Hope

I'm moving forward because there's only two choices: wallow in bitterness or accept the whims of cruel fate and hope the universe sees fit to balance them out in the long run.

But it is better to take action than just to say you're moving forward.  Thankfully, our friends at the Big Ten office have decided that, in addition to a "public reprimand" for Coach Harbaugh for his postgame comments, they have fined Michigan $10,000 for violations of the Big Ten's sportsmanship policy.

Now, we're not worried about Michigan's ability to pay the fine.  In fact, I'm pretty sure Warde Manuel has a small piggy bank in Weidenbach Hall labeled "Harbaugh Says Something Fund" filled with the petty cash overflow from Michigan Stadium popcorn sales that will cover it no sweat.  But, it gave our blog friend Justin at MaizeandGoBlue an idea, one supported by Kerri from SupportUofM and Brad from Maize & Blue Nation as well as us here at the HSR, to launch a fundraiser benefiting The ChadTough Foundation.

This is a chance for all of us to turn a negative into a positive, to turn disappointment into hope, and to prove that the power of the Ann Arbor money cannon is a force for good.
The plan is as such:
Step 1: Raise $10k for The ChadTough Foundation by kickoff of this Saturday’s Big Ten Championship Game
Step 2: Once we raise $10k, let’s challenge the Big Ten to match the donation
Step 3: Let's make this a conversation piece during the Big Ten Championship Game
We’re all part of a big Michigan family, so let's show that when a family faces disappointment it can come together and make big things happen.  Spread the word on your social media channels, get the snowball rolling.

Visit the fundraiser to donate now.

No amount is too large or too small.  (We personally like $27.00 for what the winning score would have been had the spot been adjudicated in Michigan's favor or $17.00 if you're old school and think the tie would have been perhaps more fitting an outcome for a battle of this magnitude.)

Then, once you donate, please share via social media to help generate awareness. Full details on the fundraiser page.


We thank you in advance on this "Giving Tuesday" and as always, forever Go Blue!

Wrongs Darker Then Death or Night

Hope dies last.  (Credit: Getty Images / Gregory Shamus)

In retrospect, they should have gone for two.  Speight wanted it.  It would have met with widespread approbation, win or lose, like a similar decision three years ago.  The defense was gassed because of the offense, led by the wounded Wilton Speight; one that managed five meager yards in the fourth quarter.  They had just found Amara Darboh in the back of the end zone at the end of the first overtime period.  But they did not, putting the game back on the offense and it nearly worked until Grant Perry was mugged on third down, forcing Michigan to settle for a field goal.

The defense damn near did the thing.  Curtis Samuel ran the width of the Horseshoe on third down and somehow still came up a yard short of the 15. Confusion reigned.  Urban Meyer didn't trust his kicker (with good reason) and initially tried to just punch it on fourth and 1, then thought better of it, called a timeout, then thought better of that and sent the offense back out to try and get that yard.

That yard.  For the remainder of my days, likely in spite of whatever epistemological evidence presented to the contrary, I will never fully believe that J.T. Barrett made the line to gain.  The spot was generous, and there is no way that the officials, who had somehow seen fit to only reprimand Ohio State with six penalty yards for the entire game, were going to reverse that call on replay at that stadium.  The next play was just the denouement.  It didn't matter how, it didn't matter who, it just mattered that it was the only logical conclusion at that point.

So it's disappointing, bitterly so, and I wish I had some "Well, let's look on the bright side." notion to present this day.  But I do not.  Michigan played well enough to win, except for the turnovers, which is like saying I ran the marathon well except for the 12 miles I used a Segway.  It's a rather large exception, one that cannot just be blithely overlooked.  But I think it's worth remembering that few of us expected Wilton Speight was going to play in this game, and he was limited.  Michigan did not complete a pass over 20 yards downfield.  Speight not at 100% was still the best choice, but it was not necessarily enough to win.  We're left with so many "not enoughs" during the course of this century.  It is almost worse than the Rodriguez or Hoke eras.  This team is a great team, it beat both of the Big Ten's division winners, as well as the winner of the Pac 12 South.  But it couldn't win on the road, even if it was a one-point loss at the last second in one case, and a three-point loss in double overtime in the other, it's still cold comfort and it's still a pair of L's on the standings board.  Ohio gets to feel superior for another year and questions remain, what ifs abound.

So I don't have the words right now, I don't know if I will ever have the words.  I want there to be some grand epiphany about this result and what it means, but this just feels like a "life isn't fair" moment and sometimes the universe just needs to remind you of that fact, even if it has done so repeatedly over the course of this year.  There may be a lesson someday, down the road, where the dots connect in retrospect, but I am reminded of something Nate Silver said in The Signal and the Noise, which I just finished last night:

However, the context we provide can be biased and self-serving. As Cicero warned Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, "Men may construe things, after their fashion / Clean from the purpose of the things themselves." We may focus on those signals which advance our preferred theory about the world, or might imply a more optimistic outcome.

Another edition of The Game is in the books.  Some will call it a classic.  I will call it over.

Kohn O'Jorn

Wilton Speight's injury could not have come at a worse time for anagram makers. He missed the snow game! There are 385 anagrams of Wilton Speight that contain the word snow! But Speight's shoulder prevents us from enjoying them, just as his shoulder prevented him from doing snow angels after Saturday's win.

Fortunately, I was somewhat prepared for this contingency, as I had considered the possibility of the O'Korn-meter before the season, as August, much like now, was a time when Harbaugh was being very coy about who the starting QB is. So I had a system sketched out to rank the offense according to songs by Korn and their nü-metal compatriots. Fortunately we were reprieved from having to do that for 10 weeks!

My heart has, by Sunday night, convinced myself that the entire game was played in a blizzard and thus O'Korn's 7/16, 59-yard day was perfectly reasonable under the circumstances. My brain knows, however, that the first three quarters of that game was not played in a winter wonderland, and that Ohio State is going to require a much stronger QB performance. A kickass day from De'Veon Smith only goes so far.

The O'Korn-meter starts off at a 3. I think Trapt's "Headstrong" was the third-worst nü-metal hit, but I'm not going to listen to a bunch of nü-metal to find out for sure.

Cold Front

A beautiful sight, we're happy tonight... (Photo by Isaiah Hole)

Chaos, we must be reminded, disguises itself as normal, but just ever so askew.  It does not walk up to you as a manic street preacher, foretelling the end times and calling for your repentance.  That would be too easy.  Then again, maybe it wouldn't.  The person telling you the truth that you didn't want to hear could be and would be easily dismissed and then you would be shocked, shocked, to learn that they were, in fact, telling you the truth.

For all of our calling Indiana #CHAOSTEAM, we tended to presume that Michigan would bounce back from the disappointment of that night at Kinnick, and rally behind John O'Korn and figure out how to get by Indiana, a team Michigan has not lost to since 1987, and has not lost in Ann Arbor to since 1967.  But the same problems from last week, from the last month, really, were cropping up.  Slightly off target passes, bad luck on spots, every toss-up ball to an Indiana receiver managing to be good for a solid gain.  By the end of a cold and blustery first half at Michigan Stadium, only Kenny Allen's punting seemed to be going right and Michigan and its fans felt fortunate that if this was the first time all season that they were going into the locker room at halftime down, it was only a 7-3 margin.

So the Chaos did come, but, as chaos is wont to do, it came from something seemingly random.  On a third and eight, John O'Korn used his feet, the one part of his game that everyone seemed to agree was stronger that Speight's, and scrambled for 30 yards into Indiana territory.  After an injury timeout, one handoff to De'Veon Smith saw the senior find the end zone with a little fancy leaping at the end, Michigan retook the lead and would never look back.  A second Smith touchdown, following a second blocked punt and a "missed it by that much" dagger from O'Korn to Darboh and there was some breathing room.

No, the chaos came in the snow late in the game.  It snowed.  Goodness did it snow.  In five minutes of game time, Michigan Stadium was transformed from a chilled November in the gloaming to a snowglobe of wonder, the flakes reflecting off the high-powered stadium lights in a way that was more calming that anything else.  Concurrent to this, Michigan did something it had not been able to do against Michigan State or Iowa in the fourth quarter, as they milked a 15 play drive for 51 yards, but more to the point, over eight minutes of game time, assuring that Indiana would have to move the ball in Hoth-like conditions to mount any form of a comeback and reminding them that we would see them in Hell when their Tauntaun died before they reached the first marker.

The snow swirled, the joy of a perfect home season settled over the crowd, a reminder that not every season at Michigan Stadium must end in disappointment, as had become familiar over the last decade or so.  The first snowfall of the season is a reminder of the joyful feeling that snow can provide before the cold, harsh realities of a long Michigan winter settle over you.  But, as a symbol of an ending, for this massive senior class, for those who have seen lows and highs in somewhat equal measure,

Now comes Ohio State week.  A truncated work week as we celebrate that which we are thankful for while simultaneously what we both covet and dread.  There is no reason to believe that Michigan can't go down to Columbus and get a win, but that knowledge comes with the caveat that it's going to require virtually everything to go right for Blue and a lot of things to go wrong for the Buckeyes.  But that is likely more the realities of the 21st century speaking in the back of my mind.  Never stop fighting until the fight is through.  Here endeth the lesson.

All Good Things...

And now, a symbolic moment from the evening's proceedings. (Credit: AP / Charlie Neibergall)

There's no great lesson in this one, because this is, virtually, a textbook loss.  So I suppose that it is ironic, that there is no lesson.  Michigan had any number of chances to capitalize on opportunities, failed to do so, and left the game in the hands of the team that had the ball last.  We've seen this book all too often.  Michigan State 2001 comes to mind.  Iowa 1985 comes to mind.  We could make a list of them and we would look at that list, smile, nod, and say "that's the way it goes, sometimes."

As I watched last night, I hoped this would fall into the category of the "near death experience" game, where everything goes wrong and Michigan somehow manages to hold on (think Iowa 1997, as one example.)  Especially when it looked like the fickle finger of fate that is the John O'Neill officiating crew gives you the gift of "roughing the center" (which, same crew, did NOT call at the end of Michigan State last year when it was far more obvious.)  You hope for the best, but the fear never really leaves you.  When a field goal can win it, it's almost all too easy to see it coming.  The facemask, that may or may not have happened, essentially sealed Michigan's fate.

My hope is that this is not a harbinger of how things can fall apart, but rather the "OK, we're not as good as we thought we were" reminder.  We won't really know anything this week (unless we lose, which, ugh) but we're back to where we were, needing to win at Columbus to move forward.  We shall see.

One serious note: Dear Michigan players.  I know you are happy when you score, I am happy as well.  Please, however, stop headbutting each other.  With an actual focus on concussions and head trauma, even these small impacts, which are wholly unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, are just not a good look.  Celebrate, but do so responsibly.

Concerning Flight

They just spent like two or three weeks out the country / Them boys up to something, they just not just bluffing (AP Photo)

It is joyful.  It may not be joyful in the future, there may be rough sledding yet to come.  Joyful does not mean perfect, there are obviously things to correct.  But it is joyful.  It is joyful to watch this team.  So well coached, executing at the highest level, running interesting and dynamic play calls, showing interesting concepts, connecting on passes in rhythm, and generally making it fun to watch Michigan football.

Yes, winning makes everything better.  But as someone who remembers the Carr years, there was not this joy.  Michigan football, for so many years, even when it was winning football, had hints of joylessness.  It felt, at times, like a thing that had to be done.  But Michigan was winning, so it was good.  Then came the Rodriguez years, which had flashes of brilliance, but more of chaos and of agony.  The early promise of the Hoke years died in the rain of Utah and the Shane Morris incident.  Happiness came in the form of gallows humor and knowing nods at the other members of the tribe.

This changed with Harbaugh.  We saw flashes of it last year, we could not sell ourselves the notion that they would be this much better from Year 1 to Year 2.  We got that bill of goods sold to us, hard, in 2009.  We're wearing scars of wounds we only remember we have when something reminds us of them in a way we were not expecting. We didn't know if the quarterback would be an issue.  Instead, Speight has become a quietly efficient machine, eluding pass rushers and dropping pinpoint passes into buckets.  He leaped across the goal line because he thought he saw a tackler, but ended up with style and flair points.  We didn't know if Michigan could establish the run.  Instead, we get a seemingly infinitely headed hydra of options, with De'Veon Smith shaking defenders off his foot, and Chris Evans blazing into the secondary like he was leaving flame tracks in his wake.

This is why Harbaugh is worth every dollar he gets.  He understands how to get the players to execute and to excel and to want to find ways to be better.  But he does not suck the joy out of the process.  Harbaugh's teams are teams.  They are loose, they are light, and they are supportive of each other.  It is easy to mock Michigan for the things we want to believe we are and the stories that we tell ourselves that we are, but it is clear that this team is keeping in the best traditions and proper spirit of what Michigan holds itself out to be.

The oddness of a Kinnick night presents itself as the next challenge.  Michigan will be ready for it.  We are hopeful that the joy will follow.

(Additional joy notes from the Maryland side: the Maryland kick return duo of D.J. Moore and Jake Funk wins the prize for "kick returners that sound most like a Macklemore knockoff.
Similarly, Perry Hills wins the current B1G prize for "Quarterback whose name sounds most like an MHSAA Division 5 football playoff qualifier, edging ahead of Tyler O'Connor.)

Look at Lord Autumnbottom over there

Pies in the face are only funny is the sap has dignity, but this, on the other hand, is only funny because the sap doesn't have dignity:

The man desperately striving for dignity and failing to achieve it is an American archetype. Willy Loman fantasizes about Uncle Ben. Fredo Corleone insists, indignantly, that he is smart. And much like Fredo, this year Michigan State is being passed over for its even younger brother (WMU).

Going for two when you know you're going to lose is football's version of saying "I'm smart and I want respect. As
Spencer Hall said about the Illinois game, there's something uniquely sad about scoring 8 points in a blowout loss, about having a permanent record that you thought you had a chance. In art, the striver can be a tragic figure, a sign of wasted potential or of the agony of living with a fundamental misunderstanding of how the world works. Football rarely goes for the kind of existential tragedy. It's just funny instead.

Oh, the Speightmeter was delayed this week. Speight is John Navarre this week in honor of the classic Lloydball second half. The offense tried for about 70% of the game, so 7/10 on the Speightmeter seems about right. The extremely conservative fourth-quarter offense may have been strategically sound, but I wonder if there was a little more to it. Out here is civilian-land, saying you took your foot out the gas might be considered an act of mercy, but I can't escape the feeling that for Jim Harbaugh, easing up at the end is the most contemptuous act he could ever imagine inflicting on an enemy. Being considered worthy of the effort necessary to get your butt kicked 78-0 is more dignified than that.

Heart of Glory

And every Michigan fan exhaled.  Finally. (Michigan Athletics)

I wanted to believe.  I wanted to tell myself that the numbers were right and I was being needlessly scarred by the waning seconds of last year's game and that the computers had everything sorted out.  But data, for all that it can tell us, is retrospective.  It can only tell us what has happened, and potentially what may happen, but not what will happen.  That does not mean that data is not instructive, it's deeply so, especially if you take the time to study it and understand what it means.  It's just that "models are opinions embedded in mathematics."

What Michigan State has been this year is utterly surprising to virtually any college football observer whom I have read.  It doesn't seem like it's real, even when you account for the issues like losing a quarterback like Connor Cook or seniors on the O-Line, it just appeared that Michigan State's collapse was inexplicable.  Without getting all cliche, however, there was no way that Michigan State was just going to roll over in this game. A win over Michigan would, if not save their season, could easily mark the moment when they turned their season around.  They were going to take their best swing at Michigan, and for the opening minutes of a swiftly paced first quarter, they looked like they had connected.

Michigan, however, tasted the blood in their mouth, smiled, and proceeded to put 27 points on Michigan State by halftime and had their biggest lead at Spartan Stadium that anyone seemed to be able to remember.  It had been a long, long time.  But the fear remained.  For as great a day as Amara Darboh was having, grabbing nearly everything thrown in his general vicinity, there was still trepidation.  Michigan hadn't looked great last week in the second half against Illinois, for a relative definition of great, would this be the case again.

So when Wilton Speight threw a pick on a wheel route, (which I didn't even know could happen because wheel routes are blameless, holy creatures) and Michigan State took the ball inside the ten-yard line, the fear began to rise once more.  When Jabrill Peppers was called for a meh defensive pass interference in the end zone, giving Michigan State new life and a new set of downs, the fear rose up again.  This was calmed when Michigan stopped them yet again on four straight plays inside the two-yard line, and there was a realization that this year was not all of those other years, Michigan State was not going to out tough Michigan this year.

Except, Michigan really couldn't get anything going as they had to that point.  After the 14 play drive that ended on a nicely placed Kenny Allen field goal to make it 30-10, Michigan went three and out for its first punt of the game, which was followed by a Michigan State touchdown.  Michigan then went six and out, which was followed by a ten play MSU drive that ended in a turnover on downs thanks to a Jabrill Peppers sack.  

Michigan got the ball back with 1:46 left and MSU had two timeouts remaining.  They used both after two Michigan run plays, the second of which looked like Karan Higdon got it but a meh spot, and then a run for no gain had Michigan punting again.   A cleanly handled Kenny Allen snap and punt put Michigan State on their own 25 with 37 seconds remaining.  Time to breathe easy.  Except no.

Michigan State traversed the natural surface of Spartan Stadium quickly (on the clock, the interminable fourth quarter took forever, thanks to reviews, penalties, and general shenanigans) and with one second remaining, scored a touchdown to make it 30-23.  Without warning, Michigan was facing the possibility of a kick with one second remaining where Michigan State could potentially win the game, especially if they converted the try for two.

So when Jabrill Peppers scooped up the loose football from a failed pitch and raced to the end zone for Michigan's own defensive two-point conversion, putting Michigan up an insurmountable nine points with one second remaining, there was a collective exhale from the Michigan fanbase.  The onside kick attempt sailed harmlessly out of bounds and Michigan was, once more, the rightful possessor of the Paul Bunyan Trophy.

There should be no grand proclamations of order restored, or Michigan being back.  Michigan is playing well, the defense, while perhaps no longer on its heretofore historic trajectory that it was before the most recent sixty minutes in East Lansing, is still formidable.  At a time of the year when the chaos begins to swell and swirl around the college football landscape, Michigan went into a stadium that has been a nightmare for them for the last decade and got out with a win.  Style points may matter, but style points don't make the Paul Bunyan Trophy any more beloved when it is displayed in the Towsley Family Museum.  Michigan remains undefeated as the calendar turns to November.  That hasn't happened in long enough that we should pause and reflect on the excellence of that fact.

By happy coincidence, today marks the tenth anniversary of my first HSR post.  Though it took me some time to find my voice, and eventually start these columns, essentially my dairy of my thoughts on the most recent Michigan football game, looking back at these ten years, these eleven seasons spanned in that framework and you realize just how odd they really have been.  Michigan has had as many head coaches in this time frame as it did from 1959-2007.  We have seen the end of the Lloyd era, one that was as confusing at the time as anything. We have seen the high hopes for the Rodriguez era dashed on the rocky shore of tradition and "fit".  We have seen the early promise of the Hoke era collapse under the weight of a lack of competencies. We have seen our way through three coaching searches, each more chaotic than the last.  We have seen our belief in the power of home mocked by everyone outside the tribe except for the one person to whom it actually had to matter.  We have seen the chaos of the Harbaugh era mitigated by the grace of a return to the past, an odd combination of the movie series reboot that works, retaining that which we loved about the original while giving it the right modern twist.  We have seen the staggering highs of Denard running wild, and the dismal lows of well, there was a lot of them.  The final analysis is simple: The last ten years are a rich tapestry, filled with more heartbreak than a Michigan fan is accustomed, but one that has made us more grateful for the small graces.  Like when Michigan's do-everything linebacker runs a two-point conversion back in the final second of a rivalry game.  The small graces matter, and that's why we write about them.  We're trying to capture in words what we feel in our hearts, in our heads.  Something beyond the data, something beyond the metrics, not because those things don't matter, but because we need to give them context.  

Onward to Maryland, onward to November.  

Speight Meter: Slow Insight

Scoring less than half the number of touchdowns that you scored in the previous game is rarely not a cause for concern, but dropping from 11 to 5 is hardly an issue for concern, especially when (1) Wilton Speight has worked his way back towards his early season accuracy, and (2) Kenny Allen hit a couple of field goals. Going into halftime 31-0 was more reassuring than going in up 35-0 would have been.

The most heartening events of this weekend weren't at the Big House - everywhere else in the Big Ten gave signs that the schedule already played was harder than Michigan made it look and the schedule to come is a little easier than we thought. Indiana lost to Northwestern. Iowa failed to have an offense yet again. Rutgers showed signs of being merely extremely bad instead of utterly incompetent. And Penn State beat Ohio State and is now "good" again, which means that Michigan beat a good team by 39 points.

Michigan State lost to Maryland. According to the rules of our Sparty, No! quiz, this counts as a Sparty No! game because MSU was up 17-14 at the start of the fourth and thus, technically, they blew a fourth-quarter lead. If win probabilities had been readily available four years ago we would have used them instead, as MSU only had, at most, a 55% chance of winning.

Of course, we never know what schemes Mark Dantonio has up his sleeves. Riley Bullough could have got himself ejected so he'd have extra rest for Saturday, we may never know.

The Speight Meter is at an 8 this week. Go win this pelt.

The Homecoming

One of the many heads of Michigan's running back hydra.  No, not that Hyrda.  Even if we share the whole "Hail" thing.
(AP/ Tony Ding)

Some random notes from the second half of a blowout win.
Issue #1: Why isn't Illinois better at football?
Illinois is 4th all-time in Big Ten Conference championships, with 15 (just behind...Minnesota?  Yes, Minnesota), but only have seven since 1945.  For all of the people who live in Illinois, you would think that they should be able to recruit the best of Chicago and downstate and be highly competitive.  Then again, Urbana-Champaign is 135 minutes away from Chicago without traffic, and Notre Dame is just an hour away, and Northwestern is "Chicago's Big Ten Team" so maybe that's part of it.  Illinois being "good" always feels more like a random blip than a sustained notion.

Issue #2: Does Jim Harbaugh pay at Ruth's Chris Steak House?
I say yes, even if he is doing wonders for their Sunday-Thursday business.

Issue #3: Does Jim Harbaugh believe in Information Chaos Theory over Information Secrecy Theory?
I have a friend who breaks things for a living and he explained to me during the early years of social media that the key to not giving potential identity thieves a line on who you are is not to put zero information out there, but to put so much information out there that no one knows what is real and what is fake.  If you make it plausible enough, you're not worth the hassle.

I feel like Harbaugh/Drevno/Fisch have decided that they're going to show Michigan's opponents so many things in their playbook that have so many variations, that no one will know that look X means play Y.   Instead, they've gone full Vulcan: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.  Sure, we'll try a fake punt up 34 in the second half, because the opportunity presented itself!  Sure, we'll run the train after two straight misfires in the "let's just Jabrill Peppers a touchdown today" effort.  Sure, we'll cook something up that earns Tyrone Wheatley, Jr. his first career catch which becomes a touchdown.

Basically, Jim Harbaugh is Jimmy James from NewsRadio:

Mr. James: "See? That's right. Just when you think I'm going to zig, I zag."
Dave Nelson: "Well sir, when you're done with your zig-zagging..."
Mr. James: "That's when I zog."

Issue #4: The Michigan Stadium scoreboard was reconfigured and now it is harder to see where the ball is spotted.
I don't need to know what quarter it is on equal footing, but I do want to know where the ball was spotted.  Especially when you're in the end zone and don't have a good angle on it.

Issue #5: I hope the Yips are OK.
Saw the costumes but not being worn, I hope that the Yips are OK.

Really, that's about it.  Which is fine.  Yesterday was routine, for a new definition of routine.  And that's awesome.  On to bringing Paul home to Ann Arbor. Hail!

Speight Meter Week 6: Win, with, spite

Normally, watching a football game involving Rutgers has a well-defined place on the priority list, and that place is at the bottom. So, upon hearing that Saturday's game would be at 4:00 PT and conflict with my arranged-far-in-advance dinner reservations, I expected that missing the late stages of a blowout would mean not missing anything important. Never again will I underestimate the Rutgers's ability to overwhelm with underperformance.

I stopped following the game to start dinner in that brief moment when it appeared Rutgers had more than zero points.

As for the offense: I reviewed the drive chart and realized I had almost forgotten that the first few drives...were not good. If we want to nitpick a 78-point performance (and Michigan Men always do), we can complain about using the wrong gloves and not needing a passing game.

But putting up the largest margin of victory since 1939 is a special occasion and should be noted accordingly.

Rutgers can't even stop our third string and walk-ons, but that's none of my business. It's not my job to stop trying to score.

Operation: Annihilate!

Hello, Mr. Laviano, it's Taco Time.  (AP / Mel Evans)

When preparing to write these posts, I like to look back at the play-by-play to find patterns that I may not remember from watching the game live.  This week showed me that I was correct in thinking that Michigan would not throw another pass after the near interception off the deflection that was taken to the house by Rutgers, only to be called back (unfire the cannon!).  Only three things can happen when you pass, and two of them are bad, and when you are up 57-0, you don't need that hassle in your life.  In the fourth quarter, not counting the two end of game kneel downs, Michigan averaged, averaged 10.64 yards per carry from that point, and scored three touchdowns, all from backups.  Michigan did not so much call off the dogs as told the dogs to go out and have fun and don't get hurt and still put up 21 points.  There can be one conclusion from this: Rutgers 2016 is not a good football team.  I suspect one day in the near future they may be; especially if (and this is a big if) they can keep some of that local talent at home, but for now, Michigan honored the 100th anniversary the infamous Georgia Tech 222, Cumberland 0 shutout, by burning down a divisional foe.

It's worth remembering though that this game was ugly to start.  The rain falling on northern New Jersey was threatening to make this game an equalized slog where it would come down to fumbles and traction.  It was punt, punt, fumble on Michigan's first three series and the room was becoming visibly and audibly nervous.  But then Jabrill Peppers decided to frolick down the sideline on a wildcat keeper, stopped at the Rutgers four and Michigan was in business and never looked back.  Michigan kept piling on, keeping up with a tradition of going for two while up four scores and looks forward to an open date next week.

For all of the offensive fireworks and gaudy stats, the defense was the real MVP.  Michigan had 13 total TFL from 13 different players, limiting Rutgers to an average of two feet per play.  Not two yards, two feet. There were several moments when Michigan was on defense and successfully got pressure, only to see the Rutgers quarterback escape danger, only to have a Michigan player fly in from off screen to lay the wood where I yelped "Oh dear God."  It was savage, it was unkind, and it was ferocious.  It is Michigan's mentality now.  It is no longer her to make friends; it is no longer concerned with being liked by any other school, team, or fan base.  Considering how far Michigan has come since its last trip to Piscataway, that bleary October evening two years ago, this is a whole other world.  It is a world that would have only been permissible in one's wildest dreams or deepest rooted fantasies.  No longer are Michigan fans left to look for silver linings or pushed to gallows' humor.  We enjoy the moment and the seemingly limitless horizon that lays out before us, because this team and this coaching staff have, thus far, made it possible.

But now here Michigan is, 6-0, running like a finely tuned machine, and yet one that still has room for improvement.  That said, the expectations are such that this is where most Michigan fans thought this team would be at this point in the season.  Even if the entirety of Michigan's non-conference slate is proving itself to be better than predicted before the season started, even if Michigan's toughest opponent turned out to be a Wisconsin team that did give the Wolverines fits last week, the six wins in six tries was the widely expected notion.  In looking at the second half od the schedule, the next six games are fascinating if nothing else. Road trips to three of the most hostile to Michigan venues possible, Indiana and Maryland teams that are showing to be a tough out, if Michigan makes it to Thanksgiving with all of its goals in front of it, it will have shown it through the mantra: "Win with character. Win with cruelty."

Enjoy the open date and the new world.

Wis., Tot Helping

Watching Michigan play Wisconsin was like taking a three-year-old to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the game, which is what I did. In the first quarter, everything seems OK. She gets her lunch, eats some fries and her fruit, plays with their game box, and everything is going slowly as planned. There are warning signs though - she doesn't want to eat her mac & cheese because BW3 has shells instead of elbows.

The second quarter starts out better. She gets out of her seat and lies on her side once for no real reason, but soon after she starts clapping along to The Victors like she knows what she's doing. But the mac & cheese slowly congeals into a single blob and she starts throwing her toy football everywhere except where it's supposed to go.

I buy her ice cream at halftime because these three and a half hours need ice cream to get through.

The third quarter has the inevitable accident that you always have to plan for but you're always surprised when it actually happens. Let's not speak of it further.

The fourth quarter starts with her finally deciding to eat a little bit of macaroni. Despite it all, she does do everything she's supposed. For the second Victors singalong she starts to get all the hand motions right.

She spends the second half of the fourth quarter watching Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood on the iPad, learning valuable lessons about anger management, and just riding out the string. As the game ends she starts yelling a little and demands to go home as quickly as possible. 

So if you want to know what parenthood is like, Saturday was the experience for you. Everything usually works out OK in the end, making the hours upon hours of aggravation worth it.

The Speight-meter gets a 2, as the difference in the game was Speight-to-Darboh whipping it longest.

Numbers go in the train formation now.

A Taste of Armageddon

Darboh time, just in the nick of time. (Dustin Johnson / Maize n Brew)

In my mind, there was a slight bit of amusement to be had in the pundits predicting that this would be the week that Wisconsin was exposed as being not as good as thought collectively.  There's nothing wrong with those predictions, they were based on sound reasoning and math, it's just that felt highly unlikely as to how this week was going to go at The Big House.  Even if one thought Michigan might cover the 10 1/2 point spread, it was still going to be a rock fight.  The reality is, advanced stats can help us understand what has happened, but it is still difficult to see when they tell us what will happen.  We can see why Michigan's defense has been so good through things like its HAVOC rating and its stellar third-down completion percentage, but it does not mean that those things will happen again, just that they are likely to be as such, at least based on past performance.

That is why I felt that Wisconsin fumble that was not on third down deep in their territory was a critical missed opportunity.  Not because Michigan needed help, but because that kind of thing would be a break a team needs to help it demoralize an opponent early on and lead to the boat racing that many had foreseen.  Even if Wisconsin didn't score on that drive, even if they didn't move the ball that well, it still felt like a moment of what could have been.  An experienced watcher starts mentally writing the story of the game in one's head while watching the game because one has seen how these things tend to play out.  Very often, that narrative is wrong, but on occasion, it ends up being right.

When Michigan went down the field late in the first quarter, pass, run, run, pass, pass, incompletion, pass, run, run, touchdown run, it felt like Michigan had found a rhythm and a way to befuddle the stout Wisconsin defense just enough to keep ahead of the chains and find paydirt.  Except that is not what was meant to be.  Despite getting excellent field position from Wisconsin, a horror show broke out, complete with a pair of missed field goals, a flurry of penalty flags, and a plethora of punts.  In a game that Michigan should have been up 13-0 headed into the locker room, it was a very disquieting 7-0 lead and one that provided more questions than answers.  Should have has yet to win a football game.

So the weirdness of the opening salvo of the third quarter, penalties leading to Michigan needing to re-punt, only to draw a roughing the snapper call on the re-kick, only to see Speight throw an interception on the play after a Shane Morris run had been called back by a hold, emblematic of the disjointed weirdness that had inhabited Michigan's offense after the touchdown.  Wisconsin used a short field and a wheel route to make their first real moves on the Michigan defense and suddenly, the missed field goals loom large and become the narrative thread of what might have been.

Except, it wasn't.  After another missed field goal, and five exchanged punts, Wilton Speight stayed clean for just long enough to find Amarah Darboh covered single high and dropped a duck in the bucket and Michigan led again.  But the time loomed large over the 110,000 plus crowd, each second feeling longer than the last.  Could the Michigan defense keep answering the bell?

In the end, Michigan held Wisconsin under 170 total yards.  They had three interceptions, including a pair of critical picks by Channing Stribling as the Saturday understudy, and the single most exceptional interception I have ever seen in person by All-America Jourdan Lewis, and it was just enough to hold on to win.  Not pretty, not at all textbook, but perhaps showing one critical point: If Michigan can beat its opponents in all three phases, as has been suggested, and two of them are not working on a given day, the only one that it can rely on is its defense.

In so many ways, I was reminded of the 1997 Iowa game, one of the first real tests of that championship season.  It's not a perfect analogue, for instance, Michigan never trailed in this game, but when a team has championship aspirations after a long run of middling, fans and players alike need to know that the team has mettle, that the team can dig deep and find it when it needs it most, and pull out a win that keeps all of  the team's goals in front of them, it becomes a relief.  But it also is a reminder that there's magic in these moments, even when it does not seem apparent.

On to Rutgers, where Michigan seeks its first victory at Piscataway.

The return of the wordplay-based meter

Last year, the Drevnometer collapsed like a football unit trying to operate in an overcomplicated scheme. As the season went on, cracks in the facade turned into a full-blown collapse. It seemed as though the idea of pun-based offensive ranking meters had run its course. We here were hopeful that John O'Korn would get the starting job because the nü-metal O'Kornmeter is a clear concept, but we were also dreading the possibility because then we would have to listen to a bunch of nü-metal songs to figure out how they should be ranked.

When Wilton Speight won the job, the days of pun-based rankings were over, but fortunately, Speight provides an unexpectedly different kind of wordplay. Not only is Wilton Speight an anagram goldmine, but anagrams of his name provide references that harken back to Michigan quarterbacks of yore. WHITEST LOPING is clearly a reference to John Navarre and there is no phrase more clearly associated with Tom Brady than LIGHTEN TWO PSI.

So not only do we have an anagram-meter, but the anagrams are rated according to the reputations of the great Michigan QBs they're clearing referencing. So what do we have?

Wilton Speight's Anagram Meter

1/10. Let's hope they never play like they overslept and missed their flight. It's Ryan Mallett: O, SITTING WHELP.

2/10. Do people look like they'd rather be playing baseball and striking out a lot? It's Drew Henson: WHIP IT LONGEST.

3/10. Sometimes the offense tries and fails to do things it should never have been asked to do. That describes poor Denard Robinson in THE PISTOL WING to a tee.

4/10. Are things erratic but finally rounding into legitimately good shape? Then we've got Jake Rudock: LEGIT TOWNSHIP.

5/10. An 8-4 season would be a disappointment, so let's hope things go better than they did for Todd Collins: EIGHT WINS PLOT.

6/10. Is the offense good enough to win it all with a legendarily great defense? If so, we've got Brian Griese: TOWNIES' PLIGHT, because Scorekeepers window jokes are still funny two decades later.

7/10. Is Michigan setting all kinds of offensive records, but still getting sniped at for everything that goes wrong? Then it's John Navarre: WHITEST LOPING!

8/10. Can the offense storm back from behind and beat Michigan State? If so, we've got Chad Henne: GO WIN THIS PELT

9/10. An Orange Bowl win and a preeminent NFL career only gets you so far, Tom Brady: LIGHTEN TWO PSI

10/10. Winning Orange Bowls and Super Bowls is nice, but they're no Rose Bowls, and they're definitely not People's 1998 Sexiest Athlete Alive Award. So capping off the meter is Elvis Grbac: HOT PIGLET WINS

No Michigan QB is bad enough to be associated WITH INEPT SLOG for 0/10, so we'll just go with "Rutgers" instead. (There is also an 11 - yes it is Harbaugh - but we're keeping that in reserve until it's needed.)

Standards on the Speight-meter have gone way up over the days of the Borges-O-Meter. Now 3/10 gets you a beloved long-time quarterback. No more giving bad offense a 5/10 out of hope. We're kicking off the Speight-meter this week with a rating of 6.

High expectations aboud when a national championship gets you a 6. Blame Phil Fulmer, like we always do.

Shine a Light

(Author's note: I wrestled with this post, or at least, the notions behind it,  for a long time.  I wanted to get the tone and message just right, and each time I thought I had it, I still wasn't sure it was right.  But I'd rather be mostly right than silent; because silence's time is over.  I am only speaking for myself in the words that follow.)

The recent events at Michigan, between the raised fist protest by members of the football team and the racially charged flyering, there's been lots of attention paid to where we are as a campus and alumni community at Michigan, part of a larger national conversation.  This conversation has no easy answers, because if it did, it would already have taken place.  A piece on this topic by MTV News's (and Michigan alumna) Jane Coaston helped me understand that maybe I did have one small thing to add to this conversation.

I'm a 38-year-old white guy from the suburbs.  My entire life has been lived in a triangle bounded by Livonia, Ann Arbor, and Cone, Michigan.  By any estimation, I have had an incredibly blessed life, one for which I am grateful, though perhaps not always as grateful as I should be. Whatever my anxieties or stresses are, they are not life or death.  I do not know the African American experience, nor would I make any claim to understanding it beyond what I have read and what I have heard from listening to people whose opinions I respect discuss it or write about it.  But I do feel like an important piece has been, if not missing, at least undervalued, in the discussion of the protests taking place regarding the national anthem.  It is in this area is where I feel comfortable, as someone who is well versed in America's history, in making a point.

In the preamble to the United States Constitution, Madison and the other Founders gave their generations and those in their posterity, a mission statement for the United States.  We, the People, of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union.  "More perfect" is a statement of striving, an aspirational goal that says "It's not going to be perfect, but we should try to be better."  Immediately following that statement, the Framers provide a list of things that this Constitution seeks to accomplish: establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.  That "establish Justice" and "insure domestic Tranquility" sit side by side is what gives us pause.  Those who are protesting are seeking, in a very oversimplified by me, way, equal protection under the law, something the Constitution would not assure its citizens for nearly 90 years after its ratification by the several States.  That the quest for that assurance has, in the minds of some, disrupted domestic tranquility is frustrating or even angering, but it is truly in the best traditions of America's history.

One of the heritage narrative themes that runs through America's history, in its telling, is that we are a country founded on dissent and protest.  The Puritans were religious dissenters who left England for an errand in the wilderness and resolved to make their colony a "city upon a hill," an example to the rest of the world.  When middle-class artisans and upper-class Bostonians felt their way of life being threatened by increased regulation from Britain, they took a series of steps to express their displeasure, culminating in the Boston Tea Party.  When men and women alike began to question the role slavery was playing in the United States, they began to write, and write, and write to expose what they saw as a grave injustice, often at great personal or political cost.  When women felt they had waited for a half century of empty promises to grant women's suffrage, seeing nothing come of the words but delays and prevarications, they took to the streets and made their case.  When African-Americans realized that nearly a century after the Civil War, America was still a segregated society of two classes of citizens, they employed a variety of techniques to make their message heard.  All of these moments were, in their time, denounced by the status quo as needless agitations and harmful to the proper order of society.  Today, we celebrate these groups as examples what America can do at its best, shine a light on that where we are wrong and through commitment, dedication, and courage, make things better.  We strive ever forward towards more perfect, though knowing that while perfect may never be attainable, it is a lofty and worthy goal of a nation that believes in the ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality.

At a university whose motto is "Arts, Knowledge, Truth," we too can seek a better way forward.  We can have minds broad enough to embrace positions with seeming contradictions.  We can support the players who protest knowing that they understand their beliefs fall firmly between a love of country and a desire to see that country be better.  We can believe in the possibilities of a better tomorrow while simultaneously listening to those whose today needs immediate care.  We can learn from each other if we listen to each other. If we accept that, well, just maybe, we don't know better than everyone else.  If we don't presume motives without asking questions, and if we can use knowledge gleaned from a wide variety of sources, backgrounds, and beliefs, perhaps we can find something closer to the truth.

I'm just one person, with a very tiny platform, if I can use my platform to support the courage of young men who seek to use their athletic gifts to benefit the university I love, and who use their platform to help draw attention to difficult truths worth examining, then I know that we are keeping in the best traditions of the university I love.  A university that seeks better tomorrows together, and walks together into that future, one that is hopefully made brighter by the honor, courage, and sacrifice of those who shine a light today.

I thank you for reading, and as always, we fight for better days.

Scrambled

So, during the fourth quarter of a blowout, you hope no one gets hurt (speedy recovery Jeremy Clark) and you start to fill with tangential material.  So we ended up doing this.

RASHAN GARY
also gives you
GNASH ARRAY

— Hoover Street Rag (@hooverstreet) September 24, 2016

And
TACO CHARLTON
gives you
CHANT LOCATOR

— Hoover Street Rag (@hooverstreet) September 24, 2016

WILTON SPEIGHT
gives you
WHITEST LOPING

(but we all know that is John Navarre)

— Hoover Street Rag (@hooverstreet) September 24, 2016

WILTON SPEIGHT also gives you
LEGIT TOWNSHIP
OWLISH PETTING
WHILE SPOTTING
HOTEL WINGTIPS
WINE SPOTLIGHT
OPEN TWILIGHTS

— Hoover Street Rag (@hooverstreet) September 24, 2016

So, in this vein, here is, in no particular order, a list of anagrams for selected members of the 2016 Michigan football team (fun fact, J words are very tricky in anagrams.  Also, Jake Butt is impossible to anagram, which makes sense, since it's so perfect on its own).

AMARA DARBOH gets you ABHOR ARMADA

DEVIN ASIASI gets you VAIN DAISES

SHANE MORRIS gets you IRON SMASHER

MIKE McCRAY gets you MY, I CRACK EM

CHRIS EVANS gets you CRASH VINES

EDDIE McDOOM gets you DOOMED MEDIC

CHASE WINOVICH gets you COACH, HIVE WINS

HENRY POGGI gets you HYPER GOING

KARAN HIGDON gets you A DARN HOKING (Well...)

JOURDAN LEWIS gets you WIDE JOURNALS

CHRIS WORMLEY gets you CHOWS MERRILY

DELANO HILL gets you NO DEAL, HILL (wait, that's terrible.)

DELANO HILL gets you HELLION LAD (that, that is awesome.)

KYLE KALIS gets you SKA, LIKELY (Which I believe was a rejected name for Ace's ska band.)

MAURICE HURST gets you HAIRCUT SERUM

BEN BREDESON gets you BONES BENDER

MAURICE WAYS gets you AW, MY SAUCIER

MATTHEW GODIN gets you WIDTH MONTAGE

In a Mirror, Darkly

Celebrating with the students, and our ride or dies, the MGoYipYips.
See all of Dustin's photos from the game at Maize n Brew. (Photo credit: Dustin Johnson)

The rout-like nature of the game this week allowed me to think about other notions regarding college football, and specifically Penn State's place in it, five years after what was one of the biggest and most soul wrenching scandals in the history of the sport.

Let's be transparent about a couple of very critical points before we move forward. Firstly, many Penn State loyalists are still wounded and horrified by the Sandusky child abuse scandal, because they may be Penn State fans, but they are thinking, feeling human beings first. They know the gravity, the magnitude, and the sheer awfulness of the whole of it and do not seek to wish it away, but rather want to channel it into positive directions of "Never Forget, so it never happens to anyone again." My genuine belief is that these fans are numerous, but not necessarily visible,  in part because, truth be told, many of us on the outside would rather bury that chapter of college football history in the past. Perhaps occasionally, we present some fist shaking of out revulsion at the scandal to remind ourselves that we are, in fact, human.  Part of this may be that creeping sense that the structural flaws of college football as constructed in American life today are a large part of what made the Sandusky scandal possible and those lessons show no signs of taking root in America writ large.  Whether we like it or not, there is still a sense of "there but for the grace of God go I" as it relates to one's program.

Secondly, we cannot deny that there is a faction within the Penn State fan community disconnected with reality. In rejecting it as such, have tried to force upon the rest of the college football world a narrative that is soulless, honor-free, and numb to the victims and their very real trauma and very real pain. These people do not deserve to be listened to or given any regard, as they have chosen to recreate a pretense of a false world, one built on lies at worst, or a blind eye and few questions if we are generous.  But the recriminations are so natural, so obvious; we hammer them because it makes us feel better about that we didn't choose that path.  Five years on, we're no closer to answers, no closer to healing, no closer to having seemed to learn anything, and that secondary tragedy is nearly as depressing as the original scandal.

All of that said, perhaps the more fascinating, which is to say hilarious rather than soul-numbing, disconnect from reality that Penn State suffers from is the idea that James Franklin is a coach on the level of an Urban Meyer, a Mark Dantonio, or a Jim Harbaugh. That James Franklin, who seems to understand less each passing year about the nature of time and clock management, is a high-level coach that can bring Penn State's "success with honor" vision to fruition. That James Franklin is the right man for the job in State College. That James Franklin, if given the choice, would be a general preference to run your program, even if you could get a Harbaugh (just ask the PennLive writers).

James Franklin pulled a rare moment of doubling down on a surrender field goal, choosing to kick a 21 yarder after a timeout taken to avoid a delay of game penalty.  This after his team had forced a three and out to open the half, and his offense had actually shown some signs of life, driving over 70 yards and making its first real impression on the Michigan side of the field all day. While I cannot prove this, I genuinely believe that this field goal had to inflame the competitive soul of Jim Harbaugh, who realized that quarter was being asked, but that no quarter was being considered, let alone granted.

So Coach Harbaugh called for the challenge on the spot on fourth down up 35-3 late in the third quarter. So Coach Harbaugh kept the starters in until the dying moments of the fourth quarter. Coach Harbaugh's philosophy is simple, we're out here to win the game, and your job is to stop us (a lesson he took from a 2004 game against Penn when he was at San Diego. I'm not calling off the dogs is about you getting stops than me not trying.) Harbaugh saw the tiny white flag attached to that field goal and ordered Penn State's continued devastation. You don't get to decide to surrender, you don't get to sue for peace, we're going to ground you into powder because I would expect no different if the roles were reversed.  This will lead to calls of "classlessness" and "poor sportsmanship" but Harbaugh "always sees the game as 0-0, no matter what the scoreboard says" in a paraphrase of Brian Griese from Saturday's telecast.  Harbaugh has stated that they only way you get better at playing football is playing football, and so those live snaps are some valuable time in the lab, seeing how concepts the staff have drawn up in the film room and on the practice field at the Glick play out in game situations.  You've got four legitimate running backs? Let's see how all of them work?  You've got three tight ends?  Let's see who can block and who can catch.  Coach Harbaugh knows the challenge that Michigan faces next week, not peeking ahead, but having to know that Wisconsin will be the first genuine test of Michigan's mettle.  The no quarter flag is flying at Michigan Stadium and the man who raised it knows the price involved.

Tacking into the Wind

A little bit of everything.  (Rick Osentoski, USA TODAY Sports)

I'd love to be able to tell you that I saw this coming, but no, I did not.  I did not think today would be a romp; Colorado has some guys on scholarship, after all, but the quick strike touchdown, followed by the sack-fumble-touchdown, and the only comforting thought in the Big House was that it was still really early, and Michigan has not exactly struggled on offense this season.

In sailing, when the direction that one wants to sail in is into the wind, a sailor, with great effort, must tack, or turn its bow into the danger zone, to achieve the desired direction.  It requires discipline, recognition of the circumstances, and willingness to do what is needed to find a way forward.

So, after being stalled in the doldrums for much of the first quarter, Michigan's offense and defense both made adjustments that took them from 21-7 down to 45-28 as a final.  We have become so acclimated to Michigan failing to adjust to what the opponent is trying to do, Michigan being stubborn and refusing to break its tendencies. That it seemed like a minor miracle when midway through the second quarter,  (Truth be told, while the adjustments, which are just coaching, are better for my sanity, they make for worse columns.  I was clearly much better at this when there was some "died bravely" thread running through the piece.  It is a trade-off I can and happily will live with.)

So much of that "tacking" boils down to the efforts of Jabrill Peppers.  Peppers needed to be great and provided a spark on defense and special teams.  He was stopping the run; he executed a tremendous safety blitz that Colorado did not see until their backup quarterback was picking pieces of rubber out of his mouthguard 11 yards behind the line of scrimmage.  Then, of course, there was punt return.

Because of the importance of punt returns for touchdowns in previous Heisman-winning seasons for Michigan players, there has been, in my estimation, a collective will in the Big House to compel by some larger force, Peppers into getting a punt return TD.

So when that ball took a flat trajectory into Peppers' hands, just past the midfield stripe and burst forward, it was the hope that Peppers could score in that end zone that Howard and Woodson had made famous all those years ago.  It was not the prettiest run back, but Peppers is more about bursting through and fighting through than gliding fast and free.  The score and subsequent point after put Michigan up 17 and for the first time all day, Michigan fans felt as though they could breathe with some ease.

And so Michigan emerges from the non-conference portion of the calendar with a 3-0 record, not as easily as some had predicted, but 3-0 nevertheless.  This team is still a flawed team, but it has surpluses in critical areas that allow for those deficits to not necessarily be a huge concern...yet.

But, for now, as long as Michigan has a Peppers, it feels like it always has a chance.

Future Imperfect

This, this was pretty good.

This had to happen.  It was inevitable because it is what happens when expectations are raised.  Michigan won by 37 points, and people aren't happy.  There is a legitimacy in this because it's the inevitability of disappointment, and disappointment only comes when expectations exist.  Expectations have not been "real" in Ann Arbor for much of the last decade, after all.  There have been historical expectations, but that is based as much on a bizarre combination of entitlement and factual evidence as anything.  The expectations that this team entered the 2016 season were, in some ways, too low.  They were tempered by the "three tough road games" narrative and the worry that Year 2 was too soon to think Playoff.  But there were others who said, perhaps rightfully so, that this was the year.  But wherever one fell on that continuum, there were expectations and those expectations were created by the roster and staff that Michigan was rolling out on the field this season.

Michigan punted on its first offensive series of the game, the first time they had punted all season. Their next six drives went touchdown, touchdown, touchdown, field goal, touchdown, field goal.  By the time they punted for the second time this season to essentially close out the first half, Michigan was up 34-7, and the online kvetching had begun in earnest.  Michigan can't run the ball!  Michigan can't stop the run!  Michigan looks sloppy on their assignments! Michigan didn't provide enough condiment stations for the family pack hot dog plans!

There is a difference between "complaints" and "concerns".  Complaints boil down to "I'm mad that you're not doing what I expected of you!"  Concerns are "Well, that needs to be fixed going forward."  It's mostly a matter of tonality.  What's interesting about yesterday's results are that despite the score it is the other stats on the Big House scoreboard served to confirm many of our concerns as fans from the beginning of the season, that Michigan might have a hard time establishing the run, that Michigan might have difficulty with securing contain in an aggressive defensive scheme,  The difference is a belief that the coaching staff working to fix the problems.  Colorado will likely provide a stiffer test than expected before the season started, and the progress from this week will be measured against the rising expectations of "OK, good, but..."

In the end, we got back exactly what we have wanted for the last ten years, the goal of being in the running for the national championship.  Those expectations come at a high cost.  In Bo's Lasting Lessons, John U. Bacon relays the story (which I am paraphrasing here) that when Bo's captains would choose goals for the season, if they wanted the national championship, he would remind them that they would need to be perfect, not just on every play on Saturday, but in every snap in practice.  Even then, you would need more than your fair share of luck.  Having the highest goals for the season is not an objectively bad thing, Harbaugh himself has said himself: "If nobody's laughing, you didn't set your goals high enough."  But goals only become real when paired with execution.  Saturday showed us, and this team that you can still win a game even if you don't play perfectly.  But this was against Central Florida, a team that went 0-12 last season.  All of us, the fans, the players, and the coaching staff know that this won't cut it against a Wisconsin, or certainly not a Michigan State or an Ohio State.  But, just like the fumbled punt snap yesterday that Kenny Allen fell on, perhaps it is good that it happened early, while there's still time to fix it.

Where No Man Has Gone Before

Speight, the final frontier.  (Credit: Getty Images / Gregory Shamus)

50 years ago this month, Star Trek debuted on NBC.  Though a modest hit at best, it developed, over time, a cult-like following, obsessives who pored over every detail of the original 79 episodes and became the sci-fi fandom against which other fandoms are judged.

137 seasons into Michigan football, each new season is eagerly awaited by its fans (and its hate-watchers) to see which twists and turns the writers have in store for this year.  Social media will see hushed moments of awe and vociferous complaint in the online recaps.  Some will say that this season is a return to form, on par with the classics.  Others will worry that the new landscape will never allow this year to measure up.  But the season is here, and well, these are the voyages.

In the grand scheme, this was as strong a season opener as you could hope for in this kind of enterprise.  When your defense loses the shutout because the kicker defiantly nails a 55-yarder, you just kind of laugh, because the offense nearly covered the over by itself.  So many freshmen played today, it felt like an away team with all of the redshirts burning.  This game, by itself, does not answer many questions, it's just one episode.  New horizons wait next week, new discoveries to be made.  But make no bones about it, if we're going to get beyond the last decade, one that took us into darkness, then the reboot under Harbaugh, keeping the things we loved about the original, but adding a new cast of characters, starting with a head coach with a ridiculous Q score, one seemingly regarded as an emissary by the faithful, that's where all of this brings us, to Year 2, an undiscovered country.  The future remains to be written, but when you have good leadership, your crew can defy the impossible again and again.

First games are about learning something.  Michigan learned a lot from last year's away mission to Salt Lake City, it bounced back because it worked on correcting mistakes that cost them a victory.  All of the preseason expectations change as we gather data points.  Is Colorado better than advertised, or is Colorado State really bad?  Could Wisconsin be more of a challenge than anticipated?  Is the defense for real?  These are the storylines, some will be answered, others will be forgotten as the season moves forward.  Here's to hoping that we will never have to say "Dammit Jim."

10 Years

I got bored when I didn't have a band. So I started a band, man...

A photo posted by The Hold Steady (@theholdsteady) on Aug 30, 2016 at 6:34pm PDT

In 2006, I was a year and a half into the job I still hold, but I didn't have much else going on. Work took up most of my time, and trying to make friends as an adult is weird. I started gravitating online, and a lot of that gravitation took me to MGoBlog. I was completely on board with that, and with my extra time, I figured I could pour that into something similar. So I started a blog, and recruited my friends. It wasn't particularly good (at least not my stuff), but it existed and that was enough. As the years have gone on, my job got bigger, and I fell in love, got married, sold a house, moved 4 times, and bought another house. That slice of time I had has gotten slimmer, and my writing has not gotten any better, so I've receded around here.

But we're back here for the 2016 season, and there's a palpable buzz in the air. I've long given up predicting a year's outcome. It's much more likely to go well, when compared to most of the last decade, but there's a reason they play the games, etc., etc. I want to enjoy this season, just like I enjoyed the 2006 season. It should be a wild ride, and I want to hang on and watch these guys work through it. I hope you'll join me.

HSR 10

It's our tenth anniversary year here at HSR, and we made a joke this morning:

We're back, for our 10th anniversary season! (We don't have a patch. We should.)https://t.co/nfSNl7Ckoi

— Hoover Street Rag (@hooverstreet) August 16, 2016

We got way more than we deserved!

@hooverstreet I was bored pic.twitter.com/zS75vOecQQ

— Joe Sports (@joefedewa) August 16, 2016

Thank you, Joe!

MGoMix 2016

We're back!  After yet still another summer of continued Harbaugh, Harbaugh, Harbaugh, we're back with our breakdown of our new playlist for the 2016 season.  We tried to mix it up a bit while following our rules: no more than 80 minutes of music, make every effort not to repeat non-Michigan songs from previous years, and try to capture the mood of the season while driving to Ann Arbor and walking to Michigan Stadium.  With that in mind, here we go:

(Note: It's been a crazy summer.  We did sincerely think about just tossing up The Big Chill soundtrack and calling it a day, but we figured someone would catch it.  That said, there is a vein running through this year's choices.)

1). "It Don't Come Easy" by Ringo Starr
"Forget about the past and all your sorrows
The future won't last
It will soon be over tomorrow."

Last season was great, well, except for a few moments.  But it's in the past.  A new horizon awaits, new memories to be made.  New joys are stretching out before us.

2). "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf
"Why don't you tell your dreams to me
Fantasy will set you free." 

In honor of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, the song the accompanied the first warp flight.  It also marks the return of Michigan fans being able to, reasonably, dream big.

3). "Here Comes Your Man" by The Pixies
"There is a wait so long (so long, so long)
You'll never wait so long
Here comes your man."
Harbaugh?  Harbaugh.

4). "Hypnotize" by The Notorious B.I.G.
"Pink gators, my Detroit players."
I mean, the video starts with a trip to Florida.  I also hope that we can collectively start calling the Cass Tech connection "the Pink Gators." OK, you know what, let's not.

Then again, I mean, it all makes sense when you think about it, it's all there. #howbiggieknow?

5). "Heroes" by David Bowie
"We can beat them, forever and ever
Oh, we can be heroes, just for one day."

In honor of the late great Mr. Bowie, my favorite Bowie song (well, this or "Under Pressure").  Some portions of the schedule will feature schools Michigan has handled in the past with great ease.  Others, well, just for one day.

6). "Living in America" by James Brown
"You might have to walk the fine line
You might take the hard line
But everybody's working overtime."

It's Jim Harbaugh's America as this tribute to the hardest working man in college football shows us.  (Also, as we learned in the "30 for 30" on the events of Rocky IV, never perform a five-minute dance routine before you begin your prize fight.) 

7).  "Lonely Town" by Brandon Flowers
Brandon Flowers and the Killers remain the unofficial chroniclers of HSR's sincere belief in a new future.

8). "Something Good Can Work" by Two Door Cinema Club
"There's a spanner in the works, you know
You gotta step up your game to make to the top
So go!

Got a little competition now
You're going to find it hard to cope with living on your own now
Uh oh! Uh oh!"

Michigan football, ladies and gentlemen.

9). "Mess is Mine" by Vance Joy
"You can tell me what you see
I will choose what I believe

Well hold on darling
This body is yours
This body is yours and mine
Well hold on my darling
This mess was yours
Now your mess is mine
Ah-oooh
Your mess is mine."

There's something appropriate to this for my ten-year "career" as a Michigan football blogger.  I write about Michigan football, Michigan athletics, because of the shared communal experience of it. Not just the highs, but the lows, the frustrations, the near misses.  This mess was yours, now your mess is mine.

10). "Hey Man, Nice Shot" by Filter
"Now that the smoke's gone
And the air is all clear
Those who were right there
Got a new kind of fear"

Hey man, have fun.

11). "Sure Shot" by the Beastie Boys
"Because you can't, you won't, and you don't stop."

Jim Harbaugh in one line.

12). "My Silver Lining" by First Aid Kit
"There's hope, there's a silver lining
Show me my silver lining."

Seven years ago, another program tried to be the silver lining for the state of Michigan.  Time to restore the traditional order of things.

13). "Courage (For Hugh MacLellan)" by The Tragically Hip
"But that night as I drove back to Montreal, I at least discovered this: that there is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and that the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.”

― Hugh MacLennan, The Watch that Ends the Night

This one is for me.  Thank you, Gord.

14). "Spectre" by Radiohead
"Futures tricked by the past
Spectre, how he laughs"

The danger of a strong performance in a New Year's Day bowl is that it can be ephemeral.  That team that won won't be the one that takes the field on September 3.  The job of this team will be to show that 41-7 was no fluke.

15). "Trouble Man" by Marvin Gaye

"I come up hard, baby, I had to fight

Took him on madness with all my might

I come up hard, I had to win

Then start all over and then again

I come up hard, but that's OK

Because Trouble Man don't get in my way"

"Marvin Gaye, 1972, Trouble Man soundtrack.  Everything you missed, jammed into one album."  How right you are, Sam.
16). "Gimme Some Lovin" by The Spencer Davis Group
"Well, my temperature is rising, got my feet on the floor
Crazy people rocking 'cause they want to go more
Let me in baby, I don't know what you got
But you better take it easy cause this place is hot"

One of the truly great opening riffs of 1960s blue-eyed soul.  And it goes will with a young man running a precision aerial assault.  Or a precision ground attack.  Or trying to counter preprogrammed electronic dis-co.

17). "I Can't Turn You Loose" by The Blues Brothers
18). "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" by The Blues Brothers
"We're so glad to see so many of you lovely people here tonight and we would especially like to welcome all the representatives of the Big Ten officiating community who have chosen to join us here in the Michigan Amphitheater at this time. We do sincerely hope you'll all enjoy the show and please remember people, that no matter who you are and what you do to live, thrive and survive, there're still some things that make us all the same. You, me, _them_, everybody, everybody."

19). "I Can't Turn You Loose" by Michigan Marching Band
And suddenly, I am craving cake and electronic dis-co.

20). "M Fanfare" by Michigan Marching Band
21). "The Victors" by Michigan Marching Band
22). "Temptation" by Michigan Marching Band
23). "Hawaiian War Chant" by Michigan Marching Band
24). "Varsity" by Michigan Marching Band
25). "Star Spangled Banner" by Michigan Marching Band