Unverified Voracity Is Gathering Data Comment Count

Brian

Get away from tourists. Visit a Miami game. Miami vs Bethune-Cookman, second quarter:

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At least one intrinsically corrupt football program has had the decency to wither up and die. BTW, that was reported as 39k.

Massive injuries. No fair bringing up Blake Countess if Michigan happens to lose against MSU or ND, as both of those opponents came down with injuries just as important over the last couple days.

MSU right tackle Fou Fonoti is out six to ten weeks with a broken foot. M plays MSU in four weeks. In his place MSU inserted Skyler Burkland, who missed most of last year with an injury of his own. Burkland proceeded to get owned by ND LB Prince Shembo on several third and longs on which ND rushed three and still got plenty of pressure. MSU also replaced their LG, which didn't help matters but doesn't look like it's something that will persist until the Michigan game. The Spartan OL is now on depth alert equivalent to Michigan's: they've got a guy or two on the interior; a tackle injury will be time to sound the klaxons.

Notre Dame's already flimsy secondary took another major hit when Jamoris Slaughter tore his achilles against the Spartans. Projected starting CB Lo Wood is also out for the year. It looks like redshirt freshman Matthias Farley is Slaughter's replacement; he is a converted WR who was a consensus three-star with middling offers (Illinois, UCLA, Wisconsin) as a recruit. He's been getting talked up some, and played big chunks of the Purdue and MSU games.

In injury news that may not affect Michigan, Minnesota QB MarQueis Gray has a high ankle sprain and is projected to be out 2-4 weeks.

Gathering data. Seth had a good idea that we're going to give a shot: we're going to collect a bunch of data about the market for Michigan tickets and try to make it useful. This is an idea that the MZone also had at about the same time we did, undoubtedly prompted by the calculation a lot of people made this year: would I be better off scalping instead of getting season tickets this year? For UMass, it's a blowout in favor of yes, but that's the easiest ticket of the bunch.

Their hypothesis is you'll actually get off cheaper at Stubhub, which if true would be a stunning upset since Stubhub not only takes 15% from the seller but tacks on twenty bucks in fees for the buyer. We don't really have a hypothesis, we're just trying to figure out what's a good deal on gameday. 

AIRBHG is running out of targets. Dude.

The Hawkeyes lost two more running backs Saturday, as both Damon Bullock and Greg Garmon were forced to leave an eventual win over Northern Iowa early due to injuries. However, it appears Iowa has learned how to overcome the wrath of AIRBHG in the process: With so many other choices available, the Hawkeyes turned to fullback Mark Weisman, who ran over the UNI defense and AIRBHG en route to 113 yards and 3 touchdowns.

Bullock and Garmon are supposed to be good to go this weekend. AIRBHG licks his chops. Weisman dances.

Yost. Another shot of Yost:

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Since an assistant coach took this one hopefully the athletic department won't ask him to take it down, as they did with the last batch of Yost photos.

Etc.: Hope you didn't care about the Block Ms on the pylons, because they gone. ND used wristbands to prevent sign stealing after an S&C coach moved from ND to MSU this offseason. Given massive game prep problems w/ MSU in recent past, that might be a good idea. Q: why isn't that more commonly used anyway? I'd rather have rotating wristbands than having to communicate in hostile environments.

Comments

kmd

September 17th, 2012 at 7:36 PM ^

That's only because of Southeast Michigan's proximity to Canada, and because the NHL is a league with Canadian teams. I can't say I've ever seen one inside a rink here in the Twin Cities area outside of the Xcel Center, though I don't particularly make a point of checking. They don't regularly have one at Mariucci (University of Minnesota), and they didn't have one at the National Hockey Center (St Cloud State University) last time I went to a game there.

justingoblue

September 17th, 2012 at 7:55 PM ^

I haven't played much in Michigan, outside of a few tournaments as a kid. I can say definitively that there are Canadian flags in almost all of the Chicago metropolitan area rinks (Seven Bridges, Crystal Ice House, Bolingbrook Rocket, Geneva, All Seasons, ect.). The couple I've been to in Indiana have them, at least in the biggest rink in the complex.

Interesting to hear about Minnesota, though. I only played in Minneapolis once, and that was years ago. I wouldn't have thought to look for a Canadian flag.

a2yostie

September 17th, 2012 at 5:46 PM ^

Yost has had once since I've been going to games (coming on 33 years now). We usually play a canadian university team every year, plus at one point our team was made up mostly of Canadians!

LSSU used to play O Canada before every game along with the Star Spangled Banner; they probably still do actually, I just haven't been up there since the mid 90's

Johnny Blood

September 17th, 2012 at 5:32 PM ^

I picked up a ticket in section 4 this past weekend on stubhub -- it was half face value ($75) and I only paid a $2 transaction fee and $4 payment to stubhub.  No doubt that "half face value" is due to the opponent and won't apply to other home games like MSU, but the fees were a lot lower than I expected.

Space Coyote

September 17th, 2012 at 5:46 PM ^

But when they were good, their fans sucked. And their fans do suck. Possibly the most fair-weather fans around, which is saying a lot.

Also, Miami, though loaded with some great, great teams, and fun talent, hasn't always been the beacon for what college football stands for (not that college football itself really stands as a beacon for what college football stands for anymore...or something like that).

avendittelli

September 17th, 2012 at 5:57 PM ^

and grew up a Michigan fan, hence the frequenting of this fine blog. And I agree wholeheartedly, the stereotypical Miami fan is terrible. I was more curious as to why Brian is choosing now to harp on something that has always been the case. Miami fans never show up - I think they averaged 45K in 2001, for arguably the best cfb team ever. Miami will never have the infrastructure of a 50K enrollment rolling over each year into a ridiculously large alumni base. But to say or insinuate they specifically aren't what cfb "stands for" when in reality all they did was get caught and pick the wrong guy to be their booster, while cheating is as rampant as it ever was, all across the nation? Come on. 

avendittelli

September 17th, 2012 at 7:38 PM ^

Combining responses here, but not sure how Miami's 10K and change is higher than USC's 17K, going off the recent US News report. And most corrupt of the 80s? SMU clearly takes that by a mile. We could probably throw a few SEC teams in here before Miami. Their big scandal was the early 90s Pell Grant fun.

But, as I said earlier, I agree Miami fans suck. I was just curious as to Brian's inherent hatred towards kicking the rolling dumpster fire that is Miami's program right now. In lieu of Brian responding, If that's the case as you say, I guess it'll have to suffice as my answer. Like my ghost tree stand hunting commerical.

WolvinLA2

September 17th, 2012 at 8:07 PM ^

OK, for some reason I thought SC was smaller than that, but the 7k student enrollment number is now what gets 90k to their games and 40k to yours.  At any school, at least a large minority of the fans were never students of the school.  And your 10k number doesn't include people getting grad degrees from Miami who become fans.  

My point - don't blam attendance on enrollment.  ND has 8k, and they have a higher attendance than most schools.

avendittelli

September 17th, 2012 at 8:16 PM ^

The 10K and 17K was comparing apples to apples from the US News report, no grad school included. In that case it would USC with 38K and Miami with 16K. But your point is taken.

Although I could go a few more rounds discussing ND and the fact they've been around forever and are the defacto school rooting choice for an entire religion. But I'll leave it as Miami fans suck, through and through. Go Canes!

Judge Dredd

September 17th, 2012 at 5:59 PM ^

You're obviously uninformed. The Orange Bowl during the 80s, 90s and early 2000s was arguably the most intimidating venue in CFB, it seated 65k and routinely had 70k+ for games, they even rolled out additional stands to fill up the empty endzone. Remember the NCAA record 58 straight home wins? No you probably don't.

The fact that Sun Life Stadium is a horrible venue for football and every other sport they've tried to play there, and the fact that it is a good 45 min (without traffic) from the campus kind of matters. Good day.

avendittelli

September 17th, 2012 at 6:06 PM ^

which is very fitting for its lack of facts. Did you go to Miami? Because I did. I guess my eyes were deceiving me when 75K would pack in for Florida State and VT, and barely 40K would show up for Rutgers, WVU, or a top 20 ranked Syracuse and Washington.

The Orange Bowl was one of the most intimidating stadiums to play in, only surpassed by a rocking Silverdome in my opinion.

Don't disagree on Sun Life being a terrible place to play, in any capacity. But 45 mins from campus without traffic for a 20 mile all-freeway drive? I think not. But at this point we're just arguing semantics.

Mr Miggle

September 18th, 2012 at 7:41 AM ^

In fact, I find it quite the opposiite. Consider the possible explanations.

1, Fans are sending a message; Don't schedule baby seals.

2. Fans are sending a message. Please stop cheating. We are tired of our team getting caught.

3. Miami fans suck. This is not sad for football in general and is not indicative of declining interest in CFB. 

 

 

French West Indian

September 18th, 2012 at 11:57 AM ^

A rocking Silverdome shoutout...now that's what I'm talking about!

Also, the Miami stadium in the picture at the top of this post looks like it really needs some shading.  Would anybody really want to sit under the hot, southern Florida sun for four hours?  Probably not.  Even if you like the team you'd probably rather be somewhere with some AC or at least some shade.

WolvinLA2

September 17th, 2012 at 5:44 PM ^

There is more that goes into them ticket situation than just the final price on the ticket. Sure, if you have lots of time to troll StubHub and you don't really need to make travel plans or get hotel rooms, whatever, you can probably save some money. You probably have to be OK with sitting in a different spot every game, and you risk getting stuck closer to the game with either buying a more expensive ticket than you wanted, or stuck with a worse seat than you wanted.

The nice thing about season seats is there's none of those things to worry about. My parents went with another couple to the UMass game, and because they're the type of people who wanted to buy the ticket a month in advance and not worry about it, they paid face for their tickets because that's what StubHub had a month ago. StubHub can be a real bargain in the same way buying a used car on Craigslist can be, but lots of people don't like the hassle and would rather just go to the dealer.

So you might find that scouring secondary ticket sites could save you money over buying season seats, you have to also account for the non-monetary advantages that season tickets provide and that many of the older fans really appreciate.

ChelseaRick

September 17th, 2012 at 8:47 PM ^

I too am excited to see Yost complete.  I went on a tour a week ago and it is getting really close to being done and it is pretty awesome.  To see all of the natural light beaming in after being closed up for years is pretty special.  Too bad games are at night and we'll never see it in that light. 

French West Indian

September 18th, 2012 at 12:00 PM ^

I used to live in that neighborhood and often passed Yost at night and it was depressing to see it as just a big black hole in the nighttime streetscape.  The windows should really add some game night vibrancy to the neighborhood.

B-Nut-GoBlue

September 17th, 2012 at 6:30 PM ^

I agree about more teams using wrist bands.  I remember hearing at the beginning of the game about the athletic trainer-type person switching to Sparty during the offseason, forcing Kelly to utilize the wrist band method (something he hasn'd done in a long time, apparently).  This all made for a hilarious opening drive for Notre Dame.  The efficiency of the wrist bands was displayed at it's finest when they started with a false start penalty and subsequently forced to use a timeout the following "play" as the play clock was down to under 5 seconds; all within a whopping SEVEN SECONDS into the game.

avendittelli

September 17th, 2012 at 7:49 PM ^

Many champion this idea, but the city of Coral Gables will never allow something of that nature built on their land. Think Grosse Point Shores x 5 in terms of highbrow mindedness.

And to be honest, I think anything more than 45K doesn't get filled up. Miami's best attendance year since 1980 was in 2002, coming off a national title but also continuing to win the following year. Miami fans treat the school like their 3rd favorite professional sports team in the city.

Don

September 17th, 2012 at 8:26 PM ^

According to Wikipedia, Miami's 1989 NC team routinely drew 20-25K under capacity at the old Orange Bowl that year. The only game that filled the stadium was the last game of the season against #1 Notre Dame.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Miami_Hurricanes_football_team

Looking at a couple prior years, including the '87 NC team shows attendance that was similarly awful, with the exception of a couple of games per season.

 

And that's Grosse Pointe. They take that "e" extremely seriously there.

Tacopants

September 17th, 2012 at 6:44 PM ^

Wristbands dont offer the flexibility and amount of plays that signalling will.  Anecdotally, also easier to steal calls off of wristbands in game.  Double anecdote - its also pretty easy to identify who the "hot" signaller is - he's the guy standing next to the coach/listening to his headset who isn't signalling like a maniac immediately, he listens for the actual playcall.  It's just hard to figure out wtf the signals mean, as opposed to a big "PLAY # 3" sign.

In any case, both systems are extremely stupid and unnecessarily complex. Just go the NFL route and give certain players headsets in their helmets. Presto, now nobody has to worry about their signals being stolen and we can stop seeing features on Oregon's picture boards.

BlueFordSoftTop

September 17th, 2012 at 7:44 PM ^

Just go the NFL route

 
NEVER.
 
Eventually, the Belichicks of the college game would hire former NSA radio signals intercept and decryption gurus to work their wizardry linked to the coordinators.  (Clue:  dark sunglasses/trenchcoats/speaking into wrist watches.)  Games would be decided by the best algorithms and cleverest antennae designs.  Then we wake up in the matrix but we don't really care because 24/7/365 Michigan football is all that made us human anyway and it's so much better here inside.
 
This is why NCAA is now allowing two extra "assistant coaches" per side.  It's all part of a vast conspiracy by those who know that cars can run on WATER.