podcasts

Note. In case anyone hadn't noticed, the restrictions implemented Saturday were lifted yesterday, so things should be back to normal. I think it worked out pretty well; there were a number of threads that got deleted but overall things here were way less dumb than elsewhere, thanks in large part to turning off the ability for people to sign up to vent. That system will return in the aftermath of future HEAD ASPLODE type events.

There have been complaints about censorship, to which I say nuts. Example of a pulled thread:

F--- me.
F--- my life.
If football can't fill the void in my life, i'm just going to have to turn to booze and sluts. 

This is noise, and things on the internet get ruined when the signal to noise ratio gets too low. The MGoBlog trend is ever-increasing levels of restriction as the blog grows to keep the ratio relatively high, and that won't change.

Also BONUS. I've turned on the ability for folks to use Windows Live Writer to put up diary posts. For now it's restricted to 500+ point folk; once I know it's up and running without incident anyone will be able to use it if you like. Complicated instructions will allow you to access much more convenient picture uploads and tagging and whatnot. It's just a better editor in all ways. (protip: the main column is 560 pixels wide.)

Mac/Linux people will have to pound sand. Sorry.

Fun fun fun until daddy's head explodes, leaving chunks spread across the county. So… was yesterday's appearance on WTKA fun or what? Yes, it was fun or what. If you'd like a hear a man attempting to hang on to the last shreds of his sanity, there are podcasts:

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4 || Part 5 || Part 6

Sorry I can't embed them; WTKA's site is a little less than modern.

If you just want to get to the part where smoke comes out my ears, MVictors has helpfully clipped it out. Now I'm going to go put my head in a bucket of ice. Maybe I'll steam some broccoli at the same time.

Elsewhere in last weekend, This Week In Schadenfreude sticks Michigan—and yours truly!—above the fold. Peek into the terror that is my inbox.

Mary Sue got your back. President Coleman with the long-term vote of confidence:

"I don't think it's fair to coaches to bring them in and say, 'We're going to give you three years,'" she said in an interview on Friday, citing a recent example. "When [former men's basketball coach] Tommy Amaker came in, we stuck with him for six years. It just wasn't going to work; it wasn't the right fit. But it wasn't a rushed decision."

Note that the statement specifically implies not just next year but the year after for Rodriguez. Short of a major violation from the Freep jihad—which I will reiterate is not the expected outcome from anyone on the Michigan side of things—Rodriguez will get to 2011, at which point it's up to him.

Why the suck? We're living in an era of college football hyperbole thanks to the 12th game and bowl games now counting as official stats, but not retroactively. Every good multi-year starter is now breaking or threatening this record or that. There's no better example of this than Juice Williams approaching the top five in all time Big Ten passing yards. All these records mean nothing.

But there's one area of hyperbole that's not hyperbole at all: we are really living through an era of the worst calls in college football history. Before the advent of replay, bad calls were just bad calls and were relatively understandable since they were irreversible split-second decisions. Now, though, replay officials can commit the cardinal sin of screwing up an obviously correct call. Here's a touchdown from the Indiana-Iowa game:

This was ruled a touchdown on the field and overturned by the replay official. It is in the building when it comes to worst calls ever made because some guy saw indisputable evidence—watch the field turf change color as the IU receiver's foot rakes over it—of a touchdown and called it not a touchdown. (It's not very far in the building since I can think of two more egregious ones off the top of my head: Brandon Minor's pylon-aided touchdown against Michigan State last year and the onside kick Oregon was awarded despite never even recovering the ball.)

So, a question: why are confused goats allowed to run these things? Honestly. There is no other explanation for this stuff. A few years ago refs correctly called Antonio Bass down against Iowa and the replay official overturned it despite clear evidence that the reason the ball came out was Bass's elbow hitting the ground. They failed to overturn that ridiculous Domata Peko touchdown. On the Indiana call above it is so obvious that the PBP guy immediately says "oh he dragged that right foot" as the spray of fieldturf pellets goes up. Most replay calls are that obvious on a first viewing, and yet they take five minutes and there's a reasonable chance the guy in the booth can't see what's completely obvious to everyone watching the game.

I don't know what the fix is, but I think a major problem is that replay officials are often referees who have been put out to pasture. Therefore they are crazy and old. Putting crazy old people in charge leads to things like Florida State's defense. It is not a good idea.

You grow like a weed. Hope burgeons for your #15 Michigan Wolverine basketball team (who wants some FREE PPPPPIZZAAA) for a variety of reasons, mostly Manny Harris and Deshawn Sims. Big Ten Geeks has put together a great study that provides another reason for optimism:

The big, overarching conclusion is this: a player shows the most improvement between his freshman and sophomore seasons than he does any other offseason. In fact, the freshman offseason improvement is, on average, greater than the improvement between a player's sophomore season and his senior season.

Here's the o-rating chart:

That's one of four graphs that all say the same thing: older players are better and younger players get better faster.

How this applies to the Big Ten this year:

Schwing. Indiana is a runaway winner here but their goal is to go from one of the worst teams in a major conference to one of the worst teams in the Big Ten. Amongst actual contenders no team should see its players improve more than Michigan and the only team that's even somewhat close is Minnesota. The bounce Michigan gets should be significant.

I'll add in my default caution: past performance is a better predictor of future results than past results. Michigan's past performance lags behind their past results—they finished the year #50 in the Pomeroy rankings instead of the 40th-ish their tourney seeding suggested or the 32nd-ish their second-round status suggested. That's the baseline from which I'm measuring improvement, and from that perspective I've thought projecting a leap into the top 15 was optimistic. 25? Sure. 15? Probably not. The above chart is convincing enough to close some of that gap, IME.

You rang? There are three main questions going into the season. One: can Manny Harris reduce appearances of Evil Manny to a couple here and there? Two: will one of the wing players step up to be a true three-point gunner with an eFG percentage Salim Stoudemire would be proud of? And three: will we get anything from a big lumbering gumpy white guy?

BLGWG #1 is Zack Gibson, who can't shoot threes like he thinks he can and doesn't do much offensively but has erratic moments of OMGIBSON ownage. College bigs like him often take some time to get it together and find themselves blossoming into useful, even good players their senior year. Examples from recent Michigan vintage include Graham Brown and Chris Young. And late last year Gibson was a huge factor on defense, making a lot of plays that no one else on the roster can make for reasons of being 6'5" tops. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a quasi-breakout year that no one except Michigan fans notice.

BLGWG #2 is Ben Cronin, who Mike Rothstein hyped up a few days ago on AnnArbor.com:

“My legs are in the best shape they’ve been in in a long time,” Cronin said. “I’m sure it’s going to turn over on the court where I guarantee I’m going to be a little more explosive than I’ve ever been. And my endurance is going to be better because of the track, so I’m really excited about where I’m at.”

Cronin is what Beilein looks for in a big man. He’s intelligent. He has good passing skills, something demonstrated during Saturday’s open practice when he found cutting players from the high post.

He’s also demonstrated the ability to shoot three-pointers - something Beilein’s most well-known big man, former West Virginia center Kevin Pittsnogle, was known for.

There's no way Cronin is an effective or frequent three-point shooter and the conditioning/hip issues are probably going to limit him to 10-15 minutes a game—Beilein says Cronin "doesn't have his bounce back" in the article. But in his cameo last year before the injury redshirt he showed some skills to go with his hugeness. If he can spell Gibson effectively Michigan will be able to roll out a decently sized lineup against the big thumpers of the world, which would do wonders for Michigan's atrocious 2PT FG defense.

No. This guy attempts to defend Deadspin for the Phillips Incident, stating that the rumors weren't "unsourced" based on Daulerio's round of contrition interviews in which he repeatedly stated that they weren't just publishing random emails. I don't know if I believe that; given the way it was framed it was clear Daulerio didn't care either way, really.

And let's remember what the "news" is here: Deadspin has successfully ferreted out the very newsworthy information that one ESPN vice president is in a relationship with another ESPN vice president. Armed with this knowledge, we will defeat cancer and Marcelo Balboa. Daulerio's wandered around giving interview after interview in which he acknowledges he had a hissy fit, which he apparently thinks will earn him credit, before claiming that there was a noble purpose—exposing ESPN's inconsistent enforcement of sexual harassment rules—behind everything. The evidence marshaled for this consists of the following items:

• An ESPN radio host sexually harassed someone and was suspended for it.
• ESPN VP 1 is dating non-related ESPN VP 2.

Daulerio's attempts to explain his actions after the fact are feeble post-hoc justifications for a mean-spirited, purposeless expose on the private life of a non-public figure.

Etc.: I'm not sure why, but EDSBS has a photoshop of Gruden-as-M-coach on a post about Steve Kragthorpe. I noted that I didn't understand the blocking scheme on a particular run play that Penn State ran last week; Smart Football says it's a zone variant called the "pin and pull"

Unfortunately, we did not flag down an Illinois blogger for this week's podcast, as I wasn't aware of anyone with a regularly-updated Illinois blog. But we do talk with Tim about the Penn State game—which was awesome—and bring in Jamiemac for the usual trip around the Big Ten, with the discussion of the Michigan-Illinois game serving as this week's opponent preview.

Note: here's a handy link to subscribe via ITunes.

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Podcast this week is long, long, long. Get some tea. We talk with Jamiemac of Just Cover, as per usual, and Mike from Black Shoe Diaries about the upcoming Penn State game. Also we talk about the Delaware State game a bit. Also we talk about Terrelle Pryor, because obviously you have to.

One item: at the end of Mike's segment he starts asking for "two seconds," which I totally failed to parse. That sucks, because I've always wanted to ask a Penn State fan harboring resentment about that game a single question: do you realize that Joe Paterno asked for and got two seconds—exactly two seconds!—when Penn State was driving for the go-ahead score?

Oh well.

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So we called up extremely famous Delaware State blogger No One and had a great conversation about the Hornets that unfortunately failed to record because it didn't exist. But Tim and I do talk about the Iowa game and Jamiemac of Just Cover stops by to talk about the Big Ten and the completely hypothetical Delaware State line, which is hypothetically 35.5 and Jamie would definitely take if it was 34, because he is a degenerate.

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This week on the podcast we talk about the Michigan State game (bleah!) with Tim, the Iowa game with Oops Pow Surprise of Black Heart Gold Pants and Buster Sports, and the Big Ten with Jamiemac of Just Cover. At some point, Tate Forcier gets compared to Hulk Hogan. Convincingly. Ultimate Hawkeye, we are coming for you. Warning: there is a small amount of swearing on this podcast, which comes from me but is necessary to describe Iowa safety Tyler Sash.

BONUS: in a stunning display of incestuous behavior, I was the guest on this week's BHGP podcast.

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Another podcast. In case you just cannot get enough of listening to me talk, I was on the FanSided Friday Tailgate podcast. Starts off with a considerable amount of meta talk before moving on to the State game and some other general college football picks.

HYPE VIDEO. The rest of the internet has gone crazy for this UAF hype video and it's obvious why:

EXPLODING POLAR BEAR DOOM. Michigan plays Fairbanks next weekend. Further evidence that university administrators hate life:

Hockey open w/ Polar Bear from Fairbanks, Alaska for the UAF Nanooks AKA "The Alaska Nanooks". This is the intended directors cut with the original music choice, rejected by the UAF people for being "too 80's" as if there is such a thing.

Yes, Paul will be directed to insert an exploding polar bear into next year's hype video. Or wolverine. Whatever. Maybe both. We'll give the wolverine a lacrosse stick.

Maybe we should actually explode all non-blog polls. First Stewart Mandel note: he picks Michigan State, 3.5-point favorites, as his "upset special" this week. Maybe this is why his straight up prediction record this year is 20-20.

Second: AAAARGGGGH. Here's Mandel on the possibility that Boise State might end up in the national championship game:

Should they keep winning late into the season and start knocking on the title-game doorstep, we'll witness something else: significant outcry from those who feel the Broncos are undeserving.

However, there's very little precedent for voters suddenly downgrading a team without cause. And contrary to what you might believe, the BCS computers aren't likely to cause the Broncos' undoing. For one thing, they only account for one-third of the overall standings, not to mention an unblemished record goes a long way in the computers' eyes. Last season, both Utah and Boise State actually finished the regular season ranked higher by the computers than the voters. The Broncos may get docked a couple of "style points" should they endure an undue scare against a San Jose State or Idaho, but realistically, the only way they could fail to make up three spots in 10 weeks is if the voters start vaulting other, more "deserving" teams above them following a big win or two.

Argh! Boise has done exactly one thing to warrant the #5 spot they're in this year: beat Oregon. At the end of the year they will have done exactly one thing to warrant whatever spot they finish in: beat Oregon. The scare quotes around "deserving" are amongst the most idiotic in the history of the rhetorical device. They prioritize the uninformed opinions of writers and people who don't even watch Boise play over things that happen on the field. Boise has no right to the national championship game and if they make it there it will be a travesty that will further convince everyone else to never schedule anyone in the nonconference. Braves and Birds has more on this travesty.

Mandel's the same guy who used to vote WVU up high specifically because he thought the 'Eers had an easy schedule, and now he's justifying the placement of Boise high up as if that's some sort of birthright. This man had an AP ballot. ARGH!

This is not going in the hype video. Rumeal Robinson is in some legal trouble of a horrifying variety:

Helen Ford has been known in the Cambridge community as a woman with a big heart and open arms for numerous foster children. But she never expected that one of her adopted sons, former NBA basketball player Rumeal Robinson, would play a part in evicting her from the place she called home for more than 30 years.

Robinson was arrested by the FBI for bank fraud, bank bribery, wire fraud, and a lot of other nasty stuff. Sounds like things went sour for him after his… NBA career. Insert typical middle-aged white sportswriter 600 words about how the young folk can't keep their money on their mind. I'm at a loss; the NBA should just hire someone to show up at every player's house every two months to slap them and scream "FIRE YOUR ENTOURAGE AND GET A SAVINGS ACCOUNT." Probably Charles Oakley if the NBA would like their guy to remain alive.

Side note: the picture of this woman painted in the comments is vastly different than the one painted by the article, with multiple commenters offering up various serious-seeming stories about her Not Being Very Nice. Not that that would excuse anything that's been alleged here, obviously.

Spot on. We had a photoshop of Mark Dantonio as Rodney Dangerfield, and I feel another coming on in the event of a Michigan win on Saturday:

#22 Michigan at Michigan State

Holly: Rich Rodriguez IS White Goodman IN Dodgeball. Say, did you know Sparty’s chestplate contains actual kevlar? Nice moves, although it won’t save them. RichRod is a smug, entitled bastard, but shoo-law does he have a lot of projectiles in his smug, entitled arsenal. Sometimes the lovable losers win, and sometimes they get their front teeth broken at the gym. (And sometimes the losers ain’t all that lovable. Dantonio, you never call.)

Orson: Michigan State IS Khan IN Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan. Khan had to have a “XX Years XXX Days XX Hours” clock in his bunker on Ceti Alpha V. You know this to be true, just as you know we could have just as easily cast Dantonio as the flower pot falling from the sky in Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, the reincarnated object killed again and again by Arthur Dent’s unending carelessness. Khan, though, has the right ring in terms of attitude. Michigan State is all effort and survival, but ultimately the lack of experience in three-dimensional combat that Rich Rodriguez’s offense has will doom the Spartans (though like the Enterprise in the film, Michigan will suffer significant damage due to lack of shields.)

I think those are W predictions for M, FWIW, which is nothing. As Orson says, THIS MEANS BET ON THE OTHER TEAM UNLESS THAT TEAM IS COLORADO.

Get to campus get to campus get to campus. The first indication that the 2010 hockey recruiting class is as dirty as previous suggested is a Hockey News list of the top 50 prospects for the 2010 NHL draft that features three Wolverines in first-round spots:

In addition, D-man Mac Bennett has already gone in the second round of this year's draft.

(HT: WCH)

Etc.: Jason Forcier has a nice car. Big Ten Geeks tackle Illinois basketball.