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I mean this home schedule sucks but it's not really that much worse than this year, we had michigan state at home, which yeah rivalry game and then what? Iowa? yeah there is more history but in my honest opinion maryland will be a better team than Iowa at that point.  Utah is better than air force.  I honestly don't think that 2014 is that much worse than this years was and at least there are 7 games.  The fact of the matter is that about 3/4's of the big ten provide no excitement so any year without osu is going to have to bring in an out of conference game to spice it up which is what will be happening starting with arkansas and va tech.

The idea that you as a customer would be saving money in a pay per channel market is a fallacy.  If, for example you wanted ESPN as one of your channels, well without having every cable subscriber automatically paying in, in order to cover the contracts they have been handing out and to maintain programming, ESPN would most likely charge you like $50 just for that single channel.  Smaller side chanels like fx and tbs would either cease to exist, or would probably be bundled up with their parent chanels, like they are now, so you can either pay $20 for just CBS or $30 for a bundle.  At the end of the day, a pay per channel model isn't as appealing as everyone here makes it out to be and chances are anyone who wanted to watch sports would be paying at least as much as they are now for only half the channels.

Want to follow through and throw this about to be alumni a job? (does this count as networking?)

I like where a lot of recruiting battles are going but I am confused about people can continually read quotes from Hand about how VT feels like home and bud foster is his favorite coach and think michigan is the leader.  Am I missing something?  Liking  a professor is not better than saying a place feels like home to me.

Wait people were upset with maryland and rutgers but would be cool with syracuse? I don't get it.

Look to the story of the hiker who was taken in Iran and accused of being a spy.  He was only in solitary for a few months and he wrote about how he welcomed seeing the people who tortured him and missed it when it stopped. Humans are not meant to be alone, there is almost no fate that has a worse impact on a person

Do any of you know if students can get hard tickets? Not having one of those tickets was my only regret from the weekend.

If a booster thinks you are a really intelligent engineering student and would do great things as a u of m alum and says I will give you money to attend the university of michigan is that a violation of moral integrity? There is nothing technically wrong about it but it is the exact same situation and I would never call a kid who took that money someone who lacked moral integrity.  Who excused Webber? He broke a rule and as a result has been denied contact to the school that according to the rest of the fab five he actually really does care about.  But to vilify, refuse to ever forgive and say he has no moral integrity is such an over the top response I have to believe you don't actually believe it because who can have that much hate in them over a person they have never met nor truly understand what he went through.  Furthermore, I believe that responses such as yours are the reason he has never apologized, because you attack him as a person he is defensive and does not want to make you happy, it may be petty, but news flash so are you.

I mean if you really want to get into the "rules are rules no matter how much you dislike them" argument it was mlk that said an unjust law is no law at all.  I mean rosa parks never apologized for sitting on the front of the bus (not trying to equate rosa parks with webber, just talking about the rules are rules argument).  I never said what webber did was smart or right, I just said trying to vilify him and make him out to be some secretly bad person (which is more or less what the poster I replied to originally was doing) as a result of this is an over the top reaction, thats it.  

webber isn't special, it is just in these situations with 17 or 18 year old kids getting paid by boosters I never blame the players.  I don't think what the ohio guys did makes them bad people, I don't reggie bush is a bad person either.  

And lets be honest, the santions hurt the school for about 5 years, the 15 years after that were just bad hires.  Maryland was hurt with worse sanctions after the len bias tragedy but hired gary williams and won a national title 10 years after.

Webber didn't cheat, he was a high school kid who was offered things he could never have purchased on his own and took it to make his life better.  You've done the same thing your entire life most likely, you just weren't an athlete so when your dad's friend gives you a job its not a violation of some inane rule.  The system is broken hating Weber is asinine.

Has anybody gotten an email from the ncaa yet? I can't actually remember if I made it to 11 games because I forget how many I missed due to winter break and it messing up my count so I'm not sure whether to expect an email or not today.

For people saying not to use the tournament I get what you are saying but at the end of the day when you look at the fnal four in most years it is made up of teams who were there all year.  Just look at this years elite 8, duke, l'ville, syracuse, michigan, florida, osu, marquette, wichita state.  Of those teams only two spent most of the year not ranked in the top 10 and I think that is true most years.  I honestly believe that the style of play that is predominant in the big ten is not good for top teams.  If you have a better team it behooves you to get more possesions.  The big ten was certainly the deepest league in the country this year, but that doesn't mean the top 2 or 3 teams in the country played in it so it depends which measure you care about more.

Pitt is my only loss so far, but i never put them past the round of 62 because they are terrible in the tourny.

The refs played a factor in my double post

It isn't high road bullshit, the refs weren't good but we gave up 82 points to the worst team in the big ten, thats embarrasing and I don't give a fuck what the refs did.  This loss is embarassing and is highlighting the fact that this team just doesn't have what it tkaes for whaterver reason to play the defense necessary to really win anything of note this year.

God there is nothing that pisses me off then when the other team clearly is playing harder, that sequence was terrible, lazy pass and then lazy getting back and lazy boxing out, just bad.

In 1997 mlb weren't asked to cover TE that could run 4.4's.  It was a different game and Lewis was a liability in the passing game for the last couple years but made up for it with his ability to align himself and the rest of the defense based off diagnosing the offense.  Unless you think te'o is as good at diagnosing an offense as ray lewis then that 40 time is a huge red flag.

If you want to watch a great matchup #1 loyola is hosting #2 maryland today at 1:30 and i'm pretty sure its on nbc sports or something like that.  And yes the state of Maryland does have 3 of the top 5 in the country right now, lacrosse is kind of a big deal there.

Have played a tough schedule but no real marquee wins.  pitt and k-state are solid, minnesota on the road is good but looks less impressive now than it did.  I'd probably have indiana, duke (better wins), miami, gonzaga, syracuse, florida, msu, and possibly arizona though they have no real great wins either.  That puts us at 7th or 8th and you could still make an argument for kansas though their schedule is easier.  I'm not saying we are worse than all those teams, just that our resume matches up with those and how you choose to shuffle them around is mostly bias.

probably somewhere between 6-8 and that honestly might be a little high.

So frustrating that both msu and indiana are the two weekends of spring break.  Also the msu game wasn't even part of the student season ticket package, you had to purchase it seperately which just seems like a terrible idea and a kinda douche move by the athletic department.

I'm trying to play devils advocate in this, my post says I don't know what happened, I just think its absurd that people have so little doubt in their mind despite knowing a tiny percentage of the facts.  That is all.  Have any of the people in this thread seen Lewis's deposition? Read over the police report? Done any legitimate research on the issue? Because if they haven't I think its absurd they are trying to degrade this man with so few facts.

And Peyton Manning should have been playing for the baltimore colts.

Why? Because I pointed out that nobody cracking jokes in this thread has any idea what happened that night and based off a few news reports has decided a man is guilty of murder.  Or the fact that they refuse to acknoledge that despite never being even charged with murder he has never had anything off the field that suggests poor behavior since that night and has had a huge impact on the Baltimore charity scene and has made a positive difference in a lot of people's lives.  You guys like talking about what is right about sports?  How about listening to Lewis's speach after the loss to the patriots last year where he talks about how there are bigger things than sports in reference to a local high school student he had befriended who had passed away a week before the game.  

I don't have a problem with people not liking him for his antics, or his constant screaming about religion, that all makes sense.  Saying possibly the greatest linebacker of all time shouldn't have a statue because you decided he is guilty of a crime he was never even charged with is just bitter.

Just throwing this out there but Maryland would be ranked fourth in the big ten team recruit rankings, not really going to be a drag of quality people make it out to be

Welp you can't go 4 minutes without scoring twice and expect to win against good teams, especially on the road.

Dang nothing is dropping, even if we hit half the wide open 3's this is a close game.

considering some of them would be making upwards of millions of dollars if they could market themselves and take advantage of sponsorships I think they would take that trade.  Just think how much denard could have made on sponsorships based off his popularity.  

Lol you can play slow and not suck at basketball, wisconsin plays straight up ugly basketball and osu has an offense that is deshaun thomas or bricks, which is also ugly.  And for the record, zero national championships since 2000 would suggest strongly that the slow down basketball employed by many in the big ten is not in fact all that effective.

Play rugby?

i didn't say you weren't entitled to opinion, I said it doesn't matter and shouldn't impact whether he makes the nfl, and the comment was more directed to the op, hit reply to the wrong post but it's whatever.

and not convicted on either? I mean its great that you, who was not in any way involved with the case and most likely never read the police reports or examined the crime scene or talked to witnesses has decided he is guilty but it means absolutely nothing.

And yet this still wore it before we did.  We may have made it iconic by being successful, but we did not come up with anything, princeton wore it first and its better to just accept that and that is associated with us because we win a lot more.

I was saying they are way above purdue and such as a program, not in the last decade per se but based off of michigan football's last decade I think we can all understand not judging a teams historical importance based off one decade.  And yeah I said an argument could be made, not a slam dunk, uconn has only been good under calhoun, no real history, ohio is not as good (see gary williams leaving ohio st to rebuild a maryland team still under probation) and maryland has more acc wins than nc state and is the reason the postseason is not limited to just conference champs anymore.  But yeah the last decade hasn't been great mainly because gary refused to deal with the aau scene and thus missed on a lot of local talent.

Wanted the wind at the back of their kicker rather than into it

I didn't see it as saving poor people from themselves and I am sorry if it read that way, it was more a commentary that those who are born with less are going to be willing to take risks that mortgage their future more.  I just think its easy for advantaged and people with knowledge about the issues to sit there and say "they" (being footbal players) know exactly what they are getting into and have tons of other good options moving forward when I don't think either of those statements are true.

Wait, I got downvoted for calling out a guy for using vaginas as an insult, implying that men are better than women? Ok

I'm glad that rather than attempting to have a discussion you chose to misrepresent what my post says that you could come across ignorant and bitter, solid debating skills you got there, I bet you win a lot of arguments.

The point of this debate isn't the health of nfl players, its the thousands of other people who play football too without getting paid millions. And its not about banning football, its about having a discussion to see if we can reduce risk.

And people need to stop bringing up other jobs like policemen.  Those jobs are a necessary part of a functioning society, football is not.  Furthermore I'm sure if you could change rules around how fires and firemen interact that made being a fireman safer most people would support that, we can do that with football and its a discussion I think is worth having, you clearly don't.

Sexist argument, nicely done bro

sorry?

Not high school football players. The point I was trying to make with my first argument is that thousands of people take this risk without being payed for it and very few of those people really understand the risk football can pose to longterm mental health because these findings are relatively new.

In terms of the physical dangers I think that is true but most of the information about long term brain damage is more recent and I think its a mistake to think that a lot of 10 year old kids are aware of what long term brain damage really means and a lot of parents who still aren't educated on the subject.

They also have scored under 50 4 times this year and won a game 37-35 in the ugliest game you will ever see.  They are not really all that good.

IU is like 8th in the country in terms of defensive eficiency according to kenpom, so they are pretty good this year

Our defense is eh, that indiana game scares me.

To be fair its over break and that is the student section, but yeah Rutgers is a kind of pathetic school.  At least MD has 17k at their game, so there is that.

Wikipedia is slightly wrong on this one, a 1 pt safety has occured before in college 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KKLKbpWLHJ8

I stayed with a friend that lives in Tampa but she is from a small town and was saying there are still some places around where she lives that have 'white only' signs, racism is still alive and well and pretending it isn't is half the problem.

Is anybody else bothered that a situation which involves thousands of workers being screwed by a company turned into a discussion about uniform quality and choice?  These are people who are possibly having their lives destroyed and we are talking about how we can avoid wearing two different kinds of uniforms, sometimes sports discussions should take a back seat.

There is going to be at least as many marylands fans who will do that if just to see maryland basketball/lacrosse/soccer than will sign up for purdue or northwestern anything. Rutgers on the other hand probably won't add much.

les miz is in no way a chick flick.  Yeah sure its a musical so there is singing but the in the play version at least has some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard.  Also if you ever read the novel by victor hugo you would understand this is nowhere near a chick flick, it touches on the struggle of poverty, what people will sacrifice for their children, the struggle to reform after committing a crime and the obstacles faced by ex-felons, the desire to overthrow oppression and more.  Seriously you may not want to see the movie but don't not see it because it is a chick flick.  Also read the novel by victor hugo, he is a hell of writer and a lot of the things discussed in the novel closely mirror many problems still in society today.

He didn't get there in time to go for the ball.  If he goes for the ball its a touchdown.  How can you tell a defender to not hit a guy and give up a tpuchdown? Thats just not allowing people to play defense, at a certain point you have to let them play with the risk of concussions or stop playing football.  A lot of research is starting to show the small hits that offensive and defensive lineman take on the head while blocking is just as dangerous as the big hits.  Are we going to eliminiate blocking from the sport and go 7 on 7?  I understand wanting to protect players but a certain point you have to realize football is a dangerous sport, if you want to allow defense to exist you have to live with the consequences.  If guys go low you are blowing out knees and ending carreers.  This was a hit from a shoulder to a chest, you can't do it better if you are trying to prevent a completion and stop the touchdown.  If this hit is too dangerous you might as well start playing flag football because you just can't stop a passing attack anymore.

No

I guess its a do you prefer people with previous head coaching experience or not argument, clearly the sec has had it working for them. However Anderson was the dc at utah when they beat bama in the sugar bowl in 08, his team has won 15 of 18 and the 3 losses have come by a combined 6 points, he is only 48, and he just turned down the colorado and cal coaching jobs a few weeks ago.  This counts as a good hire.

I got deferred and then in back in 09, its all going to be all right.

I'm a little surprised that i got downvoted for saying it wasn't 100% clear with no doubt that burke is the best pg.  I think burke is certainly the overall better player and I would probably argue the best pg in the country, I was just pointing out that you could make an argument that carter-williams is having a great season as a pg, he also has two more steals a game then burke and is a better defender.  I understand all the arguments but carter-williams is averaging a double double with points and assists, thats pretty impressive too, especially considering that I think burke has a more talented scoring cast around him.

What makes you think morris would have gotten drafted higher? The year after he left was a deeper draft class and if Morris hasn't improved his outside shot after two years of focusing solely on basketball it wasn't going to improve while in college either.  Morris is limited as a pg, he has relatively slow foot speed that can make him a liability on defense, isn't an explosive athlete or jumper, and has an incosistent at best outside shot which makes getting your own shot pretty difficult.  Morris probably went as high as he was ever going to go in the draft, he made the right call.

Only one was worn at home and every change from traditional came from a special event game other than the inexplicable msu game uniforms.  Its not like its just random lets try a new uniform at home vs iowa or something.

Maybe just maybe Brandon has what is best for Michigan at heart and realizes die hard fans that post on message boards make up like 5% of the fanbase and the money to remain elite comes from the other 95%. Just a thought.

We are just practicing for when rutgers is in the league

Why was this negged? guy had 4 or 5 turnovers and got a technical for taunting the other teams bench. He is a great player, just had made some typical mistakes freshman make which is why you don't generally see freshman based teams win championships. 

Shitting away another lead, this is frustrating.

These refs are starting tp piss me off.

We are settling for a few too many jumpshots right now and look a little sloppy, need to get burke back with the ball and slow the game down a little bit.

what i've heard is that he is waiting for the duke job to open up, everyone thinks he is waiting for indiana or duke and crean isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

What about UNC? 80% of its student population is in-state and it is highly regarded as well.

not trying to be political but the university is currently aiming for a 50-50 split for out of state and in state because of the cuts in funding from the state have led tuition to become over 70% of the schools budget and they want to maintain high teacher salaries and providing the other amenities that makes michigan a top school.  Have a problem with it tell your legislaturs both democrat and republican to stop cutting higher education spending every year.

I got in with a 3.3 gpa and a 33 act but also was in IB, played 3 varsity sports was in multiple student orgs and spent one summer working with habitiat in arkansas for two months and anothers summer working with an organization in honduras for 2 and a half months and a my last summer doing research at hopkins (i'm from baltimore).  Also I was deferred originally, they told me they wanted to see my first semester senior year grades and would revisit my application, apparently it is not uncommon and it is 100% still possible to get in so your daughter should just continue to work hard and not give up if this is where she wants to go.  Also reach out to the admissions office, talk to them about stuff you can do, maybe they want to see her grades or it might be something else but in my experience the admissions office was pretty easy to talk to.

Welp went down 4-0 and down 3 midway through, can't do that against a more talented team, great run for the team though.

Yeah texas is the more talented team and they are playing like it right now.

Yeah there are some not to bright and not hard working guys on the michigan football team too, you get a lot of help as a football player, its pretty tough to fail.

Seeing playing time is good, but in theory the best coaches are in the nba, you practice all day for the entire year.  The danger of stting on the bench is getting cut which is why guys should stay in college.  Its better to be able to improve your game without having to worry about keeping your job but if you have a contract it is better for  development to be in the nba.  The development league does exist, its not like the lakers have to keep him on the bench.

For everyone talking about how college football is pricing out its fans and all that these numbers are very misleading when looking at the totals.

If you subtract new d1 schools from the list the attendance numbers have not really dropped all that much or even at all.  Also consider that average attendance has not really dropped at the big time programs which is where the absurdly high prices are so its not ticket prices impacting attendance on a large scale on my way down texas for the bama game I got a ticket to see vandy vs. south carolina (who was ranked #9 ) for like $30. 

Its a little different in the nfl, ravens are most likely gonna be in the playoffs this year and they gotta do what they can to win right now, not throwing away a year like a transition could be in college ball.  

I mean yes but as a ravens fan I can say that the ravens defense is more a symptom of lewis than a coordinator kind of like manning and the colts offense back in the day.  Like 6 or 7 former coordinators got head coaching jobs after being the ravens defensive coordinator and most of them didn't do well and the defense kept chugging along.  Fans were frustred with his decision to always go prevent at the end of games rather than sticking with what had been succsesful.  He's been different at Michigan but pretty much think about how the defense looked against nd on the last drive of the night game and imagine that happened like 4 or 5 times over the year, it got frustrating.

Yesterday wasn't the game to judge him by, ravens fans have been calling for the guy to get fired for 2 years now, his terrible playcalling has been bailed out by good defense and ray rice being a monster but in the loss last week to pitt rice got 12 carries even though he was averaging like 5 yards per carry.  Cameron was terrible and I'm actually happy we lost to the redskins if it was what caused him getting fired, ravens will probably still make the playoffs and are already out of the running for the #1 seed so i'm glad it happened.

jonathan ogden was #1 overall I think.  Ravens got Ogden and ray lewis in the same draft, that's pretty incredible.

If we are appreciating other fans traditions, utah state has the best college basketball fans I can find, just awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIYaPOjk_Gw

Or it could be that he knows his assistants will get paid better at arkansas and understands that good coordinators are important.  Or it could be that recruiting is easier at arkansas than at wisconsin so he feels the ceiling is higher.  Or maybe he is just tired of the cold.  Who cares? There are any number of reasons this decision got made and the people trying to pit this as an sec vs big ten thing are creating a story that isn't there.  Arkansas is at worst on the same level as wisconsin as a desirable job and with that maybe personal things is what drove him to arkansas, we don't know but it also doesn't really matter.  

Yeah but adding Maryland and Rutgers doesn't hurt that either.  Its not about quality of play in this situation.  Beilima thinks he can accomplish more and get more money at arkansas.  Having lots of money is good for athletic departments, more than just football, just because Wisconsin isn't willing to shell out enough to keep their coach doesn't mean having more money for schools is a bad or unhelpful thing.  Also, arkansas cand and does get better recruits than wisconsin so I don't really disagree with Beilima's decision.

weren't both of those teams you know undefeated? There is something to be said for only being able to beat the teams you play, but when you lose to a bad iowa team that sort of thing changes.  In addition both boise and utah had already had a few years of success at that point, not just a sympton of an easy schedule and a down year when you go undefeated or with 1 loss for a few years in a row.  This NIU team seems more like that Hawai'i team that got stomped by georgia than a boise or a utah, hell even hawai'i had a better history of success to back up their claim to actually being a pretty good team.

I think I read Maryland  would have had like the 4th or 5th best class last year too, marylands problem is randy edsall and the fact that they lost 4 qb's to season ending injury, imagine what michigans season would have looked like if denard got injured before the year started, gardner lasted 4 games, bellomy one and jack kennedy one.  Tough to judge the talent level this year since the defense was playing well early before the offense couldn't do anything.

Ok cool, lets just put Michigan with that schedule and go to the bcs every year, that schedule is a joke, the loss to iowa is a joke, their best win is over a team that lost to a terrible kentucky game.  When deciding who the best teams are in a division with 120 teams you can't look at just record.  Do you think w-l is a good stat for pitchers in baseball too?

In this years bcs there will be the ap #13,16,22 and a NR team.  Hell of a system they got going there, really matches up the best of the best. 

I think it was at burke, not the team in general

We are really sloppy and the defense is probably going to be average at best this year, its almost like we play a lot of freshman.  But seriously we are going to lose at least one game on the road to a team nowhere near us on talent, I predict it will be iowa.

I mean at this point tuition is over 50% of the schools operating budget and is projected to rise.  The school doesn't exist without students and thus neither would the athletic program.  It makes sense to give partial treatment to alums which is why every school does it.  Alums also tend to donate more back to the school itself which is a good thing, sports helps keep alumni connected to the school in more ways than one so it helps to keep them connected.  But i'm also a student now so I might be bias.

Just read the article, Debbie Yow is just about the worst athletic director to exist (sorry dave brandon haters he doesn't come close) and ran the department straight into the ground.  How she still gets jobs is beyond me.  Also every coach at md hated her to the point where gary williams when called and asked about working with yow during nc states baskeball coach search told people to not work for her and a report was written recently that based off her reputation there are high school football coaches who would turn down the nc state football job that just opened up.

I heard the big ten is providing maryland interest free loans to be paid back later but who knows if that is official

Can we count MD as win for the big ten? I feel like the record should be 4-1-1 or something.

Everyone knew this was coming so its not a surprise, if the acc loses this case fsu is most likely gone to the big 12 and the acc falls apart so they have no choice but to sue.  At this point i'm hoping the acc falls apart and duke winds up boned, if somehow unc could go down too that would be ideal the all carolina conference is getting dropped by a bunch of schools that never had an equal say and know it.  Also if l'ville joins there will be more big east teams than original acc teams, the acc is already dead, they just haven't admitted yet.

Maybe it didn't count because while it was at osu it was against michigan so technically he could have been there to see us maybe

Its obviously possible and one of the bigger problems is lumping all the spread attacks into one group, there are tons of different kinds of spreads types predicated on different things.  However I would a) argue that what you describe as a 'short passing attempts and running game' is the exact same definition I see said about the west coast offense which is what Borges wants to run and b) point out that in general traditional spread teams try to score quickly by running the hurry up to keep mismatches and tire defenses out.  That is part of the strategy of the spread and it can result in putting up 50 points but when you try to do that and go 3 and out your drive took all of about a minute total and puts your defense in a tough spot, even if it is a good defense.  

Like I said both strategies can work, the spread is a more risk reward strategy, if its working you put up a ton of points but if you are going 3 and out while running a hurry up you are also putting a ton of pressure on your defense and need an elite defense to even have a chance later in the game.  Look at the Stanford Oregon game, the Stanford defense played incredible and did a good job but the Stanford offense also took a ton of time off the clock and limited the number of posessions, the more posessions in that game the better chance oregon had.  If stanford was also running a spread offense I think they would have lost, thats obviously an assumption but it is much easier to slow a game down than it is to speed it up which is why I think 'manball' allows you to do a better job of controlling the pace of a game.

I mean the guys might not be undersized or weak but that doesn't make them talented.  Lewan had a bad game but I didn't see anyone saying he took a step back before this game and the play calling put the weakness of our o-line up against the strength of the osu defense.  I'm not willing to get worked up about funk until 2 years when the talented linemen have a year of starting.

So I read your things that went wrong not on borges but stopped giving a shit about your analysis after you listed having an ankle tackle happen as anything wrong with Gallon, guy made a diving ankle tackle it happens all the time, there is literally nothing Gallon did wrong.  In regards to the 4th and 3 play I remember a few guys hitting denard but maybe you are right on that one.  Either way Borges is dumb.

This is the first time im happy we are replacing over half the o-line. They o line was beyond terrible and the only thing worse was the playcalling

Wtf burke? No way beilein drew up that shot, also damn horford is in street clothes, that can't be good

God we look bad, turnover and then two guys dont get back on defense