With one night game and two ESPN fan reaction shots "Facepalm guy" made his way into our MGohearts in 2011. But who can forget the one fan whose visage got us through the years previous? Six Zero wins a Diarist of the Week for reviving the MGoProfiles to introduce us to the original fan we obsess over, one Lloyd Brady.

Because this is college football we cannot simply declare a champion of fans. No. We need a regional championship game. Then we need a national championship game. And then maybe a Plus One just in case Victor Shirtless (below) is the real deal. Yes, it's that week again. Not bowl week, but bitching about the bowls week.

Between the yummy Sparty NO schadenfreude (michelin) and the faint ignorable buzz from the Fredo schools passed over for their inability to make the family rich, there is a sense among us that something is terribly wrong with the BCS. Gameboy points out what the bowls are really supposed to be (they're exhibitions, not rewards). Eye of the Tiger has a rundown of some but not all of the criteria a playoff has to meet:

What an alternative to the BCS would have to look like:

Any viable alternative to the BCS, and by viable I mean palatable to ADs and school presidents, needs to do the following things:

1. Preserve the bowl system

2. Not extend the season far beyond its already extended point

3. Not threaten to engulf the regular season by morphing into an actual tournament

And lo the diarists had solutions:

POSTSEASON REFORM THE FIRST: Eight teams, ends January 21st. Gajensen's is an 8-team, 3-round playoff that confuses the hell out of everyone in order to try to appease everyone. I think the Top 4 BCS teams are automatic qualifiers and the rest goes down the line of conference champs.

POSTSEASON REFORM THE SECOND: Sixteen teams, and I'm 90% sure this guy likes the names of the Big Ten's divisions because he has a 7-step plan. Bluestreak expands this to 16 teams, with automatic qualifiers for every conference (Join the Sun Belt!) but a consistently weak conference loses their autobid (bye Sun Belt). He gets rid of some regular season games to make room so Michigan plays Ohio State in early November. There are tiers called "Champions" and "Contenders" and…this idea has lost me.

POSTSEASON REFORM THE TRAID: Six-teams, Round 1 at home instead of conf. champ games, Round 2 in the Bowls, Championship in the Plus 1 game a week later. Wolfman81 starts off by getting rid of conference championship games, and shows very good reasoning (they're more apt to repeat a game already decided than actually determine a champion). He makes an even stronger case about the BCS rules as it stands being a patchwork of reactions to things that went wrong before, basically an entire ship made of caulked holes and no foresight. The he suggests the Brian playoffs, end diary. I want this guy to write more diaries.

POSTSEASON REFORM THE ONE AFTER TRAID: Get rid of conference divisions but still have conference championships.Vasav read Wolfman's thing and then tried to replace the conference championships we just got rid of with a system that isn't very clear except don't replay games. You're still having 11-1 teams needing to play 9-3 teams to win their conference championship.

POSTSEASON REFORM THE MINE: Instead of an official conference championship game have a "Showcase" game that matches the best two teams from each division that haven't played each other yet. Occasionally you'll actually get to have a championship game. This year MSU would get the Rose Bowl bid and Michigan could play Wisconsin over an almost certain BCS bid. No automatic anythings: the conference chooses to game. If you ever do need to settle the score between two teams that didn't play each other, this becomes the Big Ten championship trophy.

Bwgrudt1484 notes that the Big Ten is playing 5 of our 8 bowl games within an hour's distance of our opponents' home fields (EDIT: within the home state) of our opponents. What else is new?

The Year In Review (Like How We Beat Ohio State)

Upchurch

Some of your favorite weeklies recap the year that was following Michigan's season-ending defeat of Ohio State, not counting the bowl game that comes after the game where we beat Ohio State. First, I bet you're wondering, after we beat Ohio State, what the final turnover margins and effects were for Michigan. Enjoy Life shows the year at +6, ranked 26, which is a GERG-to-Greg level recovery. A new metric that measures fumble recovery rates also shows this may be a little bit lucky:

Also abnormally lucky: 2006. Brian is convinced this is random except for offensive experience and pressure but I believe in non-random parts that come from things like good pursuit angles and attacking holes. When you don't touch the other team they don't fumble as much; good defense gives you more chances to knock something loose.

Stubob's Ugly Game of the Week hands out postseason awards for Ugliest Team of the Year and other doily awards. That one MST3K clip appears again.

Maize_in_spartyland has grades for everybody. I mean everybody in the Big Ten. What's with failing Indiana? Don't they at least deserve a "thank you for participating" ribbon or something?

Etc.

CRex got to the end of Three & Out and wrote a long thought on Carr and living up to Bo—pretty much exactly what you were thinking and feeling after reading Three & Out. Like so:

That's what we need to take away from the RR era. Our dad [Bo] died. Uncle Lloyd turned out be a distant and cold paternal figure. Uncle Rodriguez went through a rough time and had a meltdown. Uncle Martin was busy clicking buttons in excel. So a lot of the fanbase regressed from Michigan Men into bitchy children who said mean things on the radio or wrote them, despite the negative impact they had on The Team.

That was similar to my 3&O reaction except I also found myself wondering "I wonder if you can buy those Twin City socks on the internet?" Turns out a.) you can, and b.) THEY REALLY ARE THAT AWESOME AND I'M WEARING THEM RIGHT NOW (not yours Rimington winner David Molk).

For recruiting junkies, Ace put up the post-Darboh recruiting rankings. Ohio State got a 3-star from Florida I guess Urban knew and Adolphus Washington. Nebraska, Michigan, and Penn State had decommits.

And hockey plays Michigan State this weekend. Yesman2221 has the weekly preview but the short version is Michigan hasn't been playing as well as we'd like and MSU is coming off of a good series against the Gophers. Then again they're kind of like Michigan (one good defensive pairing then guh), except without a real head coach.

So, that's it for the diaries. Best of the board after a jump I guarantee you want to make.

Best of the Board

KORK COUPONS CAN HAZ HTRS

That's literally 1/10th of what you'll find in here. Y U Make so EZ Innernet? If that's not enough 'freude for you after watching the eminently dislikeable Spartans lose on a chintzy running into the kicker call (they call it every time but still), well sir it is high time you get yourself brushed up on your Sparty No! moments:

If this isn't on 100 of your friends' walls by tomorrow a kitten will die. Beat my 21.

2012 RECRUITS DROP/ADD DATES 2011/2012

Stop pestering Ace about when guys are announcing and check out the handy hart20chart. Quickly: Jehu Chesson on 12/21 or 22, Kozan and Dunn by the end of the year, Powe at the 1/5 Under Armour game, Wright/McNamara possibly at the 1/7 Army Bowl, Garnet 1/25 or 26, Diamond on Signing Day, the rest unknown (probably Signing Day).

WHAT SAYS 'OHIO' TO YOU?

The state down there is playing a little word association with its new license plates, which will look like those things Wordpress blogs make with keywords. BostonWolverine knows what this means and you should too: START. ENTERING. KEYWORDS! If anyone can sneak something on the final version you get all the points. I've been writing "Bo" but they'll probably catch that one.

WE ARE SO OVER THE LAST GUY AND THIS THREAD NOBODY LOOKED AT PROVES IT

A guy mentions that Magee, Dews, and yes, Gibson are joining Rodriguez in Arizona. I'm not wading into anything with Gibson in it, but I'd like to know why this page got more reads than any FP post this week.

HELLO: NEW ORLEANS

As pointed out by methylene blue Michigan in January will complete the BCS Bowl Grand Slam, as the Sugar is the last one we haven't been to (EDIT: won) yet. If you're going (/shakes fist at Heiko and Heiko's bag of free press swag) we will have jlvanals there to help you get situated. Original.

Another interesting fact (HT: TheDirtyD): Michigan is the first team to ever play 10 games against bowl teams. That's really more about there being enough bowls nowadays that a 6-6 MAC team can go to one, but at least it makes it sound like we had a tough schedule.

WOLVERINE HISTORIAN PLEASE MEET YOUR PARTY ON THE BOARD.

Drkboarder needs you.

ACADEMIC ALL-WOLVERINES

Cavanaugh, JB Fitz, Glanda, Cam Gordon, Heininger, Zac Johnson, Kovacs, McColgan, Ricardo Miller, Omameh, and Roh are Michigan's Big Ten All-Academic honorees.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

To all of those who donated gifts or time to Adopt-a-Shelter this year. I know it was you because here's the pile of loot from you just for the smaller site:

There was 20x that much in donations for the larger site. The shelter received enough Amazon boxes that I'm talking to them about making this all-year-round (so they can "register" for the stuff they're short on all times of the year). This is MGoBlog FTW! Special thank you to Scott Rains for providing over 150 kids a picture with Santa!