lolsparty

SON OF A. I should have read this message board post before I posted the game column. Here's some car vandalism from the weekend that would have been a perfect insert:

This is what happens when you drop your vandalism major.

Thanks, Les. The Les Miles misery machine managed to bump Michigan below the fold in TWIS…

…so thanks for that. The Michigan section is devoid of anything like dong-punching, but only thanks to this guy and his rageohol:

This is not me. I was in the stadium one row behind an adorable child. I swear it.

Penn State implosion explanation, implications. How did Illinois run for almost 300 yards against Penn State's normally tough defense? It was the second string D:

DIDN'T PLAY

• Linebacker Gerald Hodges: Missed his fourth game with a hairline fracture but has begun running.
• Defensive end Jack Crawford: Foot injury, spent game on crutches on the sideline, might need surgery, Paterno said.
• Linebacker Mike Mauti: Missed game with a high ankle sprain.
• Linebacker Bani Gbadyu: Knee injury.
• [Ed: these two are my additions.] Defensive end Sean Stanley: suspended for violations of team rules.
• Cornerback Derrick Thomas: suspended for violations of team rules.

LEFT GAME

• Defensive end Eric Latimore: Sustained wrist injury on first play, could be out for an extended period.
• Defensive back Nick Sukay: Possible torn pectoral muscle, also could be out for a while.
• Defensive end Pete Massaro: Treated for dehydration symptoms and played with an injured left quadriceps.
• Defensive back Andrew Dailey: Sustained possible stinger on helmet-to-helmet hit in second half.
• Defensive tackle Jordan Hill: Aggravated previous ankle injury.

That's eleven guys from the two-deep, all of whom have seen significant playing time. Michigan plays Penn State in three weeks. It sounds like Sukay, Latimore, and Crawford will definitely be out. Mauti and Hodges could be out, too, and who knows what's with Stanley and Thomas. If it's serious enough for them to miss two games it's 50-50 they'll miss four.

While that sucks for PSU that opens the ever-widening window of opportunity Michigan has in Happy Valley. That will be a critical game for Rich Rodriguez unless Michigan pulls off the upset against Iowa, in which case it will only be a very important game.

The vault. MGoVideo has put a bunch of old newsreels from the 50s and 60s on the tubes. I linked one on the sidebar yesterday that didn't end so well. None of them actually end that well, though, since they're reels from the 50s, when Michigan was no good. The best I can do is a 6-2-1 Michigan keeping the Brown Jug in 1949:

Other hat-laden newsreels covering:

• The 1951 Minnesota game, a 54-27 win over a turrible Gopher team.
• Football yearbooks in 1957 (5-3-1, losses to very good MSU and OSU teams), 1958 (2-6-1 bler), 1959 (4-5), and 1965 (4-6).

Newsreels only covered mediocre to terrible Michigan teams, evidently.

While we're idling in the 40s and 50s, a reader sent along this 1947 Time article on Crisler's Mad Magicians that sounds strikingly similar to what's going on around these parts sixty years later:

Michigan's 1947 Wolverines are a good bet to be the second team in Michigan's history to play in Pasadena's Tournament of Roses. They have been rated the nation's best. They are as unlike Fielding ("Hurry-Up") Yost's old-time Michigan teams as modern design can make them. There are no roughcast iron men on Michigan's 1947 squad. It is a collection of chrome-plated, hand-tooled specialists. Some never get a chance to make a tackle, others never throw a block. Usually none stays in a game long enough to work up as much sweat as the radio announcer, who tries to keep track of them as they trot on & off.

Michigan's shrewd Coach Fritz Crisler has taken advantage of the unlimited substitution rule. In the first four games of the season, Crisler's team used everyone but the water boy, and averaged 55 points a game.

The way they did it was something to behold. Lacking brawn, they have to be nimble. And jack-nimble is what they are —and as well-drilled as the Rockettes.

And if they had sports talk radio back then someone would call in to grouse about how this team is soft and doesn't compare to what all they had in dickety-two when Michigan beat back the Kaiser and called it a day. It's crazy that Crisler invented platooning—that anyone had to say "hey, now, maybe I should get people off the field from time to time." Also he said this:

"Confound it, if you want to be sensational, bounce the ball, turn a somersault, then pick it up and run."

This is exactly what Rodriguez says to Mike Cox.

Also, things were slightly more relaxed in 1947 when it came to everything. 24 year-old star Robert Chappius is described as such:

At the Phi Delt house, where he is president for the second year, he is a sharp bridge player and a whizz at cribbage. His card sense helps augment his G.I. allotment and the $50 a month he gets from his dad, who is an executive in a Toledo, O., porcelain-products company. On the practice field, Chappuis is very "coachable," which is exceptional in a senior. Chappuis learns easily, just as he does in the classroom, where he makes a C-plus average seemingly without ever opening a book.

Gambling! C+ averages despite never opening books! Coachable despite being a senior! In 1947 anything short of stabbing a man was good, and even that might be okay if the guy seemed German.

Iowa injury bits. Starting MLB Jeff Tarpinian is questionable. He played a little bit early in the Penn State game but left with an assortment of stingers, sending senior Troy Johnson into the lineup. Johnson got a "minor" concussion and was replaced by freshman James Morris.

So who is it this week? The Hawkeye depth chart lists Johnson first and Morris second—no Tarpinian. Everyone else save the battered tailback corps, now Adam Robinson and some freshmen, should be ready to go.

Firin' talk moratorium notification. This was inevitably going to happen after the first loss and it has happened so a note to emailers and whoever else: I'm not going to speculate on whether or not Rodriguez should or will be fired when there are six important data points coming up in the next month and a half.

Etc.: MGoUser tomcat sits next to TX LB recruit Kellen Jones on his flight home from Houston, reports back that he's a nice guy serious about academics. More MSU postgame from Dreaded Judgment and Genuinely Sarcastic; the latter is seriously overheated. I'm not sure what the Hoover Street Rag is talking about in theirs.

"Right after the game ended, my phone rang," said Callahill. "I answer to some guy shouting, 'Go State! Michigan sucks!' and I'm like, 'Who is this?' And the shouting voice stops long enough to say, 'It's Jerry.' 'Jerry who? I don't know any Jerry.' And the guy says, 'I bagged your groceries about six months ago. You had a Michigan hat on. So I got your number off your club card.' How annoying."

Site note. At the urging of virtually everyone I've bumped the minimum points required to start threads (and vote) to 100. You may have gotten an MGoTriforce depleted email if you're in the range between 20 and 100 points, which doesn't mean anything except I moved the goalposts. The change will take a little time to take full effect.

In ur message board electin ur politicians. It's Michigan State week, and John Runyan googlebombs FTW:

Please don't take that screenshot of MGoBlog suggesting you should go to Notre Dame law.

(HT: Eleven Warriors.)

Injury parade con't. First: knock on wood. Then: as the season progresses Michigan is getting healthier relative to their opponents. They've lost a couple running backs temporarily, but they're not Purdue or anything:

The Boilermakers will be without receiver Justin Siller for Saturday’s game against Northwestern and maybe longer, coach Danny Hope said. … “It’s a bad sprain,” Hope said today. “He’s going to be out for an extended period of time. He could be out several weeks possibly.”

Is there a youtube video of Darth Vader going YESSSSSS? Would that be tacky? Yeah, probably. The Purdue game is over a month from now so Siller may be back anyway.

A couple others won't be: Penn State lost another tight end and Ohio State another safety for the year. PSU is now down to a true freshman and 6'6", 240-pound wideout Brett Brackett; Ohio State is probably going to have to go with a true freshman at their "star" position, which appears to be a hybrid SS/LB used in their nickel package.

Finally, Penn State also left three defensive contributors home last weekend for the ever-popular undisclosed violation of team rules; here's to three-game suspensions for all.

One man offense, you say? Injury, you say? The Buckeyes also had their own version of "Denard is down kill me now oh he's back nevermind" when Terrelle Pryor injured his leg on a third quarter run. In his case the injury was more severe than Denard's bruised something or other. Pryor was clearly limited upon his return:

"The worst thing was when I came back and the guys thought I was all right," Pryor said. "They were saying, 'Come on, Terrelle, lead us,' and it was hard because I knew I couldn't do anything about it. There was no way I could do anything about it other than hand the ball off and maybe throw a couple passes. It kind of hurt a little bit dropping back."

… After he returned, he handed off 26 times, was 3 of 4 passing for 28 yards and gained 2 yards on a sneak.

The official diagnosis is a "strained quad," so could be one of those things that lingers until the offseason or he could be fine next week. Former Buckeye and guy who strained his quad Dustin Fox thinks it will be the former:

Just so u guys know. There's no such thing as a mild quad strain. As soon as u try to burst it's gonna lock up

If it's a Grade 1 strain he should be fine in a few weeks; if it's Grade 2 he could be limited for up to two months. Re-aggravation is possible since OSU has little choice but to ride Pryor as far as he can take them. Their backup quarterback situation is grim and a lot of their praise for Boom Herron's workmanlike performance reads like it's from Michigan fans hoping Vincent Smith is better than he seems right now. This slight window of hope will be followed by Pryor pulling a Denard against their next opponent, which is… Indiana. (Welcome to the Big Ten season, Hoosiers. Yeesh.)

Penn State jealousy update! Kevin Newsome: still backing up a true freshman. Anthony Fera, who Michigan recruited as a kicker:

By my count, Anthony Fera had four mediocre and one really, really bad punt.

They're still 39th in net punting and Michigan is 88th, but we're catching up after being in triple digits last week. While we're on Penn State, that game continues to look very plausible but I don't like this bit:

Credit where it's due: despite being harried and pounded on for pretty much the entire game (and dealing with a difficult night-game atmosphere in Kinnick; it got LOUD on multiple occasions), Robert Bolden seemed to keep his composure well and he did a nice job of leading the Penn State offense down the field on those two drives on either side of halftime.  The coaches made things easier on him by using a lot of quick roll-outs and short passes, but he looked pretty calm in executing that gameplan. Things got more ragged in the fourth quarter and he threw a lot more balls that could have (and should have) been intercepted (including the one that was, by Shaun Prater late in the fourth quarter), but freshmen quarterbacks are going to take their lumps; Bolden seems like he could be a pretty good quarterback for PSU in the not-too-distant future. 

Who hates quick rollouts and short passes? You do, because Michigan can't defend them. That's another game in which I have no idea what will happen. That's a big step forward from the beginning of the season. As a bonus, JoePa punted on fourth and six down 14 with 4:36 left: that's not a game in which fear of Denard will make coaches go Romer.

All hat. Remember when we were all excited about getting Les Miles and despondent when he said GTFO?

(HT: The War Eagle Reader.)

Dodged an enormous penis-shaped bullet there. What looked like enormous balls and a refreshing ability to do that Romer stuff we've been talking about all day turns out to be an inability to comprehend the conventional wisdom or the clock rules. You've seen this, right? It's seven minutes but if you didn't see how this went down you have to repair this immediately:

There are no words. If you insist that there are, Orson has you covered:

The clock runs. You do two things when you might want to stop the clock on the goal-line down 14-10 with a running clock. You may spike it---wait, that's not happening. There's a thing about spiking the ball at LSU, if you'll recall. They could call time out, but they have no timeouts because Les Miles is pretty sure the federal government demands those back at the end of the year if you don't spend them all. Though they've been on the two yard line ever since the pass interference penalty, the LSU offensive staff suddenly remembers OH MY GOD WE HAVE A GOAL LINE PACKAGE and sets off a fire drill the People's Republic of China would call "disgracefully hurried and chaotic."

Imagine if the smoldering tire fire that is Michigan's secondary was inside the head coaches' skull. LSU recruited Russell Shepard, a five-star dual threat QB Michigan thought was more talented than anyone they've recruited at the position and moved him to wide receiver so Jordan Jefferson could play. Guh.

BONUS: The Alphabetical's D, E, and F all concern the Michigan-Indiana tennis match, with Denard ascending past Woody Danztler in Orson's pantheon of spread quarterbacks.

Etc.: Stencil this across the world. Football coaches are focused on play success, not drive success. Chait is with me: just say no to punts.

"Wow. Shame he took 10 years off his life for Michigan State."

Quickly:

In retrospect, obvious. Shredder's latest and something I'm kicking myself for not putting in the preview:

 
Too bad it's a 100% guaranteed cease-and-desist magnet, or that would be a killer t-shirt.

Nacho dip. Obama's hard edge. Random seven minute video featuring Rodriguez and impressions of Rodriguez from his players:

Via MBN.

This is never good. Remember Brent Petway's rap? Yeah… now there's a Michigan State version:

So they've caught up to us in that department. Let's not return the favor with team-wide brawls. Also, athletes: stop rapping. That is all.

Not that this is a surprise, but… John Pollack continues saying "it's just a flesh wound" in AnnArbor.com, further revealing reasons no one should talk to him ever again:

“What happened was that Michigan Stadium was a unique stadium,” he said. “With the renovation, it looks pretty much like every stadium in the country.” … “If you take out seat-license fees, the whole financial model collapses,” he said. “And what did the average fan get in return? A quarter-inch. It’s not even worth repainting the numbers.”

1. The bowl has not seen the seats expand to their final size, since that process will take the next three years.
2. The noise in the bowl has gone up 30-40%.
3. Handicap seating is considerably more extensive.
4. Seat license fees were instituted a decade ago.
4. He continues insisting that now Michigan Stadium looks like "every other stadium in the country," which good lord:

He also keeps saying that the "mystery and surprise" that Michigan Stadium was just a HOLE IN THE GROUND was an asset since surely no one knew it was called "the Big House" when it was a HOLE IN THE GROUND.

False. If I had a picture of this man I would lolcat it like that. just "FALSE."

On the crushening of Denard. A small amount of chatter in the aftermath of the UConn game has been about how the Big Ten rabble rabble defense rabble linebacker rabble Robinson's spleen rabble rabble rabble. Jon Chait points out a reason the 29 carry(!) outing is not likely to be repeated:

The seminal thing about Connecticut's defensive game plan is that it did not work. At all. Michigan had one punt and zero turnovers. Ask yourself this. If you were designing a game plan against Michigan, would your goal be to make Robinson carry the ball as often as possible? Or would you try to force less dangerous players to get the ball? I predict most defenses who have seen what Robinson can do pick door number two, and his rushing attempts per game drop.

Also as Robinson's passing gains the trust of the coaches, Michigan's run/pass breakdown will retreat from 75% run to 70%, maybe 65%. And probably 50% of his carries will be touchdowns anyway.

On secondary aigh. Notre Dame's got some of its own. Starting safety Jamoris Slaughter will not play this weekend, leaving this in the ND backfield:

Slaughter's injury and freshman Derek Roback's transfer to Ohio University earlier this week leave the Irish with only three fully healthy scholarship safeties for the Michigan game - [sophomore Zeke] Motta, junior Dan McCarthy and senior Harrison Smith.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: Kelly says he's not moving anyone to the position because there's a 5'10" walk-on who they're "not afraid to put in the game."

Motta will start his first game tomorrow. He was a pretty big recruit, albeit one the sites all ranked as a linebacker. May his judgment of angles be correct for humans, incorrect for Denard.

Etc.: Good news for people in Denmark: NBC will stream the M-ND game live. This message will be repeated in the liveblog post. Another Michigan blog: Dreaded Judgment. Rodriguez says he "hopes" Forcier stays and competes. Big Ten Network ad revenue increases 22%. And, finally:

"The Big Ten basically told the Spartans they don't matter."