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Thanks for this thread

I feel sick for all the kids who battled all game long against a really good team and handed it away after it had seemingly been won. Feel sick for our punter who had such a great game until the last play. Feel sick that he was subjected to the disgraceful lunacy of a small unhinged minority of our fan base in the aftermath. He tried his best and made a costly mistake. Oh well, get 'em next time. Nobody will feel worse than our players and especially Blake. As fans we owe these kids our support right now. I do have confidence in Harbaugh to bring them together and turn this into a teaching moment they will grow from. Go Blue!

Hope we don't completely abandon maize pants on the road

This uniform looks great! Very traditional and classy. However at the same time it feels like a big departure from Michigan's classic away look for my entire lifetime. Even with the stupid piping and trim cluttering recent away jerseys there was no question that it was Michigan coming out of the tunnel for an away game (excepting that one time we were bumblebees).

My preference would be to try and have it both ways and have Michigan wear these all-whites whenever playing on the road against a team that wears yellow pants at home (Iowa, Minnesota, etc.) and maize whenever playing a team that wears white pants at home (Penn State, Wisconsin...). Mix and match for teams that wear other colors.

I've always thought football should take a page from European soccer and require opposing teams to wear different colored pants and jerseys from each other. Michigan-Iowa games (home and away) in particular have always struck me as being way too yellow-intensive. And this year wearing the white pants at Penn State would be equally unappealing.

who cares about bracket integrity

I've always found the committee's obsession with bracket integrity maddening considering the wild swings in pwr ranking that occur just about weekly.  The pwr is a decent mechanism for picking the field of 16 teams in that its transparency has removed all controversy over who gets left out, and I suppose it's generally useful to establish clusters of teams as 1 through 4 seeds.  But the bottom line is that most years, beyond the clear 1 or 2 standout teams (NoDak last year, BC this year) and the AHA champ on the other end, the margin between any two teams in the middle of the pack is almost nonexistent.  When North Dakota can arrive in St. Paul for the Final Five with the realistic possibility of finishing as a 4 seed or a 1 seed, it seems a bit ridiculous to sacrifice attendance in order to keep a 7 vs. 10 matchup intact instead of, for example, a 7 vs. 9 or 12.  As Michigan fans, would we feel a substantially different level of anxiety over facing any of these teams in the tournament: Ferris (#6), Denver (#11), BU(#9), Miami(#5), Western(#14), Duluth (#7)? These teams seem about equally scary to me. 

With Minnesota hosting  (and actually qualifying!), bracket integrity will be shot no matter what the committee does this year, which pleases me. Needless to say I would not send BU out west or Duluth out east in order to preserve an 8-9 or 7-10 matchup, though I fully expect the committee to do this.

 

no goal wasn't a bad call

I was at the game, sitting down low in the M section which means I couldn't see the intent to blow play live at all. A buddy who was watching ESPN texted that it was the same situation as the Lynch non-goal against Miami last year so I spent the remainder of the period fuming at what an aweful rule intent to blow is. A bad call that early can't be blamed for the eventual result, but still...

Anyway, after watching the replay after I got home, I felt silly for the outrage I felt and encouraged within our section. The reason is simple, and has very little to do with the intent to blow rule: the decision to stop the play when the puck was under Reiter's pad was probably correct. A close call for sure, and a tough one for whichever team didn't get it, but probably correct (just as it was probably incorrect to allow Miami's goal against us last year when Hunwick covered the pick with his pad).

In the situation where the decision to stop play is correct, the intent to blow rule works fine and is probably even necessary. Think of the most obvious situation where a goalie covers the puck but an attacking player pokes it free in the moment before the ref can sound his whistle. Of course a goal shouldn't count under those circumstances, and "intent to blow" is the only way to ensure the right result.

However, in situations where it is obvious that there was no justification for stopping the play (see Lynch's OT non-goal last year) the intent to blow rule is as unjust and illogical as the original poster suggests. The rule should therefore be changed so that where replay conclusively shows that there was no basis to stop the play, everything that happened before the whistle actually did sound stands. That would allow common sense to prevail and lead to the right result in almost all situations.

Bottom line: we got screwed last year, but this year: not so much.

I was at the game, sitting

I was at the game, sitting down low in the M section which means I couldn't see the intent to blow play live at all. A buddy who was watching ESPN texted that it was the same situation as the Lynch non-goal against Miami last year so I spent the remainder of the period fuming at what an aweful rule intent to blow is. A bad call that early can't be blamed for the eventual result, but still...

Anyway, after watching the replay after I got home, I felt silly for the outrage I felt and encouraged within our section. The reason is simple, and has very little to do with the intent to blow rule: the decision to stop the play when the puck was under Reiter's pad was probably correct. A close call for sure, and a tough one for whichever team didn't get it, but probably correct (just as it was probably incorrect to allow Miami's goal against us last year when Hunwick covered the pick with his pad).

In the situation where the decision to stop play is correct, the intent to blow rule works fine and is probably even necessary. Think of the most obvious situation where a goalie covers the puck but an attacking player pokes it free in the moment before the ref can sound his whistle. Of course a goal shouldn't count under those circumstances, and "intent to blow" is the only way to ensure the right result.

However, in situations where it is obvious that there was no justification for stopping the play (see Lynch's OT non-goal last year) the intent to blow rule is as unjust and illogical as the original poster suggests. The rule should therefore be changed so that where replay conclusively shows that there was no basis to stop the play, everything that happened before the whistle actually did sound stands. That would allow common sense to prevail and lead to the right result in almost all situations.

Bottom line: we got screwed last year, but this year: not so much.