Blue Outs are dumb and not intimidating
February 12th, 2022 at 8:29 PM ^
It was really stupid and the team played stupidly!
February 12th, 2022 at 10:36 PM ^
I agree. I do not understand Blue Outs at all. Everyone just blends in. May as well just have everyone show up in camouflage.
February 13th, 2022 at 12:53 PM ^
It probably made it look like less people were there for everyone involved, and probably did influence the energy in the building. Sure didn't bother the Buckeyes.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:30 PM ^
Crisler is already one of the worst venues in the BIG.
You have not been to some of the other venues in the league if you think that. There’s nothing wrong with Crisler as a building.
But our fans need to step up to the plate more often.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:32 PM ^
I struggle to think of a worse venue aside from Penn State. Northwestern and Nebraska have more exciting atmospheres than we do.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:39 PM ^
Fans generate atmosphere, not the building. Our fans have a hard enough time showing up and when they do, rarely get vocal enough. (They did do their part against Purdue though.)
But Crisler’s a nice arena now. They did a really nice job on the renovations. This is not the Crisler of 10+ years ago that was a dungeon. When people complain about it, I wonder how recently they've been to a game.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:49 PM ^
No one is talking about the actual building. They're talking about the fans that may or likely may not occupy that arena. That's what they mean when they say "Crisler is a bad venue" they mean, they fans occupying it are quiet and not intimidating, if they show up.
Hence the term "atmosphere". Yes, it's the fans.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:57 PM ^
It's not completely clear that the OP was referring to the atmosphere rather than the building.
February 12th, 2022 at 10:11 PM ^
Hmmm, no when someone is complaining about the quality of a venue, they’re talking about the building. If they’re talking about the atmosphere, they specify that the atmosphere is bad.
February 13th, 2022 at 12:23 AM ^
It was crystal clear it was a post about the bad atmosphere. The title of the post is about the blue out being dumb and not intimidating.
This would be a post about the building:
Trough urinals are dumb and not private
Crisler was already one of the worst venues in the league. Adding urinals because the announcers were making fun of the bathrooms doesn't help.
Context guys. C'mon. Why would a blue out help the structure of the building? Of course he's talking about the atmosphere!
February 13th, 2022 at 7:15 AM ^
Hmm no, it’s not clear. As, again, the word venue refers to the building. “Crisler has one of the worst gameday atmospheres” would be referring to the fans.
Believe it or not, it’s possible to complain about two things at once. He can simultaneously complain that the venue already sucks, and now we’ve added a non-intimidating schtick to the crowd. Crazy right?
February 13th, 2022 at 9:54 AM ^
It's not clear to you but to most everyone else it was. Make of that what you will.
February 13th, 2022 at 12:53 AM ^
ven·ue
/ˈvenˌyo͞o/
noun
-
the place where something happens, especially an organized event such as a concert, conference, or sports event
And NO, it was not clear he was talking about the atmosphere/fans. He started the OP with a statement that “Crisler is one of the worst venues”. That stands on its own and is patently false.
February 13th, 2022 at 1:01 AM ^
Speaking from my experience tonight, it is difficult to cheer loudly when you are forced to wear a face diaper
February 13th, 2022 at 12:13 AM ^
Michigan fans/alumni love to point out how intellectual they are. Intellectuals generally observe, they are not easily excitable, they won't be manipulated by "let's get loud" jumbotron signals. They appreciate quality and generally discuss greatness rather than spur on something that is average to be something better than what they obviously are.
I am not a Michigan alumni, but I am a huge fan of all things Michigan. If someone says "remember the passcode 7537", my brain says Skrepenak, Irons.
My last note, recruiting rankings in college basketball aren't the same as football. Kentucky and Duke have had top recruiting classes consistently over the past few years and they have struggled to be elite. The game is too fast and it takes time to adjust when the core of your team are 19 years old.
February 13th, 2022 at 10:36 AM ^
Duke students, for example, are notorious for their passivity.
February 12th, 2022 at 10:34 PM ^
The student seating at Crisler is very poorly set up. The first few rows need to be all student seating and wrap nearly all the way around like at Breslin.
February 12th, 2022 at 11:15 PM ^
I would buy this as the sole cause of the issues if the bleacher students weren't a major role in the bad atmosphere. I don't think I've ever seen a more lackluster main student section for a program like Michigan. Regardless of our success that particular year. I would describe the max impact they have as a dull background buzz except for the biggest of moments. The section next to the band doesn't even provide that. There's a stunning lack of leadership and creativity from the Maize Rage. What happened to those pre game handouts that they used to have for all the conference games and other big ones? Chanting "backup" at Williams was like the first player specific thing I can remember in recent memory. Why is there no cowbell anymore to lead chants? The left and right side of the bleachers are always out of sync, and then the other lower bowl section is often doing a completely different thing. Why is the most unique thing happening a guy jotting down B- jokes on a white board? Obviously the rest of us suck and much more than the students at that (As in, don't take this rant as me saying that moving more students down wouldn't be better in general), but it's very much not the only reason Crisler has a brutal atmosphere. I'll fully admit that I could be better too. More standing and yelling and whatnot. I'd gladly give up my lower bowl seats to students if they stepped their game up too though. 100%. I've posted in the past that this is what my ideal student section would look like (Red arrows point to the new lower bowl sections). 
Big enough to fill the lower bowl even against the worse teams we play. Not too big to avoid big empty chunks. And the precious big doners don't lose their seats so the AD can't use that excuse. And it unifies the section so that there aren't a bunch of fractures. Again, I don't think this solves the issue above that the student section just kinda sucks in general, but it'd be better than we have now.
February 13th, 2022 at 2:00 AM ^
I mean, our now former president made it very clear he had no interest in M athletics. There is a distinct lack of pride and responsibility regarding athletics at the school these days. Schlissel damaged the culture.
February 13th, 2022 at 1:34 PM ^
He may have damaged it, but it’s been down bad for a long time and goes well before his tenure IMO.
February 13th, 2022 at 4:45 PM ^
There’s nothing wrong with Crisler as a building.
There's a lot wrong with how the seating and student section are set up actually
February 12th, 2022 at 8:32 PM ^
Something I’ve never understood is why after the game starts and you have numerous lower open seats, why not let people who actually showed the hell up move down? It would at least give the appearance that the damn thing is packed. Fans sitting in the nose bleeds while ticket holders don’t bother to show up doesn’t help anyone.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:59 PM ^
Hey -- the riffraff needs to be kept in its place. (Full disclosure: I was in the last row of the upper bowl today.)
February 12th, 2022 at 10:29 PM ^
The ushers brought my family and I down to the end of the student section behind the Michigan bench this year. They brought others down as well. Maybe they stopped doing it. It was towards the beginning of the season
February 13th, 2022 at 12:48 PM ^
Speaking from my experience with other venues, Michigan should have general admission seating for at least a portion of the seats. The baseline extended is what is done at Florida St. Crisler also has way too many aisles, or the aisles are too wide. There's no reason the student section should have any aisles.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:32 PM ^
It looks fine. A dark look can be a good one. The on-court uniform combination looked fantastic.
The team didn't play all that well.
Brighter colors *do* tend to make for more noticeable color coordination promotions, so generally speaking I think maize-outs are the better choice. But the blue look actually read well on tv and I don't mind it on rare occasions.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:37 PM ^
Yeah, I thought it looked fine on TV, so visually I don't get the complaint. But we've also now had two threads today about how shitty the fanbase is so this feels more like a talking point than some deeply-held concern about color contrasts on screen.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:53 PM ^
No, it looks terrible. Blue is already the default color because of blue jeans. It doesn't pop.
And the uniforms were so disappointing. I groaned when I turned it on. We are at home. It 100 percent has to be a maize out and wear the maize unis at home if you want to do something other than whites. The maize unis look so much better than the blues.
February 13th, 2022 at 9:51 AM ^
This was me too. I did not need to watch the game to know they were going to lose after seeing the uniforms.
This was a maize uniform game. Obviously uniforms aren’t the reason they lost the game but it was part of a pretty comprehensive bed-crapping.
February 13th, 2022 at 12:13 AM ^
This is a bit off this particular topic and nitpicky but I don't think we played too poorly tonight. Missed shots? Yes, that could be considered poor play. But the shots were generated. Even bunnies that were missed. But the defense and rebounding was mostly there. There was a spirit, a show of progress, to this team that wasnt there against Minnesota or Rutgers.
And then there's the officiating. It's a lame and old argument, I know. But some of those poor-to-atrocious calls could be considered game changing. It probably wouldn't have been enough tonight anyway as credit to OSU, they came to play and did so pretty well. We just couldn't efficiently find the bottom of the nylon.
(Sorry, that was long and again likely misplaced comment)
February 12th, 2022 at 8:33 PM ^
So is not playing sound defense, not knocking down lay-ups, or not hitting open 3's.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:40 PM ^
The defense was fine today beyond the fact that Lidell was simply unconscious out there. OSU also got the more favorable whistle, which helped them survive some stagnant shooting periods as well.
The poor shooting by UM is correct, but at this point is just their MO.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:55 PM ^
Yep, I've been critical of the defense most of the year and it was quite good tonight. The reffing was bad so they gave OSU some FTs that they shouldn't have, and OSU made an inordinate number of lucky pull ups that teams hadn't been making for the past three games. Variance got us tonight (including missing so many open threes).
February 12th, 2022 at 11:05 PM ^
Reffing was terrible. They lost the game as soon as they let OSU grab Hunter’s arm on a rebound and pull him to the ground without calling at the very least an intentional foul. It went downhill from there
February 12th, 2022 at 9:11 PM ^
If allowing 50% shooting from the floor is good defense then we're truly fucked. Although the officiating sucked we committed just as many dumb fouls.
February 12th, 2022 at 9:25 PM ^
I wouldn’t really bag on the defensive effort tonight; OSU was hitting a bunch of contested shots. While that seems to be a theme this season, the defense today *felt* better, to me at least
February 12th, 2022 at 10:28 PM ^
If free throws are contested shots then yes Ohio was hitting them.
February 12th, 2022 at 10:48 PM ^
White flag. Originally it really wasn't an observation about the defensive effort tonight, it was the season as a whole and not blaming the color of uni's. It was turned into that from the first response.
Optically, the defensive effort looked decent tonight and good enough to win some of those game we shouldn't have lost. Still, we allowed a 50% shooting night, missed switches and Eugene friggen Brown had more defensive rebounds than HD and Moussa combined.
February 13th, 2022 at 8:21 AM ^
It always fascinates me how bad the officiating is when a team I'm rooting for loses. I notice when my team ball handles , passes , move their feet on defense and without the ball on offense , and hits their shots to a good percentage.......the officiating isn't as noticable.
February 12th, 2022 at 10:40 PM ^
Evenly matched and poor shooting equates to a loss.
They shoot fantastically (like PU) and they win. Shoot below ave (21% 3 pt, 40% 2 pt) while opposition shoots lights out (36%, 50%), and lose.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:47 PM ^
I wonder if that influenced the crappy shooting by the team too.
This would not explain the majority of the season, so the answer is “no”.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:51 PM ^
The OP in that other post is getting rightfully downvoted, but his wife isn't wrong. Michigan didn't wanna do a maize out because it would be very spotty. The maize looks way better than blue and there's already the maize rage. I agree with what Brian and many others have said: open up more seats to students, carrots and sticks for season ticket holders, let people into the lower bowl, etc. It's never going to be the best atmosphere since Michigan is a football school and frankly the fans just aren't known for being loud in any sport, but it can definitely be improved.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:52 PM ^
When you win your crowd can dress however the hell it wants and it can be called intimidating.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:54 PM ^
Yeah I think it's ridiculous that any crowd color scheme has intimidated any team anywhere. There's an advantage at home because of comfort and familiarity vs the road team having to travel, loud fans, and a home whistle.
February 12th, 2022 at 10:30 PM ^
Fans just need to be louder. Scream your ass off and it will make for an intimidating environment.
February 13th, 2022 at 9:37 AM ^
Uh, "home whistle" is something with which, as a Michigan fan, I am unfamiliar.
February 12th, 2022 at 8:52 PM ^
expand the student section
February 12th, 2022 at 8:54 PM ^
I think playing 3 games in 5 nights caught up with them.
That being said, maize outs are better than blue outs. Don't like wearing blue at home.
Back to the NIT:(
February 13th, 2022 at 8:33 AM ^
Every time we win a game I start plotting out how we can end up as a 6-seed that ends up in the final four.
Every time we lose a game I start thinking about narrowly missing the tournament.
February 12th, 2022 at 9:00 PM ^
Looked like any normal game in person aside from the students. Feels like our student section brings nothing more than minimal energy even for big games.