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Date	Title	Body
11 hours 29 min ago	IM Reffing	I also was an IM ref at Michigan in the '90s.  It was interesting, because I had played two or three years of IM sports and constantly complained about the bad officiating--and then I became an IM ref myself and understood it from the other side.  But I was a pretty damn awful referree.  A couple of my favorite memories: In my very first game, the offensive team threw "the bomb" on the first play from scrimmage.  The receiver went up and made a circus catch.  I got caught up in the excitement of the play and raised my arms to signal "touchdown" as soon as I verified that he had possession of the ball and his feet were in-bounds. Only problem?  He landed at about the 5 yard-line.  The defensive team was pissed, but as the guy working the game with me said, "eh, they would have scored anyway." In the first game I officiated solo, it was a shoot-out, with the offenses marching up and down the field.  Each team had scored several touchdowns, and probably the only thing separating them score-wise were the PAT conversions.  So, at halftime, one of the coaches walks up to me and asks, "hey ref, what's the score?"  It was only then that I realized I was responsible for keeping score of the game.  I had no clue what the score really was, so I just made something up.  In the sorority league games, most teams wouldn't have a girl who could throw the ball more than five or ten yards.  Since they couldn't pass, and since there was really no run-blocking, most of the sororities would run these extremely complicated deception plays--multiple reverses, fakes, handoffs, etc.  Usually I was pretty good about keeping track of where the ball was.  But in the one game, which was ties 0-0 late in the second half, with pretty much the entire game having been played within about the same 15-yard stretch of the field, I blew a play dead after the defense pulled the flag of the girl I thought had the ball--only to see the girl who actually had the ball streaking down the opposite sideline with no defenders anywhere in sight.   You know those Southwest "wanna get away?" commercials...
12 hours 25 min ago	Nebraska	Hey, come on now.  Most first graders know that "knowledge" starts with a K.
1 day 13 hours ago	Shallman	In other words, he's Aaron Shea (and could play defense).
1 day 14 hours ago	Latin American Futbol Stars	Unless you are Cuahtemoc Blanco.  Then the Maradona way is an improvement.
1 day 20 hours ago	ND schedule	Yeah, I guess when you look more closely, it isn't as hard as I first thought.  There are a lot of big names but some of those teams are not going to be up to their usual quality.--Arizona St., BYU, Purdue, probably Staee and Pitt--and then, as you said, all their really difficult opponents are in South Bend.  But hopefully they go 5-7 anyway.
1 day 21 hours ago	Linebackers	Three-star linebackers?  Meh.  Once we get all the 5-star DEs and DBs, we'll just be rollin' with the 5-0-6.
1 day 22 hours ago	Northwestern	Before 1993, Wisconsin was a perennial Big Ten doormat.  But Alvarez came in and turned things around, and they were able to sustain success under Bielema.  Now, most people view Wisconsin as a legitimate contender most every season. Northwestern has been reasonably good for a number of years now.  They were very good under Gary Barnett, they were pretty good under Randy Walker, and now they are having success under Fitzgerald.  Now they are pulling in higher quality recruits, and they will be in the eminently winnable B1G West.  Northwestern probably hasn't reached Wisconsin's level of establishment yet, but it's worth noticing and discussing how close they are getting and what more they need to do.
2 days 1 hour ago	Notre Dame Schedule	Wow, I just looked at ND's 2013 schedule, and it's about as difficult a schedule as I've ever seen:   Aug. 31 Temple Sep. 07 @ Michigan Sep. 14 @ Purdue  Sep. 21 Michigan State Sep. 28 Oklahoma Oct. 09 Arizona State - Cowboys Stadium, Arlington, TX Oct. 19 Southern Cal Oct. 26 @ Air Force Nov. 02 Navy Nov. 09 @ Pittsburgh Nov. 23 Brigham Young Nov. 30 @ Stanford
2 days 1 hour ago	Last-minute deal	Most programs lose money on bowl trips.  I wouldn't be surprised if you had some 6-6 team someplace whose athletic department was really struggling financially, and they decide to let ND take their spot in the Summer's Eve Bowl for a big payoff.  It would be sad to see something like that happen, as it wouldn't be fair to the players or fans of the displaced team, but big programs usually get their way in these sorts of matters.
2 days 2 hours ago	Bowls	Well, according to the article, all of the bowls do have tie-ins.  Are you aware of any specific bowls that don't have tie-ins?   It still seems unlikely that a bowl-eligible ND team would be left out, because it's pretty unlikely that every single conference would fill every single one of its tie-ins.  But as the article explains, it is at least possible that could happen.
2 days 10 hours ago	Nice.	Cannn youuuu dig it???
2 days 14 hours ago	Warriors	Warriors, come out and play-ay...
3 days 1 hour ago	247 Composite Ranking	It's like the FICO score of football recruiting; from the 247 website: "247Composite Rating The 247Composite Rating is a proprietary algorithm that compiles prospect "rankings" and "ratings" listed in the public domain by the major media recruiting services. It converts average industry ranks and ratings into a linear composite index capping at 1.0000, which indicates a consensus No. 1 prospect across all services. The 247Composite Rating is the industry's most comprehensive and unbiased prospect ranking and is also used to generate 247Sports Team Recruiting Rankings.   More Details   All major media services share an equal percentage in the 247Composite Rating. The composite index equally weights this percentage among the services that participate in a ranking for that specific prospect.   A composite strength meter, indicated by red bars, illustrates the total number of industry services that have ranked the prospect. A full strength meter indicates the prospect has been ranked by all industry services participating in the composite.   All industry services have a different philosophy on number of "stars" distributed with each class. The 247Composite Rating assigns stars based on an approximate average distribution of stars from the industry."
3 days 10 hours ago	Arkansas	Oh, I forgot about Arkansas.  I was just using the "future schedules" page under the "Useful Stuff" tab.  That probably hasn't been updated in a while.  I'll have to add Arkansas' info; thanks for the reminder. Edit: evidently we play Arkansas in 2018 and 2019.  A 2014 recruit who redshirts would play in the 2018 game as a senior.
3 days 12 hours ago	VT	I thought about that, but we don't play VT until 2020.  Even if they redshirt, 2014 players will be long gone by then.
3 days 16 hours ago	New Jersey	I don't agree with this.  While other Big Ten schools may not have deep roots in New Jersey or historical success recruiting NJ kids, the same cannot be said of Rutgers itself.  Penn State has also traditionally drawn from New Jersey.  I realize this is an adjustment, but starting in 2014 we are going to have Rutgers and Penn State on the schedule every year for the foreseeable future.  That means from now on, there is a good chance that Michigan will wind up playing against most of the good New Jersey prospects who don't sign with Michigan.  Same goes for Maryland--though maybe not to the same extent, due to the presence of other major non-B1G powers in the area.
3 days 22 hours ago	Woodson	In fact, the main reason Woodson played CB at Michigan is because he saw that as his best chance of getting on the field early.  If we hadn't already had established stars at RB (Biakabatuka) and WR (Toomer, Hayes) when Woodson showed up, he might have been an offensive player after all.
3 days 23 hours ago	Peppers	I think it comes down to Michigan vs. rap.
3 days 23 hours ago	Mr. Rager	I guess he was living up to his name.
4 days 49 min ago	Ferns	I don't disagree with you.  It's just that a few days ago, when it still looked like the staff was after Kyron Watson, the consensus seemed to be that if Winovich didn't go Blue, then we would take Watson as an MLB and Ferns would come in as a SAM.  Though, it could be that was never the case, or if it was, the coaches may have reconsidered.
4 days 1 hour ago	SLBs	We do have McCray coming in 2013, plus evidently Ferns can play SAM.  So it seems unlikely that would take two SLBs in 2014 plus Ferns. Maybe one SLB (Winovich or Swain), plus another MLB/WLB prospect?
4 days 13 hours ago	Caps Lock	Did Nix forget to turn off CAPS LOCK before he created his Twitter account?
4 days 18 hours ago	Height	The most likely reason appears to be that Watson doesn't project to SAM. The reason he doesn't project to SAM seems largely to be his lack of the requisite length. So it may not have been Watson's height per se that led the staff to stop recruiting him, but it nonetheless appears to have been a precipitating factor.
5 days 1 hour ago	Linebackers	According to a new post on The M Block, the coaches basically told Winovich they will still have a spot for him even if Watson commits: "This was a little bit ago but they told me that they would probably only take one more...but then said, 'Dang, we should take two.'"  You know, because of how the linebacker situation is, so take two more, as in three total.  But they never said one word to me like, 'If you don't come here now that spot's not going to be open.' So I assume that I'd still have that spot whether he (Kyron Watson) commits or not.  You know, if I'm not important enough to them where they're willing to wait for me, then I don't want to go there.  I can't control what other people do.  I can only control what I can control.  From what I understand they want him more as an inside guy so that wouldn't really make a difference." Link to full article
5 days 14 hours ago	Offense	Speaking of moving to offense, that seems like an idea worth considering for Peppers if (a) none of our other WR prospects turn out to be spectacular and (b) Peppers actually, you know, signs with M.
5 days 18 hours ago	Special Teams Demon	Legit 4.4 speed and a great tackler?  If nothing else he should contend for the Steve Tasker award.
5 days 21 hours ago	Snaps	"Honestly, it's a good thing because he will no longer be taking up valuable practice snaps, as he has since arriving." Harsh.
6 days 23 hours ago	Recruits	They do come in pairs. Cool .gif BTW
1 week 18 hours ago	Michigan offers	In recent years, if a player has an Alabama offer, that to me signals he's a legitimate big-timer.  Before that, a USC offer meant the same.   When Hoke first came in, the staff was putting out a lot of offers early in the recruiting cycle--presumably because we didn't have much depth and a lot of the players we did have didn't fit with their approach.  Now, with much depth restored and major prospects showing serious interest or signing with UM, the staff has become much more selective.  I still don't see a a M offer as being quite to the level of an Alabama of USC-heyday offer, but it's got to be getting close.
1 week 19 hours ago	Peppers	I don't know; have you seen his highlight reel? I'm not so sure he can't play all four secondary positions at once.

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