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Still very early.  With the…

Still very early.  With the transfer portal and the COVID year it's going to be that much harder to predict anything. 

I am also interested if we'll have some stability on the coaching staff or if there will be any turnover there.

I disagree.  I watched the …

I disagree.  I watched the (2nd half) of the Big Ten title game.  I saw heavy use of the wham block, the same type of block we have seen deployed with Ben Mason.  And of course Trey Sermon set an all-time single game school rushing yards record.

9 of 15, but still still…

9 of 15, but still still very good nonetheless.  

https://www.espn.com/nba/player/gamelog/_/id/3157465/duncan-robinson

I was watching a show last…

I was watching a show last night about Duke and Coach K's first big recruiting class (Jay Bilas, Johnny Dawkins, among others).  They were 11-17 their first year and then they all made a big leap into their sophomore years.  Nice to see DeJulius perhaps following a similar trajectory. 

Was it a great 2nd half?  

Was it a great 2nd half?  

Our offense had 7 points.  We were a bit fortunate that ND's touchdown was taken off the board for a procedural penalty.  The scoreboard is still the only thing that matters at the end of the day; I'm not excited about outscoring them 7-3 for the half.

I can't help but think to at least some extent the Irish were content knowing that it was unlikely our offense was going to be able to put up multiple touchdowns.

 

Logged in to upvote

Excellent work.  That was a fun read.

Reminds me

Reminds me of the comically large muscles on those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures I had as a kid.  

Record Keeping

Curious how this might impact record keeping.

As I understand it today, the medical redshirt is more exception basis.  If the guy played, you have to file for the medical redshirt.

Under this proposal, you would probably have to submit fairly detailed game logs to substantiate who played each game.  Maybe I am overthinking it and this data is already being collected and reported on to the NCAA.

Potential suggestion for improvement

Personally I would like to see last year's standings near the top of the post.  Maybe even a projection of how the teams might fare this year (yours, another source, or a "consensus" of experts). 

Thanks for bringing some entertainment into our day. 

Choose who takes the free throws

If the foul is intentional (other than end of game situations), then the team that is fouled can pick anyone on the floor to take the free throws.  They already do this for technical fouls.  Soccer does it for penalty kicks.

That way, there is no advantage to hacking Andre or Deandre Jordan.

Geography

I agree - geography has to be a consideration.  Not desirable for Rutgers to end up in a conference with all West Coast teams or San Jose to end up in a conference with all East Coast teams.

As a memo, we would have been relegated based on our 2008 performance (tied for 2nd to last in conf with Purdue, and we lost to them head-to-head for the tiebreaker).

 

Smile

That big spike right near the end of Timmy's career made me smile.  Then sigh, then smile again.

HARBAUGH

How do you win a game in which you lose the turnover battle, get outgained by 160 yards, and lose your starting quarterback?

A little luck, and a lot of HARBAUGH.

1990 - 5th Down Game

1990 Colorado - Missouri.  Google it - ESPN had something about the 25th anniversary earlier this year.  Colorado would go on to win the National Championship that year.

The refs were brutal on that final drive:

- They stopped the clock with seven seconds left to clear the pile when they had no business doing that

- Colorado got 5 downs (essentially did 2nd down twice - the down marker and scoreboard never moved; a fan in the stands had a heart attack and that confused everyone)

- It wasn't clear on the replay that Colorado even crossed the plane of the goal line on the winning score

Guessing here, but wet = can make it rain

Not to be confused with Shawn Kemp, who was the "Reign Man".

Text messages

Wish they would have talked more about the text messages in the article.  When the equipment guys are texting each other and saying that Tom has directed them to deflate balls that is much more persuasive evidence for me than any of the stats I have seen so far.

What does the 20% mean?

When you (and Brian) say 20%, is it people or subscribers?  That's a huge difference.  I'm the only one in my family that watches ESPN (1 out of 5 people or 20%) - because I want it, the family as a subscriber is buying it and will continue to do so (1 out of 1 - 100% in this very narrow example).

Yes and no

Informative.  The theme is correct as well as the general conclusion - it's very unlikely our next coach is going to have a Bo or even Carr length career at Michigan.

However, there is a logic gap in your extrapolation.  A current coach who has been at a program for less than 10 years could still possibly remain at the school past the 10 year mark.

If I had to guess, I would say out of the current NCAA football coaches about a third of them will stay at their resepective program past that 10 year mark.

Great write-up

Love the comment about the need for medical staff to have override power.

For that matter, teammates should have override power.  As part of their onboarding and at least annual team meetings, as a major college football player you should explicitly be given the charge to have the courage to intervene.  If you are an OL, and you see your quarterback a few yards away stumbling around you with symptoms - man up, tell him to sit down and let the medical staff take a look at him.

Don't forget Mike Hart as a cornerback

Tom Lemming rated Mike Hart the Number 6 cornerback nationally that particular recruiting year.  

 

Pete Carroll

I understand your point.

However, last I checked, Pete Carroll was doing pretty well for himself without Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian, or Norm Chow.

Semi circular argument

Offense can also help defense.  It works both ways - if the offense stays on the field, the defense stays off the field.  

Clock Management

The clock management at the end of the game didn't bother me.  They were putting all of their eggs into one basket and they were in FG range before the fumble.  A few more plays and a tying or go-ahead score and there wouldn't be enough time for Iowa to retake the lead.

The running plays of course did bother me just as much as they did you.  

 

Yes but also

They may have given up a lot of yards, but they also forced 4 turnovers and scored 7 themselves.  The defense is far from perfect, but they are not the issue here.

My take

1. Rule changes - why shoot for 100 yards rushing when it's just as easy to get 300 passing (or 400)

2. Partially related, running backs have become more of a commodity.  I can't be for sure as to why, but there doesn't seem to be much separating a first rounder from a mid-round back these days.  For every Adrian Peterson, there's a Trent Richardson.

Good stuff as always

Always enjoy your posts.

Interesting that the Lions had a decently similar situation that ended up not working out for them.  Of course a 9-6 game is usually a lot different than a 27-23 game, NFL vs college differences, etc.  

Would be interested in seeing the analysis for the Lions if you have an opportunity - Mike and Mike were critical of the decision this morning but of course when talking about the Michigan game only talked about the FG to end regulation and how Northwestern keeps finding ways to lose - I didn't hear mention of M's 4th down situation.

Drive starting at NW 11

He must not be giving the offense credit for the FG on the drive that started at the NW 11 yard line.  I can't blame him - the offense didn't exactly earn that field position.

Informative

Really liked the first down stats.  Out of those 26 first downs to only see 1 incompletion (and 3 total bad results from the passing game) - that's rather telling.

Would prefer more short passing on 1st down - tell Gardner if the first read or two isn't open to throw it away.  Heck - I would rather see the chuck it deep every play offense; I can live with the occaisonal arm punt .

Is Speilman available?

Can we get Speilman to run our offense?  

I guess that would make him the anti-Boren.

No more excuses

3 drives starting at the opponent's 40 yard line or better . . . 3 points to show for it (from a long field goal that had a fortuitous bounce off the upright).  

You can make up all the excuses you want, but this offense still has Gallon, Funchess, Gardner, Lewan, and Schofield and yet it seems completely incompetent.  That incompetence is one thing against the #1 defense in the country, but against this Nebraska squad at home - there can be no excuses.

Bball and football differences

The Novak and Douglass contributions were undeniable.  However in basketball, it is a lot more common than football to get big contributions from underclassmen.  In 2010-11, a sophomore Darius Morris was a huge part of that tournament run.  And last year of course, a sophomore Trey Burke (along with several freshmen) were instrumental to the team's success.

In basketball, the top prospects are often ready to go right to the NBA after a year or two of college.  Football is of course very different in that respect - so although Hoke has been recruiting well, that is not going to immediately translate to on-field success.

 

You are correct - about 42-43%

http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/football_records/2013/fbs.pdf

Page 123.  It varies from year to year.  For 2012, there were 108 makes on 261 attempts - 41.4%.  

Interestingly on page 122 - statistically speaking you are more likely to make a 50 yard FG in college than a 2 point conversion attempt (though the FG number has a larger problem with selection bias). 

 

Agree

Whether you are an old school coach that has been through hundreds of games or just a coach potato like me who likes to look at some stats, we all implicitly or explicitly subscribe to some type of situational football strategy.  Because these strategies are all based on prior experiences, by default they average everything - they work best if your team is average in every facet of the game and so is your opponent.  

To make these strategies truly effective, you need to be able to make some tweaks.  A 6-3 game is very different from a 50-47 game, and playing a cupcake is a little different than playing Alabama or your biggest rival (to use a few extremes).

When you have essentially zero production from your running backs, it is appropriate to tweak your game theory strategy.  We can certainly argue about what exactly that might be, but presumably it would be anything other than I-form HB run between the tackles.

Perspective

I know the fan base is feeling down after the loss and some lingering effects of Akron and UConn.  

Let's remember that our team is 5-1.  That one loss was on the road in 4OT against a 4-2 team - although we had plenty of chances to win that game, it was a small miracle to be in the game at all after committing 3 1st half turnovers and falling down 11 points.

While no one is going to confuse this Michigan squad for a BCS bowl contender, we still control our own destiny in the Big Ten.  No game is guaranteed, but there's really only one game that I would have difficulty imagining Michigan winning.  Everyone else in the division has serious flaws that could be exposed on the right night.

 

Whatever man

Let's just say the Michigan receivers impressed me a little more than our quarterback did - though Gardner deserves credit as well.  

You can quote a quarterback's stats, but it still takes somebody on the other end catching it.  This isn't every throw in either case mind you but there were a few Gardner incompletions vs Akron and Connecticut that weren't any less accurate than some of the throws that were completions against Minnesota.  

I did watch some NFL today, and I saw some balls touch receivers fingers and go to the turf.  That is not something I recall seeing much of from Funchess and company yesterday - maybe the throw that was a bit high for Dileo.

Gardner inaccuracy

To be fair, I thought that Gardner was fairly inaccurate against Minnesota.  However, unlike the last couple of games, our receivers actually managed to catch some of the difficult ones.

Take a look back at the game tape and you'll see more often than not that our receivers were catching balls thrown well behind them.  The Funchess snag at the goal line to me typified the sort of throws Gardner had - I'm very glad those balls were thrown in spots such that the defense wasn't going to pick it off but as a fan I have to give a lot of credit to the young men catching the ball.

All is right with the world

This game was eerily similar to the earlier Georgia - SC game.  Both games featured 2 Top 25 teams.  In both cases, the lower ranked team, playing at home, got up multiple scores early and despite the opponent closing to within 34-30 was able to hold on for a 41-30 win.  

Doubt he comes back

Good for Juwan - always a very likeable athlete.  Something tells me he's not coming back - only 51 regular season minutes and 0 in the playoffs - I don't think he even dresses most nights unless there's injury/suspension.

He's known for motivational speeches - hope he has a career as a coach.

Very good stuff

I forgot how terribly calculated our out of conference strength of schedule was.

Gonzaga - they have one team on their schedule that is currently ranked in the AP Top 25 (Oklahoma State).

Michigan - has 9: Pitt, K State, Ohio (x2), Indiana (x2), Wisconsin, Mich St (x2)

Goes to show that some of those SOS calculations used are absolute bogus.

Who cares about coaches? QB is where it's at

The Manning family is pissed that they haven't been mentioned in this thread yet.

DB has opposite reaction

I think Dave Brandon's reaction to the story would be the opposite: hmm, I wonder how I can charge students more?

Boise State?

You say there are no mid-majors left that the big conferences would want, but I would not rule out Boise State so quickly.  They are not quite as strong this year, but I think they will still be in the national conversation for the forseeable future.

On another note, I still don't fully understand why Notre Dame doesn't want to be in the Big Ten - it just seems to make way too much sense logically.  But that could be it's own diary in and of itself.

 

Still need a receiver to avoid intentional grounding

To avoid intentional grounding, there still needs to be a receiver plausibly in the vacinity of the pass - Brady's safety in the most recent Super Bowl is a great example of this.  

On two of Bama's passes, there were clearly no receivers anywhere near the pass - simply trying to avoid a sack.  It was without a doubt intentional grounding in the literal sense of the phrase.

As with several other items, it by itself did not matter in the outcome of the game, but it was annoying to me as a fan.

 

Follow-up on Youth comment

The Lakers are an old team, and with trading four draft picks to Phoenix for a (relative, in basketball terms) old guy, they are not getting any younger anytime soon.  The last few months, all of the pundits have been talking about how the Lakers need to get younger.

The Lakers will look for some young guy like Sessions or a bench guy like Morris to develop in lieu of those draft picks (or maybe just cross their fingers for more free-agent signings and trades to pick up some youth).

You do know that they won the title, right?

You use the Heat as an example of why it won't work when . . . the Heat reached the Finals in their first season with Lebron and won it all in year two.

Informative

Thanks for the insight - as a whole on a per at-bat basis, I think it's pretty clear that Austin Jackson has had at least as good if not a better season thus far than Curtis Granderson.  Of course home runs are a slightly "sexier" stat, and that didn't hurt Curtis with the voting.

Always interesting how little these hard statistics actually factor into things like rankings and All-Star selections - which I guess is why it is going to be good to de-emphasize polls in college football and go with a selection committee.

 

 

Would like to see median as well

I would like to see the median as well.  It's not exactly time-wasting per se - it's an excel formula that takes maybe two minutes to copy and paste to the 12 teams in the rankings?

Then again, I'm a financial analyst - I live for data. Must . . . . have . . . . .input . . . . input!

My pet peeve:

I hate it when people say "I seen it" - saw is not that hard to say people!

 

Durant

The real reason that people should be down on Lebron's fourth quarter performance is that Kevin Durant scored 17 in that frame.  If you want to be the best of your generation, you have to do more than just your average when the game is on the line.

* on averages

The long snapper addition sure made our averages look funny - almost more meaningful to exclude him from the averages . . .

That would put us at 3.84 for the average of averages.