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Yes, there's even a Big Ten…

Yes, there's even a Big Ten rule that says that the game may not be started unless the "RealFeel" index on Accuweather is at least 28 degrees F.  Not sure if it applies to non-conference games, but as you point out Oakland is so close that it wouldn't be too much of a burden to re-schedule if necessary.

Yeah, it's basically the…

Yeah, it's basically the same empty expanse of ocean where NASA dumped all of the Space Shuttle External Tanks. Even if the trajectory got messed up somehow, it isn't landing on anything but deep ocean.

Wow, a Friday starter for a…

Wow, a Friday starter for a top-40 team?  Looks like he has a sub-3.00 ERA and about 10 K/9 IP.  Impressive.  

Also keep an eye on the Michigan hockey regional schedule.  Two of the regionals are Thursday-Saturday and two are Friday-Sunday; you might want to find yourself a place to watch if Michigan happens to be playing.

Alex obviously had the same…

Alex obviously had the same thought that I did after watching the games:  "did we just see Jeff Jackson's last game as a hockey coach?"  It has been quite a career, but I think he hasn't really adapted very well to recent changes in the game.

The two east regionals are…

The two east regionals are looking most likely to me, so that's definitely good news for you.

But remember this--the 3-seed band is the one that gets flipped around the most when teams have to be re-arranged for travel or intra-conference matchup reasons.  Since Michigan is a likely 3-seed, there is a good chance they have to swap with another region.  So I guess in the end right now it comes back to your "total crapshoot" idea.

Ask me again next week and we will have a better feel for this.

Michigan's matchups to begin…

Michigan's matchups to begin Session 2:

SEMIFINALS
125:  #7 Michael DeAugustino v #6 Braeden Davis, PS
133:  #1 Dylan Ragusin v #5 Aaron Nagao, PS
141:  #5 Sergio Lemley v #1 Beau Bartlett, PS
149:  #2 Austin Gomez v #6 Ethen Miller, MD
157:  #7 Will Lewan v #3 Brayton Lee, IN
174:  #2 Shane Griffith v #3 Patrick Kennedy, IA
184:  #5 Jaden Bullock v #1 Isaiah Salazar, MN
285:  #3 Lucas Davison v #2 Nick Feldman, OS

CONSOLATION ROUND 2
165:  #6 Cameron Amine v #12 Maxx Mayfield, NW 
 

Standings through session 1:…

Standings through session 1:

1. Penn State (83.5)
2. Michigan (70.5)
3. Iowa (57.5)
4. Nebraska (46.5)
5. Minnesota (34.5)
6. Rutgers (31.5)
7. Ohio State (28.5)
8. Maryland (20.5)
9. Wisconsin (16.5)
10. Indiana (16)
11t. Illinois (10)
11t. Michigan State (10)
13. Northwestern (7)
14. Purdue (4)

A semifinal win is worth 7 points at a minimum, and up to 9 points depending on how the wrestler wins. Michigan has 8 semifinalists, Penn State has 9.  
 

If both teams are 8-0, maybe…

If both teams are 8-0, maybe the pressure will be to win the game on December 7.  You know, when they play back-to-back weeks.  Of course, the real pressure will be to win the game on January 10, 2025, when the teams meet in the Orange Bowl in the Semifinals.

Ugh, I hate what college football is becoming.

 

Can't we have one message…

Can't we have one message board thread that doesn't end up with us digging up a corpse?

I would assume there is also…

I would assume there is also good camera coverage in the facility, so the AD would theoretically be able to pull the tapes and see what happened.

 

I'm one of those weird…

I'm one of those weird season ticket holders who actually gave the ticket office the zero-interest loan, but I haven't done that every season.  I agree--I would be furious if I had lost out on my preferred seats because the ticket office couldn't be bothered to offer the tickets to me before putting them up for sale to the general public.

I will also add that I absolutely did not receive any e-mails from Michigan on February 13. They are lying to you.

Michigan is taking their…

Michigan is taking their annual Spring Break road trip this upcoming week, playing 8 games in Texas and California in the next 10 days, including games in 2 different MLB parks (Globe Life Field and Dodger Stadium).

Fri 2/23  vs Oklahoma State, 4:00 (Globe Life Field)
Sat 2/24  vs Oregon State, 4:00 (Globe Life Field)
Sun 2/25  vs Arkansas, 2:00 (Globe Life Field)
Tue 2/27  at USC, 9:00
Wed 2/28  at Loyola Marymount, 9:00
Fri 3/1  at UCLA, 8:00
Sat 3/2  at UC Irvine, 4:00
Sun 3/3  vs San Diego, 1:30 (Dodger Stadium)

(All times Eastern).

Michigan is probably favored in 1 of those 8 games--the LMU game Wednesday night. A 3-5 record for the trip would have to be considered a success.

Michigan's first home game is Wednesday March 6 against Oakland University, weather permitting.

 

They are picked mid-pack in…

They are picked mid-pack in the Big Ten--6th of 13 in the one projection I saw, I think from Baseball America. They didn't even look like a mid-pack B1G team last week, splitting a 4-game series with Western Michigan with a couple of brutal blown leads leading to high-scoring extra inning losses.

Short summary:  the hitting is good enough to compete with the best in the Big Ten, the pitching is...not.

 

No, CBC did not carry the…

No, CBC did not carry the Olympics then; it was (I think) CTV.

Some UHF station in Sarnia had the game on, but it was hard to pull in their signal in Ann Arbor. If you were in Detroit, it would have been easier though.

My memory is some random guy from Macomb County called in to the Warren Pearce show on WJR and "announced" the last couple of minutes of the game from his television. Pearce said a couple of times that we probably shouldn't be letting him do this, but he never actually made the move to stop him. 

What even more people don't…

What even more people don't realize is that it was not a semifinal.  There was no semifinal and no final, only a "medal round."

Michigan's game 1 starting…

Michigan's game 1 starting lineup will include 6 players who were playing elsewhere last season--5 transfers from other D-I schools plus 1 true Freshman.

Stephen Hrustich-LF, Gr. (Stone Mountain, GA / Northwestern)
Mack Timbrook-2B, Gr. (Kent, OH / Kent State)
Mitch Voit-1B, So. (Whitefish Bay, WI)
Jonathan Kim-CF, So. (Brookfield, WI)
Will Rogers-C, Jr. (Shoreview, MN / Arizona State)
Dylan Stanton-DH, Jr. (Richland, MI)
Cole Caruso-3B, Jr. (Scottsdale, AZ / USC Upstate)
Kyle Dernedde-SS, Gr. (Tualatin, OR / Oregon State)
Greg Pace Jr.-RF, So. (Southfield, MI)

Dylan Vigue-P, Fr. (Leominster, MA)
 

Ask me in May. Last year he…

Ask me in May. Last year he was coaching the leftovers of somebody else's team--he didn't really have a chance to recruit a Freshman class or even hit the portal since he was hired at the end of June 2022. 

You know what?  Ask me in May 2025. Smith deserves a couple of years to recruit and develop his own team. I'm not entirely discouraged, and Smith has a track record of being a great recruiter.

 

Michigan baseball's problems…

Michigan baseball's problems this year will be exactly the opposite of the softball team's problems. Michigan has a good lineup of hitters but a whole bunch of Freshman pitchers.  Michigan will likely be in a lot of high scoring games, just like last season.  Hopefully they end up with a few more arms that they can trust than they had last year.

Michigan's key returning player might be Sophomore P/1B Mitch Voit, who was selected as a Freshman All-American last season.  Last year, Voit was the closer and started just about every game at third base.  This year, Voit will be in the starting rotation and they are taking some pressure off of his arm by moving him to 1B when he's not pitching. It looks like they have him batting third today.

Michigan's best batter will probably be OF Stephen Hrustich, a graduate transfer who was just about the only bright spot in Northwestern's train wreck of a program last year. He hit .325 and had an OPS of .959 last year against about the same level of competition that he will be facing this season.

Michigan is picked slightly above mid-pack in the Big Ten, but it really seems like they could end up much higher or much lower than that, depending on the performance they get out of their Freshman arms. Iowa and Indiana are the favorites in the conference, with Rutgers and Maryland right behind them.  Unfortunately for Michigan, they have road series against both Indiana and Iowa on their schedule.

Michigan's big home series this year will be against Ohio State on April 19-20-21, the same weekend I think as the spring football game.

Michigan has a home game…

Michigan has a home game against Oakland University scheduled for March 6. We will; see how that works out. Of course, if it's too cold they can just move the game to April or cancel it--Oakland's less than an hour away so it's no inconvenience to decide the day of the game.

The amazing thing about the schedule this year is a 3-game home series against San Diego on March 15-16-17.  I think I can confidently state that the weather in Ann Arbor on March 15-17 will be...less pleasant than the weather that San Diego players are used to.

Well...(1) you have to play…

Well...(1) you have to play somebody--teams that don't start on the first day of the season are not serious programs. Even the dregs of the MAC will all be playing today. 

(2) You have to go to a place where it's possible to play baseball in February. There are no baseball domed stadiums around here, so Arizona/Florida/Texas/California it is.

 

That's a complicated…

That's a complicated question. It's a National Championship (the "ITA Division I National Women's Team Indoor Championship") but it's not an NCAA Championship.  As you correctly point out, the NCAA Championship is conducted in May. Winning this will get you no Directors Cup points and won't have a cool "NCAA Champion" trophy to go with it.

On the other hand, this is much more than an invitational tournament--there are no teams offered a spot in the tournament who declined to participate, and all of the top 15 are offered a spot (along with host Washington). The winner of the tournament will almost certainly have an inside track to the #1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament in May.

Yes, track and field is the only sport with separate NCAA championships for indoor and outdoor.

And even if all of those…

And even if all of those teams played at home, so what?

I would rather see FSU play in front of 1500 fans at Ewigleben than in front of 1000 or even 2000 fans in Allentown PA. If you are concerned about visiting team fans, then make a minimum number of tickets available for purchase by the visiting team ticket office. 

Yeah my preferred system…

Yeah my preferred system uses this idea too (I always go with "Milwaukee and Manchester" as the QF sites, but I assume that we might get to the point where the regionalized quarterfinals could move from 10,000 seat arenas to 15,000 seat arenas).

Tell me ESPN wouldn't love…

Tell me ESPN wouldn't love this:

RIT at #1 Boston College, Fri 7:00 ET
Providence at #8 Denver, Fri 7:30 MT

Massachusetts at #6 Quinnipiac, Sat 3:30 ET
Michigan at #4 Maine, Sat 6:00 ET
Minnesota at #3 North Dakota, Sat 7:30 CT

Western Michigan at #7 Michigan State, Sun 2:30 ET
St. Thomas at #5 Wisconsin, Sun 4:00 CT
Cornell at #2 Boston University, Sun 7:30 ET

Not a single game when most people are working. Start the tournament with the #1 seed, and Saturday and Sunday prime time games with the 2 biggest non-conference rivalries in college hockey.

 

Okay, but the NCAA isn't…

Okay, but the NCAA isn't going to regionalize the tournament. They have rules that transcend all sports, and one of them is that at-large teams are selected nationally, not regionally.

So let's do something that the lacrosse tournament does. (1) pick the field. (2) seed the top 8 in order. (3) First round has a rule--minimize the number of flights ("flight" = 400 or more miles between schools). (4) No intra-conference matchups in the first round. (5) If no other rules are violated, seed by ranking.

So what do we get?

RIT at #1 Boston College (386 miles)
Providence at #8 Denver (1970 miles)

St. Thomas at #5 Wisconsin (265 miles)
Michigan at #4 Maine (901 miles)

Minnesota at #3 North Dakota (313 miles)
Massachusetts at #6 Quinnipiac (80 miles)

Western Michigan at #7 Michigan State (79 miles)
Cornell at #2 Boston University (327 miles)

Only 2 flights, median 320 miles and IQR (!!!) of 173 - 644 miles.  All without breaking any NCAA rules.  You can't avoid the 2 flights, there are no non-conference opponents available within 400 miles of Maine or Denver.
 

Yep, UCLA, Washington and…

Yep, UCLA, Washington and Oregon will start play in the Big Ten in softball in 2025.  USC, weirdly, does not have a softball team so it will be a very awkwardly sized 17-team conference.

Ah, baseball from cricket. …

Ah, baseball from cricket.  That's a little different.  Baseball was created by the British as a "scrub game."  A scrub game is taking a full-fledged sport and creating a simplified version of the sport--maybe for younger players, maybe for girls instead of boys, maybe because you don't have enough time or space to play the full-fledged sport.

Baseball was basically cricket for little kids, girls or boys, a game that you could finish in a single afternoon and play in a single town lot, as opposed to cricket, which needs more space and more time.  Americans then took the British game of baseball and slowly sized up the field and turned it back into a sport for adults too.  Then the British for whatever reason re-named baseball into "rounders."

 And then in the early 1900s, Americans created a "scrub game" out of baseball, and called it softball (they originally called it "indoor baseball" until they realized softball was fun outside as well).

Oh, they knew the rules. …

Oh, they knew the rules.  They just didn't like the rules and thought they could do better.  That's why Yale's Walter Camp is one of the geniuses of the 19th Century--he kept the exciting parts of rugby, got rid of the boring parts, and gave us this sport.

Believe it or not, I got…

Believe it or not, I got that idea because I read somewhere (I think the Football Archaeology website) that this used to be the rule back in like the 1910s.  A ball could literally roll under the bleachers and the players would have to chase it to try to recover it for their team. The ball wouldn't become dead until one team or the other established possession.

No, that will remove…

No, that will remove excitement.  Let's add it instead.

Either (a) all fumbles out of bounds are turnovers, or (b) a fumble out of bounds is still live and any player may recover it, no matter whether it's in bounds or out.

Wait...I like Title IX.  I…

Wait...I like Title IX.  I like it a lot.

And really, its adoption had almost nothing to do with The NCAA's shortcomings. That was going to become a law in the early '70s no matter what, and its adoption had very little to do with sports in general, or college sports in particular.

I agree with the best-of…

I agree with the best-of-three idea but I think I'm in favor of fighting the biggest battle first.  

So, the current format is this:

* Week 1 = 4 four-team regionals at pre-determined sites
* Week 2 = bye
* Week 3 = Frozen four at a neutral site

And the proposed new format is this:

* Week 1 = 8 first round games at better seeds
* Week 2 = 4 quarterfinal games at better seeds
* Week 3 = Frozen four at a neutral site
 

The great thing is that the new format will actually be cheaper than the current format.  The current format has 12 or so flights for the regionals, and it requires 48 hotel room nights (2 nights for the teams eliminated in the first round and 4 nights for teams who win their first round game, since they added the "off day" to the regionals).

The new format will have 9 or so flights the first 2 weeks, averaging out over the last several years, and only 24 hotel room nights (2 nights for each visiting team and 0 for each home team).

If you change to best-of-three, that price advantage disappears and that would just give the small-minded small schools another excuse to not go with the better format.

I think another good question is why we allow division 2 schools like Ferris State, Mercyhurst and Minnesota-Duluth to have any say at all in how a division 1 sport is conducted. I mean, I am not opposed to allowing them to play at the division 1 level, but the administration of the sport should be left to the schools that actually have division 1 athletic departments.

The sad fact is that you don…

The sad fact is that you don't have a majority of the committee supporting the change. You would need 4 of the following 6 supporting the change and the votes just aren't there.  One vote per conference.

The NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Committee:

Jeffrey Schulman, Vermont AD (Chair)
Bob Daniels, Ferris State Coach
Rick Gotkin, Mercyhurst Coach
Josh Richelew, Michigan Director of Hockey Operations
Scott Sandelin, Minnesota-Duluth Coach
Tim Troville, Harvard Associate AD
 

If hockey games were 48…

If hockey games were 48 minutes long, Michigan would be 10-3-1 in the Big Ten, and next week's MSU series would be for first place.  Instead they are 5-6-3 (counting the overtime loss as a tie) and struggling to get home ice in the first round of the Big Ten tournament. 

That's 10 leads with 12 minutes to go, and Michigan has blown 5 of the 10.

Depth, depth, depth.  It's great to have superstars on the first line but that doesn't mean you can ignore the recruiting for the third defensive pair and the 4th line, who have to be able to give you 15 minutes of solid hockey a night--if they can't be trusted to do that, the stars will be exhausted by the end of the game.

I heard it was Guppy Troup.

I heard it was Guppy Troup.

I assume it's a 14-day…

I assume it's a 14-day waiting period to get the waiver?

I think one big difference…

I think one big difference is that Crisler was loved by the Big Ten and the NCAA--they appointed him head of several committees, including the rules committee--because he was opposed to any progress at all in college athletics. He opposed recruiting, scholarships, TV broadcasts, women's sports, etc. He even opposed "two platoon" football, even though he essentially invented it.

Harbaugh was pretty much Crisler's opposite in every case.

All right; I don't disagree…

All right; I don't disagree with any of that. 

Thank you, sir, I have…

Thank you, sir, I have nothing to add.

Except this:  Wodon is either misinformed or being deceptive when he implies that women's basketball has pre-determined first round sites. It used to, but no longer does.  Women's basketball got rid of the pre-determined first round sites because of attendance issues (!!!) and now the first and second round are hosted by the top 16 teams as determined by the selection committee.

Also...

A list of NCAA Division I sports with multiple playoff rounds where the first round is played at the top seeds:

Baseball
W Basketball
Field Hockey
FBS Football (starting 2024/25)
FCS Football
W Ice Hockey
M Lacrosse
W Lacrosse
M Soccer
W Soccer
Softball
M Tennis
W Tennis
W Volleyball

And a list of NCAA Division I sports with multiple playoff rounds where the first round is played at a pre-determined site:

M Basketball (always neutral site)
M Ice Hockey (not always neutral site)

Yep. 2 long trips in 8 days…

Yep. 2 long trips in 8 days was a lot of travel.  No way am I doing three bowl trips in a 4-week period.  It will be interesting to see what happens to attendance at the QF & SF round.

 

Remember that the top 4…

Remember that the top 4 seeds--the byes--are all reserved for teams that won CCGs.  The 4 best Conference Champions of the 9 conferences (there are only 9 now, right?) will be seeds #1, #2, #3 and #4.  The 5th and 6th best CCG winners are also guaranteed to be in the #5 to #12 seed group--almost certainly as #11 and #12.

So if you play your "junior varsity" in the CCG, that just means you have to win 4 more games to win the CFP, instead of 3.

Perhaps we could add the…

Perhaps we could add the latest money-making and publicity-hunting schemes of a certain Mr. Stalions to the list of forbidden topics here. I certainly would if it were up to me.

Obviously any news of the investigation is on topic, but a former minor athletic department employee shouldn't get automatic publicity here every time he opens an InstaTok account or whatever.

And when I think a zag's…

And when I think a zag's coming?  That's when I zog.

Ernie Harwell absolutely did…

Ernie Harwell absolutely did call football.  He was color, and later play-by-play, for Georgia Tech football in the 1940s.  In the 1950s, he did play-by-play for Fordham, Boston College, and Yale at various times, and for the NFL NY Giants in 1952.  He also did the Baltimore Colts in 1956-1958.

Regrettably, he was also talked into doing Michigan State football in 1963.

I am all for it as well, but…

I am all for it as well, but unfortunately they have announced that the roof will be closed.

A factor here is that they…

A factor here is that they try to write the rules to apply to all 3 divisions (instant replay is still I think the only exception).

Especially 25 years ago, I think they figured 35-40 yards was right around the max range of an average D2 or D3 kicker, so teams could still have a shot at a FG even if they didn't pick up a first down.

Plus they realized that game length would quickly become a problem if they started much behind the 25. It ended up being so much of a problem that they just do 2-point conversions after the 2nd overtime now.

I was discussing with some…

I was discussing with some fans after the game.  We concluded that going second is clearly the right strategy in a road game or a home game, but you could make the case that you might want to pick "your" side of the field in a neutral game with the fans split.

Still, as has been pointed out, Alabama knew they had to go for it on 4th and goal, and knowing that was a huge advantage for them. If they had gone first, they would almost certainly have kicked the FG in that same situation. 

Yes, he has 1 year of…

Yes, he has 1 year of baseball eligibility remaining--his "COVID Year."  As of now he's still listed on Michigan's baseball roster.  I'm not sure how this works, if he will stay at Michigan through baseball season and then transfer, or if he will end up somewhere else right away.

Since there's only about a week until Spring classes start at most places, I assume he's at Michigan through May/June.

I would suggest that this…

I would suggest that this isn't all that great a way to compare rating systems, since bowl games are uniquely affected by opt-outs, transfers, different levels of commitment to the game, etc. Obviously computer rating systems don't adjust for any of those things. One of the best raters out there (KFord) even says specifically that he does not use his ratings to predict bowl games for this exact reason.

It would be like using the last week of the NFL season, when playoff teams are resting their starters and bad teams are tanking, to evaluate NFL rating systems. Picking a random week in October or November would be a much better test.

"Welcome to the Big Ten,…

"Welcome to the Big Ten, Oregon. So we decided that you get to host Michigan once every 18 years.  The good news? You get to host Northwestern 9 times every 18 years!"