Dear Diary Catbreads Math for Charity

"Have you ever wondered what our current Michigan basketball roster would look like as an old-school 1970s hoops squad?" --FabFiver5. More hoops wallpapers by jonvalk, et al.

'Tis the Season. So I meant to take a picture of this but you guys filled filled a poor woman's entire office (as in the computer is on top of an Amazon box) with gift donations for Adopt a Shelter, which is tomorrow. I still need some volunteers if you're free in the morning and wanna help throw a Christmas party for homeless kids.

I also inadvertently opened the flood gates for good causes going on this holiday season.

• Athletic Angels: This is Barwis (eeeeeeee)'s foundation that is doing something similar to the above but is donation-based, providing a catered dinner, clothes, and some toys for impoverished kids in metro Detroit. Their party is next Thursday. Video of the 2010 event.
• Merit: David Merritt stopped by to plug his new venture that's kinda like those feel-good shoes everybody has nowadays, where they make fashionable clothing and 20% of every purchase goes toward a scholarship via the Jalen Rose thing.
• Big House Big Heart: Brandon responded in AA.com about the Big House Big Heart Champions for Charity run he nixed, explaining he'd rather the university run it than a for-profit organization. People in this thread say the profit is small but I don't know where those #s are coming from; the greatest evidence that Brandon is just being a grinch is the event's director is all like "if they want it they can have it and we'll do all the work anyway; it's for charity!"
• People for Hoops Information Against Starving Dylans: UMHoops did their annual drive to keep them viable and made their it. I miss the old hardwood look but love everything else they've done with that place. Now about that photo above…

Bacari calls them his motivating shoulders. There's one floppy-haired coach's head that's still unused next to (director of basketball operations) Travis Conlan on the far right and FabFiver is taking suggestions; I vote S&C coach Jon Sanderson.

Yeeeeah. This man is going to kill me. Just like our dominating Big Ten team is going to murderate a puny SEC team, says ClearEyesFullHart in his Arkansas preview. BIG TEN! That's it for the cagers in the diaries, now back to the world where our conference has five 'N's.

[After the Jump, the BIG TENNNN! that was, Meeting South Carolina, and the Best of the Board]

BIG TENNNN vs. the Skoal People

If Spurrier had only gone to a Mississippi school we could talk about the SEC West as a self-contained cesspool. Since you probably don't know much more about South Carolina than that they invented the military prep school minor league system and are mysteriously competitive for the top overall recruits in the country, some good folks have taken it upon themselves to eddicate.

To start, LSAClassOf2000 finally took my suggestion of adding a random cat picture to his article so no more boring tag. AND his statistical comparison of Michigan and S.C. is the best of the recent crop. Not good news:

The only teams to do much rushing against them were LSU (we don't have that offensive line) and Clemson (we don't have that offense /shakes fist at Borges). ECU quarterback Dominique Davis is a projected 5th rounder who's Gardner-like so there's some hope there; I ought to watch that game and see what was up because the only other 300+ passing day against USC (NNTUSC) was when they got the Bray. On the boards DGDestroys put up every snap videos of the LSU game and their Florida game.

The afore mentioned 2000 LSA grad then becomes our diarist of the week for creating a scorecard that measures whether each Big Ten team was better or worse than the league average (pink in the tables being worse than) in various categories like average YPC. I like to think of white in the charts as "Big Ten" and pink as "Big TENNNN!" The only school that wasn't Big TENNNNN! in at least one passing offense category was the one with the walk-on at quarterback. Big TENNNNN!

TSS looks at sacks allowed in-conference to show that Michigan was still good at not having the QB taken down behind the line. I am pretty sure this has less to do with our OL's pass pro and more to do with our quarterbacks being crazy athletic. I mean you have to play contain on Denard because he's Denard. And I mean:

Devin Gardner does not care about your physics; he doesn't like getting sacked.

Gordon says so long to the crummiest conference season since we let a mediocre land grant basketball school join it.

Etc. Turnover Analysis at the end; he breaks it down by player. Club_med is still investigating whether momentum is a thing going into overtime, this time factoring in which team was favored to begin with—it's still a coin flip. J.W. Wells Co. adds GT and Notre Dame and makes a pod system.

Best of the Board

ANACOSTIA AND CATO JUNE

If you haven't been following these threads all year let's catch you up:

• Jan 19: Cato June named head coach of his old high school team in D.C., which won just a single game over its last two years. Just like with his recruitment Walter Cross (as OC) came with.
• Nov 7: The team won six of its 10 games to qualify for the 4-team playoffs.
• Nov 20: Holy wolverines he's got them playing in the regional championship on Thanksgiving!
• Dec 1: Against the big bully of Washington, D.C.-area schools June's team got to a 4th and goal on the opponent's 5-yard line down 12-6 late in the 4th quarter. Then the pass… Coach of the year voting was obvious.
• Dec 3: Holy wolverines some TV guys have noticed and are making a special about them.
• This Afternoon: The NFL Network is airing the special at 4:30 p.m., and then at 7:30 and 1:30 tomorrow.

DENARD AND KOVACS SPEECHES AT THE BUST

GoBlueInNYC figured out how to embed these.

Denard's speech:

Kovac's speech:

BROCK MEALER SHORT FEATURE ON SOME CHANNEL

There's a 30-second commercial to get to the other side, which is a Fox & Friends special on Brock walking (!) down the aisle. Takeaway: if you really want to win that gal invite her to attend a charity event with you.

NO WJR ISN'T COMING BACK

They burned that bridge pretty good, although Bill Martin was probably taking them for granted too. The thread is incredibly knowledgeable about AM radio and the history of what went down when 760 sold their souls to Sparty. Take solace in the fact that the gambit didn't work; for this football season they ranked behind The Ticket, the country station, the news station and the oldies station. But yeah I'm sure basketball will be worth it guys.

SOURCE: stationratings.com. I haven't listened to any Detroit radio ever since I realized I can stream WTKA on my phone.

INSERT DARTH VADER NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

See that triple with American cheese, pickles, egg, grilled mushrooms and onions? Well say goodbye to it because Blimpy Burger needs to find a new home. Do you know what a tragedy this is? Do I have to mention the fries? Or getting back strange bits of U.S. currency like $2 bills and Sacagawea dollars? The lamentations, not the news, really make this thread with lots of memories of long gone Ann Arbor foodstuffs and one guy who figured out there's over 2 million possible burger combinations.

Your moment of zen: