lolsparty

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."

Hockey bits. Whatever doubt there was about Summers returning this weekend is just about evaporated. Berenson is "over 80 percent confident" he will be back:

"I thought he looked pretty good again [on Wednesday]," Berenson said. "He's such a free skater, and that's an advantage he has. And he's a senior. He's fit. He's worked hard in this whole rehab. If he gets through the next few days, he'll play."

As mentioned in the preview, I assume this means Lee Moffie gets sent to the press box. Hogan is still out.

I updated the preview with some extra television information, but if you missed it Saturday's game is now on Comcast so everyone should get it. Channels:

• Comcast: 900
• Dish: 432 and 436.
• DirecTV: 640 and 668.

The game is also on ESPN360 and will be on ESPNU on tape delay. Hypothetical Sunday game would be on ESPNU.

Rothstein has a piece on Fort Wayne's preparations for the NCAA tourney—he used to work at the paper there—and asks whether neutral sites really work for the NCAA hockey tournament. In my opinion, not really. It's goofy to have the most important games of the season played in sterile, largely empty buildings, and moving to home ice for top seeds would help make the tourney less of a random number generator. Playoffs should strive for a  balance between unpredictability and a satisfactory champion. The NBA has too little unpredictability, MLB too much. College basketball is just right. Single-elimination hockey is on the MLB side of the scale.

Also, lolsparty:

Comley says MSU was the last team out  of the NCAA tournament and if Michigan had not beaten Miami, then MSU would have replaced the Wolverines in the 16-team field.  He is not for expanding the current 16-team format, although I am in favor of expanding it to 24 because a couple of teams with automatic bids, like Alabama Huntsville, are in the field with a losing record.

As Western College hockey points out, 24 teams would be 40% of college hockey. It would be all but one TUC. The tourney is more likely to contract back to twelve than expand further. Hockey is already over the 25% mark, the maximum amount of tournament participation advised by the NCAA. Also, Comley's wrong. Ferris State is the first team out of the tourney.

BONUS: Junior defenseman Jeff Petry is a holy lock to sign with Edmonton. I'm hoping Tropp heads out the door, too, so that karma delivering a fatality to him is the last thing that happens to him in college hockey, but it sounds like he's leaning towards a return.

So how's that working out for you, being ornery? Ever since the Free Press Jihad started there has been a wing of Michigan's internet fandom dedicated to the proposition that Michigan should pursue a scorched-earth policy with the paper. They imagine David Brandon revoking press passes and locking anyone from the paper with temerity to show up on campus in stocks on the Diag.

A popular sentiment amongst these folks in the aftermath of Urban Meyer going all no-you-di'in't…

…at the reporter who quoted Deonte Thompson saying he was glad to have a "real quarterback" was "that's how you handle the media."

This, of course, releases the hounds. (There's plenty more if you want it.) Two of those are from Bruce Feldman and Tony Barnhardt, adults capable of stringing together paragraphs. But the latter is from Mike Bianchi and is closer to certain local folks' speed. Prepare for the one-sentencing:

First Urban Meyer quits.

Then he comes back.

Then he takes a leave of absence.

Then he doesn’t take a leave of absence.

Now, incredibly, he is threatening reporters because one of his players was quoted … correctly?

Can you say Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?

Good grief, that Florida coaching job really is a pressure-cooker, isn’t it?

Urban Meyer has to care zero percent because he has a two-deep at crystal football, but it's an illustration of the cliche about not getting in arguments with people who buy ink by the barrel. It doesn't matter that according to people on the same beat think Urban was basically right about this guy…

other Florida beat reporters contend Thompson's quote was merely a poor, vastly overblown choice of words by a 21-year-old who will never be mistaken for Barack Obama as a public speaker, and I can tell you some of them think Fowler has had it coming for a long time.

…any time a reporter takes a shot from a coach, rightly or wrongly, it's time to close ranks and howl at the moon. Meyer didn't even raise his voice here; his "threat of violence" was phrased as a hypothetical from the start. And this reporter basically deserves his chewing out. But get pissed off at a guy and you'll never hear the end of it, no matter how righteous your wrath is.

So… yeah, Michigan's doing the right thing by sucking it up and smiling nice for the cameras. Sadly.

How's that working out for you, being a hypocritical weasel? Win at all costs is apparently a totally awesome strategy for John Calipari:

REFUSE TO LOSE. It sounds like such a simple, inspirational phrase for a team -- and it can be. But it also describes the man. He's a scrapper, and will weigh all of his options besides losing.

Calipari has done the most remarkable coaching job of this season, and nobody is close. Think about it: He convinced John Wall, Xavier Henry and DeMarcus Cousins to come to Memphis, inserted clauses into their letters of intent so they could go somewhere else if Calipari left, convinced Memphis to keep its Notice of Allegations from the NCAA quiet for three months, took the Kentucky job before anybody knew about that notice, then convinced Wall and Cousins to join him in Lexington. That is refusing to lose.

Can you guess who wrote that? It's freakin' Mike Rosenberg, the guy who's spent the last two years ripping Rodriguez for recruiting one kid who got in trouble, slightly exceeding allotted NCAA practice time, and a bunch of other inconsequential or totally imaginary crap. I'm too busy slamming my head into the desk to analyze this, so I beg you to head over to Braves and Birds for righteous indignation.

Etc.: I really wanted the Tebow Wonderlic prayer thing to be true because I thought it was hilarious. Football players pray all the time. They pray before games. They pray during games. They pray when they score touchdowns. They pray when someone's injured. They pray all the time. So Tebow wandering in and saying "HAI GUYS LET'S PRAY" so often that football players were getting exasperated at him was an awesome mental lollercoaster yesterday. So of course it is 0% true.

Kenpom's doing very well through the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, but don't tell my bracket that. [shakes fist at Kansas] [feels douchey for bringing up his bracket]. Wisconsin fans want to demand more out of Bo Ryan. This is because they are insane.

The rotate. Illinois will look to the future on Saturday by rotating in redshirt freshman Jacob Charest, who you can see making sweet love to your whole body with his mind to the right. Hey, baby, Jacob Charest would like to know if you like emo bangs and nonchalant poses from his trip to North Korea. Yeah, baby, Jacob Charest wore his Illini uniform to Pyongyang Stadium. Because Illini up, that's why.

Charest is a 6'4" pro-style QB out of North Carolina who was a middling three star a couple years back. When Juice got pulled (again) against Purdue, Charest came in and did this:

Charest made his debut Saturday, playing in three series while going 4 of 8 for 52 yards. Zook said he was impressed with the way Charest threw downfield.

Read: "Zook said he was impressed that Charest had better accuracy than a random number generator."

So… good or bad? I guess you'd always rather be going against a team that's trying to find a quarterback and is on their third attempt—Eddie McGee is now working at wide receiver—of the season. And Williams was beyond terrifying last year against Michigan. On the other hand: Michigan's clear weakness this year is the secondary, and anyone more capable of taking advantage of that secondary than Williams is bad.

It probably won't matter since Illinois's line is so terrible: the Illini are #112 in sacks allowed despite a below-average number of passes. (212; NCAA average is 228. So it's not a huge outlier or anything; the point is that their stats aren't distorted by a lot of late-game passing because they're bad.)

Bonus: Arrelious Benn has been fighting an ankle sprain since the first game of the year and played with a shoulder sprain against Purdue. He'll play this weekend but is not 100%.

Ortmann carries around a phonebooth on his back. Via Rittenberg, this table of woe from before the Penn State game:

Suboptimal, and probably worse after Forcier got little help from his receivers. The pocket stuff isn't quite that grim as the table implies since this only accounts for throw of over ten yards—I was in the midst of firing off an email suggesting those numbers had to be wrong when I finally understood the qualifier—but, yeah, pretty grim.

This is a confirmation of a number of this: Forcier's bad in the pocket, the receivers aren't helping out much, and so forth and so on. Michigan should really slant its playcalling towards Lloyd-style conservatism, which only maddens when you're running around with a senior Tom Brady, not sophomore John Navarre.

Mumble mumble bands thing. Michigan State may have lost Saturday, but they won the halftime show:

The Numa Numa song is kind of awesome arranged for marching band, isn't it?

I'm still not sure what the MMB played, as I couldn't hear 3/4ths of it. Was it supposed to be four different thematic versions of the Victors? The one I heard had some vague Victors-y parts but it didn't sound like the fight song itself. I was confused by it.

He descended on a cloud and grumbled out some grumbles for us, we used it to season the tacos. Lloyd Carr, perhaps prompted by Rick Leach's intemperate outburst on WTKA a week or two ago, has emerged from the Fortress of Solitude to deliver his benediction:

"Rich is a young guy, (and) he's got a great background for such a young guy," Carr said during his interview with Frank Beckmann and Jim Brandstatter. "What we're seeing here offensively throughout this season is a great thing for the future of Michigan football.

"The transition a year ago you could expect (the struggles) because what they were looking for in a quarterback. Certainly what we have here is exciting. I'm excited for the future." …

"I've had a lot of conversations with Rich Rodriguez down through the last 18, 20 months, and I told him from the beginning if he needed me for any reason, just call me," Carr said. "I did not want to be a coach who's at practice and hanging around and answering questions from the media about what I saw. I didn't think that was good for Rich or our program."

This will slightly staunch the internet paranoia, but only slightly. As always, I wish to avoid this topic as thoroughly as possible. I have zero credible information about it, and learned during the coaching search that different factions can have incredibly different versions of reality.

On the notice. Chengelis's article on the import of this notice Michigan received from the NCAA starts off by broaching the possibility of major infractions but the end of it puts the event that just transpired in context:

Experts said that might well not be a major development.

"I think this is just a natural sequence of events that should occur when you have numerous former and current players making allegations that there have been rule violations, in this case, practices too long," said Rick Karcher, a sports law expert at the Florida Coastal School of Law.

"It's just a first step."

The next step would either be a determination by the NCAA that the accusations are baseless, or a formal "Notice of Allegations" detailing precisely what is supported by evidence.

It appears this is something that was obviously going to happen, and since NCAA investigators have been working with Michigan the past couple months it seems like this is a letter telling Michigan what it already knows. Basically status quo.

lolfreep.

Just 40 more years and they'll get the hang of it.

Charts. A diarist at Black Shoe Diaries diarist is rivaling Misopogon with his charts and interesting research. His focus is on Big Ten passer efficiency over the last decade, with a special focus on Penn State that won't be surprising to anyone who's watched PSU play over the last decade. PSU QBs were consistently horrible except for that one year Mills had before his arm fell off until Darryl Clark broke all of our preconceived notions about JayPa. A couple more general takeaways:

• The last few years Big Ten QBs have dropped off a cliff, with this year a bounce-back.
• Passer efficiency continues to skyrocket. Check out some meh QBs of recent and not-so-recent vintage:
   
  Approximately same rank, 12 extra passer efficiency points for the guy slightly worse.

That latter one is a reason to relax pass interference rules, I think. Another reason: right now they are arbitrary.

Etc.: Tempo-free stats make the NBA bigtime. Florida is the current possessor of a hypothetical college football title belt dating back to the first game ever played; Michigan is an eight-time hypothetical champ, most recently in 2004 when they beat… Purdue?