Notes from Brian's night in Chicago
(That excruciating to type on a phone)
Well the third time must've been the charm cuz the OP isn't divulging any of the juicy nuggets of maize n blue gossip that surely were pouring forth during the evening.
Must get Rivals subscription now
Must get inside Fort
Can't imagine a grown man telling me not to post something on the internet. This ain't China bitch. I can do what I want. If you don't want your precious premium content outside of a paywall, maybe don't tell it to a room full of people.
Dick.
/end rant
all the stuff that will be common knowledge w/in 3-13 hrs after its release, they demand a monetary donation for in the form of a monthly subscription and call it Inside the Fort. By time you wake up tomorrow and check your mail, you'll know what every member of the wolverine site knows. Hell, it was probably covered on this site in some manner today.
Honestly, I was mildly upset when I got tossed for having the balls to stand up to one of their coffee and donut men, otherwise known as "voluntary mods." Problem is with those guys they think they can have a few loudmouths and insult people who disagree with their "expert-lol" take on a given subject without retribution. I wasn't upset by getting tossed. Like I said whatever they know we know tomorrow, or earlier. I was just pissed they didn't have the class to give me my money back on a prepaid subscription. Lot of nice fans on the wolverine, and I miss them as well. I still recall when I first came across that site. I was a government employee so naturally we had a lot of time to search what was then fairly new, the internet. I think Borton might have been running it, but it was completely free and a lot of fun. We only had about twenty to thirty regulars, some of whom have gone on to create their own site like Winged Helmet for instance. But damn, before they decided they could make money off of this thing we had a ball. Fans from other sites, Bama was actually in a down cycle under DuBose and a member of their site would drop in daily and successfully start a war of words. Bamabullybowl was his user name. Damn, this was like '98. I can recall near the end of the season the majority of the board was so upset with him they named Bama as the team they'd most like to play in the bowl game. Well as luck would have it. Thank you Tommy B. and David T. That was the year MSU beat Fl as well. He actually had enough class to visit after the bowl games and declare the BIG the best conference in the nation for that year. Good times.
"Winged Helmet" is my dad. The site he started "The Alamo" still runs off an iMac in his basement. To think someone remembered him and his handle from 16 years is mind blowing. although thinking back to some of his posts from back then, they were pretty memorable.
"Honestly, I was mildly upset when I got tossed for having the balls to stand up to one of their coffee and donut men, otherwise known as 'voluntary mods.'"
Two sentences later...
"I wasn't upset by getting tossed..."
Even though I agree with your original point when you started this comment, c'mon, I had too... :P
In the second statement, he is clarifying that he wasn't upset by being tossed per se, but by the fact that they did not refund his subscription (which I agree they should have done). Thus the first statement refers to the overall situation (he was upset WHEN he got tossed, not THAT he got tossed), the second to specific aspects of the situation. He could have made it a bit clearer, I suppose, but I don't think it warrants criticism.
No, I got that. I just used to hear things like "I wasn't even mad" before someone launched into a tirade all the time at my old job, so I found this very funny.
"off the record I heard that Recruit X was looking for money" or "Player X turned down money from elsewhere to go to Michigan"
Not sure where the hostility toward Balas comes from, but I'll say something in his defense - he breaks most of the basketball news these days. For instance, he was the first to break the Duncan Robinson info a few days back. Sure, it was readily available on this blog and UMHoops within hours of Balas posting, but that's the internet these days. I think it's a punk move not to give at least a little respect to someone who does the work to get the inside info.
Also, in defense of "The Fort", in addition to often being the first to leak basketball info, they have some really knowledgable basketball posters (outside of the staff) who participate heavily in the forums. That's worth something to me as a consumer, especially as MGoBlog continues to try to fight off the hoards of dumb posters that come when a blog has no barriers to entry.
I know disagreeing with Brian is unpopular but... Ehhh last year's offense and this year's offense are different in that one is stupid and one is most likely not stupid. I know the O-line isn't all seniors who have had 30+ starts like Wisconsin, but there's enough experience (Magnuson, Bosch, Kalis, Glasgow), combined with keeping the defense on their feet, to be serviceable. And given our skill players, being serviceable is really all we need to score points.
I'm getting tired of bandwagon pessimism. Let's just be all in for the team and worry about Hoke wearing a headset later.
I laughed out loud at this. Thank you 3rdgenerationblue for posting the above.
Can anyone who was at the event confirm whether Brian's jeans appeared to be ripped up from years of genuine hard-core indie blogging or *shudder* factory distressed?
I believe the offense will acquit itself quite nicely. It may not light the world on fire but by the same token it won't be embarassing anybody either. I think, could be wrong, Brian's concern is that the OL will at best improve about 10-15 points, from the worst OL to #100.
I seem to recall in the February time frame he referenced some study about incremental year over year improvements of offensive lines. Since the offense is founded on the OL, and if the OL won't be drastically improving year over year, don't expect an offense to improve much year over year. I think that's the primary basis of his concerns
I like to believe that 2013 was an anomaly with many lessons learned and don't forsee a repeat of last year.
Agreed. I think the offense will be much more consistent this year. No changing schemes and philosophies every other week.
"Coach Nuss" had the best players in the country at every position at Bama. It's a lot easier to play MANBALL when your boosters are buying you the "men." I detest seeing Michigan play 20th century football in the 21st century. I would be stunned if this team goes better than 9-3 this year.
That being said, I really, really hope I am wrong.
I honestly can't even hazard a guess. On the plus side of the ledger, if Borges was even half as bad as some people believe, just having a new OC will probably jump us 30 places by most metrics. On the other hand, we're replacing 2 NFL tackles (whatever personality issues aside), so that could negate the 10-15 spots we're statistically supposed to see. I, personally, suspect some nagging OL injuries also played a big part in how bad we were last year too, I can't really reconcile how badly we regressed from ND to MSU and then back again a bit for OSU and the especially the bowl game otherwise. My gut feel is we'll be somewhere mid pack in rushing stats, probably a little better off in sacks.
Agreed. I am not saying it is like 97' but the great thing about that was nobody expected it that year. Gardner can do special things when not asked to do crazy things that only lead to more crazy things like running backwards and throwing to the other team. I like our defense and blocking will be much better even with the loss of two NFL tackles. The line could use more experience but it is a matter of scheme and repetition.
to gel. I see us as MSU last year. Everyone thought their offense would struggle, which it did initially, and they would have to survive on defense. Then the offense came together.
I'm not saying we are going to be as successful as State was because we still have a very young line. I think they will be much better at the end of the year though. The weak early season schedule is actually good to give the line time to develop.
I think it is a generalization. We're almost exactly the opposite of State's situation on offense in that their question marks were QB and RB. Their OL was demolished by injuries in 2012 and they returned Maxwell as an incumbant in 2013 but a lot of those OL guys were upperclassmen who just got hurt the prior year. They had a pretty big stable of experienced WRs - sort of like we will have in 1 year but no one stood out like a Funchess had. So MSU had the line play going into last year, but werein open competition at QB and had some unknowns at RB, and no TE to speak of.
We return an established QB (with some questions to him) and have most of our questions at WR and OL. And the TE until Butt comes back is "welp". The RB is hard to tell what questions we have but its a lot of inexperience and hard to tell what we have due to the OL being so bad.
MSU 2013 v UM 2014 offense
- MSU OL - pretty sturdy and experienced, but racked with injury prior year
- UM OL - welp
- MSU QB - welp
- UM QB - raw potential but has to improve on some key things (decision making, reading defense)
- MSU RB - in flux, moving LBs to RBs, trying to find a feature back
- UM RB - in flux, no set starter, relying on young guys or injured in 2013 guys
- MSU WR - a plethora of decent guys who were interchangable + HS star Burbridge
- UM WR - 1 established star and a whole lot of young question marks
- MSU TE - a black hole
- UM TE - welp, 1 guy with 1 catch and 1 guy who played DE. Rain dance to Butt's ACL.
somebody put up numbers that showed 2 RSJrs = 4th season, and several RSSos = 3rd season. There is one real Sophomore in the mix who payed siginificant time last year. So the Oline is comprised of guys going on thier 3rd or 4th season. (Cole is going to be a backup to Mags). They've all got playing time.
At what point do Olinemen - especially highly recruited ones - become effective?
i.e., youth has ceased being an excuse. Frank, Devin and Jake can say they'll fight for Hoke all they want. Hopefully the OL have picked themselves up of the mat, got pissed, and have deicided to deliver together.
This makes sense given the youth of the offensive line and running a new scheme
Considering it is going to start either 8 or 9 underclassmen, I think that's a throwaway comment. If the offense did not improve for a 2nd straight year between game 1 and game 12 it would be time for panic. Especially with so many guys in year 2 and 3 which are the prime years for "getting it" mid season.
Too bad a rumble (or at least an argument) didn't break out; i thought the two hated each other. Brian would whoop 'em.
that Brian is a misbegotten clone of Jerry Garcia?
Fare enough; I at least appreciated the update, OP. I am intrigued by this powerpoint you speak of. Brian probably won't post it, but why was it so awesome and funny? Or did you just have to be there ...
... sorry if that came off as preachy. I was on my phone, where I have fewer internal filters.
Basically, to me all that matters (or should matter) is content. Sure Rivals is somewhat antiquated, but I still remember the first time I found that website, I felt like I hit a jackpot. We all still heavily rely on it and similar services to learn about prospects and even this site's editorial team relies heavily upon the paid services in many of their recruiting updates. I guess I'm saying the truth is more nuanced, and if neither of them said anything different than what most of us know, it shouldn't matter too much the style in which they delivered it.
Anyway, I do appreciate the update and think it's awesome Brian and Balas did this, and that 50 people showed up to be a part of it. The Michigan community thrives, and that's a great part of being a member of that community.
You must be fun at parties.
Right on N. Ashland, about ten minutes on the blue line from Gov't square. Liked that area a lot.
I don;t think anyone will know how our offense will look until we start practicing.