The State Of Our Open Threads: After Air Force

Submitted by LSAClassOf2000 on

Well, that was fun, wasn't it?

Not really? I can't say I blame you.

We definitely had a lot to say about this game across the 2,423 board posts that were generated in the two threads, but what was a little surprising is that in all that, we officially only managed 237 fucks. I am sure tens of thousands more - hundreds of thousands if not millions in fact - were said throughout the stadium and Michigan nation, but on the MGoBoard, we only barely beat the 218 fucks given for the Cincinnati game. 

We didn't beat last week's total for basically everything - less shits, fewer damns, and we didn't even really talk about "youth" or "young" or anything like that as much as we did in the first two games. 

We did blow one thing out of the water, of course.

Last week, we mentioned the offense or the offensive line (I tag both) only 74 times altogether, but this week, we zeroed right in on the offense to the tune of 262 posts, which while not suprising, it is kind of interesting because that is the only the second time in four seasons that "fuck" has NOT been the main driver for a game in this study. Of course, watching the offense as we were, "offense" - particularly in the red zone - essentially became a profane word unto itself during the game.

As a side note, I informally went back through the data late last night and counted "Speight", and it was a similar rate of mention and came with a high correspondence to "offense", as the two are right now inseperable in the minds of many apparently. 

It came tied to a slight uptick in instances of "fire" too actually - many of these being directed at Tim Drevno. So far, no one has suggested that Jim Harbaugh be shown the door, although if you were sitting where I was yesterday, there was at least one person - one stupid person - who was wondering what the Mad Hatter was doing these days. If they are reading this, let me repeat - that is a stupid suggestion and you should feel bad for making it. 

So, let's take a look at the informal Stress Chart - 

InstancesByPageAF

So, again, a quick explanation of how to read it - the vertical axis is total tracked instances by page, the horizontal axis is pages of posts (300 per page, on average covering about 8 minutes of play or about 20 minutes of airtime). On the right, the secondary axis is totals for specific words. The blue line is overall instances, the orange is "fuck", and in this case, gray is "offense".

You can see that the gray line, which is total mentions of the "offense", tracks very closely with overall instance. In face, the R-squared value here is 0.932, so our overall stress was definitely driven by our woes in the red zone as well as by woes about playcalling and a few other things that made our 29 points tougher sledding than it should have been.

"Fuck" roughly spikes with AF's red zone trips and scoring, but overall, the R-squared for "fuck" was only 0.838 this time, which is a drop from last week, but here the explanation is quite clear - we weren't even worried about being profane, we were far more focused on why we seemed allergic to 1st and Goal, 2nd and Goal, and so forth. 

The grand total was 949 instances tracked across 2,423 posts, which makes for an overall swearing efficiency rating of 2.47. Historically, most anything under 3.00 has been in the loss column for us, so this was a stressful, underwhelming win that - as you can see - leaves a lot of wondering what Big Ten play will be like.

....and Big Ten play begins next week with Purdue. I am sure this feature will have more to say about the tenor of the season after that game. 

Until then, enjoy your Sunday and your week. 

 

El Jeffe

September 17th, 2017 at 8:55 AM ^

Man I gotta say that after the incompetent defenses and special teams of the RichRod years and the barely competent whatever that was of the Hoke years, I'm totally happy watching a game where the offense does just enough and the defense and special teams win the game.

I contributed no fucks to that open thread, is what I'm saying.

sharklover

September 17th, 2017 at 10:46 AM ^

They have been tracking these trends game by game for years. The use of language by dedicated fans and committed observers gives a fairly unbiased window into the relative perception of the performance of different teams against different opponents of different qualities over time. It is very difficult to look at a box score or a historical news article of a game from the distant past and get any kind of sense of the significance of the outcome of the game in a global sense. These trends give us an amazing look into the subjective context of each game that is otherwise difficulty to quantify. And really, when you are talking about a sport like college football, in which fan experience, tradition, and pageantry are almost as important as the actual game itself on any given week, the subjective perceptions of dedicated fans is the most important stat, in the end.

The People's Jones

September 17th, 2017 at 8:57 AM ^

and i hate our fanbase most of the time. it's almost as if no one remembers how bad things were for nearly a decade

uminks

September 17th, 2017 at 12:20 PM ^

I can't believe we have boo bird fans in Michigan stadium. Even when I drove 1200 miles to watch Toledo beat us in the big house, I never booed. I never heard a boo when I had student tickets and  then season tickets for 3 years in the 80s. Bo probably would go crazy if he heard Michigan fans booing in the stadium.

Njia

September 17th, 2017 at 9:00 AM ^

That was the worst offensing offense we have fielded since Brady offensing Hoke and Al offensing Borges fielded the 27-for-27 offense.

Offense.

EDIT: That was a test to see how the offensive substitution worked. Meh. Not that fucking satisfying.

uminks

September 17th, 2017 at 12:07 PM ^

Those young players we are watching, struggling at times, will be the same players we will be watching in the playoffs in a couple years. So, I'm not upset about the play since we are 3-0. I'm sure by the end of the season this will be a much better team even if we lose 3 games. I just hope we improve enough to knock off OSU at home.

J.

September 17th, 2017 at 4:25 PM ^

Based on what I've seen the last couple of weeks, Michigan could beat OSU 52-3, with Isaac, Evans, and Higdon each running for 100 yards, and Speight going 17/18 for 267 yards and 4 TDs, and people would complain about the one incomplete pass, and how on earth could Michigan allow OSU to score, and Peters would have gone 18/18 with 6 TDs, and why can't the OL block well enough to get any of these RBs 200 yards, and Drevno is terrible because Isaac lost 2 on a 1st and 10 run while up 35-0 and the playcalling is so predictable, and Michigan will lose by 50 in the Big Ten Championship game and may as well forfeit the bowl game now.  (Oh, and Fire Harbaugh).