tom hammond

computers2[1]

On S&P+

S&P+

Number 3? For the statistically challenged, what do you think of this methodology?

S&P+ is as good as any other ranking system that drills into play-by-play data to get a clearer picture of a football game than scoring margin alone can give you. Bill Connelly, the guy behind it, also runs Football Study Hall. He does a lot of smart things. S&P+ is a valuable look at who is playing the best.

Unfortunately, it can only go on the data that exists and in early-season college football that's always going to be sparse. Meanwhile some folks will dispute lot of the assumptions S&P+ makes, primarily that turnovers are super random and not major factors in the rankings. It also values all games evenly in ways that humans aren't always big fans of. Utah is significantly below Michigan because:

  • the Michigan-Utah game was about even down to down and turned on turnovers
  • Utah did not significantly outgain Utah State or Fresno State
  • Michigan yardage-murdered everyone other than Utah

S&P+ is not trying to be a descriptive ranking (ie: these teams have had the best season so far) but rather a predictive one (ie: if these teams were to meet who would win). Michigan has performed like an elite team so far according to S&P+, and I can see why it thinks that.

FEI, the other major ranking that takes more than score into account*, is more skeptical than S&P, but I think that's because that still bakes some preseason assumptions into the ranking.

*[AFAIK Sagarin only uses the final score.]

Can we manball it when even Saban flees to spread-type behavior?

It seems that Nick Saban has recently admitted that his current style is a bit outdated, that he needs to adjust to the recent trends in college football. It is pretty obvious that teams like OSU, Oregon, TCU, Baylor, even BGSU are seeing a lot of success by utilizing both up-tempo and featuring quick guys in space.

Can you speak to offensive philosophies such as Alabama and Stanford and how this may or may not be a concern for us going forward? I understand that "smashmouth" football is not mutually exclusive with up-tempo and quick guys in space. But it just seems to me that Harbaugh's style doesn't seem to emphasize either of these current successful trends.

Thanks,
UNCWolverine

Given how the season has gone so far I actually think Michigan might occasionally run into the opposite problem. They've been absolutely lights out against six consecutive spread offenses. (Not very good spread offenses, sure, but Michigan isn't holding these guys to 20 points and high-fiving afterwards. They are crushing opponents.) Meanwhile the Harbauffense is winning plays against teams that aren't always comfortable putting heavy D packages on the field or filling all the gaps Harbaugh creates.

Saban's move to a more spread and tempo oriented offense is a reaction to the many times his defense has been blown out of the water by those kind of attacks over the past few years. When the Tide get to line up against one of the remaining "pro style" offenses, the results are generally ugly. Ask Georgia.

Michigan might not have that issue. Durkin seems very comfortable devising ways to neutralize spreads. I will have trepidation when and if Michigan does come up against… well, pretty much just Alabama.

On and off and on and off

Brian or Ace-

Do you know, or, if not, could you ask someone, why Dan Liesman (I think that is who it is, at least according to my Mini-Program; it is #54) comes out a few yards onto the field between plays almost every time when we are on defense. It is as if he is not sure whether he is going in or not, but since he NEVER goes in, it is obviously for some other reason. Is there some rule about substitutions that this relates to, are we trying to confuse the opposition, or does he just like to pretend he might be going in? There has to be a reason, and I would think most MGoBloggers would love to hear it. Thanks

David

We've seen Ross and Gant also do this. It's just a substitution strategy. After the play Michigan sends guys who may or may not be in the defensive package, depending on what the offense does, to about the numbers. (Any farther could get you an illegal substitution penalty.)

If opponents send in two or more blocky-catchy types, the linebacker will stay in and a DB will be removed. Since every team Michigan has played almost never uses two or more blocky-catchy types the LB heads back to the sideline almost all the time.

Liesman specifically is interesting because Michigan usually has Ross available; I haven't noticed if sometimes he is poking his head on the field when Michigan's already in a 4-3. That would imply Michigan has a heavy package in case someone tries to manball them.

Someone was confused.

Mr. Hammond

I wanted you to know how much I appreciate and enjoy your broadcasts of Notre Dame football.  Your kind deference to Our Lady's University is a beautiful expression of the christian love that infuses your broadcast persona.  Thank you so much!  You are a good man.

May God bless you and yours.

Andrew V.

I did flip over to the Notre Dame-UMass game when it was interesting for a minute and heard Hammond's dulcet tones. He's missed.

I assume that guy who made the Tom Hammond tie is in Congress by now.

[After THE JUMP: early drives allowed, Harbaugh's playcalling system, a search for superclusters.]

Ouch. My Retinae.

You probably heard that Jason Collins came out of the closet on Monday, making him the first active athlete in one of the four major sports to do so. And as you would expect, the announcement sparked a mix of debate, encouragement, and less-than-flattering comments from all corners of the sports world.

Fortunately, after several hours of often heated discussion, the sporting world was brought back together in unison. Gay, straight, bisexual, asexual, black, white, hispanic, Asian, Native American, and any Panera you-pick-two of the above, we all spoke loudly in one voice that NO NO NO DO NOT WANT:

Brando Sex Tape

I’m not a smart man, and my knowledge of genetics, sociology, and biology are woefully inadequate. Debates about the origins of sexual orientation are best left to people wiser than I. But I know this: the words “Tim Brando Sex Tape” are not going to do anything for Team Heterosexuality. Every time someone tries to play the “the gays are ruining everything” card, someone will throw in a copy of Brando Does the SEC, and the conversation ends with everyone rubbing guacamole in his or her eyes to dull the pain.

Oh, but it gets worse. Dick Vitale, probably inspired by Brando’s positive body self-image, jumped in with HIS two cents about interpersonal relations vis a vis Martha Stewart. And I ain’t sayin’ he’s a gold-digger… but he ain’t messin’ with no broke domestic solutions specialists.

“Oh yeah. That’s awesome baby…”

It could be worse, though. I know of at least one announcer who has lots of time on his hands these days, and may be looking for a new project:

And then Marv Albert gets involved, and then the very fabric of society tears asunder as the masses try desperately to flee. Do you see what you’ve done, Jason Collins?

BONUS: Early Jose Canseco Update

Just when you thought this whole cluster had reached its merciful conclusion, things jumped the crazy shark, which in this case might be a euphemism for some sort of random and terrifying sex act:

Canseco Brando

I don’t know if he’s serious. And neither do you. But let’s agree to NO ONE CALL HIS BLUFF.

#ReallyReallyBigNews

The NCAA announced yesterday that colleges are no longer allowed to paint hashtags on the field. This is obviously a watershed moment in college sports, and one that will lead inexorably to the resolution of all the other minor problems facing college athletics like amateurism and concussions and whatnot. Asked to explain the hashtag ban, national coordinator for college football officials Rogers Redding explained that it was all about integrity:

"If they have stuff on the sidelines, or on the walls that go around the stadium, it's OK," Redding said. "The idea is just to preserve the integrity of the field and not open it up to other kinds of advertising."

Yep. You read that.

Boise State

The integrity of the field.

 Eastern Washington

This was said with a straight face.

FIU Hashtags would ruin these pristine natural playing surfaces, man. As a Michigan fan, I’m totally cool with never seeing a hashtag on a field again. But why the NCAA thinks this needs to be a rule is beyond me. I mean, have you SEEN some of the football and basketball uniforms Adidas and Nike have trotted out in the last couple of years? And you think a pound sign is going to make a difference?

Also, because of some confusion, the NCAA felt the need to clarify that they are not banning the existence of hashtags as a metaphysical matter:

NCAA WUT

So good news, Twitter users. You can continue to use hashtags without the NCAA busting in, urinating on your laptop and/or smartphone, and issuing you a Notice of Allegations. But you get the feeling that they considered banning hashtags (along with gifs, blogs, and NCAA related water cooler conversation),  but decided against it. They are, after all, benevolent overlords.

Not Sure if Serious, or if Terrible Evaluator of Talent

Every year when the draft winds down, fans hold onto hope that their favorite college player will be plucked in the last few picks. Some go so far as to tweet NFL teams asking them to take their favorite players, as if real teams actually use the “show of hands” method of drafting.* I suppose it’s a harmless thing to do; it’s like the audience at the Price is Right shouting that they think the Cream of Wheat is more expensive than the Ziploc bags. They’re probably wrong, but damnit that’s half the fun of being in the audience.

But when some random guy suggested that the Colts draft Robert Marve as Mr. Irrelevant last week, the Colts shouted back that, Cream of Wheat? Are you stupid or something?

Colts Marve

(H/T @Landgrant33)

It’s rare, and somewhat refreshing, to see a team react this honestly to a fan. The easiest thing in the world would have been to either ignore it, or to respond with a non-committal “we’ll see what happens, so stay tuned.” But instead, we got “Robert Marve? Seriously? The guy who has torn his ACL like twelve times? Seriously? I mean, his numbers aren’t terrible… but have you watched him play football? You want us to intentionally choose him for our professional football franchise? Hell, no one wanted Tyler Bray or Collin Klein or Matt Scott, and those guys are 50 times less terrible than Robert Marve.”

Or at least they would have said that. Damn 140 character limit.

*Some have suggested the Raiders draft by show of hands, but they technically use a Modified Show-of-Hands/Blindfolded-Lemur-Throwing-Darts-at-a-Draft-Board system. So it’s not quite the same thing.

Who is Canada’s Version of Barbara Streisand?

If you’ve ever been on the Internet (and if you’re reading this, that’s you), you’ve been accused of something horrific by an anonymous commenter on some random message board. The same goes if you have ever done anything that was discussed on the internet. In fact, if you have ever done anything that involved things and/or stuff, you have been accused of being somewhere on the spectrum of pickpocket to Serbian war criminal. I’ve personally been accused of a string of penguin molestations for which I TOTALLY HAVE AN ALIBI. But we all know two things about these rumors when we see them: that these rumors are almost certainly false (especially those that are penguin-related), and that the targets have absolutely no recourse.

Recently fired Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke, however, cares not for your rules. He is suing eighteen anonymous internet message board users for defamation. Among the named defendants are “poonerman,” “sir psycho sexy,” “KaBoomin8,” “Loob,” and “mowerman.” Burke is alleging that these guys and gals (but guys, because we’re talking Canadian hockey message board users here) spread rumors that he was fired by the Leafs because he fathered a child out of wedlock. His motivation here is pretty straight-forward:

“That’s kind of the point,” [Burke’s attorney Peter] Gall told the Star. “A lot of people think that they can with impunity say whatever outrageous things on the Internet and nobody’s ever going to be able to find them or hold them accountable. Brian is going to hold them accountable.”

Brian Burke is going to police the internet for us. Pack it up, mods, there’s a 57-year-old former hockey exec on the job.

I’m not well-versed in Canadian libel law, but this seems to me to be a ridiculous suit. For one thing, he’s gotta demonstrate damages, which he probably can’t do because he was fired BEFORE this stuff went public. In other words, he has to prove that some people out there would be like, “well, I didn’t think this guy was fired for fathering an illegitimate child, but now that LOOB has said so, I totally believe it.” He also wants an injunction prohibiting the defendants from making further defamatory statements, which… good luck with that.

The bigger problem, though, is that Brian Burke has obviously never heard of the Streisand Effect, whereby the act of trying to squash things that happen on the internet typically make them a much bigger deal than they otherwise would have been. Before the suit, this was confined to a series of 18 posts on a Wordpress blog. And now?

Burke Google Autocomplete

I’ll give you three guesses at the rumored name of the alleged mother of Burke’s love-child. Way to put the kibosh on those rumors, champ. 

Additional Sloopy Sighting

A friend of mine texted me this picture from West Michigan yesterday:

SloopySighting

Someone must know this confused soul. Find him. I wish to interview him. I know there is much we can learn from each other, if we can negotiate a truce. Can there be a peace between us?

Regularly Scheduled Canseco Update

Canseco White House

Maybe he can parlay the Brando fame into an invite to the White House. We’ve got our fingers crossed for you, man.

Kickstarter, eh! After many requests we have added a couple of kickstarter tiers for international folks: 20 bucks for one mag, 40 for both, and we'll eat the extra costs for anyone who goes for the 50+ tiers.

Reminder: we have made our base goal and are now shooting for the 50k stretch goal, whereupon the basketball/hockey preview mag is a real thing on paper.

Meanwhile if you're in the giving mood check out Marlin Jackson's Fight For Life charity. Very good cause. Seth posted extensively on what they do this morning.

Our linemen are a wonderful freak show. They're all having huge lumberjack beards and looking like Freddie Mercury and, uh, this:

djbunyan

That's walk-on Dan Gibbs's twitter avatar. We probably should have started him against Jesse Williams, who Gibbs is seen riding. Equal to the task is Gibbs's twitter avatar: DJBunyan.

Speaking of offensive linemen, Elliott Mealer has shaved the beard.

as if millions of follicles suddenly cried out in terror

We will always remember you, ZZ Top beard.

image

This year's OL has a lot to live up to. They are off to a good start, at least.

Zak-Irvin[1]

Michigan has a five star basketball recruit for the second straight year. (isportsweb)

It's too bad he can't compete with the big boys. Rivals has given Zak Irvin the GRIII bump, moving up ten spots after his Mr. Basketball season in Indiana. This nets him the coveted fifth star. Walton is #37—also a ten-spot bump—while Mark Donnal is #111, one of the last four-stars. IIRC Donnal was just inside the top 100 last time. He got one of those "you stay the same and we find twelve guys we like a lot" downgrades.

Indiana's six-person oversigning extravaganza is the best class in the Big Ten according to the sites. Michigan is second, #13 nationally at ESPN. Illinois and Wisconsin are next, but it's always hard to figure out how to rank basketball classes because they're so divergent in terms of numbers.

Speaking of Tom Crean…

You're Nick Saban, dude. A year after Indiana signee Ron Patterson was told he couldn't enroll at Indiana in August—ie, the Les Miles—Tom Crean signs six players and is oversigned by one going into the late signing period. Out you go, Remy Abell. Indiana currently has 13 players. They've just offered Jaren Sina, the former Northwestern commit who opened up his recruitment when Bill Carmody was fired.

Now is the time on Sprockets when brows are furrowed about young men and how it's disappointing they've left the program and etc. etc. etc. It's not disappointing, it is mathematically required by Coach Schrute's recruiting. Someone was going to leave, full stop. There's no difference between what's going down at Indiana and Nick Saban's annual purge. In this, OSU and Michigan fans are united.

The thing is: Crean's just flat out saying they're oversigning, which is at least more honest than Saban's approach.

Again, this was not unexpected, and IU coach Tom Crean admitted as much when he spoke with assembled media in Bloomington, Ind., Thursday afternoon. He knew he might have two guys leaving early, in addition to three seniors (Jordan Hulls, Christian Watford, Derek Elston) which is, Crean told the Indianapolis Star, "one of the reasons we oversigned."

Wait ... what?

Yes, the Hoosiers enter the second straight summer with more players signed than scholarships to give out — this time 14 for 13. (Last season, IU's 15 signed players ended with senior guard Matt Roth's seemingly confused, thensuddenly uber-positive, departure, and a fortuitous turn in freshman Ron Patterson's academic ineligibility.)

Even without further departures Michigan will go into next year with an open scholarship. Purdue's down to ten. Schrute is looking for more guys to run off. Hard to have the moral high ground as a conference when you… uh… don't have it.

Godspeed, Tom Hammond. The Great and Powerful Hammond is being replaced by some guy named Hicks on Notre Dame broadcasts. A tip of the cap to a man who overcame his fear of cameras to be on television, like, all the time. We'll always have the picture and the tie.

tomhammondtie_thumb[1]

See you around the rhythmic gymnastics odeon. /brohug

Baseball making it happen. Rich Maloney's ouster last year was sudden and controversial. So far it looks to have been the right move as the previously moribund base-to-ball team is currently 7-2 in the Big Ten behind freshman starting pitcher Evan Hill's dominating 1.89 ERA. Baseball America takes note:

The future looks bright for Michigan, which has a strong freshman core leading its resurgence this spring. Michigan’s best starter has been freshman lefthander Evan Hill (6-1, 1.89), whose projectable 6-foot-5 frame helped him rank No. 165 on the BA 500 heading into last year’s draft. Hill still is just scratching the surface of his potential, but he is maturing quickly and has settled nicely into the Saturday starter role.

“He still is a projection guy—his best years are ahead of him,” Bakich said. “But he’s very talented, he works extremely hard. The mental game has been critical for him, because he’s learned how to breathe and focus on executing the next pitch, that’s been a big part of his development mentally. But he’s still a long, lean, tall, thin guy who has a good fastball, and he’s got good offspeed pitches. He just doesn’t always have the command that he’s going to have in the future of his secondary stuff. But a lot of his success has come from pitching off his fastball. He throws a cutter and a curveball, and when those are on, he usually does pretty well.”

Two other freshmen have earned starting jobs on the left side of the infield and in the top half of the batting order. Travis Maezes (.308/.396/.421) has shown good athleticism, instincts and arm strength at shortstop while hitting in the No. 2 hole. And third baseman Jacob Cronenworth (.339/.397/.460 with two homers and a team-leading 26 RBIs) has been very steady in the cleanup spot. He has a balanced, line-drive approach from the left side of the plate to go along with good speed. Cronenworth also has a strong arm at the hot corner, and he can run his fastball up to 92 mph off the mound, where he has emerged as Michigan’s closer, posting a 1.06 ERA, six saves and a 16-3 strikeout-walk mark in 17 innings.

That's a hell of a freshman class.

Michigan's coming off consecutive sweeps of MSU and Penn State; they take on ND today at 4, with Eastern coming in tomorrow at 6. If you're in Chicago, Michigan plays Northwestern at Wrigley Saturday.

It was a bet with Zak Irvin. A picture of a displeased Gary Harris wearing a Maize Rage t-shirt made the rounds on twitter recently, and I was all like "dude lost a bet with Zak Irvin?"

Dude did lose a bet with Zak Irvin:

M&GB: Can you tell us about that picture of Gary Harris that surfaced on twitter of him wearing a Maize Rage t-shirt?

Irvin: (Laughs) As a matter of fact I was just talking with him about that a couple hours ago but that was from last year. When Michigan played Michigan State we had a bet that whichever team won, the loser had to wear that team’s shirt to school the next day, and Michigan won so Gary had to wear a Michigan t-shirt all the next day.

Just not a recent one.

Not playing coy about Dymonte Thomas. Courtney Avery's job is officially in serious danger given the way Michigan usually talks about freshmen. No one's bothering to say Dymonte Thomas is a long way off or whatever:

"He’s a very conscientious young man. For a guy that comes that should have been at his prom to be here the whole time, and for him to pick it up like he did ... Dymonte Thomas had a very, very good spring for a freshman.”

So there's that. He's playing. Starting? We'll see.

Cumong, NCAA man. Oregon and the NCAA agree that Oregon paid Willie Lyles 25k to help recruit players. Also this:

There is no information," according to the NCAA, "in the record that Lyles coerced or directed any prospect to ultimately choose Oregon. That said, Lyles did provide a meaningful recruiting advantage by orally providing background information about prospects to the coaching staff and also by serving as a conduit to facilitate communication with prospective student-athletes."

I hate you, NCAA enforcement. Oregon has proposed two years of probation and one lost scholarship for a few years. Seriously. Sic 'em, Get The Picture.

Etc.: A tribute to Trey Burke. His finest moments. Oh yes "Roger Federer as a Religious Experience" reference in regards to Trey Burke, oh yes. HSR on the end of basketball season.

UMHoops talks to 2015 SG recruit Luke Kennard. MSU is selling spots in the press box for their spring game. How much? Next question. The definition of amateurism is "whatever the NCAA says it is," and changes constantly. Four(!) Michigan players make John Gasaway's final top 25 freshmen($), with Spike Albrecht making the tail end of the list at 25. That's for show, man. David Allen Grier gets Trey Burke to smile. It is possible. Drake Harris "commitment" scarequotes are unbecoming.