Dear Diary,

What is wrong with this picture? (which Zoo Blue found on the Michigan Football Facebook page)

• Khoury in for Molk. Omigod something happen to Molk?!?
• Mike Martin's standing up, like a blitzing WILL
• Ummm…?
• Waitaminute: Khoury, Omameh…
• Is that a tight end in the backfield? Koger?
• Khoury, Omameh, …, Moore
• Hey, no right tackle. UNBALANCED!

Way to go board – follow the thread by ZB to pick this apart. And welcome to the new feature of Dear Diary: Things-That-Are-Awesome-From-the-Board-That-You-Might-Have-Missed-This-Week-And-Holy-Hell-Does-It-Need-a-Cleverer-Nickname. But first, to the diaries themselves, starting with a candidate for Diary of the Year.

This is Undefeated dream season of 1992's Ph.D. thesis to show which teams get the most bang for the buck out of their recruiting. Unlike other entries under the "recruiting is legit, yo" tag, the author whom I call "9-0-3" in my head takes into account expectation based on returning starters (especially at QB) and previous FEI performance versus recruiting class ranking. Of course Michigan is terrible:

The top schools in the B1G for outperforming expectations are Iowa, Nebraska, and Wisconsin. Whatever their methods, they have been successful turning 3 star recruits into 5 star players. Over the past three years, the worst B1G team relative to expectations is… Michigan, and that's despite last year's offensive leap. 2008, for a variety of reasons (including Tacopants), was an offensive disaster for Michigan, and 2009 was still below the model's expectations. Minnesota and Illinois round out the B1G bottom 3. Ohio State is right in the middle, mainly because it recruits so well and performs up to those expectations.

Go ahead and blame Greg Robinson. C'mon, you know you wanna!

GERRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!

He covers the regression angle pretty well – maybe do FEI percentile instead of rank. My other critique is what are you measuring: scheme effectiveness, development, talent evaluation, or a scouts' biases against recruits who don't live within 40 minutes of a Southwest Airlines hub?

You'll Be Hearing From Us

Highly aesthetic upper body-enhancement equipment / prizes for knowing things about football.

A week from now it'll be prediction this and prediction that and I'll eat a loaf of Lembas bread if we actually get through it without somebody proclaiming Michigan's going to run the table. Yet in the penultimate week of this memorable 2011 offseason, it got really kind of metttttta.

Last week Six Zero debuted the new MGoShirts for this year (see above).

Then Jeff introduced the Pick Six, a relic competition from an ancient Domer blog where you pick 5 teams you think will do well from the Top 25, plus one unranked. Originally there was no prize but eternal glory in the knowledge that you know more about football than other people, but then Brian offered some of those MGoShirts to the winners.

Brian made a rare diary appearance to announce we're gonna get pictures of things baby!

And if you haven't yet met the new guys, here's Hello: Ace, and Hello: Heiko.

Best of the Board (needs clever name)

That photo above is just one of several Hoke: The Early Years shots dug up by Wolverine Historian after MGoShoe discovered the Hoke Points at Things site. This is just a sampling of the wonders to be found deep in the belly of the MGoBoard. Since the board is quite big and I can't read it all, feel free to let me know (misopogon at att dot net) if you come across anything 92% Pure Columbian Awesome or higher. Here's some highlights this week:

1: MICHIGAN STADIUM TO COVER 25 PERCENT OF PLANET BY 2060:* Bumped to a Diary, MGoPhotoRod personally interviewed Dave Brandon about the planned further expansion of the Big House. Radical adherents of traditionalism and democratic architecture, start your griping:

The specs include all-bleacher seating, which will rise up to enclose the spaces between the sideline structures to the scoreboard at a height that the scoreboard will appear as if it is "set into" the new seating area. The design would also make the seating appear like a second deck, as a concourse will be included in the new construction below the new seating.

I'm going to see it before I judge. Second deck like Joe Louis Arena wouldn't bother me, but a visually separated section for the proles I think would damage one of the most aesthetically nice things about Michigan Stadium, which is that unlike some places it doesn't make you feel like you're walking into an Orwellian novel. I doubt however it will look any different than the concourse that broke up the 'M'.

Anyway can people see from up there? I haven't sat up high since my freshman year when they built that stupid Halo, and from there the game just looked like a bunch of blue and yellow dots chasing a white and orange dot around the field.

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* You know who's got the rest

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2. PARKING: Speaking of the stadium, DIABEETUS got some info on where you'll put your car when they're all done.

3. WTKA SUMMARY: On a thread during the live broadcast of Brian's WTKA show, Bocheezu kindly summarized the first two of three segments. Bochee- you should totally make this a weekly diary.

4. BEERS AND BARS: Lamest thing ever that a group of college guys would totally come up with: Forming a club called "DBAAA" ie "Drinking Beer Around Ann Arbor." Here's a follow-up thread to Brian's foodie entry this week that's all about Ann Arbor-y suds.

5. MINNESANGS MIGHT HAVE BEEN MORE APPROPRIATE BUT: Mustachioed Gentleman sparked a Haiku thread for welcoming Heiko, wherein everybody posted in Haiku. #ONLYATMICHIGAN

6. PEP RALLY WILL INCLUDE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUR BOSS TO FIRE YOU AGAIN: Tell Ablauf when it's time to do the Michigan/App State rematch in 2014, the "Old Wounds" game press release is already written.

Etc.

Section 1 remembers when the Lions came to play in the Big House. Not the Nittany kind – the ones that people now use as an example for devastating interior rushing.

Last year Blazefire put his season preview to the theme of "American Pie," and it was almost as good as that "Bye Bye [Name of Fraternity Which Found a Particularly Hilarious Way of Getting Kicked Off Campus]" fwd circulating around umich.edu inboxes c.1999 that you now wish you'd kept.  This year he outdid himself with Walk This Way:

…Singin’ “hail to the Victors”
at our Irish little sisters at the Big House
In the cool night air!

So we took a big chance, with a Hoke-y romance
Didn’t know if he was ready to lead,
Had us all gone foolin’, Yeah he took us for some schoolin’
Seems that he knew what he was doin ‘ indeed

Next week there's football.