If Michigan wins the Frozen Four (big IF, I know), it has to be one of the best tournament performances of all time. As mentioned on the pod, NoDak was a 1 seed quality team,. though they dropped late. MSU, BC, and BU/Denver are all actual 1 seeds. So to win it all, they will have gone through 4 of the top 5 teams this year. It would be incredible.
I agree that the NHL division setup is unnecessarily convoluted, and made worse by the Atlantic and Metropolitan names. I think they could probably follow your suggestion of making a balanced schedule and seeding 1-8 in conference, and do away with divisions, and it would make the league better. Though the NHL always has bigger fish to fry.
Divisions make sense to (A) limit travel by scheduling more games with nearby teams and (B) build and market rivalries. The NHL wants the Alberta teams, Toronto/Montreal, etc. to play each other as often as possible (and in the playoffs as well) and I think the current alignment tries to accomplish that. It makes some sense.
Travel is less of an issue now than it was in the days when teams took trains across the country to play. Starting last year, MLB reduced the number of divisonal games (from 6 series/19 games to 4/13) in order to balance the schedule, so now each team plays every other team in baseball. It took 20+ years of interleague play and 50+ years for the NL to adopt the DH before the change. Is it better for the league if the Yankees and Red Sox have games against the Rockies and Marlins instead of each other? Debatable, but for the league overall, it's probably better for the brand for each team to play in every other city.
It's kind of insane to me that the Dodgers never played a regular season game in old Yankee Stadium. Plenty of World Series, of course, going back to the Brooklyn days, but the first time the interleague rotation had LAD playing in the Bronx was the new stadium in 2010.
NHL teams can't consistently scout, draft and develop goalies. There's no way a college coaching staff can. Getting good goalies is basically a crapshoot it seems, even more than everything else in recruiting. I think either take as many as possible and hope one is a lottery ticket winner, or just count on getting what you can from the portal.
If a short kid named Don Shunwick showed up in pads, I'd take him.
Watching all, betting all. Don't particularly care who wins, though I'd like Purdue to break through, and South Carolina finishing the undefeated season would be cool, even more than the Clark or Bueckers story.
Last year we had a Hobey winner and NHL forward leading the team, and the year before they had 5 first round picks including 4 of the top 5. Next year's team looks loaded too if they all stay as indicated, plus the additions.
So, since hockey gods play jokes to amuse themselves, this odd team in between is the one that's gonna break through and win the Frozen Four. That's how it works.
It took me a while to figure out the opponent in the header picture. I wondered who we played that would dress like that, and thought of Northwestern and Maryland, until I remembered MSU went all dark this year. It's a shame that the impact of a great picture from a rivalry game is lost because you can't even recognize the home team based on the colors they are wearing. Luckily for Michigan, the winged helmet should always be the signature.
Also, are the previous assistants still on staff? I suppose there isn't much of a roster to hold together as it's apparently just Dusty and Will T right now, but I believe that assistants generally stay under contract and keep working even if the head guy gets canned, at least until a new place hires them. So does anybody know if Saddi, Eisley and Martelli are still around (and since Washington was a Beilein holdover, is there any chance he stays?)?
Has there been a comparable situation to Harbaugh and McCarthy in recent memory? Where a coach jumps from college to the NFL and a top prospect is someone he coached and developed? I can't think of any from Carroll, Saban, or even Jimmie Johnson and Bill Walsh.
This has been said before, but it's not about dumbing down our standards. It's about being reasonable in accepting credits for classes taken at other schools. And the admissions office has continually shown itself to be unreasonable in denying credits, athletes or not. The current setup is anti-student in how it denies credit for even basic freshman and sophomore-level classes.
Essegian and Wolf are the portal types that seem off-limits due to transfer credit issues in Admissions. It will be a positive sign if they can get in and stay eligible with transfer credits from a BTAA and Ivy league school, respectively.
The NCAA Men's basketball tournament is one of the greatest events in sports, so I don't blame the organizers for trying to adopt the format for hockey. However, I think we've proven that it doesn't work. College hockey is too niche and the sports are too different. It's fine to sit through 5 hours for back to back basketball games, but most people aren't willing to do that for 7-8 hours of hockey. And there are definitely not enough fans willing to travel to do that and take Thursday or Friday afternoons off work.
Single-game home site regional and super regionals, like pretty much all other NCAA tournaments have, would be so much better for fans and programs. We should hope that the big conferences realize this and push for it.
Thanks for the anniversary reminder. Watching and reading about it never gets old.
Among the many extremely funny things that happened that night, one of my low-key favorites is the Michigan connection. That game was Mike Knuble's NHL debut. Imagine walking into the locker room full of stars, finally realizing your hockey dream, and it turns out to be WWIII. It's hilarious to me.
From what I've heard, conventional wisdom is that RB coaching matters less than other positions, so it's a position coach for recruiting. Which it appears he is, so good hire. Actually getting our RBs to live up to their potential is a bonus.
It's not that crazy an idea. Bill Snyder, Mack Brown and Don Brown all returned to old football jobs in their 60s. I have faith that John Beilein could do the same for basketball if he wanted to.
I seem to recall Michigan lineman running 40+ yards multiple times to celebrate with Donovan Edwards in the endzone in important games the last few years.
I'm happy to jump back on the Red Wings bandwagon. I haven't really paid them much attention since the playoff streak ended and the guys I loved from the 08 team all retired or left.
My last memory of Patrick Kane was hatred from his Chicago days, particularly that 2013 playoff series Detroit had no business being in but still should have won. It still feels weird to have him in Detroit.
Can't wait for the playoffs, nothing gets the juices flowing like playoff hockey.
It makes no sense to say that Nightingale has proven to be a good coach and recruiter while saying that judgement cannot be passed on Naruato. We've won the BTT and gone to the Frozen Four two years in a row. I think hockey will be fine.
Michigan fans were apathetic before, at the end of the Amaker years, and then came back in force once Beilein put teams in the tournament. And there was plenty of discontent and (relative) apathy in the dark days of Hoke and Harbaugh. We should know from experience that nothing is permanent and we will likely cycle back to the top with good moves as a program.
This will be the Wings' fifth outdoor game (not counting the Marquette prison game in 1954). If it gets close to a sellout, it's likely to be the second highest attended, after the Michigan Stadium Winter Classic in 2014.
Bad look for the NHL to be so insecure in your own product that you need to piggyback off college teams. Especially to the point of reversing the colors of the RED Wings and BLUE Jackets.
A slam dunk is fun as hell and hurts no one, so I think it's the least unsportsmanlike action of the three. Especially in the NBA, they are there to entertain the fans, so if you want to turn into the Harlem Globetrotters for the last ten seconds of a blowout, go for it. It should be allowed equally to home or away, and ahead or behind.
Violating the victory formation truce is not great. It was the end of the season and I get why they wanted to get a guy a TD. They should have just lined up and run a normal play.
The slapshot ENG was a little over the top and he deserved a bit of payback but Rielly overdid it. A chirp, shove, or fight in the rematch would have been more appropriate than the headshot and he will get a deserved suspension for that.
It's bad but acceptable in context. It was caught on TV in the Super Bowl and featured the most famous player and his head coach. I imagine similar shouting and close physical contact occur nearly every game between a player and position coach or coordinator or teammate. It's a passionate game and I would expect pretty much any player short of JJ McCarthy to have it in him to lose it sometimes.
WRs are famous for being "divas" for demanding the ball. I assume this is a similar situation. Not that Antonio Brown retiring midgame is the minimum standard, but we've seen worse behavior from receivers who feel wronged for whatever reason.
I did think it was odd how early it was, from what I recall it was after the second drive. I think they were probably still in the opening game script so I'm not sure what he got so upset about and why he was taking it out on Reid instead of Mahomes. But all's well that ends well, Kelce ended with a bunch of yards and KC won.
It's called football, it would be extremely dumb to eliminate kicking for points.
That being said, the kickoff after scores have become all but a formality with touch backs and fair catches. And onside recoveries are so rare they practically don't happen, which removes some potential drama from the end of games. So I would fix both by requiring a single offensive down after a score. You can punt or go for it. The yards to gain should be calibrated to the conversion rate you want, but maybe 10 for college and 15 for NFL.
Crazy that Parker Fleming was running this site on the side while coaching OSU's special teams, poorly. Hope he can come out with more fun graphs now that he can focus on it full-time.
My hot take is that nothing fundamentally changed. They've always tried to build a successful team, just like the other 31 owners, GMs and coaches. Success in the NFL is way less deterministic than most want to admit - there's no consistent formula that works, and no secret method that can be copied from team to team. Lions fans know, since the Detroit Patriots experiment failed horribly.
In other words, it's mostly luck. Do your draft picks work out or turn out to be busts? Can you get through a season without major injuries compounding a weak area on the roster? Do you catch teams on the schedule at the right time? Do you get fortunate bounces in-game, and key decisions from the refs? If all those lottery balls line up for you - congrats, you are a playoff team.
I don't mean to downplay Hamp, Holmes and Campbell's efforts - clearly they have skills in their positions, and so far we see results. I just don't think the roster management and team culture they bring is dramatically different than what every other team's management tries to do.
Side note: 4/5 OL were drafted by Bob Quinn (Decker and Ragnow in the 1st round, Jackson and Glasgow in the 3rd), and Sewell was an additional 1st round pick by Holmes. Credit to him for keeping them all, including bringing Glasgow back as a free agent. But the investment in a top OL takes time to build, starting from the Decker pick in 2016. So maybe the lesson is invest in OL, the unit that's on the field for every snap and make your QB more efficient, and then have the patience to let them develop into grown men and gel as a unit, over multiple seasons?
To me, the annoying thing is that many parts of this saga don't make sense in my model of the mind of Coach Harbaugh. There is something motivating him that I can't seem to understand.
He wants to go to the NFL and win a Super Bowl, but not enough that he is just going to resign from Michigan and go all-in. He's talked about loving this and wanting to stay in the past, yet this has happened three straight seasons now. The NCAA issues are new this off season but don't seem to impact the motivating factors above, along with all the other details of the contract that are still open. I don't really see this as a "business decision" as money does not seem to be a factor. Maybe his wife wants to move the family back to California and the Chargers job is an opportunity to do that? Maybe the agents and lawyers are just fogging up the room and getting in the way of what should be an easy agreement? I just don't know, and I'm frustrated by that.
At least when Beilein left, it was for pretty obvious and relatable reasons of ambition and higher-level competition. With Harbaugh, we just don't know.
I think going from a mid-level Big 12 program to Washington - a team that just went 14-1 and is moving into the Big Ten - is a clear step up, not lateral move.
Make the Twitter losers pay Champions Circle directly so OP doesn't receive their cash and therefore no taxable income.
Or, if you already committed to giving to charity and think that CC wouldn't count, use Hail impact or Mott or your charity of choice. Again, if you make them pay directly, you don't have any income from winning the bet. They can even get the charitable deduction themselves, so they get a tax benefit to donating 10k.
Looks like 2013 was the last time. When Labor Day falls on September 2 and Thanksgiving on November 28, the latest it can be, there is an extra week in football season.
Among the other things that make the Rose Bowl special, as both an event and stadium, is that it doesn't have an NFL team as the primary occupant (distinctions that the Cotton and Orange Bowls both had but gave up), and until UCLA moved in, it didn't even have regular major conference football (sorry Caltech).
The bowl game isn't just another event they host to get some extra use, it's the raison d'etre. That's important, and why it deserves the CFP championship, not just another one of the rotating quarters and semifinals sites.
I'm not saying this was or was not a factor for McLaughlin, or in the case of Kyle McCord transferring away from OSU, but the coincidence of easy transfers plus toxic fanbases with easy access to players via social media seems like a very bad combo.
I'm sure players have heard plenty of awful things from both opposing and their own fans over the years. God knows that Black athletes from George Jewett through the Fab 5 and Devin Gardner heard awful slurs. But I have to imagine that there is a difference in what you hear and internalize on the field, or through spittle-covered letters in the mail, and what today's guys have to go through just to be on X/Instagram/TikTok or whatever they're on. Without actually looking, I can guarantee some Bama yahoo blamed the loss on McLaughlin, which is unfair and unkind. I'm sure it sucks and I feel for these kids, and I understand why they would rather just get out of the situation rather than take the abuse.
Shout-out to Brian's college girlfriend who gets her second (at least) mention on this blog, first in that Waterloo, Indiana column, and again with the same story of the '98 Rose Bowl here.
Tough to be a specialist in the League. Make one or two crucial mistakes, and not only does everybody see it, but you may also lose your job on Monday.
I don't think anyone expected to win in Lambeau in December back in 2014. Those were still the days when it seemed impossible to beat Green Bay at home. 2017 they had a chance to win the division against GB at home at the end of the year, and blew it.
I think people retcon the Stafford years because they were never consistently good, didn't make the playoffs in consecutive years, and always were the last wild card team in. With three different coaches, "the year" was always at least a few years away.
Rodgers left Green Bay and they beat KC on opening night, so it finally seems like now is "the year" we've all been waiting for.
The Pistons could have had 4 straight if not for the Bird steal in '87.
It all happened before I was born, and I'm not a big pro basketball fan anyway, but watching the Bad Boys documentary got me fired up about both of the playoff years preceding the championships. It was disappointing like I was there.
Perhaps you are right, but football games are so scarce that it shouldn't be that hard for teams and fans to "get up" for late season games, even outside of CFP or conference implications. Rivalry games help: attendance and passion is high even for relatively meaningless end of season games (see Old Oaken Bucket and similar games).
The NFL has plenty of late season games between non playoff teams, and due to the draft the teams are actually incentivized to lose, yet starters still mostly play, games are competitive, fans show up, upsets happen, etc.
Recent Comments
If Michigan wins the Frozen Four (big IF, I know), it has to be one of the best tournament performances of all time. As mentioned on the pod, NoDak was a 1 seed quality team,. though they dropped late. MSU, BC, and BU/Denver are all actual 1 seeds. So to win it all, they will have gone through 4 of the top 5 teams this year. It would be incredible.
I agree that the NHL division setup is unnecessarily convoluted, and made worse by the Atlantic and Metropolitan names. I think they could probably follow your suggestion of making a balanced schedule and seeding 1-8 in conference, and do away with divisions, and it would make the league better. Though the NHL always has bigger fish to fry.
Divisions make sense to (A) limit travel by scheduling more games with nearby teams and (B) build and market rivalries. The NHL wants the Alberta teams, Toronto/Montreal, etc. to play each other as often as possible (and in the playoffs as well) and I think the current alignment tries to accomplish that. It makes some sense.
Travel is less of an issue now than it was in the days when teams took trains across the country to play. Starting last year, MLB reduced the number of divisonal games (from 6 series/19 games to 4/13) in order to balance the schedule, so now each team plays every other team in baseball. It took 20+ years of interleague play and 50+ years for the NL to adopt the DH before the change. Is it better for the league if the Yankees and Red Sox have games against the Rockies and Marlins instead of each other? Debatable, but for the league overall, it's probably better for the brand for each team to play in every other city.
It's kind of insane to me that the Dodgers never played a regular season game in old Yankee Stadium. Plenty of World Series, of course, going back to the Brooklyn days, but the first time the interleague rotation had LAD playing in the Bronx was the new stadium in 2010.
NHL teams can't consistently scout, draft and develop goalies. There's no way a college coaching staff can. Getting good goalies is basically a crapshoot it seems, even more than everything else in recruiting. I think either take as many as possible and hope one is a lottery ticket winner, or just count on getting what you can from the portal.
If a short kid named Don Shunwick showed up in pads, I'd take him.
Watching all, betting all. Don't particularly care who wins, though I'd like Purdue to break through, and South Carolina finishing the undefeated season would be cool, even more than the Clark or Bueckers story.
Last year we had a Hobey winner and NHL forward leading the team, and the year before they had 5 first round picks including 4 of the top 5. Next year's team looks loaded too if they all stay as indicated, plus the additions.
So, since hockey gods play jokes to amuse themselves, this odd team in between is the one that's gonna break through and win the Frozen Four. That's how it works.
It took me a while to figure out the opponent in the header picture. I wondered who we played that would dress like that, and thought of Northwestern and Maryland, until I remembered MSU went all dark this year. It's a shame that the impact of a great picture from a rivalry game is lost because you can't even recognize the home team based on the colors they are wearing. Luckily for Michigan, the winged helmet should always be the signature.
Also, are the previous assistants still on staff? I suppose there isn't much of a roster to hold together as it's apparently just Dusty and Will T right now, but I believe that assistants generally stay under contract and keep working even if the head guy gets canned, at least until a new place hires them. So does anybody know if Saddi, Eisley and Martelli are still around (and since Washington was a Beilein holdover, is there any chance he stays?)?
Has there been a comparable situation to Harbaugh and McCarthy in recent memory? Where a coach jumps from college to the NFL and a top prospect is someone he coached and developed? I can't think of any from Carroll, Saban, or even Jimmie Johnson and Bill Walsh.
This has been said before, but it's not about dumbing down our standards. It's about being reasonable in accepting credits for classes taken at other schools. And the admissions office has continually shown itself to be unreasonable in denying credits, athletes or not. The current setup is anti-student in how it denies credit for even basic freshman and sophomore-level classes.
Essegian and Wolf are the portal types that seem off-limits due to transfer credit issues in Admissions. It will be a positive sign if they can get in and stay eligible with transfer credits from a BTAA and Ivy league school, respectively.
Manti Te'o admitting that his tragic dead girlfriend story was all made up
Or, like Shaka Smart leaving Texas for Marquette. Get out before getting fired, and go to a place where you're more likely to do well.
The NCAA Men's basketball tournament is one of the greatest events in sports, so I don't blame the organizers for trying to adopt the format for hockey. However, I think we've proven that it doesn't work. College hockey is too niche and the sports are too different. It's fine to sit through 5 hours for back to back basketball games, but most people aren't willing to do that for 7-8 hours of hockey. And there are definitely not enough fans willing to travel to do that and take Thursday or Friday afternoons off work.
Single-game home site regional and super regionals, like pretty much all other NCAA tournaments have, would be so much better for fans and programs. We should hope that the big conferences realize this and push for it.
Thanks for the anniversary reminder. Watching and reading about it never gets old.
Among the many extremely funny things that happened that night, one of my low-key favorites is the Michigan connection. That game was Mike Knuble's NHL debut. Imagine walking into the locker room full of stars, finally realizing your hockey dream, and it turns out to be WWIII. It's hilarious to me.
Did anyone else read OP to imply that Jim Harbaugh is actually JJ's father?
The rundown of games to watch should say FAU (May) vs Northwestern (Chris Collins), right?
/s
Based on the picture, it looks like the Harbaugh family has the same addiction to gimmicky Amazon electronics as I do.
From what I've heard, conventional wisdom is that RB coaching matters less than other positions, so it's a position coach for recruiting. Which it appears he is, so good hire. Actually getting our RBs to live up to their potential is a bonus.
Just using this opportunity to remind everyone that Jim Harbaugh has more NFL rushing yards than Bo Jackson
It's not that crazy an idea. Bill Snyder, Mack Brown and Don Brown all returned to old football jobs in their 60s. I have faith that John Beilein could do the same for basketball if he wanted to.
There are worse options out there.
I seem to recall Michigan lineman running 40+ yards multiple times to celebrate with Donovan Edwards in the endzone in important games the last few years.
Fine I'll ask the question everyone else is afraid to ask. Why was David sensitive about this joke?
I'm happy to jump back on the Red Wings bandwagon. I haven't really paid them much attention since the playoff streak ended and the guys I loved from the 08 team all retired or left.
My last memory of Patrick Kane was hatred from his Chicago days, particularly that 2013 playoff series Detroit had no business being in but still should have won. It still feels weird to have him in Detroit.
Can't wait for the playoffs, nothing gets the juices flowing like playoff hockey.
That's basically what was said about Harbaugh in his first 4-5 years. Lots of wins, but few wins in the "big" category: rivalry and/or upsets.
It makes no sense to say that Nightingale has proven to be a good coach and recruiter while saying that judgement cannot be passed on Naruato. We've won the BTT and gone to the Frozen Four two years in a row. I think hockey will be fine.
Michigan fans were apathetic before, at the end of the Amaker years, and then came back in force once Beilein put teams in the tournament. And there was plenty of discontent and (relative) apathy in the dark days of Hoke and Harbaugh. We should know from experience that nothing is permanent and we will likely cycle back to the top with good moves as a program.
This will be the Wings' fifth outdoor game (not counting the Marquette prison game in 1954). If it gets close to a sellout, it's likely to be the second highest attended, after the Michigan Stadium Winter Classic in 2014.
Bad look for the NHL to be so insecure in your own product that you need to piggyback off college teams. Especially to the point of reversing the colors of the RED Wings and BLUE Jackets.
A slam dunk is fun as hell and hurts no one, so I think it's the least unsportsmanlike action of the three. Especially in the NBA, they are there to entertain the fans, so if you want to turn into the Harlem Globetrotters for the last ten seconds of a blowout, go for it. It should be allowed equally to home or away, and ahead or behind.
Violating the victory formation truce is not great. It was the end of the season and I get why they wanted to get a guy a TD. They should have just lined up and run a normal play.
The slapshot ENG was a little over the top and he deserved a bit of payback but Rielly overdid it. A chirp, shove, or fight in the rematch would have been more appropriate than the headshot and he will get a deserved suspension for that.
It's bad but acceptable in context. It was caught on TV in the Super Bowl and featured the most famous player and his head coach. I imagine similar shouting and close physical contact occur nearly every game between a player and position coach or coordinator or teammate. It's a passionate game and I would expect pretty much any player short of JJ McCarthy to have it in him to lose it sometimes.
WRs are famous for being "divas" for demanding the ball. I assume this is a similar situation. Not that Antonio Brown retiring midgame is the minimum standard, but we've seen worse behavior from receivers who feel wronged for whatever reason.
I did think it was odd how early it was, from what I recall it was after the second drive. I think they were probably still in the opening game script so I'm not sure what he got so upset about and why he was taking it out on Reid instead of Mahomes. But all's well that ends well, Kelce ended with a bunch of yards and KC won.
It's called football, it would be extremely dumb to eliminate kicking for points.
That being said, the kickoff after scores have become all but a formality with touch backs and fair catches. And onside recoveries are so rare they practically don't happen, which removes some potential drama from the end of games. So I would fix both by requiring a single offensive down after a score. You can punt or go for it. The yards to gain should be calibrated to the conversion rate you want, but maybe 10 for college and 15 for NFL.
Crazy that Parker Fleming was running this site on the side while coaching OSU's special teams, poorly. Hope he can come out with more fun graphs now that he can focus on it full-time.
/s
My hot take is that nothing fundamentally changed. They've always tried to build a successful team, just like the other 31 owners, GMs and coaches. Success in the NFL is way less deterministic than most want to admit - there's no consistent formula that works, and no secret method that can be copied from team to team. Lions fans know, since the Detroit Patriots experiment failed horribly.
In other words, it's mostly luck. Do your draft picks work out or turn out to be busts? Can you get through a season without major injuries compounding a weak area on the roster? Do you catch teams on the schedule at the right time? Do you get fortunate bounces in-game, and key decisions from the refs? If all those lottery balls line up for you - congrats, you are a playoff team.
I don't mean to downplay Hamp, Holmes and Campbell's efforts - clearly they have skills in their positions, and so far we see results. I just don't think the roster management and team culture they bring is dramatically different than what every other team's management tries to do.
Side note: 4/5 OL were drafted by Bob Quinn (Decker and Ragnow in the 1st round, Jackson and Glasgow in the 3rd), and Sewell was an additional 1st round pick by Holmes. Credit to him for keeping them all, including bringing Glasgow back as a free agent. But the investment in a top OL takes time to build, starting from the Decker pick in 2016. So maybe the lesson is invest in OL, the unit that's on the field for every snap and make your QB more efficient, and then have the patience to let them develop into grown men and gel as a unit, over multiple seasons?
To me, the annoying thing is that many parts of this saga don't make sense in my model of the mind of Coach Harbaugh. There is something motivating him that I can't seem to understand.
He wants to go to the NFL and win a Super Bowl, but not enough that he is just going to resign from Michigan and go all-in. He's talked about loving this and wanting to stay in the past, yet this has happened three straight seasons now. The NCAA issues are new this off season but don't seem to impact the motivating factors above, along with all the other details of the contract that are still open. I don't really see this as a "business decision" as money does not seem to be a factor. Maybe his wife wants to move the family back to California and the Chargers job is an opportunity to do that? Maybe the agents and lawyers are just fogging up the room and getting in the way of what should be an easy agreement? I just don't know, and I'm frustrated by that.
At least when Beilein left, it was for pretty obvious and relatable reasons of ambition and higher-level competition. With Harbaugh, we just don't know.
I think going from a mid-level Big 12 program to Washington - a team that just went 14-1 and is moving into the Big Ten - is a clear step up, not lateral move.
Columbus area tattoo artists hardest hit
This is not tax advice. But:
Make the Twitter losers pay Champions Circle directly so OP doesn't receive their cash and therefore no taxable income.
Or, if you already committed to giving to charity and think that CC wouldn't count, use Hail impact or Mott or your charity of choice. Again, if you make them pay directly, you don't have any income from winning the bet. They can even get the charitable deduction themselves, so they get a tax benefit to donating 10k.
Looks like 2013 was the last time. When Labor Day falls on September 2 and Thanksgiving on November 28, the latest it can be, there is an extra week in football season.
Technically, the opponent would score 6 since there's no need to kick an XP on a TD.
Among the other things that make the Rose Bowl special, as both an event and stadium, is that it doesn't have an NFL team as the primary occupant (distinctions that the Cotton and Orange Bowls both had but gave up), and until UCLA moved in, it didn't even have regular major conference football (sorry Caltech).
The bowl game isn't just another event they host to get some extra use, it's the raison d'etre. That's important, and why it deserves the CFP championship, not just another one of the rotating quarters and semifinals sites.
I'm not saying this was or was not a factor for McLaughlin, or in the case of Kyle McCord transferring away from OSU, but the coincidence of easy transfers plus toxic fanbases with easy access to players via social media seems like a very bad combo.
I'm sure players have heard plenty of awful things from both opposing and their own fans over the years. God knows that Black athletes from George Jewett through the Fab 5 and Devin Gardner heard awful slurs. But I have to imagine that there is a difference in what you hear and internalize on the field, or through spittle-covered letters in the mail, and what today's guys have to go through just to be on X/Instagram/TikTok or whatever they're on. Without actually looking, I can guarantee some Bama yahoo blamed the loss on McLaughlin, which is unfair and unkind. I'm sure it sucks and I feel for these kids, and I understand why they would rather just get out of the situation rather than take the abuse.
Shout-out to Brian's college girlfriend who gets her second (at least) mention on this blog, first in that Waterloo, Indiana column, and again with the same story of the '98 Rose Bowl here.
Winning the Big Ten in 2021 and getting a 1 seed, plus getting to the Sweet 16 a year later is not an epic failure, regardless of what happened after.
Also it's extremely weird to be focused on basketball 12 hours after the biggest win in football program history.
I'll take 11-1 then a loss in a NY6 bowl if that's what mediocrity is.
Tough to be a specialist in the League. Make one or two crucial mistakes, and not only does everybody see it, but you may also lose your job on Monday.
Matt Stafford in 2009: "I want to help the Lions win a playoff game in Ford Field."
Somewhere: a monkey's paw curls
I don't think anyone expected to win in Lambeau in December back in 2014. Those were still the days when it seemed impossible to beat Green Bay at home. 2017 they had a chance to win the division against GB at home at the end of the year, and blew it.
I think people retcon the Stafford years because they were never consistently good, didn't make the playoffs in consecutive years, and always were the last wild card team in. With three different coaches, "the year" was always at least a few years away.
Rodgers left Green Bay and they beat KC on opening night, so it finally seems like now is "the year" we've all been waiting for.
The Pistons could have had 4 straight if not for the Bird steal in '87.
It all happened before I was born, and I'm not a big pro basketball fan anyway, but watching the Bad Boys documentary got me fired up about both of the playoff years preceding the championships. It was disappointing like I was there.
Ironically the picture was taken on an iPhone from the stands
Perhaps you are right, but football games are so scarce that it shouldn't be that hard for teams and fans to "get up" for late season games, even outside of CFP or conference implications. Rivalry games help: attendance and passion is high even for relatively meaningless end of season games (see Old Oaken Bucket and similar games).
The NFL has plenty of late season games between non playoff teams, and due to the draft the teams are actually incentivized to lose, yet starters still mostly play, games are competitive, fans show up, upsets happen, etc.