stadium experience

parts of the stadium experience can't be recreated at home [Patrick Barron]

If you missed it, I covered questions on basketball rule changes, hoops attrition under Juwan Howard vs. John Beilein, and a little off-topic stuff here. Today's mostly veers into OT territory. There may be some ska content. Skantent? I'm fine, everything is fine.

True Home Games

This is going to be a little different for me than many of you since I've been going to games for work, not as a casual fan, since 2011. Although that doesn't necessarily change the experience as much as you might think, my answer of "being able to have audible emotions again" doesn't apply to most people used to watching in person.

I most miss the parts of the experience you can't recreate at home. If they even bother to show them on television, the band's pregame performance, the drum major back bend, the team touching the banner, that moment when the crowd roars in anticipation as the national anthem ends—none of it hits the same. I miss walking my traditional route from my childhood home to the stadium, passing tailgate after tailgate along the way. I miss the people in the press box who've gone from colleagues to friends.

Most of all, I miss the rush of writing the recap while looking over the mostly empty field and trying to live-transcribe as they air the postgame presser on the press box televisions, or doing the same sitting in the Crisler Center press room while sorting through photos and pulling quotes from the coach statements and player breakout sessions. Those were among my favorite moments on the job.

you don't get this on the teevee [Eric Upchurch]

That said, there are parts of the home viewing experience that I greatly prefer to going to games. Those used to spending a huge portion of their weekend—or even an hour in traffic—traveling to and from Michigan Stadium may find the lack of hassle refreshing, especially when it allows one to consume a good deal more football that day. My couch is comfortable. There are no lines for the bathroom. I set the menu. I can check in on other games or even utilize multiple screens to watch them simultaneously. I can see replays that aren't in pore-o-vision and take advantage of my DVR.

If you don't feel too dorky doing it, creating your own viewing-at-home traditions helps make up for the loss of the in-stadium pageantry. The marching band has released several albums over the years and you can find a lot of their work on YouTube—I'll have this going at high volume before big games. Before I stopped drinking, I had a traditional postgame bourbon. I call the same friend after every game.

I also keep this in mind: there are a lot of Michigan fans and only so many have the privilege of getting inside the Michigan Stadium gates. I had a particularly fun way to watch games for eight years. Even if I never make it back, I'll always feel lucky to have had that experience. Keeping that perspective has made it a lot easier to enjoy, and appreciate, watching from home.

[Hit THE JUMP for the revenue sport athlete who would've been the best decathlete, a bunch of music questions, and a Beilein/Cavs/Michigan hypothetical.]

The Sponsors

We can do this because people support us. You should support them too so they’ll want to do it again next year! The show is presented by UGP & The Bo Store, and if it wasn’t for Rishi and Ryan we would have office jobs and STILL be depressed about losing by a touchdown at Notre Dame.

Our other sponsors are also key to all of this: HomeSure Lending, Peak Wealth Management, Ann Arbor Elder Law, the Residence Inn Ann Arbor Downtown, the University of Michigan Alumni Association, Michigan Law Grad,Human Element, Lantana Hummus and debuting this year, The Ann Arbor District Library

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1. Offense

starts at 1:00

Cranky beginning and they score on their last six drives. Shea looked like he didn't know what he was seeing when he got time: the INT and the shoulda-INT. Then he fixed it. The Gentry Zone is higher than the #Buttzone, should be more of the offense. Pass-blocking was non-disastrous. DPJ Day. Good Evans/Bad Evans and how to use Chris Evans. Patterson needs to keep it more often on zone reads. Felt like gameplan was Higdon-based and they had to use Evans at gametime. Extended Wilson time: pretty good. Ruiz busts.

2. Defense

starts at 30:54

If SMU gets yards it's gonna be James Proche. It was Proche. Slants slants slants—dude just beat Kinnel and Metellus on those. Corners held that down—why no Ambry in Dime? Why not Lavert Hill on that guy all day? Why not do something? Defense got a metric ton of crap penalties: Hudson timed his "offsides" blitz perfectly because he timed the jet motion. Okay-est PI: Ross. Worst PI: Kinnel when the ball hits a GA 10 yards into the sideline AND it wasn't interference. If you're getting held on edge runs go down because they won't call it otherwise. So weird they never call it anymore when arms are outside shoulderpads. Dwumfour was a pass-rushing specialist in this one—that's what he's good at.

3. Special Teams & Feelingsball

starts at 54:23

One of the least fun games ever gone to. This commercial break obviated by Corporation X. Nordin's field goals can get out of the stadium. SMU squibs. Sonny Dykes what are you doing, running into the line twice then punting, then getting your cheap yards at the end to keep us in the stadium. In 22 minutes of game time they had an entire basketball game's worth of commercial breaks. Sitting in the stadium I feel like a sap. What's that paying for because it's not professional referees.

4. Around the Big Ten wsg Jamie MacMillan

starts at 1:14:56

Big Ten lost 7 games to unranked opponents. Michigan's next four opponents lost to Troy, Akron, Temple, and BYU. IU has some good receivers when they're healthy, have a hard time with running QBs and Lewerke looms. Kansas beat Rutgers better than Ohio State did; Sitkowski had another three picks. #CannonIntheD is dead. Wisconsin upset is insane—BYU had four position-switch defenders. Kasim Hill looked worse against Temple than Texas. USF puts 600 yards on Illinois. Nebraska-Troy: UNL still outgained them by 100 yards, didn't have Martinez, Troy is not terrible. Refs hand OSU a win over TCU, who survived with a JuCo left tackle vs Bosa.

MUSIC

  • "A Horse With No Name"—Michelle Branch's version
  • "Wild Horses"—The Rolling Stones
  • "Super 8"—Jason Isbell
  • “Across 110th Street”

THE USUAL LINKS

You have these referees who can't tell their ass from their other ass

The last walkoff goal line stand. Via Wolverine Historian, Illinois 1982:

Health bits. Rudock should play Saturday. Smith's having issues, he will continue to have issues, he has an injury you can play through but always hurts and won't stop hurting until the offseason.

11457304[1]

Excellent, responsive, transparent. The athletic department surveyed 4,500 season ticket holders and is releasing that information over the next couple weeks. I love that. It shows the department is listening to fans and allowing us to talk about the data they gathered in public. That is something I've wanted them to do for a long time. So:

Question 4: Did you enjoy the balance of piped-in music and band during the game (not including pregame or halftime)?

• It was a perfect balance (43%)
• Would prefer a lot more band, a lot less piped-in music (20%)
• Would prefer a little more band, a little less piped-in music (28%)
• Would prefer a little more piped-in music, a little less band (6%)
• Would prefer a lot more piped-in music, a lot less band (1%)
• Didn't care (3%)

That's about a 50/50 split between people who think the music is fine and those who want it toned down. (I am obviously in the 20% group.)

I'm disappointed with this answer:

Question 3: How would you rate the overall video board presentation (highlight videos, replays, prompts, information, etc.)?

• Excellent (49%)
• Good (44%)
• Fair (6%)
• Poor (1%)

Alas! Have I not yelled about pore-o-vision sufficiently to move the mass of public opinion?

I'll say this much for Dave Brandon. He didn't land Michigan in a congressional report about how many of the military patriotism events at sport events are bought and paid for. The NFL, of course, is the biggest offender here, but Wisconsin, Indiana, and Purdue are the college programs that managed to show up. In those teams' case they seem to be selling a bunch of game tickets to their local National Guard units, which 1) is not a good use of taxpayer dollars and 2) in the case of Indiana-Purdue football is just not nice to our military reservists.

But mostly it's just NFL teams taking millions of dollars to pretend like they care about anything other than millions of dollars. Which is the best! It is infinite NFL.

Speaking of things we aren't getting paid for. Flyover this weekend:

The answer is "most deserving." Chris Brown asks what the goal of playoff rankings should be:

What criteria should we use to determine who gets the title?

One answer is that the champion should be the season’s “best team,” possibly defined as the best overall team or the team we think would be favored to beat every other team on a neutral field. Another answer is the “most deserving team,” loosely defined as the team that produced the best overall season. These two things are not always the same. It’s perfectly possible for the best team — i.e., the most formidable — to lose a close game or even two on a bad kick or a fluke play, while another team runs the table by winning close games.

Alabama lost a game to Ole Miss in which they had an avalanche of fluky turnovers and this happen to them:

That doesn't really impact my opinion about how good Alabama is. I think they're better than Ole Miss, probably a lot better. But that is just, like, my opinion, man. Once you start talking about "best" because team X has fancy S&P stats or a bunch of NFL first rounders you lose the reason we even play the damn fluky thing that is football. You play to win the game. Bama didn't win.

Now, in a sport like college football you can't just add up wins and losses and call it a day. Schedules are imbalanced and short. Style points have to come into play because a lot of teams will have similar records. A 58-0 blowout of a team should matter more than a 21-20 win. But once you start looking at the why you start eroding the fundamental reason I should care about, say, a one in a million punt drop disaster.

Moving the game to a Vegas-style "eh, don't care about results" model is not good for the sport and is fundamentally a guess that football keeps proving us wrong about, and thus we should dump why and how from playoff rankings in favor of a deeply researched take on what.

I demand a Drake Johnson television show. He killed it at his press availability oh and also

Skyrim bartering is bad but I'll allow it.

On that one site with all the liars. Hey. So Chatsports just lies about things, all the time, in search of traffic. Don't pay attention to them. This was Georgia QB commit Jacob Eason's dad in the aftermath of another Chatsports fiction piece:

The “story” that came out yesterday about him contacting multiple schools really struck a nerve.

Tony Eason called me on Wednesday morning and he was not happy about it.

“Who the h$#** is Marc F&%*% and where did he get that Bull Sh$%$# story at?”

Marc Furballson is the updated nom de plume of Ace Williams. If you post a chatsports link to the message board we will delete all your points. AND THEN WHAT WILL YOU DO

They won't listen. Mike Freeman on Harbaugh availability:

I asked one general manager about Jim Harbaugh returning to the NFL. His response: "He's going to have at least six teams come after him. He'd be able to have any open job he wants." The GM didn't name the teams, but it's not hard to figure out who some of them will be.

Then, the general manager said some NFL teams have already reached out to Harbaugh's camp to see if he'd be available once the season ends. Those teams, the GM explained, weren't told just "no." They were basically told "no freaking way."

Harbaugh isn't going anywhere.

Not that you needed to be told that.

I get it. Bruce Feldman on the Minnesota job:

For one, they don't even have an AD right now. Getting a new coach without a permanent AD is going to be very hard unless you have a Harbaugh; Minnesota doesn't. For two, cheap. For three, this is not a job market Minnesota particularly wants to be in, and you can make a long-term decision on Claeys after a year or two since there should be staff continuity.

Heavier now. MVictors went back and found the average weight of Michigan's starters since the beginning. After a plateau to start weights have crept upwards at a near-constant rate for around 100 years:

AverageWeightbyseason_thumb1[1]

Things have leveled off a little bit since the 1990s.

Etc.: Rainman previewed. Dylan Larkin is good at hockey /weeps about last season. Exit Frank Beamer, real good dude. Bill Daley remembered. Rutgers blog is doing a 68-coach bracket to determine who their next dude should be and John Baxter makes a play-in game. Spike profiled. Blake O'Neill and a small child. More of a medium child, actually.

Nebraska's athletic director is… working on extension? That's one way to approach things. Things are going down at Georgia. Chaos there helps Michigan with Isaac Nauta and Mecole Hardman. OSU/M tickets next year will be expensive, still under demand.