OTish - Halloween HOT Takes
Ahh, Halloween. On a Tuesday! The annual celebration of ........ ???? Spook? Mini-Almond Joys? Whatever. It's that night a year when parents take their kidoos, every single one suffering from some kind of seasonal viral infection with a low grade fever, strolling through the rain soaked 37 degree neighborhood in a costume missing half of its peices from the classroom celebration cluster-F only hours earlier, collecting chocolate goods that will see roughly 30% of them spontaneously throw up in a near stupor before bed and stay home tomorrow because good god that kid can't go to school. Because it's Halloween! And that's what we do around here.
Anyway, I think it is a good morning for some hot takes. In a week that has seen (thankfully) far less hot takey OPs, maybe we can get them all off of our chest here. College football related or otherwise. (Perhaps we can avoid rabbit hole topics, like if you get ready to type Manafort or Obama you are going in the wrong direction). If you don't want to join in, fine, just try to avoid venomous snark for no reason other than to ensure discord.
Hot Take - Alabama or Ohio State is going to lose this weekend.
Ohio State, coming off a miraculous comeback win against Penn State, one week before hosting Michigan State in a game with division stakes and payback feels from two years ago, heads to the exact worst possible place I would want to be taking that team this week, cozy Kinnick Stadium (you may recall that stuff like this tends to happen there). Iowa, stingy as ever, losing three close games this year and ready to pounce on their Florida-Meh-Bowl securing win. I think this one looks tricky.
Alabama has been murdering everybody they play. Seriously, this team has not had a close game in the second quarter since FSU. They are due for a complication. And after an ugly start, LSU has strung together a few nice wins including including a win over a pretty good Auburn team a couple of weeks ago. I'm not saying Alabama is sleeping on this game, but I am saying that LSU is going to bring it this week. I think this could be a sneaky game this weekend for the Tide.
Happy Halloween and let's hear your takes.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:23 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 9:44 AM ^
Alabama and Clemsons recruitng practices are pure as the driven snow.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:49 AM ^
Pure as 100% Columbian snow - and just as profitable.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:00 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 10:23 AM ^
I don't see why not. Everyone knows that kids pick their schools based on which ones have the best slides and whiffleball fields.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:23 AM ^
Please be OSU. Please be OSU. Just not Penn State. I hate them but the Sparties in West Michigan are ridiculous.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:09 AM ^
Please?
October 31st, 2017 at 11:17 AM ^
I think he/she wants PSU to win, that way they don't have to hear it from Sparty fans (in West Michigan) about how great MSU is.
I live in West Michigan and can vouch, when Sparty was 6-1 rolling into Northwestern, an ungodly amount of flags started appearing on houses and any time I was out in public wearing UM gear, they couldn't help but make comments. Stuff like "Struggled with Indiana? I didn't expect that" or "I expected so much more from your defense. I guess they're not as good as we thought" after PSU. It's always passive agressive "I didn't expect that." or "What is going on?" comments. I was so happy when they lost to NW.
October 31st, 2017 at 11:18 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 9:27 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 9:32 AM ^
But, Stanford, Wash St, NC St, Arizona, or USC will all fall out of the top 25 with a loss this week, and the fact that they all play against one another (NC St plays Clemson) means this wil happen for a couple of them. This will hurt a lot of teams with strength of schedule.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:57 AM ^
How does Washington St and Stanford both fall out of top 25 when they play each other? same with USC Arizona.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:59 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 10:15 AM ^
"will all"
but anways this really only effects Notre Dame's strength of schedule who has wins over/plays 4/5 of those teams. Everybody knows the Pac-12 is trash and the conference will end up outside of the playoff.
Notre Dame is the interesting part. Big game vs Miami coming up who will probably make the ACC title game. That game may make up for beating up on overrated PAC 12 teams.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:38 AM ^
But in the end it could effect Clemson also. ND played 3 of those teams, and Clemson plays NC St this weekend, so they will hang a loss on NC St, but how badly will they / if they beat them? The comittee says style points don't count, but they do.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:35 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 9:58 AM ^
OSU isn't looking ahead to MSU, but IS looking forward to MSU. The MSU offensive is truly offensive and OSU will roll them in Columbus. Kinnick will prove tough for a quarter, but Iowa's offense is nearly as bad as MSU's.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:20 AM ^
I think they said this on the MGoBlog roundtable. Iowa looked great coming within one point of PSU, if you didn't watch the game. PSU had 579 yards to Iowa's 273.
I didn't watch the game, but it makes sense. I still hope Iowa takes OSU.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:39 AM ^
Won on the last play of the game. That makes the yardage a moot point.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:42 AM ^
at all for the sake of this conversation. Iowa held an offense that went for 38 against OSU to under 300 yards total offense. That is relevant to a discussion about potential Iowa v. OSU outcomes.
October 31st, 2017 at 12:39 PM ^
Iowa held Penn State to 579 yards of offense. They had under 300 themselves.
They looked good in the sense that, if you didn't see the game and just looked at the final score, it appeared that they were good.
November 10th, 2017 at 11:56 AM ^
though you got the yardage wrong for your analysis, your comment ended up being prophetic. +1.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:36 AM ^
Wisconsin is actually not very good and will finish the year with at least 2 losses, but most likely 3. They only managed to beat Illinois 24-10 last week. We beat a Rutgers team that is better than Illinois by a wider margin with playing a QB that basically had two hooks for hands for the first 23 minutes of the game.
I am confident about us beating them, but even if we don't, they will get smoked in the Big Ten championship game, and then, as a 1 loss team, get smoked by a really good opponent in a bowl game they didn't deserve (like a 1 loss Notre Dame or Clemson that barely misses the playoffs, oh God). Their season will look a lot like our season last year, where they lose 3 of their last 4 games.
Seems like a warm take, not too hot.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:41 AM ^
I like your warm take. I see beating Wisconsin as our way to salvage whats left of our season.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:58 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 10:02 AM ^
I think the Fugitive is looking for that guy.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:27 AM ^
If Peters plays at least as well as he did Saturday, going forward, Michigan beats UW. If Peters improves to slightly above average, Michigan rolls UW. That said, I think UW was just on auto-pilot for Ill - no way was Ill ever going to win that game, regardless of who UW put on the field.
October 31st, 2017 at 11:21 AM ^
Now this is a hot take. I don't seem UM ever "rolling" UW. Their defense is too good. I feel like UW is rope-a-doping like PSU was. Their schedule is weak and they don't need to show much until Michigan. Indiana and Iowa won't force them to show anything, so I expect a lot of new wrinkles for UM.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:38 AM ^
Halloween stores have a lot of innappropriate costumes for children.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:46 AM ^
M Den sells a Michigan Cheerleader costume for kids. It fits a 5'2" 115lb adult woman perfectly.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:04 AM ^
...or it isn't true
Where's Waldo???
October 31st, 2017 at 10:10 AM ^
On repeat. Lots of repeat.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:59 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 9:40 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 10:00 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 9:43 AM ^
We win out. Peters sees Rudock level of improvement over the rest of the year and the O-Line continues its upward trend, culminating in the upset of #3 Ohio State here at the Big House 35-28 with 4th quarter drive down the field for the win led by Peters and Higdon. Fans storm the field as the MMB plays the Victors.
October 31st, 2017 at 2:03 PM ^
I'll have what you're having.
November 2nd, 2017 at 8:55 AM ^
The magic that is the water in Hill Dorms and the Mt. Dew in MoJo dining, my dude.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:41 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 9:48 AM ^
was speculative, but on the podcast they were saying that the Walker thing looked a little tricky, while the Izaac thing was probably abundance-of-caution concussion protocol. I think the coaches said Big Mike is fine.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:12 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 9:45 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 10:30 AM ^
What do you have against Tootsie Rolls?
But no, it's not wrong. I'll set aside a bag of farts for OSU/PSU/MSU (*SU?) kids.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:36 AM ^
October 31st, 2017 at 9:43 AM ^
was spot on.
I do enjoy this holiday though...
October 31st, 2017 at 9:48 AM ^
was going to be something like that.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:20 AM ^
I remember being pretty sad when I was too old to trick-or-treat anymore, then I found out there was a different version of the holiday for adult males.
October 31st, 2017 at 9:45 AM ^
martin luther took a hammer to the cathederal in wittenberg and nailed up a certain piece of paper.
as for halloween, we live in the boonies and have never had a trick-or-treater. way too far to walk from farm to farm.
October 31st, 2017 at 10:47 AM ^
if they start to like it too much you can't ever leave a milk bucket unattended or else they will drink it. that is our daily milk supply and i don't want felines contaminating it. love our barn cat, but not that much.