if it's any consolation Brian my JetBlue flight from IAH to JFK was supposed to land at 10:30pm, was delayed until midnight and was then rerouted to DULLES (!) At 2am we finally got notice that there would either be a courtesy bus that would drop us off at JFK (!!) or we could wait until a JetBlue representative arrived at Dulles. JetBlue does not fly or have any operations out of IAD, so there was no timetable for when that might be (!!!)
I decided to simply hail an Uber, negotiate with the guy to drive me home to Long Island, NY, and slept in his backseat. Walked in my door around 7am to a giggling 9 month old and a very relieved wife.
Would do it all again in a heartbeat to see this team win the natty.
Wanted to chime in - I and friends of mine actually organized the various Block M's in 2008-2010, I used to have the t shirt to prove it! Here are a few pictures when we tried to get it going, the first one we foolishly put in the corner of the bowl and it sorta screwed up all the dimensions of the M but we figured it out by 2009.
That's a shame dot gif. Carnage Sunday in the Big Ten saw the conference lose four of five games, with only Purdue surviving to join Michigan in the Sweet 16. Aside from seeing Iowa make it—a distant dream indeed—that's a perfect first weekend of the tournament. Brad Davison trudging off the court after Wisconsin lost a virtual home game against Iowa State was a true chef's kiss moment.
To be clear, is it a good thing that Purdue advanced? I am firmly on the "Painter is also a fraud" bandwagon so my personal preference would have been to see him bow out early along with Izzo, Fran, Greg, Brad, and the rest of the Fuckaround Gang.
A little bummed about Rutgers losing to ND though. I actually enjoyed their chaos streak this year.
There are worse fates than having donors who have never been to a football game, or than having a coach who is unlikely to become the subject of a New York Times series about hiding evidence from law enforcement.
Forgive me, but considering what the University is dealing with right now at an institutional level between Robert Anderson, Martin Philbert, Bruce Conforth, etc., this is a statement made in particularly bad taste. Sure, maybe Harbaugh himself isn't the subject of said NYT series, but plenty of other characters at U of M are!
I don't want to be *that* guy, but we have a metric ton of nice things.
A. Above all else, This Is Michigan (fergodsakes)
B. Women's field hockey, Elite 8 and lost to Harvard, which is fine I guess, it's nice for Harvard students to have something go their way for once.
C. Women's basketball is the best it's ever been, maybe not quite at the UMD/IU level in the conference, but certainly competitive for the upper echelon.
D. A more consistent men's hockey team wins the national title this year.
E. Swimming/diving is likely a national title contender, again.
F. Women's gymnastics is coming off of a national title in the last year or two.
G. Women's soccer got to the Elite 8 and lost in OT.
Continued a long, long streak of Michigan losing at least the two most important games on its schedule (2011 - Iowa and Michigan State, neither of which was remotely competitive, and we don't need to get into the other three years)
Struck out on every OL recruit he brought into Michigan (never mind the legitimate scandal that arose with Logan Tulley-Tillman) and deserves at least partial blame for the low ceiling and total lack of depth from 2015-17
Trusted Al Borges way too long and never developed any semblance of an offensive scheme
Legitimately endangered the life of one of his players and likely so deeply screwed up said player's fundamentals that he never stood a chance to recover and make a decent name for himself
Ruined Denard AND Devin, and
Was a useful idiot / puppet for the biggest jackass the University has employed in recent memory, which if you've been paying attention for the past few years, SAYS QUITE A LOT.
I will not have any rose-colored glasses for a guy who inherited the best offense in the conference and more or less totaled the car within a year. Good for him for finding his lane at SDSU, but good riddance.
my thoughts on this are that Baylor seems to have a pretty decent institutional issue with respect to athletics, which Ace spoke to in much greater detail last week. the fact that Kenneth Starr, of Clinton investigation fame, was "in charge" of the internal investigations around the football team's (and campus's) broad problems with sexual assault, to me, speaks volumes. that he left in ignominy should answer any questions around that, and I get that he's been shown the door, but...
W/R/T the basketball program specifically, I'll never get over the Dave Bliss disaster. A kid on his team was murdered by one of his teammates and Bliss stopped at exactly nothing to cover his own ass. Whether or not Baylor knew of the cover-up, assisted in it, was complicit, or was literally none the wiser even with the rampant drug problems on the team, I don't think any of it matters. Scott Drew could literally be the second coming of Jesus (happy Easter, for those celebrating) and my only question would be "Why did you pick Waco?"
Also, like, Rand Paul is terrible. If Baylor losing makes him unhappier, that's fine in my book.
"3-star guard Angelo Brizzicommitted to Villanova last week. Brizzi is probably going to be a productive college player as an upperclassmen that hits perimeter shots and can facilitate some offense, but this isn’t a huge blow in my opinion. He has some physical limitations that made it likely he’d be recruited over at some point with Juwan Howard’s preferences."
I'm still too scarred from Donte DiVincenzo to ever short-sell an Italian going to Villanova.
even before Petersen stepped down yesterday I thought we had a decent shot at running the table going into Columbus next year. battle for the brown jug is going to be wild but otherwise we have a very favorable schedule with Sconnie/PSU both at home and MSU in free fall.
this is nonsense, c'mon. Wisconsin was objectively awful for the entirety of its existence before he built something out of nothing. If you drop the 2011 game (when he took over after Bielema decided to go live with the feral hogs), he's undefeated in Rose Bowls.
I graduated in 2011 which remains the only 4-year graduating class in university history to have a losing football record.
Denard and Brandon Graham were the two brightest stars in a space largely devoid of any light. Without question the most fun player I've ever seen (Denard) and the most dominant (BG) during my time at Michigan.
Brian Griese got drunk and threw a chair through the window at Skeeps and as a result football players can't join IFC fraternities. That always made me chuckle.
I absolutely do not understand and cannot agree with this scorcher of a taek. You cannot look at this Ohio State offense and say it's Urban's (the personnel, sure, but the scheme? Absolutely not).
Every offense he's ever had has been focused on a dual-threat QB (if not an outright run-first QB) and passing plays were used to pick off defenses that started cheating to take away the run. Haskins is a pro-style, pass-first QB and Day constructed the whole thing around him. My inclination is to be very, very afraid of the next few years, especially if the recruiting continues apace.
Hello, I'm 29 and male. My wife is 29 and female and is a Vandy grad, so gearing up for Saturdays is very much not her MO.
That being said, we watch essentially every game unless there's a conflict (like my buddy from UM getting married on the night of the Wisconsin game.) If she's got other stuff going on, we part ways and she doesn't generally object to me watching with friends.
She gives me lots of grief if Michigan loses (well within her right) but by and large she's pretty into it. We're hosting friends this weekend for PSU and that was her idea.
a number of people, including at least one who writes for this site, believe that enjoying a particular podcast produced through Barstool makes you complicit in the rest of Barstool's far less enjoyable activities, like the rampant sexism, the mob mentality of Stoolies, etc.
also MGoBlog broadly has gotten into it with Dave Portnoy so don't expect a nuanced opinion.
Do we think it's a case of guys bein' dudes and Rashan just having fun at Chase's expense, or do we think that there might be a bit of animosity and a sense of "What the hell are you doing?" with the high fives thing?
even if formulaic, it's been great for as long as I've been watching, which has to be at least the 2008 Cowboys season. Liev Schrieber is a phenomenal narrator.
And a show that gives us Jeff Fisher saying "I'm not going 7-9 again" right before going 7-9 again is worth any man's time.
The fact that they close every episode this year with everyone (front office, players, coaches) freaking out about Game of Thrones is just icing on the cake.
Stephan Lauermann. We must have been classmates together. I share your pain.
I missed an A- in that class by 9 points out of 1000 (LITERALLY LESS THAN 1% ERROR) and he and my GSI were like "lol tough shit buddy better luck next time".
Honestly though Econ 402 was pretty awful too, if only because it was another German professor with a thicker accent who couldn't be bothered to address class questions. Those two made for a relentless sophomore year.
Last year, before the wheels came off the bus entirely, my dad and I got front row, courtside seats next to the hoop where M was warming up pregame. Spike proceeded to drill 3 threes from the corner which made my dad laugh out loud and made me say out of reflex "God d*** Spike".
He turned around and smiled and said "Thanks, Go Blue".
If only because as someone who has a little brother, I've found that my little brother is actually beyond supportive of me in everything. And I of him. We have different relative strengths and I'm certain that when he surpasses (or has surpassed) my skills in various endeavors, he celebrated perhaps for a bit and then got to focusing on making himself even better.
This isn't little brother. This is the little sh-t cousin at every family gathering (to whom you refuse to believe you're related) who is deadset on being better than you, and one-upping you, even after the conversation has moved onto another topic (like, how we have a bye week and still have to win the Jug in two Saturdays, but the only thing Spartans can focus on is the biggest fluke and probably second largest ref screwjob [Spartan Bob] in the history of Michigan football.)
Jemele Hill taking up 90% of her segment to rip on Michigan is not what a little brother would do. It is the sign of a pathologically insecure and obsessed fanbase that has nothing to live for except to beat Michigan. It'd honestly be adorable if it weren't so pathetic.
But as a by-and-large traditionalist, I have to admit I really, really did like the solid blues against Penn State. I thought futzing with the helmet to any degree (matte finish, chrome finish (?), schizophrenic decisions on what color yellow we're using) and whatever we're barfing onto the white jerseys is shameless overkill, but I do think there's something to be said about going monochrome during a night game.
Related: I'm also an Eagles fan who would love to see them bring back the kelly greens, and I thought the solid black look against the Giants this past Sunday night was terrific. I think there's something to be gained from the monochrome look if we do it once a year for UTL.
The striped numbers were hideous, I'll just put that out there.
Both Hoke and Mattison are at their core DL guys. They know the position inside and out. They don't have that level of nuance and insight for LB / DB position groups. I'm not going to pretend I know the intricacies of the 4-3 over or 4-3 under but on a generally-applicable high level, familiarity can only do so much for a player when and if there are fundamental flaws in what he's doing that aren't being corrected by the coaches.
No, I don't have a particular player in mind, and no, I don't know if people are making the same mistake repeatedly on defense. This is just a commentary on Management 101. If Hoke and Mattison don't have the level of insight for the rest of the defense that they do for the D-line, then we're in some sense doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. That we shuffled all of the defensive position coaches in the offseason probably doesn't add much to continuity either.
Considering the Eagles' secondary woes, I think Kovacs could end up contributing somewhat. Anyone who can anchor the two best defenses that Michigan has had in recent memory, I'm certain brings something valuable to the table.
Anyone would be better than Cary Williams at this point, good lord.
I can't be the only person sitting at my desk quietly FREAKING OUT about the fact that we keep missing on 2015 commits right? Considering how much turnover we're going to have after this year we need all the help we can get.
If I'm completely off base, I would love for someone to slap me and tell me to get my sht together.
He took an experienced group of players, implemented a fairly new/different scheme, and there wasn't a considerable drop-off in production from RR 2010. Coupled with Mattison's improvements to the D, we won a Sugar Bowl.
We've been getting younger each and every year and maybe his stubbornness was his undoing but we actually won a BCS game thanks in no small part to Borges being able to adapt to Denard. We have exactly two BCS wins.
Just out of curiosity, no one sees the problem in hiring someone who has never been a coordinator or called plays (e.g., assistants from other "pro-style" schools), when our own head coach doesn't call plays or even wear a headset? No one sees this as problematic?
"Stephen M. Ross Michigan Stadium Presented by Kraft Foods, in Association with Buffalo Wild Wings, Domino's, and the Good Folks who Provide the Bernstein Advantage."
if you pick ruining Ohio's season (maybe extrapolating it to their overall winning streak) over Michigan winning a national title of its own, it doesn't change the fact that you are picking spiting someone else over your own alma mater's triumph, a triumph we have accomplished exactly one time in history.
So congratulations, if you'd rather #BEATOHIO than win a national title, you're a Spartan in Wolverine clothing. Go burn a couch.
Recent Comments
if it's any consolation Brian my JetBlue flight from IAH to JFK was supposed to land at 10:30pm, was delayed until midnight and was then rerouted to DULLES (!) At 2am we finally got notice that there would either be a courtesy bus that would drop us off at JFK (!!) or we could wait until a JetBlue representative arrived at Dulles. JetBlue does not fly or have any operations out of IAD, so there was no timetable for when that might be (!!!)
I decided to simply hail an Uber, negotiate with the guy to drive me home to Long Island, NY, and slept in his backseat. Walked in my door around 7am to a giggling 9 month old and a very relieved wife.
Would do it all again in a heartbeat to see this team win the natty.
It is objectively terrible that this has to be on Cowherd's platform but idk strange bedfellows I guess
how dare you compare them to Texas A&M, Miami actually has success on the field/court.
Wanted to chime in - I and friends of mine actually organized the various Block M's in 2008-2010, I used to have the t shirt to prove it! Here are a few pictures when we tried to get it going, the first one we foolishly put in the corner of the bowl and it sorta screwed up all the dimensions of the M but we figured it out by 2009.
To be clear, is it a good thing that Purdue advanced? I am firmly on the "Painter is also a fraud" bandwagon so my personal preference would have been to see him bow out early along with Izzo, Fran, Greg, Brad, and the rest of the Fuckaround Gang.
A little bummed about Rutgers losing to ND though. I actually enjoyed their chaos streak this year.
is hassan the greatest diamond in the rough Harbaugh/this staff has ever found?
Forgive me, but considering what the University is dealing with right now at an institutional level between Robert Anderson, Martin Philbert, Bruce Conforth, etc., this is a statement made in particularly bad taste. Sure, maybe Harbaugh himself isn't the subject of said NYT series, but plenty of other characters at U of M are!
I don't want to be *that* guy, but we have a metric ton of nice things.
A. Above all else, This Is Michigan (fergodsakes)
B. Women's field hockey, Elite 8 and lost to Harvard, which is fine I guess, it's nice for Harvard students to have something go their way for once.
C. Women's basketball is the best it's ever been, maybe not quite at the UMD/IU level in the conference, but certainly competitive for the upper echelon.
D. A more consistent men's hockey team wins the national title this year.
E. Swimming/diving is likely a national title contender, again.
F. Women's gymnastics is coming off of a national title in the last year or two.
G. Women's soccer got to the Elite 8 and lost in OT.
I could keep going but you get the drift.
logged in to make this exact comment. seconded (or thirded) entirely
double post my bad
Continued a…
Brady Hoke:
I will not have any rose-colored glasses for a guy who inherited the best offense in the conference and more or less totaled the car within a year. Good for him for finding his lane at SDSU, but good riddance.
every day is scott frost day, that's pretty much all there is to it.
i am very much part of the aforementioned way-too-online CFB universe.
my thoughts on this are that Baylor seems to have a pretty decent institutional issue with respect to athletics, which Ace spoke to in much greater detail last week. the fact that Kenneth Starr, of Clinton investigation fame, was "in charge" of the internal investigations around the football team's (and campus's) broad problems with sexual assault, to me, speaks volumes. that he left in ignominy should answer any questions around that, and I get that he's been shown the door, but...
W/R/T the basketball program specifically, I'll never get over the Dave Bliss disaster. A kid on his team was murdered by one of his teammates and Bliss stopped at exactly nothing to cover his own ass. Whether or not Baylor knew of the cover-up, assisted in it, was complicit, or was literally none the wiser even with the rampant drug problems on the team, I don't think any of it matters. Scott Drew could literally be the second coming of Jesus (happy Easter, for those celebrating) and my only question would be "Why did you pick Waco?"
Also, like, Rand Paul is terrible. If Baylor losing makes him unhappier, that's fine in my book.
I'm still too scarred from Donte DiVincenzo to ever short-sell an Italian going to Villanova.
even…
call me crazy, but...
even before Petersen stepped down yesterday I thought we had a decent shot at running the table going into Columbus next year. battle for the brown jug is going to be wild but otherwise we have a very favorable schedule with Sconnie/PSU both at home and MSU in free fall.
this is nonsense, c'mon. Wisconsin was objectively awful for the entirety of its existence before he built something out of nothing. If you drop the 2011 game (when he took over after Bielema decided to go live with the feral hogs), he's undefeated in Rose Bowls.
I would personally say that counts for plenty.
Army beating "the entire SEC (except Kentucky and Missouri)" had me laughing for a solid five minutes
Look I don't want to be that guy or point out the elephant in the room but is no one else getting Marinovich vibes here?
Believe the word you're looking for here is "commensurate" although commiserate is plenty amusing (and telling!) in its own right
I graduated in 2011 which remains the only 4-year graduating class in university history to have a losing football record.
Denard and Brandon Graham were the two brightest stars in a space largely devoid of any light. Without question the most fun player I've ever seen (Denard) and the most dominant (BG) during my time at Michigan.
Brian Griese got drunk and threw a chair through the window at Skeeps and as a result football players can't join IFC fraternities. That always made me chuckle.
https://www.apnews.com/865212f07504cdebc576ba42467a170d
Oklahoma West got pantsed by their biggest rival in a blizzard and landed in the Alamo Bowl.
To be fair Wazzu deserved a lot better than that but I think it'll be a decent matchup with Iowa State.
I absolutely do not understand and cannot agree with this scorcher of a taek. You cannot look at this Ohio State offense and say it's Urban's (the personnel, sure, but the scheme? Absolutely not).
Every offense he's ever had has been focused on a dual-threat QB (if not an outright run-first QB) and passing plays were used to pick off defenses that started cheating to take away the run. Haskins is a pro-style, pass-first QB and Day constructed the whole thing around him. My inclination is to be very, very afraid of the next few years, especially if the recruiting continues apace.
yeah but if he's anything like those toddlers and women at My Lai, they probably had it coming.
Hello, I'm 29 and male. My wife is 29 and female and is a Vandy grad, so gearing up for Saturdays is very much not her MO.
That being said, we watch essentially every game unless there's a conflict (like my buddy from UM getting married on the night of the Wisconsin game.) If she's got other stuff going on, we part ways and she doesn't generally object to me watching with friends.
She gives me lots of grief if Michigan loses (well within her right) but by and large she's pretty into it. We're hosting friends this weekend for PSU and that was her idea.
I may be a statistical outlier in this regard.
can't forget about Bosa either
any optimism i've corralled for myself has been completely offset by the terror of a Dwumfour Achilles injury
a number of people, including at least one who writes for this site, believe that enjoying a particular podcast produced through Barstool makes you complicit in the rest of Barstool's far less enjoyable activities, like the rampant sexism, the mob mentality of Stoolies, etc.
also MGoBlog broadly has gotten into it with Dave Portnoy so don't expect a nuanced opinion.
How do you put in text like "Testing Article" and not just abbreviate it to "Test-icle"?!
Do we think it's a case of guys bein' dudes and Rashan just having fun at Chase's expense, or do we think that there might be a bit of animosity and a sense of "What the hell are you doing?" with the high fives thing?
even if formulaic, it's been great for as long as I've been watching, which has to be at least the 2008 Cowboys season. Liev Schrieber is a phenomenal narrator.
And a show that gives us Jeff Fisher saying "I'm not going 7-9 again" right before going 7-9 again is worth any man's time.
The fact that they close every episode this year with everyone (front office, players, coaches) freaking out about Game of Thrones is just icing on the cake.
Were truly something else. Boubacar and Justin Feagin I think were both 4 stars to Rivals.
Stephan Lauermann. We must have been classmates together. I share your pain.
I missed an A- in that class by 9 points out of 1000 (LITERALLY LESS THAN 1% ERROR) and he and my GSI were like "lol tough shit buddy better luck next time".
Honestly though Econ 402 was pretty awful too, if only because it was another German professor with a thicker accent who couldn't be bothered to address class questions. Those two made for a relentless sophomore year.
From Saratoga?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i7ez5ApJ2o
But having met Walton a number of times and being a clean 6'1" myself, Derrick Walton is NOT 6'1". He's lucky if he's 6' even.
This can, should and does make him even weirder. Hail Beilein.
"You down with JBP?"
Or something to that effect, JBP just seems to make the most sense and flows easiest.
Last year, before the wheels came off the bus entirely, my dad and I got front row, courtside seats next to the hoop where M was warming up pregame. Spike proceeded to drill 3 threes from the corner which made my dad laugh out loud and made me say out of reflex "God d*** Spike".
He turned around and smiled and said "Thanks, Go Blue".
I'm gonna miss the loving hell out of him.
If only because as someone who has a little brother, I've found that my little brother is actually beyond supportive of me in everything. And I of him. We have different relative strengths and I'm certain that when he surpasses (or has surpassed) my skills in various endeavors, he celebrated perhaps for a bit and then got to focusing on making himself even better.
This isn't little brother. This is the little sh-t cousin at every family gathering (to whom you refuse to believe you're related) who is deadset on being better than you, and one-upping you, even after the conversation has moved onto another topic (like, how we have a bye week and still have to win the Jug in two Saturdays, but the only thing Spartans can focus on is the biggest fluke and probably second largest ref screwjob [Spartan Bob] in the history of Michigan football.)
Jemele Hill taking up 90% of her segment to rip on Michigan is not what a little brother would do. It is the sign of a pathologically insecure and obsessed fanbase that has nothing to live for except to beat Michigan. It'd honestly be adorable if it weren't so pathetic.
After all, this could end up being, dare I say, "tremendous?" It's SiriusXM fergodsakes.
But as a by-and-large traditionalist, I have to admit I really, really did like the solid blues against Penn State. I thought futzing with the helmet to any degree (matte finish, chrome finish (?), schizophrenic decisions on what color yellow we're using) and whatever we're barfing onto the white jerseys is shameless overkill, but I do think there's something to be said about going monochrome during a night game.
Related: I'm also an Eagles fan who would love to see them bring back the kelly greens, and I thought the solid black look against the Giants this past Sunday night was terrific. I think there's something to be gained from the monochrome look if we do it once a year for UTL.
The striped numbers were hideous, I'll just put that out there.
Both Hoke and Mattison are at their core DL guys. They know the position inside and out. They don't have that level of nuance and insight for LB / DB position groups. I'm not going to pretend I know the intricacies of the 4-3 over or 4-3 under but on a generally-applicable high level, familiarity can only do so much for a player when and if there are fundamental flaws in what he's doing that aren't being corrected by the coaches.
No, I don't have a particular player in mind, and no, I don't know if people are making the same mistake repeatedly on defense. This is just a commentary on Management 101. If Hoke and Mattison don't have the level of insight for the rest of the defense that they do for the D-line, then we're in some sense doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. That we shuffled all of the defensive position coaches in the offseason probably doesn't add much to continuity either.
Considering the Eagles' secondary woes, I think Kovacs could end up contributing somewhat. Anyone who can anchor the two best defenses that Michigan has had in recent memory, I'm certain brings something valuable to the table.
Anyone would be better than Cary Williams at this point, good lord.
I can't be the only person sitting at my desk quietly FREAKING OUT about the fact that we keep missing on 2015 commits right? Considering how much turnover we're going to have after this year we need all the help we can get.
If I'm completely off base, I would love for someone to slap me and tell me to get my sht together.
He took an experienced group of players, implemented a fairly new/different scheme, and there wasn't a considerable drop-off in production from RR 2010. Coupled with Mattison's improvements to the D, we won a Sugar Bowl.
We've been getting younger each and every year and maybe his stubbornness was his undoing but we actually won a BCS game thanks in no small part to Borges being able to adapt to Denard. We have exactly two BCS wins.
Here's to hoping for the future.
Just out of curiosity, no one sees the problem in hiring someone who has never been a coordinator or called plays (e.g., assistants from other "pro-style" schools), when our own head coach doesn't call plays or even wear a headset? No one sees this as problematic?
i'm at work and now i need to go home and change pants. but well done. this should probably win troll of the week.
"Stephen M. Ross Michigan Stadium Presented by Kraft Foods, in Association with Buffalo Wild Wings, Domino's, and the Good Folks who Provide the Bernstein Advantage."
the nightmare scenario would be gawdawful. and to think I was half considering going to South America next year hahaha
if you pick ruining Ohio's season (maybe extrapolating it to their overall winning streak) over Michigan winning a national title of its own, it doesn't change the fact that you are picking spiting someone else over your own alma mater's triumph, a triumph we have accomplished exactly one time in history.
So congratulations, if you'd rather #BEATOHIO than win a national title, you're a Spartan in Wolverine clothing. Go burn a couch.