He was probably the second best QB in the Big Ten last year. He isnt a first round pick, but with a good defense he was better than Cade and played toe-to-toe with the best team in the country, one of the big ten's best teams ever, and one of the best defenses ever. Dont know why he left, but I don't think OSU had a clear upgrade there.
Also, I feel like Cuse can and should be good. Penn St is the NE's Big Ten team and has effectively leveraged that. But Cuse should fill that void in the ACC/B12 space. I guess Pitt has? Cuse should be at least at the Pitt/Rutgers(!) level.
This. Mason Graham was poorly rated. OL/DL are the most important positions on the field and typically the hardest to project. Stars matter and they have limitations. That said - getting the best players wins. And money goes a long way to doing that. The As used to, and now the Rays have, found ways to be contenders with low payrolls. The Yanks and Sawx sometimes miss, but its still easier to win like the Yanks and Sawx and Dodgers than like the Rays.
Im not a soccer fan, but to put it another way, Leicester winning the British premier league was a revelation, but usually its the highest payrolls competing to win. The Champions League winner is rarely, if ever, a low payroll club, right? There's no shame in being a fan of a low payroll team, but there's no extra pride in it either - and there's no reason Michigan should be acting like the Tampa Bay Rays when we have the resources of the Damn Yankees. (As do the As, for that matter).
The last yime they went to Indy, the Big Ten changed the rules to get them in. The last time we went to Indy, the big ten changed the rules to try to keep us out.
We all should dunk on them for "winning the off season" talk, especially when they ran off a decent QB because he wasnt CJ Stroud...but NIL/fundraising does appear to be a bigger part of the game behind the game moving forward. It is a new aspect of recruiting. M's roster maybe surprised Ari Wasserman - but stars do matter.
They still have to win on the field, they dont really scare me like in years past. But if theyve got a solid operation on fundraising and recruiting, they will never be vanquished, and we should keep notes about it.
They could have done other things, but to be offended by how it was done takes effort.
Further, as incredibly important as WW1 was to Americans and Europeans, its impact on Africa and Asia was far less direct, and its effects on Latin America even less so. For a rant about American solipsism to advocate embracing a Eurocentric approach is not a surprise. "World" history is often taught from a European perspective around the world. There are many valid criticisms of American perspectives and closr mindedness, but this particular criticism lacks self awareness.
You've got your history twisted a bit - it was changed in America drom Armistice Day to Veteran's Day after WW2 to be more inclusive, and recognize another conflict that also killed tens of millions and shaped humanity. As there was already a long tradition in America of Memorial Day (treated similar to Dia de los Muertes, and had sometimes been called Decoration Day for decorating the graves of the fallen), and Armistice Day celebrations featured major gatherings of Veterans, it seemed appropriate.
If it's gross to you I acknowledge your feelings, but understand it's really not about you.
Yea like the program coached by the NFL's winningest active HC and had more NFL draft picks than anybody else not including major contributors DE, Rod Moore, Will Johnson, Mason Graham or Kenneth Grant - clearly the only explanation for their success was cheating.
Despite them very clearly unable to for half the season. And the impacts of that cheat being equivalent to what their opponents did. Its the only explanation for 15-0, even if it makes zero sense upon further examination.
This is true but also setting rhe level at Big Ten/SEC is a new and annoying metric. Go to Berkeley on gameday - the campus is still abuzz, and produced the likes if Beast Mode and Aaron Rodgers quite recently. And even if Stanford cares a lot about their other sports and cares less than the Big Ten about football - they still almost certainly care more about football than everything else, because this is America and people care about FB and then basketball and sowmtimes baseball and/or hockey.
Just because Fox/ESPN have turned CFB into a stupid game of risk doesnt mean fans have to blindly obey. Let smaller resourced schools enjoy their nice things, including FB.
One the many things I loved about sports as a kid was literally being outside - in the sun or rain, smelling the grass. And as others note I think this is overstated. But - it's not just about FB and the SB. If youre building a stadium on Chicago's lake shore, its a significant cost. 8 FB games/yr plus a SB can prolly recover it - but you want a profit. So you build a stadium that can also host Beyonce in January, the Final Four, and cirq du soleil on tour. A domed stadium makes a lot of sense
But while it doesnt make sense, shivering for Braylonfest until the crowd suddenly got energy and we all warmed up - or seeing the swirling storm as Michigan FINALLY vanquished Ohio. you cant measure it in dollars or sense. You just gotta FEEL it
I know the answer is economics, butu feel like culturally the G5 are more like FCS than Power 5, except with more TV exposure (hence, MACtion). I think the exceptions are the American and the Mtn West 10 years ago. But the rest splitting off is fine. I'll still watch intermittently
Yea, I think one of the dynamics of signs gate is that OSU was just not used to being #2 in the league, and so was convinced that it had to be nefarious and hired their PI. And because in the early 2010s their main competition were MSU and Wisconsin - schools whose run at the top was relatively recent and then ended by 2020 - and PSU and M had a down period then, rhere was this idea that "OSU is permanent."
Long story short, everyone was willing to carry OSU's water because theyd won the only nattys for the league in the BCS/CFP era. I think M winning the natty - and not just winning it, but legitimately putting together one of the Big Ten's best seasons ever, easily the best of the BCS/CFP era - well it changes that dynamic, but not before a lot of bad blood was spilled.
Ironically M's season probably gave Pettiti the ammo to throw his weight around in setting up the CFP. But his actions, along with Delaney's and Warren's, have made the conference less cohesive, if more profitable and powerful. My hot take is it wont last long into the 2030s, next round of TV deals will see something weird happen
NHL - LA, bruins. (Not LV, they're cool but their unis and name are generic)
Baseball - nobody. We need more colorful uniforms like the 70s, but at least the hats and socks should be colorful. The white sox have worn black for a generation. That nickname is infamous. They could pull off white sox and black pants (but itll prolly be hot). But yea black is mostly lame on rhe diamond.
College - maybe TT, makes me think of crabtree. Colorado and Purdue and Iowa too. Thats about it.
Black in my mind has become like white - for most teams, a generic accent/contrast uniform. Its better than a gray jersey I guess. But I think unless you kinda commit all in to black, like the raiders and steelers and Texas Tech - it feels very generic to wear a black jersey.
Looks great, but dilutes your identity. Same is true of white alternates (Cleveland most notably).
Lions should wear blue. Maybe black against other blue teams, and even then on the road and against light blue teams - so, the chargers. Otherwise it's meh.
If we beat one of Texas, Oregon or Washington (toughest non Ohio road game) and dont drop anything else before the game, I'll feel good. We've too many big question marks nn the passing game, and while the D looks stacked we did have a whilesale staff turnover there. Repeating as national champs feels unbelievable, and repeating as big ten feels like the edge of possibilities. Granted, this program has pushed its ceiling the last 3 years.
Ten wins and beat Ohio is what im hoping for this season. First look on Saturday. Go blue.
This is absolutely excellent. I do think the point about how the NCAA is just a useful shield is accurate. The problem is the people in charge, and they're mostly our ADs.
I also think that fans are impossible to please for athletic administrators in general. Are any of the professional commissioners popular? Who is the last AD Michigan fans liked? Pretty much all of us dont think highly of the last 3 Big Ten commissioners. I mean...they cant ALL be bad, right? Maybe the problem is us?
It's crazy that I dont even out the PSU wins up there but youre right - theyve become underrated in hind sight. The Erick All TD was destined to be the biggest okay of the season until the boys shocked us all and beat Ohio. The '22 PBJ game was hyped, and then we snuffed them out and announced our arrival into the top 5. The '23 game had the signs drama, and ended with Moore declaring his love for his coach and this university.
Before 2021, we were peers with PSU, except theyd managed to get to Indy and win it once. From '21 onwards, they were firmly in 3rd place in the league, and yet that series is an aftethought because we'd soared to heights they cant really remember, and even OSU has only distant memories of now.
The Rose Bowl may actually be the biggest M win of all time.
'21 Game changed the narrative around the program, '22 solidified it, and '23 was probably the biggest version of The Game ever - altho it's hype going in was different than its imoortance jn hindsight, where its importance was elevated by M winning the natty. So '21 and '23 are great candidates
But beating Nick Saban's Alabama in the Rose Bowl, our first out-of-conference top 5 win since 1950, and paving the way for our second ever undisputed natty? Thats it
Long but good. Thinking and googling about it, 240 is the second highly composite number that is divisible by 16, 2^4, so it has an advantage over other highly composite numbers (the first is 48, which is way too small). Id have preferred 144 but 240 is an excellent choice
If we played 17 games to determine the Big Ten champ, then I'd agree with them. And be worried about player safety, but seriously not the way ADs and Conference Commissioners claim to be.
I hope you don't mind me responding to your responses, but I think all 3 of these are worth talking about
1) The death of the Big East was a big deal and thought of as such at the time. The little brothers of the conference were left in a limbo for 10 years until the final denouement. It ended up that all the schools from the '90s found P5 landing spots, except for Temple who'd been kicked out. The '00s Big East added 4 schools, with L'Ville ending up in the ACC and the other 3 left outside the power structure for FB for the next 10 years. It ended up mostly ok for everyone from the '90s, except that nascent rivalries were shoved aside or ignored (most notably the Backyard Brawl). It's hard to say how much NE CFB is ignored because the Big East is gone and it's schools scattered to other regional conferences and how much it's ignored because they've all been poor on the field. But I don't want to underrate this.
But the Pac12 was a bigger deal. True, Miami leaving the Big East was as big a deal as USC leaving the Pac12. But the remaining schools - ASU, CU, UW, and even Stanford and Cal all had proud football histories. UW and CU had won national titles in the early '90s, ASU came minutes away from doing it in 1996, Stanford had recently been a regular feature in the top 5. And Oregon is a touchstone of the sport, one of the most consistent top10 programs over the last 20 years. The Big East basically formed in 1990 from a bunch of independents wanting to make a TV deal together. The Pac12 had its roots with the 6 northwestern schools forming a league before the end of WW!, and the SoCal schools banding with them before the Great Depression. You are right to feel this one was different
2) For me, personally, the Big Ten conference died in 2014. The B1G era saw the East and West as nearly different leagues with different identities and prestige. At first I was sad that we weren't in regular competition with the western schools. Then I got used to it. Then the conference raided the Pac12 and shortly after tried to sabotage our season, so i really stopped caring for and rooting for the conference as a whole. The Big Ten is behind the trends I find most distasteful in college sports, so I bear it some ill will. It's identity is no longer Midwestern colleges that banded together for culture and geography. It's Tony Pettiti.
Maybe that will change, time heals wounds, the institutions do have a lot of commonalities despite geographic distances - but 1/3 of the conference is now definitively not Midwestern . Our standings will involved teams we haven't played and have few common opponents with. And I still bear some enmity for the way the league handled sign-stealing. But in my mind we didn't just kill the Pac12, the Big Ten also has lost its way.
3) it does suck, a lot. Not just for them, but for all of us that love this sport. I don't mind the big guys getting more money for bringing more eyeballs. But college sports without the smaller cinderella programs is less fun. Small college towns in out of the way places make this game more fun.
This was a great post of the feelings swirling around this. A couple thoughts
1) the pac12's demise hits different than the big east, because the big east was an amalgamation from the start, held together by Miami. Also, weirdly, most of the big east ended up in the ACC. Poor damn WVU. Lucky damn Rutgers. Temple had already been kicked out.
2a) Also, the Pac12's end is the end of regionalism in CFB, as you mention
2b) but it's also the end of the big ten as a Midwestern league. Maybe that already happened with Rutgers and Maryland. But it is complete now
3) I hate the super 2 era, I hate the idea of college sports being NFL lite. But nationalized conferences for a nationalized game doesn't have to be bad. As you touch on, the special thing about college basketball and football is that there are true Cinderellas who shock us. The nationalized conferences are scary and different, but the true killer here is shutting out the Wazzus and continuing to shut out Boise State and trying to prevent the next Miami or even Gonzaga on the CBB side. The problem isn't national conferences, it's the SEC and Big Ten closing the door to everyone else.
They made some poor business decisions, but it's crazy that basically one unfortunate ten year run basically doomed the conference. In 2013, most of us figured there would be 3-4 conferences, and the Pac12 would be the Pac16. Even in 2023, the Pac12-2 had the bigger brands than the latest Big12, the bigger markets, and programs with more historic success.
Yes it was mismanagement that led the west coast to become an outpost for Eastern conferences. But it wasn't decades of mismanagement - it was a ten year period, and then dramatically at the end a few key programs decided it was better to be part of the Eastern conferences than mainstays in a western one.
I guess the one NFL decision I wish they'd changed was to keep the Dolphins in the AFC East instead of the Colts. I think the AFC South feels very hodge-podge, with the two closest teams being the Colts and the Titans. I know the Dolphins had "historic" rivalries with the Jets, but I think Fins-Jags could've been a great North Florida-South Florida rivalry, and the Colts wouldn't have felt out of place in the AFC East - whereas everyone feels out of place in the AFC South.
Maybe also flip the Bucs to the AFC with the Titans - making the NFC South very Atlanta-specific. Then Houston absolutely looks like the odd-man out of the AFC South tho, sorta like WVU in the Big 12 the last decade. So i'm less into that one. And the NOLA-Atlanta rivalry is real. Maybe flip the Panthers and Texans? So the Panthers-Titans become a "new south" rivalry? I dunno. NFC South is great, AFC south is so hodgepodge. Feels wrong to take anybody out of the NFC South and somehow everyone in the AFC South feels like the castoffs thrown into a stew. Dolphins for Colts could've given the AFC South more of an identity, maybe?
that's interesting - I actually think they have the most utility in the NFL, because of the way the schedule, even at 18, disallows you from playing everyone.
you make a good point - that familiarity breeds contempt, and playoff chases/pennant races make rivalries happen. But to counter, most soccer leagues have an everyone-plays-everyone setup, but still have fierce rivalries, right? (i'm not a real big soccer fan so I may have the details misunderstood)
to flesh this out slightly - the NBA season is currently ~25 weeks long, with its teams playing slightly less than a game every other day. NHL is ~27 weeks long, and they play a game about every 2.3 days - so in a week you'd still expect 3-4 games for both. Slightly more often, 4 games in bball, 3 in hockey.
If you did home-and-home in basketball with everyone, that's 58 games. the remaining 24 games, you could do either simply do 6 games against the rest of your division (3 home 3 away against each), or cut that number to 2 or 4 and fill the rest up with the in-season tourney. Maybe on Thursday-to-Sunday, you'd play the "league" games, and Monday-to-Wednesday you'd play the division/tourney games. Or you focus the division games before Christmas and it could be tied to the in-season tourney, or delay the in-season tourney's championship to the All-Star break and still tie it to the division. A similar setup would work for the NHL.
In baseball, you could do a similar thing but I don't think fans crave more single elimination baseball in the dog days of summer. I think instead you could split the season in two - one focused on the division, and then one take all the pennant winners to play for another pennant, where everyone else plays to get into the postseason. The 30 teams would have to be split into divisions of 6, or expansion would have to happen, so that's a more fundamental change. But I kinda hate watching a 100+ game winner lose in October and be called choke artists while a team barely over .500 gets to play in the WS because somehow baseball in cold October nights matters "more" than the 162 games played in nice weather. Playoff baseball is exciting, but it doesn't matter more.
My gripe is a little different but generally the same conclusion - I think in basketball, baseball and hockey, we've had 30-ish teams for 30-ish years now, and there's more than enough games to play a home-and-home series/game with every other team. I think divisions can be useful in having parallel competitions - like how in soccer, there's like 3 different trophies every year - but I think the fairest way to crown a champ is have everyone play everyone. Make up the difference in games with divisional trophies or with other "in-season tournament" type gimmicks. Finish the seasons with your grinding playoffs. But yea, embrace the league as a singular entity.
The NFL is a little different - there aren't enough games to play everyone. College sports, FWIW, should absolutely embrace the "play everyone" concept, and that should limit the size of the league. Saying that unveils my true ulterior motive, and now you see this whole post has been a ploy to return college football back to the ideal times. Except Michigan just won the natty so...I'm good with how it is. Carry on. The world is perfect.
The article touched on this at the end - games into play, play into games. I guess baseball is now more of a game than just play, and that's ok I guess.
I love watching sports, but I think the best games are ones that can be easily played in a disorganized manner. Soccer and basketball and even touch football have that. Baseball's roots are that way, but it's increasingly becoming too organized - restrictions on where you play, all star youth leagues preventing good pitchers from throwing to all the neighborhood kids, and long ago club teams being replaced by minor leagues.
I love stories about sports history and baseball was very much a club and community game that got popular from the ground up. But the club teams became minor leagues became owned by the MLB and then slowly suffocated. It's a beautiful game and I'm excited to read this article, and maybe I'm just old, but it kinda makes me sad that nowadays when you see kids playing baseball they're always wearing little league uniforms instead of just jeans and t shirts. At least beer league softball still exists. May it last forever.
Thanks for the recap, I'd seen the scores. It looks like the squad is improved over last year's, but not quite yet at the level of Big Ten contenders. The stat at the end is eye opening. 51st seems like the wrong side of the bubble unfortunately, but there remains time to get in there, right?
I'm sorta surprised that there hasn't been mention here or on the board of College Sports Tomorrow...but seeing as it's as unlikely to happen as any other message board idea (albeit slightly better funded and connected), maybe I shouldn't be
speaking of which - and obviously, it's been a busy off-season - but did we do a fall sports recap this year? i did love the fall and winter sports roundups last year.
sorry to request ore work from you Alex, but just consider it a compliment to your content and i'll go by the book.
Dang thanks for the update. This is great news. I'd remained hopeful after the non-con, but got distracted from the diamond the last few weeks with march madness and wrestling and hockey. So it's great to hear the team has at least looked much better than last year in big ten play.
I think the real solution is smaller conferences and that way we keep traditional matchups and rivalries but have room for variety - and all in the OOC scheduling.
Now if only Fox and ESPN consulted me before realigning CFB
Most teams are playing 10 P5 schools. Bama plays 9. Props on UGA for always having one big opponent and GT. PSU and OSU both have one season as lame as our last 2. I'm glad to see our last 2 look like an anomaly.
Anyhow my main takeaway is, Bama's schedule is easier over the 2 year period.
I don't get why they are averse to 4th and very long - punts are safer, you can go for it, you can fake it, send like a solid way to make the play after a PA relevant and safe
Man, 27 years! I know I'm old but wow this is a reminder. I didn't grow up in Michigan - but Red Wings-Avs was known as one of the premier hockey rivalries for kids my age. Sorta like Niners-Cowboys. Both those faded when I was in college in the '00s. Now, I wonder if college kids today looks at those pro rivalries the way I looked at Celtics-Lakers - I used to think, "how much of a rivalry can this really be anymore? Maybe it once was but now..."
I recently made an old man comment on a post about realignment. I still hate realignment. But damn, this post just made me realize how old I am. There are 26 year olds right now who think Wings-Avs is as relevant as ND-Miami or the St Louis Rams and the Greatest Show on Turf.
GT has exactly what UGA has in terms of location and resources, and 30 years ago had more fans too. Nebraska was considered unassailable at that time, and 20-35 years ago your narratives of Miami and USC were flipped. 15 years ago tho, USC was considered unassailable.
Everything we think about these schools is not immutable and timeless. Even Alabama and Ohio State have had down periods. Preventing the next Miami, Georgia or Clemson from rising because of a formula that doesn't even match the past is short sighted.
Recent Comments
He was probably the second best QB in the Big Ten last year. He isnt a first round pick, but with a good defense he was better than Cade and played toe-to-toe with the best team in the country, one of the big ten's best teams ever, and one of the best defenses ever. Dont know why he left, but I don't think OSU had a clear upgrade there.
Also, I feel like Cuse can and should be good. Penn St is the NE's Big Ten team and has effectively leveraged that. But Cuse should fill that void in the ACC/B12 space. I guess Pitt has? Cuse should be at least at the Pitt/Rutgers(!) level.
This. Mason Graham was poorly rated. OL/DL are the most important positions on the field and typically the hardest to project. Stars matter and they have limitations. That said - getting the best players wins. And money goes a long way to doing that. The As used to, and now the Rays have, found ways to be contenders with low payrolls. The Yanks and Sawx sometimes miss, but its still easier to win like the Yanks and Sawx and Dodgers than like the Rays.
Im not a soccer fan, but to put it another way, Leicester winning the British premier league was a revelation, but usually its the highest payrolls competing to win. The Champions League winner is rarely, if ever, a low payroll club, right? There's no shame in being a fan of a low payroll team, but there's no extra pride in it either - and there's no reason Michigan should be acting like the Tampa Bay Rays when we have the resources of the Damn Yankees. (As do the As, for that matter).
The last yime they went to Indy, the Big Ten changed the rules to get them in. The last time we went to Indy, the big ten changed the rules to try to keep us out.
We all should dunk on them for "winning the off season" talk, especially when they ran off a decent QB because he wasnt CJ Stroud...but NIL/fundraising does appear to be a bigger part of the game behind the game moving forward. It is a new aspect of recruiting. M's roster maybe surprised Ari Wasserman - but stars do matter.
They still have to win on the field, they dont really scare me like in years past. But if theyve got a solid operation on fundraising and recruiting, they will never be vanquished, and we should keep notes about it.
They could have done other things, but to be offended by how it was done takes effort.
Further, as incredibly important as WW1 was to Americans and Europeans, its impact on Africa and Asia was far less direct, and its effects on Latin America even less so. For a rant about American solipsism to advocate embracing a Eurocentric approach is not a surprise. "World" history is often taught from a European perspective around the world. There are many valid criticisms of American perspectives and closr mindedness, but this particular criticism lacks self awareness.
He starts to the left but then twirls artfully to the right. There is grace in his movements, as they unite left and right, unti clockwise snd countrr
You've got your history twisted a bit - it was changed in America drom Armistice Day to Veteran's Day after WW2 to be more inclusive, and recognize another conflict that also killed tens of millions and shaped humanity. As there was already a long tradition in America of Memorial Day (treated similar to Dia de los Muertes, and had sometimes been called Decoration Day for decorating the graves of the fallen), and Armistice Day celebrations featured major gatherings of Veterans, it seemed appropriate.
If it's gross to you I acknowledge your feelings, but understand it's really not about you.
My bosses typically give me veterans day off...after I show uo to work...if theu remember it's Veteran's Day
Yea like the program coached by the NFL's winningest active HC and had more NFL draft picks than anybody else not including major contributors DE, Rod Moore, Will Johnson, Mason Graham or Kenneth Grant - clearly the only explanation for their success was cheating.
Despite them very clearly unable to for half the season. And the impacts of that cheat being equivalent to what their opponents did. Its the only explanation for 15-0, even if it makes zero sense upon further examination.
Feel likethe american 7s teams have been pretty all right the last decade tho
This is true but also setting rhe level at Big Ten/SEC is a new and annoying metric. Go to Berkeley on gameday - the campus is still abuzz, and produced the likes if Beast Mode and Aaron Rodgers quite recently. And even if Stanford cares a lot about their other sports and cares less than the Big Ten about football - they still almost certainly care more about football than everything else, because this is America and people care about FB and then basketball and sowmtimes baseball and/or hockey.
Just because Fox/ESPN have turned CFB into a stupid game of risk doesnt mean fans have to blindly obey. Let smaller resourced schools enjoy their nice things, including FB.
One the many things I loved about sports as a kid was literally being outside - in the sun or rain, smelling the grass. And as others note I think this is overstated. But - it's not just about FB and the SB. If youre building a stadium on Chicago's lake shore, its a significant cost. 8 FB games/yr plus a SB can prolly recover it - but you want a profit. So you build a stadium that can also host Beyonce in January, the Final Four, and cirq du soleil on tour. A domed stadium makes a lot of sense
But while it doesnt make sense, shivering for Braylonfest until the crowd suddenly got energy and we all warmed up - or seeing the swirling storm as Michigan FINALLY vanquished Ohio. you cant measure it in dollars or sense. You just gotta FEEL it
I know the answer is economics, butu feel like culturally the G5 are more like FCS than Power 5, except with more TV exposure (hence, MACtion). I think the exceptions are the American and the Mtn West 10 years ago. But the rest splitting off is fine. I'll still watch intermittently
It's definitely a biggie :) or a "conference 'ship" for the non obsessed
4 other freestyle wrestlers from M made it
https://twitter.com/allbluedotfans/status/1781827870223933769?t=z2D9y1pRThsqAg9PZFz6iw&s=19
Yea, I think one of the dynamics of signs gate is that OSU was just not used to being #2 in the league, and so was convinced that it had to be nefarious and hired their PI. And because in the early 2010s their main competition were MSU and Wisconsin - schools whose run at the top was relatively recent and then ended by 2020 - and PSU and M had a down period then, rhere was this idea that "OSU is permanent."
Long story short, everyone was willing to carry OSU's water because theyd won the only nattys for the league in the BCS/CFP era. I think M winning the natty - and not just winning it, but legitimately putting together one of the Big Ten's best seasons ever, easily the best of the BCS/CFP era - well it changes that dynamic, but not before a lot of bad blood was spilled.
Ironically M's season probably gave Pettiti the ammo to throw his weight around in setting up the CFP. But his actions, along with Delaney's and Warren's, have made the conference less cohesive, if more profitable and powerful. My hot take is it wont last long into the 2030s, next round of TV deals will see something weird happen
Teams that do black well
NFL - raiders, steelers...ravens? Bengals
NBA - heat. Magic? AI era sixers
NHL - LA, bruins. (Not LV, they're cool but their unis and name are generic)
Baseball - nobody. We need more colorful uniforms like the 70s, but at least the hats and socks should be colorful. The white sox have worn black for a generation. That nickname is infamous. They could pull off white sox and black pants (but itll prolly be hot). But yea black is mostly lame on rhe diamond.
College - maybe TT, makes me think of crabtree. Colorado and Purdue and Iowa too. Thats about it.
Black in my mind has become like white - for most teams, a generic accent/contrast uniform. Its better than a gray jersey I guess. But I think unless you kinda commit all in to black, like the raiders and steelers and Texas Tech - it feels very generic to wear a black jersey.
Looks great, but dilutes your identity. Same is true of white alternates (Cleveland most notably).
Lions should wear blue. Maybe black against other blue teams, and even then on the road and against light blue teams - so, the chargers. Otherwise it's meh.
If we beat one of Texas, Oregon or Washington (toughest non Ohio road game) and dont drop anything else before the game, I'll feel good. We've too many big question marks nn the passing game, and while the D looks stacked we did have a whilesale staff turnover there. Repeating as national champs feels unbelievable, and repeating as big ten feels like the edge of possibilities. Granted, this program has pushed its ceiling the last 3 years.
Ten wins and beat Ohio is what im hoping for this season. First look on Saturday. Go blue.
This is absolutely excellent. I do think the point about how the NCAA is just a useful shield is accurate. The problem is the people in charge, and they're mostly our ADs.
I also think that fans are impossible to please for athletic administrators in general. Are any of the professional commissioners popular? Who is the last AD Michigan fans liked? Pretty much all of us dont think highly of the last 3 Big Ten commissioners. I mean...they cant ALL be bad, right? Maybe the problem is us?
It's crazy that I dont even out the PSU wins up there but youre right - theyve become underrated in hind sight. The Erick All TD was destined to be the biggest okay of the season until the boys shocked us all and beat Ohio. The '22 PBJ game was hyped, and then we snuffed them out and announced our arrival into the top 5. The '23 game had the signs drama, and ended with Moore declaring his love for his coach and this university.
Before 2021, we were peers with PSU, except theyd managed to get to Indy and win it once. From '21 onwards, they were firmly in 3rd place in the league, and yet that series is an aftethought because we'd soared to heights they cant really remember, and even OSU has only distant memories of now.
The Rose Bowl may actually be the biggest M win of all time.
'21 Game changed the narrative around the program, '22 solidified it, and '23 was probably the biggest version of The Game ever - altho it's hype going in was different than its imoortance jn hindsight, where its importance was elevated by M winning the natty. So '21 and '23 are great candidates
But beating Nick Saban's Alabama in the Rose Bowl, our first out-of-conference top 5 win since 1950, and paving the way for our second ever undisputed natty? Thats it
Long but good. Thinking and googling about it, 240 is the second highly composite number that is divisible by 16, 2^4, so it has an advantage over other highly composite numbers (the first is 48, which is way too small). Id have preferred 144 but 240 is an excellent choice
a dozen pence to a shilling was a great system. combining that with 20 shillings to a pound is where the nonsense was
If we played 17 games to determine the Big Ten champ, then I'd agree with them. And be worried about player safety, but seriously not the way ADs and Conference Commissioners claim to be.
I hope you don't mind me responding to your responses, but I think all 3 of these are worth talking about
1) The death of the Big East was a big deal and thought of as such at the time. The little brothers of the conference were left in a limbo for 10 years until the final denouement. It ended up that all the schools from the '90s found P5 landing spots, except for Temple who'd been kicked out. The '00s Big East added 4 schools, with L'Ville ending up in the ACC and the other 3 left outside the power structure for FB for the next 10 years. It ended up mostly ok for everyone from the '90s, except that nascent rivalries were shoved aside or ignored (most notably the Backyard Brawl). It's hard to say how much NE CFB is ignored because the Big East is gone and it's schools scattered to other regional conferences and how much it's ignored because they've all been poor on the field. But I don't want to underrate this.
But the Pac12 was a bigger deal. True, Miami leaving the Big East was as big a deal as USC leaving the Pac12. But the remaining schools - ASU, CU, UW, and even Stanford and Cal all had proud football histories. UW and CU had won national titles in the early '90s, ASU came minutes away from doing it in 1996, Stanford had recently been a regular feature in the top 5. And Oregon is a touchstone of the sport, one of the most consistent top10 programs over the last 20 years. The Big East basically formed in 1990 from a bunch of independents wanting to make a TV deal together. The Pac12 had its roots with the 6 northwestern schools forming a league before the end of WW!, and the SoCal schools banding with them before the Great Depression. You are right to feel this one was different
2) For me, personally, the Big Ten conference died in 2014. The B1G era saw the East and West as nearly different leagues with different identities and prestige. At first I was sad that we weren't in regular competition with the western schools. Then I got used to it. Then the conference raided the Pac12 and shortly after tried to sabotage our season, so i really stopped caring for and rooting for the conference as a whole. The Big Ten is behind the trends I find most distasteful in college sports, so I bear it some ill will. It's identity is no longer Midwestern colleges that banded together for culture and geography. It's Tony Pettiti.
Maybe that will change, time heals wounds, the institutions do have a lot of commonalities despite geographic distances - but 1/3 of the conference is now definitively not Midwestern . Our standings will involved teams we haven't played and have few common opponents with. And I still bear some enmity for the way the league handled sign-stealing. But in my mind we didn't just kill the Pac12, the Big Ten also has lost its way.
3) it does suck, a lot. Not just for them, but for all of us that love this sport. I don't mind the big guys getting more money for bringing more eyeballs. But college sports without the smaller cinderella programs is less fun. Small college towns in out of the way places make this game more fun.
This was a great post of the feelings swirling around this. A couple thoughts
1) the pac12's demise hits different than the big east, because the big east was an amalgamation from the start, held together by Miami. Also, weirdly, most of the big east ended up in the ACC. Poor damn WVU. Lucky damn Rutgers. Temple had already been kicked out.
2a) Also, the Pac12's end is the end of regionalism in CFB, as you mention
2b) but it's also the end of the big ten as a Midwestern league. Maybe that already happened with Rutgers and Maryland. But it is complete now
3) I hate the super 2 era, I hate the idea of college sports being NFL lite. But nationalized conferences for a nationalized game doesn't have to be bad. As you touch on, the special thing about college basketball and football is that there are true Cinderellas who shock us. The nationalized conferences are scary and different, but the true killer here is shutting out the Wazzus and continuing to shut out Boise State and trying to prevent the next Miami or even Gonzaga on the CBB side. The problem isn't national conferences, it's the SEC and Big Ten closing the door to everyone else.
They made some poor business decisions, but it's crazy that basically one unfortunate ten year run basically doomed the conference. In 2013, most of us figured there would be 3-4 conferences, and the Pac12 would be the Pac16. Even in 2023, the Pac12-2 had the bigger brands than the latest Big12, the bigger markets, and programs with more historic success.
Yes it was mismanagement that led the west coast to become an outpost for Eastern conferences. But it wasn't decades of mismanagement - it was a ten year period, and then dramatically at the end a few key programs decided it was better to be part of the Eastern conferences than mainstays in a western one.
I guess the one NFL decision I wish they'd changed was to keep the Dolphins in the AFC East instead of the Colts. I think the AFC South feels very hodge-podge, with the two closest teams being the Colts and the Titans. I know the Dolphins had "historic" rivalries with the Jets, but I think Fins-Jags could've been a great North Florida-South Florida rivalry, and the Colts wouldn't have felt out of place in the AFC East - whereas everyone feels out of place in the AFC South.
Maybe also flip the Bucs to the AFC with the Titans - making the NFC South very Atlanta-specific. Then Houston absolutely looks like the odd-man out of the AFC South tho, sorta like WVU in the Big 12 the last decade. So i'm less into that one. And the NOLA-Atlanta rivalry is real. Maybe flip the Panthers and Texans? So the Panthers-Titans become a "new south" rivalry? I dunno. NFC South is great, AFC south is so hodgepodge. Feels wrong to take anybody out of the NFC South and somehow everyone in the AFC South feels like the castoffs thrown into a stew. Dolphins for Colts could've given the AFC South more of an identity, maybe?
that's interesting - I actually think they have the most utility in the NFL, because of the way the schedule, even at 18, disallows you from playing everyone.
you make a good point - that familiarity breeds contempt, and playoff chases/pennant races make rivalries happen. But to counter, most soccer leagues have an everyone-plays-everyone setup, but still have fierce rivalries, right? (i'm not a real big soccer fan so I may have the details misunderstood)
to flesh this out slightly - the NBA season is currently ~25 weeks long, with its teams playing slightly less than a game every other day. NHL is ~27 weeks long, and they play a game about every 2.3 days - so in a week you'd still expect 3-4 games for both. Slightly more often, 4 games in bball, 3 in hockey.
If you did home-and-home in basketball with everyone, that's 58 games. the remaining 24 games, you could do either simply do 6 games against the rest of your division (3 home 3 away against each), or cut that number to 2 or 4 and fill the rest up with the in-season tourney. Maybe on Thursday-to-Sunday, you'd play the "league" games, and Monday-to-Wednesday you'd play the division/tourney games. Or you focus the division games before Christmas and it could be tied to the in-season tourney, or delay the in-season tourney's championship to the All-Star break and still tie it to the division. A similar setup would work for the NHL.
In baseball, you could do a similar thing but I don't think fans crave more single elimination baseball in the dog days of summer. I think instead you could split the season in two - one focused on the division, and then one take all the pennant winners to play for another pennant, where everyone else plays to get into the postseason. The 30 teams would have to be split into divisions of 6, or expansion would have to happen, so that's a more fundamental change. But I kinda hate watching a 100+ game winner lose in October and be called choke artists while a team barely over .500 gets to play in the WS because somehow baseball in cold October nights matters "more" than the 162 games played in nice weather. Playoff baseball is exciting, but it doesn't matter more.
My gripe is a little different but generally the same conclusion - I think in basketball, baseball and hockey, we've had 30-ish teams for 30-ish years now, and there's more than enough games to play a home-and-home series/game with every other team. I think divisions can be useful in having parallel competitions - like how in soccer, there's like 3 different trophies every year - but I think the fairest way to crown a champ is have everyone play everyone. Make up the difference in games with divisional trophies or with other "in-season tournament" type gimmicks. Finish the seasons with your grinding playoffs. But yea, embrace the league as a singular entity.
The NFL is a little different - there aren't enough games to play everyone. College sports, FWIW, should absolutely embrace the "play everyone" concept, and that should limit the size of the league. Saying that unveils my true ulterior motive, and now you see this whole post has been a ploy to return college football back to the ideal times. Except Michigan just won the natty so...I'm good with how it is. Carry on. The world is perfect.
The article touched on this at the end - games into play, play into games. I guess baseball is now more of a game than just play, and that's ok I guess.
I love watching sports, but I think the best games are ones that can be easily played in a disorganized manner. Soccer and basketball and even touch football have that. Baseball's roots are that way, but it's increasingly becoming too organized - restrictions on where you play, all star youth leagues preventing good pitchers from throwing to all the neighborhood kids, and long ago club teams being replaced by minor leagues.
I love stories about sports history and baseball was very much a club and community game that got popular from the ground up. But the club teams became minor leagues became owned by the MLB and then slowly suffocated. It's a beautiful game and I'm excited to read this article, and maybe I'm just old, but it kinda makes me sad that nowadays when you see kids playing baseball they're always wearing little league uniforms instead of just jeans and t shirts. At least beer league softball still exists. May it last forever.
Thanks for the recap, I'd seen the scores. It looks like the squad is improved over last year's, but not quite yet at the level of Big Ten contenders. The stat at the end is eye opening. 51st seems like the wrong side of the bubble unfortunately, but there remains time to get in there, right?
:(
Love the depth chart emojis, can we get it for O soon or do we have to wait?
I'm sorta surprised that there hasn't been mention here or on the board of College Sports Tomorrow...but seeing as it's as unlikely to happen as any other message board idea (albeit slightly better funded and connected), maybe I shouldn't be
i'll prolly watch as long as my wife doesn't go into labor and doesn't want to watch reruns of jane the virgin
i don't root for the big ten anymore, i think i'm rooting for a UConn-NC St double final
SCAR and Purdue
speaking of which - and obviously, it's been a busy off-season - but did we do a fall sports recap this year? i did love the fall and winter sports roundups last year.
sorry to request ore work from you Alex, but just consider it a compliment to your content and i'll go by the book.
Strapping in, buddy. GO BLUE!
Sparty picking a fight as their season ran down is, whether they like it or not, very on brand for them.
GO BLUE!
Dang thanks for the update. This is great news. I'd remained hopeful after the non-con, but got distracted from the diamond the last few weeks with march madness and wrestling and hockey. So it's great to hear the team has at least looked much better than last year in big ten play.
Go blue!
Not rooting for it, but it would be sorta funny if as soon as Saban leaves bama becomes a basketball school for the next decade
I think the real solution is smaller conferences and that way we keep traditional matchups and rivalries but have room for variety - and all in the OOC scheduling.
Now if only Fox and ESPN consulted me before realigning CFB
Most teams are playing 10 P5 schools. Bama plays 9. Props on UGA for always having one big opponent and GT. PSU and OSU both have one season as lame as our last 2. I'm glad to see our last 2 look like an anomaly.
Anyhow my main takeaway is, Bama's schedule is easier over the 2 year period.
I don't get why they are averse to 4th and very long - punts are safer, you can go for it, you can fake it, send like a solid way to make the play after a PA relevant and safe
Man, 27 years! I know I'm old but wow this is a reminder. I didn't grow up in Michigan - but Red Wings-Avs was known as one of the premier hockey rivalries for kids my age. Sorta like Niners-Cowboys. Both those faded when I was in college in the '00s. Now, I wonder if college kids today looks at those pro rivalries the way I looked at Celtics-Lakers - I used to think, "how much of a rivalry can this really be anymore? Maybe it once was but now..."
I recently made an old man comment on a post about realignment. I still hate realignment. But damn, this post just made me realize how old I am. There are 26 year olds right now who think Wings-Avs is as relevant as ND-Miami or the St Louis Rams and the Greatest Show on Turf.
GT has exactly what UGA has in terms of location and resources, and 30 years ago had more fans too. Nebraska was considered unassailable at that time, and 20-35 years ago your narratives of Miami and USC were flipped. 15 years ago tho, USC was considered unassailable.
Everything we think about these schools is not immutable and timeless. Even Alabama and Ohio State have had down periods. Preventing the next Miami, Georgia or Clemson from rising because of a formula that doesn't even match the past is short sighted.