Western Michigan things: Preview, Podcast, 2021 Season Preview

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

The Monty Hall problem used to bother me quite a bit.

For those who are unfamiliar with the Monty Hall problem, it is named after the host of the long-running game show Let’s Make a Deal. And if you are like me, it will make your brain itch.

Imagine you are presented with three identical doors. Behind one of the doors is a new car. Behind each of the other two doors is a gag prize, like a goat or season tickets to Northwestern basketball. You are asked to select one of the three doors. After you announce your choice, the host (who knows which door contains the car) opens one of the two remaining doors to reveal a goat. He then offers you the chance to either (a) switch to the remaining unopened door, or (b) stick with your original choice.

Intuitively, the answer is simple. There are two unopened doors, so the odds of either door are the same at 50/50. So it doesn’t matter, right?

goat

Except… that’s wrong. You’re twice as likely to win the car if you switch doors.

[After THE JUMP: What’s a letter?]

If you just yelled at the screen, I don’t blame you. When Parade magazine ran a version of the Monty Hall problem in 1990 with the correct answer (that switching was much better mathematically), they received more than 10,000 angry letters* ⁠— nearly 1,000 of which were signed by Ph.D’s ⁠— explaining to the author (literally the smartest woman in the world) that she was wrong. But she wasn’t. The math checks out. Switching is objectively, empirically, demonstrably better.

*NOTE: a “letter” is an email that is printed onto a piece of paper and then physically sent to another person.

Now, some of you might just accept that answer and move on with your lives. Some might want it explained, but once it’s explained, would move on with your lives. Some might disagree with the answer, but not care, and move on with your lives.

But I went through a period where my brain remembered the answer, but also retained the lizard brain reaction that the answer was dumb. And I would have to sit down and work it out again in my head before I could move on.

You see, sometimes stuff gets stuck in my head that I can’t square. These are known as veridical paradoxes; things which seem absurd but are demonstrably true. Like the fact that the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and nothing can travel faster than light, but the observable universe is 93 billion light years across. Or the idea that if you have 23 people in a room, the odds that two of them will share the same birthday is 50/50. Or the fact that Mike DeBord was hired as an offensive coordinator for a Power 5 football team in TWO THOUSAND FREEKING TWENTY-ONE.

goat

I get it. I know objectively that Jim Harbaugh’s tenure at Michigan has been fine. Hell, it’s been good. Even if you include last year’s 2-4 record, he has won 69% of his games. He’s 34-16 in conference, a 68% mark. That’s a better conference record than James Franklin. It’s a better conference record than Mark Dantonio. It’s significantly better than Kirk Ferentz, and more than a win and a half per season better than Pat Fitzgerald. He’s been way, WAY better than the two guys who came before him. And I look around at the clown shows at places like Tennessee and Florida State and Nebraska, and I try to remind myself how poorly these things can go, and what “disappointing” REALLY looks like.

I’m not an entirely unreasonable person. I can watch my favorite team lose a hockey game and convince myself “eh, I’m not mad, because we win that game most of the time except for puck luck,” and carry on. If my favorite baseball team wins 68% of its games, I’m probably thrilled. I can watch a mediocre team shoot 65% from three, shrug my shoulders and declare, “stuff happens.”

goat

But football is not a thinkin’ fan’s sport. It’s a lizard brain sport. I don’t want my team to be statistically improved. I want smashing destruction. Complete defenestration. I want trophies and banners and parades. I want my enemies prostrate before me as I chug their beers and eat the best of their nachos. The good nachos towards the top center (but not right in the center, where there is too much sour cream). And thus far, we remain nacholess.

The one problem with the Monty Hall analogy is that in the Monty Hall problem, you know there is a car behind one of the doors. You can improve your chances of finding it with some strategies, and while at the end of the day you can make the “right” move and still lose (or make the “wrong” move and still win), there is a prize (and only one prize) to be won. In this game, there’s always a chance that all the doors are goats. Or all the doors are cars.

We’ll find out in 2021. I’m optimistic… but I wouldn’t bet on it. Michigan 28, Western Michigan 21.

----------------------------

COUNTERPUNT

By Internet Raj
@internetraj

Few things in life are as physically and mentally taxing as living in an apartment building with a too-small garbage chute. If you’re unfamiliar with living in multistory apartment buildings, particularly those in densely populated cities, the communal garbage chute presents itself on the surface as a welcoming, luxurious convenience – after all, it’s much easier to toss your trash bag into a chute in your hallway than to trek to the dumpster in the basement or parking garage. 

The problem, though, lies in the fact that apartment building engineers around the world at some point conspired en masse to beta test some new feature of hell using the garbage chute, a Rock of Sisyphus of late-stage capitalism: every single garbage chute you will ever use is designed with cold precision to the same grisly dimensions – 90% of whatever size trash bag you happen to be carrying.

Even Izzo isn't fitting in there

Week after week, you lug a hulking trash bag to the chute, so filled to the brim that the flimsy Glad brand handle ties dig deeply into your skin, leaving an indelible red-ringed brand of self-inflicted shame across your index and ring fingers. 

Week after week, your trash bag will be larger than the chute opening, sometimes by orders of magnitude. Your brain will register this fundamental principle of physics as you pull the bag out of your kitchen trash can. However, caught in the throes of the “take-out-the garbage-procrastination” that will ultimately spell your doom, you will also promptly and recklessly disregard that very fact.

Week after week you convince yourself that this time it’ll fit.

Week after week, you approach the chute with an ill-advised optimism that betrays your better judgement. 

Week after week, you try to stuff that monstrosity of a bag—one whose mutant polyhedral shape is defined by disgusting, jagged protrusions that dangerously test the trash bag’s “heavy duty” rating—down a chute that somehow seems to shrink with each unathletic shove.

Week after week, you huff and you puff as you try to jam that bag down the chute. You constantly reorient the bag, playing a sort of nauseating, malformed clone of Tetris, but at some point the angular force of your futile twisting finally causes a protruding plastic fork, toilet paper roll, or some random piece of blister packaging to puncture the bag.

The structural integrity of a Greg Robinson 3-3-5

And there it is. Week after week, a majestic arc of disgusting garbage ooze splatters all over you. Trash debris begin to spill out haphazardly at your feet. You begin to question every minor life decision that conspired to bring you to this exact moment.

“I’ll do better next week,” you tell yourself. 

You will not.

*****************************

For over a decade, I’ve been hauling what has mostly been overstuffed, gross maize and blue trash on a weekly basis with unearned optimism. First it was Rich Rod, then it was Brady Hoke, and finally it was Jim Harbaugh. Devastating losses to Michigan State. Routine blowouts at the hand of Ohio State. Crossing route after crossing route pulverizing whatever 3-star Don Brown recruited from Massachusetts with tighter hips than a Deloitte consultant who hasn’t been able to touch his toes since the Presidential Fitness Test. Whatever it’s been, it’s been almost uniformly bad.

Yet here I am. I’m ready for more. I filled up my trash bag and boy is it a bulky monstrosity. And you bet I’m brimming with unfounded optimism. A younger coaching staff injecting energy and intensity into the team. A returning quarterback oozing leadership. A seemingly revitalized Jim Harbaugh fighting for his coaching life and ready to leave everything on the line.

I’m walking with an annoying pep in my step towards the chute that is the 2021 football season. All I see right now is a dominating week one win, a commanding win against MSU, and a shocking upset of Ohio State, all en route to Indy. Will my joyful exuberance be repaid in kind by a splattering of toxic sludge? Maybe, but you’ll never know until you try to squeeze that nasty bag in. And I just don’t know better.

LFG

Michigan 54, Western Michigan 3