Unverified Voracity Can Stop With The Terror Books
I'll miss you, terror books. Not really.
Aaand it falls off. I've been doing annual APR posts the past few years because Michigan was in a dodgy spot after the Carr/Rodriguez transfer year saddled Michigan with a horrendous 897. That plus an also-dismal 918 in Carr's last year put Michigan within shouting distance of penalties, which they avoided by putting up a series of nice numbers. Since Hoke's arrival Michigan has largely avoided academic risks, so it was just matter of time before that 897 fell off and Michigan shot up. It just did.
Drumroll… Michigan's football APR is now 975. The constituent scores:
- 2010: 942
- 2011: 984
- 2012: 981
- 2013: 985
Their 975 places them fourth in the Big Ten, behind Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Nebraska; if they continue on their current mid-980s rate they'd pass Nebraska but still remain third if everyone else is static.
So hooray. The main upshot of this is that OSU assistants can't send out APR lists in novelty fonts claiming "the stats don't lie" or make charts that aren't even sorted correctly because their players managed to get through Pokémon 401. (But not Sort Function In Excel 330.) OSU's APR is now worse than Michigan's.
Oh, and the NCAA will not do bad things. Meanwhile, at Southern University…
Oooooof. RT @JonSolomonCBS: All Southern University teams also have APR postseason bans due to unusable data. Ouch.
— Bill Connelly (@SBN_BillC) May 14, 2014 …several people just got fired with prejudice.
Reload and fire at will. EDSBS Bowl reaches day four with Michigan still staggeringly far out ahead of the pack with 5.4k to Auburn's 1.3k. Give us the significance of your donation in the comments.
When in need of vague hand-waving that means nothing, call in the right man. Dave Brandon and Mark Hollis will testify for the NCAA in the Ed O'Bannon case. Hollis will claim that his deposition would better on an aircraft carrier on the moon; Brandon will tell the opposition lawyer that he "knows a little something about branding" 18 times. After each, the lawyer will calmly explain the question had nothing to do with branding.
Well then. Alabama tailback Derryck Henry took a photograph of himself in front of an expensive new car that he said was his, creating little "BAGMAN!" tornadoes across the internet. These are the natural order. This is a bit outside of it:
I'm a little dubious that title was on the table for White, a nondescript three-star recruit, but it could be one of those deals like the Clarett/Pryor thing where the dealership lets you "test drive" the car for months. In any case, yes some guy gave this dude a car or money or whatever and the NCAA will not do anything about it so our choices are to be uselessly smug or repeal all this crap that's not getting enforced anyway.
An odd fit, yes. Will Leitch makes a good point about replay in basketball: because of the nature of the game, sometimes there are things that are going to be both wrong and right at the same time. An event from late in the Clippers/Thunder game 6 blew up twitter, demonstrating the problem.
… it is clear that Barnes fouled Jackson; even more clear, perhaps, than that the ball was off Jackson last. At this point, the referees had a decision to make. Should they follow the rules of replay to the letter and award the ball to the Clippers? Or should they make the right call, which was to give the ball to the Thunder?
They gave the ball to the Thunder, which Leitch describes as "vigilante officiating." That stuff happens all the time on out of bounds situations. Fouls are committed but let go when the ball goes out of bounds and is awarded to the other team. Once you start reviewing those you upset the delicate balance there. Basketball replay is inherently goofy because of that.
At least those reviews sometimes amount to something, unlike college basketball's unceasingly tedious replays for flagrant fouls that never, ever come back with a flagrant.
I would be in favor. With Notre Dame due to become a fading memory and replacements ranging from yawn to moderately interesting, I would be down with Tom Fornelli's radical solution to college football breaking itself:
ACC, Big Ten and SEC could solve all their scheduling problems in one simple step. Ditch non-conference games, stay within your conference, continue to foster the regional rivalries that made this sport so popular to begin with, and then send your champion to the playoff to take on the winners of the other conferences.
This is more of a problem for the ACC and SEC, which have a number of annual rivalries that would be set on fire by this. The Big Ten has none of those now. ND-MSU, you say? Mark Hollis just admitted that their series with the Irish is "gone," save for occasional games in the future.
So, yeah, I'd be happier with Michigan dumping MAC games and playing a near-round-robin against the conference. It will never ever happen in a million billion years, I acknowledge. But it would be better.
Numbers. Bill Connelly's got a charting project going that returns numbers. With the disclaimer that not all games were charted and therefore things might be skewed by sampling bias (12 NW games are in versus two Wisconsin games, but then again there were only 2 A&M games versus ten for Tommy Tuberville's Cincinnati), here are some overall trends:
49% [of plays] took place without a huddle, 51% came with a huddle.
Without a huddle does not necessarily mean hurrying, of course. Lots of outfits don't huddle but will use chunks of the playclock for check-with-me. I'm actually surprised the no-huddle percentage isn't higher.
56% came from a shotgun formation, 26% with the quarterback under center, and 18% from the pistol.
Would be fascinated to see how this developed over the last ten years.
On pass plays, the defense rushed four defenders at the passer 61% of the time, five 19% of the time, three 11% of the time, six or more 8% of the time, and one or two just 0.3% of the time.
Michigan was not far away from this, FWIW.
On standard downs, 26% of pass attempts were marked as a play-action attempt of some kind. On passing downs, 11% were play-action.
Every single one of the passing down play action plays was Al Borges running a waggle from a big formation on second and eleven. Holy crap. I can't believe he did that with the running game he had. This joke isn't funny anymore.
Etc.: 2015 hockey commit Kyle Connor might be a big deal: THN ranks him 9th for next year's NHL draft. Stay away from killer robots (and the OHL), Kyle.
Penn State fan loses respect for NFL because Michael Sam got drafted. How Iowa makes NFL recruits. Man no one should listen to says playoff will stay at 4 teams. Iowa, preseason darling? Soccer announces a tough schedule. The next time someone tells you that athletic departments don't make a profit, remind them that the scholarship money counted as debt is fiction.
Michigan adds Jon Jansen to their broadcast team.
I donated $80.79, for the final score of the 1989 NCAA Basketball Championship game.
Yes, wrong sport, but WHATEVA, I DO WHAT I WANT.
If there's a recruit that Michigan is most likely to lose, it's Kyle Connor.
Connor was already projected to go around the 15-25 range, but after he went to the U-18 Worlds and had a point in every game, his stock is through the roof.
He is arguably the best player in the USHL and is only 17. He will have to decide this summer, go back to Youngstown for a 3rd year in a league he's outgrown, or go to Saginaw.
In any case, yes some guy gave this dude a car or money or whatever and the NCAA will not do anything about it so our choices are to be uselessly smug or repeal all this crap that's not getting enforced anyway.
I get (hope?) that this is partially exasperation or hyperbole, but I don't get why so many people view the world this way. These aren't the only two options. A third option would be to change the rules so that scholarship athletes need to explain, via affidavit, where their car comes from. A fourth option would be to have athletes agree that if their actions in accepting goods and services violate NCAA rules in a substantial fashion, they are personally liable for repayment of their scholarship fees. A fifth option would be to require that all programs monitor the cars that the student athletes drive, and if a car is worth more than $X the program investigate and document how the car came into the student athlete's possession (with the program's investigation files subject to audit and confirmation by the NCAA). A sixth option would be to have the NCAA have the right to audit student athlete's parking lots. These are just off the top of my head.
We just saw that Oklahoma State got hit with practice sanctions because the NCAA rule at play was relatively well-drafted and easily testable. Just because the NCAA does a crappy job enforcing most of its rules doesn't necessarily mean we should just throw the rule book away. It means we need better-written rules and actual, impartial enforcement.
What about another option that anyone receiving an athletic scholarship must (and my legal brain isn't coming up with the proper language for this thinking-out-loud) agree to "give" to the NCAA the power to subpoena them and/or their representatives.
I don't think it would be a subpoena (that power is a creature of legislature, and enforced by the courts), but it seems you could have student athletes fill out the equivalent of a Financial Aid Form that explains where their cash and other assets come from, with penalties for failure to provide accurate information. And it may be possible that you could further require that their participation is conditioned upon the corroboration of their benefactor, in an affidavit format. (Then, I suppose, you would go after fake benefactors under fraud claims or some such.) Your core idea is interesting, and I'm sure there are plenty of other options out there.
I think the penalties would either be to take away scholarships or participation, or - if you charge the program with oversight of the accuracy of that form - program penalties like loss of scholarships, post-season play, practice time, or whatever else sufficiently deters this behavior.
The trick, of course, is to have the member institutions mad enough about scofflaws that the larger group forces through meaningful rule changes. That's been the biggest problem in today's landscape so far as I can see.
I thought I read that on here
The point is that the NCAA doesn't do any of these things. So, you have to ask why not. The answer appears to be that NCAA doesn't want to because actually enforcing its own rules could be bad for business.
I take your point - the NCAA often does not enforce its rules, and it's hard to see why. And your suggestion that the status quo is good for business has weight.
One reason that they don't enforce the rules is that they are not a state agency with subpoena powers and other devices to force people to divulge damning information. Without a smoking gun, there's often not much the NCAA can do to enforce the improper benefits rules.
My point is that the NCAA could revise the rules so that enforcement is more practical. One way to do that is to get programs and athletes to agree as a condition to being an NCAA athlete to transparency with respect to the source of their assets. As one poster notes above, athletes already have to agree to allow access to their bank accounts.
Also, it's not like schools don't have experience with means testing. That's a large chunk of what financial aid departments do. Applying those measures to athletic departments ought not be that difficult.
(One other thing that would help get the NCAA off the dime [hah!] would be if the press was willing to dig behind these stories with investigative journalism. The Free Press jihad was ridiculous, but it underscored that an image-conscious entity like the NCAA can be moved by negative press. IIRC, the whole Ed Martin scandal arose because a reporter noted that the Mateen Cleaves injury took place in a car (Traylor?) that the player clearly could not afford.)
et al. sign on to that? What's their incentive? And realisticly, at best you'd just drive some photos off instagram and onto snapchat and force some players to park their cars in a different lot, brought in some more bureaucrats, and added to the perception that there is an antagonistic relationship between universities and elite athletes.
Michigan is not a welfare recipient; we'd fare better putting on our big boy pants and fighting for an open labor market than we would whining for more labor acquisition restrictions.
First, it's not really up to the scofflaws (e.g., BAMA) to determine the rules. There are 1281 member institutions in the NCAA. Do the Bamas and Oregon's of the world carry a lot of weight in the NCAA? Of course. But there are a ton of other schools who would benefit from having better rules better enforced. Part of the problem is that Mark Emmert is a weak leader - give me an institution with 1281 members where 10-15 are chronically abusing the system, and I think I'd be able to rally some of the remaining 1265 member institutions into change.
Second, if you adopted some of the changes I and others have suggested, it's fallacious to state "at best you'd just drive some photos off instagram" etc. If an athlete's scholarship were not only at risk, but he/she we are risk for repaying it, you'd see less dancing around the rules. There are serious penalties if you lie on your Financial Aid Form, and those penalties act as a deterrent to fraud. Currently the NCAA penalties for cheating are generally mild (unless it's excess stretching!), and consequently don't act as a serious deterrent. So fix the rules, and fix the penalties. Make the rules easier and less costly to enforce.
Third, (and it's not just you, Letsgoblue2004) folks arguing that we'd fare better fighting for an open labor market are grossly oversimplifying a complex situation. It's funny to me that people arguing that we should fix the rules are "naive" while people arguing that we should have an "open labor market" are self-styled realists. Do you really think you have a well thought-out landscape of how your open labor market looks? I've read a lot of people making a similar broad brush argument, but I've not seen a lot of details as to how they think it would all play out.
Finally, I don't know what you're driving at with "whining for more labor acquisition restrictions". Since when is suggesting rule changes whining? And isn't phrasing this as "labor acquisition restrictions" a cheap rhetorical device to assume your conclusion?
If you push Oregon/Phil Knight, USC, Alabama, ESPN (they don't want an MNC game with a bunch of Nick Sheridans taking on a bunch of Kovacs), et al. far enough, they might create their own system and take all the talent with them. Mark Emmert is a weak leader because the cartel's structural flaws have been exacerbated by the new money floating through the system. But don't pretend those structural flaws haven't been there since the beginning. If there's one thing you learn by reading about the history of college sports, it's that there has been rampant disregard for amateurism (or "amateurism" post-1952) since it started. The Carnegie Foundation Report detailing massive, systemic disregard for amateurism and academics came out in 1929. There have been dozens of jeremiads lamenting dishonesty, disregard for the rules. etc. in the decades since but nothing changes.
Second, you can't bleed a stone. Most players are not going to pay it back and are not going to fear having the NCAA come after their assets.
Third, most of this is going to be washed away by the O'Bannon and Jenkins litigation. Schools aren't going to be able to agree with each other to force players to sign adhesive contracts in the future (those might not even be enforcable now). Instead, schools would have to bargain individually, and anti-player regimes like the one you proposed would destroy recruiting for the schools that adopted them.
Fourth, we have plenty of experience with sports leagues that have open markets. The general rule is that the organizations with large resource advantages (like Michigan) dominate those leagues. It's not that complex--basica economic principles apply.
Instead of describing how your preferred 'professional college sports world' looks, you simply dodge the issue by stating that we have experience with other professional sports leagues. And finish off with a condescending "it's not that complex -- basic economic principles apply" statement. That probably feels good to write, but it entirely dodges the issue of details.
NCAA sports hold a special place in many of our hearts because the athletes are students, who attend classes at our school, and are competing against other students. Apart from making you feel "realistic" I don't know why you're so sure that fully-professionalizing the NCAA would make college sports so much better. For rubes like me, college sports would lose a lot of its allure if it was nothing but another professional sports league.
But for us rubes, do us a favor. Since it's "not that complex" please share the details of how it all works. Not by a dismissive statement, but with some real details as to how your "open market" NCAA actually operates. Or if the NCAA ceases to exist in your optimal world, how the league is governed and why that league causes us to care as much about a team as the current system.
[BTW, I've still not come to a conclusion about whether it would be better to have some sort of additional monetary compensation for athletes, etc. I'm not married to the current system. I'm just irritated by slapdash "it's so simple - it's ... economics!" arguments people make so they can feel like a 21st century Ayn Rand. Provide a detailed picture of how the professionalized college sports world looks, explain why the fans would be as invested in it as they are in the current structure, and I'm all ears.]
What details do you want? What type of pen recruits use to sign contracts? A de-regulated system is, by definition, de-regulated. There aren't a lot of details, other than getting rid of the salary cap (right now set at the value of a GIA scholarship) and arbtrary recruiting restrictions ("recruiting calendars," no-contact periods, etc.)
"NCAA sports hold a special place in many of our hearts because the athletes are students"
The athletes would continue to be students (more accurately, "students") the same way they are today in an open system. 4 in 5 eligibility would remain. And let's get something crystal clear here; college football is not popular because of what the players have done in the classroom. There are plenty of teams at every school (including Michigan) where the players are much, much more like the student-body academically than they are in the revenue sports, yet those sports are intensily unpopular. Players who were pretty openly bought remain just as popular (usually more) than the Jordan Kovacs of the world; Auburn didn't build a status of Cam Newton because of what he did in the classroom, and the "circumstances" surrounding his decision to attend Auburn haven't stopped fans from taking snapsots of it.
College football and basketball are professional sports leagues now; ticket prices are based on the market, there's advertising in the stadia and during broadcasts of the games, and lots of money is being made. They are just a professional sports with absurdly low salary caps.
You make statements like "college football and basketball are professional sports leagues now" which again assume your conclusion. I think you sincerely believe that. I think that's an oversimplification. I don't see us getting to yes on this.
And based on your apparent desire for statues of student athletes, I'm guessing that you don't see anything wrong with how Auburn conducts itself. I disagree, but I don't see us getting to yes on this.
In any event, you've provided all of one detail: 4 in 5 eligibility would remain. Then you make a sweeping statment that "a de-regulated system is, by definition, de-regulated. " so apparently the 4 in 5 eligibility system is the only rule left. I suspect that you believe the genius of your system is its simplicity and its reliance on market forces to sort out the rest. I'm not so sure, but again I don't see us getting to yes on this.
Of course most professional sports leagues are, of necessity, very regulated - from the EPL to the OHL to the NFL to the MLB. As a matter of fact, I can't think of one sports league that is structured the way you suggest (ultimate frisbee, back in the day was close - but that's become pretty regulated). Even non-team sports like boxing and MMA are regulated. So I think it's unrealistic to have unregulated college football. And you think it's realistic. Again, I don't see us getting to yes on this.
So my sense is we're best off agreeing to disagree, and getting on with our respective days.
by any reasonable analysis.
- The players are paid (the pay is very low, but they receive GIA scholarships in return for their athletic services) and are not "amateurs."
- Most tickets are sold by the owners of the teams at market prices.
- The games are commercialized, with paid advertisements both in the stadium (including Michigan Stadium; just because it's an ad for the women's softball team doesn't mean it isn't an ad) and during broadcasts.
- At the high levels, the players spend massive amounts of time practicing. This isn't a random luxury hobby for wealthy aristocrats to dabble in one day a week for a couple hours.
- People within the system are making enormous amounrs from the sports. Coaches with multi-million contracts, ADs making 7-figure salaries, associate ADs making high-6 figure salaries, "marketing consultants" getting $$, etc.
- The players are "players first, students second" (if at all).
What details about an open system do you want? I think that's a red herring; an open system could be as simple as maintaining every on-field regulation and just eliminating the salary cap and recruiting restrictions.
1. My sons' school soccer teams provide them uniforms and meals on game days. They get free transportation to and from games. The pay is very very low, but some will earn college scholarships.
2. My sons' schools set ticket prices for games, and set them at market prices. And not one penny goes to my sons.
3. Local businesses advertise at my sons' h.s. soccer stadium. And the playoff games are broadcast.
4. The best players on my sons' teams spend enormous amounts of time training, both at clubs and with private coaches. It is not a random luxury hobby.
5. My sons' coaches all get paid. At their club, the coaches are paid enough that it's their full-time job. Not millions, but still.
6. My sons are players first, students second in the eyes of some of their coaches.
My goodness, my sons are professional soccer players. Who knew?
pay isn't very low; it's nonexistent. Treating uniforms and transportation as compensation is like saying that Foxconn workers are compensated by working in a new factory. And I'll go out on a limb and guess that your son and vast majority of players in his league are students first and treat it as a hobby. I'm not going to wade into the particulars of public school soccer teams, but suffice it to say that some southern high school football leagues are professional. Much farther down the spectrum, FBS football and D-1 basketball are professional.
Change is a constant; embrace it.
You've stretched the definition of "professional" so far it's meaningless.
"Suffice it to say that some southern high school football leagues are professional." I suppose your next step will be to simply throw out the high school athletic association rulebooks (except for attendance) and let the free market reign. After all, some schools are breaking the rules, so the only possible solution is to throw out the rulebooks.
I'm jealous of your world. Solutions are really simple there, whereas my (naive) world is nuanced. In fairness, I've got shades of gray where you only have black and white.
at many levels, including some high school football leagues in the south. I would not throw away the whole rulebook, but I would prohibit competitors from agreeing to fix wages without a fairly negotiated CBA. That's not just me talking; that's our nation's competition laws.
The NCAA is a cartel made up of member institutions. Many, if not most, of the most powerful members regularly violate those rules. They aren't going to sign on for your proposal. If the APR actually threatned them, that would fall too (the APR's "strength" is its weakness; it's very easy to game, as Kentucky basketball's perfect 2012-13 score can attest to). One reason that these rules are so frequently violated is that they have low levels of legitimacy within the governed populations. Making the system even more onerous on players, recruits and their families isn't just bad publicity; it's going to increase violation. On top of this is the legal reality that the more investigative mechanisms you give to the NCAA, the closer it gets to becoming a de facto state actor, and a court steps in and forces the NCAA to provide real due process.
So "get even more draconian and unjust" is not realistic. And what would the benefit be? Michigan would be a huge winner in a free market system.
Let's assume that you've got a superior grip on reality. Tell us all about your "free market system" and how it works. If you've got a well-reasoned and detailed picture of that world, please share it with us. Simply declaring that "Michigan would be a huge winner in a free market system" is assuming a conclusion without basis.
Would Michigan be a winner in a world where football at less popular schools ceased to exist? Would Michigan be a winner in a world where Division 1 was a professional league? It's possible, I suppose, but you sure haven't explained why.
And developing better rules better enforced is "even more draconian and unjust"? That seems a bit upside-down to me. Maybe I'm a rube (I can tell from your comments that you think I am) but it's hard for a rube like me to wrap my head around why improving the rules with an eye to making them enforceable is necessarily "draconian and unjust".
have wanted for over 130 years, and it's never been done. It's inot going to happen, especially now that players have started fighting back (your proposal is bad for revenue athletes--do you understand that?).
I doubt that you are a "rube," but I think that your perception of what college football and basketball have been (and certainly are now) is somewhat naive. They are "professional sports" now, by any reasonable definition of the word.
"Would Michigan be a winner in a world where football at less popular schools ceased to exist?"
What programs would cease to exist? Why would a free market change the equation for, say, EMU? EMU football is terrible under the status quo. It is not a large revenue generator under the status quo. An open market will not change the cost of football players for EMU--they aren't getting guys with better options now, they could get the same guys post-O'Bannon/Jenkins.
I'm not sure about the difference between a "rube" and "naive" but I'll check it out in the dictionary. I know Talking Heads subtitled their song This Must Be The Place "Naive Melody" and I really like that song, so ... OK.
But it still seems like when you say college football and basketball "are 'professional sports' now by any reasonable definition" you are - again - just assuming your conclusion. A lot of definitions would note that many of the participants in those sports (esp. football) are not even scholarship athletes, yet they are important parts of the team. Those definitions would also note that there is no salary for playing, although there is compensation in the form of training tables, facilities, tutors, etc. So those definitions would note that these sports may not adhere to a pure ideal of amateurism, but they also aren't professional. I don't see us getting to yes on this.
There's not much point in hashing this out any further. I get the sense that it's just so obvious to you that a free-market solution creates an optimal college sports world that you don't have much patience for anyone who can't see something so obvious. I don't see it as being so obvious, but as I noted above, we're not likely to get to yes on this.
All of that aside, I hope you have a great weekend, and welcome to the board.
Whenever talk of Dave Brandon / Branding / Domino's comes up, we must remember the Pasta Bread Bowl.
I can't remember who it was, but someone on the blog once said, "that's not how complaining works" when describing a situation in which officials used perhaps the wrong form to get to the right substance. That's what happened in the OKC v. LAC game. It would have been absurd to give the ball to the Clippers.
I've been a ref (at the rec level) and this stuff happens all the time. You overlook the ticky-tac foul but give the ball to the right team.
The clippers should have been given the ball back to make up for the no-call when Westbrook went through Paul's shoulder to get the steal with ~20 seconds left. Yes, I'm a clipper fan.
Or how about comparing the last two plays: Paul taps Westbrook's elbow, distorting his shot. There was very little contact, but it effected the shot so the Thunder got 3 FTs. On the Clippers last possession, Reggie Jackson, I think, swats Paul's forearm. Paul loses possession. It was minor contact, but it looked like it effected his control of the ball. No foul on the Thunder. Hmmm... Which team has the racist owner that the NBA wishes would just go away? Yeah, I thought so...
That was not the first time CP3 has tried to get a shooting foul in that situation, maybe he will learn his lesson. With the exception of MeBron, Wade and Blake Griffin, I can't think of anyone else with his level of talent that flops or tries to manipulate the officials as much as him.
So you really think the Clippers lost that game b/c of their owner? If that was the case, they would not have won gane 4.
The refs can't do anything about Scott Brooks inability to coach.
This is true, that guy needs to get fired.
The following rule pretyy much ends the debate on whether the call was correct of not.
Rule 8, Section II-c states:
… If a player has his hand in contact with the ball and an opponent hits the hand causing the ball to go out-of-bounds, the team whose player had his hand on the ball will retain possession.
http://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2014/05/14/the-call-thunder-clippers-game…
He slapped the hand not touching the ball, but regardless, the officials said it was inconclusive. OK, so one guy moves his hand one direction, the other player is going in the opposite direction, and the ball goes in the direction of the latter player. Um, doesn't anybody understand physics?!? Objects in motion, etc.
You need to get your eyes checked, it looks pretty obvious to me that his fingers were still on the ball when Barnes hit his hand.
I've seen the video, but I don't know which team was in white, which was in blue, but I can tell you what I saw from the replay. Player in white (W) was driving toward the basket while bringing the ball up to shoot. His strong hand, right hand was under the ball and his weak hand, left hand was supporting the ball. Player in blue (B) reached in and slapped the hand of W causing W to lose control of the ball.
Derrick Henry is a beast of a tailback that may end up passing Yeldon, who was an uber recruit himself. I mean, wow:
I would expect that speed from a tiny RB or slot receiver, not a 6'3, 230+ pounder. Looks like a video game character.
The good news is that they get Maryland and Indiana at home. The bad news is that they play Maryland and Indiana, of course.
I donated $27.27 because I'm a masochist.
I did the same thing, before reading this thread.
while at a desk job. It's a little bit sweeter than normal. Time to throw a couple bucks toward the kickstarter now . . .
One benefit of non-conference play was measuring one conference strength (relatively, of course) to another's. It's kind of lost already when schools schedule MAC-like teams, but should be on the rebound again with strength of schedule on a playoff voter's mind. Heck, even a Georgia Tech, Washington, or others would be more exciting than a Miami-OH.
I also wish the Big Ten would schedule non-conference games later in the season, similar to the SEC. Invite a Florida, etc. during November (at night even, for kicks) and use Indiana as a season opener/ exhibition game.
119.00 for the 1902 beatdown of Michigan vs Michigan Agricultural
You kind of just invited Spencer Hall over... for charity?
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