Board quality

Submitted by JLo on

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking that the quality of mgoboard has gone down significantly over the past few weeks - 'Sky is falling' posts, etc.  One of the things that I really enjoyed about this forum when it started was that, unlike Scout or Rivals, it was full of smart posters and good football discussion.

What I'm wondering is, what can we do to get back to that?  Is there any sort of self-policing stuff that Brian can implement?  I'm thinking maybe something like the youtube comment system, where you can give a thumbs-down to idiotic posts, and posts below a certain rating threshhold are hidden.  Thoughts?  Any other ideas?

Marques Slocum…

October 13th, 2008 at 8:55 AM ^

I am not trying to put words in your mouth, but are you insinuating that a post that you don't agree with is a "low quality" post? Because if the sky isn't falling after a loss to a 1-4 Toledo team AT HOME, when can the sky be considered falling?

I am not a part of the "I hate Rod" revolution (I will give him 3 years), but that loss was kind of, sort of, not good right? Even if we are putting our faith in Rod for the future and all that, it was still a rather pitiful football game by us right? I can see how the older fans are pissed... and if they show their disappointment I can't see that as "low quality". This is all just my opinion.

JLo

October 13th, 2008 at 9:01 AM ^

I don't really want to start anything, since the topic was already covered in the 'save mgoblog' thread earlier.  But to clarify, I was talking about the extreme overreaction "OMG FIRE DICKROD" posts, not simple negativity.  I'll be the first to admit, this season sucks.  Our team is young and lacking talent, and we're going through tough times - but that's not a reason to go completely off the deep end.

Marques Slocum…

October 13th, 2008 at 9:05 AM ^

I don't want to fire Rich. I think we should give him his due time. I hope he can turn it around. But I don't think we should be suprised when people go crazy after we lose to a 1-4 MAC team AT HOME. It was a frustrating game to watch and people are angry and with good reason, in my opinion.

JLo

October 13th, 2008 at 9:23 AM ^

I have to disagree, I don't know if you do have good reason to be angry.  Frustrated, yes.  But not angry.  Let's take a look at the offense we fielded on Saturday:  An offensive line made up of inexperienced, MAC-level talent; a redshirt freshman quarterback who was replaced by a walk-on when he got injured; a true freshman running back, and a young receiving corps minus two of its top three players due to injury.  What the hell can you expect out of that squad?  You could have the best coaching staff in the world and still not get production out of a crew like that.  Sure you can assign some of the blame to the coaches, but I don't think you can really be too surprised or angry about what happened.

Marques Slocum…

October 13th, 2008 at 9:37 AM ^

I think we could all expect to beat a 1-4 MAC team at home "with that squad" to answer your question. If that is not our expectation then God help our program.

JLo

October 13th, 2008 at 9:55 AM ^

Honestly?  That IS about my expectation with the team we fielded on Saturday.  After the App State loss last year, I got over my elitism - I don't think that we can beat lower tier teams just because we're Michigan.  If you can throw out your bias and compare our offense this year against a MAC team position-by-position, I sincerely believe that we come out on the short end of the stick.  The O-line is probably a push at best, and although our skill players are more talented, they are all freshman.  On top of that, two of our most best freshman players were out of the game on Saturday, leaving us with our crappy inexperienced players, rather than our good inexperienced players.

I have tremendous faith that given a year or two, we'll be humming along and scoring like nobody's business.  But until we get more maturity and experience on offense, I've tempered my expectations. 

Marques Slocum…

October 13th, 2008 at 10:02 AM ^

I don't think we can beat anybody "just because we are Michigan". Those are your sentiments, not mine. Please try not to put words in my mouth.

 You can call it bias, but I believe that almost every player on the Michigan Wolverines football team is better than all but a few on a MAC team. If that is not the assumption then we should take a serious look at our recruiters. We should always have better talent than a  MAC team, that is kind of the point right? I don't think that is bias. I think that is common sense. Even our "crappy" players (your words not mine, none of our players are "crappy" in my opinion) should be better than most of their everyday players. That is why they are a MAC team and we are a perrenial Big Ten power. 

We should have beaten Toledo at home and nobody can convince me otherwise. I am not even pointing to where we should place blame, because I really don't know. The fact is we lost to Toledo at home. That is unacceptable.

JLo

October 13th, 2008 at 10:26 AM ^

--'I don't think we can beat anybody "just because we are Michigan".'

--'The fact is we lost to Toledo at home. That is unacceptable.'

A little cognitive dissonance?  That statement sounds more than a little elitist to me.

I would agree with you that most of our players are more talented than most of their players.  HOWEVER, the players at important positions for us are all less experienced.  Sure, I'd take a senior Threet over their senior QB anyday - unfortunately for us, Threet's a freshman, and he's going to play like one. 

Regardless, I said in my first reply that I wan't trying to start anything in this thread, and I really didn't want to, so I'm just going to drop this.  This discussion is going on in several other threads as well, so we can talk about it somewhere else if you really feel like arguing.

Brewers Yost

October 13th, 2008 at 10:53 AM ^

I am tired of people using the we are inexperienced excuse. JLo our offense scored 10 points against a team that was giving up an average of 35 a game. Now I admit that the 35 a game is somewhat misleading but even Eastern Michigan managed 17.

My biggest problem with this excuse is that we are talking about college football; experience will always be an issue.