cup between the three Big Ten teams (PSU is the other). Now this is how you launch a new varsity sport!

In a Race to Pasadena, I'll Take the Beamer Bimmer^HT. Your diarist of the week Eye of the Tiger has made 2012 Big Ten Football programs comparable to 2012 model automobiles #OnlyInMichigan. Each team gets a 2011 grade, a 2012 recruiting grade, and a predicted average wins for the next three years that doesn't seem to take into account some of the vast differences in schedule strengths. It also highlights the bitter unfairness of Ohio State's players only getting free Nissans this year when they're valued at Ferrari FFs. Michigan Team 133 is a controversial 2012 BMW M5. Controversial because people in the comments are enraged that he said the metaphorically Rich-Rod model was a naturally aspirated V10 but the V10 is really traditional so he must be saying Lloyd and Mo and Bo ran spread offenses, and Hoke isn't a safe V8 and...wow guys we really just found a way to drag performance engines into an RR argument. Seriously: #OnlyInMichigan!

Picture-Paging Brilliance. On TV the Treais goal when he put back his own rebound looked downright Datsyukian, but I was afraid it might seem less so when screen capped. Silly thing to fear:

All hail CenterIce for picture paging every goal against MSU last weekend.

Sugar Bowl Every Snap. Sugar Bowl Every Snap. He also surveys readers to ask who wants Brian to stop what he's doing and sacrifice two days of his life to thoroughly picking apart a game from six weeks ago that is only marginally related to this year's team. To this you respond "hell yes!" because Brian Cook is our personal UFR monkey.

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Best of the Board

WHAT IS THE AIRSPEED VELOCITY OF A BE-DREADED SPREAD QUARTERBACK CARRYING AN OBLONG COCONUT?

The board this week awoke to a new self-consciousness. In order to cross the Bridge of MGoDeath you must answer me these questions three:

• WHO is your favorite new MGoBoard poster (hint: it's the Bama guy)?
• WHICH old-tyme blogger do you miss the most?
• WHAT made you come to MGoBlog in the first place?

That last is the most interesting, from the guy who found the blogspot site left open on a fishbowl computer to the old guy who finally asked his kid "how do you know so much about the recruits?"

SOFTBALL UPDATE

Starting pitcher Sara Driesenga was freshman of the week. Line? Line!

Line!!!! Sara, who by reports was born crying "Hail to the Victors," is also batting .500 so far (2 for 4). This is slightly worse than her high school career, when she had an ERA of 0.40, and a .504 career batting average. Let's pick it up Sara; this is MICHIGAN fergodsakes. Softball also picked up a touted southpaw recruit this week.

GET TO THE PART WITH KATE UPTON!

Etc. Discussing blooms from Brian's post on the Mattison clinic on whether this using the SAM on the wide side always is perhaps a bit unsound—from recollection teams that tried that last year were Illinois and Nebraska and it very didn't work. College Game Day is free FYI; in return for this information the OP let us know Denard liked his valentine song from up top. Sigh: Kate Upton. The countdown begins.

…or "install a 3-4 defense," or "hedge on screens," or "replace Martin & Van Bergen," or "excuse bad threads with 'OT:'," or "take a bus to North Campus," or "find parking on 4th street." But starting a Facebook meme page for your school? Oh man, there is evil there that does not sleep. Not with a 100 memes could you do this. More best of the board:

NO TIMEOUTS IN CRISLER (WE'RE JUST GONNA COME OUT IN ZONE ANYWAY)

Also peasy is identifying the Maize Rage shirts from Amaker's first season because they said "No timeouts in Crisler!" on the backs. The fronts said "Pass around the perimeter, have Bernard or LaVell take a bad shot, give up a layup, repeat until Avery Queen turns it over!" Then we'd all turn around in shame and Amaker would see "No timeouts in Crisler!" and oblige as his former team scored 104 points on his current one. If you still have your Maize Rage t-shirts from any era, Wolverine Devotee could use your help for his project. Tell the story of that season when you post and this thread will get either good, or really bad but easy to root for.

RIVALS 100/250 ARE OUT

Tremendous, who goes by aquaman2342 on MGo, posted the relevant folk to Michigan, and Hill.FootballRecruits did la même chose for the Rivals 250. Shane Morris is No. 16 overall, the third QB, and well within the range that eventually becomes 5-stars for Rivals, so of course the board is putting out conspiracy theories for why he's so low. Dymonte is 77th. Bluestreak points out that the in-state crop isn't as deep as it was this year, but 2012 was just a really deep year.

DON'T YOU ALL HAVE HOMES?

The Red Wings and Maple Leafs are coming to Michigan Stadium to break the Big Chill's hockey attendance record, the GLI is moving to Comerica Park, and if you're wondering why it seemed the negotiations were so edgy just imagine both Dave Brandon and Mike Ilitch in a room when it comes time to order lunch. Actually they negotiated this from different rooms. Pizza is srs business. I love outdoor hockey, and love anything that brings back the Wings-Leafs rivalry, and I love love love the Red Wings. But srsly January 1st? I don't care about the record; that "backup date of Jan. 2" clause had better have something in there about roses is all I'm saying (it doesn't, but it oughtta).

JOIN THE BOOK CLUB

Only you. User aiglick wants to start an MGoBookClub this offseason, starting with Bo's Lasting Lessons. I'm in so long as you all promise that the June book is Hail to the Victors.

HIPSTER, BRO, OR LATE-AUGHTS MICHIGAN OFFENSIVE LINEMAN?

'Pre-Gaming with' Pat Stansik made a movie that I think takes place on Ann Street about a new roommate who defies his friends' attempts to place him in social categories. I bet the dude has a stache-tat on his finger. But if avant-garde is more your style I put up a … thing discovered by Orson where … oh hell screen caps:

Fair warning: if you get past a thread title that says "Un film dérangeant" and "Catlab" in it, plus the images above and the nonsensical introduction, and you still watch all 2:37 of this video, I am not responsible for any amount of your life you can't get back.

NON-REVENUE CUPDATE

Hutch's softball program—shout-out to the ones at the airport Wendy's last evening—may be nearing its apex with three players on the pre-season All-America watch list . They also picked up a shortstop recruit from Georgia who's hitting .568 in an area not known for softball. Wrestling recently was on the short end of what numerous people who know wrestling have now assured me was the worst call in the history of wrestling. Oh, and we got a diary on Men's Tennis.

Diaries Play Five

Hey look at Moffie. See your glorious forward playing an unhindered Holmstrom spot—this is very bad for Miami by the way. CenterIce is your diarist of the week for his new regularish feature he calls "Special Teams Breakdown" and your alliteration-loving editors would rather he call "Picture Paging Power Plays." The theme for this week's is Miami is bad at the penalty kill.

High Five, Fab Five. In the basketballs, buddhafrog put up a heart-warming story about when the Fab Five showed up to a hospital for mentally disabled kids—the kind of kids it's hard to face because you start mentally shaking your fist at deities who would do such things to kids—which makes this kind of remarkable:

Weber and Rose saw through their disabilities; they saw through the wall that makes most people much more comfortable by just turning away.  They treated the boys as real boys, as real people. It meant the world to my boys at the Center and was probably the highlight of their year.

The raison d'être for this blog was because Beilein wants to get $100,000 in charity to the same center, and is in a tight race on ESPN with Motta and the Columbus Ronald McDonald House.

Demi-sabermetric Alabama fans don't exist, but if they did… Maize_in_spartyland investigated that turnover margin last year equals wins/losses this year metric on its face and finds that yes it works in his too-easy-to-work definition. Notable exceptions were Alabama and Oklahoma State; this means somewhere out there is an Alabama fan who is saying Bama's +12 turnover margin in 2010 was…okay yeah you are never going to have that conversation with anyone, because once you start down the path of analyzing turnover margin to predict next year's win totals you're not going to stop half-way.

Etc. Today is the last day to give blood and beat MSU. The Blockhams watched the Superbowl.

Between National Signing Day and the Superbowl, we are in the last little oasis of The Footballs before the other things take over again. Then comes the long months before little bits of spring trickle in. So let's with the footballs! The footballs last year! The footballs this year! The footballs in four years!

Maize_in_spartyland put a lot of time into using this year's success as a predictor for next year's strengths of schedule across the conference, including early 2012 projections for each team. Michigan's schedule is up there but Nebraska and Penn State seem to have the toughest roads ahead, not that you have any sympathy for either of them.

CRex continued (2002-2005) and then concluded his year-by-year study of Minimum Playoff Size, with 2006 through 2011. He's got a 5-team playoff for 2006 that doesn't include Michigan, which highlights the problem with doing this with hindsight (ie including the bowl results) instead of looking at the pre-bowl situation and saying "THIS would settle it."

He also put together a long review of Coaching the West Coast Quarterback, a book by one Al Borges and his brother Keith in 2002 while they were at Cal. If you're the kind of person who buys coaching books by your team's coordinators* there's one new one left at a reasonable price on Amazon. Or you could read the diary. Combined effort nets this man Diarist of the Weeks.

With NSD passed we really are into next year now. One last trip, then, into that which was 2011, courtesy of Eye of the Tiger, who after a bolded "But" with an ellipsis and its own line goes on to make a good point that V-Tech ended up looking eerily like Mississippi State 2010. The offense scored a few more points but wasn't as good as expected. The defense was WAY better than we dreamed. Brunette girls fixed the kicking problems (Misopogal: "We are awesome like that") and we all converted back to the church of…Time of Possession?!?

What I learned this season was that ToP may not matter in many cases, but it sure does when you're exactly the kind of team that has close to zero depth on defense.  Then you really should keep them off the field if you can.  Oregon can do the uptempo thing because they have lots and lots of depth on defense.  They may not be Alabama, but they have a legion of solid dudes they can substitute in and out, and that's exactly what they do. 

This makes sense. Let's recruit like 10 DL/LB this year so we don't have to … oh we did that. Carry on.

The Footballs, Recruiting is Perspective:

RJS and the Temple of Zooms

Well you know how National Signing Day went down. In case you missed some of the lead-up, Ace interviewed 2012 commit Royce Jenkins-Stone, the No. 1 player in the home state according to Scout (but not Dantonio). And you figure he's run out of funny names for 2013 prospects, but there's still one (Florida OT) Laremy Tunsil to go along with a boring old electric 6'4 receiver from Jersey named Charlie. Six Zero turned the microphone around and interviewed the weirdly named Ace Anbender.

WolverineBlue took Scout's recruiting scoring system and tried to predict where Michigan would land. It's as of 1/24, so needs updating after we know what the OL are doing, but he's accurate as of this writing. WolverineLake went backwards in time, grabbed a bolded personality, and showed the Scout recruiting rankings are predictive but the margin for error is big enough to drive Wisconsin's offensive line through it.

The Basketballs:

So the plan this year was to lean on the front court while breaking in a new PG so he's not overwhelmed with responsibility an…hey, this freshman IS our offense:

Player	Year	FGM	Assists	Team FGM	% Team FGM
Eric Turner	1981-82	163	120	696	40.70%
Trey Burke	2011-12	99	92	472	40.50%
Daniel Horton	2002-03	151	134	706	40.40%
Manny Harris	2007-08	159	86	709	34.60%
Jalen Rose	1991-92	206	135	1,014	33.60%
Gary Grant	1984-85	169	140	936	33.00%
Kevin Gaines	1999-'00	110	133	780	31.20%
Antoine Joubert	1983-84	118	102	867	25.40%
Dion Harris	2003-04	112	76	823	22.80%
Darius Morris	2009-10	52	84	732	18.60%

So Trey Burke is right there among the leaders for this metric.

Raoul goes on to compare him favorably against the best point guards in the country in how much of his team's offense is generated by the 1.

AC1997 has put together a fantastic and nice-looking study on Michigan's season to date. This is outdated post-Indiana but still very good and very relevant as it breaks the schedule into good wins, good losses, bad losses, and what various outcomes of what cometh would mean.

The Hockeys:

Hey, what was up with our Power Play vs. Notre Dame eh? Yesman2221, our resident hockey guru other than that Cook guy, PP'ed Michigan's PP.

Etc. In the fall your blood is for beating Ohio. But in hockey/hoops season, you can put it all toward beating State. M Wolve with a list of places to donate. If your name is Zack Novak you are welcome to give directly at Breslin. A couple of Blockhams.

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Best of the Board

OH FATHER! M PULLS TWO SIGNING DAY SURPRISES

Congrats to two new MGoDaddies who kept Michigan fans on edge for only a few hours before leaking their new sons' final college choices. Shortly after these announcements Mark Dantonio assured alumni he already had a solid verbal from the top 2030 prospect in the state. Further shout-outs to zohizzle101 for the recruit profiles you see above, and comment of the year from gajensen:

WE'RE GETTING COMMITS IN PAIRS AGAIN!!1!1!

I would also like to send out my deepest condolences to the Facebook friends of Florida Blue and Wolverine In a Bag. Once there were epic Youtube links, lolz pics from George Takei*, and breaking Michigan news—no more. As of now the baby has probably already taken over the profile pic and will be the subject of every update until at least 2016. In other M legacy recruits, Madonna's pushing her daughter to choose Michigan.

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*Damn you Takei, another hour of my life. Sigh. Urban Meyer in college:

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YOU'RE FOR THE G-MEN SUNDAY RIGHT? YOU'RE WHAT? HHHMMMMMMM.

No Dave Baas, I'm not rooting for your team, and not just because the Giants' whites look like a certain group of unmentionables when your helmets are off. I'm sure the readers have some sort of deep-seated reasoning, or office squares, or deep knowledge about the Pats and Giants, but since the Lions have never sniffed such a thing in my lifetime, in Superbowls I root for whoever's got the most Michigan guys and/or fewest Buckeyes, with ties going to the most favoritists of M players, or guys who haven't won before. This year the Giants have Super Mario and David Baas of the Daves*, versus Tom Brady and Zoltan the Inconceivable. The former link there is 12 trivia about Brady. The latter is a link to a link to a Romanian Space Emperor/Epic Punter/Business Major doing Borat. For this, I wish him great success.

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*My senior year Michigan ran most of its plays up the middle behind an interior line made up entirely of guys named Dave. Since I didn't have access to a blog at the time I just tried to get my section to call them things like "Dave Petruziello of the Daves" or "Dave Pearson of the Daves."

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NO LEGS? NO VAK!

Indiana's comeback explained: Novak played most of the second half without his legs. Crean is looking into whether Zack should be suspended for this. MGoBoard is already photoshipping.

MGOBLOG: THE MAGAZINE RETURNS

As Brian announced in a meta thread, we are bringing back "Hail to the Victors" this year, and for the first time producing it independently. Look for future updates on this as we use your support to prove we can afford to do it. There's still some time to submit your ideas of things you would pay for to help support the launch effort.

ACE: THE PODCAST

++ = listen.

ETC.

NFL's new rookie cap might drive more players to the NFL faster. Future Museday: how many 4- and 5-stars make it to NFL Contract #2. If you've caught yourself double-posting something and want us to erase your heinous, unforgiveable crime for all time, you can change the title to "Mods Please Delete," or you can invoke the Space Emperor (of Space).

This sounds like a snarky college applicant's answer to the "who would you invite to dinner?" question, but it's real: you can actually pay actual-ass money to have actual dinner with the actual Coach Carr, Coach Hoke, Dhani Jones, and Mike Martin. Plus the money goes to a good cause, helping markw and rest of a community service student organization fund their 2012 projects.

Speaking of Projects, you gotta see this Multi-Parter by crex that goes over every BCS year to figure out from available evidence how many teams need to be in a playoff in order to make sure those with a strong claim always get in. He has a few different conclusions than my Museday a few weeks ago on this. Read 1998 through 2011, then Part II is 2002 to 2005. More to come. Crex is your diarist of the week. And he didn't even have to embarrass his wife for this one!

Maize_in_spartyalnd followed that up with a study on the bowl payouts in-conference accumulated over the same time period. The Big Ten splits all of this but it's kind of interesting to see the numbers. Ohio State is out-contributing Indiana at more than $100 to the dollar, not that this surprises you. Did we really just get $6 million for being in the Sugar Bowl?

Did you know ESPN is actually really good at picking out overrated Michigan recruits? A study by blueloosh only went through 2008 and 2009 to see which of ESPN, Rivals and Scout were better at predicting how M's recruits would fare. The study is not at all conclusive—the final tally is too close to call and the transfers don't help.

Ace's Recruiting Corner of Funny Names

So we have a 2013 recruit named Courtney Love. It is at this very moment that I am happiest Brian and Ace have to do the recruiting posts—and the heavy Googling that entails—around here. In fact Heiko and I are having a little G-Chat party right now. More funny names interviewed were James Onwualu, an athlete from Seantrel Henderson's school, and OL Cameron Dillard, who—get this—is working out with Barwis. Current conference class rankings are current.

This is Pretty Much My Daily Inner Monologue:

Awesome job done again by Six Zero on the t-shirts. Let the world know what you're thinking. And while we're on Six, the adventures of The Blockhams continue. That link isn't to the diary but his site and the newest comic with bow ties in it, because I like that one better.

Etc. Video of Michigan vs. MSU in a sport we consistently beat them in these days. And credit to Yesman2221 for his OSU preview, posted four (to one) scores, and four (to nothing) scores ago. LATE BREAK: His Notre Dame Preview is up.

Quiet Best of the Board.

Here's to you, Friars singing Here's to You, Denard Robinson.

The fun begins 2:00 in.

A Wisconsin fan says Michigan is their biggest rival. I wouldn't scorn this like Illinois; Badger fans have had it in for us ever since we were doing things like keeping Dayne under 50 yards and a few other preposterous things (punt hitting a gunner's foot, David Terrell leaping over double-coverage) when a Michigan loss might have been the difference between a Rose Bowl as Big Ten Champ, or an outside shot at a No. 2 ranking and BCS bid. There are exactly two things we can hate them back for: 1) You can tell their O-Line are all going to the NFL because they hold every freaking play, and 2) They can't remember a time when their current RB wasn't the best back in the country. Come to think of it that is actually kind of adorable in a provincial sort of way. Change my 2) to Bielema's nose. That or the grand-transfer quarterbacking. But you kept State out of a BCS bowl without fighting us for recruits, and for that we thank you.

In the wake of another ho-hum defeat of MSU in basketball, a posbang thread ensued.

OTHER BLOGS, TWEETING HERE

aquaman2342 of TreMendOus enlisted the board's help for today's interview with Brandy. MFR interviewed Michael Hutchings of Cal-De La Salle; apparently this name is far too normal for Ace. Last time I checked up on De La Salle they still hadn't lost a football game ever or something, but this was when Matt Gutierrez was their QB.

Old McPointsalot had a farm, E-I-E-I-Oh. And on that farm he had…

A Rainbow-Pooping Unicorn. This isn't going to do us any favors with the New York Times. Also you should mentally add "unicorn pooping rainbows" to things you should never search for on Google Images.

What you are seeing (other than a unicorn pooping rainbows at a post-Apocalyptic Gowanus Canal) is the opening salvo of BlueSeoul's last game wrap of the season:

This week's love-hate relationship status with Al Borges is .... .... Love? That's odd, because during the game there were times when the needle was strongly tilted towards hate.  But after a second look at the game film, the final analysis, just like the outcome of the game, is slightly positive.

Much like the Iowa game, the lack of production on offense wasn't really his fault so much as it was a combination of a lack of execution, personnel limitations, and a darn good defense.

So ends 2011, the year of the oxymoronic fecal substances. On to 2012, the year that is the year we play Alabama in Dallas.

Unto this breach goes hart20 to give an early and detailed count of returning starters for next season's opponents. He wrote this before Coker quit Iowa but for future reference whenever you preview Iowa always count at least one extra sacrifice to the Angry Iowa Running Back Hating God. Ohio State returns the most starters (they lose 5 on offense and none on D) while Air Force has to replace 17 starters and their backup QB. Diary of the Week, this.

And in That Future Was a Playoff, F-U-O-Hi-O. Playoff the first is by JeepinBen and takes parts of the basketball tournament that might work for football. It has 11 teams. The MWC and Big East champions plus four at-large teams play a week after the conf. championship games, then face three of the five big conference teams in Round 2. It would see Bama playing at TCU on December 10. I would give the at-large teams the home field instead of the crappy conference champs. Boise State fans will say different but Boise State's president probably won't be too hurt about splitting half of 110,000 tickets rather than half of 10,000 to have the game on blue turf.

The second is by Seattle Maize and isn't a playoff, more like "move the BCS decision until after the bowls." Ten teams go to BCS bowls based on tie-ins, and then we recalculate the BCS to pit the best two of the remaining five (the Cotton gets an upgrade) against each other. Upside: the only fans traveling on short notice are going to the National Championship game (which should be two weeks after). Downside: doesn't really solve anything – it's just another BCS, albeit a better one than we have now.

And in Those Playoffs Were These Recruits. I can't believe umhero wrote this composite ranking chart of three sites' Top 100 on the boards. Michigan's seven players who make someone's Top 100 is tied with Florida State for 3rd. Texas has 11; Bama 10. Our reality is the one that exists in some Alabama freshman's NCAA 2004* dynasty (his roommate plays Boise State and created Cam Newton as payback for the entire pack of Fig Newtons that disappeared from the fridge). Also in this universe he can edit recruit names to funny things like 2013 S.C. receiver, "Uriah LeMay," and Ace would interview them. Ace also spoke to PA tight end Adam Breneman.

If you are a recruit in RollTide06's reality, before choosing a school based on NFL potential, best to read docwhoblocked's study on your chances first.

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* If it was '05 nobody would be able to catch; if it was '03 he wouldn't know to hire name his generic middle-aged coach Saban.

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And the Basketball Was Back, but it Never Left, Yeah It Did, No It Didn't, Yeah It Diddanoitdidn't. We join ClearEyesFullHart in an appreciation fest of where Michigan basketball has come from Dom Ingerson. However far this goes, it feels like the cagers have now crawled through the shit pipe to clear the program from the prison of the '90s, carved our name in the half-way house that claimed SMU football, put in our time at Amaker Grocery in the aughts, and now we're on a road to paradise. It makes a much better story than an ellipsis between tournament appearances:

I suppose that's why Brian's wording, "Right now we're going through the last vestiges of having no expectations because we have no program" made me just a little bit angry.  Because I can remember when we had no program.  I remember when beating Bowling Green was a big deal.  I was there, and it was actually quite a while ago.

The argument is semantic, and on the Ellerbe years I'd rather forget too, but in ways I'm with CEFH. There were times in the lost years that Michigan was reduced to a 3rd string walk-on Jewish kid playing guard with literally no ligament in his elbow, but I'd still take any five of Dani Wohl's vital organs over this year's Penn State team.

More Blockhams by Six Zero and the Sparty hate gets going on his home site:

The artwork is fantastic, and Six is really one of the good guys. You sense a 'but' in there. Okay there's a but, but first repeat the caveat about Six Zero being awesome in 99% of ways. But: social messaging future Buckeyes and trolling Spartan offspring when they ask an answerable question are acts that make me not like the Michigan fan characters. The Sugar Bowl one was great. He's got "Tom" down. "Desmond," the collegiate Blockham, appears annoying and probably got his MGoBlog account suspended for copious use of the word "Stud." Grandpa Glenn's an asshole. Needs MOAR character development. Am i being overly harsh on a comic that's six strips old? Yes I am.

And in Etc. There Was a Yak. Seriously, There's a Yak in This Diary! CRex's personal life and what the dry ear wax phenotype has to do with the bar scene in Ulaangom. And a shout-out to everyone who helped the Mathlete complete the now comprehensive list of D-I coaches and coordinators since '03.

Best o' th' Boards

THE SECRET AND ASTOUNDING ADVENTURES OF ACE, THE MAN WHO BLOGGGED

Using the sneaky but effective ploy of posing as a mild-mannered classmate of Ace, patstansik, better know as "Pre-Game Pat," scored the exclusive interview with the elusive Anbender. What mysteries lie behind the only person doing actual work around here? What improbable twists of fate and snappy dressing led a young man of San Francisco to climb to the heights of bloggerdom, and reach fame so great his mom gets questions from the checkout guy at Kroger's.* It's all there in Ace: The Podcast.

If you'd like to share your own story on how you became a Wolverine, you can do so in the thread by Mr.Mario86.

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* There's no apostrophe-'s' in 'Kroger' you say? Well I say this is Michigan fergodsakes's

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OHIO: BIRTHPLACE OF WOODSON, HOWARD, AND SCHEMBECHLER

Voting has concluded on the new Ohio license plate voting with "Bo" and "Worst State Ever" notable write-ins. Well trolled my friends.

NUMBERS TOO OR JUST WINGS?

The battle lines are drawn. Of things I don't like changing, the numbers on the helmets are somewhere between the fact that keys don't look like keys anymore and my hair line, i.e. doesn't bug me that much but if I had a choice I'd go back to the way things were.

HAPPY HOKEIVERSARY!

It was this week last year. Who's awesome? You're awesome!

(Quick note: offseason OT rules now in effect)

In the MGoBlog Diaries section the Wolverine fan base is represented by two equally important groups: the stat-heads who investigate college football, and the fan-boys who celebrate their achievements. These are their stories.

[gavel sound]

And we're back. It's been a few weeks since a DD column. I used my MGoVacation to watch L&O marathons and a few bowl games with funny names while the denizens focused on more important things, which are Michigan football things.

Fortunately these had a happy year. AC1997 tried to contextualize this 11-2, BCS bowl-winning season of ours (feel free to repeat that sentence a few times before moving on). The thing has a chart, and a bolded alter ego to introduce it. He also created something called a "VASAV" score which sounds like a cool sabermetric acronym  but is really just named after the user who suggested a super-simple scoring system for BCS/Rose Bowl seasons by fan satisfaction. 1997 was a 4.0; this was a 1.5.

: Hey, keep getting grades like that 'n you'll be visiting East Lansing a lot more often.

Da-dum, duh duh duh duh dunnnnnnnn…[electric piano, clarinet, clarinet, bass guitar]

Man Lennie, you are dark sometimes. So Michigan murdered this season, but considering where this program was just 12 months ago, how did such a thing happen? Well we can check the box scores by ST3 – it looks like he's got an entire season in there, right? Or it could be just a bunch of Iron Maiden songs.

Fortunately WolverineBlue has been down in the lab, conducting an autopsy of the Toussaint touchdown that wasn't against Ohio State. Like every other L&O autopsy report, it is unbelievably thorough and straightforward, presenting such a wealth of information if this wasn't for television that would be 90% of the case solved right there. As it is, this forensic analysis proves Fitz should have been ruled in  Edit: down 1/2 in short. Virginia Tech fans with screen capture got nothin' on this Diarist of the Weeks (plural):

Exhibit B

The other Diarist of the Weeks is JeepinBen who looked into the personnel on hand and being recruited for Mattison's defense and in a sudden twist of realization, saw that if you look at it like a 3-4 defense instead of a 4-3, just one big guy named Ondre plus lots of linebackers and ends all make sense!

A couple of diaries meant as previews to the Sugar are still relevant to our investigation here. The one by cps2010 is excellent for advanced readers looking to understand the weird-ass, corner-dependent defense that V-Tech runs. Steve Sharik once spent over an hour and a half trying to explain this very defense to me before saying "Michigan will never run it," but you never know when you'll be in a situation where you'll have to quickly execute a base Cover 4 robber. If you plan to re-watch the Sugar Bowl, I highly recommend you read this, then watch Hosley and appreciate how good he is. Also still useful is the extensive head-to-head-ing by CollegeFootball13 between M's season and VT's. And monuMental made a beautiful background:

If you want more evidence, Boyz n da Pahokee flipped the video over to us. Before some a-hole lawyer from you-know-where calls it inadmissible, get your Sugar Bowl Replay, Sugar VOAV, Sugar Preview, 2011 Offensive Highlights, and 2011 Defensive Highlights. So much good stuff in there, from the Herron TDs, to "GUN-der the lights" while wearing a DL, a Roundtree and a WHAAT?, and Robinson eating all that soup, and Jibreel finally corralling Braxton Miller on 3rd and goal.

After the jump, the real McCoy takes it to trial, and the board celebrates FESTIVUS!