Dear Diary Passes the Shakalaka
A ho-hum home win versus Purdue doesn't quite register on the official Muppet meter, even if the No. 1 team lost on Wednesday and we're the No. 2. And we can't all be celebratin' an ultimately meaningless ranking that hasn't been posted yet. So I propose a compromise:
Finding a marquee road win on its dwindling schedule was imperative for Purdue's fading tournament hopes, and for much of last night you could tell the Boilermakers were stiffing it. Then Glenn dropped the family stone…
Soundtrack | Ace
Two epic gif dunks in two weeks and we've got ourselves a new Robinson to love. A top ranking may be academic from here with Duke falling to Miami, but just in case you don't trust the coaches to do right, Mmmm Hmmm has tracked the poll movement among B1G title contenders this season. He did the same with football earlier this week, and giving him the Diarist of the Week honors for it so he doesn't have to ask the mods to bump things anymore.
LSAClassof2000 has his own metric for comparing the top teams in the conference based whether you're above or below average on 18 stats he can pull from box scores. When he's done it looks thus (click embiggemates):
The things we're below average in are the usual things; the lack of an elite defender has Michigan last in the conference in blocks with only Penn State, Nebraska, and--oh okay--Indiana in the neighborhood. For what it's worth THE_KNOWLEDGE says we'll play Ohio State in the Big Ten tourney.
A Michigan Man will coach the 49'ers. Brian on Wednesday bumped the diary by stephenrjking pleading for people to forgive Harbaugh his academic comments in '07 because, like, we're blood. I'm 
whatever; the thing I don't like is when people say they're mad at Harbaugh because he was "disloyal." If there's something that makes Michigan different it's not that we stand by each other, in fact I can't think of any other family among major college programs that's as ready to criticize itself (we're still biased). We're not the school with a "Sacred Brotherhood" that you violate by complying with NCAA investigators and tell the truth.
Jim's crimes were the same as Snyder/Rosenberg's—being mostly inaccurate in his criticism, and being motivated by spite and personal gain—although to a far smaller degree. Harbaugh doesn't care about your grudge anymore than he cares that he currently employs four (Boone, Whitner, Grant and Ginn) Buckeyes who could be exempli gratias for how little our rivals care about educating players to do something besides football or work at a car dealership. He said the thing because he was competing for the same kids attracted by Michigan's academic/athletic combo pitch while being hamstrung by Northwestern-level requirements we don't meet.
If there's an exceptionalism to Michigan—the school and the sports—it's a focus on being exceptional over whether we appear to be so. That's what distinguished Bo from Paterno, it's what distinguished Carr from Tressel, and it's what made Hoke a great choice for Michigan's head coach in 2011.
Rutgers and Maryland Explained? Using a database published by USA Today, woomba found valuations for the pieces the Big Ten recently plucked in the current media environment by manually adding "Rights/Licensing" to "Other". Maryland ($22 million) was still just No. 6 among Big East and ACC teams in this metric, and Rutgers ($14.5 million) was 12th. For reference, Nebraska was at $35.8 million the year before they joined the Big Ten.
Things of interest not related to killing the conference to gamble on an outdated TV model: Michigan leads the nation in licensing but our "Other" is a relatively pedestrian $6 million (Ohio State's was a ludicrous $20.6 million last year but other schools at the top were all around $10 to $11 million). I'm almost sure this difference is in-stadium advertising but don't tell Brandon (I'm sure he already knows and that this grates him endlessly). The football ticket shakedown and replacing the coach raised contributions from $12 million in 2010 to almost $28 million last year. Ohio State's contributions dropped by almost $10 million after Tatgate.
Best of the Board
WELCOME TO THE NEW AGE?
A 2012 highlights/2013 hype video by MGomaha. All of the highlights and none of the "crap" Brady. If all of these are so good it'll be a pleasant offseason. Still nowhere close to a Better Son or Daughter or the Weapon of Choice/Dilithium spring reels.
STARS DON'T MEAN YOU'LL PLAY IN THE SUPERBOWL…
They just wink very suggestively. Discussion on Hinton's Superbowl starters by recruiting stars article linked. One thing I noticed was that most of the guys he listed as "N/A" because they were before the Rivals database were major, major recruits. Frank Gore, Randy Moss, Ray Lewis, Ed Reed, Anguan Boldin, Terrell Suggs and Bryant McKinnie were all among the top 10 high school players in their years (Moss and Boldin of all time). Carlos Rogers and Justin Smith were Superprep All-Americans, which is the equivalent of being a Top-50 player. Jonathan Goodwin you could call a 3- or 4-star; he had all the offers but went to a MAC school so he could play right away.
If you call the other "N/A" guys unranked you end up with a Superbowl roster made up of roughly a quarter each of five-stars, four-stars, three-stars, and lower. Some readers saw that and came away with "See it doesn't matter what you're ranked out of high school because half of the guys in the Superbowl weren't blue chips." This is because these readers don't know how math works.
Rivals this year lists 34 players who are 5 stars, and had 250 players get 4 stars or higher, and gave at least 3 stars to 1,650. That's out of 8,171 high school players profiled. So let's compare percents shall we?
| Rating | 2013 Recruits | SB Starters |
|---|---|---|
| 5 stars | 0.42% | 24.5% |
| 4 stars | 3.06% | 28.3% |
| 3 stars | 20.19% | 24.5% |
| 2 or less | 76.33% | 22.6% |
| Players | 8,171 | 53 |
If stars didn't matter these two columns ought to be apportioned the same. Yes it's too small a sample size to scream correlation, but that's a very suggestive wink.
Your Moment of Zen:
Sorry dad.
Via mgovideo - Apparently he and I share an internal playlist.
EDIT: The title of this article was changed after posting because apparently it was causing Creed-related seizures. Please note that the title to the Sly & The Family Stone song where they say "Boom Shakalaka" is "I Want to Take You Higher." There is no reason to have any other song come to your head when you hear those words.
January 25th, 2013 at 9:36 AM ^
Why in the hell did Higher from Creed immediately come into my head as soon as I read the title of this thread??!
January 25th, 2013 at 9:43 AM ^
January 25th, 2013 at 1:59 PM ^
Required viewing: Sly's "Wanna Take You Higher / Hey Music Lover" from Woodstock. I think that the "Woodstock" feature film footage has been removed from YouTube. The middle of winter in Michigan would be a great time to re-watch Woodstock, if only for those few minutes of Sly and the Family Stone.
January 25th, 2013 at 11:57 AM ^
Well I mean everyone saw the dunk and thought "That's an NBA Jam dunk." Then you think of the song.
January 26th, 2013 at 10:42 AM ^
January 25th, 2013 at 10:08 AM ^
The following two quotes are spot on in my opinion:
"If there's something that makes Michigan different it's not that we stand by each other, in fact I can't think of any other family among major college programs that's as ready to criticize itself (we're still biased). We're not the school with a "Sacred Brotherhood" that you violate by complying with NCAA investigators and tell the truth."
AND
"If there's an exceptionalism to Michigan—the school and the sports—it's a focus on being exceptional over whether we appear to be so. That's what distinguished Bo from Paterno, it's what distinguished Carr from Tressel, and it's what made Hoke a great choice for Michigan's head coach in 2011."
January 25th, 2013 at 10:30 AM ^
Then who was that guy we saw play for Michigan with "Goodwin" on the back of the jersey?
January 25th, 2013 at 10:57 AM ^
Same guy after transferring.
Such compliments have been the norm since Jonathan Goodwin has blazed his football trail. Overlooked, likely because of Seymour, Jonathan Goodwin signed with Ohio University, where he started as a freshman. He knew he was good enough for bigger stage so he set his sights on The Big House, home the University of Michigan Wolverines. Luckily, Harold Goodwin was a graduate assistant for Michigan coach Lloyd Carr, so he popped in some tape of his younger brother. Carr bit, and the two Goodwins shared an apartment as Jonathan transferred to Michigan and Harold took a coaching job at Eastern Michigan University.
. The more you know.gif.
January 25th, 2013 at 11:16 AM ^
I have to assume its the blog skewing young if Creed came into their head first instead of Sly and The Family Stone. But, I am old
Thought the Harbaugh controversy was much ado about nothing then and much ado about nothing now. Just some overly sensitive Michigan fans.
January 25th, 2013 at 12:24 PM ^
After a thorough investigation by the Notre Dame Athletic Department's Sports Information Director, I'd like to announce that all of you were duped, and that in fact Seth is my real, live online fake boyfriend:
I'm
whatever; the thing I don't like is when people say they're mad at Harbaugh because he was "disloyal." If there's something that makes Michigan different it's not that we stand by each other, in fact I can't think of any other family among major college programs that's as ready to criticize itself (we're still biased). We're not the school with a "Sacred Brotherhood" that you violate by complying with NCAA investigators and tell the truth.
Jim's crimes were the same as Snyder/Rosenberg's—being mostly inaccurate in his criticism, and being motivated by spite and personal gain—although to a far smaller degree. Harbaugh doesn't care about your grudge anymore than he cares that he currently employs four (Boone, Whitner, Grant and Ginn) Buckeyes who could be exempli gratias for how little our rivals care about educating players to do something besides football or work at a car dealership. He said the thing because he was competing for the same kids attracted by Michigan's academic/athletic combo pitch while being hamstrung by Northwestern-level requirements we don't meet.
January 25th, 2013 at 12:52 PM ^
may be hazy, but didn't Brian come around with the update that the curriculum of the "student-athlete" playing football at Stanford took the similar track of classes as those ND or U-M? And though my eyes may be getting older, those Stanford players with mohawks and tatted arms hardly looked to be the 4.0 GPA/1400+ SAT achievers that Harbaugh seemed to indicate were base requirements for admission into Stanford in the first place.
January 25th, 2013 at 1:55 PM ^
You might be right. My general rule of thumb in arguments over which schools were football factories and which weren't, has always been that if Northwestern and Stanford wanted to argue that their football student/athletes were superior students, they were welcome to do so, and I'd happily listen to the argument. The only caveat being that the proponent of the argument had to be a graduate of Northwestern or Stanford. And in that case, I was willing to personally supply the sauvignon blanc for the duration of the discussion.
If the argument was that Notre Dame had superior admissions and academic standards for its football players, my response was "bullshit." And I left. It's not an argument I will suffer gladly.
Michigan was better than almost everybody else, and whatever differed, was mostly irrelevant.
January 25th, 2013 at 5:57 PM ^
The difference is minor. Most schools will do whatever to get a kid in. Michigan is slightly above that, and we lose the odd Dorsey or Burbridge because of it. Northwestern and Stanford are to Michigan and Notre Dame what M and ND are to, say, Ohio State. We're still talking about a school that will let in a C kid with a 22 on the ACT but NEVER a C- kid with a 20. Of course with football talent a Dorsey or a Burbridge every other year adds up to something. Michigan's level of academic requirement for a scholarship football player is low enough that most high school kids will qualify, and we'll trust in the program to make sure they can complete a Michigan courseload. Northwestern and Stanford are still low enough to fit most kids--and those kids are WAAAAY different than the typical freshman.
Once at the school, no there isn't a huge difference. ND like to claim their athletes are thrown into the same classes as every other kid but that's just because they have way fewer classes than Michigan, but those classes are actually no harder than MSU--the prestige of the school is maintained by the expense of going there, not the actual education so much. Stanford players don't have any different education than Michigan players. Northwestern players do if only because of the way that school is organized--you can't avoid really hard classes on the front and back ends of your degree, from what I'm told by friends who graduated.
In total effect, I would bet you Northwestern's standards are de facto WAY higher than Stanfords, even if they're the same on the way in (it's a two-tier process, or was when i wrote the article on it a few years ago), because Northwestern sticks to a niche of football players who are also smart enough to get into Michigan even if they didn't play football, while Stanford tries to hit the same niche Michigan does of the smarter-than-average athlete who wants to also have a shot at winning a bowl more than twice a century. The only difference between Michigan and Stanford is their admissions people are slightly more prudish whores than our prudish whores.
January 25th, 2013 at 10:17 PM ^
Good summation of this "process". For an outsider to these types of programs, I'm a bit in the dark on the matter of academic standards amongst schools (more precisely, the better schools). I only know as much as I've read here, which is pretty much the writings of "board members", which means I've read a few sides of the Michigan admissions Dept. and its leniency. This helped square-up where Michigan (and others) really does fit in the "athlete admission".
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