Recent Comments

I shall retreat to my Shed of Shame. It's right next to my Shed of Triumph, and behind my Shed of Garden Tools. I shall remain there fo life.

Sorry this took so long. The galleys didn't come back from the focus group until Thursday, and with the MGoEditorialBoard schedule and mandatory 72 hour comment period, this was as fast as I could get this out.

Until the fullback doesn't line up between the quarterback and the halfback, the whole "is the nickelback a nickelback" thing doesn't concern me.

Buy low, sell NOW!!!!

You don't think the chrome helmets might be a bit much with the maize jerseys?

http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-am-under-18-button-clicked-for-first-...

I don't think you know the regard in which Brian holds Marlin Jackson.  "Poor Man's Marlin Jackson" is the fourth highest rating, behind only "Poor Man's Charles Woodson," "Marlin Jackson," and "Charles Woodson."

"He'll have to wrest the job away from Jeremy Clark and possibly Thomas; I think he will."

Methinks you buried the lede...

Kovacs was on his own dime for two years (and as an out-of-state student no less).

My point was just that two weed-related incidents (or two underage drinking incidents) should probably be treated differently than, as an example, two killing sprees. I'd be okay with whatever punishments are dished out, I'm just saying that hard-and-fast rules are tricky when the whole realm is so amorphous.

But that's ridiculous in practice. Are you going to boot people for being late to one team meetings? For skipping a class? For calling them Ohio STATE? Those are team rules, too.

These are college kids. College kids - ALL college kids - do stupid stuff. Hell, I'm 30, and I still do stupid stuff.  And these coaches aren't just there to coach football. They're there to mold these young kids. And one way is by being supportive when they inevitably succumb to the things to which kids succumb and teaching them how not to continue down that path.

What kind of ridiculous lesson would it be for these kids for the coaches to say, "I demand that you give this team everything you've got. I demand that you work as hard as you can and learn as much as you can and run as fast as you can and hit as hard as you can. But if you screw up, even once, even a LITTLE BIT, I will discard you."

As someone who has attended BOTH schools, I can report that Michigan is indeed the superior party school. And the superior school school.

The Shazorvacs will haunt my dreams a little bit...

Beyond that, though, did Walsh-era folks distinguish between field and boundary corners, or was it basically "you're defending an outside receiver, so whatevs"?

I'm still mad at DB for wanting a fuzzy mascot.

Fuckin' T3 Media

JBB?

As that they (a) often produce crazy results for individual data points despite being pretty good overall, (b) often lack any sort of "sanity check," and (c) suffer from the fact that you can only include so many variables before you risk overfitting the curve.

In other words, models have blind spots, and trying to make sure every data point is where you THINK it should be is a recipe for a terrible result. I happen to think Michigan will outperform this result comfortably, but you can't really be mad.

I forget which basketball model had Michigan at like #42 entering this year, and in the discussion portion they were all, "yeah, Michigan is almost certainly too low, but they're really young so that happens."

The politics can (and should) be discussed elsewhere, but the stupid is fair game.

Strangely enough, while the blog has a pretty strict "no politics" rule, it is surprisingly lax on naked dudes (see: the old banner).

It's been 5 guys: Finley, Reschke, Shane Jones, Madaris, and Burbridge

But drive with caution.

Not my best effort. Those five days straight days with strep throat and a fever impeded my ability to focus on what was happening in the world. Or the existence of an outside world. I did have some wicked dreams, though, if you'd like me to write about those.

I'm upping my Vitamin C intake. Don't worry, I won't let you down again.

3400 people missed Michigan State. For a 3:30 kickoff.

When more than 15% of the students just flat no-show for a late afternoon game against your second-biggest football rival, the problem isn't with the schedule.

I find your logic questionable. Michigan has been a broad-ranging national/international school for decades.

As for the "no exciting games theory, what in the tapdancing hell are you talking about? There weren't many exciting games in 2010. Great. But 2011 had the UTL game, damn entertaining wins over Illinois and Nebraska, and a nice little battle with Ohio State. They also won a damn Sugar Bowl. And yet 2012 saw TERRIBLE attendance. Just brutal.

But regardless of the reason, what is the problem here? If a quarter of the students aren't gonna show, why are we going to continue to reserve a seat for each and every student? It makes no sense.

Michigan and Tennessee were his clear leaders, and each told him they had one remaining spot for a TE. He may have been leaning toward Tennessee anyway, but the Bunting committment pretty much clarified Helm's situation.

Good luck to the kid.

Sparty ain't gonna like this article...

But lots of topics CAN take a political turn (I'd argue that this one wasn't particularly inherently political, but whatevs), but there is one iron-clad rule around here: No. Politics. So to the extent people may feel the urge to go down that path, you must resist that temptation. Again: No. Politics.

As for the Rovell stuff, I wish I'd screenshotted (screenshat?) the earlier conversation, but Rovell deleted his end of things so I can't access it anymore. Rookie error on my part.

We're not going to get into politics here. I wanted to create a little catharsis, not start a holy war. 

I'm not asking everyone to rend garments and gnash teeth. There are worse things that can happen in the world. But when you hear an 8-year-old kid got blown up, and a bunch of marathoners may never walk normally again, I think most people are going to look at that and say, "that sucks."

You can know something, not say it, and be well within your role as a reporter. Insiders know stuff all the time, and they don't report everything they know. that's how they get to learn secret things.

But once it hits a major outlet like CBS Sports (which this did), the cat is out of the bag.

We can differentiate between BR and Ace Williams. 

BR has some good stuff sandwiched amongst the crap. Ace Williams has a bunch of crap sandwiched amongst other crap. He literally makes up libelous stuff that is almost always unverifiable by standard techniques (because he "has a super-secret source"). He's never right. He sucks.

...whenever I create a controversial thread. Sort of a "you break it, you bought it" policy.

Is that whether the "cause" is right, left, foreign, domestic, or just insane, the act of planting bombs at the Boston Marathon is by definition "terrorism."

I think if /when Mitch comes back, Donnal redshirts

If RABACK is willing to make a prediction, that pretty much settles it, right?

Anyone?

They are too high

How does one end up with that many couches?

I will say that I know of people in college who, in lieu of trying to get rid of a couch, decided to burn them up. I dare say that that sort of pragmatic "I want this couch to vanish" couch-burning, while still a pretty bad idea, is more defensible than the celebratory type of couch-burning.

So I echo your thanks.

But wait... then it's not a thankless job.

You do a minimally thankful job, gents. It has broken lesser golden retrievers, so your courageous efforts are appreciated. Keep up the good work.

SNEEEEEEEEEEEEERFEUNBECR%&EOINJXC*EMS!!!

/pours out a little orange juice

We're in the title game! NOTHING can bring me down!



/Reads OP/



Oh. That did it.

For a lower-profile/non-revenue sport like baseball, anything they can do to bump up their group of core followers up is good idea. It's probably a low-return sort of thing, but it's pretty much free, so why not.

I see a big difference between this and a Michigan football hashtag. Michigan baseball can slide under the radar, whereas Michigan football is... yeah.

This is like waiting until you're throwing a big party in your back yard, grabbing a shovel, and digging up the bones of your dead cat Fluffy and saying, "HEY, LET'S TALK ABOUT WHOSE FAULT IT WAS THAT FLUFFY GOT HIT BY THAT CAR."

Scoreboard. I am unconcerned.

Great piece. Thanks for sharing.

On the bright side, this ridiculous year of sports ridiculousness will be over soon, so you will hopefully be able to grab a well-deserved break. In the meantime, GIF SOMETHING DAMNIT.

But I write what the figurative voice in my head tells me to write, with an assist from the literal voices in my head. If if comes out sounding like Brian or Salman Rushdie or the Cookie Monster, it is what it is. I'm the sum of my influences. Nothing more, nothing less. I appreciate that you read my stuff, but if you do, be forewarned that some of it is gonna sound like Brian and Ace and Seth and Cookie Monster.

But my standard shtick (seltzer bottles and floppy clown shoes) doesn't play well in writing, so this is all I've got.

For the football gods giveth to Ross, but in doing so they taketh from Gibbs.

But in that "humans share 75% of their genes with mice" sense, right?

I believe that some people are prone to go apeshit in crunch time (hence my 1500 words of man-crush above). But people often make too large of conclusions off of too little information. Hell, Joe Flacco just signed a bazillion dollar contract because of his new-found playoff clutchness. 

How much of it is actually just SEEMING "clutch"? Sure, some guys perform better in late-game situations, but small sample sizes can introduce a bunch of noise into the data. There are also unrelated reasons; a great golfer might notwin the jacket because he doesn't have the putter to play well on Augusta's quick greens. 

Robert Horry is probably a bad example, too. He MADE a bunch of big shots, but he also MISSED a bunch. People only tend to remember the hero moments, but Horry was a career 35.8% 3-point shooter in the playoffs. 

Was your son, Steve Holt. STEVE HOLT! /hopes you don't actually have a son named Steve

North Quad?

/Old man

But there are too few opportunities in life to make a good trebuchet reference.

Much like the ball, tweets don't lie. Even if they are fake.

There's no way you had a 3.8% chance when asking for dates.

And they did cry "havoc" and let slip the rams of war. And lo, the blogosphere was concerned.

Is a futile exercise. We don't have a pure post player right now.

After football games, everyone created his own thread entitled, "Michigan should run the ball better" or "I am unhappy." I put in a rule that you couldn't create a post-game thread that was just the stuff that people were already discussing in existing threads. It's called the snowflake rule because not everyone's unsupported and repetitive opinion is a special little snowflake that needs to be shared.

Now people create a thread after games in which people can put their own random thoughts. 

To confirm, you're saying that in 2015 Wisconsin will lose to Alabama, but not by a lot, and this will be a great source of embarrassment to Michigan because Alabama beat Michigan in 2012 in the midst of a dominating national championship by 2012 Alabama?

Is "imaginative" really what you're going for with an NCAA bracket?

Nothing to see here. Back to your turnips.

Hard to fault Craft. It's hard to continue to drive to the hoop without your neck.

"This team sucks because they should be beating these good teams because this team is really good."

No longer being a mod.

I hope all the bad things in life happen to you and nobody else but you.

are making me thirsty.

PLUS, who gave up the winning points in every loss over the last two years? THE DEFENSE.

So he misses 21% of the time.

As for your other question, by my math, facing that same situation (2 shots for GRIII and one-and-ones for Hardaway and Burke), the odds of coming away with that with one or fewer points is about 4%.

/makes mental note for football season...

I am Jack's complete lack of surprise

They said this would only bury the athletic department. A GERG hiring would bring down WAY more than that.

The test you name is for whether a TANGENTIALLY political thread violates the "no politics" rule. It's like the rule for an as-applied constitutional challenge. This one is facially political.

It appears you were roaming that entire time...

Brian mentioned that the site was heading for a revamp, which will include a return to something approximating the old point system. Due to land some time this spring/summer, I think.

But Hoke will say those words soon about these players.

Thanksgiving Day. 7 pounds, 9 ounces.

This is the training video Brian sends to all of the new mods:

Both look "tremendous" and have had "outstanding off-seasons." #Insider

I'm looking at the two stat lines you posted for Harris, and I barely detect a difference.

17 points on 13 shots vs. 16 points on 16 shots is probably not statistically significant. 2-9 with 6 TOs vs. 6-9 with 0 TOs? That's a sea change.

Maybe the writer sensed that Appling spelled it wrong verbally?

Oh, MLive.

I think so.

But I have it on good authority that this is the accepted story among those "in the know." In other words, this isn't an internet creation (unlike this latest rumor).

So regardless of what actually happened, whatever DID happen resulted in a significant falling-out between Moeller and Miles.

Messages from people you aren't following don't tend to go through. Maybe try just sending me a normal tweet with my name (@Bry_Mac), or you can email me your address.

/Outraged indignance, not-so-subtle reference to 1930's political movement, incorrect interpretation of certain speech-related constitutional rights

/Inflammatory hyperbolic political comment designed to provoke angry response

Would make more sense if we already pretty much know that there are gay players currently in the league.

Pretty freeking close? You bet.

You know these "practical reasons why it could have a very real impact on team chemistry and the functionality of team roles" you mentioned? Those are some of the EXACT SAME REASONS PEOPLE GAVE TO KEEP BLACKS OUT OF BASEBALL. And to keep schools and the military segregated. Your argument boils down to the idea that some people are bigoted against a group, and therefore the solution is to keep that group out to the extent possible. And holy fuck does that piss me off. It's twenty-fucking-thirteen.

But the NFL is nowhere near even the "somewhat accepting of gays" point. Once it becomes more commonplace (like, for example, when there has been at least ONE openly gay player), I think it might seem less nefarious. For now, Occam's Razor suggests that these questions are being asked to weed out gays.

It isn't against federal law to ask about sexual orientation like it is with ethnicity, pregnancy status, etc. Some states do make it illegal, though Michigan is not one of them. Actually, the "work-around" question they asked about marital status WAS probably a violation of federal law.

You can't leave the ship. Someone has to steer this thing.

/says the guy who bribed his way onto one of the first lifeboats with like 8 people on it.

It is ridiculous, and yet simultaneously not ridiculous, and there is no way to know whether it will remain ridiculous from one moment to the next.

There are 88 million people. THINK OF THE NEW MARKET FOR THE BTN!!!

FOOTPRINT!!!