Since we're getting close to a consensus on what the board generally wants to see in a 12-team Big Ten schedule, I went ahead and made one up:

 

The Rules:

• North/South Division (a brilliant idea from Seth 9)
• 9 Conference Games
• Each team plays in-division opponents once per year
• Each team has one cross-divisional rival they play once per year
• Every team plays three more games against a rotation of the five remaining cross-divisional opponents
• The cross-divisional opponents rotate by 2 teams every 2 years (never more than 2 seasons without playing an opponent, and it evens out over a 10-year cycle)

Cross-Divisional Rivals

• Michigan/Ohio St
• Mich St/Indiana
• Wisconsin/Pitt
• Minnesota/Penn St
• Northwestern/Illinois
• Iowa/Purdue

Michigan State and Indiana have a trophy game, the Old Brass Spittoon. I know Minnesota/Penn State is contrived but they have a trophy too.

That leaves some combination of Iowa and Wisconsin with Purdue and Pitt. I figure if Pitt's joining the conference, let them pick which one they want.

One thing I like about this division is the competitive balance, e.g., Northwestern and Indiana are split up. The North is a bit deeper but the South has two monsters.

It has symmetry of rivalries. It has relatively balanced schedules.

And we all play each other often enough to still think of ourselves as a close-knit group. The key is the 9th conference game. In case you're wondering, here's a table of the teams left off Michigan's schedule from 2011 through 2020:

2011-12	2013-14	2015-16	2017-18	2019-20
Illini	Indiana	PSU	Purdue	Pitt
Purdue	Pitt	Illini	Indiana	PSU

Names:

I'm sick of sterile divisional names. I guess it comes from being an old NHL fan, but I'm a big believer in cool names for conferences.

Lakes Division: Michigan, MSU, Iowa, Wis, Minn, NW

River Division: Ohio St, Penn St, Indiana, Purdue, Pitt, Illinois

Get it? Great Lakes/Ohio River. But it's purposely left ambiguous since, like, Iowa doesn't really touch a Great Lake (but it has lots of lakes -- we'll just tell Iowa it's 'cause we all have lots of lakes, deal?)

Ambiguous or not, it's at least feint toward our footprint's geography other than cardinal directions (lame!), and pretty easy to remember.

These are not my dream names. My dream names would be Schembechler and Hayes Divisions. Or Algonquin and Iroquois. Or if you really wanna be clever, then howabout:

Vowel Shift Six and the Barn-Burning Division

Because most of Lower Michigan, Chicagoland, Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin have all picked up the Northern Cities Vowel Shift:



(Put two fingers in the corners of your mouth and say a short-a, as in "accent." Did your corners move away from each other horizontally? If so, you have the accent. If your lips moved vertically, you don't).

And it just so happens that the footprint for this dialect includes Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Northwestern, but no other Big Ten Schools (it's in St. Louis and vicinity too, but not Champaign). The isogloss (i.e. border) for our short-a is roughly the same line that separates our divisions. Surely something can be done with this?

As for "Barn Burner" (meaning a great game) -- it's an old Hoosier term that has made its way through the Ohio River valley. Again, it's something that, among Big Ten teams, the southern half could call its own.

As for the conference itself, the problem with changing the name isn't just branding: it has to do with the conference's non-profit status. Yes, it's possible to put the forms back in, but from my limited understand, having gone through the process on a much smaller scale, you end up triggering a bunch of post-1990 grandfather clauses that I'm guessing the Big Ten currently enjoys.

Also, if we go to 12, there's already a 12-team conference.

Of course, it's branding too, especially for the Big Ten Network. But let's say we finally decide that the most academically prestigious BCS conference shouldn't itself be a misnomer, what should we call this collection? Ideas:

• The Big Athletic Conference
• The Big Midwest (The "Midwest Conference" is already taken
• The Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives (its official name until 1987)
• The Odawa Conference
• The Big Ten and Then Some
• The Lakers' Dozen
• The Bigger 12
• The Big1T2EN

I'm not really a fan of any of these, really. Maybe the Lakers' Dozen. Keep in mind, historically, "The Big Ten" was just a nickname anyway.

This is a follow-up to my post last week on Adopt-a-Shelter.

For those just joining us, it's a community service event (Mitch Albom's organization is involved) in which we go to two (used to be five) family homeless shelters in Detroit and throw the kids there a Christmas Party.

Before I posted that on the board (and Brian stapled it to an Unverified Voracity), this year's event was looking a bit grim. No one knows quite the reason. It could be that our head wasn't screwed on quite right. I could be, perhaps, that our cash was too tight. But I think that the most likely reason of all, may have been that the economy was two sizes too small.

But, whatever the reason, our head or our wallets, or too much yule lagers, it wouldn't have come off but for MGoBloggers.

Every kid in the shelters, the tall and the small,
might still have been singing, without any presents at all.
But we needn't have worried, YOU CAME THROUGH!
We went from little to plenty, and it was all thanks to you!
MGoBloggers responded, from Detroit to L.A.
Heck, even a Buckeye sent donations our way.

165 clients at Booth Evangeline
Ate pizza and cake and talked Wolverine spleen
The ladies had their nails done, the boys played some ball
And then Santa arrived with presents for all
Though I don't think MGoBlog was really noticed by Mitch
We know why AAS '09 went off without a hitch
(You'll have to take thank-you's from organizer Marci Fitch)
So thank you to everyone who helped in some way.
This blog seriously made those kids' day.

For the other site, well, Ms. Kroflich had these words to say:

Hello Seth,

Could you post this on the MGoBloggers site?  I'll send thank you letters (and receipts) to the people who donated, but we might get an even better turn-out next year if people know what happens (?).  Thank you again for posting this event (it wouldn't have been nearly as successful with MGoBloggers help)!

Thank you to the volunteers and donors who made the Christmas Party at Genesis II House* such a marvelous event!!  

 

We got off to a slow start... but things really picked up from there.  The students in Mrs. Val Tomich's class at Allen Park Community School provided us with the crafts to create decorations for the Christmas tree.  It sparkled with the silver and gold garland and our glittery decorations.  It looked so great that Santa Claus (Lonnie) came to visit, passed out candy, and sat for photos with the children.  Once Santa was safely on his way back to the North Pole, the party started groovin' with Living Energy (248 926-9550).  Rick and his crew gets everyone up and jumpin!  They passed out hats, glasses, bead necklaces, and feather boas which made everyone feel extra festive.  We got funky for about an hour and then did a conga line to the dining room for lunch.  Sandee and Jessica made us a terrific lunch including hamburgers, chicken strips, tater-tots, baked beans, 3 bean casserole, and brownies.  After lunch, we setup a Holiday store with all of the fabulous donations... coats, hat/mitten/scarf sets, clothes, toys, games, stuffed animals, books, make-up kits, toiletry sets, purses, and Payless gift certificates (cash donations were used to purchase gifts).  There were more warm coats and dress clothes than ever this year.  We had enough donations for every lady to receive 2 gifts and each child to receive 8 gifts!  Our bravest volunteers, Kevin and Laura, stayed in the dining room and sang Christmas carols with the children while the rest of us made sure that everyone got the perfect gifts for Christmas! 

 

* For those who may not know, Genesis II House is one of Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries transitional housing shelters.  They provide the ladies and children with a safe and stable environment, focusing on education, job-training, and parenting.  The goal is to help the ladies obtain and keep a home of their own... One of the ladies told us that she would not be at Genesis II for our next party because she got a home of her own.  Now that's a Merry Christmas!

 

 

Thank you all so much for making the Holidays happier!

 

Julie Kroflich

fin.

UPDATE 11/24: Brian suggested on Monday's Unverified Voracity that we get a Paypal account so you can donate directly. We do accept $$$, but for legalese reasons we much prefer in-kind donations, i.e., buy a gift.

An easy way to do this:

Buy it from Amazon.com

(if you use the link above you will give Brian credit for it),

and have it shipped to:

Mitch Albom Christmas Party
c/o Salvation Army/Booth Services
3737 Humboldt
Detroit, MI  48208

E-mail us the tracking info if you can.

Make sure it is unwrapped.

If you or your organization just want to give an online donation and be done with it, donate to S.A.Y. Detroit: https://drmm.org/donate1.htm

This qualify as a 501(c)3 organization for tax receipts.

It's Mitch's organization, which we can access directly for this event.

Also: Your best e-mail contact for any questions is to e-mail timetohelpmitch@gmail.com. You will get Nancy Welber Barr, who was V.I.'s president, and is organizing the Booth Shelter Party (the one Mitch will be at). You can e-mail me, Misopogon@att.net, too, if you like.

/Update
-------------------------------------------------------------



Hi, I'm Misopogon.

You may know me from such incredibly long diaries such as The Decimated Defense, Data-Mining the HenneChart, and pre-OSU, Hamlet-inspired emo.

This is not one such diary. Rather it is attempt to trade in my good will and MGoPoints, such as they are, for some srsly help with a community service project now and up to the morning of Saturday, Dec. 5.

What U Talkin Bout?

The event is called "Adopt-a-Shelter."



and



This is a community service thing that I do every year to bring some holiday cheer to homeless kids. It used to be a signature event of Volunteer Impact.

Mitch Albom's Time to Help organization runs one of the shelters. He will be there, operating as a kind of Master of Ceremonies. Misopogal will be there, operating as a kind of Master of the Arts&Crafts and Cookie Decoration operation. I will be there, operating as "oooohhhh are you [Misopogal]'s BOY-FRIEND?"

We basically go to several homeless shelters in Detroit and give the kids there a Christmas party, complete with Santa, face-painting, pizza and cake, activities, and -- here's the operative part -- gifts.

Ah, a Point Emerges...

The gifts are all donations from Not-Living-In-a-Homeless-Shelter Metro-Detroiters and businesses. They're small gifts -- like $15 things.

They are new and unwrapped

The way it works is the parents go "shopping" for their kids' gifts while we keep the tykes distracted with face painting, and pizza, and dancing, and a short, jolly, obese, bearded elf in a red suit.

You also can just donate like $15 bucks, and that'll go directly into the big Toys R Us run. If you wanna do that, get it in to Julie Kroflich (248) 478-5168 before Nov. 30.

What Kind of Gifts?

Well, first of all, things that are NOT guns, swords, violent comic books, etc. No perfume, cologne, body sprays or mouthwash, or anything else containing alcohol of any sort. No nail files or any other sharp items. Nothing with stickers.

Second, they have to be new, still in the packaging.

If you have any used strollers in good condition, they would be most welcome for the new moms who often don't have the resources to buy a stroller and must constantly hold their babies. Strollers are in addition to needing gifts to stock the "store."

Michigan apparel is totally cool. You will probably make some kid blue for life.

If you've got a gift, contact Julie Kroflich -- (248) 478-5168.

As for suggestions, this being MGoBlog and all, I think that might best be shown in a ..

data table?

data table.

Infant/Toddler	Child (4-12 Years)	Teen	Parent
Diapers	Underwear	Underwear	Underwear
Sleepers	Sweat suits	Sweat suits	Sweat suits
Onesies	Socks	Socks	Purses
Socks	Hats	Hats	Socks
Hats/mittens	Mittens	Mittens	Hats
Coats	Coats	Coats	Mittens
	$15 Gift certificates for Payless shoes	$15 Gift certificates for Payless shoes	Coats
	Board games	Board games	$15 Gift certificates for Payless shoes
	Stuffed animals	Radio walkman	Resume paper and envelopes
	Activity books	Jewelry kits	Radio walkman
	Puzzles	Puzzles	Crossword puzzles
	Dolls	Books	Books
	Books	Notebooks/pens
	Toy cars/trucks

Update 11/25: Age Spread of Current Residents:

I got numbers on the ages of the kids who will be at the shelter, so you can decide for yourself what target to hit:

Age	Boys:	Girls:
Infant	9	6
2	2	2
3	8	2
4	4	4
5	3	0
6	3	2
7	1	3
8	3	1
9	2	3
10	3	1
11	0	3
12	0	1
13	0	2
14	0	0
15	0	2
16	0	2
17	1	0

So lots and lots of toddlers and infants. Very short on boys +10 (which sucks because we just got a lot of cool t-shirts). Teenage girl gifts are in short supply.

Okay, What Do I Do With It?

Contact Julie Kroflich -- (248) 478-5168.

OR -- you can bring it down yourself to the:

Booth Evangeline Shelter
3737 Humboldt
Detroit, MI 48208

Walk in and say it's for the "Adopt-a-Shelter" party on Dec. 5.

Is That All?

We also could use stuff donations: This is like, say, if you own a pizza joint and can donate pizza for 200 people, or orange juice/donuts/bagels for 200 people. Or cream cheese.

Or balloons, game prizes, arts&crafts stuff.

One year we had a Saturn Dealership give us 50 empty popcorn boxes (don't ask), and they were awesome. Another year we had paper crowns from a certain restaurant chain that kids decorated. You know what schlock you got.

We have the forms if you want tax receipts for the donations.

Or if you're a videographer, and could record and edit to create like a 3-5 minute video. Chances are it would be put on Mitch's Albom's website.

Volunteers: The Genesis II House (the not Mitch Albom one) still needs like four more solid volunteers. The Booth Evangeline Shelter could use more still I think. I will update as I get more info.

The gifts are what we need most right now.

If you can help, call Julie Kroflich at (248) 478-5168. You can also e-mail me at misopogon@att.net, or Mitch's organization at timetohelpmitch@gmail.

Happy Holidays, and Go Blue!

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

 

I hate Henri the Otter of Ennui.

For me, losing hurts. Watching Ezeh bite on a Juice Williams ninja fake hurts. Getting run over by Wisconsin hurts. Getting run around by Purdue hurts. Coming up just short after outplaying Iowa, having a win in East Lansing slip out of our grasps after a tantalizing tie, getting out-coached and out-executed by Penn State: these things hurt.

Henri can turn himself off. He can be blasé about such things. I can’t. I hate Henri for that.

Here’s some things that I seriously thought today:

1. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been wearing maize each week.”
2. “When have the holders of conventional wisdom ever had to prove themselves?”
3. “Is RR just a fantastic offensive or Big East coach promoted beyond his capabilities?”
4. “What is the percent chance that RR brings Michigan back to the top of the Big Ten, and what is the percent chance that it could happen under, say, Jim Harbaugh?”
5. “Maybe we should just shut down the football program altogether and concentrate on being a hockey monster.”
6. “But then we wouldn’t have Barwis.”
7. “eee”
8. “What have I done to deserve this?”

Because unlike Henri the Otter of Ennui I am incapable of shutting down my feelings, after losses, I grieve. This is part of the grieving process for me: questioning all that is given, thinking the thing that hasn’t been thought for awhile. To quote Dunder Mifflen Paper Co. Regional Manager Michael Scott, “there is such a thing as good grief; just ask Charlie Brown.”

I have tried several ways of dealing with post-loss grief this year, none of which have really done the trick. The best – but least repeatable – method was to go late-season lake perch fishing, catch almost 30 perch and a handful of smallmouth bass, race back home, and throw the still-twitching perch in a frying pan and gorge, all the while lashing out at snarky Spartan family members.

I also tried zoning out to Law & Order reruns with my head in Misopogal’s lap (although this had the probably foreseeable outcome of receiving an assessment on my need for a haircut). I tried drinking copious amounts of whiskey and losing $25.00 to friends who are better at poker than I am. I tried sitting in a grumpy corner during a weekend-long in-law family event, eyeing the guitar case in the corner that would allow me to belt out my sorrows between Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and Bob Dylan songs, and avoiding eye contact with Misopogal, who has a strict No-Belting-Out-Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and Bob Dylan Songs-During-Events-With-Her-Side-of-the-Family policy. And I tried sucking back Boddingtons and Stilton Fries in the window seat of Ashley’s while watching the throngs of maize-clad disappointment and waxing half-hearted existentialism with my best friend.

All of these are cathartic in their way. Some got me very full. Some got me very drunk. Some finally got me into the barber shop. But I’m running out of new and exciting coping mechanisms. So my latest is going on MGoBlog with a bevy of stupid questions, which I go on to answer at length using Hamlet and Charlie Brown and The Office and buried Infinite Jest references, i.e. logorrhea.

1. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been wearing maize each week.”

I’m a Johnny-Come-Lately to the whole ‘Maize-Out’ thing. I started wearing maize on Football Saturdays last year. We started really really sucking last year.

This should not be taken for a causal relationship. Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc. Moving on.

2. “When have the holders of conventional wisdom ever had to prove themselves?”

C.S. Lewis had this theory (actually it was more of a mourning observation) that there is no such thing today as a fair argument. There is no right or wrong anymore. Rather, in any disagreement, there is one side that is popular, and another side that is unpopular. The side that is unpopular has the burden of proof, and must argue with perfect clarity. The side that is popular – whether it is right or wrong – is best served by arguing with platitudes and rhetorical tricks. The only way they could possibly lose is actually have a fair argument, therefore a fair argument should be avoided at all costs.

The sports radio you can get in your car in Detroit is all platitudes. It’s also All-Fire-Rich-Rod-All-the-Time these days. Unfortunately, I finished my last CD-on-Tape (a biography of C.S. Lewis) last week and have little else to listen to in the car when stuck in construction-abetted gridlock, and I can’t stand Jim Rome because that guy is more in need of an ass-whopping than any man in history, so I end up listening for like five minutes to Mike Valenti (MSU brah!) and Terry Foster (Drew Sharp Lite) until I’m literally pounding my fists on the dashboard.

This is where having Misopogal around is incredibly important for me, because she knows how to use an Adam Sandler movie quote to make me realize how little it really matters what, say, Mike Valenti or Sean Hannity or those douche bags who say “Unacceptable” while walking out of Michigan Stadium have to say.* I won’t attempt to do her justice on here. Suffice to say that if everyone was as fair and open-minded and good at listening as my fiancé, well, she wouldn’t be as remarkable. People have strong biases and much prefer hearing that they’re right to seeking truths, and if you let this bother you, you will end up a grumpy old Oxfordian who’s as insufferable to others as others are to you.

Fuck Sean Hannity. Fuck Bill Maher. Fuck Mike Valenti and Terry Foster. All they do is reinforce opinions that weren’t going to change anyway. Those who make the important decisions don’t listen to these fucks. I seriously doubt that Mary Sue Coleman and Bill Martin and Bill Martin’s replacement are the type of folk to let Valenti and Foster talk them into felo-de-se.

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

* “Well, I have a microphone and you don't, so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!”

-The Wedding Singer

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

3. “Is RR just a fantastic offensive or Big East coach promoted beyond his capabilities?”

From Wikipedia:

The Peter Principle … holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions … Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".

Dunder Mifflen’s Michael Scott is the modern paradigm of the Peter Principle. The character was a fantastic salesman because of his everyman charm, * which earned him a promotion to Regional Manager, his spectacular incompetence at which provides the majority of the show’s humor.

The way you avoid the Peter Principle in your own hierarchy is to judge candidates on whether they show the skills required of the higher job.

I think you can make a great Peter Principle case for Charlie Weiss. I don’t think you have as much of a case with Rich Rodriguez. Rodriguez built a national power in West Fucking Virginia. While the Big East is not as on-par with the Big Ten as whatever the SEC version of Sean Hannity is would like you to believe, neither is it that huge of a jump to go from head coach at a Big East school to head coach at a Big Ten school.

I said you don’t have as much of a case. But there is a case. Because Michigan really isn’t “just a Big Ten school.” Michigan is to the Big Ten what Texas is to the Big XII, or Florida State is to the ACC. Wherever you draw the arbitrary line of where college football history doesn’t matter anymore, Michigan is still one of the top programs in a sport that functionally rewards top programs more than any other.

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

* In my biz we call these guys “handshake guys” – they are not necessarily bright, nor do they even know the real value of what they’re selling, but they interface very well with clients’ handshake guys, with whom they form handshake-guy bonds that generate a ton of inexplicable sales.

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

There are parts of this job that require much more than a successful Big East coach needs to be successful:

• Winning nationally recognized rivalry games
• Handling a huge amount of media pressure
• Recruiting athletes from anywhere in the country who are coveted by every program in the country
• Placating egos of 21-year-olds with assured NFL futures
• Winning in horrible weather
• Out-coaching guys who are a lock for the coaching Hall of Fame
• Winning when things go against you
• Winning when you are the biggest game of the year for every team you face.

Some of these things we can assess. Others are way too early. I will make a stab at each, with regard to Rich Rod, but include percentages after each to tell you how sure I am of my assessment:

Winning nationally recognized rivalry games.

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to get a nervous, John Cooper-esque feeling (not helped by the smartest sports guy in my office saying this all the time), that RR doesn’t “get” rivalries. What I mean by that is mostly that he doesn’t know how to blow enough smoke up everyone’s asses about rivalries.*

There is a “it’s basically a football game” attitude that engineers can appreciate, but which makes us LSA folk whinge. I’m starting to think that RR falls in that engineer category, which makes sense since he is widely considered (by the considerably small group of people who actually consider things) to be one of the best football engineering minds in the game. What engineers don’t realize, but LSA folk seem to understand intuitively, is that if you blow enough smoke about something, you can convince yourself and others that it is true, and then your brain can make it come true, and it actually does become true.

There is no good physical explanation for how Bo writing 50** all over the place in 1969 led to a huge upset over Ohio State, or why Bo was able to build off that win to establish a dynasty that lasted almost 40 years. You engineering folk are just gonna have to trust us wussy-ass liberal artfarts on this: for the head coach of Michigan, beating Ohio State matters more than any two wins anywhere on the schedule. And part of the way you beat Ohio State is to be more irrational about beating Ohio State than Ohio State is about beating Michigan. I believe this. I don’t think Rich Rod believes this. 60 percent.

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

* This was the subject of a recent bout of existentialist post-(Purdue) loss grief therapy in the window of Ashley’s.

** i.e. the amount of points the 1968 Buckeyes put up on Michigan.

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

Handling a huge amount of media pressure.

This is one of the few jobs in the United States that is conducted in a national fishbowl. People know who’s coaching Michigan like they know who the Vice President is. RR came in with a more open, aw-shucks, honest approach than Lloyd's "Eat the crags in my face, bitches" answer.

The local media's response was to eat him alive.

In media, as in football, those who are in the room for the big stuff are those who have already managed to succeed in the highly competitive, dog-eat-dog industry we work in. The problem with a room full of carnivorous survivors is that predators can't resist weakness (or, like me, find other, less-competitive niches to exploit).

We journalists are as incapable of coming up with a mutually beneficial relationship with a public figure as a bear is incapable of independently coming to a working relationship with a Salmon population. Since the early days, RR has adapted, and adapted very quickly.

Until taking a job like this, there is really no way of assessing how a person will do in it. Think of how many promising politicians have flamed out in the first month of a presidential campaign.

Nobody does well at first. When you enter the fishbowl, you either have the stones to handle it, or you don't. At this point – and it's still early – it is my professional opinion that Rich Rodriguez does absolutely have the cojones to hang in. It may be he'll lose it after a few more years, but I think at this point that is pretty doubtful. We are lucky as all hell because this is a very rare trait, but this is a guy who has been put through the worst we can dish out, often, and early, and come through. I think RR can handle the media. It won't ever be, like Obama-level graceful, but in his own clunky way, this guy's got it. 70 percent.

Recruiting athletes from anywhere in the country who are coveted by every program in the country.

If there's a place on Rich Rodriguez's resume that was cause for concern, this was it. Granted, it's hard to get anyone with an opportunity to go somewhere else to live in Morgantown, W.Va., for four or so years. But RR's teams, wherever he has gone, have been explicitly built with "his" kinds of guys.

This isn't someone who can go in and win with other guys' players, as has been demonstrated so thoroughly by our underperformance of talent the past two years.* The thing is, the real blue chip high school talent pool is small and therefore not so varied. What I mean is that RR won at West Virginia and Clemson and Tulane by taking his hand-picked 3-star guys against someone else's base sample of 3-star guys.

You don't get to hand-pick so much with the smaller 4- and 5-star talent pools. There aren't four 5-star ninja slot guys every year – rather, you get like one national Percy Harvin or Reggie Bush once every four years. This creates a recruiting disadvantage for RR as opposed to Lloyd, whose M.O. was that any 4-star receiver can come here and head to the NFL. As Brian has pointed out, the dynamics of his system will result in lower-rated classes (if much higher than West Virginia).

Even if the system more than makes up for that, this has an unfortunate corollary, in that our rivals (e.g. Ohio State, Notre Dame, USC), get to mop up on what we don't make a play for. There's a limit to what you can do, recruiting-wise, with a system-based program. Just as Beilein probably can never be MSU, I get the feeling that Rich Rod can never be USC. If he's winning just as much, I don't give a damn, but it does leave the door open for USC to be USC, and Ohio State to be Ohio State.

Of course, we may never find out. Early returns are not good. RR went head-to-head with Ohio State for perfect-for-our-system athlete Terrell Pryor, and lost out because Pryor thought the Buckeyes would make him a better pro. That this was a bad decision by Pryor is pretty much not in dispute (Hannityism nonwithstanding). It says something that RR went all-out for a recruit who was clearly better off at Michigan and lost him. However, at this point you can't knock RR too much – there is more evidence that Pryor is a bad decision-maker than there is for RR not being able to be a player in the blue chip recruit market. Seantrel Henderson, 2010's uber recruit, had Michigan a top consideration until the bottom fell out of our season. Until we see Rich Rod recruit with a 10-3 bowl win, we won't really know. 35 percent 

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* This is the subject of a future blog that I'm working on, but basically he won 3 games with a 5-win talent level last year, and is on pace for 5 wins with a 7-win group of talent this year. These are both within the margin of error, but as I'll show in that future blog, Lloyd almost never (2005 was the lone exception) came more than a game under expectation, and twice at the bottom of the margin of error is not a good sign. For now, you're just gonna have to trust me.

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

Placating egos of 21-year-olds with assured NFL futures

.

So far, obviously not a problem. Nuff said. 35 percent.

Winning in horrible weather

I know I'm chancing a visit from Captain Obvious here, but Michigan is in Michigan. September in Ann Arbor is perfect for a wedding (keep your fingers crossed for me), but playing games in Ann Arbor, and Columbus, and Chicagoland, and Madison, and Minneapolis, yada yada in October and November is just crying for chill, rain, wind, sleet, snow, hail, and of course the State of Michigan's specialty, chillrainsleetwindsnowhail.

Is it all that different, weather-wise, than the Big East? I'm led to believe it is, though not like the difference between Big Ten and SEC.

Does it affect Rich Rod's teams more than other teams? Well, doesn't it kind of look like it so far?

Again, we are in small sample territory here. But I'm starting to think that weather and the spread-n-shred are not good buddies. On pretty days, we have shredded. On crummy days, we have been shredded. On surface observation, when it rains on us, it pours.

Shitty weather is bad for any offense, e.g. 2007 Michigan/Ohio State. The reason I think it hurts us more is that our whole offensive concept is to get ninja buggers in space who then make guys miss. When the ball becomes slick and uncatchable, that limits the places we can go with it, which is counter to the spread's philosophy of keeping everything an optional point-of-attack. When the ground becomes un-maneuverable, that neutralizes a team that tries to beat you by having guys who make sharper cuts.

The last two years we have gotten worse as the season progressed. Michigan State has gotten better late in the year. Is this because we are more subject to the weather? I don't know. I can only muse. 5 percent.

Out-coaching guys who are a lock for the coaching Hall of Fame

That Penn State game pissed me off. I thought they looked better prepared for us than we were for them. And we were the guys who got a week against a sacrificial lamb to prepare. We were at home. This is all crap you could hear on the radio and means nothing.

Was it getting out-coached? Brian had this to say in UFR's new "RPS" metric:

RPS     6    13   -7        Robinson got pwned.

That's on GERG, not Rich Rodriguez. There's more to it than that, but yes, we've been getting out-coached a bit this year, and not just from Joe Paterno. In the Michigan State games of this year and last, Dantonio took personal command of his defenses and had game plans that were as close to perfect against RR as you can come up with.

Other than that, though, the offense has been conceptually better than everyone else we've faced – execution by the young and talent-deficient has been the O's biggest problem.

On defense, like woah.

One thing that I think most any college football fan is incapable of doing is having a completely realistic view of their own head coach. So long as that coach is your coach, you are married, so either you're doing whatever you can to make the relationship work, or you're in the process of destroying the whole thing. So let's look back and see what Michigan fans thought of Rich Rodriguez before "Head Coach of the University of Michigan Football Team" was one of his accolades (from Maize n Brew, 12/10/2007 (emphasis mine)):

Positives - Excellent recruiter. Excellent in game coach. Runs a clean program (as far as we know). Seemingly a good guy who would fit into the mantra of a "Michigan Man." Recruits awesomely, awesomely named players.

Negatives - Loss to the Wannstache with a MNC berth on the line. Seriously. That's a significant negative. His players have an uncanny ability to fumble at the worst possible times. Defensive has never been the strongest tool in the utility belt and the Mountaineers generally have to outscore their opponents to win ball games. Limited ties to the Midwest and no ties to Michigan. May benefit from coaching in a weak conference.

So there really there is nothing before Rich Rodriguez arrived in Ann Arbor, nor anything since, to suggest that he's even an average defensive coach. RR relies on his defensive coordinators to handle that.

At Michigan, his first DC hire was a total, fired-after-first-year flameout, which set back our defensive development by at least a year. His second? I don't know. GERG is in his first year, and has unheard-of depth problems and talent deficiencies. He's also getting pwned in Rock, Paper, Scissors by the Galen Hall and the Spread HD.

It could just be that Jay Hopson sucks. That's been kind of the unofficial premise around here. But I'm also looking at a weak 2008 defensive class, and a 2009 defensive class that didn't go balls-out on defensive backs when balls-out on DBs was like more necessary than any time in recent history. It's too early, but early returns say that Rich Rodriguez is and probably never will be a good defensive coach, and that this puts him at a disadvantage to guys like Paterno, Dantonio, and Bielema in recruiting and developing that side of the ball.

Even if RR had the best DC in the game, not being a defensive guy, in my opinion, will always hurt him. There's a huge difference between the man at the top having every faculty, and the man at the top having to trust his lieutenants.

MnB's Madden-esque way of saying this was "generally have to outscore their opponents to win ball games." Well, you actually ALWAYS have to outscore opponents to win ball games (not counting "Moral Victories," Lions fans). But it might be fair to say that Rodriguez's Michigan teams will have to be extraordinarily successful offensively, because the defense isn't going to win games himself. 40 percent.

Winning when things go against you

This is easy. Basically, if you want to win despite random, no-fault turnovers, and crappy officiating, and Michigan-X-Hating-Gods, etc., then you have to not just be better than other teams but be WAY better and WAY deeper than other teams.

That takes time. And luxury. At this moment, we have neither.

The other thing is attitude. This is another one of those things that engineers don't appreciate, and the poetic know but don't understand. Again, way too early, but RR's teams are now starting to get a bit of a reputation for folding when things go against them. Illinois stands us up at the goal line: utter disaster. Purdue executes a perfect onside kick: instant long touchdown. Wisconsin basically gets gifted a turnover on a bogus roughing the kicker penalty: touchdown, fold, go home.

Of course, we're saying that about the same team that clawed its way back when overmatched against Notre Dame, roared back to tie the MSU game, and hung in there despite five turnovers against Iowa. Or if you prefer, the team that looked like a match for Ohio State in the first half last year. The thing is, when there isn't much hope, there is a performance drop on this team, particularly defensively. My guess is that it's not a lack of heart so much as guys who are normally prone to bad decisions trying to do too much. Either way, you expect the coach to be the guy getting that sort of stuff under control, and it has so far been a profound disappointment that Rich Rodriguez has not been able to do that. 35 percent.

Winning when you are the biggest game of the year for every team you face.

When is the last time you saw a reaction like that from someone who just beat a 2-6 team? Sparties still e-mail photos of the final score to each other. Srsly! I got one last week!

The reason why this is such a big deal to them is because Michigan still has that cachet.

I posited before the Penn State game that maybe we would be overlooked. One of the better Black Shoe Diaries visitors that week was incredulous. Overlook Michigan?

The point is that we don't just face opponents each week – more often than not, we are the second or first game circled on the schedule for every team we play. And that's just when we suck!

What does this have to do with anything?

It means there's more to "getting back" than just having the talent of a typical Carr team again. Maintaining Michigan's place in the standings to go along with its place in college football history means either being so good that you can take anyone's absolute best shot, or being so crazy competitive that you don't want just to win – you want to murder death kill every comer. Of the two, the second sounds easier. Since we haven't been in this situation yet, we have no idea how RR will stand. 0 percent.

4. “What is the percent chance that RR brings Michigan back to the top of the Big Ten, and what is the percent chance that it could happen under, say, Jim Harbaugh?”

But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?

1. Given until 2014, pretty good. Given through 2011, pretty bad.
2. How the hell should I know? In the hypothetical of firing RR and hiring Harbaugh today, the chances are pretty slim, for reasons outlined nicely by Brian, and not nearly so nicely by the WLA.

5. “Maybe we should just shut down the football program altogether and concentrate on being a hockey monster.”

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

I wonder if a Northwestern fan has to go through this like every year. For me, justifying having a football program that could bring me such pain is not like something that I've ever considered.

I think losing the football program is a bad idea, and will always be a bad idea.

Let's say we weren't 5-6, but 0-11 right now. And let's say instead of Brandon Graham and Donovan Warren and Tate Forcier and Brandon Minor and Zoltan the Space Emperor et al. we had a lot of Jordan Kovacseses.

This would still be totally worth it, from the walk through the foliage, the by-far cleverest t-shirts of any fanbase, the toppled pumpkins in the streets, a stomach full of Blimpy Burger…

Ann Arbor rocks. Ann Arbor particularly rocks on Football Saturdays. Michigan Football Games would be awesome with half as good of a team as we have now.

We're rebuilding. Rebuilding looks ugly. But if you're sticking around and reading MGoStuff and putting on your M gear and Keep Coming Back, you can now imagine what this thing will look like when Big Ten Championship banners rather than pipes and cables, are hanging from the rafters.

And really, things aren't all that bad.

6. “But then we wouldn’t have Barwis.”

And thus the native hue of resolution

Do you still believe that the best-conditioned team in the land is the one most likely to win?

I do.

I'm still in.

7. “eee”

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought

Indeed.

8. “What have I done to deserve this?”

Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now?

That's just the thing, Prince Hamlet, this play is about vengeance, and comeuppance arrives for the jester as it does for the prince.

The thing about having a 40-year run at or near the top of college football is that we end up taking things for granted. We imposed our will upon so many 5-6 teams just crying for a bowl game – any bowl game – that we have forgotten what it feels like ourselves.

Now, I think we would make much finer winners than, say, repugnant Ohio State fans. But if we can learn anything as fans from this year, it's humility. For we have indeed been humbled.

• Michigan State, who has come so close and then self-blown so many great victories there's now a saying for it ("Sparty NO!"), got to watch Michigan come back only to snatch defeat from the hands of victory. With an OT interception in the end zone no less.
• Iowa, the team that is always in a position to win, but so often gets punished for every single tiny mistake, leaves a guy wide open for Denard Robinson that would have put Michigan in range for a game-winning field goal, and instead our freshman QB tossed an INT to a double-covered guy.
• Penn State, having held on to their coach since the '60s, finally got a win on the road in awful weather that was vintage out-coaching.
• Illinois, who spent the last three years waiting for their unheard-of collection of recruits to germinate, who walked into this year with one of the Big Ten's best offensive weapons and then inexplicably proved useless all year, finally got a signature home win.
• Purdue, the whiniest program in the country, the whoa-is-me-est guys in the Big Ten, the "we've had a spread since 1996 and all we got was this damn t-shirt" guys, got to excise demons and execute a perfect on-side field goal recovery, got refereeing even they couldn't hate, and finally stuck it to somebody.
• Wisconsin, for whom running the ball up the gut and playing hard defense against the run are practically religion, got to run the ball up the gut and play hard defense against the run, and when they had the lead and the ball at the start of the 4th quarter, they got to keep the ball for the whole 4th quarter.
It's not just that we lost these games. It's the way we lost these games. This year is like Big Ten catharsis year, with every team beating us exactly the way that we have been beating them for four decades.

Fortunately, for us, then, this whole year isn't written yet. And there's still one Big Ten game left, and they have zero karma going for them, and zero catharsis against Michigan that needs to be exercised, and they will show up in a Nike modern mockery of the uniforms they wore for their 1954 split national championship.

That's the year Michigan had them on the ropes, then couldn't punch it in, and Ohio State drove 99 yards for a touchdown. But that's already happened this year. Excised.

If there's anyone left in the Big Ten who doesn't deserve to beat Michigan, it's these guys. Karma-wise, we are cleansed. Of course, we also walk in to a fencing match with poisonous linebackers and poison-tipped Ohio State talent.

By this point, the Buckeyes have exhausted every conceivable reason to beat us. They're going to the Rose Bowl regardless of this or any other outcome. Sweatervest has won virtually every recruiting battle over Rich Rod not including a guy whose knee got blown out. They're not in front of their fans. The lifetime record against Michigan for Tressell is not in doubt. Mike Hart's and Chad Henne's and Jake Long's careers have been left unavenged, as has Bo Schembechler's death. Consecutive wins over Penn State and Iowa have Pryor back in the fanbase's good graces, and OSU back atop the Big Ten, ready to once again blow the conference's reputation with a half-hearted BCS blowout. And as for fanbases generating goodwill, though there be plenty of kind Buckeyes about the world, you will never in college football find such a wretched hive of scum and villainy.

To come out of this game with a win would take a miracle, the kind of miracle which around here you can build a 40-year dynasty upon. I don't know if it's possible, or if Rich Rod will ever really have the team to beat those guys. But I know that our guys have gone through coaching changes and Barwisizing and hellish officiating and hellish game conditions, and every other hell you can throw at a football program that still has more wins than any other. So I know this: we deserve it more.

Not the world is particularly fair.

And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

After achieving my life-long goal of getting linked to by Dr. Saturday, I did a little updating this morning of the first in the acclaimed "The Decimated Defense" posts.

This mgoboard (mysteriously  bumped to a diary) post is so loyal MGoBlog readers can get all the new goodies without re-reading the thing. The first noticeable difference: a Defensive Depth Chart, which looks like this:

DE	NT	DT
NFL All-World Guy	Young Beast	Solid Guy
	True Freshman Blue Chip or Serviceable backup guy	Old-guy bust who's kind of serviceable now

SLB	MLB	WLB	OLB
Former Infinite Safety Disaster, now above-average tweener guy		Young guy who's progressing but prone to massive young-guy mistakes	True freshman wunderkind who is still a true freshman
	Long-time judgment-impaired starter who projected to possible Butkus Watch List but instead regressed and lost job to a walk-on	Nuclear missile equally likely to strike his own territory as his enemy's	Kind of this 3-star red shirt soph who plays exactly like that

LCB	SS	FS	RCB
NFL-ready junior guy		Current Infinite Safety Disaster, who is worse than the walk-on	Legacy who is halfway decent and was our FS until a few weeks ago
Dust mite true freshman who was a running back until a few weeks ago		True freshman recovering from knee surgery who can't be that great if he hasn't seen the field	Red shirt freshman with clear talent deficiency to be serviceable

( = Walk-on)

There's also a part at the end that uses the 2008 linebacker and DB disasters as a microcosm of the greater problem, which reads as follows:

The 2008 linebacker and DB hauls are a perfect microcosm of Michigan's bigger problems.

Linebacker: At a position that had zero depth left over from previous classes, we brought in four 4-star players: Marcus Witherspoon, Taylor Hill, J.B. Fitzgerald, and Kenny Demens.

Of those, Witherspoon and Hill were lost immediately to attrition. One (Fitzgerald) is on track to be a long-term contributor. One (Demens) seems to be a bust. In this case, Michigan fulfilled its recruitment needs, but was hit by double the expected attrition. Result: one serviceable player when we needed at least two.

Defensive back: At a position that had zero depth left over from pervious classes, we brought in two 4-stars (Brandon Smith and Boubacar Cissoko) and one flier (J.T. Floyd). As with Mouton, Smith was immediately deemed a linebacker, and this was a known likelihood during the recruitment period, so really we brought in just a 4-star and a flier. The 4-star looked to be a bit behind track for his rating, until he got himself kicked off the team. The flier, as was the expected result, was not useful. Result: zero serviceable players when we needed at least two or three.

Linebacker is a clear-cut case of decimation due to attrition. Defensive back is a clear-cut case of decimation due to under-recruiting. Both of these factors have ravaged each class from 2005 to 2008. Along the way, there were some serviceable players picked up, but we are still generally two serviceable players short of the Michigan norm at several linebacker positions and all four defesnive backfield positions, i.e. we are at least 12 good, useful, on-the-roster players away from a normal Michigan defense. That is HUGE!!!

I also updated the charts a bit to reflect the Purdue depth chart changes. That is all.

[Editor's note: holy hell, man. This is like a PhD thesis.]

It hits you like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body. You can't breathe. You can't think. At least, not about anything but the pain.

I'm searching for a metaphor.

Amidst the phantom flags and the Angry Michigan Hating Bounces and the dropping of babies on 3rd down on Saturday you could not possibly have missed a notable lack of competency in the 11 guys tasked with making sure the other guys score less than we do, otherwise referred to as "Michigan's Defense."

This is Part II of the afore-bumped diary "The Decimated Defense," a look at what has happened to turn Michigan's once vaunted defense into..

I don't have a metaphor...

Something that has a lot of really shiny beautiful parts, that ostensibly looks like something grand and wonderful, but like with some major defect or hole in it, from which pours in death and destruction...



In the wake of, well, that, I'm sure that you, as I, need to understand what happened to Michigan's defense, how we got here, will it get better, and can it be avoided again?

In the first of this series, I went through Michigan's last five classes to see if we could find where and what went wrong in defensive recruiting to lead us to a day when Jordan Kovacs was all that stood between the program and the bottom of the sea. We looked at the cheap rivets, the lack of safety training, and missing life boats, while Brian UFR'ed a really big iceburg.

It was long, and mostly stuff you already knew, and at one point you had to fix yourself a sandwich, but at the end we identified two factors that were very likely contributors:

1. Small classes
2. High attrition

Today we put that in context. I compared the current rosters to the recruited rosters of Michigan, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Penn State, Michigan State and Alabama, to see how each of these teams were built, and what was lost along the way, in order to understand why should so many other luxury liners and loveable tugboats and whatnot stay dry as we face a watery grave?

(Excel spreadsheet lives here.)

Recruiting: Quantity and Quality

Rose: The fall alone would kill you.

Jack: It would hurt. I'm not saying it wouldn't. Tell you the truth, I'm a lot more concerned about that water being so cold.

Here's how Michigan stacked up in pure defensive recruiting from 2005 through 2009 (Rivals ratings used):

	Michigan	Alabama	MSU	Notre Dame	Ohio State	Penn State
2-stars	2	8	24	1	4	9
3-stars	20	34	30	22	20	18
4-stars	23	37	10	19	32	23
5-stars	3	4	0	1	3	2
TOTAL	48	83	64	43	59	52

This counts every recruit that came in ready to play defense, except athletes who played their entire careers on offense. It also includes offensive recruits later moved to defense. It excludes walk-ons.

Many nuggets here. Let us bullet:

• Notre Dame fans who blame recruiting for some of their woes have a beef. Their classes have been highly ranked, but even smaller than paltry Michigan's!
• Bama LOL
• Michigan and Penn State recruited pretty similarly. The big difference was that PSU brought in 7 more 2-stars.
• Michigan and Ohio State both recruited 20 players of 3-star caliber, and 3 blue chips, but OSU had 9 more 4-star players during that time.
• Michigan State clearly isn't in the same recruiting league as these others. They're basically averaging one lower star per recruit
• ...but out of a respectable class size.
• Even so, Alabama had more 3-star defensive recruits over this time than Michigan State.

Michigan's closest recruiting analogue here is Penn State, with the high-end (4-5 star) recruiting separated by one more 5-star guy for us. You can call Notre Dame basically a Michigan-light. If anything, the Fighting Irish have been even pickier about talent than U-M, OSU and PSU, except they haven't been as successful at reeling in the big fish as any of the major schools profiled.

For these schools, the distribution seems weighted slightly toward the top, but their bell curves are only slightly ahead of OSU and Bama. However, when placed beside each other, it's easy to see how large amounts of recruits can generate a much more sizeable talent pool from which to draw starters.

So recruiting tells a story, but certainly not the story. Certainly, Alabama and Ohio State recruited the most 4- and 5-star players, and subsequently have great defenses.

Michigan and Penn State should, just going by recruiting, have about the same level of defense, with maybe one more NFL-bound player in Ann Arbor, and maybe a bunch of 2-star guys backing up at Penn State instead of Michigan's walk-ons. Or it would be, if attrition was constant. We will see in the next section that it isn't. But you knew the problem wasn't just recruiting, anyway, since you know that Penn State's defense is legitimately good, and Michigan went into this season steering a pre-WWI luxury liner.

First, though, while we're on pure recruiting, let's look real quick and see if it's actually the age of the recruits that matter. Since they should be theoretically the heart of a great defense, and since the distribution among all schools except Michigan State was fairly equal when it came to 4- versus 5- stars, let's just look at those two groups, and when they came in for each school (MSU left out to spare them the indignation of looking like Antarctica):

	Michigan	Alabama	Notre Dame	Ohio State	Penn State
2005	4	3	0	6	3
2006	6	5	2	6	8
2007	4	8	4	8	6
2008	7	15	10	6	4
2009	5	10	4	9	4
4-Star+	26	41	20	35	25

[At this point I would ask everyone else to pause for a moment while we give Irish, who has been waiting patiently all this time, an opportunity to assign righteous blame on Ty Willingham. HE did this, precious!]

Okay, so other than an '05-'06 "Domer LOL," did we get anything out of this?

Penn State's great defense has a lot of high-rated juniors and seniors on it -- more than any other school. Michigan was kind of even, but actually should have had more upperclassmen than Bama or Notre Dame. Ohio State has been strong all the way through. Alabama is going to be really really good in a few years.

There's nothing here to suggest Michigan should be really bad. Not yet.

Moving on.

The Other Shoe, of Which Its Current Gravity Situation You Were Well Aware

Rose : Don't you understand? The water is freezing and there aren't enough boats. Not enough by half. Half the people on this ship are going to die.

Cal: Not the better half.

Cal, if you make it off that ship, and if that whole heir-to-a-robber-baron thing doesn't work out for you, you might make a fine SEC recruiting coordinator.

What I'm talking about is Alabama's over-signing strategy, which has been covered many times on this blog. In short, the Crimson Tide under Saban have recruited more guys than they have scholarships for, expecting enough will find reason to get themselves expelled or booted off the team before the count becomes official. The ultimate effect is that Saban has a strong incentive not to keep troubled players, particularly less talented troubled players, in school.

I bring it up now because:

	Def. Recruits	On Roster	On Roster %
Michigan	48	28	58.33%
Alabama	83	52	62.65%
Michigan State	64	45	70.31%
Penn State	52	40	76.92%
Ohio State	59	46	77.97%
Notre Dame	43	36	83.72%

Bullets?

Bullets.

• Michigan has had higher attrition from 2005 to 2009 than Alabama.
• Let's rephrase: Michigan has had higher attrition than a team that has been TRYING TO SHED PLAYERS.
• If Ohio State is pulling a 'Bama, there is zero evidence for it here. They have a reasonable number of recruits, and very low attrition.
• Penn State, as I mentioned before, is a much older team, and therefore has had a lot more time to lose guys to graduation and leaving early for the NFL and whatnot. In that light, their retention rate is pretty darn good.
• Michigan State and OSU ended up with about the same number of recruits on their respective rosters, while Bama was just a bit higher.
• Notre Dame's team is much, much younger, hence the high retention rate.
• Attrition has generally been higher for the teams with coaching changes in the last few years.
• Michigan's 28 scholarship athletes on defense may work on your pre-2005 EA Sports video game (which had a 55-player limit) but is way, way below the competition.
• 58.33 percent, as it turns out, is in fact quite putrid.