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"The Transfer Portal is the…

"The Transfer Portal is the beer goggles of college football" 

Thank you Joel Klatt 

(No subject)
I think pointing out…

I think pointing out randomness strengthens the argument for going for two early. After all, who knows what word things could happen when you're trying to score twice? In the mean time, if your kick early, you still need to convert two pointer to make any trouble with the snap matter. 

But by that sentiment,…

But by that sentiment, wouldn't the players play extra hard if you go for two and make it, knowing they can tie it with an extra point? This is just loss aversion again, your focused totally on the bad things that will happen if you miss, while completely ignoring the good things that will happen if you make it.

One question: Outside of…

One question: Outside of loss aversion, what is the big benefit from kicking the XP and delaying the 2-point conversion? Even if you assume that the game is over if you miss the 2-pointer, it's not like delaying the attempt gives you better odds at converting. The only benefit is avoiding any potential bad news for longer. 

If anything, I'd think converting early would be extra motivating. Now, instead of having the dreaded 2-point attempt looming over any drive, your team knows that a touchdown automatically* ties the game. That seems to matter way more than avoiding the miss, especially since we're assuming the game is over whenever you miss. 

*99% 

See, this post shows why…

See, this post shows why Frames was correct to go for two early: Kicking the XP only makes sense if you've totally given up on trying to win if miss the 2-point conversion. However, if you'd like to actually give yourself the best chance to win, even if you miss the 2-pointer, it's better to get it out of the way early so you can better manage the rest of the game. 

This is just a form of loss aversion, where some people would rather avoid the bad news as long as possible even if it means you have a lower chance of winning. It's same reason the old guard grumbled about teams going for it more on 4th and short situations - punting avoided a small chance at a big loss now, even if it meant voluntarily giving up a good chance at continuing a drive in good field position. Avoiding the big loss now lowered the odds of winning, but it sure felt safer. 

Well, yesterday's news story…

Well, yesterday's news story was that multiple Big Ten schools had confirmed that Stalions had bought tickets from them, and that there would soon be footage coming out soon of people recording the sidelines from the seats he bought. I'm assuming this means there are going to be videos of people recording from those seats released this evening. 

You're still focusing on the…

You're still focusing on the results rather than the process. The criticism is about the process: the things he did actually gave him a relatively low chance of actually getting the results he wanted, doings things another way would have actually given him a better chance to get the results he wanted. But you're ignoring that because the lower probability route ended up working this time. 

Like, imaging if I gave you a chance to make a free throw for $1000, or shoot a half-court shot for $1000. Clearly, choosing the free throw would give you a better chance at wining the money. But PJ Fleck chose the half court shot, and you're defending the decision because he made the shot against the odds. 

Sometimes bad strategies end up with good results. That does not make the strategy smart. 

Your basing your explanation…

Your basing your explanation on results, not process. Sometimes poor strategies end up working out, this does not mean the strategy was good. Sometimes optimum strategies don't end up working, this does not mean the strategy was bad. Fleck's strategy ended up working out this time, that does not mean it was good

And we've seen plenty of coaches who are better at that job than me execute terrible in-game strategies. Mario Cristobal knows way more than me about coaching football, but I think I can say his end-of-game strategy last week was terrible. Fleck knowing more about coaching than me, but that does not mean every in-game strategy he executes is above criticism.

You do realize that Fleck's…

You do realize that Fleck's job is to coach his team to scoring points as well as preventing Michigan from doing the same, right?

The issue is: When you're down 21 points in the first half, going out of your way to prevent the other team from having another possession before the end of the half should be much lower priority than giving your team the best chance to actually score a touchdown. Once you're down 21, preventing the other team from scoring only matters if you actually put some points on the board yourself. But Fleck seemed to be content to settle for a field goal with one low-probability shot at the end zone when he should should have done whatever he could do to give his team the best chance at scoring a touchdown. You're down 21, you need to score a lot of points!

But then the low-probability shot at the end zone worked, and he was rewarded for his poor strategy. 

I think I have all of the…

think I have all of the Hail to the Victors, and the first one I have is 2009 (Maple Street Press!)

He definitely said TJ Hughes…

He definitely said TJ Hughes' name before going into his stats

Great, we have multiple…

Great, we have multiple tweets leading to an article that's locked behind a paywall. Can anyone here actually access the article to see if there's anything to the rumor this time, or if it's the usual speculation?

The numbers don't match your…

The numbers don't match your hypothesis. From the tweet at the top of the article, it shows that Michigan has the 3rd-fewest plays per minute in CFB. That is the opposite of what you want to do if you want to run more plays, or want your opponent to run more plays. And of course, if we ran more plays just as efficiently, our drives would be over more quickly, leading to more time for more drives and increasing the number of drives we would have per game. 

Number of drives per game and number of plays per game seem pretty correlated, and the coaching staff doesn't seem to be doing much to maximize either. Which seems like a poor strategy decision for a team that's going to be superior to its opponents the vast majority of the time. 

We probably didn't see all…

We probably didn't see all the frippery, but we saw the concept and how it can be defeated: players. 

Wasn't the same thing said about the spread until people started running the spread with players? And now pretty much every offense has spread concepts all over the place. 

Which is not a prediction that the Go-Go offense is the future or anything. But I'd like to see it some more when the OL isn't being totally overwhelmed by the DL. Every offense looks bad when that happens. 

I would like to thank the…

I would like to thank the civility police for educating me that ACKSHUALLY the problem here was me not being civil enough in my criticism of explicit calls for discrimination. Great job, guy. 

you brought up a totally…

you brought up a totally unbelievable story of a bunch of men who hang out in a bathroom to make decisions about stuff.

I never said that people just hang out in the bathroom making decisions. I don't know the details because I wasn't there, but "continuing the discussions from the meeting in the restroom immediately after the meeting" isn't particularly hard to believe. And if you aren't supposed to be in that restroom, you're going to miss out on whatever was said in there, which is going to make life more difficult for you. 

Hey, speaking of "missing…

Hey, speaking of "missing the forest through the trees" and "things men do in the workplace that unintentionally make life more difficult for women", here you are! You are entirely dismissing the point of my post because a woman's story of a thing that happened to her doesn't match up with your experience as a man. Nothing problematic there!

Fine, I phrased in poorly. I…

Fine, I phrased in poorly. I shouldn't have said anything about the OP having issues controlling himself, I admit it, whatever. But this stupid semantic argument about the way I phrased my criticism is missing the forest through the trees. 

I'm thinking of a story a woman I know told me once. She would regularly attend meetings with a bunch of men, and then after the meetings, all of them would naturally head to the restrooms. And then the men would continue the conversation from the meeting in the men's restroom, while she would get left out of all the input and decision making while she was alone in the women's restroom. So she started just using the men's restroom with all the men to make sure she didn't get left out!

Do I think the men hated women? No. Do I think the men were intentionally discriminating against the woman on the team? No. Do I think they had issues controlling themselves? Absolutely not. Do I think they were even aware that their behavior was discriminating against women? No.

Was their behavior making life more difficult for the women in the workplace? Absolutely. 

So here, we have a thread already about one of the ways men in power regularly make the workplace more difficult for women, by treating them like objects of sexual desire rather than colleagues. And in this thread, we have a poster so clueless on the workplace environment that he casually tosses out explicitly discriminating against women as useful workplace advice. And it receives a lot of upvotes! And no pushback outside of my comments. That's bad!

But yes, let's focus on whether "controlling himself" was the right phrase to use here, because that's the real problem. Boy, do we have a bunch of posters who are really concerned about that problem.

He's not going to have to…

He's not going to have to worry about false accusations if he can control himself. Instead, he's explicitly discriminating against women because he views false accusations as a bigger problem than explicitly discriminating against women. And advising other people to explicitly discriminate against women as well. Probably because explicitly discriminating against women won't affect him personally, so it's not a real problem. 

He said he avoids 1-on-1…

He said he avoids 1-on-1 situations with members of the opposite sex, but nothing about 1-on-1 meetings with members of the same sex. This means it it is more difficult for women to actually meet with him, since he'll avoid them if there are no other people present. His effort to protect himself is making life more difficult for women than their male colleagues. How is that not discriminating against women?

If I had a publicly high…

If I had a publicly high-profile job as a man, I would actively avoid 1-on-1 situations with the opposite sex as a rule, let alone what this clown allegedly did. 

Stop it with this bullshit. You're advocating for explicitly discriminating against women because you can't control yourself. How about treating women like human beings and not objects that only serve one purpose instead?

I believe this is the Zak…

believe this is the Zak Zinter video tweet Brian was talking about:

https://twitter.com/greatmckay/status/1596997011466616833

Very pleasant to continually watch on a loop

Clearly, failing to win a…

Clearly, failing to win a third World Cup in a row proves they care too much about politics. They should learn from the team that beat them, Sweden, which is famously non-woke. 

Am I going to be able to…

Am I going to be able to subscribe to Peacock for just one week/month or are they going to make us sign up for a year to watch football?

As of right now, all of your…

As of right now, all of your YouTube embeds are showing up as "Video unavailable/This video is private" for me. Might want to fix your privacy settings. 

I was not selected, but a…

I was not chosen, but a YouTubeTV support forum I visited had an official representative drop in and post "If you don't have access then and want to test out multiview during March Madness, you can contact our live support team and they can help you out." So I did that this morning, and they said I should be activated within 24 hours. I haven't seen anything yet, but hopefully it'll be working for me by the time the first games kick off tomorrow. 

And I think OP is being a little overly dramatic about the downsides of this. Sure, it's limited to pre-selected channels for now, and only certain hardware for now, but this is just an initial limited release for testing. Presumably it'll get opened up to more customization and more hardware as development continues. I'll be shocked if they launch NFL Sunday Ticket this fall without the ability to customize which games you get to watch for that. This is presumably just a test run to work out the kinks ahead of time for that. 

I know this isn't after the…

I know this isn't after the fact, but two thoughts so far:

  • I vaguely remember someone mentioning the watchalong in a podcast this week, but I had forgotten about it until I saw a tweet after the game started. Maybe more advanced notification next time?
  • And then I turned in, but this game is only available on BTN+ for me (Maybe it's on Bally on local cable for most of you in Michigan? But not outside of Michigan). But I quickly turned it off because I don't have BTN+, and it's pretty much useless if you can't actually watch along. If you're going to try this again, maybe try on a game that's on regular BTN or ESPNU or something like that. 

Anyways, those are my thoughts, which may or may not be worth anything.

I'll fix that (I think, let…

I'll fix that (I think, let's see how this formats...)

[Bryan Fuller]
The whole idea of a list of …

The whole idea of a list of "X things to do before you die" existed long before the movie. But calling that list a "bucket list" was practically nonexistent before the movie. So that's where the confusion comes from - it seems like it's been around forever because the concept behind it has been around forever, but no one actually called that concept a bucket list before the movie came out. 

I've gone back and rewatched…

I've gone back and rewatched the full version of the '21 game, and I gotta admit, the second half is a bit of a slog. Of course, this is mostly because we were kicking their butts so badly on offense and scoring so quickly that we barely had the ball in the second half. But this means that a whole lot of time is spent watching the defense not quite being able to kick OSU off the field when one more stop would have ended the game. Still great, but the 60 minute version is probably an improvement. 

But the '22 game? All of our quick scoring is interrupted by Stroud floundering around the whole second half and tons of OSU schadenfreude. Inject it all into my veins. 

Does anyone know what…

Does anyone know what sections were part of the UM ticket allocation?

I don't know if it's the…

I don't know if it's the best or cheapest option. But I live out of state and have YouTubeTV, and I can easily legally watch every Michigan football game. And any other Michigan sporting event that's on regular cable TV. So it's a good default option. 

I saw it last night, I'm…

I saw it last night, I'm going to echo a similar sentiment as pretty much everyone else. No, it's not a cinematic masterpiece, but neither was the original. The original was loved because it was a fun, action-packed, adrenaline pumping movie, that has lots of big planes go vroooom. This one hits on all the same sentiments without being a retread of the original. It was just a fun, enjoyable two hours. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one. 

The main problem was that…

The main problem was that this:

The Athletic typically, not always, barters in speculation and shoddy sources.

Seems totally inaccurate. Nobody thinks you were making an ad hominem attack, they just think you're reasons for trashing The Athletic were totally untrue. 

And this follow up doesn't help:

For Michigan sports, I find the analysis and the actual news-breaking most helpful on this site, Touch the Banner, or through social media posts

Yeah, The Athletic barters in speculation and shoddy sources, but social media posts are very reliable and well sourced!

I think this is the latest…

I think this is the latest learderboard update as of right now:

 

https://twitter.com/newampaths/status/1518946013540671490

 

I think they're being dicks…

I think they're being dicks about forcing people to use the new Reddit site and official Reddit apps in order to modify /r/Place. Or at least I couldn't see the design on old Reddit until I went to https://new.reddit.com/r/place. YMMV

Man, I'm 40 years old and my…

Man, I'm 40 years old and my parents dropped their land line. My grandmother is still alive and figured out how to call the new number. People have been changing phone numbers and updating their contact info forever. You're showing your intellectual capacity by thinking you need to keep paying for a land line for those things. And by bragging about how you got all those things for "only" $250. 

But... Cell phones have…

But... Cell phones have voice mail where people can leave lovely messages too

Happy YouTubeTV subscriber…

Happy YouTubeTV subscriber here. Good lord, cable subscribers have the shortest memories ever, as if there haven't been been tons of carriage disputes on cable providers as well over the last 25 years. Once again able to to watch whatever I want while paying way less than $250 for TV, internet, and OK boomer who still has a home phone. 

LOL no. The only thing cable…

LOL no. The only thing cable TV and it's streaming equivalents like YouTube TV have going for them is live sports. But if you don't care about (legal) live sports, you can get a much bigger variety of content for much cheaper through a few streaming services. You don't need to pay for basically every streaming service to do it. 

Are you *not* paying for…

Are you *not* paying for internet anyway even without cutting the cord on TV?

Somewhere on the Andy…

Somewhere on the Andy Staples podcast (I can't remember which episode), he mentioned that the original idea for the early signing period was in August, so players who had made up their minds could play their senior season without having to deal with all the recruiting hassle. This is pretty much how the early signing period works for basketball. However, ADs didn't want the bad press that comes with firing a coach after a significant number of recruits had already signed (which is also an issue for basketball, but no one seems to make that big a deal about it). So they moved the early signing period to December, which pretty much defeats the purpose of having an early signing day while causing an extra mess with the coaching carousel. 

I think the early signing period could work if it was moved to August. But having it in December where it is now just causes a mess. Either move it or get rid of it. 

via GIFER

via GIFER

Any of you youths out there…

Any of you youths out there willing to link to this for us olds who don't Tok or Tik?

EDIT: This was supposed to be in reply to Mercury Hayes, it got posted below the next comment because ???

If Gameday goes to the The…

If Gameday goes to the The Game next year, I'm going to be disappointed if there's nobody there with a Charmin J Stroud sign

LOL, the secret "segment" is…

LOL, the secret "segment" is almost as long as the rest of the podcast.

And I'm listening to all of it.

The counterpoint, succinctly…

The counterpoint, succinctly:

  • You'd rather find out you're down 9 with 5:00 left than find out your down 2 with 0:15 left. Both suck, but one has more options. 
  • If you find out you're down 7 with 5:00 left your end game strategy is much clearer than being down 8 and not knowing if you're going to need one or two more scores. 
Here's the real choice, the…

Here's the real choice, the only choice: if your defense does the job, you're getting the ball back with 3:30, probably around your own 30 yard line.  (All moot, obviously, if your defense doesn't do the job.)  Now: Would you rather be down 8, or down 9?  (Remember: we're assuming that if you make the 2PC, it really doesn't matter when it happens.  Down 7 is best, but there is zero difference between being down 7 and scoring the TD, and down 8 and scoring the TD plus the 2PC.)

Anyone who chooses 9 is crazy.  I'd rather maybe have to have only one possession, than definitely have to have two.

Here is your problem: you're assuming the coach is an idiot who will kick it deep with five minutes left down nine. The advantage to going for it early is knowing that you need to score two more times right then and you start onside kicking right away and hope for a miracle. 

You're going to need a miracle either way if you miss the 2pc, but going for it early gives you more options to hope for a miracle. 

Because if you fail late,…

Because if you fail late, you need the onside kick plus about 10-15 yards for the field goal.  That's it.

If you fail early, you're going to kick off, stop the other team's offense, and they're going to punt it.  Now you need to go ~70 yards, and then you need the onside kick anyway.  Or you're going to go 40-50 yards kick a FG, onside kick anyway, and still need 50 yards. That's where the extra yards come in.

Your scenarios assume onside kick if you go for it late vs kick it deep if you go for it early. Of course the scenario where you kick it deep requires more yards! That has nothing to do with if you go for it early or late! If you fail early and onside kick it's the exact same yards. Especially since you're much more likely to know you need to onside kick if you go for it early and fail. 

People are too focused on the time, but what they leave out is that the opponent gets a say in how much time goes off the clock and you'd damn sure rather have to spend that time driving only once than driving twice.

You're comparing apples to oranges. You still need to drive twice if you go for it late! Only you have less time to plan for those drives!

All your scenarios involve comparing the happy case for going for it late compared to the worst case for going for it early. Once you start comparing similar cases (2pc fails for both cases, onside kick fails for both cases, etc), going for it early is clearly better.