But No That Blocked Punt Against CMU Was Totally Worth It.

Alum96 decided to go into excruciating detail on the upcoming cliff, and which spots will need to be addressed. Like “two OL recruits in two years” he also pinpointed the situation:

…we only recruited 9 defensive players in 2013 and 4 in 2014.  That's a middling 13 players - of which one is already gone (Ferns).  12-ish defensive players is what you generally get in 1 class, not combined in 2.

Two years out you want to have more in the tank than:

• DEs: Poggi, Marshall, S.Johnson, R.Jones
• DTs: Hurst, Mone, Pallante (if he doesn’t stay at FB)
• LBs: McCray, Winovich, Furbush, Wangler
• CBs: Dawson, Watson, Washington
• S: Kinnel, Peppers if he isn’t in the NFL

Some of these guys are not going to work out. Attrition happens. And if by some miracle both are avoided this is a one-deep. There’s time to fill the gaps if Harbaugh can find in the 2016 class the kinds of guys who can ball like an All-Big Ten player before they can buy a beer. Of course he can do that because HARBAUGH.

Another way to mitigate this would be to get redshirts on some of the juniors or sophomores they don’t need as much this year. No way: Taco and Jourdan Lewis are starting, Dymonte is the current guy they roll in for the nickel (at safety; Peppers moves down to the slot). Probably no way: Gedeon is the first LB in after the starters (but if McCray…), Mone is currently 2nd on the NT depth chart (but if Pipkins…). So Michigan could maybe late-shirt Delano Hill and Channing Stribling, leaving six scholarship cornerbacks and four safeties available for 2015.

/shakes fist at 2013 special teams

Bring Back the Molly McGannon Memorial Children of Yost Section

Our official chronicler of the student section SaddestTailgateEver addressed the changes at Yost as the student section was shrunk, split, and shoved off to the (wrong) side, while prime property was roped off for the usually empty opponents’ parents section:

That is a full-blown, fully mapped DMZ that you better keep stepping through and not stop. So now we have students that don’t fit in Section 17, stuck above row 10 in Section 18, and a bunch of needlessly empty seats below them. And for what? So these parents can have some elbow room to look at their sons’ backs?

This also puts the parents right in front of the “c-ya” cheer, and has led to altercations, and staff stepping in on behalf of the parents who usually started it. To that I’ll add that the glare in the revamped old barn is like stepping onto the bridge of the J.J. Abrams Enterprise.

R.I.P. Spock.

I don’t have the heart to tell him what that place was like when I had season tickets circa 2000. Yost would be best if it acknowledged what it is—a raucous throwback to 1920s-style sports fandom—but it’s hard to see the administration trying to re-engineer that feel since the Goss/Martin ADs barely tolerated the Children of Yost.

What they can do is cut the feed to the RAWK MUZAK they blare in your face, put the opponents’ families in the obstructed overhang seats (this is a compromise; I would prefer gibbets), and put the students front and center, then look away and let the atmosphere fill in organically.

[Hit the jump for people talking about bad calls and the 1997 Championship]

What Could be Worst?

Several times a year somebody suggests that Brian UFR a classic Michigan game. I’ve thought about trying it but UFR is Brian’s thing and he doesn’t appreciate others watering down the format. Brian might do it but if he’s to go back and do a UFR over the offseason it’s more helpful by far to do one of those he missed. Such a project would also require complete video, not the “we skip ahead in our programming and rejoin in the 2nd quarter, because there was just too much football back then to fit that and our advertising into this timeslot” versions they play on BTN.

But that doesn’t mean the rest of the weekly football season content can’t be applied to great games of the past. Bronxblue decided to give the 1998 Rose Bowl his Best & Worst treatment.

The Worsts were the clunky Rose Bowl performance that opened a door for the coaches to give Tom Osborne (and ultimately every Michigan hater) his going away present. And an offense that thought it unmanly to exploit mismatches or not let the defense know what was coming ahead of time.

Dreams of a Thousand Horses

Interesting analogy from ReadYourGuard, one of the former player Michigan players in our community, of Michigan since Bo as a 1969 Camaro we’ve been drag racing for 45 years. One thing about the Harbaugh hire that made it seem such a slam dunk is it served both the wishes of the Rebellion and the Lloydists. We never really solved the fundamental disagreement over whether Michigan needs to run Power to be Michigan.

I think the analogy is flawed because Bo’s Michigan wasn’t a flashy ‘69 Camaro muscle car. The guy ran options with angry agile linemen for most of his time here, and built his program like a cleaner Dantonio’s MSU: Bo recruited a lot of guys from Ohio who weren’t at the top of Ohio State’s list, then spent years hammering on that chip in their shoulders while training them to play as upperclassmen.

Michigan Welcomes the Chinese Minister of Victorian Crotchetiness

Craig Ross remembers when Wu Ting Fing saw a football game in 1901:

"Are they dead yet?" queried Mr. Wu with polite solicitude, as he surveyed the spectacle.

"Oh, no!" said one of the party's student guides. "Look, they are getting up."

"Marvelous tenacity of life," commented the distiguished visitor. "How many sudden deaths would it take to postpone the game?"

Diaries etc. The spring depth chart with parenthetical 247 composite ratings. This week in college hockey; losing to Ohio State last Friday means Michigan no longer controls its destiny for a playoff spot. No, Bambi, basketball isn’t dancing. Remembering the student riots of 1908 (Craig Ross remembered this too).

Best of the Board

AWFUL CALLS OF ALL VARIETIES

Two threads for the worst calls to go against Michigan and the worst to go for us. The latter is only 50 comments short of the former as of this posting which surprised me; y’all are pretty even-handed for a bunch of superfans.

OP of the first mentions the White fumble TD in the ‘79 Rose Bowl and that one’s pretty bad but was probably hard to see at the time. That’s nothing next to robbing the 1974 team of a Rose Bowl-clinching victory over Ohio State when Mike Lantry’s winning field goal was too high. Buckeye fans sitting behind it even said so.

The first that comes to my mind was the backward pass by MSU in 2010; it was obviously behind the line, and Michigan obviously was picking it up, but they whistled it as incomplete and therefore avoided a review that probably swings the outcome of that game. Nothing pisses me off like when refs forget a rule at a crucial juncture. Michigan got our own outrageously bad call vs. MSU in 2008, when they OVERTURNED a clear non-TD catch by Brandon Minor by inventing a “pylon” rule.

YOUR BRAIN VERSUS A DRESS PHOTO

Apparently there are blind or insane people in the world who think a clearly white and gold dress in shadow is some other color. There are also colorblind idiots who think a clearly black and blue dress is something else entirely.

There’s even a third class of people who believe the color of a dress, no matter how much of a mind-eff, is off-topic for a Michigan sports website. All of this is easily remedied.

Now we all agree: it’s a good-lookin’ dress.

CREATING THE FUTURE OF THE PAST

Marketing at Michigan in its infancy, via Dr. Sap:

Art Volo’s sweatshirt was probably from J.C. Penny. This record of Bob Ufer calling great Michigan moments reappears here and there, and I’m guessing it’s where a lot of the Ufer on YouTube came from. Note the point of it was keeping ticket prices low.

ETC. Introduce yourself thread 2015. Best and worst stadium experiences (yours). Still space, bitches. NCAA says they didn’t disqualify a homeless Baylor player for accepting a roof over his head minutes after they disqualified a homeless Baylor player for accepting the offer of a roof over his head #BrandonFindsAJob. OL getting Drevno’d. Peppers < Countess in gymnastics.

Your Moment of Zen: