First, a quick note: For all of you diarists who wanted a better way to get at old UFRs, I've added an Upon Further Review Archives to the User-Curated Hall of Fame page. Go forth and discover. Now on with the show...

Dear Diary,

I tried going without Michigan football this week, and I got a little crazy. I'm ready to admit I have a problem...

I tried to get some football in, heading to my high school alma mater on Friday to watch future Wolverine Shawn Conway not get a ball thrown to him in the Seaholm Maples' 21-7 victory over my Groves Falcons. Stat of the day: current high school girls had on almost as much makeup (2,798 lbs.) as clothing (2,856 lbs.) I'm not complaining out of fuddy-duddyness but envy: I went to high school during the tail end of the grunge era, when about the raciest thing girls would wear to class were inside-out Coed Naked [Professional Occupation] t-shirts.

Which leads me to the real theme of Michigan football this week:

OMG SHOPPING!!!

To see why, scroll down to find Six Zero's absolutely epic Wife Day Preview:

Cheap Thrills

Worry if...

• Ann Taylor has coupons of any kind.
• She brings an early Christmas Shopping List
• New stores, with a Grand Opening Sale.

Cackle with knowing glee if...

• My wife says “Wow, those surround sound units are amazing.”
• The words “Go ahead and I’ll catch up with you later” are even whispered.
• Live football is being displayed on any television in my basic vicinity.

The post, which instantly made the User-Curated Hall of Fame, has already spawned an Opponent's Press Conference, a post-game flame war on the boards, and a movie! Unfortunately there was no liveblog, but chance of a UFR is 80 percent. To wit: we MGoHusbands didn't spend the weekend with our wives, but we did spend it on a Michigan football blog talking about spending time with our wives, which for those of us in some form of obsession therapy is major progress.

For leaving his credit rating and not a few man cards at a Pennsylvania outlet mall, Six Zero wins Diarist of the Week, which trophy is going in the garage.

Did You Say Michigan Football?

Yes, and let's talk about that...

Little bro is having a good time at our expense, and we're not really sure what year it is, and all of this is really hard to deal with, but it's okay because thanks to BlockM we are now seeing a therapist:

Older Man: Hey kid, I don't know a lot... but you see this? All this shit. It's not your fault.

The older man steps toward the young man and opens the manila envelope. It's full of freep articles and newspaper clippings. The one on top declares the 3-9 season to be the worst of all time. Another can be seen proclaiming the exact number of hours since Michigan beat Ohio State.

Young Man: Yeah, I know that. It's all those stupid injuries.

Older Man: Look at me son. It's not your fault.

Young Man: I know, the recruiting has been bad.

Older Man: It's not your fault.

We also go to Drakeep for a second opinion.

What if I'm Just Afraid of Lions?

These ones?

No.

These ones?

LOLZ. No, the ones who wear neckerchiefs and pasted us the last two years.

Oh, those. Don't worry about those...

Fortunately, all things Nittany aren't nearly as terrifying this year, partly because they were Michigan 2008 at quarterback to begin with, and because since then their roster reads like an OSHA report.

If you want more (of course you do -- you're obsessed, right?) MGoDiarists have provided.

User kb starts us off with a predictive win model (which--SPOILER--predicts WIN!) using a combination of tempo-free stats. Our PREDSCORE is 1.21, good for fifth (behind OSU, MSU, Iowa and Wisconsin) in the Big Ten. Penn State (-0.88) is 8th.

Nonnair also noticed something interesting: Penn State seems to do most of its passing on 1st down:

Based on these stats, occasional watching of PSU games, and poring over their play-by-play sheets this year, this Penn State team throws deep almost exclusively on first down, and has found success that way for TDs in three of the past four games.

So good news if easy TD passes to Andrew Quarless are keeping you up at nights:

1. Daryll Clark (Half-Brady/Half-Duck?) is gone.
2. If it's gonna happen, it'll happen quickly.

Quit the Psychobabble and Give Me Statistics!

With the bye week things were a little light in the MGoMath department, but some of the usual suspects came on with post-Iowa updates.

Enjoy Life came in with his excellent updates using national rankings that actually mean something (stern look, BCS), where he shows us the Michigan who lost to MSU and Iowa is still pretty much the same Michigan that torched Bowling Green:

... Based on these rankings, M maintains a 43% chance for a +5 WLM (9-4 or better) season and an 83% chance for a winning season.

As for what's different now than three weeks ago, Enjoy Life has you covered on that too. In a single word: "turnovers." In a thousand words:

Throw ball to wrong team = please return expectations to 7-5.

But We're Gonna Be Awesome in the Future, Right?

Well, that depends on a lot of things. There was a really good board discussion this week by cypress on a best-case scenario for next year's defense. It wasn't bumped to Diary, but when you include all the responses it's about on that level, and includes several responses that could have been diaries themselves. Read so you know what to be rooting for.

Usually I don't bother sharing things written by the MGoStaff, and this will get covered again in Tim's Wednesday Recruiting, but I would be remiss if I didn't bring up TomVH's best-guess diary. For those of you who have just a passing (i.e. healthy) level of interest in the next crop, this is for you, since it gives a general overview of the guys Michigan is likely to add next year. Short-short version, the 2011 class will be something kinda like this:

In meta-recruiting, MGoBlog has great luck in finding All American diarists, but because we're college football fans, of course we're always on the lookout for the next big thing. My bold prediction: this guy tasnyder01, who created his account just 8 days ago, will one day join the ranks of the Great, Bored, and Need to Share Our Thoughts. He made his diaretic debut this week when I bumped his UFR of Kenny Demens from the board, and he posted that just two hours after a comprehensive rundown of secondary losses that I almost bumped as well. He's still really raw, but if our coaches can teach tasnyder01 to use a WYSIWYG editor we might have a future Diary All Star on our hands. You heard it here first.

Etc.

• Communist Football continued his regular series, tracking Michigan, Big Ten, and NCAA records likely to get Denarded.
• Your weekly Week in Pillow Fights by stubob is back this..uh...week.
• Wereverine reminds us that Sweatervest locking up Ohio talent is probably more worrisome for Michigan than anything happening in-state.

Stay sane, people, or else end up like Penn State fans; you'll get to meet them this week.