scoreboards

Release the offer kraken. Today is the first day 2013 basketball recruits can be offered, and since John Beilein is king of the rules he sticks to this date religiously. He's also more than a little crafty by doing this since Michigan just got a first-hand look at most of its top targets at Michigan's elite camp. UMHoops reports it was the most talented of Beilein's tenure and there was one potential offeree who stood out:

Monte Morris won the day

Michigan’s top point guard prospects were all in attendance and everyone in the gym, including the players themselves, knew it.

The guard targets all played pretty well but it was Monte Morris who was most impressive. Morris was very good during drills, took a couple tough losses in 3-on-3 play and then exploded during 5-on-5 play to finish the night. He had a string of great games on the main floor, in front of the Michigan coaches, controlling the tempo and dominating the game as a great point guard should. He didn’t force shots, but scored with ease slicing to the basket, and also ran the pick-and-roll very well. Most of the games on the main floor came down to the final possession, or were even decided by sudden death free throw shooting contests. When Morris’s squad started clicking on the main floor they cruised to a couple comfortable victories.

Michigan is presumably interested in Morris, then. Yesterday GBW published this headline, from which you can extraopolate who the #1 is:

A Clear #1 for Morris

By Kyle Bogenshutz & Sam Webb

Michigan’s Elite Camp managed to attract several top prospects including four of the c/o 2013’s best point guards. The top performer of group on the day was Flint (MI) Beecher standout, Monte Morris. GBW caught up with the talented floor general to get his thoughts on the camp, his recent unofficial visit to Ann Arbor, his decision timeline, and the school he currently has at the top of his list.

Unfortunately for Obviously Extrapolated Leader, when UMHoops interviewed Morris he was planning to take his recruitment until the end of his junior year. As anyone who's followed Brady Hoke's recruiting can tell you, timelines can move up. Keep your ears perked for one of Sam's gut feelings.

Hockey indoors and out. A smattering of news items on the hockey team have come down the pipe.

One: they'll be replacing the College Hockey Showcase with game against Northeastern. You can count so you know that's one game too few to replace the CHS; in the past what this has meant is that two Eastern teams head out and switch off against Michigan and MSU. Oddly, NU (not that NU) released its entire schedule and their game against M is just a one-off.

Two: Michigan and Ohio State are apparently going to play an outdoor game in Cleveland this January. That seems to be a questionable way to create the future. Ohio State does draw better for Michigan games, but not well enough to fill their basketball arena. A football stadium in Cleveland is going to be a tough sell, especially one year after Michigan fans nearly packed the Big House. When they did so they found out that outdoor hockey is pretty cool but kind of a gimmick—sightlines are suboptimal. I think I'd rather watch it on TV, and if I want to watch it on TV that stadium is going to be half-full. If it's part of a Winter Classic featuring the Wings and Blue Jackets, on the other hand… that could work.

Three: the new scoreboard in the flesh is so sexy.

This is creating the future I can get behind.

Four: In addition to placing goal replays directly into your brain, Brandon is creating a $14 million renovation of the old barn. The future includes completely replaced seating, the conversion of the current media level into "loge boxes," a new media level above that, and some additional "corner and platform seating." Seems like they might squeeze another 500 seats or so out of the old barn.

Not mentioned was the top priority of the blogosphere—returning the old man to his rightful place:

But they did mention "concourse improvements" so those are probably putting Yost's head on everything.

There can be no UV without tatgate. AnnArbor.com catches up with a local memorabilia dealer to find the state of his business with college guys:

“We would never touch a college guy,” said Newhouse, a 38-year-old Ann Arbor man who operates AllAmericanSportsHouse.com. “We know that’s the ultimate taboo thing.”

…“That’s just stupid,” Newhouse said. “It makes no sense, and people should know better, especially if it’s a team you like. These are Buckeyes fans who ruined their team for years. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

I don't know, man, if I had the ability to make Terrelle Pryor show up at Chuck E. Cheese I might mortgage my program's future for one shining moment.

Taylor Lewan's golf swi—DUCK

Taylor Lewan’s first tee shot Monday at the David Mealer Memorial Golf Classic went screaming off of his undersized iron, traveling in a straight line into a wooden area located right of the tee box on hole 17 at Brandywine Country Club. A subsequent loud thud was Lewan’s ball hitting what everyone could only hope was a tree.

“Let’s get this day started!” Lewan yelled, sarcastically, in response to his regrettable shot.

IS EVERYONE OK

(Thirty-two Michigan players and a coach, Brock still working out with Barwis at his new Plymouth digs, Kevin Koger not playing because he's worse than that, general impression they should have done this at the swankiest putt-putt place they could find.)

Sharps hate us. The Wolverine Blog asks "why not us?" at a convenient time. Here's why not us: Just Cover notes some huge line movement at the Golden Nugget, which annually releases a set of "game of the year" lines early. In each case, Michigan got hammered:

…everybody is betting against the Michigan Wolverines. Along with Auburn, Florida, Mississippi State and TCU, the Wolverines were a popular bet against team among the betting professionals. And, hey, why not?  Until further notice, the defense still sucks, the potent offense from a year ago is undergoing a makeover and, well, did you see last year? The Wolverines went 0-8 against the number in Big 10 play and have been one of the best teams to bet against during the ill-fated, three-year Rodriguez tenure. The coaching change isn't enough to inspire betting confidence.

The Golden Nugget released lines on five Michigan games and in four of them, after a crazy initial weekend of betting, have moved significantly against the Wolverines. Nobody is betting them, at least nobody among the crowd of sharps and wiseguys who do this for a living, so much so that they pack the Golden Nugget in early June in to get bets down before most of the college football betting public has even bought a preseason annual. The critiques are that Michigan remains a soft team, the Golden Nugget overrated a typically public program and sharp bettors love betting against first year head coaches installing a new system. The Nugget is going to take a bath unless the Wolverines, as my old bookie once urged them more than a decade, can just cover the spread.

Notre Dame moving from M –2 to ND –3 with reports that is up to ND –6, Northwestern moving from M –4 to a pick'em, and MSU going from a 3.5 point favorite to 7.5. Sharps are betting Al Borges Denard Fusion Cuisine does not go well.

Meanwhile, our neighbors to the south had no lines posted for obvious reasons.

The young people. This, from one of those alumni tour things, is all your fault:

Finally, for all you MMB fans out there, I was able to speak with DB about the piped in music at the stadium. DB said that there was some resistance in the Big 10, but that they have been able to change the rule and now can mike the band. They expect this to make a big difference. He cautioned that they will keep some piped in music because the 'young people' like it, but is hoping for about 65% MMB and 35% recorded.

Let the bodies hit the floor, yo.

Etc.: Pitt and Penn State miraculously sign a two year contract to play in 2016 and 2017. Article subtitle "new coaching staff stresses accountability" makes inevitable appearance as dictated by the laws of man and God. Mets Maize on fanbase 180.

The worst thing is when you know you saw something useful somewhere obscure a long time ago and stare at the Google box certain it will not help you. So it was yesterday when I tried to dig up a scoreboard comparison graphic that I thought I saw on a Mississippi State blog sometime in the murky past. Never found it, [UPDATE: It was on an Auburn blog; we are basically going from South Carolina to Tennessee] but the Daily did this:

So there you go. Bigger than a blue whale. IIRC, this is a standard Daily graphic they use whenever they have to compare the size of anything to objects in the world. I remember that elephant.

The actual viewable area for the boards is 47 x 85. This is large. When I went to Auburn a few years back I reported their single HD board was "killer" and that Michigan fans had "no idea" how much they needed one. That board:

That board was packed with frippery and advertising—about every fourth play instead of a replay you'd get a frustrating ad—that Michigan's boards will presumably be free of. This is going to be life-changing. Serious. Your life will be different. There will be a band hype-up video that actually gets you hyped up. You will understand what is happening in football games better. You will have up to date stats. Also grapefruit will taste better.

Let's explore in the universal language of Mike Hart pictures. I could not find dimensions for the existing scoreboard but I remember Michigan State's setup, also installed the late 90s, as nearly identical. The size of that increasingly vintage board:

The size of Auburn's board:

What you'll see this fall:

Very big. Somehow still considerably smaller than Minnesota's. And just for the hell of it here's Godzillatron:

Ah but wait:

In its first usage, the portion of the new screen that was typically used for showing replays and film highlights was approximately the same size as the old video screen. More recent games have featured a 16:9 format image centered in a ring of advertisement and score/clock related information. Nevertheless, complaints continue about the advertising, with some fans shouting out "We won't shop/eat/bank there" when advertisements are played loudly in the stadium.

This is wikipedia so it's true. With ads…

…Godzillatron loses a big chunk of its advantage, especially if they blare as loud as the ones at Ohio Stadium or Memorial Stadium. Michigan's going to have the best combo of replay and lack of annoyance in the country. Point Dave Brandon.

I'm apparently the last person in the world to get this press release, but someone posted it up so it doesn't matter. Here are the relevant parts:

Michigan Stadium

The demolition and removal of the existing video boards began in March. Over the next several months, TS Sports will install new state-of-the-art LED screens in both end zones of Michigan Stadium, which will be 40 percent larger than the previous system. The new video screens will be 47’ (h) x 85’ (w) and be located in the end zones. The Big House upgrade will be completed in August prior to the 2011 season.

The new video display at the “Big House” features:
· Two (2) Lighthouse Impact 16 video displays measuring over 4000 square feet each (Resolution: 900 x 1632)
· New Custom Scoring System
· New Custom System Enclosure
- Size: 62’ (h) x 108’ (w)

Crisler Arena

The new center-hung at Crisler Arena will consist of 14 LED video displays:
· Four (4) 12’ x 16.8’ Pi10 10mm main displays
· Four (4) 6.28’ x 16.8’ Pi10 10mm scoring displays
· Four (4) 6.28’ x 6.3’ Pi10 10mm advertising displays
· One (1) 2.1’ x 81.9’ Pi10 10mm top video ring display
· One (1) 2.1’ x 44.1’ Pi10 10mm bottom video ring display

Yost Ice Arena

For the first time in its history Yost Ice Arena will get a facelift that will include LED video displays for the arena.
The new center-hung at Yost Ice Arena will consist of 9 LED video displays:
· Four (4) 13’ x 16.8’ Pi10 main displays
· Four (4) 12.5’ x 6’6’ F16 corner displays
· One (1) 2.5’ x 75.59’ F16 video ring display

----------------------------------

The new Michigan Stadium boards will vault Michigan to around sixth nationally. They'll probably end up nestled in between those at Neyland and the Swamp. Right now Wikipedia's insanely comprehensive list of college football scoreboard sizes doesn't even list Michigan, so… yeah. It's kind of a big difference. Getting replay at Yost is clutch as well. I love me some universe just for you moments but I also like knowing what happened.

Good news for people who like boring news. There is a webcam of Michigan taking down their new scoreboards. You can watch it, or you can look at this picture. They are basically equivalent:

Yes, they left the Big Chill lingo up.

Womp-rats? Yesterday at about 7 PM Yahoo released its latest article that terrifies and thrills, and it's a doozy:

Tressel knew of gear scheme last April

If true, that would expose Ohio State to the worst kind of NCAA justice. Cover-ups are very bad. They got SMU the death penalty and are soon to terminate the job of Bruce Pearl.

Can Yahoo/the NCAA prove it, though? The Robinson/Wetzel piece relies on one anonymous source who said Tressel was "troubled by the information" and promised to investigate. I don't think OSU can reasonably suggest they investigated and found nothing since it didn't take the NCAA long to confirm the story, but previous Yahoo gotchas came with paper trails—as of now there isn't one.

The worst-case scenario here is that this gets rolled into an investigation of Terrelle Pryor's perpetual loaner and it turns out that—surprise—zealous OSU boosters are funneling massive amounts of impermissible benefits to players. It's getting to the point where it's hard to downplay everything that comes to light as an isolated incident, especially when Antonio Pittman tweets that cats have been getting hookups on tats since 2001.

I don't think anyone knows where this is going but if Yahoo can produce paper a major violation, an actual one not about stretching, is in the offing. Eleven Warriors just tweeted that they are hearing Tressel will admit wrongdoing(!) and sanctions/suspensions are "possible."

No serious harm done. According to Mike Spath, Carl Hagelin and Billy Powers expect Louie Caporusso to return for next weekend's CCHA finals at the Joe. Presuming Michigan can get by Bowling Green, by far the worst team in the league this season, without him they won't be short in their quest for a one-seed.

Word. Best NFL draft evaluation ever on one Justin Boren:

Plays angry on the field but his mental makeup is in question after a transfer from Michigan. Day 3 prospect.

Love to bits. The SBN Oilers blog goes off on semi-regular rants about how numbers are just not understood, man, that I love to tiny bits. Their latest is about the Avalanche and their fluky run last year. According to hockey's advanced metrics last year, the Avs were a terrible team. According to the standings midway through the year they were pretty good. They managed to survive a massive late slump to squeeze into the playoffs and fans thought this was sustainable and numbers were stupid. This year they're pretty much the same team except they're not nearly as lucky, so they're just above the Oilers in the standings and fans are discussing whether they should fire the coach they were pumping for the Jack Adams last year.

Key section:

Avalanche fans are not alone in ignoring, even denying the evidence behind the performance of the team. In an article entitled "When the scientific evidence is unwelcome, people try to reason it away" in The Guardian, author Ben Goldacre explores what happens when people are "...confronted with scientific evidence that challenges their pre-existing view." His conclusion? "Often they will try to ignore it, intimidate it, buy it off, sue it for libel or reason it away." Goldacre references a 1979 paper from Lord, Ross and Lepper. From the paper's abstract:

People who hold strong opinions on complex social issues are likely to examine relevant empirical evidence in a biased manner. They are apt to accept "confirming" evidence at face value while subjecting "disconfirming" evidence to critical evaluation, and, as a result, draw undue support for their initial positions from mixed or random empirical findings.

Goldacre goes on to discuss a second group of people - those who attack the science behind the evidence presented to them.

When presented with unwelcome scientific evidence, it seems, in a desperate attempt to retain some consistency in their world view, people would rather conclude that science in general is broken.

This line of thinking is similar to that used by fans who argue in favor of shot quality. Shot quality has become the great foil used by those arguing against possession metrics as a basis of hockey analytics. The ever-increasing mountain of possession data, evidence and studies means little to the shot quality folks. Arguments abound in favor of shot quality with no evidence to back it up, so lacking so Desjardins challenged the world to prove the existence of shot quality. There were no takers.

Goldacre concludes:

When presented with unwelcome scientific evidence, it seems, in a desperate attempt to retain some consistency in their world view, people would rather conclude that science in general is broken.

What's that on the horizon? It's getting closer! It's getting closer very fast!

This is why numbers are important—they at least force you to consider things that conventional wisdom holds are ridiculous, like Derek Jeter being a pretty crappy defensive shortstop. The advanced metrics said the Avs were due to regress badly and they did. This would be just another guy who loves numbers accepting confirming evidence while some other team that defied the numbers would be seized upon by the Joe Morgans of the world as their confirming evidence… except for the fact that you can collect big sets of numbers and show they are accurate more often than not. We had a discussion about this before college football season when I predicted Iowa wouldn't do so hot and Iowa fans were like "numbers are stupid."

The other end of the spectrum from Joe Morgan is David Berri, who's just as wrong as Morgan and relies on a just-as-irrelevant credential ("I was the greatest second baseman of all time"/"I went to Princeton") in his quest to reduce everything in sports to a regression. I'm not arguing for that, either. The numbers gathered by football and basketball box scores are witheringly insufficient to hope to explain anything.

In reality, numbers are insufficient to fully explain anything but baseball for a lot of reasons. Baseball's easier and there are orders of magnitude more data—Pitch FX is insane. But in all sports advanced metrics can at least provide a much better answer for "what," if not how and why. An example: about a week ago LaVall Jordan tweeted that Michigan had the fourth best defense in the Big Ten. That's true on a pure counting number basis but if you do something like divide they were ninth*. That's a huge difference and the tempo-free number is indisputably better. There's a huge difference between talking about why Michigan has an above average defense or why they have a below-average one, and anyone who would prefer to talk about the former is just wasting people's time.

*[The MSU game moved them up to seventh.]

Hardaway explosion. Rod Beard's latest in the News has a wide array of quotes on the emergence of Tim Hardaway Jr. Vitale is involved, but don't let that phase you. Here's the most interesting bit on his recent blowup:

"When he was shooting a lower percentage earlier in the year, I called him in and we just talked a little about getting a better shot than he was taking," Beilein said. "(I told him) you're probably going to take just as many shots, but the ball will come back to you again.

"He did it immediately and his shooting percentage has gone way up."

Beilein has repeatedly praised Hardaway's coachability, which suggests he will continue to improve over the duration of his career at Michigan. Dad is also impressed:

"He's developed very well and the whole team has, from November to today," Tim Sr. said. "You can see a lot of confidence in them and you can see their swagger. They're playing well, they believe in the system and they believe in the coach."

Random offer thought. Michigan continues to litter the nation with offers, but a Q: could this be a more general pattern? The NCAA just implemented a rule that prohibits schools from sending written offers until August. In the past there was the verbal offer, which was more of an indication of interest, and the written offer, which was as close to official as something that says "we can revoke this at any time" gets. Now there are no written offers, nothing to distinguish between the two, and kids who may have waited to declare they had an offer until they had the actual paper in their hands now have nothing else do go on.

In any case, the universal predictions that this rule would lead to confusion and would do nothing to slow down the breakneck pace of recruiting have come true, like it was obvious they would.

Etc.: Posnanski writes something about the "joy of rooting against Lebron" that expands on yesterday's trash-talk assertions. According to Ira at WTKA via Brandon, Michigan's club seats and suites are sold out. Evolving Evan Smotrycz. Big Ten wrestling details.