miami no-goal fiasco

Marvin in. There were some rumblings that incoming S recruit Marvin Robinson might have some academic issues after his plan to enroll early didn't come off. As seen on the board, these appear to have been false. Robinson just told Rivals he will be on campus June 1st($), whereupon he will try to take Jordan Kovacs's spot at bandit.

The More You Know, As Presented By Lil Wayne.

repeat after us: that's not my weed no matter how much my hat implies it is.

Notre Dame tight end Mike Ragone is the earthly avatar of New Jersey. Also he is a backup Notre Dame tight end, so he will get in minor trouble with recreational substances and get hellaciously disproportionate justice in return. The minor trouble with recreational substances:

The trooper making the stop smelled marijuana, searched the car and found two baggies of a leafy substance in the purse of Ragone’s girlfriend. A field test indicated it was marijuana.

According to probable cause affidavits filed by Trooper Tony LoMonaco, Ragone gave the baggies to his girlfriend to hide in her purse as they were being pulled over. LoMonaco said Ragone waived his right to remain silent and said the marijuana belonged to him.

Someone is not familiar with the concept of a weed carrier.

If precedent holds, Ragone is likely to be suspended for a year because the institution of Notre Dame has just finished watching Reefer Madness for the third time this week, finding nothing even mildly humorous therein. This would make him the third second-string Notre Dame tight end to feel ND's boot on his neck for typical student hijinks: Will Yeatman got booted in 2008 for moped DUI (seriously: moped DUI) and Joseph Fauria transferred to UCLA after he got suspended for something undisclosed; he dropped some bombs on the way out.

Q: Why is it always the backup tight end? Why can't it be the quarterback?

Colton, Cullen. Cullen, Colton. Rothstein has some more on Colton Christian, Michigan's newest basketball commitment. His role, as envisioned by Beilein, is Petway with a decent jumper:

Christian said Beilein told him his role as a freshman could be to guard an opponent’s forwards, rebound, box out and offensively play around the high post.

His high school coach (Bellvue, not Hargrave) provides some additional information that suggests things by omitting them:

“Really athletic,” O’Connor said. “6-foot-6, long. Fills the lanes really well, rebounds really well, can defend people on the interior and out on the perimeter. He can defend inside and out.”

Mention of offensive skills: nonexistent. Even so, if Christian can be a 6-6 all-purpose defensive stopper and rebounder that's something unique on the team. His addition seems worthwhile as long as it doesn't impact Michigan's ability to take two more players in the 2011 class (which already features Carlton Brundidge). This would require a transfer or Laval Lucas-Perry not getting a fifth year.

Define "fair." The welcome news that the NCAA hockey committee is seriously considering dumping the failed regionals format for home series was covered on Friday. It's a move that makes sense on multiple levels. One of them is that going to less random format than one-and-done hockey properly rewards teams that have suggested they are amongst the best in the country. This is an asset in a sport that's so much of a random number generator that this year's NHL playoffs saw exactly one team of each seed advance to the second round.

So this is a supremely annoying argument:

Going to a 16-team four-regional format in 2003 was a signature moment for the sport. It eliminated byes, and at the same time, portended the move away from on-campus regionals as much as possible, eliminating a sore spot and unfair advantage. …

In Brad Schlossman's Grand Forks Herald report, he noted that from 1988-91, top seeds — which had a bye AND a best-of-3 quarterfinal home series — reached the Frozen Four 87.5 percent of the time. After the NCAA went away from best-of-3 series, starting in 1992, until the tournament expanded to 16 teams, the No. 1 seeds — which had a first-round bye only — reached the Frozen Four 65.9 percent of the time. Since then, needing to play two games, like everyone else, and not getting to play them at home as often, it's only 46.9 percent of the time.

But why is that bad? The whole point was to remove the unfair advantage of the top seed. This is what so many people clamored for. This would seem like a step backwards.

Argh. It is only an "unfair advantage" if the top seeds had not, you know, earned them by virtue of their play. You might as well say it's unfair that Michigan gets all those recruits. Honestly, if a four seed has no chance of winning a best two-of-three series on the road against a good team it shouldn't be in the tournament at all. In the NHL, the road team wins 45% of the time. If you want to make it fairer, the "road" team can get last change and the various other small advantages given the home team in game two.

Hockey's just too random to make any determination about a team's strength relative to another in sixty minutes. Over the course of a whole season, however, teams certainly distance themselves from others. The current tournament format tries as hard as it can to discard all that information about who is the best team in favor of weighted plinko, which yields tournaments so chaotic that they render regular season results virtually meaningless. This is "fair" according to the above argument.

Moving to home best-of-three regionals is more profitable, more exciting, provides fans a better experience, creates a tournament that is less likely to be the functional equivalent of a blender, and makes the regular season more meaningful. Protests that the Pairwise system is not precise enough to distinguish between 8 and 9 (or 7 and 10 and maybe even 6 and 11) are accurate, which is why the committee should move to a PWR system that is less stupid. If changing the tournament forces the powers that be to consider the many ways in which the Pairwise is flawed, it's a double win.

Define "rules." Literally. Also in the realm of college hockey changes, the committee is meeting for their bi-annual review. There is the usual fretting about player safety that will result in some vague redefinition of things that are already penalties. Other than that, though, there are some meaningful changes being discussed:

• Going to half-shields instead of full cages.
• Reducing ties by modifying the overtime session without resorting to the shootout: "There seemed to be more interest in reducing the number of tie games. In other words, not finishing the game with a shootout, but maybe tweaking the overtime rules that we have in place so more games end in overtime.” The proposals on the table are a mishmash of lengthening overtime to ten minutes and playing OT 4-on-4.

  I think that's the right track. Shootouts are random and they're only acceptable in the CCHA because they don't count for the pairwise.

• The CCHA is the only league against the two-ref, two-linesman system, so at least they know they're icing some confused mofos.
• They're considering tweaking icing with weird  rules about imaginary lines (to reduce whistles) or eliminating the wave-off if an attacking player misses a pass (to increase whistles) or removing the ability of a shorthanded team to ice it on a power play. The first two are dumb, but the latter is interesting to me: I bet they added the icing exception way back in the day because tired teams on the penalty kill were just going to ice it anyway and it was a way to not have ten of them in a two-minute span. Now that they've removed the ability to change after an icing, teams on the PK would have to legitimately attempt to clear the zone.
• It seems like they're going to get the d-zone dump over the boards right: "It looked like from the survey results that over half of the people would like to see something, but not a penalty. They’d like to make it so that they can’t change their players." This is right on. Make it icing, basically. Remove the incentive to do it without implementing the Dumbest Penalty In Sports.
• ARGH ARGH ARGH: "Requiring a team that has a delayed penalty in effect to clear the puck out of its defensive zone to get the whistle instead of merely gaining possession. That’s another topic that didn’t garner much in the way of support." Guessing one Red Berenson brought this up—it's something I suggested after the Miami debacle. There is no reason not to implement this immediately.
• They're also considering making all goals off skates legit, which they should do. Skate on ice: legit goal.

It sounds like at least a few of these will get implemented, and I like virtually all of them. (There is a goofy proposal to ban people from diving on the ice to block a shot, but there's no way that gets passed.)

Give money to cancer. No, cancer research. Michigan's Relay for Life is approaching and the football team has various items on auction including "Coffee with Coach Carr," spring game field passes, an autographed football, and track suits. You can also donate directly. There appears to be a competition going on between various members of the team to raise the most money. Your dominating leader thus far:

What's with everyone else? Are they spending all their time talking to babies?

Spending all your time talking to babies. Here's Devin Gardner having a nonsense conversation with a baby. The baby enjoys it more than actual words from Gardner. Geoffrey Canada is alarmed.

I've got nothing here. It's Devin Gardner talking to a baby. It requires nothing else.

Also, Gardner and Martell Webb are transferring to Arizona State.

Who is important, who is marginally important, who is a running back. The Mathlete returns with another diary that tackles one of the great unasked questions of our time: are all returning starters created equal? Or, since everyone thinks quarterbacks are way more important than anyone else, how unequal are they?

Some interesting findings:

• Running back experience means zero. Running back is the position at which instant freshman starters aren't that terrifying, but this is quite a statement: "No position on the field came close to running backs in terms of lack of value for returning starts.  There was literally no correlation from returning starts from running backs to on field success."
• Quarterbacks do matter but the most important thing is to have some experience: the bottom 20% got hammered out of proportion to the rest of the country.
• Despite running backs having almost no impact, the run game as a whole is heavily dependent on returning starts.

There wasn't a defensive breakout but as a whole it was a lot like quarterback: having severe experience deficiencies is very bad, but milder ones are not a huge deal.

This is not going to do anything but it makes me feel slightly better. Count Red Berenson amongst the folk who are totally pissed off you guys about the waved-off goal against Miami:

"It's really frustrating," said Berenson, who said he didn't see a decent television replay of the controversial no-goal until the Wolverines returned from Fort Wayne, Ind., at 3 a.m. Monday morning. "I never got a clear answer about why the goal didn't count or if there was any room being made for human error ... and that's what we're trying to find out." …

"I saw what I saw and I know what I know," Berenson said. "I think it's pretty obvious."

The lack of accountability here is frustrating. No one has stepped forward to provide any explanation, likely because there isn't one other than "we screwed it up."

Question: shouldn't hockey move to a system sort of like the way the NFL handles fumbles? These days you can fumble, be ruled down, and still lose the ball if the referee decides that the whistle did not have an impact on the play. As the refs headed to the box Sunday I knew two things. One: it was obviously a goal. Two: because the whistle went before the puck was in the net, it would not be called a goal. But the whistle had nothing to do with anything. There was no way anyone on Miami could have stopped Lynch from scoring since the puck crossed the line an instant after the whistle went. It had no impact on the play. So why create a fiasco? Why not just go to the box, figure out that it was a good goal and the quick whistle didn't impact the play, and award it?

Also, Mike Spath reports that Berenson plans on returning next year but it will likely be his last.

Co-sign. Hunwick on the Frozen Four:

Now, Hunwick cannot imagine going.

“No, I won’t be down there,” Hunwick said. “Maybe I’ll watch it on TV. But probably not.”

Ballin'. If you're interested in club seats, an MGoUser has penned a spectacularly long account of his purchase. There is a man named Ted. He is apparently spectacular, as is the club seating:

The club area was AMAZING ... it was really top tier county-club grade workmanship. Very high ceilings, wood paneling, surprisingly spacious, windows everywhere, and cool "maize" mood lights shining through the wood panels on the ceiling. There were speaker grills on the ceiling where the live sounds of the stadium are going to be piped in. The food stations were not in yet, and none of the tables, chairs, etc. are ready to be moved in. Ted said that it should all be done well before game day ... everything is on track.

If you're considering signing up, check it out.

Etc.: This place got shot down by google news when I applied because it didn't produce news or have multiple contributors, both of which the site actually does now. But Bleacher Report is good to go. Guh?

Meanwhile, Kevin Clare did not make the US U18 World Championships team. He's been playing with the U17s of late. Bad sign? OTOH, Merrill just went 11th in ESPN's most recent NHL mock draft.

If you've missed CRex's epic life, now is as good a time to catch up. The latest installment features CRex watching the Miami game in the same room as his live-in Korean girlfriend's parents.