Hello: Dear Diary Comment Count

Seth

Agoodgoodnight2brainonmichigan

On the right is something I made from this week's Blockham's by Six Zero.

The left is a screen-cap from the pinnacle of awesome. Threads existing in the shot are as follows: WOOOO-HOOOOO!; Hello: Chris Fox; MUPPETS!!!!!!!; Sullinger: post-game words to Burke; Hello: Taco Charlton; official greatest day of ever thread; Ozone: Meyer > Hoke on Recruiting Trail = Egg in Face; The Announcers; Brady Hoke; Senior Night Video?; Life, in General; What just happened???; and Super Saturday (2-18-2012) Recap. That last by YakAttack has the play-by-play for everything that went down but here's Saturday:

  • 12:00 p.m. Football: Kyle Bosch commits
  • 1:00 p.m. Lacrosse: Begins first-ever road game as varsity (would lose to PSU 16-9)
  • 1:05 p.m. Football: Wyatt Shallman commits
  • 1:55 p.m. Track & Field: Trio of Wolverines finish first at Silverston Invitational.
  • 2:25 p.m. Football: Jourdan Lewis commits, whiddle-guy Cass Tech CB mantle deployed
  • 2:25 p.m. Football: David Dawson commits.
  • 3:36 p.m. Baseball: Logan McAnallen pitches 2 scoreless innings to preserve Bobby Brosnahan's gem (7.0 innings, 4 hits, 1 run), and Michigan beats Setaon Hall 2-1.
  • 4:21 p.m. Softball: Freshman LHP Haylie Wagner completes shutout of No. 22 Kentucky
  • 7:25 p.m. Hockey: A.J. Treais scores in OT to beat Northern Michigan and sweep weekend series.
  • 9:20 p.m. M Gymnastics: Season-high 345.700 score hands Ohio State their first loss
  • 9:39 p.m. Softball: Freshman RHP Sara Driesenga completes shutout of FAU
  • 11:00 p.m. M Basketball: Michigan upsets No. 6 Ohio State 56-51
  • 11:01 p.m. Kate Upton: Kate Upton is all Kate Upton.
  • 11:05 p.m. Football: Chris Fox commits
  • 11:30 p.m. Football: Taco Charlton commits.
  • ~11:59 p.m. Jake Butt and Logan Tuley-Tillman enter REM sleep, where their dreams are invaded by GHOST OF NINJA RECRUITING SHANE MORRIS, who gives them helmets with wings and beckons they fly with him to the land of a thousand trees.

Tennis lost to Notre Dame (BlueDragon's comprehensive paume update) at some point in there, but you get the idea. Lets_Go_Blue put up an imaginative photo recap of the weekend in the diaries. Posbang thread? Posbang thread.

I'm So Softball Right Now You Guys! The shutout streak is now up to four games, thanks to Michigan's magnificent freshmen starters. I suddenly feel like doing lines!

Player ERA W-L GS CG SHO IP BB SO OppAvg
Sara Driesenga 0.91 3-1 4 2 1 23.0 7 6 0.239
Haylie Wagner 1.15 4-0 5 3 2 24.1 4 22 0.186

Haylie is a clone of Jordan Taylor (even played for the same league in Orange County) and is the crafty lefty complement to Driesenga. As such Wagner wasn't supposed to have a lot of strikeouts but, uh, well look above. The other shutout was Junior Stephanie Speierman, who was 18-1 last year with a 1.88 ERA in 122 innings. I had to look at several other top teams to convince myself these rotational riches are as ridiculous as they look. They are.

Ensuing Diaries

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The Quantum of Verisimilitude. After watching smart people commit to Hoke in droves over the weekend, Urban Meyer, Legendary Recruiter™ put up a sign so full of deceit people thought he was running for office (hyuk!). Accordingly, people who take twit pics of things made by twits at face value sent it around the internet. Enter Diarist of the Week Michael Scarn, who took the crucial step of, you know, a few cursory Googles to pull the real numbers from the teams' respective media guides.

Yes, our readers with Office Space The Office joke names are better at research than whoever's doing the signs for Ohio State's head coach. I'm sure this has nothing to do with which school is a better research institution.

Which school is the better research institution? U.S. News & World Report has its new rankings for "Worlds Best Universities" and M is 14th in the world, 10th in the nation, and 2nd among FBS schools. Ohio State (111th in world, 35th in U.S.) isn't so hot, though they'd still be middle of the Pac 12, upper quarter of the ACC, and only behind Texas-Austin anywhere else. The Big Ten is back ahead of the Pac, more because of the Oregon schools than what they added. Other bits of interest I put in a table-tastic diary.

Every Goal Against Northern Michigan. This is one of my favorite  new regular column, a weekly picture-paging of M scoring by CenterIce. Since most of my hockey knowledge comes from watching Lidstrom, the one I was instantly nodding at was the scoring opportunity created by Merrill having an NHL head on his shoulders:

Head up the whole way Merrill gets the puck from Moffie and finds Deblois cutting through the middle.

The Northerners are all kinds of confused, obviously since the blueliner has closed his legs like he's in shot blocking position.

It's Aaaaaalive! The 2013 Offer List has been updated.

Etc. The Mathlete clarifies his maths, but this doesn't make sense unless you read Bill Connelly (of SBNation blog Football Study Hall)'s response to the Mathlete original. Video of last week's defeating of Ohio State, and the Sugar Bowl.

Best of the Board

GO SOUTH ON U.S. 23 AND LOOK FOR THE GIANT TOILET BOWL

Ohio-Stadium-Close-Up

Remember kids, helpful Google Maps reviewers should always get upvoted. Unfortunately this well-executed trolling has been found and restored back the THE College of Performing Bears.

performingbears

When you search for directions to Ohio Stadium on Google Maps…oh I'll let you try it.

Etc. Salute to Percy Bates, retiring after more than two decades as the AD's faculty rep. HT Section 1.

Comments

French West Indian

February 24th, 2012 at 8:13 AM ^

Given how prevalent Google is, I'd rather see them just stick to the simple facts.  Who knows what other information they might be misrepresenting just to satisfy some petty personal perference.

Maybe on April 1st it would be amusing.  That should be enough.

GoWings2008

February 24th, 2012 at 8:39 AM ^

And whoever did it is obviously a follower of The Word of Hoke, as they used a small "o", didn't use the word "state" and....my favorite part, added "College" to it.  Priceless. 

Edit:  Bottle Spitting certainly creates the intended visual in my head of the bulging lip, an empty soda bottle and the outline of a tin of chew on the back pocket.  Whoever wrote that is a damned genius.

BucksfanXC

February 24th, 2012 at 10:14 AM ^

So my piece on "The Sign" is that the information doesn't seem to be a lie or innaccurate, just simply not fully explanatory. Which, like duh man. It's a PR sign made to put OSU in the best light possible. So it's a half-truth yes, but isn't all PR. I mean it's not made up numbers. It's just not all the numbers and not the final numbers. I think the whole thing is stupid and shouldn't have been done in the first place.

Seth

February 24th, 2012 at 10:35 AM ^

What do we call a PR sign that prints half-truths and intentionally misrepresents information in order to influence people to make a decision based on knowingly false pretenses?

If I have 40 rotten eggs and 20 good eggs and I report that my stocks are 10 bad eggs and 20 good eggs, that is "just not all the numbers and not the final numbers." It also completely misrepresents my egg situation, especially if I'm influencing decisions by telling people I have stocks of 60 eggs, and two good ones for every rotten one.

Good PR is what gets across what's truly better about what you're selling; using it to lie to the market can be effective but it should never be acceptable, and carries a considerable risk because the worst thing you could possibly do to your brand is to make the market think of you as a liar.

The thing isn't just stupid; it was dishonest. And as a Michigan fan it's my duty to shout "Urban Meyer will lie to you to get you to commit" in earshot of any recruit. Now that's PR.

BucksfanXC

February 24th, 2012 at 2:20 PM ^

You're comparing apples to oranges (or eggs I guess). It would be like if you had 40 rotten eggs and 20 good eggs and advertising that you have 20 good eggs. Which would be true. Someone who wants to buy 20 or fewer good eggs would be pleased to find you have ample stock to fulfill their needs. The rotten eggs are irrelevant to them.

In the case of the sign, a kid interested in OSU who will play football and wants to major in engineering would think, there are more engineering majors on this football team than the one at UofM. And he would be correct.

This sign makes no assertions, it simply states a small sampling of the listed majors of the two schools. Obviously it implies that OSU doesn't have as many General Studies majors as UofM, but that's all. And some kid may view that as a good thing or a bad thing.

GoWings2008

February 24th, 2012 at 3:15 PM ^

Its like you saying, we (OSU) have 20 good eggs, and omitting that you have 40 bad eggs, while we (UM) are saying we have 20 good eggs, but only 10 bad eggs....and you stating that you (OSU) have better eggs than we do. 

Omission is still lying.  Or at least, that's what my wife keeps telling me.

BucksfanXC

February 24th, 2012 at 2:13 PM ^

No, I didn't say it was wrong. It's spin. It's not lying. Nothing stated on that sign is false. And OSU didn't put on that sign, anything along the lines of: "And therefore we are a better school academically" Obviously it is meant to have recruits or their parents infer such a premise, but it does not assert one.

leu2500

February 24th, 2012 at 2:18 PM ^

sounds more impressive than "General Studies?"  And they think it will impress the families of recuits? 

 

Really?  Because when I read "Family Resource Management" my 1st thought was - football players are majoring in Home Ec?

BucksfanXC

February 24th, 2012 at 2:23 PM ^

Honestly, that was one of my many first thoughts. I thought, they just make kids declare and tons declared General instead of picking anything specific, and turns out, we do the same thing, we just have a different name for it. I'm not an 18yr old potential recruit nor am I the parent to one, so the sign wasn't directed at me. So if they think it's gonna help recruit, great.