Suffering from PBONERism? Help is on the way.

Rubbish, like the rest of this post.

You're a real piece of shit human being.

Assuming you're joking, but not funny.  If at all serious, you take this way to seriously and need help.

And if that doesn't work, put some Tussin on it!

The CFP ruined college football.  It's not going away, which means the damage is permanent.

My theory is that the NCAA/Madden video games played a role, as well blogs like MGoBlog. Brian frequently contrasts coaching decisions to those of a child Madden player, and I think there's a funny insight there. So many of us think we understand football intimately because of what we've learned from video games and the internet. Using the information one learns from Seth's Neck Sharpies post, one can become a formidable Madden player even with a team that isn't maxed out talent-wise.

This leads to an attitude that football is chess and the coaches are the chess players. Personally, I've always loved viewing football this way (my best chess adversary was a professional offensive lineman). However, what makes football more challenging than chess is that the pieces don't have clearly defined abilities and outcomes. Chess is a matrix of binaries. Although the modern Madden games probably have added many more variables than versions I once played, a player can still break it down logically (if-then/either-or) and excel by making statistically-driven choices. This perspective treats the players like automatons.

Football—college football especially—is played by people. I think we used to have a better appreciation for that. In fact, in the 80s and 90s we had a bit of an over-appreciation for it. We viewed sports not through the lens of the coach, but through the lens of individual players. Movies and Sports Illustrated articles that treated individual players and individual plays as epic heroes and moments. Woodson's catch, Howard's return, etc. While this view helped avoid the whole BPONE thing, the fans in general tended to have less of a clear idea of what was actually happening on the field and why player X was in a position to make play Y.

Football, like chess, is an attempt to simulate war. War is complex and there are many variables at play. We try to simplify it by looking at it from a general's perspective or a warrior's perspective. Viewing football more holistically—more realistically—shatters the illusion of control. It reveals a struggle to control chaos that is always imperfect. But I think viewing it holistically helps avoid the whole despair if we don't win every single game thing.

I don't think it's the CFP that changed Michigan's fans expectations, but the addition of the Big Ten Championship and just being out of conference title contention in general.  Consistently being out of conference championship contention since its inception skews things pretty negatively.  Because while Bo generally had his teams in the bottom part of the top 10, he won or shared a slice of the Big Ten title 13 out of his 21 years at Michigan.  In the 9 years the Big Ten has had a championship game, Michigan has been out of contention all but two times heading into the Ohio State game.

So it honestly can't be the CFP that's altering expectations because Michigan has frankly never been close to making that because they are almost never in a position to even get to the Big Ten Championship Game. And unless you're a freakishly good team, you're not making the CFP without winning a conference title.

What "altered expectations for a lot of people" was the hiring of Jim Harbaugh. Almost overnight MGoBlog became ground zero for brainless, off-the-charts Harbaugh idolatry and deification, and naturally this extended to what people thought was going to happen on the field.

Every silly pronouncement by Harbaugh about nervous birds and steak and whole milk and khakis was seized on as proof of his quirky brilliance that would automatically extend to winning conference championships every year, grinding our opponents into a bloody pulp along the way.

Human nature being what it is, there's nothing quite like falling short of unrealistic expectations to arouse an equally unhinged flood of bitterness and bile.

I'll take some of that cure!

I'm not saying she isn't hot, because she is, but for some reason she just doesn't do it for me.  I'm baffled, to be honest.

Clearly, you don’t understand the intersection of superstition and how a butterfly flapping its wings in Central Park causes severe weather in India.

Or affect how an athletic department or head coach makes decisions about coaches’ retention, or how an athletic conference makes or enforces its rules, or changes how the plays are called, or which QB will play, or what color pants a team will wear on the road, or whether the team will or won’t have helmet stickers, or whether anyone cares what some yahoo will or won’t find acceptable in terms of win-loss record, or whether this or that bowl opponent will be chosen by this blog, or any of the other crazy bullshit that gets bandied about here as though it matters.

This board had one lucky strike in helping to rid Michigan of Dave Brandon, but eventually, the fact that he was an asshole was going to catch up with him, with or without MGoBlog.

Except for shopping and porn, the internet has mainly empowered random cranks to spread bullshit and hasten the end of the world.

Other than that, things are great!