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

For those of you who read this week’s Opponent Watch, you may recall that we discussed the nature of footballs. In that spirit, and in light of tonight’s festivities, it may be of value to continue this effort at education.

This is a football field.

120 yards long. 53.3 yards wide. Goalposts are 10 feet high and 18.5 feet wide. It’s covered in grass (Kentucky Bluegrass, to be specific). Hashmarks every yard, field-wide lines every five yards.

Michigan is 6-5 all-time on this football field. Jim Harbaugh is 1-1 on this field, and 3-1 overall against the team that plays on it. James Franklin is 1-4 against Michigan, and was once defeated by a 5-7 Brady Hoke team coming off a loss to Rutgers.

But no one is looking at the field. They’re looking at the rest of the picture.

They’re looking at the white-out crowd and the black sky. They’re looking at the glare of the lights, and of the national spotlight. They hear the roar of the crows, and of and the members of the media who Are queueing up the “we told you so” takes. They’ve started already. I’ve heard and read mainstream purveyors of football thought declaring this a ‘must win.’ It’s all pressing inward. And downward. And it feels like a snowballing might turn into an avalanche.

[After THE JUMP: snowballs.]

The concerns about an avalanche aren’t unfounded. Michigan got avalanched once already this year. They got avalanched in the last two games of last season; granted, one was a bowl game that Michigan visibly didn’t care about, but the other was the most catastrophic loss in the last decae Michigan football. They got avalanched in the Outback Bowl in 2017. And they got avalanched under these same lights two years ago.

But what if they don’t? After all, Michigan could have been avalanched against Notre Dame last year; they were down 21-3 at night on the road. They lost, but rather than getting run out of the building they had a possession to tie the game late. The avalanche started down the hill during last year’s Michigan State game. Listen to this crowd, look at this weather, and tell me you didn’t see it coming. But it never came.

So what if this just becomes a football game. What if it is just Jim Harbaugh and Don Brown against James Franklin and Ricky Rahne. The guys who led the White Out drubbing two years ago are largely gone. Barkley is gone. McSorley is gone. Gesicki is gone. DaeSean Hamilton is gone. Joe Moorhead is gone (as is Josh Gattis).

The guys who are left are mostly the guys who put up 186 total yards (116 of which came before a Sad Touchdown Drive down 42-0) last year. They’re the guys who struggled to do anything against Pitt, and who put up fewer then 4 yards per play last week against Iowa. And they are still led by the same guy whose late game decisions are the stuff of legend.

The walls may shake. But they are held at bay at the sideline. Nothing outside those 6,400 square feet counts towards the final score. Paul Finebaum has no power here. The BPONE has no power here. Penn State has to line up and beat Michigan. And I don’t think they will. Michigan 20, Penn State 17

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COUNTERPUNT

By Internet Raj
@internetraj

June 6, 2009 has to be one of the most embarrassing days of my life.

I mean, I should have known better. By all accounts, this was a completely avoidable situation. I was 22 years old. College educated. An engineer even. Yes, I definitely should have known better.

But there I was, at the Southfield, Michigan Sprint store at 7 a.m., anxiously shifting my weight from one leg to the other while I craned my neck towards the front door waiting for the cardboard square emblazoned with “CLOSED” to be flipped so I could buy a gadget that would change the world. You’re probably doing some mental arithmetic right now and nodding to yourself and saying, “hey, those were exciting, pioneering times, Raj—there’s nothing to be embarrassed about waiting in line with hundreds of fanboys frothing at the mouth for the brand-new iPhone 3GS.”

The thing was, I wasn’t camping out for an iPhone 3GS. And I definitely did not need the extremely sad folding chair I was carrying with me. I was the fourth person in the saddest four-person line of all time. I was waiting to buy a Palm Pre on its launch day.

You might remember the Palm Pre. It might seem difficult if not impossible to fathom now, but the Palm Pre was heralded as a potential iPhone killer and a revolutionary mobile device that would rock the very foundations of the consumer electronics world. Fueled by hype generated by what was at the time still nascent internet coverage of the tech scene, I—along with three other deeply impressionable souls—had somehow thought it necessary to arrive two full hours early to a regional Sprint store for an ultimately ambitious but shitty phone. The Sprint employee opening the store that morning ended up feeling sorry for us four nerds and let us in early. Within 15 minutes I had my brand-new phone and had to call my dad to hurry up and pick me up. “I’m still in the drive through for McDonalds,” he protested. To be fair, I had warned him earlier that it might take up to 6 hours. In fact, I’m pretty sure he waited in line longer for a Sausage McMuffin that morning than I did for the Palm Pre. “This is going to change technology forever,” I remember thinking to myself as I unboxed that poorly constructed plastic piece of shit. I sold it on Craigslist 8 months later and bought an iPhone.

I should have known better.

On November 14, 2006, buoyed by a similar sad but energetic naivety, I burst through the doors of a Bloomfield Township Best Buy for what I was sure would change the music game forever. “The iPod sucks,” I remember telling myself. I was a rebel. I refused to slavishly conform to the rectangular white monolith with the dumb circular clickwheel all my friends used to play Fall Out Boy. No—I was getting a Microsoft Zune. The Zune was more than a mere mp3 player; it was a declaration of my independence, a bold, rebellious statement. It also crashed and permanently broke within a year. I then bought an iPod.

I should have known better.

In the fall of 2004, I looked at myself in the mirror and could not suppress my smile. I was wearing a sick smedium Express polo whose immaculately popped collar blended almost seamlessly with the audacious, fully vertical spikes in my hair held together by a half-bottle of LA Looks hair spray. “This aesthetic is timeless,” I remember thinking to myself. I didn’t have a girlfriend for another 18 months.

I should have known better.

In the winter of 1999, I bought a Sega Dreamcast. My excitement could not be contained. “This is the pinnacle of gaming,” I thought. Within twelve months, I tried to ship it to my cousins in rural India as a friendly hand-me-down. They promptly rejected it; they had already bought an X-Box.

I should have known better.

In 1997, I was absolutely certain the beverage industry was on the cusp of a revolution. I refused to drink anything but Orbitz. “An absolute gastronomical wonder,” I thought to myself as I marveled at the gelatinous and possibly carcinogenic balls suspended in the gross diabetes-triggering drink.

 

I should have known better.

* * *

In July 2019, I greedily opened a new package. After delicately setting aside the brand-new Hail to the Victors, I unfurled a t-shirt with what I thought would be a prophetic declaration of things to come. “Speed in Space.” “I can’t wait to wear this as we curb stomp opponent after opponent,” I whispered to myself. “I can’t believe I’m married to you,” said my wife, who I was not aware was behind me the entire time.

I am an eternal, irrational optimist who always falls for the unconventional Next Big Thing. But time after time after time my energetic enthusiasm has been met with by the cringing, pitiful backward gaze of hindsight.

When Josh Gattis was hired, I thought the Michigan offense would evolve into an unstoppable wrecking ball. I want that naïve Raj to be right. I still hope he is. But I’m looking at a game today where a frenzied group of fanatics dressed in all white will congregate at night in rural Pennsylvania and that can’t excite anyone from Michigan other than Jon Reschke. We’ve seen this story before. It’s the Palm Pre. It’s the Zune. It’s spiked-up hair and popped collars. It’s the Dreamcast. It’s Orbitz.

It’s Michigan football.

For once, I hope I’m actually right and this team does right the ship and deliver under the bright lights. But I never am.

This time, I know better. Michigan 7, Penn State 31