The State Of Our Open Threads - After Michigan State

Well, although it is cold outside here in southeastern Michigan, our hearts are warm here in Ann Arbor because Paul Bunyan is home and safe. That said, the open thread - much like the game yesterday - was not without its stress and its less than flattering looks. Such is life in sports, I believe, but some of the takes in yesterdays thread made one thing very clear to me. 

What did it make clear?

Yesterday's thread was a perfect example of why we would be an 0-12 team every year if many of the people in that thread were allowed to make in-game decisions. Fandom is funny like that, but when you look at fans as a subject of study as I do, then they are actually even more hilarious. Yes, I find many of the regulars in those threads funny, and we can only home some of the more capricious people aren't in a position to make important decisions. 

Rivalry threads tend to be the largest ones, and yesterday's open thread was the largest so far this season at 2,936 posts, and it is only the second time this year that we've topped 2,000 posts in an open thread. The other time was Notre Dame, which came in at 2,380 posts. Away games tend to inflate totals since less of us are there, but rivalries bring people who otherwise rarely post, and in the cases of some, we should be glad that they rarely post. 

We also gave the most fucks this year so far at 316, beating the 272 given at Notre Dame by a significant margin and raising the per game average to 171 fucks. Shits were at a season high of 169, exceeding the 135 given during the Southern Methodist game by quite a bit. It's a similar story with damns - 61 of those, far more than the 43 said in the Notre Dame thread. 

A couple things of note:

- Despite winning, we had the most instances of wanting someone fired during this game. As many of the fucks were directed at the offense, it makes sense then that a majority of the people wanting someone fired wanted either Harbaugh or Hamilton fired. Again, this is despite a win.

- Interestingly, we only sucked 33 times during this game. This is actually the fourth highest total so far this year - 53 times during SMU, 51 times at Northwestern and 40 during Notre Dame. It is interesting to note that in games where we suck more than 30 times, we are 5-1 this season. 

- In games where someone is an "ass" or someone is playing like "ass" more than 20 times, we are 3-1, so despite a lot of ass, we generally perform well enough in 2018. 

Overall efficiency, which is the number of tracked instances over the number of posts, was 2.49. That's the highest number thus far in the season and, in the Harbaugh era, is consistent with either a stressful win or close loss. 

Larger point of all this - Paul Bunyan is home now. Let's keep him home