Get Out Of My Cab Comment Count

Brian

Warning: post rated PG-13 for f-bomb drop.

11/6/2009 – Michigan 1, Miami 3 – 4-3, 2-1 CCHA
11/7/2009 – Michigan 36, Purdue 38 -  5-5, 1-4 Big Ten
11/7/2009 – Michigan 1, Miami 5 – 4-4, 2-2 CCHA

get-out-of-my-cab

In the aftermath of The Horror, my coping strategy was to shut off the blog—which was then still on Blogger and subject to the chaos of Haloscan's free-for-all—to avoid any emo suicides and watch The Big Lebowski. (Kittens would show up Monday.) Yes, I am one of those annoying people who thinks The Big Lebowski is the pinnacle achievement of western civilization. I haven't gone to a bowling alley dressed up like Saddam Hussein or the police chief of Malibu, at least.

I didn't do this for any reason related to football. I just like the movie. It makes me laugh to beat the band. I'd never thought there was any sort of overarching philosophy in the movie worth starting a religion over. I was in a mood to reflect on the underpinnings of my life, though.

As the movie unfolded I belatedly realized—or maybe it just seemed way more relevant given my mental state—that the Dude is a spectator throughout. At no point in the movie does the Dude actually take an action without being badgered into it by Walter.* Even the cabbie who likes the Eagles ends up taking a decisive action at the expense of our hero. By the end of the thing, Lebowski's rug is gone, apartment destroyed, car burned to a crisp, and friend dead because an inexplicable series of events he had almost nothing to do with.

My girlfriend says that the reason there is not an academic paper about the Dude's shocking lack of "agency," as the smart kids say, is that it is "too obvious to be interesting." So, too, are the parallels to Michigan fandom**.

I didn't intentionally configure my hair to match the Dude but it does and goddamn if big, incompetent misery factory Walter isn't a good stand-in for Michigan athletics at the moment:


Video: Big Lebowski   Benzer: sinema, film, big, lebowski, ashes, kül

(Sorry about the Turkish(?) subtitles. Woo inadvisable copyright claims.)

"Everything's such fucking travesty with you" was my weekend.

I'm worn out after the last two weeks of football and the fiasco at Yost this weekend; when Miami scored to make it 4-1 with maybe 15 minutes left in the third period I reached a breaking point and just left. Other scenes from earlier this week: some guy tells me not to swear so much in front of his kids at the Friday Miami game, I get in a verbal fight with some guy who wants Rodriguez fired and is complaining about Tate Forcier, cousin of mine gets in separate verbal fight after the game when a different guy is yelling "you suck" at Forcier as he runs off the field, and an adorable child in the row behind me at the Saturday Miami game screams "Mich-i-GAN" the whole game—which was cute the first 50 times.

I've got no real analysis of either team other than they're both worse than I thought. I'm burning out after two years of almost unrelenting misery, and looking forward to football season being over for the third straight year. I mean, when Michigan was down to Purdue in the second half, some fan ten or twenty rows behind me kept shouting "they've got no heart" over and over again as the guy in the row in front of me called for Rodriguez's firing. Having a conversation about Michigan football right now is trying to remember that episode of GI Joe where Destro finds a secret ninja manual in a volcano*** that allows him to kill people with precisely-applied touches: if you can just remember where the red dots are you can spare everyone a lot of pain.

I'll address the question I've gotten in a thousand different forms the past couple weeks—"when can we fire this guy?"—in a separate post. It's been that kind of era.

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*(The movie opens with a couple guys peeing on his rug because someone else's wife owes money to Jackie Treehorn. The Big Lebowski directs him to make a ransom drop. Walter screws up the drop despite the Dude screaming at Walter not to screw it up. Walter leads the Bay of Pigs invasion of Larry Sellers's home. Jackie Treehorn invites him to his beach party, so he goes. Maude directs him to show up at her place and directs him to sleep with her—"love me". When the nihilists confront the dude for his three dollars, Walter re-enacts Hill 368 as Lebowski attempts to throw money at Amie Mann's boyfriend.

About the only action Lebowski takes in the movie is telling Brandt that he can have a rug.)

**(Freudian slip: spelled that "fandoom.")

***(This may not be the right character, or even the right cartoon.)

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BULLETS

  • I wonder if the gameplan on offense was specifically designed to piss Joe Tiller off. Probably not. But dang Roundtree is going hold onto his spot in the lineup when Odoms gets back. He is a Purdue wideout in all ways: physically limited but precise, fearless over the middle, and a guy the quarterback clearly trusts.
  • Mouton got pulled for JB Fitzgerald after his (-3, cover –3) on Purdue's first drive but re-entered in the second half; Leach got yanked for Obi Ezeh late, too. So much for the hope that either of the two backups could prove clearly superior to the guys who started the season.
  • Carlos Brown had one carry. Injured? Or doghouse after Illinois? Not that I mind: Minor is clearly superior when healthy.
  • Omameh played RG the whole game and Dorrestein never came in. If guys like Brown and Dorrestein aren't even on the injury report, why bother having one? Not even "probable"?
  • Related: it was really frustrating how many times it seemed that Purdue's offensive line had gotten blown back and Bolden would pop through a hole after taking a circuitous route around a mess. I bet there are some major minuses for the LB corps on the UFR.
  • That damn rollout play was shades of the Toledo game. Surely there's an adjustment that can be made there, isn't there?
  • Warren doesn't seem good enough to go to the NFL this year anymore. He was mostly a spectator as Purdue complete a ton of routes in front of him.
  • With Banks out, Sagesse slid over to act as RVB's backup and Campbell got 20-30 snaps as Martin's backup. He seemed to do a little better.
  • I would have gone for it on fourth and ten, too. Michigan had one, maybe two more possessions and needed eight points. Kicking a field goal there only helps you if you get the ball back and score a touchdown, events that seemed unlikely given the defense's performance to that point. It think it's a close decision because it was long yardage and a field goal is a defensible option, but I would have gone for it. That's a real gray area.
  • I did have a problem with how much time Michigan took on their final touchdown drive. Scenarios there in the event of a touchdown:

    You get two: If you hurried up, Purdue has three or so minutes on the block. If you didn't, Purdue has two. Either way they have an opportunity to drive for the win; the minute there doesn't make a big difference.

    You don't get two: If you don't hurry, you've got one timeout and two minutes left and have to try an onside kick and get the ball back with 30 seconds when that fails. If you do, you can kick it deep and hypothetically get the ball back with 1:30 needing only a field goal.

    Michigan should have been in jet tempo on the final series, and should have thought about throwing for the touchdown instead of running for it.
  • Michigan breaks out the triple option—though I bet the dive is not a read yet—for the first time all year and gets a negative play and a crippling fumble out of it. Two initial thoughts: how is that fair when we haven't run that in the history of Rich Rodriguez, and if Purdue can defend it why the hell can't we?
  • The Higgs boson theory from the Purdue preview might be publishable after Michigan lost to Purdue because the kicker missed an extra point in the same game he hit a 51-yard field goal.

ELSEWHERE

Danny Hope introduced Rich Rodriguez to Zack Reckman, the Purdue lineman who got suspended in the wake of the Jonas Mouton Suspension fiasco, in a pissy drama that promises to make future Purdue games more interesting. MVictors has the relevant audio clip from the post-game press conference where Rodriguez complains about the incident.

Obligatory "take" I will bring strong: short of slapping yourself, press conferences don't matter. People use them to support/hate a coach they already support or hate because of on-field events. Nothing from Rodriguez's press conferences has ever made me think he was more likely to succeed or fail at Michigan. It is just talking, and that's a skill that a lot of coaches don't have.

As for the act itself: bush league, but I like bush league. It makes things spicy.

MVictors also reproduces an interesting statement from the officials who did the game about what went down on the crazy Carlos Brown lateral review:

What was the interpretation on the fourth down review with the forward lateral? What was it that the replay official saw?

TODD GEERLINGS: “The replay official saw that the ball, when it left his hand to the point where it touched the receiver’s hand, was clearly forward from the 13 to the 12 yard line. That’s why we had an illegal forward pass from the spot of that pass.”

Who called for the review?

GEERLINGS: “The booth called for the review and I announced that on the field prior to. The coaches on the field were trying to but Purdue did not have a challenge left so they couldn’t have. They were trying to but just as I got the buzz on the pager, I just turned to Purdue and said ‘We got it’ but I think people thought they had challenged it. They were trying to, but they did not.”

This is great. I haven't seen it on tape yet but given the lack of bitching it's probably the right call, and having some clear explanations for what happened in the heat of a critical moment is a much better way to go about defusing potential controversy's than the SEC ham-handed—nay—Delany-esque handling of its ongoing and never-ending refereeing fiascoes.

There's a press conference torrent, too.

Comments

markusr2007

November 9th, 2009 at 11:56 AM ^

in Santa Monica, CA is where they filmed the "Big Lebowski".
It would be a great place for a party, but they closed the joint down 6 years ago.

By the way, Donnie is my alter-ego because everyone keeps telling me to STFU.

bcsblue

November 9th, 2009 at 12:06 PM ^

I don't know how this fits in the analogy, but the Dude never bowls in the entire movie. Not once do you see him pick up a ball and throw it down the lane.

Also I think the lack of complaining about the "forward" lateral, is due to the fact that the team blows and no one really cares the officials fucked up. The refs didnt leave 3 wr's wide open. Also the whole drive never should have happened because Hemingway clearly just fell flat on his face and fumbled the punt. I bet if this was Michigan of any other year and the game actually mattered and we hadn't had our dongs punched for 60 min for the 3rd straight week, there might be a little more fight in the "refs suck" clan.

JeremyB

November 9th, 2009 at 12:04 PM ^

The Dude takes action only one time in the movie: When he's in Jackie Treehorn's house, he gets off the couch, sneaks to the counter, and pencil-rubs Jackie's notepad.

This is notable because it's the one time he gets up and decisively takes action, and it turns into a complete disaster for him: His drink gets poisoned, he's kicked out of Jackie's house, picked up by the cops, harassed and abused by the Malibu chief of police (a real reactionary), thrown from the cab, and returns home to find his apartment trashed.

juwan24

November 9th, 2009 at 12:03 PM ^

I still can't figure out why we're running that play with Minor and trying to get our best inside runner the ball on the outside so the corners have the sideline to help bring him down. Just another stupid coaching move by RichRod, sometimes I wonder if he's even paying attention.

Jebus

November 9th, 2009 at 12:04 PM ^

This one didn't hurt that bad, which is a little concerning.

This season has been like that scene in A Christmas Story where Ralphie is having his mouth washed out with soap. Each loss is different-

Purdue was like Palmolive- a nice, piquant after-dinner flavor - heady, but with just a touch of mellow smoothness.

Illinois, however, was clearly Lifebuoy.

I was offered two tickets to the Saturday night hockey game, and thankfully passed. I feel as if I dodged a bullet there.

xRTDxWolverineNATION

November 9th, 2009 at 12:04 PM ^

I was at the game, so like everyone else I could not tell what the ruling would be, but I DVR'd the game, and replayed that play many times. The Big Ten Network (as usual)didn't have the best angle to show whether or not it was thrown forwards or Backwards. From what I saw while Brown was getting pulled out of Bounds His arm did not look to me like it was going forwards, and The lineman was clearly behind him before he stepped forward to catch the ball. So without knowing what angle the booth had, there was no Evidence to overturn the call on the field. I could be wrong, and there could be a better angle of the play I have not seen, BUT from what I saw on the BIg Ten Replay, there was no evidence to over turn the call on the field. That's just my take.

Subrosa

November 9th, 2009 at 12:15 PM ^

I did not see a single angle that was conclusive. It was close, but unless the replay refs had a different angle, this was another over-reach by the Big 10 replay crew.

I wasn't jumping up and down about it because we shouldn't have had the ball at that time anyway (the phantom kick-catch interference call was on that drive), but it was a BS call.

matty blue

November 9th, 2009 at 1:09 PM ^

...i think we can all name half a dozen plays this season where the replay official overturned a play and not only didn't have the indisputable evidence he needed, but actually ignored video evidence to the contrary. just ask indiana...

also - i had to listen to the second half on the radio, and brandstatter and beckman were insistent that the review was whether brown was laying on a purdue player (who was partially out of bounds) when he pitched it, and whether he was down at that point. nobody knew the rule, and they thought the review was specifically to check what the rule was. when they called forward pass, they both called it a copout. fwiw.

The Squid

November 9th, 2009 at 2:34 PM ^

Watching it on the television machine, I was absolutely sure that they'd rule it a backwards lateral and was really surprised that they called it a forward pass. In fact, I assumed that the decision took so long because they were reviewing the rulebook to decide whether Carlos Brown was out of bounds or not when lying atop a player who was out. (Players and refs on the field at the snap are in play regardless of where they are on the field during the course of play so Brown was in.)

I must have watched the 2 different shots provided by BTN a half dozen times each, and I honestly have no idea what the officials saw. I'm also a little surprised by the Todd Geerlings quote that it was "clearly" a forward pass because it sure didn't seem like anything was clear about it, and, if anything, the available views pointed towards "insufficient evidence" as opposed to "clearly". Granted, in the booth they could have been looking at something that BTN didn't show.

Speaking of BTN, the announcers were completely dumbstruck by that play. They didn't offer a single piece of insightful commentary on it, including even wondering if Carlos Brown was out (as a significant number of viewers must have been) or explaining why he wasn't.

matty blue

November 9th, 2009 at 3:12 PM ^

...that they were checking the rule book. they never said what the rule was, unfortunately - my first thought, which may or may not be true, was the example where a ballcarrier is running the sideline and gets grabbed by a defensive player who falls out of bounds while still holding the ballcarrier. the ballcarrier isn't out of bounds in that case...

The Squid

November 9th, 2009 at 5:02 PM ^

The relevant rule is:

A player or an airborne player is out of bounds when part of his person touches anything, other than another player or game official, on or outside a boundary line

In other words, being out of bounds has nothing to do with sideline plane-breaking (which is why a player can hold the ball out over out of bounds territory, yet remain in bounds), and officials and players (by which I think it's safe to assume the rule means those officials and players legally on the field at the start of play and not the freshmen chilling by the Gatorade) are in play regardless of where they are on the field.

So, providing that Carlos Brown was only touching in bounds territory and the defender, he was still in bounds when he chucked the ball to Huyge.

Which is all really just to satisfy my academic curiosity since that apparently wasn't actually part of the official decision about the play being an illegal forward pass.

matty blue

November 10th, 2009 at 9:28 AM ^

that's EXACTLY what i was wondering.

as you said, it's a moot point...well, apparently, at least based on the postgame explanation. i still have my suspicions that they were, in fact, reviewing in bounds / out of bounds but found the forward pass when they started looking (CONSPIRACY!).

thanks for the info, mr.science. great, great avatar.

Chrisgocomment

November 9th, 2009 at 12:05 PM ^

Brian,

Why do you bother getting in shouting matches with people who like being angry? Even when Lloyd had Michigan rolling like in 2006 there were still people being assholes at the game. I don't see the point in addresses those sorts. Enjoy the game, cheer on the team, let people who like being angry be angry.

bcsblue

November 9th, 2009 at 12:12 PM ^

Seriously these are the people who were screaming for Mallet over healthy Henne, screaming at Tom Brady, saying you fucking suck to John Navarre. Yelling "hit em" "kill em" and then leaving with 3 minutes left vs Notre Dame.

Its like you take a standardized test, fuck up and still manage to finish in the 89th percentile. You cant understand how there are that many stupid fucking people. Spend 10 min around a large group of people and you realize how that is, these people are fucking stupid and cant put A and B together and come to C. Seriously, man as a race is fucking stupid.

Brian

November 9th, 2009 at 2:15 PM ^

three reasons:
1) they are convenient outlet for my own anger that I feel is not ethically bad. yelling at a kid because he's not playing a game as well as you'd like is a douche move. yelling at a douche is about as cathartic but less likely to make me feel dirty.
2) i have delusions that if enough people make it socially unacceptable to act like that some people will shut up.
3) i might as well make them as miserable as they're making me.

thevictor22

November 9th, 2009 at 4:15 PM ^

I think there is a potential benefit from it. Odds are there are people sitting around the screaming idiot who are also angry and less knowledgeable to the point of believing the nonsense. By calling the person out, the rest of the people sitting in the area get to hear a dissenting opinion that hopefully stop them from becoming a screaming idiot themselves.

woodfeld

November 9th, 2009 at 12:10 PM ^

Do you think his recent play has more to do with him becoming disenfranchised with the team? Like the losses and negativity are causing him to mail it in as he waits for Nov 22 (assuming no bowl game) to announce his intentions to bolt to the NFL? I thought I had read somewhere on a mgoblog board post that he is biding his time in anticipation of getting out of here ASAP as school is not his favorite aspect of college. Any thoughts?

Blue in Seattle

November 9th, 2009 at 1:45 PM ^

Although the post you are replying too used sans Graham to mean "without Graham" and that's maybe grammatically a little confusing, he meant that Warren looks bad because he and Graham are the only ones capable of performing, and even if they do the job of two people, it's still not enough.

so see if this helps, the D-Line is the Rock, and the Rock is good, the Linebackers are the scissors, and the scissors are really really weak in the middle, the secondary is the paper, and even with Warren, the paper is wet and anything pokes right through the middle,

So as an offensive coordinator you already have the upper hand on Michigan, you'd be an idiot to fight rock to rock, you wait to see if the rock is augmented by the scissors to be a bigger rock (blitz) and then throw to the open man, or with this weak secondary, three open men,

if the scissors aren't blitzing then 4 on 6 rarely gets a sack, and if the QB is mobile at all he can easily move around to help one of the 4 receivers to get open, which against this secondary and linebacker core is a given.

The Michigan D has 2 or 3 really bad holes, the super talent on the team is covering for them, but you can't cover for them an entire game. This is why the D wears down over time.

Until the offense puts in another ND type performance, they will not tilt the table.

I think Wisconsin gives us the best chance, since their talent is based on a slow field position type strategy. This lowers the total amount of flash fire points that the Offense need to put up.

I enjoyed the Purdue game because it had Minor Rage, Roy Roundtree emerge as the go to guy, and Tate get some swagger back now that he has a go to guy.

The win would have been great, because a bowl game extends the practice season, but let's face it, after the Illinois loss, this year went from a middling "nice try" to a damn, more work to be done.

And actually the worse the record, the better beating Ohio State feels. If it happens.

zlionsfan

November 9th, 2009 at 1:37 PM ^

let's use Leigh Bodden as an example. Last year it looked like he couldn't spell zone if you spotted him the consonants, but part of it had to be the knowledge that on any given play, even if he had his area covered, chances are at least two of the nearby zones would be wide open anyway, so what the hell. This year it looks like he's a solid corner again.

Not that I would excuse the behavior, just that it seems likely that being surrounded by bad play may cause some people to play badly themselves.

somewittyname

November 9th, 2009 at 12:13 PM ^

I think an additional factor is after that missed extra point Olesnavage wasn't remotely close on his fg attempt. Even if we had kicked I say 50/50 he makes it.

woodfeld

November 9th, 2009 at 12:29 PM ^

I don't know. He made a 51 yarder earlier in the game and the 49 yarder he missed had enough leg from the looks of it. Olesnavage has looked pretty darn good for a walk on that had never played before. This was a high 30's yard FG attempt and the chance of getting 4th & 10 wasn't very high, I thought you had to attempt the FG there.

c williams

November 9th, 2009 at 1:21 PM ^

I also thought at the time that a FG try with almost 5 minutes left in the game was the way to go.

But it comes down to 2 bad options. What is better odds?:
1. making 4th and 10 and making a 2pt conversion
2. making FG, making defensive stop, and making TD as time winds down

That missed xtra point really screwed up our approach to the rest of the game.

blackacre

November 9th, 2009 at 12:16 PM ^

I can't help but wonder how Alabama would have faired had it signed RR, if the "cupboard was bare" thing would have arisen as an excuse. I can't believe that UM's recruiting was that much worse than UA's the couple years preceding Saban getting hired. Lloyd Carr couldn't outrecruit friggin' Mike Shula? Since then, though, there does seem to be a disparity, heh. I do think UA would have fired RR after two losing season though, fwiw. Good luck on the rest of the season UM.

bronxblue

November 9th, 2009 at 12:48 PM ^

Hey, maybe RR couldn't cut it at a school that recently employed:

Mike Dubose - fired after NCAA investigations into recruiting of Albert Means led to the loss of 21 scholarships over three years, a two-year bowl ban, and five years of probation.

Mike Price - before coaching a single game at Alabama was fired for bringing a stripper back to a motel and likely engaging in some PG-13+ behavior.

bronxblue

November 9th, 2009 at 1:08 PM ^

I apologize - I might have come on a bit harshly there.

Alabama has the advantage of having access to a wealth of high-quality recruits in surrounding states. Outside of Ohio and parts of Pennsylvania, UM has to recruit nationally in order to nab top-notch kids. With Alabama, you either grow up an Auburn fan or an Alabama fan, and the wealth of talent in the state (plus places like Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida in close proximity) means that even during a bad year, you are going to nab some top-notch recruits from your own backyard. Michigan doesn't usually produce this wealth of talent, so a drop-off in recruiting nationally cannot be mitigated as easily by homegrown talent going to the big local school.

markusr2007

November 9th, 2009 at 12:14 PM ^

There are valuable lessons we can all extract from "The Big Lebowski" when it comes to such loud-mouthed, idiotic fans.

Brian, just try this Dude phrase next time a guy says he wants Rodriguez fired, etc.:

The Dude: "Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

They'll have like no response, man.

It works 60% of the time every time.

jlvanals

November 9th, 2009 at 12:21 PM ^

Give Brandon Minor the goddamn football. For that matter, give Brandon Minor the goddamn football a minimum of 30 times per game the rest of the season, barring injury, and let's just see what happens.