UMFootballCrazy

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Date	Title	Body
3 weeks 1 day ago	No.  It is a Greek	No.  It is a Greek preposition that is sometimes used as a prefix.
3 weeks 1 day ago	I hate to be a stickler, but	I hate to be a stickler, but the OP is not a meta discussion.  A meta discussion would have entered into a dailectic about the use of acronyms, their value and purpose.  Why do we use them?  Do they enhance communication?  Are they meant to create the impression that there is an inner circle of people who understand all the acronyms and the rest are left on the outside looking in?  Is having a discussion like this in fact a revolutionary act to break open the hegemony of the long time posters who understand all?  Is this the act of a defiant nooB who does not know his place? Those are meta topics.
3 weeks 1 day ago	Meta is a Greek preposition	Meta is a Greek preposition meaning "above", "beyond", "along with" and has come to be used in internet parlance to mean a discussion about the "situation" (German sitz im leben) within which a discussion is taking place.  Instead of simply discussing football, or recruiting or some such, a person starts to get reflective on the nature of football blogs or about blogging itself or about the nature of online interactions.  Meta discussions are a discussion of the things "beyond" or "along with" the discussion we are actually having.  Generally they are to be avoided like the plague.  People here just want to talk football and have little interest in what all of their football talk means or how it is situated within our social historical landscape.
3 weeks 1 day ago	I remember fondly the days of	I remember fondly the days of the negbang...when being a cranky poster actually carried some "risk."
28 weeks 38 min ago	Just watched that little girl	Just watched that little girl playing football...when is going to get her first D-1 offer???  Not only could she take and give a hit, but she had great patience as a runner, but had a nice stutter step and juke move...all together fun to watch!
35 weeks 22 hours ago	I hate to be the nudge, but	I hate to be the nudge, but it is five words: "What (1) is (2) up (3) with (4) Avery (5)?"  :-)
36 weeks 3 days ago	The two Devins?  Do like they	The two Devins?  Do like they do in grade school: Devin G. and Devin F.  If six year olds can figure it out on their own, you would think the MSM could manage it.  Perhaps it is too much to ask.
43 weeks 3 days ago	You are right, making a	You are right, making a public release such as you are suggesting is not something I would do, nor do I expect Hoke and company to do it either.  I would wait for the athlete to initiate, but make sure that he had an open door, even if just for advice.
43 weeks 3 days ago	I hear what you are saying,	I hear what you are saying, but the difference in my mind is pursuing them, recruiting them leave PSU and come here, that is "poaching" their players; and giving a player who choses to leave a new home where they can maximize their skills.  Poaching = same set of values that gave birth to JoPa.  Welcoming disillisioned PSU athletes is a way of making sure the players do not suffer because of JoPa.  I think we are not so far apart as we first thought.
43 weeks 3 days ago	I respectfully disagree.	I respectfully disagree.  While a relentless competitive drive is a good thing on the football field, and on the recruiting trail, there should be situations and moments that transcend or interupt that relentless desire to compete.  This is one of those moments where it is ok to step back and give the space needed for everything to transpire at its own pace without the vultures decending to pick over the bones of the program in the name of competitiveness.  If there is one thing this whole PSU situation should engender in all of us is a renewed sense of persepective.  It was the loss of persepctive that created the context within which these events transpired.  The relentless ego of JoPa and his drive to become the winningest coach ever beyond all reason, when it was clear he could no longer coach in the normal sense of D1 head coaches in combination of a desire to protect the reputation of the university and his "grand experiment" that allowed an abuser to abuse at least 10 young boys. For us to now say that "this is what happens as the fallout to penalties" is to turn a blind eye to the attitudes that made this happen.  These are not recruiting or improper benefits types cases.  This is a case where personal and institutional hubris allowed horrible things to be done to boys.  This is a case where winning was put ahead of their safety. This is a situation that requires us to curtail our competitive drive, or drive to win, to aquire the best athletes, to put one over on a conference competitor, and just step back and for one moment not focus on winning.  That same healthy focus on winning is on a scale that can metastasize into what happened at PSU if we are not vigilent in maintaining our perspective of things like football, coaches, and star athletes.  Sometimes it is more important to get mud on your face and not reach a record if it means doing the right thing. The act of immediately wanting to chase after the players on PSU's roster shows hints of the same lack of perspective that fueled the events at PSU.  Sometimes it is good to turn the lizard brain off for a bit.
43 weeks 3 days ago	I am of the mind that it	I am of the mind that it unseemly at best to talk about "going after" PSU players.  That this is major thrust of this blog's first respose to the NCAA penalties handed down is dismaying.  It would have been far better to say that we are not going to discuss the topic of poaching PSU players on the main page out of a sense of gravitas for the moment.  The desire to profit from the destruction of the PSU program is part of the culture that allowed these events to happen in the first place.  The person who sits on the sideline rubbing their hands with glee looking to poach PSU players is looking to profit from the sins of the PSU program, is looking to profit from the abuse of boys. I would think that the right thing to do would be to say that we are not looking to benfit from the misery inflicted on those boys; nor are we going to look to profit from the misery this has now inflicted on PSU and its football program.  We might add that if any of the young men involved in the program approach us, we will discuss with them whether or we are the best fit, and if they decide to come here, we will do our best to make this their football home.  The OP is in poor taste and does not fit the gravity of the moment.
52 weeks 7 hours ago	I know few here will like the	I know few here will like the comparison, but it has always struck me that there was a lot more similarities between RR and Weiss than most people care to admit.  This similarity is all the more apparent in the contrast between RR and Hoke.  We all remember the hubris of Weiss and his "decided schematic advantage."  It seems to me that RR was first and foremost a "scheme" guy.   I remember the early days of RR how we salivated over the system.  We were going to finally have a modern offence here and with the calibre of athletes who will just line up to play at Michigan because its Michigan and we will destory all.  But one thing that became apparent over time, especially as the team faltered is that scheme came ahead of fundamentals.  In the RR era the teams were fundamentally bad.  To me the similarities between him and Weiss have always amused me, except that Weiss may be a better recruiter.  Neither man really teaches fundamentals.  Its all about "installing their offence." Both men think their scheme and offensive genius will eventually win the day. Both have yet to prove themselves on the biggest stages of college football as head coaches.  The funny thing is that both Hoke and RR are "aww shucks" kind of guys.  But the biggest thing that stands out with Hoke and especially the defensive staff  is how they preach and teach fundamentals.  Also, they seem to sell the school ahead of themselves or the scheme.
52 weeks 21 hours ago	Now there is something I can	Now there is something I can agree whole heartedly with, although I believe you are kind in your estimates.  But if the OP's stuff is simply MGoClutter at best, what does that say about the 60%+ of the rest of the stuff it eclipses?  At least when they clutter up the MGoBoard, they don't promise us 101 piece series.  It is the scope of his ambitions, I believe, that garners the protests.  One louse post or two can be endured.  But when he promises to dominate the sidebar for 101 days, it crosses a line somewhere.
1 year 5 hours ago	Please, just stop.
1 year 5 hours ago	(No subject)
1 year 5 hours ago	Why?  For one, his account	Why?  For one, his account says he has been here since April 7 of this year.  Before one starts such an ambitious project, it might be wise to cool one's jets a bit, soak in the blog and its ethos first and see if this is the sort of thing users of this site would welcome.  He did not do that.  The scope of the project indicates that it is really all about the poster and his desire to post; rather than content that genuinely adds something to the discussion of Michigan football, or at the least college football.  His material is poorly researched and not well written.  It is content for content's sake.  One post of this type, we could tolerate, two perhaps, but when you indicate that you plan 101 days of this...that moves you into a different category: a nuisance This is why he is being down voted.  In the neg bang days, he could have been negged to the point where he could no longer post.  But alas, these are kinder, gentler days.
1 year 22 hours ago	Oh, I used to post.  Then, I	Oh, I used to post, and make a comment or two, back in the days when you could still neg bang, and lost about 2000 or so points in one flame war and some auto moderator penalizer or some such.  I have been kicking around here since the way back days, have a love/hate relationship with the blog, but in the end, imperfect as it may be, this is still the best place for UM Football news.  I even did the same thing, once, long ago, in a burst of enthusiasm, that the OP did; got chastized for it, saw the truth of what I was doing and stopped.  I used to post and interact more with the board, but it usually takes a bout of extreme boredom or procrastination to get me to even read, let alone comment on anything written in the side bar.  Always a sucker for expanding my X's and O's knoweldge, I clicked on College Football 101 expecting some sort of look into, you know, actual football.  Being the cranky sort, well, I reacted.  Now I just have burr stuck in my craw about the whole project the OP has started. Why not just ignore it?  I have work to do, work I don't want to do, and so being irritated at some Diary posting is what is filling my time untill deadline crunch motivates me to do said work...
1 year 23 hours ago	Awesome song.  Haunting.	Awesome song.  Haunting.  Soulful.  Great commercial.  The Tori Amos thing would have had my ears bleading before it was done.  Still, just enough, perhaps one or two other songs that I could actually listen to...if you want to clear the Big House you need but one song, play it over and over and over and people will beg you for the MMB:
1 year 23 hours ago	While the OP's enthusiasm is	While the OP's enthusiasm is laudable, the diaries have always been a place for well researched, well written, thoughtful pieces of some length and substance that required some real effort or special skill to produce.  Over the years a few select participants in this web site have generated consistently solid material and are worth the time to read and the space they take up on the Diary section for a day or three.  If he plans on writing 101 pieces, one a day, what he is communicating is that his content is more important than any of the other diaries.  Right now his two diaries, somewhat thin on content and research and somewhat off topic, occupy two slots of five on the front page diaries list.  Its selfish and rude.  If he wants to write a column a day on miscelaneous college football topics, he can toss them onto the MGoBoard which is a much more ephemeral place and better suited to this sort of material, or he can start his own blog and write to his heart's content. That said there are many other pieces that waste space in the Diaries, but they are one off works whose front page presence can be endured for a few days befor they are gone.  What raised my ire was the threat or promise of 101 of these pieces of fluff, one a day, every day, until the start of football season.  It brings to mind a scene from the digital cartoon, "Megamind":
1 year 1 day ago	Please...just stop this series...	...or stick it on the board where it will not constantly crowd out other good content.  If you want to post this much material, start your own blog.
1 year 2 days ago	This is good on a whole bunch	This is good on a whole bunch of levels.  If done across every sport, it might allow a small school like Calvin (btw, I did not see them on your list...no football program but they were D-III National Champs in basketball in the 90's) to compete in sports they are good at and focus there resources to be world class in niche sports like say hockey or rowing or swimming or fencing or track or distance running or volleyball or soccer or whatever.  It would allow you to pitch your school to top athletes and garner the exposure of competing against larger institutions.
1 year 2 days ago	This might even give someone	This might even give someone a reason to cheer for a directional school..."We're moving on up!" I love it!  It will never happen.  There is nothing that big educational instutions like less than actual accountablity for their results.
1 year 2 days ago	I am glad someone said it.	I am glad someone said it.
1 year 2 days ago	Before you waste any more of your time and ours...
1 year 2 days ago	(No subject)
1 year 1 week ago	The first MGoBlog Hall of	The first MGoBlog Hall of Fame class for football should be made up exclisively of our Heisman winners: Tom Harmon, Desmon Howard, and Charles Woodson.  Who is more deserving? After that there should be a number of years of old timers getting in -- there is a definite backlog -- and I think also we should do a two stage process of nominations then final voting.
1 year 2 weeks ago	The passer efficiency stat is	The passer efficiency stat is a good one, and one that is under utilized when talking college stats.  There was an article a couple of years ago at SI.com where they looked at the defensive mirror to that stat and found it was a better predictor of Super Bowl success that the offensive stat.  They called it Defensive Passer Rating, and it was an indicator of how well a team defended the pass.  The poorer that your oppenent's passer rating, the better you are doing on defense.  Over the last twenty five years, there was only a couple of teams that were not top five in defensive passer rating. What this stat did was disbuse the notion that good defense is built around stopping the run.  The better you can reduce the other team's passing efficiency, the more likely you are to win.  This stat did not care the percentage of run to passing plays.  You are just more likely to win if you can reduce the other team's passing efficiency.  What would be interesting is that with the greater variance of offences in college football, if the same stat bears out.  My guess is that it does and that no matter how good your run based offense is, you still have to pass the ball well to win.
1 year 2 weeks ago	I could not agree more. Case	I could not agree more. Case in point: Shannon Sharpe.  Before anyone opens their mouth about player safety they should take a few minutes and watch this video from NFL Films about Sharpe: http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-hall-of-fame/09000d5d8212e78c/Sharpe-Focus-The-demons-inside  http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-hall-of-fame/09000d5d8212e50e/Sharpe-Focus-The-college-years  http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-hall-of-fame/09000d5d8212ea70/Sharpe-Focus-Finding-his-way   http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-hall-of-fame/09000d5d8212ea73/Sharpe-Focus-The-culmination  Just because too many cannot manage the money and fame, does not mean there are not dozens of kids who would put in the work and take the risks to make it to the NFL for their shot to do for their grandma what Sharpe has been able to do for his.
1 year 7 weeks ago	Seriously.  Please tell me	Seriously.  Please tell me you are not that clueless or ignorant.  Athlon has been producing sports annuals since before the internet.  There pre-season previews and rankings used to be one of the main ways that you prepared for the college football season.  When the Athlon pre-season guide hit the shelf it meant that football season was almost about to start and it was how you briefed yourself on every team in college football.  There would be a multi-page spread for the top 25 teams and one page write ups for the rest of D1 football.
1 year 7 weeks ago	What is with the three yellow	What is with the three yellow Adidas stripes on the home jerseys?  I notice some had them and some not.  Is this a new thing?  I know we have begun the slipery slope of novelty jerseys, but letting the home jersey become an Adidas billboard might be a bit much.

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