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14 years 5 months
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Recent Comments

Date Title Body
Whistle was competent and…

Whistle was competent and fair today, can we have that crew in two weeks, please?

 

Okay, so it feels like…

Okay, so it feels like something critical is being lost in the shuffle, at least to me.

The Michigan community and some in the media have raised many valid points throughout this controversy, all of which I support and cosign. There are good arguments to to be made that Stalions' actions, if true, did not violate NCAA rules, and the Big Ten has ignored fundamental notions of due process in its rush to punish, just to name two examples. A deeper question, though, is why do so many people in so many places think what Stalions apparently did was "wrong," from a sportsmanship and ethical perspective?

View this through the various lenses of history, communication, and competitive risk/benefit.

For many years, teams huddled and a player (quarterback/middle linebacker) would actually decide what play to run on offense and how the defense would align on defense for each respective team. Evolution happened, coaches got more involved, sending in substitutes to deliver the play and giving signal-callers the ability to audible. The reward here is more flexibility to check out of a bad play call, the risk is that the audible (the communication) could be misunderstood by some on one's own team or its meaning deciphered by the other team. Plus the play-clock is always ticking, compressing the available time for processing and communication.

As further refinement, many modern college offenses operate "no-huddle". By choosing to do this, and it is a choice, they reap the significant benefits gained from playing up-tempo, locking defensive personnel on the field, making defensive adjustments difficult, etc. This choice also gives coaches greater control over play calling, as a no-huddle team will routinely get to the line showing a formation, see how the defense aligns, then receive communication from its coaching staff as to what play to run and/or how to re-align in the form of signals from the sideline. The play clock also tends to be much less an issue.

The inherent risks, the weak link, competitively, for a team choosing to operate this way lies in the communication system. Signals coming from the coaching staff through the sideline must be systemically simple enough to boil down complex information into communication symbols capable of being understood by 11 different dudes. No small feat. In addition, the signals must be coded so as to make deciphering them difficult, because the communication is taking place in front of the entire fucking football world! It's literally public communication, and a team using that form of communication has absolutely no reasonable expectation that its communication should remain indecipherable over any extended period of time. This is not Conner Stalions hacking into or "stealing" another team's private, proprietary information. This is not him electronically intercepting headphone conversations between opposing coaches or between a coach and players. As I understand it, this is him analyzing sideline footage capturing signals communicated, openly, to thousands of people at the venue and millions of people on television, of games that have, obviously, already taken place.

I'm sorry, but I'm having difficulty understanding what makes this "cheating" or unsportsmanlike. My bottom line is, if you want to reap the tangible competitive benefits of operating no-huddle, with plays called by the coaching staff and signaled-in, then you have to accept the inherent communication drawbacks and risks. You should also understand that you must be able to competitively counter those risks. Change your signals regularly, go to wristbands, huddle, free your quarterback to call plays. Hell, get diabolical and devise a system that uses your opposition's suspected reliance on knowing your signals against them.

Blindly expecting your incredibly visible, public communication system to remain inviolate game after game after game so you can blithely run your up-tempo, coach-called offense is competitive insanity.

If you got got, and stay got, that's on you.

 

 

So, on November 26, 2022:

1…

So, on November 26, 2022:

1. OSU was healthy, loaded with 4 and 5 star talent, with an experienced, Heisman level quarterback and a wonderfully talented wide receiver.

2. Michigan's running game had an injured Blake Corum for two snaps and Donovan Edwards playing with a cast on his hand, negating him as a receiving threat.

3. The day was perfect for offensive football, particularly the pass game.

4. OSU was at home, with everything to play for, including trying to atone for getting demolished in 2021.

5. OSU suspected that Michigan had their signs in plenty of time to change them.

6. OSU reportedly had Michigan's offensive signs and, based on their apparent relationship to Rutgers, probably had Michigan's defensive signs as well.

7. OSU lost by 22 points.

That's freaking delicious.

 

Two things:

1). I fully…

Two things:

1). I fully expect them to be better than last year, even though they may have less individual talent in the aggregate. They were often an incoherent mess on offense and defense, and definitely paid a price for having to play a freshman point guard big minutes. They were also both unlucky and collectively lacked confidence in close games. A basketball team can get better in lots of ways, some of which don't have anything to do with who left and who arrived.

2). Just want to vent about one aspect of Crisler for a second. I had good, lower-bowl season tickets for several years, through Amaker and early John Beilein. I love Michigan basketball and I went to every game. At some point (maybe after Zack and Stu's junior year?), just as they were really turning into something special, the Athletic Department re-seated the entire arena and shut me out of lower-bowl tickets. Not enough priority points, despite also being a graduate and having football season tickets for years. I knew more than a few fans that got treated the same way - still fairly unhappy about it...

I haven't been moved by…

I haven't been moved by anything like this post and these highlights in a long, long, time. Incredibly well-written and dramatic. Every single thing that's good about sports and team and passion and purpose. 

Thank you.

 

So, I missed watching the…

So, I missed watching the game live yesterday and just watched the replay.

I wanted to log in and complement Robbie Hummel's work on the broadcast. I think his analysis is fantastic. He's pointed, sharp, and just locked in to a bunch of subtle things that he's able to comment on in real time without dominating or interfering with the game flow.

Plus, he did yesterday's game as a former Purdue player, at a Purdue home game that Purdue really needed, on the day Purdue inducted him into its hall of fame (!), and was, as far as I can tell, completely objective.

Sorry if someone else made this point somewhere else...

 

favorite GIF

Has to be "Perry Hurdles Cord" - something about it strikes me as hilarious...

The Pride of Chesterton, Indiana, ...

.... Zack Novak.

stroke looks pure on the highlight video...

Obviously the coaching staff has earned the benefit of the doubt in their player evaluation and he looks like a great offensive fit.

What struck me most, though, was how all of that half-court offensive action looked like Michigan. There's just a bunch of little nuanced, timing-spacing things where I thought, "Hey, we do that! And that! And that, too...."

 

access to telecast

Sorry if I missed it, but can anyone help direct me to a link to watch last night's MBB game? I had a work commitment and I didn't get to see any of the game...

Wonderful, joyful article...

...beautifully, beautifully written. Sometimes sports really can be art and magic and transcendent. Thanks.

Hate MSU so much...

It's strange, but as more years pass, I find that I despise Michigan State much more passionately than OSU. I would like to see State's football, basketball, and hockey programs all shot directly into the sun. Metaphorically speaking.

I just can't stand the way all three teams play, there's seemingly very littlle art to any of it. They constantly push the physical/borderline-dirty enveolpe, daring the officials to make calls and knowing that not everything will get called, especially when they're at home.

I respect Izzo's teams but, yuck - playing against them must be like being in a street fight and playing for him doesn't look like much fun, either.

Their hockey team's style of play has been garbage for years - talk about wrecking the fastest game on earth. Trap, clutch, obstruct, hold, flip one at the net on occasion and try to win 2-1...

Their football program is a plague. Always has been...

 

 

 

Greg Mattison sighting...

...I think, at about 2:50 of that clip, right after the blocked field goal.

Comparing awfulness!

For me, Oregon was worse that the App. St. game. Putting aside the I-A v. I-AA divisional distinction, and App St. was probably something like the 50th-75th best team in the country. Maybe higher, maybe lower, but the point is that they were a legitimate team that Michigan overlooked, executed poorly against, then rallied and still could have won at the end. A bad, bad loss, but not historically bad if one removes the divisional bias. Oregon, on the other hand, left absolutely no room for argument that Michigan was still playing on anything that resembled an elite level. Oregon was just so much smarter, so much faster, so much quicker, and in such better condition, physically;  for the first time in my time being devoted to Michigan football, I looked at another program and thought: "They're doing things in a fundamentally better way than Michigan is, across the board, schematically, identifying and developing players, etc. It was awful. I honor and cherish the program's history, but want nothing to do going forward with an organizational regime linked to that history.  

decay

Couldn't agree more about how frustrating it is to hear people pine for "the good old days". For me the less spectacular, but better, example of how decayed the program's foundations had become is Oregon in 2007. Oregon came to Michigan unranked with a supposedly suspect defense. Michigan had experienced talent on both offense and defense, some of it NFL-caliber. Oregon did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. The final score was 39-7 but I'm convinced that Oregon could have scored 50-plus points if they had wanted to do so. Their first-half drive chart:

 

12:53 1 03:07 MICH 45 8 39 Field Goal Good
05:19 1 00:39 ORE 11 2 89 Passing Touchdown
03:33 1 03:22 ORE 23 11 45 Field Goal Missed
12:44 2 02:11 ORE 25 11 75 Rushing Touchdown
07:06 2 03:25 ORE 20 9 80 Rushing Touchdown
03:11 2 00:08 ORE 39 1 61 Passing Touchdown
00:24 2 00:24 ORE 8 1 -2 End of Half

That game, to me, cemented home how far Michigan truly was away from playing elite-level football.

Is NMU in, regardless?

I have a question for the Pairwise experts - is Northern Michigan in the NCAA tournament regardless of the outcome of tonight's game?

Illinois issues?

I haven't had a chance to see Illinois play much at all yet this year, just a bit of the Ohio State game. Since they (and Northwestern) run a somewhat-similar offense to Michigan's, I like to see how other conference teams are able to defend them. They looked horribly overmatched at Ohio State. Has their problem been mainly offensive line play? If not, what's going on with them, offensively?

rollouts

Great points re: Forcier's height and throwing lanes. One thing I've been struck by is how accurate Forcier is rolling out, which, by definition, creates clearer lines of sight. Not only accurate, but thrown with touch, both short and intermediate-to-deep routes. Michigan may use this more as they encounter good defensive lines.

Punt-Run option

Michigan has not yet given Mesko the punt-run option that we saw a lot of last year. I think we may see this on Saturday and going forward for the rest of the season.