Where should the MMB travel now that Notre Dame is off the schedule?

at State College were all Homecoming games and their Alumni band took 2nd billing.  I really doubt the band would have PSU as an option.  Unfotunately, I was at all 3 of those game - but the drugs I'm taking are starting help me forget the games ... 

It'll probably be Rutgers ... 

Go Blue!

State College is tricky because they require the band to actually sit in the stands. In 2006, the MMB was slated to go because the football staff specifically asked for it. The travel and lodging was completely set up, the money was there, everything was all in line. PSU put the kibosh on it because they didn't have seating. If the MMB were to do State College (and it would be tough, considering it's a pretty lengthy drive each way and flying is cost prohibitive), the decision would have to be made quite early so PSU can plan on it.

To give a little background, B1G rules always allow for opposing bands or sanctioned pep bands (i.e., the MMB can't just informally send 15 kids with regular tickets and their instruments--it has to be approved), but it's on the host school to both approve it and have somewhere to put them. No one is ever going to flat-out say no, but there are legitimate reasons why proposed visits don't work out, for one reason or another.

M is at MSU and OSU in 2014, and then both are home in 2015

Unless the Big Ten is going to give us two consecutive home games against MSU down the road to compensate, this is the new normal - MSU and OSU on the same yearly alignment.

if by weekend in NYC you mean a 12 hour bus ride out there on friday, couple hours of practice, the game, and then a 12 hour bus ride back.... because thats how that trip would probably end up

...I was setting someone up for the classic joke...

This got me thinking about a new location that the band should travel to, asshole.

Sheesh.

Given that we are financially bailing out their athletic department, they should be willing to budge on some of their policies.

So I can't blame them.  If I remember correctly, they didn't have much of a band themselves when I lived there.

I'm surprised the conference does not have a uniform rule about this.

Please say no again PSU!  Besides, doesn't the band have awful seats in the stadium?  Far from the playing field?

2001 was extra messed up because the MMB committed to going, then all of the sudden Athletics agreed to the Cold War on the same day and wanted the whole band there. The MMB had to send a pathetically small pep band to State College, and the rest of the MMB to the Cold War. The only problem was the MMB had agreed to do a fundraiser concert at some high school in Pennsylvania, and the school was really banking on the money it would have brought. The MMB cancelled, they cried foul, and the whole thing turned into a press release crossfire between Michigan and this random high school in Bumblefuck, PA.

OR DAD'S

Do you mean Alabama?

Just on the odd years?



Would you leave them home on the even years? We don't want to burn the band out making them travel to the Rose Bowl every year.

Well we clearly "should" get two home games in a row out of fairness but that would make the entire exercise of going to East Lansing two years in a row pointless. The point is to get the game in EL in even years and AA in odd years so if they played two straight road games the schedule would go back to the way it was before. 

You, sir, are spot on.  M's band-in band speak-has a legacy equally formidable to those that suit up infootball gear, relatively speaking of course. Our band's tradition is,and I have no way of measuring this, is probably as great to those that follow this type of stuff than is our football program's inarguable tradition of no. 1 based on the most solid of criteria, including accomplishments you are all aware of, but just in case an outsider is lurking and wants to argue, I'll make it simple:  all-time no of wins, all-time winning percentage, wrestled away from ND at the same time-mid 70s- as they were closing in on all time wins. As we distanced ourselves in terms of all-time wins, the College Football Warehouse added to our prestige by compiling an all-time SOS, measured by mathematical data for every year the game has been played, and once again we finished no. 1.  My reaction, after reading this and considering our head-to-head advantage against ND-and who can really argue that is not the most decisive measure?- is they were awared a lot of NCs that should have been ours.   in regard to wins, the winning percentage title was finally ours w/in a few more decades.  They can certainly claim what they want but they have no data to support their purported claim of most NCs excecpt Rockne's appeal to the AP, which they use as unequivocal proof, but still refuse to acknowledge their premature crowning in '47 prior to the bowl games and subsequently reversed in Michigan's favor by "their only recognized source for such proclomation." You simply can't have it both ways, saying, "The AP is the only recognized source(no matter the number of catholic writers at that time) but when they vote against you refuse to recognize it.  ^Sorry, their hypocrisy in that regard always gets me going.   Back to the band.  They have, I believe, not unlike those they support on the field, led the way for over 100 years on what a college marching band should be.  They gave their fiercest rivalry the script Ohio, perhaps as a spelling lesson, but once ,repeated every Saturday thereafter. Damn, times were simpler. You could actually do nice things for your opponent like the above and a stadium full of OH boosters giving Mr.Harmon a standing ovation, probably considered sacrilege today.                                                                           ^In Bo's book, Tradition, he devoted an entire chapter to how important the band was to his team. The long-time director would often ask Bo if the team needed the band after a particular practice. If Bo gave a nod in the affirmative, just as the entire team were hanging its collective head after a brutal practice, those heads would soon rise in unison when they heard the familiar music of The Victors as the band marched their way toward the practice field and as difficult as that particular practice had been the team immediately remembered where and why they were.  Along with owning claim-as voted,by well everyone that counts- as possessing the greatest fight song in college sports, many forget the first public playing of this song was led by none other than John Philip Sousa, the only Director of the Marching Band we were tested on in elementary school.  Fuck, this band has the song, the history, the introduction of same introduced by the greatest conductor of such music in that era that it has earned the right to play where and when it wants within budgetary boundaries. The Director of the MMB is held to the same level of esteem by his colleagues as former M fb coaches were. Further needn't be said.