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14 years 11 months
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Recent Comments

Date Title Body
Jurisdiction

$25,000 is the minimum jurisdictional amount to get into circuit court in Michigan (as opposed to district court), so the lawsuit will state he is seeking relief "in excess of $25,000" simply so the Court has jurisdiction over the case.  He is presumably seeking far more money than that.

BMI

BMI really doesn't apply to guys like this (indeed BMI doesn't work particularly well for men in general).

For example, I have Mike Martin's measurables at the combine at 6'1" and 306 lbs.  That gives him a BMI of 40.4.  Would you like to tell Mr. Martin that he's obese and needs to drop about a 100 pounds, or should I?

Straw man

This argument always strikes me as a bit of a straw man.  The NFL playoffs take 12 out of 32 teams for the playoffs (37.5% of teams).  For a proportionally similar playoff (and thus a proportionally meaningless regular season), college football would have to have a 24 team playoff (and that's if we're limiting it to BCS conferences).  Nobody is actually suggesting that kind of playoff.  Every reasonable suggestion is for somewhere between 4 and 8 teams. 

An 8 team playoff in college football (12% of BCS teams) would be like the NFL having a 4 team playoff.  In that case, the regular season would be incredibly meaningful.

Panthers

The Panthers have to be doing somersaults right now.

Boring Classes

Classes I routinely fell asleep in included:

Stats 350
Econ 102
ACC 271

And while I didn't usually fall asleep in EECS 183, that's only because I stopped going entirely in October.

Sweep

Announcer seems to think it was a sweeping fail, as opposed to a throwing fail.

Morpheus

Given that it's all a ridiculous hypo, we can create a situation to make this work.

Imagine Morpheus comes to you tomorrow and offers you two pills. Take the red one and you won't get laid for a year but Michigan wins the NC. Take the blue one and you continue to get laid at your typical frequency, but no guarantee of an NC. Whichever pill you choose you wake up the next morning forgetting it ever happened.

Note that it isn't that you opt not to have sex for the next year, it's that you simply won't get laid no matter how hard you try (Given that Morpheus can arrange a predestined NC, we'll assume he can control this as well). That way you don't wonder why you aren't having sex, you simply get frustrated.

Admittedly this scenario allows for masturbation but I think it's still an interesting question (and you could always tweak the red pill to be super-anti-viagra so that masturbation doesn't even work if you want to answer that question...although this would probably lead to some odd doctor's visits).

Big Ten

These alumni would make for a great bizarro Big Ten Commercial.

Oops

Sorry, misread the post. But I don't recall any interview offers from ND or USC either.

ND and USC?

I don't recall any reports that Harbaugh was ever offered either the ND or USC jobs (or indeed that he was ever seriously considered for either). Correct me if I'm wrong on that.

But assuming I'm not, that leaves the Bills and Raiders having been shot down, from which four conclusions could be drawn:

1) Harbaugh thinks those specific teams are both dysfunctional situations where it would be hard to succeed.

2) Harbaugh does not want to coach in the NFL (possibly just not now, possibly ever).

3) Harbaugh is holding out for one job in particular, presumably us.

4) Harbaugh loves Stanford and has no desire to leave.

My personaly guess on the odds of those is (1) = 40%, (2) = 20%, (3) = 39.9999% and (4) = 0.0001%

Money money

Going to go out on a limb and suggest it was because of money.

Quick google search yielded this:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/19710056

Looks like Adidas coughed up more dough.

Chance of Texas

I'm not sure I buy that Texas would actually join the Big Ten either, but I think this is a bit dismissive of the pros for them.

Mainly, the academics at UT would presumably all be massively in support of the move. The Big Ten is a much much better conference academically than the Big 12, and membership in the CIC is a big incentive for Texas. The comparison to USC is inapt on this point, since the PAC 10 has a number of other institutions on USC's level (UCLA, Stanford, Cal).

Secondly, the money difference is a lot more important than you're making it out to be. Obviously I don't know whether Texas would do better financially in the Big 10 anymore than you do, but presumably Texas would look into it and figure it out. And if Frank is right that the difference is $10 million a year, that's a pretty sizable incentive to consider making some new rivalries.

Ray's Red Hots

Thought you might want to know that Red Hot reopened as Ray's Red Hots. Have not been since they reopened, so I don't know if they continue to be awesome or not.

http://arborwiki.org/city/Red_Hot_Lovers

Geography

Here's what I don't understand: why do we all assume that the divisions would have to be geographically separated? I get that it's sort of the intuitive way to divide a conference, but don't things like rivalries and balance seem more important that whether we can draw a line on the map that neatly divides all the teams?

It's not like you can say that the travel would be a huge problem, because all of the teams have already been playing each other. Why would it matter if one conference was made up of (to pick teams largely at random) PSU, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, MSU and Purdue, and the other was Michigan, Ohio State, Illinois, Wisconsin, Northwestern and Pitt?

The only tricky part I can see is what to name the divisions, but presumably we can figure out something.

Map

Umm, you might want to get yourself a map there.

Larger Playoff

I think this argument misses that the point of all this (if you're someone advocating for a playoff, or even originally for the BCS) is to identify the best team. Not to identify the 2 best teams in the current system, or the 8 best teams in a playoff system. The argument is that you identify some subset of teams that you think might be the best team, and then determine who is actually the best through elimination games. Either 1 game as it is now, or a playoff system. (Of course you could separately argue about whether or not 1-game eliminations will properly determine the "best team" but that's an argument against the BCS and playoffs).

So, assuming we're going to use the current formula to identify a subset of teams, and have those teams play each other to determine the best team, is it logical to argue that if we increase the size of the subset, our chances of finding the best team increase?

At first glance, yes obviously, since we increase the chance that our subset includes the best team. This should be clearly true regardless of the system for identifying the subset. Regardless of how well you think the BCS formula works, it seems clear that, similarly, it's more likely that the "best team" is ranked among the Top 4 than the Top 2, the Top 8 than the Top 4, etc. (Indeed it's a mathematical certainty, since the Top 8 includes the Top 2).

The only thing that fights back against this is that the larger we make our playoff system, the greater the chance of the best team losing at one point, since it has to play multiple games, and thus the chance of a "fluke" increases (although one could argue that if there's really no "true" best team, we at least increase our chances of getting "one of the best"). That's the logic behind not increasing to a 64 team playoff (as many will point out that the Tourney doesn't necessarily give us the "best" team). It does not seem to me, though, that the chance of the upset by going to 8 teams, outweighs the likelihood that the "best" team is ranked somewhere between 3 and 8 (not to say that 8 is a magical number, I think Brian's 6 team argument makes some sense as well).

None of this is to say that the BCS formula is good or not. Just that the logic that "if the BCS works for 8 it works for 2" doesn't seem sound to me. The point isn't whether it identifies the best 8 teams or best 2 teams, it's whether that set includes the best team.

(this is what happens when I should be studying for law school exams).

McShay

Well, here's a mock draft the 2009 draft that he did in February of 2009 (obviously likely to be more accurate than the one he did now, since he actually knows the team orders in this one).

http://insider.espn.go.com/nfl/draft09/insider/columns/story?columnist=…

On my count, he got 8 out of his 32 first round picks dead on
He got another 3 picks within 1 slot of being right, and another 6 picks within 5 slots (He also correctly had Sanchez going to the Jets although necessarily had the slot way wrong due to the trade). And all in all he correctly identified 26 of the 32 players who would be drafted in the first round.

Personally, I think that's actually pretty damn good for a mock draft that was done in February, and a lot better than most of the mocks I see. Not saying this make Golden a lock to Miami, but I'll certainly take McShay's opinion over a random schmo's on the street.

(On a related note, I wish more sports writers/media sources would go back and see how accurate their predictions were this way).

Votes

1. Ndamukong
2. Gerhart
3. Ingram
4. McCoy
5. Spiller

Interesting sidenote

Interesting sidenote for anyone who was in school around 2003 or so. Check out who's reporting for the KC Star on the coaching search:

http://www.kansascity.com/166/story/1623907.html

It's our own beloved J. Brady McCollough, former Editor of the Daily Sports Page. I was a big fan of Brady's columns, and worked on the page my freshman year for a bit while he was the editor. Seemed like a good guy, and I'm glad to see things are going well for him.

Dombrowski

Yeah, I hate it when a GM takes over one of my teams and takes them from being perennially one of the worst teams in baseball to competing for division titles and winning an AL Pennant. Let's beat the crap out of that guy.

Other Wonderful MIT Pranks

Other wonderful MIT pranks include turning a building's lights into a Tetris game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmKgLp6L55c

Turning that same dome into R2D2:

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/wilson_tim/iphone/artoo_in_kill…

Texas v. TCU

I had been thinking that TCU should get the nod as well after watching Texas squeak by Nebraska, but then I looked at their results from the whole season, and I'm not so sure TCU has really "looked better" than Texas all year.

Now, I'll admit up front that I haven't had the chance to watch too much of either team this year, and if someone who has watched them play a number of games wants to tell me that TCU looks like the better team on the eyeball test, I'm happy to differ.

But just looking at their results, Texas has two squeaker wins against Nebraska and Oklahoma, with another two relatively close games (10 points) against Texas Tech and Texas A&M. Their other 8 wins were by 24 points or more.

TCU has two squeaker wins against Clemson and Air Force, and a close game against Virgina (6 points). There other 9 games were by 24 points or more.

I'm not saying that Texas's results are definitively better than TCU's, just that those results are pretty comparable. Which leads me to wonder if all the "TCU has just looked better" talk is mainly about expectations. We all expected Texas to roll through everyone in the Big 12, so a few close games made them look bad. Conversely, no one really saw TCU coming too much, so their close games don't look bad, and their blow outs look impressive.

I'd be fine either either team making the championship game, and I don't like the idea that Texas should be voted in simply because they're currently ranked higher. But looking at their results, I think Texas might get my vote even after tonight's (admittedly pretty bad) performance.

Note 1

Note #1: Recruit more kids named "Ndamukong"

Braylon

You left out signing Braylon who will be a restricted free agent after this year.

Academics

It's a fair point that Utah/BYU/TCU aren't doing nearly as much research as the big PAC 10 schools, but research is only one part of being a university, and education provided is important as well. And I don't know that Oregon State, ASU and Washington State are particularly major research universities either (note that I'm saying I don't know this, they very well may be, I'm just not aware of them being so).

Again, I'm not saying that BYU and Utah are at the level of Stanford, USC, UCLA or many other PAC-10 schools, I'm just saying I don't think a school like BYU would be laughed out of the room based on academics if they looked into joining the PAC-10.

Leftovers

Oh yeah, the other teams in those conferences would get totally screwed in this hypo, and would rightfully be incredibly pissed off. Just an interesting thought.

Academics

While I agree that these schools probably cannot really hang with the Pac-10 in most non-football sports, I think it's unfair to knock their academics. Based on US News Undergrad rankings (obviously just one measure among many) BYU is ranked 71 to Arizona's 102. TCU is ranked 110 to Oregon's 115 and Washington State's 106 . Utah is ranked 126 while Arizona State is 121. Oregon State is a tier 3 school. (Boise State only offers up to a Master's so it gets listed separately and is hard to compare, but admittedly probably falls well bellow these schools academically).

Obviously this is the lower end of the PAC 10's academics, since Stanford, Cal, UCLA, USC, and Washington are all vastly better than these schools. But I don't think they'd "laugh at" BYU, Utah, or TCU academically.

Separate Conference

I actually had a similar thought to this earlier this year, although I thought they should just form a separate conference altogether. By ransacking MWC, WAC, and C-USA you can come up with an 8 team conference of

Boise State
Utah
BYU
TCU
Air Force
Nevada
Houston
Tulsa

That conference seems like it could make a pretty strong argument it should be a BCS conference.

Cop-out?

Am I allowed to completely cop-out and give him an incomplete? If not, I'd say B.

Garbage time?

My memories of the game were different than yours, as I didn't recall at any point feeling like we had entered a "garbage time" situation. Checking ESPN's play-by-play of the game reveals that we scored our second to last TD 8 seconds into the fourth quarter, making the score 35-31 OSU. Certainly that's not garbage time.

Our last TD was scored with 2 minutes left on the clock, and put us within three points. That TD was almost certainly against a prevent D, but doesn't come close to "garbage time" given that if we'd recovered the onsides kick, we'd have had two minutes left and needed only a FG to tie.

First time for everything

This has to be the first recorded instance of someone seriously using the phrase "I was hoping Sheridan was gonna play."

DSU

I imagine Delaware State is a large part of that, which makes the stat at least a little less meaningful.

Misunderstood

The "he" in "who he thinks should be getting the ball" is referring to Tate, not Rich Rod. The writer's point was that while Tate has said all the right things about "what's good for the team," he clearly believes he should be playing at the end of the game. Which, a-duh. If either Tate or Denard DIDN'T think they should be in the game during crunch time, I'd find it disconcerting.

Schedule

And that potentially high-powered offense will be getting OSU and (I assume) Notre Dame at home, and avoid Penn State altogether.

Little

I think people are overplaying the "pressure on RR" angle of Martin's retirement. Martin is going to retire just before the 2010 football season, which means RR will certainly have next season before any decision would even be considered.

I'm pretty confident, given the direction the team is currently headed, that at that point we'll be back into contention for the Big Ten, and I cannot imagine a new AD firing RR after only three years if we're competitive. Secondly, the risk/reward to immediately firing RR doesn't make any sense for a new AD. Let's say the new AD fires RR after next season. We'd almost certainly have to go through a few more years of rebuilding, opening the new AD up to tons of criticism. Alternatively, the AD doesn't face any risk allowing RR more time, because he can always play the "RR was never my guy" card after a few more seasons.

Link

I debated including only the "print only" link, but decided against it due to the content of the article. My thinking is that when Sharp actually writes something positive, it's best if as many people as possible read it. If articles like this one actually draw a lot of readers, it's conceivable that Sharp will decide he doesn't have to do his constant negativity schtick in order to attract readers.

It's positive reinforcement. It's like giving your dog a treat when he properly asks to be let out of the house to go to the bathroom.

Chances

40 percent

4-1

I can't agree more. Losing to State sucks, clearly. But before the season I would have let you kick me in the nuts if it meant we'd be 4-1 at this point.

Second Half

As I recall the rain started at half time last year and didn't stop for the rest of the game. On the below "high"lights real, I count 3 fumbles in the second half.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v60HiLLo9fI&feature=related

Yes, we had fumbles in the first half as well (and admittedly those were the ones that really cost us the game) and I'm not disputing that we were generally a team that had a hard time holding onto the ball regardless of weather last year, and that we've been much better about it this year (knocking on wood). BUT I'm reasonable certain that it's harder to hold onto a ball that is slippery and wet than one that is not.

The D

My head tells me that rain definitely favors us, in part because of our running strength and MSU's lack thereof (as has been pointed out) and also in part because our secondary is clearly vulnerable, so the less passing MSU can do the better.

But all that being said, I just keep having visions of Michigan players fumbling the ball in the pouring rain at South Bend last year (before which I was saying the same thing about the weather favoring us). Clearly our players have gotten a lot better at keeping the ball in our possession, but rain is still going to make me nervous for a while.

Iowa

I enjoyed "65% of Americans Can't Locate Iowa on a Map"

Context

This largely misinterprets the actual segment, which was the 5 players most likely to win the Heisman other than Tebow or McCoy. I doubt very heavily that McShay thinks Forcier is the 7th best player in college, but it's a little less absurd to say he has the 7th best shot at the heisman (don't mistake me, that's absurd too, but it's less absurd), since we all know the Heisman takes lots of things into consideration that have little to do with how good the players actually are.

WR U?

Also, Braylon had 6 for 92, and Avant had 7 for 79 and a TD.

Week 2's Poll

The poll following Week 2 has one fifth place vote for Tate and Pryor has been dropped out.

http://espn.go.com/college-football/heisman/

Turned around myself

Yeah, I was adamantly opposed to piping in music when it was first talked about. But being at the game this Saturday really turned me around on it. The music did a wonderful job of getting the crowd to make noise. Obviously in an ideal world we'd make that much noise without piping in music, but anything that makes us louder is okay by me.

OSU

I'd lean OSU myself, but as an alternate suggestion consider a Michigan State pinata that is somehow rigged to come apart all on its own.

Heisman

Yeah they're talking about Barkley in that article, but mind you it was written before the Notre Dame game (although I'd still be pretty surprised if they mentioned Tate in the next)

Dogs

Speaking of dogs, hopefully they don't allow any dogs into the booth, getting under Brian's feet.

Darth Forcier Shirt

Clearly I would buy that shirt if it were made.

He takes three years, going

He takes three years, going to go ahead and call that a small sample size (I realize he does this in response to the original poster, who was clearly wrong, but I'm talking bout the whole Carr era). Check out the years before that (not including bowl games). We had one year in which we beat the spread pretty well, three where we broke even, three where we just missed, and three where we got killed.

2004: 4-8
2003: 8-3
2002: 3-9
2001: 6-6
2000: 5-5
1999: 5-6
1998: 4-8
1997: 6-6
1996: 5-7
1995: 5-7

Over the Carr era, we were -11 against the spread (admittedly only works out to -1 per year which is by no means terrible, but it certainly isn't good, and that's looking at every game, when really I'd argue you should only be looking at games in which we're the favorite, since that's when Carr's conservatism hurts against the spread).

Just to avoid any confusion, I'm not trying to knock Carr as a coach in anyway (I was a huge Carr fan). Looking at how he did against the spread would be a totally stupid way to judge his career. But in response to the question, we generally did badly ATS under Carr, and there's certainly a logic that suggests that will not be the case under RichRod.

Really, all that's somewhat beside the point, though, I just wanted to explain to Blue_Bull why a spread isn't necessarily set in such a way that every team should (in theory) be going .500 against the spread. There are always some teams that will do worse against the spread, because they're huge programs that many people bet on regardless of whether it's a good bet. Which is why, as jamiemac pointed out, it's hard to for a big program to be a "moneymaker" ATS.