Hypothetical UM Bowl
after watching lots of bowls this week, i have been wondering what would have happened if the ones that got away had not gotten away. i am referring to the illinois game (1st thru 4th and 1 to seal the game) and purdue game (missed PAT, etc) as the winnable games that UM didn't win. you could obviously choose to throw in msu and iowa as those were close, but i don't have the same sort of regret about losing to those two (anger, not regret).
scenario 1 - michigan wins 1 of those games. this gives them a 2-6 conf record, 6-6 total and because iowa goes bcs every b10 team moves up a bowl, the pizza bowl goes to michigan where they face off against ohio. ohio got down early 21-0 to marshall and managed to come back before losing 21-17.
scenario 2 - michigan wins both of those games. this gives them a 3-5 conf record, 7-6 total and because the conference tie breaker goes to better total record, michigan goes to the insight bowl to face iowa state. iowa state won this one 14-13 in a pretty evenly matched game, statistically.
there are obviously many intangibles and reasons why we can't simply plug michigan in, but this is hypothetical so i am gonna. i know national rankings are a bit flawed, but this has really been too long a post already.
hypo pizza pizza bowl - UM v OU
OU (78th O, 46th D) lost closely to Marshall (96th O, 68th D)
michigan had the 44th O and 82nd D. this tells me that UM scores more than marshall, by a 10-14, but lets up more points by a little, 3-7. bottom line - UM wins pizza pizza bowl.
hypo insight bowl - UM v ISU
ISU (103rd O, 99th D)was even with Minnesota (101st O, 61st D).
michigan had the 44th O and 82nd D. again, simplistically, michigan scores many more points, 14-21, and allows more 10-14. bottom line - UM wins insight bowl.
i know this is very remedial, but i really really miss michigan football. i just wish michigan would have been able to pull out these wins against non bowl teams.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:37 AM ^
Michigan got beat pretty badly by Illinois. They wouldn't have beat them.
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:49 AM ^
Um... going off the final box score or are you ignoring the meltdown after the opening domination?
January 2nd, 2010 at 11:52 AM ^
We could of and should have beaten illinois. The whole season crashed when they got stuffed on the goal line.
They score there Juice is out and we clobber them. We probably have a better mindset for Purdue as well. and had we won that as well who knows what could have happened in wisky or against osu. Not fantasizing, just saying it's pretty obvious the heart of this team was crushed on that one series; and, frankly, that was a bigger concern for me than everything else. how do you let one series just blow you up like that?!
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:30 PM ^
wow dude...
pretty ignorant statement
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:09 PM ^
Your hypothesis has become reality, my friend. Perfect for your tortilla chips and queso! It even kind of looks like a sombrero!January 2nd, 2010 at 1:20 PM ^
Where did you get that? I never saw one of those at any of the stores in Ann Arbor.
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:11 PM ^
How can you say 38-13 is a swing game?
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:18 PM ^
because it was almost 20-7, but that 1 yard stand off took all the wind out of our sails. We basically completely and utterly collapsed in the second half, both offensively and defensively.
If Roundtree manages to get into that endzone, who knows what would happen?
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:31 PM ^
Did you even watch the game? If you did, you would know that after we failed on 4th and goal, the game completely turned around. We were one yard away from crushing the Illini's spirit and going up 20-7. Instead the opposite happened.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:46 PM ^
He was having a poor game/season up until that point.
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:47 PM ^
Yes, a 38-13 loss is definitely a swing game in this bizarro world of college football in which Michigan fans are currently living. A young, fragile team - the young part is excusable, the level of fragility is not.
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:57 PM ^
the level of heart this team has shown since the MSU comeback of '07 has been staggering. This has very little to do with the Coach and, sadly, looks more institutional now than anything. I'm a season ticket holder since '83 and am more depressed than any time ever (even the 6 loss BYU debacle of '84). Think of it...no offense but we have been reduced to hypothesizing the prospects of the Little Caesar's or Insight.com bowl...is the Astro Blue Bonnett now too much to hope for?
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:07 PM ^
no big ten tie in, so probably yes.
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:13 PM ^
I am behind RR 100% but I am a little worried. I think he reminds me a lot of Mo - very wonky, and X's and O's oriented, but not very in tune with the motivational aspect of the game. Though, like he himself said, he did not take a stupid pill when he got here. The collapses are getting hard to ignore though....
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:39 PM ^
A big factor in a team's grit/mental toughness is their experience. Playing so many young players hurts us exponentially in the mental toughness factor and affects our ability to bounce back when things don't break our way.
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:53 PM ^
And since I'm guessing you mean "lack of", that must mean there was no heart shown in the Capital One Bowl...
January 2nd, 2010 at 5:13 PM ^
and henne, hart and long won their only game of their 0-4 OSU and 1-3 bowl game...actually I mean't "level" when I said level and I meant staggering when I said staggering. If the context didn't clearly dictate that the level was low, I apologize. Yes, I included the "cap one win one for lloyd and play they way we could have all year including app state, oregon, wisconsin and OSU" bowl. And it is institutional as it does not matter the players they seem to look for reasons to quit and have for some time.
January 2nd, 2010 at 5:54 PM ^
Or injuries?
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:04 PM ^
...1-7 is 1-7.
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:51 PM ^
"Could have won App St Oregon Wisconsin OSU" and "since MSU in 07" seems to indicate you are talking about 2007. But then you are kinda all over the place.
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:05 PM ^
Actually, at 7-5 I think we would have been playing in the Alamo Bowl. More attractive, Alamo's last chance to get us, better record than MSU and only minus 1 in the Big Ten.
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:11 PM ^
This is disgusting. It's bad enough that we weren't playing yesterday, let's just stop playing "hypothetical bowl games" now before we turn into Notre Dame or Michigan State.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:42 PM ^
This is a Michigan message board, and it's bowl season. Heaven forbid we actually discuss hypotheticals regarding our own team.
January 2nd, 2010 at 1:38 PM ^
i miss the days when michigan would be playing in real bowl games instead of hypothetical bowl games.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:01 PM ^
Is how juvenile this board has become. Guys ask questions about the shellacking Illinois laid on Michigan, and get neg-banged by some kids playing "What IF(and I do mean IF)"
You know, getting neg banged for introducing reality into a conversation aout the current sate of Michigan football.
I guess that's always a bad idea.
Carry on, ladies. Michigan will certainly win their 54th national championship in a row by the time you IF the last 24 games away.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:52 PM ^
I have not logged in to this board in a while, but I do still look from afar primarily to get the latest news. And it strikes me how Simi has become one of the more realistic, logical voices on this board, while the collective intelligence, and quality, has dropped staggeringly. I mean, how pathetic is this thread? And how illogical is the argument that if we had made that one touchdown we would have beaten Illinois - come on, seriously? You cant look back, change one thing, and pretend that either nothing else would have changed or all else would have changed. That is just linear, silly logic.
Ok, I will back my cynical and contemptuous voice out of the community once again.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:06 PM ^
How can you guys say that the goal line stand was the reason Michigan started to suck and Illinois started to take off? You have no way to know this. Maybe, just maybe Illinois won because they were better.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:24 PM ^
Momentum: Impetus of a nonphysical process, such as an idea or a course of events
if you don't believe in momentum as a part of sporting events i suggest you sit down and watch espn for the next 50 hours or so.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:27 PM ^
Momentum can't count for everythng
January 2nd, 2010 at 9:58 PM ^
no, but when michigan is absolutely dominating a game before said event, and then being dominated after said event, it can be reasonably inferred that it was a very large factor in the final result.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:55 PM ^
What this bowl season is demonstrating is that with the exception of Northwestern, the Big Ten was clearly divided into "good" and "mediocre/bad" portions.
OSU, PSU, Wisconsin and Iowa had genuinely good teams, who could be competitive in any conference. This group is currently 3-0 in bowls. Iowa might not win, but keep in mind that it is being overslotted in a BCS bowl.
Northwestern is hard to categorize because it's a solid, well-coached team, but overperforming relative its talent level. It is a clear #5 team in the league.
The reminder of the conference is lousy, though none of the remaining six teams was truly awful (all won at least four games). It was an almost indistiguishable lump of mediocrity in which everyone went between 4-8 and 6-6. We unfortunately finished tied for the bottom of this group, but were a handful of plays away from being at the top of it.
Looking ahead to next season, it will be difficult to crack the ranks of the top four. OSU and PSU not only have better players now, but are recruiting better than us (OSU is nominally ranked worse, but only because it has a much smaller class). We are recruiting better than UW and UI and eventually should overtake them, but probably won't next season, as they return most of their players. On the other hand, we are clearly recruiting better than the rest of the league and arguably had better talent than them this season, though it was very young. I also think RR is a better coach than any of his counterparts in the bottom six, though the past two seasons may not have shown it. I think grabbing that #5 spot next season is doable, and with some breaks we might finish a bit higher.
January 2nd, 2010 at 2:54 PM ^
I am almost certain we would have gone to the Alamo Bowl. I commute from Detroit to school and to games, so for OSU I left really early just in case something went wrong along the way so I could get a friend to come pick me up if need be.
While I was sitting in the stadium over an hour before kickoff, a bowl rep for the Alamo stopped by and hung out with me and the section ushers for a bit. He also gave us little fabric patches for the Alamo Bowl. Obviously there is no guarantee they would have taken us if we had beat OSU, but at 6-6 that's about the best bowl we could have hoped to get, and I doubt they'd have sent a rep there if they didn't plan on taking us if we had won.
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:06 PM ^
makes me somewhat less upset knowing how they would pick apart our secondary.
just sayin.
January 2nd, 2010 at 10:19 PM ^
Having the opportunity to watch B Graham one last time in the maize and blue...priceless!