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The header. Via the University of Michigan Heritage project, that's Eugene Waxman, age 5, acting in his capacity as a "drum minor" in 1949.

A real-life Madden kid. John Harbaugh's got Lamar Jackson and—slightly less important—a guy in the booth punching stuff into a fourth down bot:

One thing Harbaugh has taken a close look at is how he can best give the Ravens an edge with his in-game decision-making. For years, he’s had a staffer in the booth communicating win probabilities to him during games. First, it was Matt Weiss, who has since become the running backs coach. This season, it’s football analyst (that’s his official title) Daniel Stern, a 25-year-old behavioral economics major who grew up in Baltimore, got his degree from Yale and is in his fourth season with the Ravens.

During the week, Stern, Harbaugh and other members of the Ravens coaching staff come up with a plan for how they want to approach each game from a strategic perspective. They decide on a set of rules that will give them the best chance to win, and Stern reminds Harbaugh of those rules on the headset during the game. At the beginning of that drive against the Seahawks, they talked about how they wanted to be aggressive in short yardage. But with a third-and-15 run play called, it seemed unlikely that they were going to be in short yardage. Jackson, as he’s done all season, exceeded expectations with his run. The numbers said to go for it, but it wasn’t a no-brainer.

“There was definitely an advantage to going for it in that situation, mathematically it was the correct thing to do,” Stern says weeks later. “But if it had been fourth-and-4 or fourth-and-5, then it wouldn’t have been the correct thing to do. It was fourth-and-2, I think it was either a long 2 or a regular 2. It definitely wasn’t one-and-a-half. It definitely was a full 2 yards.”

Hopefully the brothers get together and this osmoses its way over to Ann Arbor.

[After THE JUMP: math]

Someone did the math. This is necessarily rough since it didn't come from Connelly, but a reasonable guess as to where Michigan's offense has been over the past five games:

If you weigh all games equally, assume there were no pre-season expectations baked into the week 7 number, etc, I think that equates to an offensive rating of about 40.7 over the past 6 weeks, which would be equal to the #7 offense over the whole year

— Christopher J Kringle (@dkkeoodk) November 25, 2019

Ugh, hope.

1969. Orion Sang with an oral history on events of 50 years ago:

Bo’s arrival

In the offseason, former coach Bump Elliott moved into an administrative role within the athletic department. His replacement was Bo Schembechler, a fiery, ‘tyrannical’ disciple of Woody Hayes who arrived from Miami (Ohio). Schembechler ran off dozens of players that offseason — and also began preparing his new team for Ohio State, whether they knew it or not.

Brandstatter: “He came in and was a maniac.”

McKenzie: “He was a real asshole.”

Dana Coin, linebacker/kicker: “When he came up in the winter and we started the winter program, we probably lost 14 or 15 guys.”

Dierdorf: “I think right off the bat, they were happy to remind us that they weren’t there (in 1968). They were in Miami of Ohio when that happened. It was entirely our fault.

Back in Mckeesport. Also in the Athletic, a profile of Khaleke Hudson:

McKeesport is a quintessential Rust Belt mill town located along the Monongahela River. It once was home to a National Tube Works plant that employed more than 7,000 people. As the mills closed and the manufacturing jobs dried up, population dwindled.

Mae Hudson, Khaleke’s grandmother, lives in a neighborhood just up the hill from the high school. She’s a lifelong McKeesport resident who has no plans to leave, despite the changes she’s observed. Signs of urban decay are everywhere: abandoned houses, boarded-up windows, empty storefronts. For Mae, those eyesores are reminders of enduring civic neglect.

“Parts just look like a ghost town,” she said. “I don’t see any redevelopment. It’s just not growing like it used to.”

Hockey cavalry is coming part X. Craig Button's 2020 NHL draft rankings feature Michigan commits Thomas Bordeleau at #25 and Brendan Brisson at #33. HockeyProspect.com's November update has Bordeleau at 25 and Brisson at 27. Bordeleau is an NTDP who's signed and will be on campus next year. There's been no indication yet that Brisson's signed his LOI yet but you have to figure he's coming in what with the dearth of forward skill on the current roster.

Etc.: Eat your heart out, Ron Hextall. A brief history of MACtion. Jace Howard profiled.