pahokee

Sponsor note. Chicago-based Wolverines headed to South Bend: there is a bus for you. Sports Power Weekends has a couple headed out from The Diag Bar & Grill [located here]. 59 bucks roundtrip gets you a spot, various goodies to and from, a tailgating spot, and the opportunity to collapse in a frazzled heap after something ridiculous happens at the end of the game. Alternative: traffic, not hopping on your MGoBlog mobile app to celebrate/commiserate.

Get on the bus!

Eating: almost eaten.

I'll plug this one more time during the last-day frenzy, but thanks to the work of the community around here Martavious Odoms is nearing his all-or-nothing 35k goal for his Pahokee kickstarter venture. The Daily interviews Odoms about his project and its goal:

The goal is to install a garden that can be self-sustaining — a project that values community involvement as much as getting food on tables. The funds raised will be used to buy the empty the plot, pay for tools and seeds and to hire people from the community to work on the garden.

Odoms would also like to see the money help give kids in the community after-school programs or to teach residents how to sow their own garden.

“This could give someone an opportunity to be part of something outside of their family to feel like they’re making a change, making a difference,” Odoms said.

The staple crops? Collared greens, green beans, black-eyed peas, tomatoes and okra, just to name a few.

“All the stuff that people eat here down here in the south,” Odoms said.

As of this instant, Odoms is a little over 3k away with eight days left. Get in on it.

TWIS and such. I went a little overboard on this week's This Week In Schadenfreude. Reconstructing the anarchy of a Colorado gamethread in which they're down 48-0 at one point became absorbing. Also, when the RCMB blows up they blow up spectacularly well:

WHAT DID I WATCH

I am completely terrified after witnessing the biggest failure of a game in my whole life.I really cannot even grasp what just happened. Are we really this bad? Is our offense completely non existent? Maxwell has had 3 years and this is what we get? I feel like god hates us. I live for Spartan Football, eat, breathe, sleep Spartan Football. I work overtime in the summer just so I can have enough money for season tickets and I get rewarded with this? What the f--- was that game? 3 points and never crossed their 30? Bell losing all Heisman talk.I felt like a snake bit me in the beginning and slowly but surely the venom ate away at my body. Yeah I know I will get down voted to hell for this but what I saw tonight was not good and the glimpses of all the bad are going to kick us in the ass this year

Applause. Unironic, tear-wiping applause. And there's like twice as much of this guy in the actual post. The RCMB is the John L Smith of message boards, except it can never be fired.

I promise I won't fire off more than a twitter zing or two this weekend if it goes poorly. TWIS next week: ND Nation versus You Guys. Please be ND Nation.

Gardnerceiving. He does not like the blocking:

"I don't feel like I'm ever going to be a person who loves to block," Gardner said with a laugh. "That comes with the position, but I don't think I'll ever love that."

He did pretty well in the UMass game from what I can see, FWIW. He is still a QB in his mind:

"I know I'm a quarterback, but as I've said in previous weeks, I'm helping the team, and I'm doing well."

We won't see where everything is in re: Devin QB until next fall camp. They just about have to move him back for spring since they'll only have Bellomy left. For now, he's got a potential breakout day coming.

They took my brains, but they gave me this extra G. Man, guys named "Gregg." This site has bombed Gregg Easterbrook in the past when… well, whenever he writes about college football, because all he ever writes about college football is about how dastardly it is that anyone would ever take another job. Occasionally he diverts from that topic to express bafflement that the laws of economics apply to it; mostly it's just the horror that anyone would accept having their salary tripled.

Anyway, the other guy named Gregg is paid to write things about sports stepped his game up recently:

Seriously? RT @GreggDoyelCBS: How can Bo Pelini demand toughness of his players? He had a tummy ache AND LEFT A GAME IN AN AMBULANCE

To his credit, he did back off of that after everyone called him an idiot. To his discredit: whoah, mega #SPROTSTAKE. Corn Nation says this is a "concern about news breaking in the twitter world," but the easily made error is easily corrected by a flurry of at replies comparing the offender's intelligence to that of a chipmunk. At least Doyel can recognize when he's craving acorns. Easterbrook has never shown any sort of similar capability.

Etc.: Jerald Robinson gets probation for his minor property crime. Orson on UF-Tennessee. Purdue has verbal commitments from a Dwayne Johnson—unfortunately an OL who will not get many opportunities to ask if you smell what he is cooking—and a Johnny Thompson—yes, a LB. Basketball season tickets on sale now. Derf. Individual three point shooting is pretty jittery. Hardaway should bounce back.

Hope for Pahokee, the kickstarter. Martavious Odoms's charity for his hometown has set out to kickstart themselves:

They've got 16 days to get to 35k and are 25k short. Hit it up. 

Also, don't forget the Colt DelVerne fundraiser on the 15th.

Transition costs: steep. Not here, but in Madison, where their new OL coach just got canned two games in. This was no Adam Braithwaite, either:

When UW coach Bret Bielema hired Markuson in the offseason, it was considered to be a coup at the time. Markuson spent the last 14 years coaching offensive lines in the Southeastern Conference at Arkansas and Mississippi. Since 2003, he coached six different players who earned All-America honors.

The Badgers had 35 rushing yards against Oregon State, 70 if you take out sacks.

The new guy is basically Adam Braithwaite. Bart Miller is a quality control coach who graduated from New Mexico in 2007 and hasn't had a full-time assistant job yet. Now he's in deep. Bret Bielema may be less lovable than Brady Hoke.

The numbers from that Oregon State game are shocking: 1.5 yards a carry for Montee Ball, 4.4 yards a pass, and 206 total yards against a team that was 3-9 last year. The 2011 Beavers were in the triple digits in rushing D and pass efficiency D and gave up 35 points to the Badgers. Nobody turns that around that quickly. I'll have to torrent that thing to see what happened.

Boo 3:30 starts. If we'd had the Air Force game at noon we all could have watched Iowa and Wisconsin implode and Notre Dame nearly do the same. Boo 3:30 starts, boo.

Ticket prices: still approaching breaking point. OSU's game against pretty decent UCF was not a sellout:

Tony Gerdeman ‏@GerdOzone

Time for #OSU to stop raising ticket prices? Last week's game was the first under 105,000 since New Mexico St. in 2009.

Bowl ban, yeah, but add it to the pile.

Lloydballin' it? Michigan punted from the Air Force 34 in the first quarter Saturday, causing a couple people to anticipate a twitter rage coming from yours truly. I guess I'm too prone to rages.

I didn't have a problem with it. If you don't think your kicker can hit it, punting is the move, yes even from the 34. I plugged the situation into Advanced NFL Stats's fourth down combobulator and it spake thusly:

Stat	Go4it	Punt	FG Att
Success Rate:	0.10	-	0.52
EP Success	+4.33	0.16	2.4
EP Fail:	-1.1	-	-1.51
EP Total:	-0.56	0.16	0.54
Break-Even:	0.30

The field goal is the best option if you've got an NFL kicker. Michigan doesn't.

So then you've got to think you have a 30% shot at converting to make it a 50-50 shot. Yeah, college defenses are more prone to breakdowns, especially Air Force's, but at worst the punt is a close call you can't get exercised about either way.

The clock butchery at the end of the first half did bug me. As a general rule, any time the clock is running after a play and you have >1 timeouts, use it. As soon as they ruled Roundtree in bounds they should have called their first timeout.

For whatever reason, Michigan's had issues with that sort of thing. Last year's Iowa game was the most frustrating example:

Is that a freaking huddle as the ref signals the game clock with 31 seconds on the play clock? Yes.

NASCAR? MORE LIKE SLOWCAR ZING

That's Michigan snapping it seventeen seconds later. /head asplode

Hopefully they get it together before that burns them again.

Adorable child. From the comments of the game column:

I was on my couch, not in the stadium (get off my back, I'm 2500 miles away). I was wearing my t-shirt. My two year old son was beside me, cheering gamely for "Deenarr WOB-inson!" as the team stood on the sidelines before kickoff. (SoullessHack, Jr. refers to both #16 and the entire team as Denard Robinson... although any non-Denard player is "the guy.") It was nice. Nice. Not the gut-churning excitement I've felt every other year. But it was nice. I guess.

Then Denard made the MLB miss. I counted three steps straight upfield and said, calmly, "They're not going to get him." SoullessHack, Jr., though, jumped up on the couch and started screaming, "DENARR WOBINSON DENARR WOBINSON! RUNNING! RUN RUN RUN!" When they cut to the cheering crowd, SHJr took his cue began to clap and jump up and down.

"HE DID IT! DENARR WOBINSON RUN SO FAST WIFF DA FOOTBAWL!!"

As long as this is not kicking me for three hours it is adorable. (There were children directly in front of and behind me at the Air Force game. Somehow they both kicked me. A lot.)

Etc.: Sticking this way down here because people are going to yell at me for mentioning him, but this shot from SMQ featuring Rich Rodriguez and his kids after the Wildcats upset Oklahoma State reminded me of of all those Rhett and Rich Rodriguez photos from his M days.

It's never too late to link Stuffing the Passer. It's okay to cheer, ND fans! (It's not. Stop it.) Webb on potential 2013 basketball addition Reggie Cameron. Duke may be in some NCAA hot water. I'm so happy SMQ is back. Here's UCLA-Nebraska recapped by Mr. Hinton.