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If you're going to criticize…

If you're going to criticize at least get your facts right. Hudson Yards developed an essentially unused six block area on the far west side of Manhattan to add a large amount of office space, shopping, and tourism draws. Saying that it "arrogates an enormous chunk of lower Manhattan to itself" is a bonafide falsehood and I feel that you don't really understand the dynamics of NYC neighborhoods if that's what you have gotten out of the Hudson Yards project. It wasn't a previously residential area and Ross isn't displacing a neighborhood with his development. The project was built on the west side rail yards - a site that was previously proposed as the vacant lot for the 2012 NYC Olympic Stadium which would then become the Jets/Giants Stadium, but obviously those games went to London. Since then it has been unused.

I don't know anyone here who actually cares negatively about the development. It either doesn't affect your life or you find some use for it. Some people's offices will move there, some people will shop there, a lot of tourists will go there. Not a big deal.

We didn't buy out UCLA to…

We didn't buy out UCLA to play another P5 program. Michigan is realizing that we were overzealous with NC scheduling, the risk/return doesn't make sense with the higher chance of loss and essentially no end-of-year CFP committee benefit, and it's smarter to just play MAC schools at home.

*berth

*berth

Kosgei is doped to the gills…

Kosgei is doped to the gills. She was running in the 2:40s in 2015 and her agent - Federico Rosa - is a known promoter of EPO usage in his athletes. In the same league as Jama Aden. He represents Asbel Kiprop, Rita Jeptoo, Jemima Sumagong, Matthew Kisorio, etc. No need to get excited about this one.

Not sure why the B1G or…

Not sure why the B1G or Rutgers would have any interest in that, however Rutgers on the road is a de-facto home game. 

You're right, Shea Patterson…

You're right, Shea Patterson himself is spending valuable practice time sorting out the logistics of this trip.

Back to chapo, kiddo.

Back to chapo, kiddo.

I don't love the London game…

I don't love the London game idea, but saying that UM is not a brand or asset is incredibly naive/unrealistic. 

It would be a non-conference…

It would be a non-conference game, so whether or not Michigan is considered the home team on a neutral field, we would be giving up a home game. We're already pretty well booked with P5 home and homes. Everything besides that each year should be cupcakes at home, especially with nine conference games.

It not being considered a home game for Michigan only means we'd wear white instead of blue. The effect is the same, which is the loss of a home game.

HUEL still can’t even figure…

HUEL still can’t even figure out how to let us edit OPs.

Thanks for the link. Page…

Thanks for the link. Page has actually thrown pretty well this year, a touch better than Kizer. He's also a freshman so presumably has gotten better as the year went on. He had a really nice WHIP in all relief appearances in conference play (on an incomplete sample size - just over 10 innings) and has started four games this year. He'll just need to give us 4-5 good innnings tonight, which is conceivable.

Brian Cook: Confirmed not a…

Brian Cook: Confirmed not a baseball guy. But that's okay! Everyone on the bandwagon!

What’s your PR? I did 2:47…

What’s your PR? I did 2:47 in Boston, hoping to safely get under the good for age for Berlin/Tokyo soon.

Internet Raj needs to be…

Internet Raj needs to be mentioned here.

POSBANG

POSBANG

Sam literally wrote that on…

Sam literally wrote that on 247. You can't call him a liar for claiming that's what Sam said, and then call him a liar for posting proof of exactly what he claimed.

Zero as well - he's just a…

Zero as well - he's just a guy in charge of things. The plugged in guys at 247 have all stressed that Moser is under heavy consideration and Sam explicitly said that he'd be very surprised if we show interest in Donovan simply because Warde doesn't think he's the right "fit". If he thinks someone who won two national championships at a major conference school isn't the right "fit" but Porter Moser is, then that tells you all you need to know. Rumors are it goes all the way back to a grudge over Florida getting Al Horford, which is so painfully believable.

 

EDIT: And wait, there's more! The poster Dotman on 247, who at this point appears to be merely a plugged in anonymous mouthpiece for Warde, posted the following (this is an excerpt):

Al Horford committed to UM. Then a couple of days later decommitted and immediately named Florida as his leader AND HE HAD NOT YET TAKEN AN OFFICIAL VISIT.

From personal knowledge, his decommitment was under duress i.e. wasn't him making the call.

The stain from that recruitment has never left those involved with the hoops program. Only way he gets considered if if somebody comes in with a nuclear powered power cleaner.

So embarrasing that this attitude actually pervades the current AD, and yet it is so Michigan. Besides the fact that nobody in a position of power 15 years ago is still around, weren't we just so gosh darn lucky that father Horford decided to not sell off Jon to Florida too? Because any time we lose a recruit it's because of an opposing coach personally handing over a pile of cash, right?

We need a Tennessee/Schiano style fan backlash if this type of talk continues out of the plugged in guys, and I already wouldn't mind ending the Manuel experiment early.

Just no. Way below the Yak…

Just no. Way below the Yak line. Slightly above mediocre Big East coast who's been at Fairfield and Providence since 2006.

Tony Bennett only makes $2…

Tony Bennett only makes $2.43mm per year so you have to ask with 2x salary to at least see. Unlikely he'd come but he was another top candidate the year we hired Beilein.

Porzingis was only in his…

Porzingis was only in his fourth season with the Knicks after they took him fourth overall and hasn't played this year.

Are you serious? Put them…

Are you serious? Put them together now and 2013 wipes the floor with them. Tim Hardaway and healthy Caris Levert would each be one of the best 2-3 players currently in college basketball. Trey is considerably better now than he was in college. GRIII can stroke it from NBA range now. Stauskas has expanded his game.

Teske would be an advantage over current McGary, but I’d take current JMo over Davis. Overall, you’ve got basically an NBA team against the current team. 2013 guys would just shoot them off the floor.

Totally agree.

Totally agree.

If we’re giving Warde’s…

If we’re giving Warde’s tenure an A then we truly do only deserve 10 win seasons. First of all, you cannot watch the majority of Michigan hockey games on television. This is our third sport and is supposed to be a revenue producer. Warde clearly couldn’t give a shit about it.

Beyond that, he hasn’t cleaned up the conference schedule, hasn’t scheduled well out of conference, hasn’t managed soccer coaching well, hasn’t bumped Harbaugh’s assistant salary pool, and then folded to the media on this most recent gymnastics hire that the student athletes supported.

On the plus side, he said no to Friday night games. I can’t think of anything else that is value above a median replacement. People are just in charge of things. C-

It is abundently clear that…

It is abundently clear that easiest possible SoS is the path to the playoffs in the Big Ten, SEC, or ACC.

He's likely going to be the…

He's likely going to be the OSU DC. Webb said he can't confirm "right now", but can't deny it either.

This man has fully bought…

This man has fully bought into the Sam Webb spin cycle. If he's ever wrong, it's just because the situation changed, not because he doesn't always get accurate information, right? Webb is the de-facto mouthpiece for the football program. He'll get and report the information that the program wants him to get and report, which isn't always accurate.

And look, I actually like Sam most of the time. We benefit from having a trusted channel for the coaches to leak information. I've actually been subscribed to scout/247 for a couple years longer than I've been on MGoBlog. But in reading him you have to be able to sift through the sunshine blowing coming from inside the program, because it's there and sometimes it's heavy. Right now it's heavy.

Lol. Come on dude. First off…

Lol. Come on dude. First off, why would a private "commitment" from Dax Hill mean anything? If he were to flip back to Michigan it'd be his second de-commitment in as many weeks. Regardless, Webb said he hasn't de-committed from Bama. More generally, silent commits are worth jack shit. Najee Harris had a West Quad assignment and an MCard. 

Webb specifically stated…

Webb specifically stated that he has not de-committed from Bama and Saban went in home this week. So he hasn't, like, changed anything. It's like people don't want to remember that he actively made the decision in the first place to leave the Michigan class and commit to Bama. 

Unfortunately top-200 guys…

Unfortunately top-200 guys don't put you in the National Championship picture. We only have the third highest average star rating in the conference. Dax flipped and Harrison is going to commit to OSU tomorrow. Our most recent five star commit just transferred. Things are not looking up.

He's so vague. Sam drops …

He's so vague. Sam drops "hints" like this all the time when he may have heard from one of the coaches that things are looking up. But then he clarifies that Saban went in-home this week and that Hill has not told the Bama staff that he's not going to stay with them.

Mike Weber, Najee Harris, Da'shawn Hand, George Karlaftis, Zach Harrison...we've heard these hints before. None of those guys ended up or will end up at Michigan. This is only recent history. Remember Josh Garnett? Michigan lock too, right? Dax will soon just be another addition to the "could have been" list.

He has not been dropping …

He has not been dropping "major hints" about Dax flipping at all. He's basically only said that we'll recruit him through the late signing day and implying that there's a chance, but I can't imagine any rational person viewing that as anything but him trying to placate the fanbase with this class completely falling apart.

Gil Brandt is the guy who…

Gil Brandt is the guy who reported that we offered and were turned down by David Cutcliffe in 2015. That coaching search has since been relived publicly in great detail by those who were involved, and Brandt's report was patently false. Haskins may go pro, but this guy is a hack. 

Most Michigan grads have the…

Most Michigan grads have the luxury of targeting which city they'd like to live in and conducting a job search while still in school to land a position in their desired city. The prospect of moving to Detroit post-grad would be laughable to most job seeking UM grads. The majority of my classmates ended up in NYC/Chicago/SF/LA/DC after graduation, and more even ended up in towns like Seattle or Denver than Detroit. It's just not a desirable landing spot for a new grad, and when Michigan's smartest high school students tend to go to UM and then leave the state, it leaves Detroit in a braindrain scenario.

No no no. He completely ties…

No no no. He completely ties up the floor on offense, and eliminates the possibility of switch everything on defense. Davis’s lack of athleticism is not a fit for this scheme and you can tell the rest of the team doesn’t trust it either. They don’t want to put the ball in his hands and opponents don’t respect his ability off the pick and roll or (obviously) shooting from the outside, so the offense changes entirely when he’s in.

The sets we ran with Davis on the floor were some motions early in the shot clock that never worked and then just iso’d Poole/Z/Matthews which isn’t a great possession. He can’t see meaningful minutes going forward. We’ve work in Johns or Castleton - at least then we can run similar offensive sets to what we do with Teske.

Sam's opinions on stay/go…

Sam's opinions on stay/go right now:

Leaving: Bush, Long, Hill

Staying: Hudson, Metellus, Gentry, Bredeson

Unclear: Shea

The only value there would…

The only value there would be if he knows of potential offensive wrinkles that they practiced while he was at OSU that have not been put on film yet. I doubt that's much if anything significant. There aren't a whole lot of secrets with OSU's offense at this point, they've needed to put a lot on film just to pull out wins.

I really wish the schools…

I really wish the schools could come to an agreement to always have both teams wear their home jersey's in this game. There is no color conflict and they are two of college football's absolute classics. USC and UCLA do it, no reason why we couldn't.

I will be there. This feels…

I will be there. This feels more like going to a concert than a sporting event. The main event is traveling in from out of town, you'll be there with a bunch of other local fans for one night only, and you know exactly what you're gonna get, risk free. It'll be fun and easy, and for that it's worth the money.

Shea!! Please be true!

Shea!! Please be true!

The Hackenberg needs to be a…

The Hackenberg needs to be a category as an ode to the 2015 Penn State/Temple game.

Temple won that opener 27-10 on the back of 10 sacks. If you give up as many or more sacks than points you score, that's a Hackenberg.

Michigan was close to a Hackenberg against PSU last weekend with five sacks. Only allowing a sad field goal would have done it, however the late TD slightly eclipsed that mark.

The primary goal of sports…

The primary goal of sports books is to maximize revenue, not to create even money on each side of a line. They mitigate risk by having efficient lines, but efficient lines do not always create equal money which is fine by them, as the real downside they need to protect against is large single bets from sharps that hammer an inefficency.

Lets look at the Purdue/MSU line from a couple weeks ago. Public money was heavy, heavy on Purdue. They'd come off the big OSU win and MSU had just been blown out by Michigan. Play-by-play modeling still showed MSU as a better team than Purdue which the sharps understood, yet the large majority of money bet on that game was on Purdue getting about a point and a half by kickoff. The line barely moved all week, only slightly in Purdue's favor, because the books didn't see any sharps making strong Purdue bets. We all know what happened.

Over time, the books will follow the sharps who are betting with much better information than the public, fade the public, and make more money than if they were just creating even money with lines. Efficient lines maximize revenues for them becuase sports books are the ultimate exercise in sample size. If the public wants to take one side of an efficient line that the sharps are keeping in check, the book will win that more often than not.

Line moves of that magnitude…

Line moves of that magnitude are relatively unusual but definitely happen with at least some regularity.

The biggest pieces of public misinformation out there on lines is that 1) big fanbases affect lines, and 2) the only goal of sports books is to even out money on both sides.

On 1 - if that were true, then over a large sample size the teams of the biggest fanbases would have to underperform the spread because of biases from the betting public. That is not borne out in the data at all. OSU and Alabama have (shocker) been some of the best performers against the spread in the last decade, and BYU has underperformed against the spread despite their fanbase largely abstaining from betting. There is zero emperical evidence to support fanbase size having any affect on lines whatsoever.

2 - This firm message board belief is the most frustrating trope out there for me personally and I've given up trying to correct people every time I see it posted, but it's just wrong. Sports books lines when released are accurate as to how they think the game will play out per the advanced statistical models they use, and are slightly adjusted in week due to betting patterns. The adjustments come more from large single bets (aka "The Sharps") than from large numbers of small bets that make up volume (aka "The Public"). The people who make a living betting on sports are very good at what they do, pay for insider connections within many, many programs, and run some of the best proprietary models out there to predict scores (and of course take note of models like S&P+). If there is an inefficient line, the sharps will *hammer* that quickly and leave the books very exposed. That's why you usually see big line shifts either quickly after a line is released or right before games are played, which is almost exclusively when sharps lay their bets. Changes in the middle of the week tend to be smaller, and are just slight scale adjustments coming from small volume bets from the public. Make no mistake, the books will take the public's money if the public is being dumb. The sharps are never being dumb. The overall volume of money is RARELY 50/50, and the books know what they're getting into.

It's a smart idea to take note of early and late line shifts. Mid week shifts are pretty inconsequential. If you see a line bet in one way both right after the spread is released and right before the game, that's a very nice sign for the team it's in favor of.

Good thing your made up…

Good thing your made up percentages mean nothing?

I don't know what you guys…

I don't know what you guys are talking about. Lorenz post-visit thinks Michigan leads for Crouch, that Crouch prefers Michigan, that his mom/grandma were won over, and that the staff believes they will sign Crouch. He is close to a CB.

Wiltfong also thinks we now lead, though Crouch has yet to take his Clemson official.

That's literally the only…

That's literally the only reason WTKA gives him a platform. 

Spanellis and Herbert say…

Spanellis and Herbert say BELIEVE IT

 

Rested, Fresh, Healthy: bye week edition pic.twitter.com/CzaF3mCL7x

— Stephen Spanellis (@Big_Spanellis78) October 23, 2018
If Auburn fires Gus both of…

If Auburn fires Gus both of these schools will be heavy after Brohm with cash. Tough for Purdue, though I could possibly see Brohm understanding the value of a weak Big Ten West and trying to stick it out through the Rondale Moore era to see what he can build. Definitely will be interesting.

The resume point is way down…

The resume point is way down the list. If we win out and win in Indy we're in the playoffs, period. Seed will depend on if Clemson and/or Notre Dame drops one. If we lose one more we'll max out at the Rose Bowl. Don't think transative wins and losses will have an impact.

I'd like to see Northwestern or Wisconsin more than Iowa or Purdue. Don't think either of the former teams would hang even close to us in a rematch, but the other two would potentially be a bit more dangerous (especially with playmakers like Purdue has on offense).

About to be? They literally…

About to be? They literally are right now:

 

Mark Dantonio is 17-16 in his last 33 games and is 10-12 in Big Ten play in his last 22 league games. He’s 1-2 vs Michigan and 0-2 vs OSU during same time. Program in decline.

— Thomas Beindit (@tbeindit) October 21, 2018
1. The Michigan head…

1. The Michigan head coaching job isn't a charity case. I love Michigan too, but when you're in that position it's not enough. The fanbase rightly has performance expectations that he fell far short of while raking in a lifetime's chunk of change.

2. He should have cared for the players. Devin Gardner deserved far better than that 2014 effort, there was no fire and no creativity at all. Just a mailed in season from the start.

3. If he really Would Have Walked To Michigan, he should have cared for the school. Gamedays were a shell of their normal selves that year and he took a lot of the spirit away from the University that Harbaugh has since restored. Recruiting does nothing for that when you're outwitted on the field.