MGoPodcast 14.24: Hey Come Merry Doll
1 hour and 46 minutes
The Sponsors
Thank you to Underground Printing for making this all possible. Rishi and Ryan have been our biggest supporters from the beginning. Check out their wide selection of officially licensed Michigan fan gear at their 3 store locations in Ann Arbor or learn about their custom apparel business at undergroundshirts.com.
Our associate sponsors are: Peak Wealth Management, HomeSure Lending, Ann Arbor Elder Law, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, The Phil Klein Insurance Group, Venue by 4M where we recorded this, TicketIQ! and The Nose Bleeds, which is the Sklars Bros’ reboot of Cheap Seats on UFC Fight Pass.
1. Men's Basketball vs Vanderbilt
starts at 1:00
Three minutes of describing how ludicrous it would have to be to lose a game up 8 with 1:34 left, and Brian just saying "Yeah" for those entire three minutes. Michigan is the 336th luckiest team in D-I basketball! There's no way this all happens again next year... right? Dug was pretty good in this game but he's still a freshman point guard making some freshman mistakes, his decision making will improve next year. Would Joey Baker have been a better in-bounder? Youssef Khayat looked like a positive work in progress.
[The rest of the writeup and the player after THE JUMP]
2. Men's Basketball Next Year
starts at 21:17
They probably get Hunter Dickinson back for another season, he's probably going to get paid more at Michigan than he would anywhere else. Jett Howard is no longer listed in the lottery. Maybe he sticks around another year to help his dad out. There's a chance Kobe Bufkin comes back, but he has a tough choice to make. Michigan may be able to make it a financially viable enough reason to stay another year. We've seen freshman to sophomore leaps be huge before at point guard, hopefully Dug McDaniel can be the next one to do it. Haven't really heard about any names in the portal yet besides B.J. Mack.
3. Hot Takes and Hockey vs Minnesota
starts at 44:53
Takes hotter than everybody's scalp when Terrance Williams was bringing the ball out at the end of the basketball game. Losing to a 16-seed - bad? We agree it's bad. Michigan looked like the better team in two out of three periods against the #1 team in the country in an away environment on Olympic ice - felt like the final exam. In this same tournament, Michigan played a couple stinkers against Wisconsin, so we've seen them at their best and their worst. Could Michigan win a seven-game series against Minnesota? We don't hate Michigan's chances against any team in the NCAA tournament. The announcers did not understand how offsides work... This was recorded before the selection show but Michigan is the 3rd #1 seed in Allentown, Pennsylvania against Colgate (Penn State and Michigan Tech are also in Allentown). The one thing you want to avoid in the tournament is a really good goalie.
4. Gimmicky Top Five
starts at 1:26:41
Things that faded late. In honor of... yeah. Seth comes out of the gate swinging hard. Should Tom Bombadil have been included in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy? Click here to learn every theory about Tom Bombadil. FIX YOUR NET, MINNESOTA. Things get a bit heated about English royals.
MUSIC:
- "Winning"--Santana
- "Cowboy Nudes"--Geese
- "Cherry Blossom"--Rubblebucket
- “Across 110th Street”
THE USUAL LINKS:
- Helpful iTunes subscribe link
- General podcast feed link
- Direct download link
- What's with the theme music
I enjoyed the books being brought to life, they needed more Tom Bombadil, though.
Hmm. So we have to talk about basketball some more? Probably but wish not.
Talk about hockey? Yes, please.
Tom Bombadil was a boring side quest. Not having it in the movie was one of the best decisions Peter Jackson ever made.
Agree so hard.
I love the 'Lord of the Rings'. I have read it many, many times in my life. And every single time I read it, I grit my teeth when I get to the Tom Bombadil section. It feels like the only reason to have him in the story is so that he is can fulfill his deus ex machina function to rescue the hobbits from the Barrow Downs.
on the other hand, he did add the fighting mountains bit to "the hobbit." i can't watch that movie without the dread that it's coming.
March 20th, 2023 at 10:11 AM ^
Not sure I entirely agree. I do tend to think it would have been hard to keep the pace and flow going, but I think he's pretty integral to the story in the books.
March 20th, 2023 at 11:10 AM ^
Is the stranger in Rings of Power going to turn out to be Bombadil?
March 20th, 2023 at 11:55 AM ^
nah, gotta be a blue wizard
March 20th, 2023 at 11:29 AM ^
Hard disagree. Tom's ability to be impervious to the ring showed obvious intent on Tolkien's part to develop him more fully. Tolkien needed to live and write for several more decades. One of the greatest minds of all time.
As for the Jackson movies, Fellowship was one of the best films ever. The next two should cause Jackson to be prosecuted for crimes against literature. The cartoon version of Return of the King showed less oblivion.
March 20th, 2023 at 12:13 PM ^
This is a hot take if I’ve ever seen one.
TTT was a great adaptation even if Jackson added in some things that weren’t in the books like w Haldir.
RotK was too damn long but epic.
Jackson should be prosecuted for destroying the Hobbit on the silver screen when the book is actually the EASIEST one to translate into cinema given its short length. He made it into a CGI 48 FPS spectacle instead of just sticking to the practical effects and the story.
March 20th, 2023 at 12:43 PM ^
It wasn't really Jackson; it was the studio. Again, see Lindsay Ellis's opus on The Hobbit.
Part 1/2:
Part 2/2:
and Part 3/2:
Such a tragedy the twitter mob ran her off of youtube. She was such a talented creator.
"Jackson should be prosecuted for destroying the Hobbit on the silver screen..."
Absolutely agree. And yes, I wasn't too upset about TTT initially until watching RotK and seeing the decline was a trend. The Hobbit was further decent into the abyss.
One of Tolkien's grand themes was the ability of the weakest to have a significant impact by simply being persons of character. Turning the hobbits into grand characters of strength entirely missed the point. As did having Frodo turn on Sam.
I was pleasantly surprised by Rings of Power. It has been fairly entertaining so far and not as offensive as expected for this Tolkien geek.
yeah
Haven't had a chance to listen yet, but we're still going with the "bad luck" narrative?
It's a discussion about how next year will be better in that metric.
The minute you guys brought up R values I fully expected a bunch of people to post variations on this meme.
I did something similar last year when UM was getting carpet bombed from 3 by opponents having some of their best shooting games of the year consistently against UM. This year? I ran the script again and they were bog average even when they looked lost to start the year. Sometimes things just happen year to year and you only have so much control over it.
But “luck” isn’t really a metric, it’s just a catch-all bucket for “all variation not explained by one of the other metrics”. And sure random chance is part of it, but it is probably not all of it. I think the name is a misnomer in that sense. I know Brian is against feelingsball takes, but the dogged insistence that everything not directly explainable by Kenpom is just “luck” seems frustratingly stubborn. Basketball teams can be analyzed statistically but at the end of the day they are made of people, not just weighted RNGs.
To paraphrase Anna Karenina, all bad teams are bad in their own way - and I think that makes them hard to explain with raw stats sometimes.
A couple of random thoughts:
1) if it’s “just luck” wouldn’t you expect it to be noisier within the season? Yet Michigan remained one of the “unluckiest” teams wire to wire on the season. “Michigan will underperform the average team in a close game” was about the most consistent thing about the team this year.
2) Has anybody compared how “streaky” Michigan is compared to other teams? Basketball is a game of back and forth scoring runs, but Michigan seemed to take this to an extreme, with seemingly every game featuring a span of several minutes where Michigan went with zero or maybe one field goal. That could partially explain the “luck” - the streakiness puts Michigan in good situations and then makes them collapse. Catch a down streak early in the game and you “made a great comeback”, catch it late in the game and you “choked”.
if it’s “just luck” wouldn’t you expect it to be noisier within the season? Yet Michigan remained one of the “unluckiest” teams wire to wire on the season.
At some point sustained "luck" over a long period of time, during events that are not purely chance, is not luck anymore
March 20th, 2023 at 11:10 AM ^
Yeah but that's what the poster is getting at. The luck metric isn't literal "luck" in the sense that so many posters keep thinking of it as. It's just a word for things unexplained by the possession to possession efficiency of teams. You could call it anything else.
Also, "luck" would include good shots bouncing out. That's not what we experienced this year. In last-minute possessions we did a God-awful job of doing anything beyond running frantically beyond the three-point line weirdly hoping a three-point shooter would just magically be left alone.
I actually think "luck" didn't apply much at all. The game against Vanderbilt was a perfect illustration. We weren't "unlucky" -- we were inexperienced, unprepared, and bad. The only way "luck" was involved in Llewellyn's and Bufkin's injuries, I guess, and maybe in Collins' transferring, but ... surely that's not what we're talking about in "late-game luck."
The fact is, for a variety of reasons -- often closely related to personnel, of course -- this team was God-awful at late game situations. Shrugging it off as "luck" is an abdication of responsibility as analysts.
I'm serious. It's ok to say it's not all Juwan's fault -- that's analysis. But to say this team was just "unlucky" is a strange take. What kind of analysis is that? They didn't have good looks at the basket that rimmed out. They so rarely even got good looks late in the game. Why not?
In the Vandy game, Joey Baker “made” a three pointer. After review, it turned out his foot was touching the line. The basket was deemed a 2-pointer and our score was reduced by 1 point. We lost the game by one point. That’s not good luck.
There’s the mathematical interpretation of luck, (Pythagorean win expectancy) and the WTF, why does TWill make 2 turnovers in the last minute when he averaged 1.3 per 40 minutes over the season, luck. We sucked at both.
The point is that everyone needs to stop getting so hung up on the word "luck." In KenPom's model it doesn't mean "luck" in the same way we use that word in every day conversation. So everyone should just stop talking about how lucky or unlucky the Michigan team is. That is just talking past the point.
I wish people would get this through their heads. Stop trying to argue about what constitutes luck. We could just as easily say Michigan is ranked 336 in GaReDAWP2PEMs (Game Results Dont Agree with Possession to Possession Efficiency Metrics). Or we could say Michigan is ranked 336 if flabbertyglorp (which is a fudge factor to make models agree with eye-test).
March 20th, 2023 at 10:05 AM ^
As to your second point I'm actually working on something based on play-by-play scraping stuff I weirdly do for fun because I enjoy writing software outside of my job...writing software.
It's still chugging along but a brief preview is that UM is streaky but so are a ton of teams in the great middle of college basketball. And especially toward the end of the year UM was doing better closing out games compared to their opponents; they held Wisconsin to no FGs for 10 minutes or whatever but were down by 12 or something when that streak started so they couldn't quite get back. They actually outplayed Illinois and IU to end those regulation games but couldn't get over the hump. They closed out tight games against Rutgers and MSU and never let Toledo make a sustained run in that win. They also played like shit for the second half in the BTT and then bombed out in the final 70-ish seconds against Vandy.
What seemed to happen to UM compared to their opponents is that their cold stretches were punished exceedingly more than their opponents, and some of that is on the team and some of that is "luck", "timing", etc. So yeah, not explainable but also sometimes what happens when you only have a sample size of 34 games.
I am interested to know this as well. What are you using for the chronological scoring record? ESPN's Gamecast page has Gameflow. I was planning to use that.
March 20th, 2023 at 10:07 AM ^
great points, and please note that my response below is not a pushback on you specifically...
there are any number of ways you might explain a series of close losses - senior guards, strength of schedule, home vs road, and, yes, coaching blunders. perhaps predictably, the coach gets blamed first, primarily because he's the most obvious "reason" and because as humans we want to find "meaning" and "cause" for things that don't necessarily have them. a random universe is a frightening place.
correlation is not causation. except when it is, of course. sometimes. or not.
Does anyone know how much Kenpom's "luck" metric tends to correct itself anyway? It's unlikely Michigan will finish in the bottom 30 in "luck" again, but they have only finished in the top 50 once in 22 years:
'23 ranked #336 in "luck" (-.078)
'22 #217 (-.019)
'21 #156 (+.007)
'20 #301 (-.048)
Howard cumulative: -.138
Avg per year: -.035
1 of 4 years with "good luck"
'19 #181 (-.001)
'18 #61 (+.052)
'17 #252 (-.025)
'16 #146 (+.013)
'15 #206 (-.008)
'14 #76 (+.047)
'13 #197 (-.007)
'12 #42 (+.058)
'11 #218 (-.014)
'10 #331 (-.079)
'09 #132 (+.014)
'08 #264 (-.037)
Beilein cumulative: +.013
Avg per year: +0.01
5 of 12 years with "good luck"
'07 #83 (+.037)
'06 #139 (+.012)
'05 #232 (+.026)
'04 #122 (+.018)
'03 #107 (+.024)
'02 #249 (-.038)
Amaker cumulative: +.079
Avg per year: +.013
5 of 6 years with "good luck"
If we look at the five other years where the team finished in the bottom 100 for luck:
'10 (-.079): +6 wins from '10 to '11
'23 (-.078): ???
'20 (-.048): +4 wins from '20 to '21*
'02 (-.038): +7 wins from '02 to '03
'08 (-.037): +11 wins from '08 to '09
'17 (-.025): +7 wins from '17 to '18
(*the '20 team had no postseason and the '21 team had 4 reg season cancelled due to Covid)
It's ... promising? (If it indicates anything at all.)
I don't have a subscription to Kenpom's site but it would be interesting to see if certain coaches are "better" at luck than others -- and what it means. (E.g. Beilein is a better coach than Amaker but what was Amaker doing, if anything, to generate "luck"?)
One last thing: this season the Big 10 only had one team in the top 25% of "luckiest" teams (Nebraska at #61) but had three teams in the bottom 10% (Michigan #336, Rutgers #356, Ohio St #361 of 363.). Pretty unlucky conference.
suggesting that luck had no influence on the close losses is to ignore both math and history.
No one is saying that, they are just pushing back on Brian’s take that “luck” had nearly all of the influence.
with all due respect, "no one saying that" is simply not true. there are any number of posters here that say the close losses are almost entirely the result of coaching.
March 20th, 2023 at 10:01 AM ^
Neither is Brian saying luck was the only thing that explains this season. When the margins are so thin, everything that went into the result becomes super relevant.
March 20th, 2023 at 11:27 AM ^
The cover image for the podcast is literally a regression he made you run to “prove” this is just random variation we should just expect to go away next year on its own.
Brian was a bit better about it in this podcast, but in the last one he was talking down to Dave about how it was a statistical fact that this was just random variability, so I’m reacting a bit to that.
IMO, saying we were unlucky isn't just about the fact that we lost a lot of close games. We've just had a lot go against us over the past 12 months.
-Houstan/Diabate both went pro when their draft projections were borderline.
-Collins transferred when he probably would have been our starting PG.
-Terrence Shannon was set to come here but a combination of rigid admissions and Texas Tech not wanting to play ball prevented it from happening.
-Llewellyn transferred in, but tore his ACL in December.
If any one of these events go differently, we probably would have been a tournament team. We were close as it was.
As far as our performance in-season goes, someone tweeted out that we lost seven games where we had an 80+% win probability at some point in the second half. Whatever you attribute that to - luck, choking, clutch play by the other team - it's unlikely to repeat itself.
Co-sign. This is where the program was undeniably unlucky. Even just Shannon and Diabate being on the team likely means a very different season. It's also true that the roster had too many non-contributors and that the team had some obvious on-court flaws. But that doesn't erase the plain bad luck of missing out on all of the guys whom you mentioned (or nearly missing out in the case of Llewellyn). And that's why I'm not remotely on board with firing Howard, though he does need to take a hard look at the program, from the roster to the coaching staff to how they evaluate players.
While I generally agree with you on the transfers / departures being part of why this team was “unlucky”, that’s not what the podcast is talking about. The podcast is using the Kenpom “luck” metric, which those off-season roster changes would not factor into.
It is odd that of all the theories of Bombadil nobody mentions the most obvious, that he is a story, both literally and in the meta.
The reason Bombadil is in the story is because Lord of the Rings began much as The Hobbit, as a serialized story about adventuring. Eventually that story coalesced around the MacGuffin of the Ring of Power and the battle against Sauron for Middle Earth, plus a sort of bonus serialized tale (The Scouring of the Shire) at the end. You will note that these are the two most glaringly missing pieces of the movie series and for good reason! The plot of the film is all about the Ring. In that part of the story the hobbits have just been chased out of the Shire with the ringwraiths on their tails. We are now at a point of high narrative tension that can bring us to Bree, the Campbellian jumping off place where they must put their trust in Aragorn. If you have Bombadil in there it stops the whole narrative. He's not affected by the ring. He's not scary. He has no narrative point in a story about the Ring and Sauron vs the peoples of Middle Earth. His bit in the books is an episode, and not a particularly good one. He saves the hobbits from the barrow wights, in a very deus ex machina way, and also saves them from Old Man Willow. The lessons there are all about how the world you step into is dangerous and full of magic, and you need a guide, which primes the Hobbits for meeting Aragorn and sharing their quest with him.
In the meta-narrative he is also a story. If you remember the conceit of Lord of the Rings in both the films and the books is that we are reading a story that was begun by Bilbo and completed by Frodo and Sam (the Red Book). Tolkien goes into detail on the historiography of the Red Book in the appendices of Return of the King, because he wants you to understand the his story, like history, comes down to us through unreliable narrators and multiple editions. One thing that Tolkien did with that, which screenwriters Fran Walsh (wife of Peter Jackson) and Phillipa Bowens definitely picked up on, was that stories about using the Ring from Bilbo and Frodo get uncanny, to the point where you have to wonder if the narrator is lying to you to cover up what really happened. For example in Bree (of both versions) Frodo puts on the ring accidentally. It just happens to slip onto his finger. Isn't it more likely that he was tempted to use it and did so? Bilbo also lied to Gandalf and the dwarves, leaving the Ring out of his explanation for how he got out of the Mountains of Mist, and was pretty coy about it when he used the Ring to save the dwarves from the spider. It's a bit of a stretch, but not too much of one to imagine that something more sinister, involving use of the Ring, got them out of the barrow wights, and that Frodo made up the episode from old wood fairy tales to cover it up.
Anyway I applaud Philippa and Fran for leaving Bombadil out of their screenplay. Far too often we judge adaptations by how much of the original story they packed in instead of on the merits of the story they are telling within their own medium. The books were a literary triumph that created a genre. The movies were a cinematic triumph that led to the modern saturation of prestige nerd film and television. My argument is not one of Tom Bombadil sucks. I think he's an interesting character who relates to a trope within the elf tales that Tolkien was trying to repackage for a modern audience. I agree strongly with the decision of The Lord of the Rings screenwriters to leave him out of the films.
If you are interested at all in this topic I highly recommend the latest video by Lindsay Ellis.
https://nebula.tv/videos/lindsayellis-how-they-adapted-lord-of-the-rings
You have to be a Patreon subscriber, but you can do that for $1, and it'll be the most rewarding $1 you ever spent.
Or you can watch the appendices of the special edition DVDs because they talk about all of it.
Is any of the Tom Bombadil discussion stemming from him being one of the previewed cards for the LOTR Magic the Gathering set coming out this summer?
No. It comes from a deep and overwhelming desire to talk about anything besides michigan basketball.
March 20th, 2023 at 10:14 AM ^
whatever the reason, i don't understand most of it but i love it deeply.
Haven't seen that one, but what did you think of the One Ring card? I know it was always going to be hard to capture it with a Magic card, but it feels just a little too.... generically powerful for me? We're well past the point in time where anyone thinks paying life for cards is a bad thing.
That said, if the foil prints show the Black Tongue of Mordor when held over open flame I'll retract all my complaints.
dupe post, argh
What was the sinister thing Frodo allegedly did to rescue them from the barrow wights?
Who knows. It's almost like basing our entire story on one historical text costs us valuable information. Hmmm.
March 20th, 2023 at 11:29 AM ^
This doesn’t make any sense - Frodo uses the ring in front of Tom Bombadil. If unreliable narrator Frodo is trying to cover up his ring use, why would he have included that?
Also, to clarify my position on British royals, here is the important difference between understanding the life of Elizabeth II versus that of Aethelred II: POWER.
American government grew out of an English tradition of government that was constantly wrestling with the problem of incompetent royals versus the need for royals. After the British surrender at Yorktown, that story's relevance shifts from Westminster to Washington (the man, then the place) and our struggles to merge democracy with the need for a large government in a world with big jobs like sustaining a Navy to make the world safe for global trade. Since they were still powerful rulers of a powerful nation, we aren't completely done with the British Monarchy at that point, but the particulars of the Madness of George III are of far less interest to me than how William Pitt used that as an opportunity to shift power towards Downing Street.
If Canute's Norman queen Emma has two children from her previous marriage and is going to raise them with deep Norman sympathies, that creates a major, multi-generational political threat that culminates in the violent, proto-nationalistic colonization of the British Isles, and ultimately an age of colonization that we're still digging out from. If the uncle of a kindergardner who will one day have to perform ceremonial duties for another country marries an American actress and goes on Oprah to talk about it, I do not have to watch it.
I am a huge history buff, particularly for Anglo-Saxon history (related: I am a big fan of the works of Anglo Saxon professor JRR Tolkien). If you want to understand the concept of "People in charge of things" that we discuss here all the time, understanding medieval kingship is a fantastic way to do that. They had Dave Brandons and disinterested sexpots, and psychopaths, and frat bros, and all kinds of people become kings. When they did have a King who was interested in law (Henry II), we got the fundamental origins of our legal system. The conveniences of Edward I are integral to understanding the basis for power-sharing in the American Constitution. The relationship of business to power that fueled the Glorious Revolution and the liberalizing reforms of the Orange regime are integral to understanding the basis for our capitalist economic system. The interplay between executive and martial kingship in the early Anglo-Saxons in the management and maintenance of their hearthwerods is useful in understanding the pressures of college football coaches.
If Michigan ever has a position as irrelevant as King Charles, I'll grant that it might be helpful to understand more about King Charles. When I said Elizabeth II may have been one of Britain's greatest rulers, that is a point about how much her forebears and the institution of monarchy suck. Elizabeth refused to wield power, which makes her very good at the one thing a royal in the 21st century should do. If you put that against the obtuse, Revolution-sparking obstinances of Charles I or Henry III, or Edgar the Peaceable riding around kidnapping nuns, or Edward the Confessor letting his crypo bros pillage the kingdom and calling in Normans for muscle, yeah, she's one of the best.
March 20th, 2023 at 10:15 AM ^
#nopolitics.
kidding, obvs.
March 20th, 2023 at 12:36 PM ^
My luck we'll have a super duper Edward the Confessor stan who will complain that pro-Norman voices on this blog get silenced while the Godwinsonic editors flaunt their Saxon biases.
March 20th, 2023 at 12:39 PM ^
my thoughts exactly, like, down to the letter.
March 20th, 2023 at 11:01 AM ^
the MGoBlog difference
March 20th, 2023 at 11:03 AM ^
Here's my Wessex/English/British/UK Monarchs Power Ranking, judged by how well they fulfilled the needs of kingship for their times. I put those with disputed or super-short rules in parentheses. Charles III is incomplete and we're not grading princeships.
- Alfred <--The Great
- Henry II <--Even Peter O'Toole couldn't do you justice.
- Aethelstan <--Rock star.
- Cnut <--How conquering should be done.
- Aethelwulf <--Impressive parenting for 900s.
- Eadred <-- I coulda warned you not to trust the Northumbrians.
- Harold Godwinson <--Next time don't genocide the Welsh maybe
- Edmund the Elder <--Thank sis (wait, did you kill her?)
-----------Not good but competent---------- - Elizabeth I <--Impressively misrepresented given all the representation.
- Henry V <--Good press, good results, bad war.
- Elizabeth II <--Fine job, no notes.
- Victoria <--Not working worked.
- Edmund Ironside <--Ooh, bad timing
(Oliver Cromwell) <--Next time don't genocide the Irish maybe. - Eathelstan (Alfred's oldest brother) <--Look out, Viking assassi...too late.
- Eathelred I (Alfred's 3rd brother) <--We're gonna just credit Alfred cool?
- Henry I <--Tough job though.
- Egbert Bretwalda <--Come up from the bottom now we here.
- George VI <--Didn't stutter.
- William & Mary <--When CEO-style is an improvement.
- Edward I <--Successful, era-defining, did big evil too
- Edward VII <--See? Your turn came.
- Eathelbert (Alfred's 2nd brother) <--Gotta let Kent go, man.
- Henry VIII <--I mean, you hired good people.
-----------Kids who weren't really in charge---- - Harold Harefoot <--I hope history is kinder than your mom.
- Eadwig <--People have been killed for dumber reasons. Not many.
(Lady Jane Grey) <--Fuck your parents. Fuck them so hard. - Edward V <--Fuck your uncle.
- Edward the Martyr <--Um, maybe a good thing you died, weirdo.
-----------Sucked but got away with it----------- - William IV <--Really dude, slavery's your hill?
- Edward III <--Plague. Dude, Plague. Stop your fucking war, Plague!
- Edward IV <--Too many Nevilles.
- Henry IV <--If you're facing rebellion why are you inciting one?
- Anne <--You pissed off the wrong Marlborough
- George III <--Yoooork-town! Yooooork-town!
- Sweign Forkbeard <--Good win, not sorry you couldn't enjoy it.
- George II <--More Hanoverian daddy issues
- James I <--Talk to your boy. No not your boy..your Boy!
- William I <--Psychopath. Effective one but still, psychopath.
----------Make decisions? Nah.------------------- - Richard Coeur de Lion <--Over-Rated! <clap clap clap>
(Eadgar Aetheling) <--Really could have used you over William. - George I <--I usually don't say this but Learn English!
- Charles II <--Have another. It's not like a civil war could happen.
(Richard Cromwell) <--So unwillful they actually let you live.
----------Made decisions, mostly bad ones---- - John <--Has my sympathies, but scoreboard.
- Richard III <--Hey look we found you!
- Edward VIII <--Had Nazi sympathies.
- Harthacnut <--Dane, chill the f out!
- George IV <--More Hanoverian daddy issues.
- William II <--nice shoes though.
- Matilda <--all you had to do was not suck!
- James II <--that worked so well for Chucky 1.
- Edward II <--proto-Charles I
------------How not to raise a king--------------- - Aethelred the Unready <--More like King Elmo
- Richard II <--Have another tantrum.
- Henry VI <--Are you trying to be Henry III?
- Henry III <--Are you trying to lose England?
------Are you TRYING to suck this hard?----- - Mary I <--Catholic, chill the f out!
- Stephen of Blois <--Dave Brandonest of Kings
- Charles I <--But not a bad guy?
British Kings as Michigan Athletic Directors:
- Alfred the Great: James Baird. Wasn't supposed to get the job, then defined it. He saw the future, cleverly worked the system, and created everything that followed.
- Edward the Elder: Philip Bartleme. Set up by the Great and had a ton of help but way too much success to simply ascribe to his predecessor.
- Elizabeth I: Don Canham: Unpopular, disruptive, and often heavily criticized in her time, later held up as a golden age that's equally unhistorical. Longstanding issue with leaving an heir. Defined by some early good hires and a major upset victory. Crucial in modernizing the operation.
- Henry V: Jim Hackett: What a flash! Only on one front while ignoring everything else that would doom his successor, but holy hell was he successful on the that front.
- George VI: Jack Weidenbach. Exactly what we needed for the short time we had him. Calm, honest, a bit too conservative but in a loveable way.
- Edward I: Fielding Yost: Some of the worst decisions from a moral standpoint (yes, in his day too) and also some of the greatest successes, as well as creating (kind of accidentally) the foundations of the system that would later define the role.
- George V: Joe Roberson. Had an easy job to do and did it ably by sticking to hard principles. Turns out he also let some rot grow in. Remembered as a success, probably deserves a harder look when our biases are gone.
- William & Mary: Bill Martin. Totally new way of doing things, but kind of what we needed, a CEO to get us back in the black and let modernity take over. Biggest failures were of vision: could have dominated the world but wanted to run a business.
- Harthacnut: Bo (as AD not HC). Absolutely focused, despite the clear insanity of it, in running things his way, which was the Danish/Football way, which was the only right way. Had an able associate keeping the country together.
- James I: Fritz Crisler (again, as AD, not HC). A long reign that settled things down and looked outwardly successful while being inwardly in turmoil and setting up a lot of the issues that would come crashing inward soon.
- George I: Warde Manuel. Hey I'm just here to be NOT A STUART. Just kept rich guys happy and didn't do anything, which was problematic and made him unpopular, but also very good and blending into the scenery rather than, you know, starting wars.
- Aethelred the Unready: Tom Goss. Unready actually meant Uncounseled and was a bit of a pun on his name which mean Wise Counseled. Goss was similar: Not very in control, let friends bankrupt the whole thing, got into petty fights.
- Stephen of Blois: Dave Brandon. Why you don't appoint the leader of the Rich Guys Have Rights faction to be in charge. Managed to piss off everybody, tried to sell off every asset, absolutely sure of his right to rule, focused on an in-group not the whole kingdom, necessitated a revolt that defined his entire reign, made awful stupid decisions when he actually did reign, and obsessed with the Wow moments.
JFC
How do I subscribe to your substack?
Comments