Unverified Voracity Throws It Down Comment Count

Brian

Iowa: not very good. BHGP on the Hawkeye depth chart at guard and RB:

IOWA FOOTBALL TAKES ON MICHIGAN SATURDAY (/GROAN).Here's the two-deeps. Conor Boffeli is your left guard this week. Jordan Walsh, Austin Blythe, Nolan MacMillan and Boffeli have all had a turn playing turnstile there since Brandon Scherff and Andrew Donnal left the Penn State game due to injury. Neither Mark Weisman nor Brad Rogers are listed at running back or fullback.

Last week, Damon Bullock got to play an Iowan version of Poor Damn Toussaint, rushing for 1.9 yards a carry against Purdue, the #85 rushing D in the country. Iowa is not good. FWIW, the game was off the board yesterday but has now been set at Michigan –20. Iowa is not good.

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YAHHHHHHHHHH / Bryan Fuller

Basketball: possibly very good. I took in my first non-tiny-stream version of Michigan basketball last night*, and this happened:

"I probably should've dunked it," the Michigan freshman forward joked. "I missed a little tip-in, I was kind of upset about that."

It was awful. I'm so depressed.

The Wolverines' freshman forward showed off every facet of his game, and his potential, scoring 21 points on 8 of 9 shooting. He went 3-for-3 from behind the 3-point line, he finished off alley-oop dunks and even grabbed six rebounds.

Oh right that part well you guys just aren't demanding enough excellence. It is only by doing so on the internet that excellence can be achieved.

But seriously folks. !!!

Let us take a brief moment to consider Jordan Morgan, who continues to lose weight and get more athletic. He uses this additional athleticism to be incredibly annoying. Here is a screen in your face. Here is a hedge of your screen that puts you in the corner six feet from the three point line. Also it comes with free batting at the ball. He is going to rotate back now and not block your shot but just make it so that when you jump you're bouncing off him a little. And then he will run the floor.

Morgan's still undersized and may still be foul-prone against better competition, but this year Michigan can turn to Mitch McGary and Jon Horford when that happens instead of a badly miscast Evan Smotrycz, so I don't even care that much except Morgan does seem a step or two better than those guys because of the aforementioned embodiment of the most annoying noise in the world.

Big guys have a tendency to make that senior step up—Chris Young, Pete Vignier, Graham Brown—that makes them loveable lunch-bucket little-coaching-squee machines, and Morgan is in that year even if he's a junior thanks to the redshirt. There's a reason he's starting.

He'll probably see his minutes reduced against teams that can put out a post guy who can simply outhuge him; other than that it's going to be hard to get him off the floor.

Other things:

  • Vogrich > Stauskas at the moment because of defense, Stauskas > anyone in terms of three point shooting ever. Totally not getting ahead of myself based on three games.
  • The defense started off a little ugly, but after it was 26-25 ten minutes in the Jags scored only 29 more points in the final 30 minutes. It doesn't seem like it will be a strength, though. That's the tangible thing Michigan will miss without Novak/Douglass.
  • Jon Horford thunderdunk + Tim Hardaway thunderdunk + GRIII alley-oop festival == John Beilein looking at his team, thinking about the dudes he coached at Cansisius and wondering if it's even the same sport.
  • Not a huge fan of the two post setup. If you're going to do that one of them has to be able to operate out of the high post or shoot—not necessarily threes, but midrange jumpers—and I'm not sure Michigan's posts are prepared to do that yet. McGary might be a high post guy in time. They'll probably run it 10 minutes a game or so.
  • McGary's blown layup thing definitely looked like a guy used to having more up than he currently has. Looks like he'll have time to round into shape.
  • Fact: Spike Albrecht is better than half of the guys Amaker recruited.
  • Hardaway took no threes. In fact, there were exactly two shots all game that irritated me, one a long contested heat check Burke three, the other a long Hardaway two with 20 seconds on the shot clock. Two is kind of an amazing low number.

*[Defensive defense of self: It's hard for me to carve out the time to go to Crisler early in the week because I am working so hard for you, reader, and hockey versus MSU against BBball versus Slippery Rock is no contest.]

The vexer is now the vexee! Or maybe vice-versa. I'm vexed.

Will Campbell wrapping up vexing career by playing his best football

Commence the Rodriguez rabbling!

"It's been bumpy, it's been up and down," Campbell said. "I wish I was under this coaching staff all four years, but I wasn't, so the opportunities they gave me I just tried to capitalize on.

"I'm not saying that (the previous staff held me back). I was just lazy and young, and didn't realize the opportunities in front of me."

You could have had a stuffed animal rubbed on your face, man. That was the opportunity you missed in favor of eating cheeseburgers and playing video games. Verdict: good call.

Format set, mostly. The people who made the playoff thing got together to hammer out some playoff details. They are:

  • A 12-year contract featuring a bucket of money delivered by ESPN.
  • The Rose, Sugar, and Orange Bowl all have set lineups, with the Orange featuring the ACC champ versus the highest ranked SEC/Big Ten/Notre Dame entity that did not make the playoff or the Rose/Sugar.
  • The highest ranked team from a minor conference—Big East now included—gets an auto bid to an "access" bowl. In years when the Rose/Sugar/Orange are all out of the semifinal business that means there is essentially one slot up for grabs.
  • It's unclear what happens when the Rose hosts a semi and the Fiesta/Cotton/Peach bowls are acquiring teams. When the Rose/Sugar are hosting semis they will not allow the Big Ten or SEC champ to be in the Orange Bowl to make the Fiesta/Cotton/Peach setups more attractive in a long term TV contract.
  • There is another bucket of money coming for the title game.

More documents, more facepalming for the NCAA. Get The Picture has been all over every document released as part of the Ed O'Bannon case's discovery process, and here's the latest palm-to-forehead moment:

Davis then writes: "Here's my concern -- Eil [sic] is a current player on the Ole Miss team. Is using his actual number and attributes (height, race, etc.) too close to reality thereby using Eli's likeness (if not his name) and causing an eligibility issue?"

Another NCAA staffer, Melissa Caito, wrote in response: "Pls be cautious as you move through this -- any more 'watering down' of the video games will likely move the manufacturers to cease operations with us."

I'm not a lawyer, but that seems bad.

BONUS:

Another document made public Monday by the plaintiffs lawyers showed the results of an NCAA commercialism and licensing survey in which 12 of 150 responding Division I schools said they "engage in the sale of licensed products bearing a current student-athlete's individual likeness."

This was 2004 to 2006. I wonder what constitutes "likeness" here—it's possible some schools admit that putting 16 on a jersey and selling it is enough, while others are like "16, never heard of him, who's named 16 lol nobody."

Etc.: MGoUser hops on reddit to ask if people actually show up at other schools. Burke is now 20, also scoring and assisting. Billy Taylor documentary is FRIDAY FRIDAY FRIDAY. Even the most reasonable minds have to wonder about whether there is some conspiracy at Penn State. Oh… against Penn State? Oh. Safety blitzin'.

Comments

Zone Left

November 13th, 2012 at 4:37 PM ^

I found the comments more vindicating than surprising. One of my beliefs about humanity is that everyone is basically the same, so it's not surprising at all to me that students everywhere behave identically. Personally, the student section argument is basically a "get off my lawn" thing.

That said, I'm all for reasonable measures that increase student on-time rates without limiting access to actual university students.

WolvinLA2

November 13th, 2012 at 6:08 PM ^

I have two answers to that:

1. The student section includes a lot of social fans - kids who get tickets because that's what you do (and/or because their parents are paying for them).  These social fans likely won't be buying tickets (certainly not season tickets) once they're out of school.  The non-students buying tickets are buying them because they want to go to the game, not because that's just what you do on Saturdays.

2. Student tailgating is a lot different from non-student tailgating in two ways - quantity of alcohol consumed and proximity to the stadium.  This is a generality of course, but it's easier to get to the game on time after drinking 5 beers on the golf course than after drinking 10 beers and walking from Hill and Church, or something.  I remember a number of times in college where I was late to the game because I mis-timed that walk after drinking too much. 

I think the drinking plays a role.  Trust me, I'm a much better drinker-then-football fan now than I was at 18-19.  I had a number of games in undergrad where I had full intention of showing up on time and then didn't because I had one too many beers, I lost track of time, I started talking to a cute girl who seemed interested, got stuck cleaning shit off my lawn, forgot to grab my ticket from my room, helped out someone who drank a little too much at my pre-party or some combination of the above.  I don't think it's a big deal and I don't see it changing much either.

M-Wolverine

November 13th, 2012 at 7:32 PM ^

It answers why students are different from other game watchers. Not why they're different than students of the past, who seemed to be able to stay up till 3 am drinking, and get up at 8 am to start again and catch the game. Because not only do I not remember it being that empty "back in the day when I was a student", but many classes that came after me that seemed to be able to do it. It seems a more recent thing across the country.

Now it might be your point feeds into the other thread that more student seats means more student casual fans than in the past, because I think the demand and numbers have gone way up; and I don't think that's all diehards.

Zone Left

November 13th, 2012 at 8:10 PM ^

I doubt they are different. If they are, I'd guess a change occurred when the school committed to an expanded student section (maybe 1999?) that would ensure all students who wanted to purchase tickets had them. This eliminated the local resale market.

Furthermore, the stamp that's now required to use a student ticket without an ID is a significant barrier to resale for the less popular games. Iowa regular tickets cost $75 on mgoblue.com, so a non-student purchaser of a student ticket has to pay $42.50 to be able to use the ticket at the stadium. Stubhub tickets are going for $40, without the coordination costs. Which would you pick? The receiver is essentially losing money even if they get the ticket for free from the student. I'm guessing there are much cheaper alternatives out there too.

The bottom line is that I hypothesize student season ticket holders always attended in similar numbers to today, but athletic department policies have essentially eliminated the informal resale market for student tickets. 

The real question is how many regular season ticket holders attend games relative to student season ticket holders. It's easy to give away or resell regular tickets. It's actually a losing proposition for the receiver to get a student ticket for free in most cases.

M-Wolverine

November 13th, 2012 at 9:02 PM ^

They used to come in booklets that you had to have the whole thing. I remember because we did actually buy a booklet among roommates/friends and split up the tickets among a bunch of us to have friends/relatives/etc come to the games with a different person each week, and we had to pass along the whole thing to the next person each week.

Zone Left

November 13th, 2012 at 9:13 PM ^

That's interesting. My brother's roommate at Michigan was in the band. I paid him for his whole ticket package for two years and went to every game. I didn't have to do anything special, I just showed up with a ticket on gameday. I regularly attended games on student tickets from the late 90s to the early aughts like this.

Maybe things were different when you were in school, or I was extraordinarily lucky to never have any resistance.

Either way, it's essentially impossible to even give away student tickets to most games now that the staff check for student IDs whenever given a student tickets. I'm pretty old, so I get a very thorough look, which always ends in me joking about spending a lot of time in the military.

champswest

November 13th, 2012 at 3:26 PM ^

Morgan and Hardaway (and I suspect, Horford. Time will tell). Generally, players seem to get better each year under Beilein.

A 10 man rotation is very possible this year. I know that is hard to do, but with this team there is little if any drop-off from the first 5 to the second 5. We shouldn't have to worry about guys getting tired from having to play excessive minutes.

robpollard

November 13th, 2012 at 3:36 PM ^

That BHGP link had the following stat: "The Wolverines are ranked in the latest polls. They will be the first ranked team Iowa will face this season."

Iowa had to get 7 games into its B1G schedule to play a single ranked team (and at that, one that's only #23)? That's pathetic.

I hope OSU and MSU fall into pits of despair, but overall, this conference has got to get it together. We're like the Big East (West side version).