Go Maggie! My kids swam with her for the London Aquatic Club and I have been watching her dominate in the pool since she was little. Hopefully she will not just win gold this year, but set a world record in the process. We wish her all the best! Go Blue! Go Canada! ??
I concur. The comments/board has gone downhill since the "old days." Yes I am a cranky old fart. I miss the actual conversations. Its now filled with the snarky and the "clever" whose claim to fame is they "dominated" a thread. I keep telling myself that once you hit the bottom of the page you enter the sewer. I am not sure why I scrolled, logged in or took the time to type this much. Its written down now so I might as well hit enter and get back to work and living a real life. Maybe I will shower first...
We get so good that when other teams start improving they say things like "Their starting to become the Michigan of the SEC" ... that is my outlandish expectation.
We have become in year two of Harbaugh a program in which every season is national championship or bust. There is only one acceptable outcome from this day forward in Harbaugh's tenure here. It is not a matter of when, but of how many will he win. "There can be only one." The Kurgan must be slain.
You cannot compare where the program is now to 2006. At that time a malaise was already beginning to settle into the program and we were on the long downward side of Carr's tenure as coach from the 1997 peak. Today the program is ascendant with Harbaugh at the helm. The feel is completely different.
As someone whose university years were in the late 1990's and can still remember clearly what it was like to win a national championship, clearly remember what it was like when it was our birthright to win at least nine or ten games and play on New Year's Day, this season is the first time in a long time where everything feels right again. It is wonderful to blow out a bad B10 team and then nitpick the ways in which we were not perfect. The only thing that is different is that rather than feeding off the ghosts of the past, Harbaugh is trully injecting a new life and spirit into this program.
Moderately interesting...nothing truly predictive, though. It seems that would require you to compare the average star rating of all your starters and how experienced they are with all the other teams and where those teams finished in terms of end of season rankings. This would give you an expectation of where you should finish and if you under or over perform your ranking.
Was never a big deal...wrote a few diaries back in the day...got cranky one day and had all my precious points taken from me...so now I just lurch these days...I remember Haloscan, the old site, the neg bang, the grammar police...all of it...I have a "day one" account too...
Yes. A couple of years ago I came to the realization that too much emotional investment in any team or any sport was just not healthy. If you cannot watch a game and move on with your life win or lose within...say...15 minutes after a game is done, you are in too deep.
This thread reminds me why I stopped swimming in the sewage that is now the MGBoard. Its good to get a reminder every once and a while. I am off to take a shower and clean off the stench.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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:
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":
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
You make a good point, and what you say is similar to someone complain that one blown play or one blown call by the ref cost them the game. What about the remaining plays? While what you say is true, as the season unfolded, the truth is that we did not win enough games when we needed to in order to control our own destiny on that last day by our play on the court. If we can point to a late season loss that cost us the outright win it was the egg we laid at home to Purdue. Champions don't lay eggs like that when all the marbles are at stake. We didn't win and as a result we needed help to secure a share of the title. Had we won at home on that day we could have been outright champs with an undefeated home record. The only team in control of their own destiny in terms of winning the Big Ten outright on that day was MSU and they laid an egg. At that point all that we and OSU could do by winning was gain a share of the title. We did win and we could not have had a share of that title without the win. But after that win, it still does not change the fact that we had to wait for our most hated rival to beat our second most hated rival in order to capture a share of the title. Not the best place to be in. At that point in the season we did indeed need help to win a share of the title. While securing a share of the Big Ten title is a great stepping stone for the program, we could have, should have had it all. For me it was bitter sweet success, knowing what could have been.
If you are expecting national radio personalities to love your team in the same biased, passionate way you do, that is not going to happen. The farther you get from the epicentre of any fan base the more perspective you get. Getting a share of the Big Ten title was an awesome stepping stone for this program and all the Beilein is doing to build the program. But when you pull back and step away from the emotion of our rabid fanbase, we had a solid but not great season. We had trouble at times winning on the road, especially against elite opponents. We needed help to get a share of the title. We needed one rival to lose and another to win and we were in a position where we had to cheer for our most hated rival. That is not an ideal space to be in.
As for Gottlieb, I hate to tell you this, but controversy sells. Radio hosts are not there to stroke the egos of passionate fan bases. They do not want nuance. They want bold opinions stated without any subtlety. If they can exploit Gottleib's own biases against Michigan to create controversy and sell ad time, then ESPN wins. By falling for it, Gottlieb wins and ESPN wins. Every time one of us starts a thread like this, ESPN wins.
The lesson in all this is to have perspective and not get caught up believing your own rabid fanbase hype. The other lesson is not to get bent out of shape when some national media host spouts what you see as outrageous opinions about your home team. That is what he is paid to do. The fact that you let you Gottlieb get you all stirred up, stirred up enough that rather that deal with his opinion as opinion, you instead attacked him as a person (He is Domer who got kicked out of school for stealing), simply demonstates that you are an irrational homer with no perspective. If his opinion is so idiotic that its not worth dealing with, then why would you spend time dealing with it?
Protip: Just because someone has biases, has youthful sins and indiscretions, and rubs you the wrong way does not mean they cannot be right. If they are wrong, they prove them wrong. Demonstrate it with facts and data (this, btw, is the heart and soul of what MGoBlog is about...proving that MSM types are idiots through the use of data...UFR anyone???). When you start ranting about how Gottlieb is a "hater" and making ad hominum attacks, you expose yourself as just another stupid, irrational, homeboy fan, not unlike your typical Bucknut, Sparty, or Domer.
Every time one of these Gottlieb or Cowherd is an idiot threads pops up, I end up feeling like we have embarased ourselves as a fan base.
Totally agree. Loved the old bowl system. Loved the idea that a #4 or #6 team had the hope they could catapult themselves to a title if they won and everything went their way. Used to be that two to four games had some meaning and all had tradition. And they were all on New Years Day. It was the best day of football bar none. The BCS screwed everything up.
I know there is no going back so I am willing to embrace the future, but one of the things I loved about the old way is that it was not definitive. The endless discussion of who was better was part of the fun of college football.
Recent Comments
Go Maggie! My kids swam with her for the London Aquatic Club and I have been watching her dominate in the pool since she was little. Hopefully she will not just win gold this year, but set a world record in the process. We wish her all the best! Go Blue! Go Canada! ??
wonder how long 'till we get a "good shit, Josh" GIF?
Bright spot? Pitching playing time to recruits?
TL:DR ... You need a life dude. Seiously. How much time did it take you to type that up. Does anyone really care? Wow.
I concur. The comments/board has gone downhill since the "old days." Yes I am a cranky old fart. I miss the actual conversations. Its now filled with the snarky and the "clever" whose claim to fame is they "dominated" a thread. I keep telling myself that once you hit the bottom of the page you enter the sewer. I am not sure why I scrolled, logged in or took the time to type this much. Its written down now so I might as well hit enter and get back to work and living a real life. Maybe I will shower first...
We get so good that when other teams start improving they say things like "Their starting to become the Michigan of the SEC" ... that is my outlandish expectation.
We have become in year two of Harbaugh a program in which every season is national championship or bust. There is only one acceptable outcome from this day forward in Harbaugh's tenure here. It is not a matter of when, but of how many will he win. "There can be only one." The Kurgan must be slain.
You cannot compare where the program is now to 2006. At that time a malaise was already beginning to settle into the program and we were on the long downward side of Carr's tenure as coach from the 1997 peak. Today the program is ascendant with Harbaugh at the helm. The feel is completely different.
Michigan 41 Indiana 6
As someone whose university years were in the late 1990's and can still remember clearly what it was like to win a national championship, clearly remember what it was like when it was our birthright to win at least nine or ten games and play on New Year's Day, this season is the first time in a long time where everything feels right again. It is wonderful to blow out a bad B10 team and then nitpick the ways in which we were not perfect. The only thing that is different is that rather than feeding off the ghosts of the past, Harbaugh is trully injecting a new life and spirit into this program.
Moderately interesting...nothing truly predictive, though. It seems that would require you to compare the average star rating of all your starters and how experienced they are with all the other teams and where those teams finished in terms of end of season rankings. This would give you an expectation of where you should finish and if you under or over perform your ranking.
Those were the days...Dex could slap down just about anyone...When there was still intelligent conversation on this board...
Was never a big deal...wrote a few diaries back in the day...got cranky one day and had all my precious points taken from me...so now I just lurch these days...I remember Haloscan, the old site, the neg bang, the grammar police...all of it...I have a "day one" account too...
Yes. A couple of years ago I came to the realization that too much emotional investment in any team or any sport was just not healthy. If you cannot watch a game and move on with your life win or lose within...say...15 minutes after a game is done, you are in too deep.
This thread reminds me why I stopped swimming in the sewage that is now the MGBoard. Its good to get a reminder every once and a while. I am off to take a shower and clean off the stench.
No. It is a Greek preposition that is sometimes used as a prefix.
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.
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.
I remember fondly the days of the negbang...when being a cranky poster actually carried some "risk."
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!
I hate to be the nudge, but it is five words: "What (1) is (2) up (3) with (4) Avery (5)?" :-)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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:
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":
...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.
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.
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.
I am glad someone said it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You make a good point, and what you say is similar to someone complain that one blown play or one blown call by the ref cost them the game. What about the remaining plays? While what you say is true, as the season unfolded, the truth is that we did not win enough games when we needed to in order to control our own destiny on that last day by our play on the court. If we can point to a late season loss that cost us the outright win it was the egg we laid at home to Purdue. Champions don't lay eggs like that when all the marbles are at stake. We didn't win and as a result we needed help to secure a share of the title. Had we won at home on that day we could have been outright champs with an undefeated home record. The only team in control of their own destiny in terms of winning the Big Ten outright on that day was MSU and they laid an egg. At that point all that we and OSU could do by winning was gain a share of the title. We did win and we could not have had a share of that title without the win. But after that win, it still does not change the fact that we had to wait for our most hated rival to beat our second most hated rival in order to capture a share of the title. Not the best place to be in. At that point in the season we did indeed need help to win a share of the title. While securing a share of the Big Ten title is a great stepping stone for the program, we could have, should have had it all. For me it was bitter sweet success, knowing what could have been.
If you are expecting national radio personalities to love your team in the same biased, passionate way you do, that is not going to happen. The farther you get from the epicentre of any fan base the more perspective you get. Getting a share of the Big Ten title was an awesome stepping stone for this program and all the Beilein is doing to build the program. But when you pull back and step away from the emotion of our rabid fanbase, we had a solid but not great season. We had trouble at times winning on the road, especially against elite opponents. We needed help to get a share of the title. We needed one rival to lose and another to win and we were in a position where we had to cheer for our most hated rival. That is not an ideal space to be in.
As for Gottlieb, I hate to tell you this, but controversy sells. Radio hosts are not there to stroke the egos of passionate fan bases. They do not want nuance. They want bold opinions stated without any subtlety. If they can exploit Gottleib's own biases against Michigan to create controversy and sell ad time, then ESPN wins. By falling for it, Gottlieb wins and ESPN wins. Every time one of us starts a thread like this, ESPN wins.
The lesson in all this is to have perspective and not get caught up believing your own rabid fanbase hype. The other lesson is not to get bent out of shape when some national media host spouts what you see as outrageous opinions about your home team. That is what he is paid to do. The fact that you let you Gottlieb get you all stirred up, stirred up enough that rather that deal with his opinion as opinion, you instead attacked him as a person (He is Domer who got kicked out of school for stealing), simply demonstates that you are an irrational homer with no perspective. If his opinion is so idiotic that its not worth dealing with, then why would you spend time dealing with it?
Protip: Just because someone has biases, has youthful sins and indiscretions, and rubs you the wrong way does not mean they cannot be right. If they are wrong, they prove them wrong. Demonstrate it with facts and data (this, btw, is the heart and soul of what MGoBlog is about...proving that MSM types are idiots through the use of data...UFR anyone???). When you start ranting about how Gottlieb is a "hater" and making ad hominum attacks, you expose yourself as just another stupid, irrational, homeboy fan, not unlike your typical Bucknut, Sparty, or Domer.
Every time one of these Gottlieb or Cowherd is an idiot threads pops up, I end up feeling like we have embarased ourselves as a fan base.
Linebackers
Totally agree. Loved the old bowl system. Loved the idea that a #4 or #6 team had the hope they could catapult themselves to a title if they won and everything went their way. Used to be that two to four games had some meaning and all had tradition. And they were all on New Years Day. It was the best day of football bar none. The BCS screwed everything up.
I know there is no going back so I am willing to embrace the future, but one of the things I loved about the old way is that it was not definitive. The endless discussion of who was better was part of the fun of college football.