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Something's been missing from Michigan gamedays since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one… something like Punt-Counterpunt.

PUNT

By Bryan MacKenzie
@Bry_Mac

Let’s just say it: this schedule sucks.

I’ve seen all the reasons and explanations and excuses, and they aren’t all totally invalid. Yes, Michigan cancelled their home-and-home with UCLA because for financial reasons, which ended up being rather important coming out of the COVID season. And yes, the four-team playoff incentivizes teams to play weaker non-conference schedule. And yes, Michigan got unlucky, with all three of their nonconference ebbing this season. And yes, it’s not Michigan’s fault that the Big Ten decided to start Michigan’s conference slate with Rutgers and Post-Apocalyptic Nebraska. Great. Fine. All valid.

It still sucks.

It doesn’t suck because it provides media and rival fans with chuckles and easy “lol Michigan ain’t played nobody” barbs. It’s amazing how back-to-back Big Ten titles will thicken one’s skin against stuff like that. And it doesn’t suck because it narrows the path for an 11-1 Michigan team to make the playoff; there are certainly scenarios where it might matter, but there is also value in guaranteeing a 3-0 start.

Heck, it doesn’t even suck because we’ve been deprived of a good football game. If “playing a Power 5 opponent” is your Shibboleth, I have bad news for you about what that might have meant for 2023 Michigan in a hypothetical matchup against, like, Virginia or Virginia Tech or Georgia Tech or Vanderbilt or West Virginia or one of the Arizona schools. You ain’t getting a ‘good’ game from a solid 30% of the Power 5.

No, it sucks because this slate is almost guaranteed to not return a single memorable game.

[After THE JUMP: ddddddd.]

Me, fondly recalling the 2016 Hawaii game

As fans, we tend to think of games existing on a graph, where one axis is “how good was the game,” and the other is “how positive do you feel about the game.” 2021 Ohio State? Very good game, very positive feelings. 2016 Ohio State? Very good game, very negative feelings. 2011 Sugar Bowl? Very bad game, very positive feelings. Basically the entire 2014 season? Yeah it’s bad and I hate it.

This is a very fair way to break it down. But if you actually make that chart, I bet you would have a much easier time filling in the corners than you would filling in the middle. Because no one remembers the vaguely positive, vaguely decent football games. And that’s what we’re getting in this Season Of Magical Murder-Wonder-Joy^TM: a month of utterly forgettable football.

Look, I was at the App State game. I was at 2013 Michigan State and 2014 Utah. Those games were awful. I remember them from time to time and shudder. But I REMEMBER them. And that’s worth more than people give it credit for.

If you’re wondering how we know Bowling Green won’t be a memorable game, ask yourself what it would take to make this a memorable game. What if Michigan scored 65 points and put up 721 yards of offense (including 466 yards rushing) with six plays of 30+ yards and zero punts. Would that do it? Apparently not, because that’s what Michigan did to Bowling Green the last time these two teams played. And I bet you don’t remember it. We got to see Denard Robinson, Devin Gardner, AND Tate Forcier at quarterback in the same game, at the apex of the RichRod “this team is fundamentally flawed but WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE” era. My brain, a veritable graveyard of old dumb games, remembers exactly two plays from that game.

Remember all this? Nope, me neither.

I get that not every game can be a Core Memory. But you could at least give us a shot.

Warde Manuel is running the risk of falling into the same trap (albeit from a very different angle) that Dave Brandon and his brain trust fell into. Remember Hunter “Lochdogg” Lochmann claiming that Michigan fans cared more about the brand than the players? He said that, and I double-checked this quote because HOLY CRAP, “at Michigan, it’s the Block M that has the infinity and power, not Denard Robinson. Those are fleeting, four-year relationships, but it's the block M that's been there for over 150 years.”

Manuel isn’t foolish enough to think that fans don’t care about players, but these scheduling decisions suggest he doesn’t understand what Michigan fans remember and love about Denard Robinson: that he carried the Block M battle standards deep into the heart of South Bend and East Lansing and Columbus. He won some, he lost some, but he engaged in titanic, heroic, memorable struggles. No one remembers that he carved up the Falcons or the Minutemen or the Eagles or the Hornets. You can’t just roll out the Block M and expect us to feel the same, and you can’t expect the next generation to fall in love with Michigan because Michigan thumped the Pirates on Peacock.

I suppose 3-0 isn’t nothing. But with the team Michigan appears to have, I just wish they would start the season already. Michigan 46, Bowling Green 10

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COUNTERPUNT

By Internet Raj
@internetraj

Bryan couldn’t be more right. This schedule is ass. And in honor of that, here is a Top 10 Things That Are Ass List.

10. Fake-ass Sudafed. This week, an FDA panel agreed in a unanimous 16-0 vote that phenylephrine, a common decongestant in over-the-counter cold medicines, is absolutely useless, thus vindicating a decade-long personal conviction of mine that phenylephrine is absolute bullshit. I’ve taken medicines with phenylephrine as the active ingredient and it’s as good as swallowing air. Anyone who knows anything knows that there’s only one medicine worth its weight: real Sudafed. The one with pseudoephedrine, that ingredient the Walter Whites of the world can convert into meth. That’s the good shit, and you know it is because you have to coyly wander to the back pharmacy counter at Walgreens and show your driver’s license and fill out a ledger just to get a box.

“I am the one who can breathe.”

9. Keurig Coffee. I don’t want to be a snob about this one and I’m all for convenience, but good god Keurig coffee is nothing more than mud-tinged water acting as a utilitarian vessel of caffeine molecules. Not to mention every single Keurig machine I’ve used is at least 9 years old and, on average, has been opened and cleaned approximately 0 times. In today’s world of capitalistic abundance, there’s no excuse to not buy a decent grinder and French press, aero press, Chemex or literally anything other than a Keurig.

8. Losing to your arch-rival 2 years in a row in a devastatingly embarrassing fashion. Can you imagine fielding two national title-contending teams rife with five-star talent and a Heisman-caliber quarterback just to lose to your nemesis not just once but twice in a row? Well I personally can definitively say that I have not had this feeling in the past 2 years.

“I’ll take ‘things that are ass’ for $100”

7. Weak flushes. Your heart sinks as soon as you hear the impotent, gasping bubbling of a weak flush. You stare down into the bowl that’s healthily packed with yesterday’s Crunchwrap Supreme and balled up toilet paper and you realize the toilet’s powerless plumbing is no match for the devastation you have wrought. Easily a top-10 worst feeling.

6. Realizing your Counterpunt column is due in 39 minutes and the only way to get out of this pickle is a clichéd top 10 list. Sorry, Seth.

5. Software updates when you’re trying to get work done. Logging on to get some urgent work done and getting hit with the “Windows Update 1 of 29” message.

4. Waking up hungover with two kids. Hangovers are horrible. You know what’s worse than a hangover? A three -ear old waking you up with one at 6am by peeling your eyelids open and barking “HEY DADA TIME TO WAKE UP” in your face.

3. Single-ply toilet paper. Single-ply toilet paper may be the worst consumer product ever created. It’s like the product designer asked “Hey how do we create a toilet paper with zero structural integrity that is also has the texture of barbed-wire-laced sandpaper? Sure, you can try folding single ply on its side several times, but you’ll still invariably have that fateful mid-wipe tear that makes you triple-check that your handsoap is of the antibacterial variety.

2. Losing an $80,000,0000 buyout due to a cataclysmic lapse of judgment.

1. Michigan’s 2023 non-conference schedule. It’s ass, plain and simple. Look, we have a monster of a team this year. I want to see them play real games! This non-conference schedule is like taking a Ferrari to the go-kart track. Do I love college football in all its forms, even shitty schedules? Of course. Will I still savor every second of this game? You bet. But will I be relieved once it’s over and we can move on to the Big Ten slate? Hell yes.

Michigan 30, Bowling Green 14, ho-hum