Williams, not Williamson. For both players.

Sam is really good at his job of carrying water for the coaches. Gattis has called the occasional good game (MSU this year was really good), but his game planning definitely leaves a lot to be desired. 

I don’t think Houstan’s performance against a bunch of super twitchy athletes, in his first college game mind you, definitively proves he is incapable of playing the 3. There are plenty of teams with just guys at the 3 and even the 2 spot. He will get better. There are probably teams that can exploit his lack of elite lateral quickness but that can be planned around on a game to game basis. 

Brian doesn't appear to be saying that head to head matters most, but that the final score matters most. Which is reductive, and unpersuasive. "Head to head," unless you're utterly Manichean/black/white in your thinking ought to include everything that transpires when two teams play, no? 

But again, be our nattering nabob of negativity, friends. :) There's just so much other awful stuff out there that I personally, am choosing to celebrate the accomplishment to date. 
 

Head-to-head should not matter the most. It is only one factor. Is Purdue better than MSU because Purdue beat MSU? Yes, but Purdue is 6-3 and MSU is 8-1, so in a ranking of 130 college football teams, MSU is probably going to come out ahead of Purdue in most systems. The rankings are about finding the best teams, in aggregate. There are going to be weird situations where one team just matches up better against another, even though if you play a full round robin, the former team will have a worse record than the latter. 

MSU beat UofM at home while getting outgained by 157 yards and benefiting from a replay official who doesn't know what the meaning of the word, "indisputable," is. I'm of the opinion that the home field advantage in college football is worth more than 3 points, but that's the common estimate. Does anyone really think that MSU is 1 point better than Michigan on a neutral field? If we play them 7 times, we probably win 5 of those, and the committee's rankings reflect that.

I personally generally like the music at UM games, Don't Stop Believin', Mr Brightside, etc.  When it's UM - MSU, music doesn't matter, but when it's a 21+ point spread, music matters.

Last weekend, ESPN talked about how Phil Collin's "In the Air Tonight" is such a big hit with NFL players.  As a guy who grew up listening to Phil and Genesis, I would definitely be on board with adding this to the Big House repertoire.

I don't think Houstan necessarily needs to play the 4, but his closeout technique needs work and he plays too upright.  Still he has good instincts and made a couple of nice plays off ball.

T Will can help here though.  He can guard the more dynamic wing when he's out there and allow Houstan to play the 4.  To an extent this applies to Johns too.  The problem is Houstan needs some strength work too and may get bullied a bit by Big Ten 4's.  I'm sure Juwan will figure it out, he has a lot of chess pieces to play with.

Can't there be a middle ground on the music?   Used to be you could get to the game a little early and enjoy the warmup.   You could hear some actual football sounds and catch up with your seatmates.   Now the music (it's like an acoustic assault and I am sure the sound level wouldn't be allowed by OSHA in any workplace environment) prohibits any of that.   So now instead of getting to my seat 45-60 minutes early, I time my arrival for kickoff.

I enjoy Journey and Mr. Brightside but does every second from an hour pregame to an hour postgame have to be filled with artificial noise?   That pro style stadium environment is the reason I have stopped going to NFL games.  

I was one of those people walking out midway through the 3rd quarter.  Never thought I'd be doing that in night game atmosphere.

I realize this is my bugaboo and maybe no one else cares, but can we all please stop saying that Penn State has "better" recruiting classes than Michigan? Their current class is ranked well above ours, yes, and that may well bear out in the end. But over the previous three cycles, Michigan's class was ranked higher on the 247 composite than Penn State's in each year. 

Penn State is consistently the third-best recruiting program in the conference, after Ohio State and Michigan. They're close enough to Michigan that it's "comparable," and they also do a better job getting transfers, so their 247 "talent composite" rating is usually higher. But the fact that the media thinks James Franklin is a recruiting whiz doesn't change the numbers, which favor Michigan.

Craig a Menshevik or a Menchsivik?

Unpopular opinion: if both MSU and Michigan beat OSU (from my lips to God's ear), let Sparty get the playoff spot (assuming they win the B1G Championship). I'd rather have a winnable Rose Bowl than get shut out by Georgia's defense.

I really don't get the continued assumption that JJ McCarthy is some wunderkind athletic marvel in the redzone.  He's a good athlete but if anything a guy with mediocre accuracy and decent legs is less effective in the redzone because defenses don't need to worry about his receivers going deep on them if he scrambles.  Maybe you get a couple of runs but my concerns about around the RZ is that none of the receivers have really emerged as targets down there beyond All, so if he's out then it's guys who don't do great fighting for balls...losing battles for balls because they aren't physically distancing themselves from defenders.  Schoonmaker's TD against McFadden was because he bodied him away before catching; the WRs don't really do that against corners and they aren't winning the hand-fights.  A different QB isn't likely to change that.

Brian thinks head to head should be what matters most, the rest of us say if the playoff committee watched that game and thought Michigan was the better team, who are we to argue?
 

Save 1 or maybe 2 years, that’s basically the Harbaugh era against MSU.  Unfortunately losses against MSU still count, despite who outplayed who.  I’m with Brian on this one.  If we played Purdue and won, that’s the only way I’d be swayed.  This will work itself out with the games left to be played, but moral victories against MSU feel empty.

The quorum was in fine form today! Great listen 

Really don't get why Sam things to think JJ is the solution to leaving yards on the field in the passing game. JJ is worse at pass reads, hangs onto the ball too long, is more likely to throw a dumb hero-ball pick, and is at least a little less accurate than Cade (all of these things are totally understandable from a freshman). 

Yeah, JJ is a better runner and that opens up some options in the red zone. But the reason he's still on the bench is precisely because he's not as reliable in the passing game. 

Sam needs to hide his relationship with Gattis a little more. He has constantly defended him since he has come here, even when he has horrible game plans and called games. When in reality he has had a very up and down tenure.