Manball: SI's Mandel says it works.
What is known as "manball" to many on MGoBlog is discussed on the first page of this Stewart Mandel column in SI:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/stewart_mandel/11/25/alab…
I basically agree with him and I look forward (seriously) to seeing something like that here.
Prior implementations at UMich have been partially flawed (RS freshman WR inserted only on running plays, pre-snap fullback bunny hops in the direction of the run, agonizing lack of adjustments to realigned defenses where required, etc.) but there's no reason it can't be done effectively.
November 26th, 2012 at 3:41 AM ^
Look, if a college football coach wants to feature one of the top yardage-shredding and point scoring offense in the country, then he can decide to do that. If such achievements are important to a coach, then he probably doesn't decide to apply the manball offensive philosophy. The 2012 college football national offensive statistics bear this out pretty clearly.
LaTech, Baylor, Oregon, Marshall, Oklahoma St., Arizona (dare I even mention it?), Nevada, West Virginia and Texas Tech are NOT "manball" teams, but Oklahoma is from time to time. There are actually very few "Manball" or "traditional pro set" teams left in college football anymore: Alabama, USC, Wisconsin come to mind.
My impression is that Brady Hoke really doesn't care all that much about offense. He downplays it every time he's asked. I think Hoke's idea of a perfect offense would be like the 1997 team: Dominant, sexy, steal-the-show defense but with a rather homely, vanilla, passion killer underwear-wearing offense , with a lunch-pail quarterback that directs the team to 17 or 20 points, and done.
"What? 21 points? That's 3 touchdowns, man! Now let's not get out of hand here!"
In 2014 when Michigan features a brand new quarterback, I'm pretty sure they'll will run a multiple offense with some Manballish sets. Hopefully it will all be creative, new and explosive as hell. But given what we know thus far, I have major doubts.
It may not matter though. I mean if Michigan beats Ohio State 20-14, do we really care whether the offense is as sexy and lethal as Oregon's?
November 26th, 2012 at 4:26 AM ^
I don't buy this. As uninspiring as the playcalling in the second half of Ohio was, it's not really reminiscent of what we've seen over the last two seasons.
Furthermore, if you want to look at a pro-style, "manball"-esque offense that shredded defenses, look at Stanford, especially under Harbaugh. It takes a great QB to take such an offense to high levels. And while I don't expect Gardner or Morris to be Andrew Luck, I think they have the physical and mental tools to run such an offense effectively.
Also, I would much rather have a defense-centered gameplan, if that's really the idea that Hoke and co. have, which I don't think is necessarily true. Not to the extent that RR focused on offense.
November 26th, 2012 at 6:52 PM ^
A great QB obviously helps, but Stanford this year is showing that it wasn't just Luck that carried them last year. In fact, their QB play this year has been downright mediocre. They have a great OL that can control the line of scrimmage against just about everyone. That's really the key.
November 26th, 2012 at 9:03 AM ^
"As uninspiring as the playcalling in the second half of Ohio was, it's not really reminiscent of what we've seen over the last two seasons."
That wasn't reminiscent of what we saw against Iowa (2011), MSU (2011 & 2012), VT (2011), ND (2011 for first 3 Q's and 2012), Alabama, Nebraska (2012) and OSu (2012)?
I would say that what we saw in the OSU game was much more the norm than what we saw in the Iowa (2012) game. Probably three times in the last two years have I thought that we actually looked like an impressive offense.
Basically when you take out the cupcake teams on our schedule, our offense has performed respectably in...10 games. And that is respectably, not great. That goes along with performing abysmally in 9 games....So I would say that it is pretty reminiscent of what we have seen over the past two years, but that's just my opnion.
Now I'm not one who is screaming for AB to be fired but let's be honest about what has been transpiring since his arrival.
November 26th, 2012 at 10:51 AM ^
They had an interesting, kitchen-sink offense. This isn't to say that Hoke/Borges don't pull lizard-brain chokes in big spots and revert to "GRR RUN THEM OVER." But I don't think there's evidence that Hoke is actually an atavist overall.
November 26th, 2012 at 12:40 PM ^
There were a few threads on SDSU's offense in the Poinsetta Bowl against Navy, and some circa 2011 discussion on what the offense would look like with Denard and going forward. Here are a couple.
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/sdsu-vs-navy-bowl-game-offense
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/sdsu-vs-navy-full-game
If we end up with an offense like SDSU ran that game, we definitely won't be looking to score twenty points. Just for the hell of it, here's the box score. I'll do my best ST3 impression here and note that Hillman ran for 228 yards, Lindley was 18/23 for 276 yards and their leading receiver had 165 yards on 8 receptions. They scored thirty-five points, gained 555 yards and had 27 first downs.
November 26th, 2012 at 1:23 PM ^
but that was against Navy and you are trying to draw comparisons of what the future would be like at a different school from a bowl game...a game the team has over a month to prep for.
Just to play devil's advocate for a minute, what do you think an outsiders view of Lloyd Carr's offense would have been like if they took his final bowl game as their sample? I would expect that there would be a lot of disappointed fans if a school hired Lloyd and expected offenses like that. It was a complete 180 from almost every game he ever coached. So was So was Al's game against Navy really indicative of what he did in his previous jobs? I don't know because I am not the one making the assertion here, but it's hard to believe it would be.
My point is it's pretty hard to consider one game against Navy after a team has a month to prep a representative sample.
November 26th, 2012 at 2:13 PM ^
first, I did qualify the response with "if we end up with an offense [like the bowl game's]. The thing is, their offensive production in their bowl was a pretty good statistical representation of their season at-large. That being the case, I think we're looking at whether they do it in the same style or not, which I don't think actually matters much.
Second, I do think that the SDSU offense was very good that season. They finished the season sixteenth in total offense (456ypg), nineteenth in scoring offense (35ppg), twelfth in passing offense (301ypg) and forty-eighth in rush offense (161ypg). They had two 1,000 yard receivers and a thousand yard rusher, while their QB threw for 3830 yards and 28TD's.
I'm not saying that Borges will automatically replicate that here (or that Hoke/Borges can't go lizard brain, as the comment above mine mentioned), but I think it's stupid to say that Hoke's ideal offense scores twenty points per game.
November 26th, 2012 at 12:31 PM ^
I agree, and I disagree. I agree there are about 100 right ways to play offense, and 2 or 3 right ways to basically play the same right defense. Offenses are as diverse as the players on that side of the ball, and whatever skills they have to get downfield are the right ones to use. I disagree in part about Hoke's offensive philosophy. He downplays everything, and stays vague and non-committal as a rule when he's interviewed. His '97 team featured Brian Griese, and Brady, who he personally recruited. While neither kid was a star prospect, Griese even walked on, and Brady just about did as a 5th stringer, both guys were fierce competetors, and made Pro Bowls and have Superbowl rings, and while they aren't all flash and razzle dazzle, they aren't very vanilla either. There is a lot to be said for being a tough physical team that can impose it's will on opponents defense, though. But establishing the line of scrimmage and running the football right down an opponents throat isn't the finished product, it's a means to an end. You run for yards, and run the clock down, but you pass for miles. While I don't give Borges the benefit of the doubt at all now, in fact quite the opposite, when Hoke brought him in his resume had top scoring offense here, top passing offense there, averaged 30 points a game this year, 40+ ppg that year, by combining a smash mouth reliable power run game with a west coast style pass attack. Last year our offense outgained the ones under RR, even. This year, though......erm.....well I'm sure Hoke would've liked to better use the talent we had, and score more points than we did.
November 26th, 2012 at 1:26 PM ^
We went to the spread since the manball to manball approach was not working against elite teams that could recruit better skill position players. I don't know how manball magically works now unless we are getting QB/RB/WR on the level of the top teams and we have yet to see that happen with RB/WR.
November 26th, 2012 at 2:37 PM ^
Then we will not have a new quarterback. Gardner will be a fifth year senior QB. I can't get excited about a kid still in high school. But I can get excited about a great athlete who has limitless potential. So I'm hoping he gets his eligibility. He's talented enough to overcome the shortcomings in the booth.
November 26th, 2012 at 6:31 PM ^
It's not completely out of the question that Gardner could go pro. Now that he has four starts under his belt to learn from, he won't really be a new starter next year. He could well have a great year and decide to move on (which I'd be perfectly fine with).
November 26th, 2012 at 4:13 AM ^
November 26th, 2012 at 7:41 AM ^
But you're already suffering those sleepless nights, aren't you?
November 26th, 2012 at 10:38 AM ^
November 26th, 2012 at 4:42 AM ^
mental AND physical tools. That means seeing 9 or 10 in the box and changing the play, seeing a corner ready to blitz and change into another set. I think that is what they are missing and if you are going to play manball you can't turn the ball over.
ohio ran 70 plays to Michigans 47. You can't manball a team to death on 47 plays. I'm sure the Nebraska game had close to the same play count.
We'll see but I think the coaches chose to just try to get by on the OL this year in the better of the program. Playing freshmen would have compounded the problem by having inexperienced guys in there who probably wouldn't have that much more of an impact AND they would lose a year of elgibility. If that is the case I'm all for it. I hate seeing true freshmen play.
November 26th, 2012 at 6:04 AM ^
I read a Chris Brown interview somewhere, and he said if you have top talent in CFB, it probably doesn't matter which offense you run — pro style or spread. And by top talent I think he meant the top 20 or so recruiting classes nationally, in which range Michigan will always be. But for a college team with lesser talent, he suggested a spread offense gives you a chance to compete against more talented teams, and might give you a leg up against similarly talented teams.
Veering a little bit off topic, it's an old story but I always thought therein lied the problem with RR, who many said wasn't a "cultural fit". RR was always the upstart who competed with relatively less talent and a brilliant scheme. He just wasn't used to the idea of smothering the opposition with talent, UM's M.O for decades. You see this everyday in business, most notably Disney hiring and then firing Michael Ovitz. There is something to be said about being more manager than innovator as the company grows in size, and one thing that struck me from the 60 minutes segment on Michigan football was how pronounced the manager side of Hoke was.
Given that angle, Meyer is an interesting case. He's definitely more innovator than Hoke and more adept at managing than RR. To me though he seems closer to Hoke than RR. But one thing to keep an eye on is his tendencies to rely heavily on the Tebows and Harvins: the star-centric system. This is true with his offensive schemes but also reportedly with how he runs his locker rooms. Hoke on the other hand is more even handed, in my opinion more suited for the Michigans, NDs and USCs of CFB. Not right or wrong, but better suited.
November 26th, 2012 at 10:17 AM ^
I think another relavant Chris Brown piece is his article on variance in strategies. If your talent level overwhelms the talent of the other team, a lot of things have to go wrong for the other team to win the game. Manball strategies limit the amount of things that can go wrong in a game and make losses to overmatched teams very unlikely.
The problem with manball strategies is that they need overwhelming talent advantages to be frequently successful. But if you can recruit talent in the trenches that will dominate at least 10 games a year, using strategies that rely on things besides dominating in the trenches is a bad idea.
November 26th, 2012 at 10:44 AM ^
Not sure if this is precisely the piece to which you refer, but Chris Brown has done a few articles on the interplay between offensive schemes, recruiting and being elite - (LINK)
He says something right at the beginning of this one that I think is probably true - "For the truly elite-level recruiting teams, I think the agnosticism of pro-style treats them well because they basically recruit incredible players and then figure out the system and scheme later. "
What he is discussing, it seems, is basically what you said here - the teams that get top-level recruitng classes year after year are actually more about being neutral and tailoring schemes to the talent rather than having a philosophy which guides recruiting. I think this is why you see teams like Oregon and Notre Dame, for example, implement spread concepts but also play variants of "old man football", as it was termed.
One thing that he talks about and that I think applies to what we've discussed on the boards extensively now is how scheme change means that you're asking players to use skills they may have practiced less more than anything. He make a larger issue of different depth requirements at different skill positions being an obstacle when a new scheme is being implemented. It's an interesting take on the subject really.
November 26th, 2012 at 7:56 AM ^
an either/or issue.
November 26th, 2012 at 8:10 AM ^
Just shocked to see a journalist spreading small, unrepresentative sample fallacies.
November 26th, 2012 at 8:10 AM ^
Borges qualifies for this. Much doubt as to whether he can adjust period, but I hope he proves me wrong.
November 26th, 2012 at 8:31 AM ^
The problem in the OSU game was he did adjust, and he did so without any reason. We were running Denard on the outside with great success and OSU showed no signs of stopping it. At hlftime the brilliant adjustment was....stop doing what was working and go to our biggest weakness all year and run between the tackles.
November 26th, 2012 at 8:39 AM ^
November 26th, 2012 at 10:16 AM ^
I can see why some want him out and I can also see why some want him to stay. For me, I'm just not sure which way I would go if I was Hoke...tough one.
November 26th, 2012 at 10:26 AM ^
The issue seems to be Borges can't make on the fly adjustments. He clearly was capable of adjusting at half time (of course he made bad adjustments, but he still did make a number of adjustments). He's also made successful adjustments over half time in other games. However he failed to adjust during say the 3rd and 4th quarter break or any TV timeout.
One thing to keep in mind is a some of the assistant coaches come up, one of them could end up as the Assoc OC who operates at field level. As it stands Borges can only communicate via people with headset. I'm wondering if that makes it harder to do adjustments from the box since we're running a mashup of spread and power that is still new and complicated.
Our defense can adjust very quickly as we've seen, because Hoke and Mattison are both defensive focused coaches who function at field level can sit the entire unit down and talk to them. I think one of the things we need to judge Borges on next year is if he can create a Mini-Me out of one of the offensive coaches who he can have implement his adjustments. With Gardner a better passer and some of our bigger WRs reaching their sophmore year I think we should look to Borges stabilizing the offense and seeing it able to react more between drives.
November 26th, 2012 at 8:41 AM ^
November 26th, 2012 at 9:06 AM ^
November 26th, 2012 at 9:32 AM ^
How hard is it for people to realize both can be effective. You want to know part of why Hoke probably doesn't like the spread? It puts a ton more pressure on your defense. That doesn't mean he want to score 20 points like someone above posted, what it means is that he doesn't want us to be in a situation like the rich rod years where if your offense doesn't get going early it goes 3 and out so fast you give your opponent 8 possesions in the first quarter, thats just asking to get burned. Going manball as a style is an attempt to control the game, to play it on your terms, give your defense a chance to adjust to the offense at more points than just halftime because every drive doesn't take under 5 minutes whether it scores or not. On the other hand scoring a lot of points is a good thing, and why a lot of teams use the spread. There are pros and cons to both sides but a 'manball' team has won the national championship 3 out of the last 5 years so it clearly can work as well. I don't think anyone would describe alabama as anything but a vanilla offense and yet they have won the national championship 2 out of the last 3 years and have a pretty good shot to make it 3 of 4, I'll take that any day.
November 26th, 2012 at 9:58 AM ^
when you have NFL talent across the board in addition to having a great defense. You can have great defense while running the spread.
It's a biggest common misconception regarding the spread that it doesn't control the clock. They do control it with short quick passing and running game.
November 26th, 2012 at 10:42 AM ^
Its obviously possible and one of the bigger problems is lumping all the spread attacks into one group, there are tons of different kinds of spreads types predicated on different things. However I would a) argue that what you describe as a 'short passing attempts and running game' is the exact same definition I see said about the west coast offense which is what Borges wants to run and b) point out that in general traditional spread teams try to score quickly by running the hurry up to keep mismatches and tire defenses out. That is part of the strategy of the spread and it can result in putting up 50 points but when you try to do that and go 3 and out your drive took all of about a minute total and puts your defense in a tough spot, even if it is a good defense.
Like I said both strategies can work, the spread is a more risk reward strategy, if its working you put up a ton of points but if you are going 3 and out while running a hurry up you are also putting a ton of pressure on your defense and need an elite defense to even have a chance later in the game. Look at the Stanford Oregon game, the Stanford defense played incredible and did a good job but the Stanford offense also took a ton of time off the clock and limited the number of posessions, the more posessions in that game the better chance oregon had. If stanford was also running a spread offense I think they would have lost, thats obviously an assumption but it is much easier to slow a game down than it is to speed it up which is why I think 'manball' allows you to do a better job of controlling the pace of a game.
November 26th, 2012 at 11:30 AM ^
November 26th, 2012 at 11:41 AM ^
Well isn't that just a matter of semantics then? If we are running a true west coast offense are we not basically running the same offense as oklahoma just with more huddling? I actually am asking the question because I am not sure. For example, would you charecterize drew brees and the saints as a spread or a west coast offense? The packers pretty much don't have a running game and neither do the patriots what are their offenses categorized as? I just think pretty much every offense has so much variation that more or less none of them fit into just spread or just manball and I think Borges would fall into that. I mean technically all those stupid denard up the middle runs would probably fall under a spread offense so its funny that people are pissed about manball when that isn't qb runs, not that i think a rb up the middle would have had more success.
November 26th, 2012 at 12:24 PM ^
on the type of offense a team runs. There are some degrees of variations but not all are the same for obvious reasons, there's Air Raid, Spread Option, West Coast, Coryell, Run N Shoot, Pro Style, etc.
What Al Borges are running is a combo of WCO and spread offense, but he doesn't know much about spread option offense that he tries to implement it into his offense. The results aren't pretty. IMO, the best thing for him is to install his offense and take his lump. The offense won't really take off for an another few years, but DG will provide a good transition because of his ability to pass the ball as well as take off to run.
November 26th, 2012 at 6:26 PM ^
is closer to a Coryell style than Walsh's WCO.
November 26th, 2012 at 9:42 AM ^
I believe the power run game can work. It has certain advantages and simplifies the game. I have always viewed Manball as playing Chess and Spread be it pass or run based as playing GO. In the game of Chess once you get an advantage the intent of the game is to simplify the game by sacrificing pieces of equal power. If you have better talent, leverage your superior talent and win. Put the defense on its heels such that there is little inovation that they can do other then stacking the box to win. A great QB is always nice. But I do not believe you can get away with a game manager whose task is not to make mistakes. Alabama and Wisc are good examples of manball teams that have schemes that do not require great QB's. It may even be hard to attract great QB's because they know the prefered option is run the ball 50 times a game. There are variations as USC looks to pass more.
The limitation of manball is that is little recourse if you meet another Manball team better then you. Since your offense is straight forward and predicated on being meaner and tougher, a bigger dog means you lose.
This leads into the popularity of the spread be it pass or run based. A spread gives a team with inferior power the capability to compete with more powerful teams by show casing speed, agility, and deception. The spread introduces more complexity and thus more variance in result. A great GO player is not looking to simplify an opponent but engulf them in complexity and deception. A classic spread team is Northwestern. NW will never attract great talent. So they recruit smaller more agile players who they can attempt to put in space. In order to combat it the defense is forced to make many more decisions. If the wrong decision is made instead of an eight yard gain it is a 78 yard TD play. This gives NW a shot to beat a power team like MSU or UM they have no buisness doing.
The down side of the spread is it is a two edge sword. The variance introduced to keep a inferior team in contention means when you are superior you have more things that can go wrong and thus lose. If your look at Oregon they have had games where they put up 70 points. Then they inexplicably lay and egg and cannot get in sync. In order for a spread to be effective it absolutely needs a QB making the right decisions. A spread cannot work with a game manager. If you have a Tebow, Newton, Young, the sky is the limit as that is whom you are show casing. You can even run them since removing the cupcakes a typical college team only plays half NFL season of games and the talent is diluted among 125 teams verses 30 NFL teams. The down side is if you do not do your homework or your QB goes down, since the offense is centered on good decisions being made by a QB, everything grinds to a halt.
In parting I think it is great we have the contrast. If football were played one way, it would be boring.
November 26th, 2012 at 10:55 AM ^
In additiont to the variance issue, I think you can also argue manball offers more in terms of injury proofing. If you're a spread team and you run into QB depth chart issues so suddenly you have Navarre starting, things are getting ugly (or a freshman Henne who can't make all the throws yet). If you're lizard brain Michigan you shrug and give A-Train/Perry/Hart 30+ carries game. Same with lineman, if your depth chart is mostly young guys you have issues teaching them to zone block. However if you just have physical freaks of nature it takes less time to teach a young guy blocking techinque and tell them "Go put that DT on rollerskates and open a hole for the RB". Obviousily you want more out of the lineman in the long term, but if you can emergency sub in a guy who has the power to relocate the DT on every down, that's tolerable.
Of course manball tends to fall apart when you can't physically outmatch the other side. I find myself a big believer in a system where Michigan functions happily as a lizard brain manball team, but we have the spread passing attack (al la Tiller Era Purdue or Capitol One Bowl vs Florida) just sitting there on the shelf. I think we were close to having that during the Henne Era, but our OC was afraid of throwing. I'm really hoping with Morris and the bigger WRs we're bring in, we're heading back that way. DeBord manball involves too much lizard brain, but some lizard brain is always nice. Just grind off the other team's will to live.
November 26th, 2012 at 9:44 AM ^
November 26th, 2012 at 10:37 AM ^
November 26th, 2012 at 10:41 AM ^
During the 2007 Cap One Bowl, we got to see a "power-spread" hybrid offense on our side of the ball. We not only kept up with Florida, we ended up winning the game, even though Urban had Tebow calling the signals and Harvin everywhere.
One of the really interesting quotes during the game was from Rich Rod. A sideline reporter, IIRC, asked him about bringing the spread to U-M. He responded, in effect, "See what Michigan's doing out there? They're running the spread." His point was that the scheme streached the Florida defense sideline to sideline and vertically, creating space.
I think we can do both. The question is whether Al Borges is wedded to the West Coast Offense as a superior religion, or if he has room in his scheme for alternative deities.
November 26th, 2012 at 11:06 AM ^
I'd argue you can't consider the running spread and the passing spread as the same. With something like the read option you're looking at pressuring specific aspects of the front 7 (namely the DE) and exploiting them there. Whereas with the passing spread it's more about laughing with insane glee as the DBs scramble to cover three top tier WRs plus a TE. Then once you've forced them into nickel and you have advantage in the box, you truck Hart up the middle.
Basically on a conference that excelles at DB production but has weaker front sevens, the running spread is potentially better, whereas a conference with strong front sevens but mediocre DBs leads itself to a passing attack.
I'd agree that the concept of the spread is the same, but when you hire a guy you need to be spend some thing thinking "do we want a passing one or a running one" and then guy hire a guy who does the desired one well.
November 26th, 2012 at 11:27 PM ^
November 26th, 2012 at 12:16 PM ^
Notre Dame and Alabama (oh wait, "Georgia/Alabama") live off of that, and they're going to the national championship game, so this isn't exactly a revolutionary article to write. Maybe two weeks ago when it was K State and Oregon on track to get there.
November 26th, 2012 at 12:44 PM ^
The system isn't what matters. The execution is what matters. My question to the board is, what do you run when your O-line can't block?
Lewan had his worst game of the season, the interior O-line was exposed (again) against a very talented front, and I'm left wondering, what play can you call when your O-line can't block very well? Sure, I wanted to see more of Devin and Denard on the field simultaneously (I'm really not sure why that didn't happen), but I'm not sure what they could have done that would have been much different without any blocking in the 2nd half.
November 26th, 2012 at 1:37 PM ^
Spread teams have done just fine in the BCS. Texas, Auburn, and Florida all won NC with pure spread teams. With the exception of the 1st Florida NC all of the above had great QB play. But who does not win a NC with an average QB? The number of journeyman QB's with NC's is very short. Even Harbaugh in the NFL came to the same conclusion that not having a QB who can make a play reduces the margin for winning it all to almost nil. At Alabama it takes Saban picking the top ten defensive players every year to pull off.
A manball offense is generally going to be throttled if the QB is a manager and the defense it is up against is throttled.
Me personally, I would hope that a coordinator would be able to adjust to the talent at hand. If a player has unique talents, tailor the offense to what you have. What I enjoy at the NFL level is the constantly changing face of the New England offense. NE comes up with a twist and the league adjusts. Then they do a complete make over and the league is off balance again. We also saw this with the Colts and Manning. You figure out how to stop the 4 WR step, they go 2 WR 2 TE. You try to stop the pass, they kill you with a run. You get burned with them going big and adjust, they go small and agile. Helps to have a great QB. But boy is it fun watching how the scheme morphs.
November 26th, 2012 at 2:13 PM ^
Hoke is definitely putting a MANBALL team together, so only time will tell if it's going to truly work. Man I love seeing those sread offenses, but D. Green and our big nasties we our recruiting sure does sound like a lot of fun to watch!!
November 26th, 2012 at 6:48 PM ^
Manball works if you can amass more talent than everyone else. It has always worked great against teams with less talent. The problem is that, in this day and age, the increments between talent levels of various teams isn't as large as it used to be.
As for Michigan, they play it straight in recruiting, while other teams such as Ohio State, USC, Oregon, and Alabama, to name a few, cheat. They know that the punishment for cheating never makes them lose as much as they gain by cheating, so they cheat, deny everything, take their punishment, and then find different ways to cheat.
Consequently, Michigan seldom has as much talent on their roster as the teams I mentioned, and manball simply doesn't work against them.
Michigan is perfectly capable of tweaking the WCO to create space for their offense. The question is whether they will be allowed to do so or not.
November 26th, 2012 at 11:24 PM ^