An interseting stat going into the final week.
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:02 PM ^
Ps still looking to sell an OSU ticket
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:02 PM ^
Losing the MSU game either. We should have won both of them.
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:06 PM ^
That is true, but at least they are going to the B1G championship. But Iowa just sucks.
November 24th, 2011 at 11:16 AM ^
November 24th, 2011 at 11:26 AM ^
not meaningless at all. If we had won that game we would have only one loss in confrence play and so on saturday when NU beats MSU that would send us to Indy.
November 24th, 2011 at 11:57 AM ^
let's be honest...northwestern is probably not going to win that game. If it were a must win for sparty, it would be even less likely.
MSU all but locked up the division after that hail mary pass
November 24th, 2011 at 12:01 PM ^
If only Northwestern were a reliable, perennial trap game.......*sigh*
November 24th, 2011 at 12:12 PM ^
i'm just saying, if you're gonna be upset about losing a game, be upset about losing the one to the team that won the division.
November 24th, 2011 at 12:24 PM ^
The MSU loss burns for that very reason. I really am not intrigued by Northwestern-MSU, I'll be honest. If for any reason MSU had a traditional LOLSparty moment and Northwestern was ahead, I might tune in...
November 24th, 2011 at 12:03 AM ^
By your logic, "You" should have lost to Notre Dame.
November 24th, 2011 at 1:38 AM ^
different team at this point. I'm rather amazed we were SO close to undefeated this year I knew we had a shot but the margin is only a handful of bad calls TBO. It's almost like we need 2 sets of stats for this year: the "getting started" stats, and then the "where we're at now" stats. 3 straight seasons of a general downward trend in form from beginning to end, and this year it's the opposite, we've played better almost every game and are peaking at week 14. I can't wait to see how far they go.
November 24th, 2011 at 1:59 AM ^
Assuming we can't have both close-call games, I'd take that ND win over an Iowa win. That will always be one of the most insane football watching experiences of my life.
November 24th, 2011 at 12:50 PM ^
We started the first half of this year off in a fashion virtually identical to '09 and '10.
In the second half of this year, we lost to MSU, just like in '09, when we at least took Sparty into OT, and '10. We lost a tough game to Iowa, just like '09 and '10. We beat Illinois, as we did under Rodriguez in '10. We were fortunate in that we didn't have Penn State or Wisconsin on the schedule. We won another couple of games in there along the way.
The big difference is last week's game against Nebraska. A number of huge breaks went our way. (A big fumble, a lucky gift on roughing the kicker, and a lot of arm-punts on long throws that fell harmlessly to the ground.) Nebraska, was a team that simply cannot come from behind, and which we fortunately got ahead of, to stay ahead. (Compounding difficulties for Taylor Martinez later.)
As I see it, we are doing nothing more and nothing less than continuing the incremental progress we had with Rich Rodriguez. 3, then 5, then 7, then 9 wins. As Coach Rodriguez pretty much predicted. In about 2009. Pity; Rodriguez never had the chance to play an OSU team that was in shambles. I hope Hoke beats Fickell. But if not, what we will be facing is the reality that this is a team that is incrementally better than the 2010 team, which is not terribly surprising or amazing or miraculous. 9 wins overall, with an exciting win over Notre Dame and desultory losses to MSU and OSU.
November 24th, 2011 at 1:04 PM ^
We started the first half of this year off in a fashion virtually identical to '09 and '10.I can't believe you're still trying to make this argument. Our '09 and '10 teams got into shootouts with last-place Indiana squads both years. The '10 team also had an uncomfortably-close win against an FCS opponent. This year's team had one squeaker (against a good ND team) and otherwise dominated its early-season competition. When we had the chance to play a last-place Big Ten team, we trounced it by 58 points.
November 24th, 2011 at 1:27 PM ^
I gather that what you are saying is that Michigan is "exponentially better" this year. And in fact, that's what Coach Rodriguez predicted before the year began. I was probably on a different page from Rodriguez, when I stated that Michigan is only incrementally better.
Mind you, I am not criticizing the team we have this year. They are an older, improved team.
But I know where you're coming from. And you know where I am coming from. People are free to support the program under Hoke without fear or criticism. And that's a big improvement in Ann Arbor. But when people want to criticize the last three years, they had better be careful what they say.
November 24th, 2011 at 1:44 PM ^
Rodriguez's soundbites are meaningless to me. He made a lot of false predictions when he was here. He certainly didn't predict that we'd go 15-22 from 2008-2010. I don't believe for a minute that under his watch, we'd have been in the top 10 in scoring defense.
You are completely changing your argument. You claimed above that our 2011 start was a carbon copy of the '09 and '10 starts. So I have to ask: Which game this year was analogous to the 42-37 win over UMass? Which game was analogous to the 42-35 shootout against Indiana?
November 24th, 2011 at 5:54 PM ^
not to mention how in both of our losses this year you can bring them back to on or 2 plays that changed to game for us. Over the last 3 years when we lost games to Sparty or the like we got beaten at every aspect of the game.
November 24th, 2011 at 2:42 PM ^
How's Arizona this time of year? Nice I bet.
November 24th, 2011 at 5:48 PM ^
so in spite of the fact that this team is 20 points allowed per game better you would insist that we are no better than we would have been with RR. Maybe you should root for Arizona.
November 24th, 2011 at 8:31 PM ^
The Section 1 breed of posters has really made me annoyed with this board as of late. Even now, they cannot accept that we are in a far better place than at any time under RR. He was awful. Whether or not it was all his fault, it was a terrible regime that was going nowhere fast. We got blown up by any sort of competent team and were winning in embarrassing fashion to schools that are nowhere in the same class as Michigan. To this breed, every good thing that happens to this team is luck or would have happened anyways if RR would have stayed.
Nah....we didnt just stomp Nebraska around the field....we got lucky b/c of some turnovers. We only held them to less yards than we held Bowling Green to last season because of sheer luck. We only scored more points against NEBRASKA than any other team we faced last year (aside from Bowling Green) b/c of a weak Big 10....or b/c of all of these players returning who couldn't put up points against good defenses.
Section 1 equates last year's Illinois game with this year's, even though this year we blew them up at their place on both sides of the ball, while last year, it took a miracle to pull out a 67-65 home win where both teams were just continually shitting down their own legs.
This breed of poster seems to forget how many points / yards we gave up to doormats, and attributes any success over last year to luck, experience, or ease of schedule. It is really getting annoying. Just watch, we'll go to the damn Sugar Bowl this year and pull down a top 5 recruiting class, and these assholes will still come up with some ignorant analysis in how all of this success would have been the same had that coach who just went 15-22 been kept around.
Grow up. Get on board. You all couldn't understand how people couldn't be on board with a coach whose teams were being humiliated on a weekly basis, but now you can't get fully on board with a team that just destroyed a national power and is knocking on the doorstep of a BCS bowl?
November 25th, 2011 at 9:00 AM ^
I remember the insulting reaction of the Free Press staff (Sharp and Albom on the radio, publisher Paul Anger in a column of his own) defending Rosenberg. That fans, who cared only about their team winning, were the only people who would complain about what the Free Press was "reporting." I didn't care about winning or losing; I cared about what was right and accurate and fair.
You boys simply can't wrap your tiny brains around the notion of the rightful defense of Rich Rodriguez, lest it somehow constitute some sort of lack of support for Brady Hoke. As if I somewow need to get up my 'focus' and 'preparation' for the next game, and any distraction or disloyalty will detract from the next game's effort. Well guess what; I'm not going to be on that field.
The worst (?!) thing that I said about Hoke's team was that it was incrementally better than last year's team. But that's not enough for the fanboyz.
November 24th, 2011 at 7:13 AM ^
Really, we were less than ten yards from winning both too....*sadface*
November 24th, 2011 at 12:45 PM ^
That's not quite true. We were nine yards away from tying the score against MSU (though they would have then had six minutes to try to win) and then we were three yards and a two-point conversion from tying Iowa.
Being close to tying the score is very different from being close to winning. We cannot assume that we would have gone on to win either one even if we'd tied the score. Truthfully, we were much closer to losing the ND game than we were to winning either of our two losses.
November 24th, 2011 at 12:50 PM ^
Still, it's nice to think about. I had actually forgotten about the need to get the 2-point conversion in the Iowa game, so yeah, you're right.
November 24th, 2011 at 6:55 AM ^
Send me an email at [email protected].
November 23rd, 2011 at 10:55 PM ^
It's interesting to a point, but everyone just spins stuff like this every which way and usually to whichever way helps their rooting interest.
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:02 PM ^
Is highly overrated, but it's hard for me to argue Alabama and LSU are not the nation's elite
November 24th, 2011 at 3:58 AM ^
I've always liked your moves, SFlaW, but man, perhaps go smaller on the font of the sig line? Or no bold plus italics? It gets me all worked up, and then I realize that I shouldn't be; I'm in agreement regarding Denard, and am strangely comforted by the fact that you are a Michigan student (or alum; same amount of mental points to me; really old guys who are alums and cool get extra points).
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:05 PM ^
Lovefest is that Arkansas should get demolished by whatever Pac 12 or Big 12 team they play.
November 24th, 2011 at 12:41 AM ^
Actually the projections that I have seen put the pigs playing Sparty in the Cap One Bowl.
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:15 PM ^
Why? CHAOS!
The more Chaos, the better.
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:43 PM ^
Very interesting.
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:45 PM ^
But he said "interseting."
November 23rd, 2011 at 11:44 PM ^
Almost every year. You can't just take the top two rated teams, it doesn't work.
November 24th, 2011 at 12:15 AM ^
why does it not work ? The BCS is the best system in all of sports for picking a champion. How often does a team win the BCS NC that isnt one of the top 3 teams without question ?
November 24th, 2011 at 12:22 AM ^
Sometimes the BCS is perfect, but there's no way there's an obvious top anything this year. Who deserves to play LSU? Nobody more than anyone else. Stanford, Alabama, Ok State? It's too subjective.
November 24th, 2011 at 12:55 AM ^
Ok, man. Agree to disagree.
November 24th, 2011 at 1:16 AM ^
I can only assume Chris1709 was joking. There is controversy almost every year. About the only time the BCS works is when there are exactly two undefeated teams at the end of the season.
That said, my biggest complaint with the BCS is not really with the end-of-the-season debates about which undefeated team gets left out, or which 1-loss or 2-loss team is the best. Rather, I don't like how the poll-driven system basically drives all the power teams to schedule so many lay-up non-conference games early in the season. Revenues are obviously a big part of that as well, but I think instituting a legitimate playoff system would cause a lot of teams to schedule more big early-season matchups (the reasoning would be: (i) if a team can make the national playoff automtaically by winning its conference, scheduling a difficult non-conference opponent presents less of a risk; and (ii) if a team that fails to win its conference can still qualify for the playoff as an at-large berth, then quality non-conference wins are more valuable).
November 24th, 2011 at 12:13 AM ^
As bad as Arkansas's numbers are... How about Houston's?
# 8 Houston- 50-72 !!! WOW that is some quality scheduling.
November 24th, 2011 at 7:06 AM ^
If we take care of business on Saturday most prognosticators are saying we'll have a chance to do something about that ourselves.
November 24th, 2011 at 9:14 AM ^
When we beat Ohio, the record will be 75-58.
If LSU wins, their's is 76-55.
Screw the SEC dominance talk.