Dear Diary Recommends Plenty of Dark Side Comment Count

Seth

Fatcamp darksideflamlips

Dear Diary,

So about that image above. First you should know I've been looking for an excuse to associate Ohio State with Cartman ever since Brian made him Steve Spurrier in 2005. And that makes us…*

I'm so off the point, which is to introduce a ✔++ diary by TSS where he calculated the Body Mass Index of the entire Big Ten (plus some Catholic school I would argue is Butters). Really it doesn't say much other than who's got the biggest team of big guys in the Big Ten, but since this is the man-meat conference after all that's relevant.

This Diary of the Week has a lot going on in the subplots and that's what I love about it. For example which positions are packed into one body type and which have a huge variance in player size?

Position

Your answers are receiver and … dammit TSS: "DL"? That's probably a whole bunch of redshirted freshmen who haven't gotten their T's and E's yet.

As a user noted in the comments BMI is about telling bloggers they need more exercise, and probably not so valuable when you're talking about Barwicized athletes who spend entire semesters working on adding muscle mass. As to usefulness of weight watching in general, if a slimmer, older, more athletic Will Campbell looks like this…

campbell_william1

…again in 2011 and 2012 because of a weight regimen I am all for it. As a blogger I still feel like we have no way of measuring more than 18-year-old body < 21-year-old body, but this is a new and noble attempt to do that and I applaud.

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*If you've been paying attention at all to South Park and Big Ten football you will have realized by now that as much as we'd like to be straight-man Stan, we are Kyle. As in balancing academics with still being one of the cool kids, embarrassed by our East Coast heritage, wondering what happened to the days when little bro was a prop for "kick the baby," and overly prone to bouts of crushing ennui when Cartman fakes out the principle with fake contrition and is rewarded with his $10 million. Wikipedia on Kyle:

Kyle often displays the highest moral standard of all the boys and is usually depicted as the most intelligent. When describing Kyle, Stone states that both he and the character are "reactionary", and susceptible to irritability and impatience. In some instances, Kyle is the only child in his class to not initially indulge in a fad or fall victim to a ploy. This has resulted in both his eagerness to fit in, and his resentment and frustration.

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We Don't Need No Education

In other must-read diaries recently, here's one from IncrediblyBLUE, from when he played for Hoke at Ball State. Astoundingly, in this entire story not once is Hoke described as pointing at something---he makes his staff point at things for him:

"To help you guys remember this, I made these numbers.” Coach Hoke then holds up two pieces of paper with a very large ‘1’ and ‘2’ printed on each piece respectively. “So guys,” he bellows, “Remember….Academics…#1,” he says, while holding up the sign that says ‘2.’ Aaron Wellman stands next to him pointing to the sign. Coach Hoke then switches to the #1 sign and continues, “Athletics….Number 2!”  This time Wellman is using a two fingered point at the sign that says #1. Everyone in tJamie Sabau/Getty Imageshe room is laughing and nodding their head. Coach Hoke then puts back up the sign that says #2 and says again, “So, academics here,” and switching signs back to the #1, “Football here.  Does everyone understand that?”

A few posters got a little nervous at non-quotes making light of "voluntary" practices – and I admit I got a little squeamish too – but I assure you there's nothing in there for a local columnist with a grudge to invent a scandal out of. The next story promises "4AM sandbag carries at the stadium in sub-zero temperatures." Well shit.

Denard-Back or Dual-Threet?

So here's what I've been working on lots.

It's a tracker for the 4-star and higher quarterbacks recruited from 2002 to 2010 based on a question posed in some thread a few weeks ago when both erstwhile 2009 commits Beaver and Newsome popped up in transfer news. There are two tabs, one for drop-backs and another for dual-threats. Feel free to browse through and edit – it's easy to see how far I got.

The point of this exercise is to test the hypothesis that going back to a Pro-Style offense has a (clear?) benefit in greater predictability from recruiting high-profile players at the offense's most important position. If we take as a given that Michigan's Michiganness will net Michigan the highest rated X-type of quarterback, high predictability means those guys will end up the best QBs of their classes in college performance. If there's higher variability, as is hypothesized for dual-threat QBs, the ability to nab the top guys is less of an advantage. The hypothesis goes if you have fewer traits to focus on (poise, accuracy, decision-making, arm) it's easier to rate, and you're less likely to have one essential trait end up a game-changing weakness.

I'm not far enough along on the drop-backs to make anything like a conclusion or even see a pattern yet so you can be my helpers. After all what's Dear Diary all about if not profiting from other peoples' labor collaborating the efforts of MGoCitizenry!

Scoreboard!

BasiWh

Thanks dahblue for the great shotz.

Etc. from a Long Offseason

I bumped this by m1jjb00 up from the boards and it only got 3 likes. I mean he left out Harry Newman from the core circle of awesome (just 'cause it's not called the Heisman doesn't mean it wasn't a walk-away Heisman), but otherwise his comparison of alumni worthiness for a Michigan Ring of Honor is so worth a look.

THE_KNOWLEDGE is holding tryouts for a General Disarray to his Professor Chaos. All you have to do is correctly predict the outcome of Michigan's 2011 games, plus the bowl games OSU will be banned from. Note: I'm not copyediting TK posts because his formatting is part of the shtick, and how can I judge what they do with commas in the 23rd century?

I bitched at a Gopher working for DetNews (who hasn't written me back – Henning tell him how it's done, man!) about why we don't need a mascot.

And Hoke Saves Lives made a hype movie that's almost as long as a Wisconsin drive, and like things to cheer about last year itself is half-Illinois:

The soundtrack doesn't do it for me. However if you turn off the YouTube volume, then hit play on the Flaming Lips' cover of Dark Side of the Moon right on the 3-second mark, it totally lines up! Run, rabbit, run!

Comments

MGoShoe

August 9th, 2011 at 8:32 AM ^

... the diary by m1jjb00 when it first came out because there were so many threads about the topic. I'm sorry I did. One additional "like" added to his virtual till.

Can I say that I think this Dear Diary is "just right"? It has an appropriate focus on diary rescue with just the right level of commentary and new material penned by the distinguished "asst editor". 

Perhaps his tremendous long form works could be contained in a new series called "Misopogon's Musings" or some such. This would prevent them from overshadowing the highlighted MGoUser-created content.

Seth

August 9th, 2011 at 8:53 AM ^

Thanks.

I kind of had the same epiphany when I was trying to make sure there was content every day during brian's absence. During the season I expect there will be enough diaries that the user content will be more than enough content. For offseason I'm switching to more of a sometimes post an article, then catch up on the last few weeks' of user-gen when it hits a critical mass.

lbpeley

August 9th, 2011 at 8:32 AM ^

that Minnesota mascot guy hasn't responded because he's scared shitless that you're ten times the writer he is. I don't know how I missed that letter last week but what a great read.

jg2112

August 9th, 2011 at 8:52 AM ^

Why the heck would anyone get squeamish about Hoke making fun of "voluntary" practices?

Reality dictates that if you don't take part in summer workouts and practices, you're not going to be good enough to keep your spot. That's true whether you play college football or high school JV volleyball, and Denard proved that at Mr. Forcier's expense last year.

The distinction to be made wrt Rodriguez is practicing too long, which he got appropriately dinged for at two universities. As long as the coaches don't require offseason practices, and those practice sessions conform to NCAA rules, there's no reason for anyone to think anything other than that Michigan's football players are doing what the kids at 119 other FBS schools do.

Mr Mackey

August 9th, 2011 at 10:03 AM ^

I hadn't read Brian's comparison between college football and South Park.. Those worked perfectly (albeit some were outdated, like Steve Spurrier at Florida).. Maybe a new, updated version is in order? You hit the nail on the head with Michigan - Kyle.

MGoBender

August 9th, 2011 at 10:12 AM ^

That hype video (well, the first 4 minutes... hype epics don't do it for me) is immensely better with Dark Side of the Moon!  Good call!

And am I the only one who's not a fan of this recent trend of including others' original productions (i.e. The Big House feature) in hype videos and almost passing them off as your own?  That and the use of movie monologues... it's just disengenuous to me.  Maybe that's the film/video guy coming out in me.  Using ESPN clips is fine because those are really just records of events.  But when you take someone's creative production and mash it up with something else without permission, it's kinda getting close to stealing creative work to me...

Whatever, just throwing that out there.  I still think the best hype videos are the simple ones that use perfectly selected music, which is why Brian/Tim's 2009 video tops my board.

Seth

August 9th, 2011 at 12:36 PM ^

Rk (NAT) Institution Endowment Funds
1 7 University of Michigan $6,564,144,000
2 9 Northwestern University $5,945,277,000
3 26 University of Minnesota $2,195,740,000
4 30 Ohio State University $1,869,312,000
5 32 Purdue University $1,633,034,000
6 35 University of Wisconsin $1,551,384,000
7 41 Michigan State University $1,449,408,000
8 43 Indiana University $1,371,025,000
9 44 The Pennsylvania State University $1,368,031,000
10 48 University of Illinois $1,289,871,000
11 54 University of Nebraska $1,143,051,000
12 81 University of Iowa $791,231,000

Loves dirtiness and sex and swearing but still believes in promise rings. Crazy about America and NASCAR. Has a brother whom he never hangs with or acknowledges, though his redneckness comes out from time to time. That answer your question?

M-Wolverine

August 9th, 2011 at 1:47 PM ^

But considering they did that every episode/year, for a long, long time, then stopped and got away from it, and now they let him live, it still fits Iowa's horrid morbund program that finally got better and and consistently "lived" since.