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Hey, I'm right on track!

When do I get in?

Just Dawn.

And Tennille.

Tom Brady is rich and famous.

Country clubs want rich and not famous.

Rich White People Problems.

I know this for a fact because it's a problem I don't seem to have no matter how hard I try.

This is an "Upper East Side condo" kind of thing where what the decision makers want is to maintain quiet sanctuary.

To us mere mortals, being rich and famous should open the door to everything.  But it actually works against you in some situations.  These places don't want all the commotion.

It's likely nothing against Tom and Gisele per se, but concern about all the "hangers on" and noise and fuss that surround people like them.

They have to show they can be "anonymous" when they are at the club.

Be careful out there.

Especially right now.

You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning.

Yes there is.

Tom Brady.

Detroit City's motto is nigh literally "fuck you"

I thought that was the NCAA's.

Washington was the one that said that Ohio State appealed to him because the academic "support" made sure you would never flunk out.  They took care of things.

Draftageddon:  All Buckeys all the time.

They lost the game and the series that year, but that shot transcends all that . . . 

Dr. J said right after that game that it was one of his 5 best shots he ever took.

The announcer said "Wow, what the heck were the other 4?."

The War of 1812 was just a Friendly.

It doesn't count.

Ufer was the bset.

You can tell he grew up in pre-television radio where you had to continuously paint the picture for your audience, not just do the play by play.

It's a lost art.  Even today's radio-only announcers don't have it like Ufer did.

Hey!  Sounds just like Tr . . .

Never mind.

It's funny to think of Brandstatter as just another player to be graded (and not that well).

I like these posts.

When they are up I feel like all angles of Michigan sports are being covered.

If someone is paying attention to this then I know they are paying attention to everything Michigan.

They are just taking two simple lists that have nothing to do with each other, and combining them to get a nonsensical combo-list.

Um, OK.

"Here are the countries with the best quality of life and the best ICBM programs."

Oh look at that, North Korea is in the top five while Sweden is not even in the top 50 . . .

I know where I'm moving.

Don't worry, the Government will just create a lottery.  "Sorry, your number came up. Give up a kidney."

They can recruit like sons of bitches.

That's why we hate them.

Or 65+ young men in the case of MSU.

vs #10 Purdue

Woah.

The US is big enough for more than one sport.

Everyone relax.

You don't have to be the biggest sport in the country for your favorite sport to survive.

I don't know where a sport like college basketball ranks, but it's probably not one of the top 5 sports in the country.  Does it matter?  It still has a very large and passionate fan base.  It's not going anywhere.

Soccer will have a prominent enough place in US sports.  Is it going to be #1?  Proabaly not, but it doesn't have to be.

They won them because Godwin could high-point that ball like a MoFo.

But he's gone now.

If we could just get a little of that Harbaugh recruiting to rub off on Beilein . . . 

OK, so I just watched it.

Video added nothing to that piece. Nothing.

To quote Frank Zappa: Is that the wave of the future? Oh, spare me please.

Only 3 top ten Rivals classes since 2002:

Meanwhile USC is always in the top five unless they are stepping on their own dicks with sanctions.

Westwood >>> South Central.

It's puzzling.  An on-campus stadium can't be worth that much can it?

Other that that, for what 18 year old male athletes want from a college experience, UCLA should always be in the top 10.

Probably the wife's doing.  The same reason that all the man's leather stuff gets relegated to the basement.

My house is like an archeological dig.  You don't find any evidence of my stuff until you get all the way down to the basement.

He pretty much dismissed anything Speight did after he broke his collarbone:

It’s funny how your offense trails off when your quarterback breaks his collarbone.

• First 9 games (9-0): Avg. score: UM 48, Opp 11 | Avg. percentile performance: 95% (~top 5) | Avg. yards per play: UM 6.7, Opp 4.2 (plus-2.5) | Michigan passer rating: 158.2
• Last 4 games (1-3): Avg. score: UM 23, Opp 22 | Avg. percentile performance: 71% (~top 35) | Avg. yards per play: Opp 4.3, UM 3.7 (minus-0.6) | Michigan passer rating: 94.5

But I'm torn.  Yes Speight lit up poor competition.  But there were some hints of issues vs. better teams before he was injured . . . Wisconsin (1-11 on third downs, Yikes) and at Iowa before the injury.  

Does he think a healthy Speight would have meant wins vs. Iowa, OSU, and FSU?  He doesn't say that but he implies it.   

If Speight is the starter this year, we won't have to guess too long.  Our schedule is much more front-loaded with tough games on the road this year vs. FL and PSU.

He wound up importing Jim Harbaugh.

Who knew?

Happy Anniversary!

MGoBlog: Preventing real work from occurring since 2004.

Big ass donation.

Yuge.

I guess we can afford that Jim Harbaugh guy after all.

The Michigan difference.  We are a tank that keeps rolling forward across the terrain no matter what.

We're not doing it based on one big happy donation that occurs once a decade.

(We get those too - Hi Steve! - but we are not completely dependent on them.)

I'll answer my own question on what counts as revenue:

Contributions: Includes amounts received directly from individuals, corporations, associations, foundations, clubs or other organizations for the operations of the athletics program. Amounts paid in excess of a ticket’s value. Contributions include cash, marketable securities and in-kind contributions such as dealer-provided cars for staff use. Also includes revenue from preferential seating

Still would have thought Oregon would have been higher. I guess you just can't fake Blue Blood.

Also:  Minnesota both made more and spent more than Oregon.  My world has been turned upside down.

They will never reproduce.

Natural Selection at work right there.

Oh look, another weekend is upon us.

Now, where was I?

Important 8:00 AM meeting with your boss, and you're on MGoBlog at 7:30 AM?

I like your spirit.

We have Jim Harbaugh and they don't.

I feel better.

Until proven otherwise . . . 

It bit him in the ass in the 4th quarter.

Godwin was the guy that I recall being the high-point guy that bailed out McSorely's arm punts.  

Those arm punts where McSorely scrambled to his right in trouble and heaved the ball 40 yards down the right sideline are not as likely to be bailed out by a TE and a RB in 2017.

That 2016 go-to play is hamstrung now in 2017.

Video has a fundamental flaw:  Audio.

Most videos are useless without audio.  But I can't hide audio that easily like I can hide my reading something.

A great deal of internet access is at work, clandestinely.  We all know this.  A bunch of us are doing it right now.  I can hide reading the content of MGoBlog.  I can't hide so easily the ESPN autoplay of video.

But it does not stop there.  Just because you are at home does not mean that you want your wife / girlfriend / parents / etc. hearing you listen to yet another video an hour after they told you to get off that damn thing.

And earbuds don't work, I don't need earbuds to look at the budget spreadsheet I'm pretending to hide behind, and my significant other knows that.

Video and especially autoplay video means that I am guaranteed to ignore it completely.

I've noticed this recently . . . I do something I never used to do:  I glean all the written content I can out of a site, and then I move on to another site and read their wtitten content.

I never move on to anybody's video content, unless it's something one-in-a-thousand-spectacular like video of a plane crash.

Video just for video's sake makes me leave the site.

Until they started getting nasty.

"Congratulations on your RichRod witch hunt that turned up absolutely nothing and actually ended up hurting the program. Miss you."

There's that devil tongue again.

He's possessed.

We were not allowed to have any water during football practice.  None at all.  No matter how long the practice, or how hot the day.

Coaches thought it slowed you down.  You were supposed to toughen it out.

One kid hit another kid so hard once that his facemask broke and it drew blood.  The coach shouted "GOOD!  THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO SEE!  BLOOD!"

This was Junior High School.  I was in eighth grade.

There was nothing about this that we did not think was just normal football coaching at the time (early '70s).  This is what every coach did as far as we knew.  They were supposed to be mean and tough.

If we told our parents about all of this, they would have said "Of course. What did you expect when you went out for football?"

How quickly they forget.

So true.  

We were like three 3rd-and-short 1st downs away from being undefeated.

An O-Line that can go get those will be the last piece of the puzzle.

I cringe to think what would have happened if we did not get Harbaugh.  There are not a lot of appelaing options out there.

Dan Mullen was a hot name for a while there during the post-Hoke coaching search as our Plan B, mostly because there were no better options.

but there are a lot of recruits who grow up with certain loyalties.

You mean Catholics?

Meh, Jim Harbaugh is in tighter with the Pope than anybody at Notre Dame.

BTW, is this the most Harbaugh picture ever or what?

Jim Harbaugh is in the Vatican handing the Pope a Michigan American Football helmet, and you just think to yourself "Yeah, so?  It's Jim Harbaugh, he does this kind of stuff all the time.  What's the big deal?"

It's an interesting thought experiment to wonder how Meyer would have done at Notre Dame.

He's an outstanding coach, but OSU lets players get away with way more academic pretenses than Notre Dame does.  It's not as easy to recruit at Notre Dame because of this, and they make players do some actual academic work when they get there.  They actually play school.

I wonder if Meyer would have still been able to overcome those hurdles and build an NC program at ND?

Stanford wins all of the "Country Club" sports of which there are many and they are very good at them, and there are not as many other competing schools across the NCAA as there are in other sports.

They've found a niche that works for them.

Never go to plaid.

This is accurate.

We can be very good.  But there is no margin of error.

A couple of key injuries or a lack of substantial progress in a couple of key areas can do us in.

It's OK to be hopeful, but assuming that everything that can go wrong will just go right instead is delusional.

It won't mean the sky is falling, we will still be on track.  Just not wildly ahead of schedule based on good luck.  

Wrong. 

I cry when I hear O Canada, and I've only been there three times.

Every 5 star in the SEC essentially does exactly this as soon as he signs a LOI.

Except that they wind up at Alabama or LSU and not Michigan.

It wasn't necessarily pure luck, but it's still just as un-repeatable.  

There is no Godwin safety blanket to high-point the arm punts that McSoely puts up this year.

A tall Corner is going to have a field day against him in a game this season.

He's not on a Meyer / Harbaugh level.  But he and his staff and his recruiting are good enough to be a factor on a regular basis.

He's not going to turn an Indiana into a contender.  But he can "game-manager" a Penn State into a contender.

the sanctions really did hurt their progress as a football program.

And so did the last decade of the Paterno regime.  

The guy was an icon that they could not just get rid of, but he was absolutely mailing it in his last few years.  

He made no recruiting effort, he was just a wandering figurehead, and he did not contribute to game plans.  In the meantime, he still had to look in charge, so all those tasks were piece-meal ad-hoc picked up by various staff members of different levels of expertise.  It was never clear who was in charge.

It was chaos.

Penn State people all rallied around Paterno when he was under fire for Sandusky, irrationally so, but many of them wanted him gone well before that.

I'm not sure you want to give a guy a 5 year extension after half a very good season. 

Charlie Weis says "Hi!"

Nice.

They'll just yell at your corpse to quit moving so slow and get back to work.

Hey, you got back up to 10000 points!  

I thought they were going to keep you pinned down until next year.

"Rarely" might be overstating it, but the notion that Brady is an under-center drop back guy because he is in a "Pro" system is not true.  

The original point was that a "Pro" system is not defined as an under center drop back system.  It has a different distinction these days as pointed out by the article. 

Better computer.

Worse hair.

Time marches on . . .

This cries out for a "You Are Here" arrow.

I read this as "Heading out to the local bar with my daughter shortly."

NTTAWWT.

Not if you do it right.

The article makes the point that the difference is not shotgun vs. under center, but rather the alignment of the TE or HB, and the propensity to pass vs. run out of the formation.

Tom Brady, the most "Pro-iest" of Pro-style QB's rarely lines up under center. 

Read the article, it's a pretty good read.

More than at least the 2 years Harbaugh has been here with a depleted OL

Saban's Alabama wasn't "Alabama" right away either.

We'll get there.  The trajectory so far shows we will.

Happy (Long) Fourth of July Weekend!

"He (Harbaugh) wants to bring Michigan a national championship"

I love how Jim Harbaugh does not shy away from declaring that Michigan's goal is to win the National Championship.  Plain and simple.

None of this tap dancing around "if we win the Big Ten, then the rest will take care of itself".

Harbaugh wants to take matters into his own hands, and he ain't afraid to let everybody know about it.

Especially after we tear it up on the field in 2018.

We just have to hold serve in 2017 and keep the momentum going while our young-but-talented players gain experience.

If we do, we'll become a monster.

Jinx.

It's missing something about Walmart though.

The game lasted 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Wow, ESPN must have really showed some restraint on the number of commercials they aired back then.

And succeeding . . . 

And there it is.

MGoChallenge:  Keep uncle leo at exactly 10000 points for the rest of the month.

Brandon Johns + Camp Sanderson = DAYUM.

I pos'd the OP.

I should be above all this immaturity.

But I'm not.

And wolves. Something about wolves.

Back in my parents' day when teens went to go make out on the beach, they called it "going to the submarine races."

I can't hear that term without that making that association.

I would have liked to see Denard run some of those plays.

WD has only been back a couple of days and they are back to the gratuitous negs already.

This is going to be a short make up.

C'mon guys, if he posts something neg-worthy then fine, neg it.  Neg'ing something like this just to bully him should get you banned.

Because it's already ruined.

It's just a farcical mix of "pro" college teams perfectly OK with that (SEC says Hi!), and a handful of college teams swimming against the stream trying to keep the idea of amateurism somewhat intact. 

It's not working.  And nobody in charge really cares anyway.  

So end the charade.

It's like when I see videos of the actual General Patton.

"Who's the old guy?"

Lesson learned from the Fab Five:  Keep arms fucking length from this guy.

Ed Martin was not a Michigan booster.  Ed Martin was an Ed Martin booster.  But Michigan let him get too close to the program and paid the price.

This guy sounds like he's cut from the same cloth.

We can't stop him from doing what he does, but we can stop him from doing it around us.

But with no mo Mo.

There are plenty of niche opportunities available that focus on substance over style.

MGoBlog says Hi.

But you do have to understand the scope of your opportunity.  You are not going to be a mass market player.

The mass market folks have gone strictly drive-by.

If you wonder how it has survived - and thrived - over the years despite the pathetic platform it resides on, there is your answer.

FoxSports.com would not survive even a full week on Drupal.  The content is not woth putting up with it.

To this day I am convinced that if he would not have been injured in the Ohio State game, we would have won it.  They had no answer for him.

I hope he gets to play if that is what he wants.  He deserves it.

Indeed.  Struggled to beat Bo's worst team ever . . . barely.

The less a champion is decided by voting, the better.

Is it just me, or does this happen to everyone . . . you are clicking on one of those lists of top beaches / sports plays / supermodels / whatever, and the screen jerks in between clicks, forcing you to accidently click on an ad or another topic as you try to go to the next slide?

What a scam.  You know they are counting these as legitimate clicks, but they are just junk clicks that are immediately backed out of.

Exactly.

There is so much shenanigans that goes on in trying to generate false clicks.

If I'm an advertiser, I would not trust any of those numbers.

The number of people that click on an ad, on purpose or by accident, versus the number of people who actually watch and pay attention to the ad has to be like 100:1.

I'm suspicious that their magic season was possibly a Michigan 2011, Notre Dame 2012 type of season.

A lot of things went right that you can't count on repeating.