The Hoover Street Rag

Nick Saban's Girlfriend Experience

2012-01-30T19:04:00.000-05:00

I like that Alabama is the first game of the 2012 season because we can spend eight months taunting them in a way that we would never be able to taunt Western Michigan.

Nick Saban is in the news again, with recruit Landon Collins's mother accusing Saban of offering her son's girlfriend a job in order to entice him to choose Alabama over LSU (fixed). Promising a recruit's girlfriend a job is apparently permissible in football, but not in basketball.

In honor of his new recruiting experience, we present a new poster of Nick Saban:

This may be the first time in internet history that Sasha Grey has been photoshopped out of a picture. If you came here looking for pictures of Sasha Grey, please consult every other website everywhere.

Seal Block Special Edition: Little brother from another mother

2012-01-29T12:55:00.000-05:00

The name "University of Cristal" was also briefly considered.

If ESPN and TSN (aka ESPN Canada) were to somehow convince Canadian universities to care about varsity sports even a tenth as much as American universities do, the next round of Big Ten expansion would have two obvious candidates for admission: The University of Toronto, the centre of Canada's largest TV market, and my undergraduate alma mater, The University of Western Ontario, the home of Canada's proudest university football tradition. Both schools would have to make enormous facilities upgrades for this to happen, and Toronto would have to stop being terrible at football, but academically both would be excellent fits for the CIC. Having two Canadian schools in the Big Ten hockey conference would help replace the Canadian Hockey League with a slightly less corrupt player development model, which would also be nice.

UWO has recently announced a major new marketing push asking for people to call it "Western." To Canadians, this is hilarious as no other province has a western directional school. We all call it Western already. The American equivalent to this would be the University of California at Los Angeles spending tons of money on marketing to convince people to call it UCLA.

This marketing push includes a quote from the university president which may go down as one of the stupidest most WTF things ever said by a university president ever:

Harvard isn’t just Harvard. It’s Harvard University. But you don’t have to say university. How long will it take Western to get there, I don’t know. Our goal is to become such a recognized brand that just Western means us.

I've been trying to make a snarky comment in response to that and I can't. I'm so confused that the best I could think to do was put in a snarky post tag.

Old logo: We have a tower!
New logo: Stag and lion slap-fight! Winner gets maple syrup!

I didn't enjoy my undergraduate years. People bragged a lot about how great they were, but backed up their boasts with alcohol consumption instead of academic performance. I really don't like getting the alumni magazine because it's a lot of fluff about how great the school is and far too little about the interesting stuff people are actually doing. It's like the school has an inferiority complex. Recently it hit me: UWO is Michigan State. It's Toronto's little brother.

The most awe-inspiring "big brother" move one school has ever pulled on another was the one Toronto pulled on Western in 1921. Western had a part-time professor named Frederick Banting who had a hypothesis on how to extract insulin and use it to treat diabetes, but he didn't have lab space. So he went to Toronto, borrowed some space from J.J.R. Macleod, and the rest is Nobel Prize money for everyone. The Michigan equivalent would be if Richard Lenski was performing his E. coli evolution experiment in the basement of the Kraus Building. (If you don't know who Lenski is, read this epic smackdown he delivered. He should give MSU's post-game press conferences.) As big brother moves go, Mike Hart - awesome though he may be - has nothing even close.

There actually is a method to this rebranding madness. People in Canada know Western's a decent school, but people around the world think Western Ontario on a lower tier with similarly named schools like Western Michigan, Western Kentucky, Western Illinois, etc. (Not that any of those are bad schools, but in each case you get a more renowned school if you strike the word "Western.") The idea is to make it clear internationally that "Western" is the Canadian version of "Northwestern," and thereby attract more international students. No one cares that Northwestern's not in Seattle or Portland, and no one would care that Western's not in Vancouver.

The problem is that the school founded as "Western University" changed its name when it was no longer in the western part of Canada; it should have stuck it out the way Northwestern did. University officials changed the name to "The University of Western Ontario" in 1923, which in retrospect was a bad move. Maybe they were still stinging from the epic pwnage that Toronto had just pulled on them.

This move isn't going to encourage me to break open my ~~checkbook~~ chequebook, though. This is still a school that gives out 11" x 17" diplomas for some reason. This is still the school that sent me an e-mail invite to attend a Washington Nationals home game while I was living in Seattle. This is still the school that obsessively called me during my first year at Michigan asking for donations until I finally snapped and yelled, "No! I am not giving you any money! You gave me a crappy education that left me underprepared for grad school!"

At least Michigan State gets to make fun of their little brother, Central Michigan, 2009 football loss notwithstanding. UWO's little brother, Waterloo, is the precocious sibling that excels at math and engineering that you'll be working for someday. There is a point to this off-topic tale about branding and a university that needs to worry so much about branding: one of the reasons it's great to be a Michigan Wolverine because people all around the world know, even if they don't want to admit it, that it's great to be a Michigan Wolverine.

So, um, hi. (A rare political post)

2012-01-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

If you didn't read the title for some reason, this is a rare post that explicitly discusses politics. So if you read the whole thing and you're not happy, don't say you weren't warned. Twice.

Craig gave me the keys to the blog back in September, but I recently realized that I never wrote a proper introductory post. So — hi everybody! I'm David. I was at Michigan from 2000 to 2006 for graduate school in Electrical Engineering: Systems. After that I did four years of postdoctoral research in Seattle at the University of Washington, during which time I occasionally put in an appearance as HSR's Northwest Correspondent.

Originally I was going to just write about academic seals to provide some midweek content during football season. But I got bored during my forced three-week vacation at the end of September and started writing more and more. That's where the politics gets involved.

The story continues after the jump. This is your third and final warning if you don't want to read about politics. I mean, it's like a Daily Kos diary entry crossed with a Grantland post back there. A relatively coherent and well-structured diary entry and Grantland post, but still.

I finally decided to write this post after reading about Chester Brown.

After leaving Seattle, I moved to the D.C. area for work. Though my degree is in engineering, it's probably more accurate to say I'm a scientist right now. As you might guess from some of the posts I've written here, statistical analysis is part of the job. Because this post constitutes very mild political advocacy, it would be prudent of me to not say much more about work here. I'll limit myself to saying, like many jobs in the D.C. area, you'd probably agree my job supports U.S. national interests^*.

^*I want to make it 1000% clear that the views expressed here are solely my own as a private resident and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or any other organization. As you'll see, it's good to be extra careful.

There's another thing you need to know. Before heading to Ann Arbor for grad school, I spent 22 years in Canada because I was born and raised there. So when I was a student at Michigan, I was in the United States on a F-1 student visa. While I was in Seattle, I was authorized to work under TN status, which allows Canadian nationals working as qualified professionals to temporarily work in the U.S. As a postdoctoral position is, by definition, non-permanent, this was the easiest and most appropriate way to get me working.

I am married and my wife is an American citizen. Now that I'm working at a job where I can in principle stay permanently, we decided it was time for me to get my green card. So my wife filled out an I-130 petition, I filled out an I-485 petition, we filled out an I-864 to prove we wouldn't go broke any time soon, we each filled out a G-325A with all our biographical information, I went to a civil surgeon and got an I-694 to prove I didn't have tuberculosis or any other nasty or rare condition. Reams of forms had been completed. Everything was looking good.

While an application for permanent residency is in process, the applicant is not supposed to leave the country. This was a problem because, for work, I was organizing a conference in Canada from September 11-16. Fortunately, there's a form for that like there's a form for everything else, so I filled out an I-131 and sent that off, and, after weeks of cajoling USCIS, I got my I-512L advance parole form just in time^† so I could go to the conference and get back to the country.

^†Actually, I didn't get it in time. The form actually showed up at my home the day after I left on my trip, so one of my co-workers Fedexed it to me in Canada. But since I only needed it to re-enter the U.S., that was all right. Before leaving, when it appeared that I wasn't going to get the form in time, I made an appointment with the local USCIS office in Baltimore to get the form expedited, but was told that I couldn't get the form expedited because I had already submitted a non-expedited request for the form. (What is this, Thembria?)

Now for the fun part. At the Calgary airport on the way home, I was informed by the U.S. border guard stationed there^‡ that while I would indeed be allowed to return to the country, I was no longer authorized to work. This was completely my fault because I forgot to fill out an I-765 to get an Employment Authorization Document. Under NAFTA, the TN is non-immigrant intent status and, by applying for a green card, I had stated immigrant intent and thus no longer eligible to work as under TN status. I was admitted into the U.S. under the mysterious AOS, or "adjustment of status."

^‡Canada and the U.S. have an agreement where people flying from major Canadian airports to the states pass through customs before boarding the plane. Since you now have to wait through a customs line of indeterminate length, followed by a security line of indeterminate length, you'd think it would behoove you to show up at a Canadian airport extra, extra early. You'd be wrong: U.S. customs doesn't let you get in line more than two hours before your departure time.

Back in Maryland, I call up company HQ and say, I need to get my work eligibility back. There were two options. I could fill out an I-765 and wait up to 90 days, or my employer could shell out $2000 for an expedited H1-B visa. Since the second option only takes 2-3 weeks, we went with that. While I was waiting for USCIS to expedite things, I got kind of bored and a little stir-crazy. So I started writing stir-crazy posts.

Suppose that you are my biggest fan in the universe and you think posts like these make me the Louis C.K. of Michigan sports-related comedy. (Which I'm not, as long as the M-Zone is around.) Even if I made you laugh your ass off, wouldn't you rather I had been spending that time doing, oh say, my job? Shouldn't that be more important to the United States than one damn piece of paper? That damn piece of paper, by the way, asks for no documentation that hadn't been provided with the other forms we had already filled out.

So after spending three weeks of being allowed to be in the U.S., having a job in the U.S., but not being allowed to do that job, I got my H1-B paperwork, drove seven hours to Buffalo, got it approved at the border, and drove back and got back to work. The good news is that I've been doing a good job since my forced vacation ended. If you're still reading this, you probably like my writing, so I'll jump to the conclusion that you think me continuing to write here is also good news.

I got my green card at the beginning of December after an interview with an USCIS official in Baltimore. After my wife and I told the story about how I lost my status and had to scramble to get a new one, she stated the one obvious fact that no one in the government had thought to say before: "We want skilled people to immigrate here!" She said that the border guard should have just given me a lecture and let me go on through^**, even though he was following the letter of the law.

^**To be honest, I think she said that because this whole mess ended up being extra work for her. She's the one who had to fill out all the records explaining why I went through three immigration statuses in less than a month. This post is long, and she probably had to write it all up in three times the detail, and in triplicate.

Blogging and government bureaucracy have one big thing in common: once they get rolling they take on lives of their own, regardless of how silly the results may be. I have some suggestions to make nightmarish bureaucratic situations like this less Kafka-esque.

The simplest solution for me would be for the TN status to be a "dual intent" status like the H1-B is, but that change requires an amendment to NAFTA. When they where negotiating the agreement, the Bush 41 and Mulroney governments apparently never considered the possibility that someone might move to their countries with the intention of staying temporarily, but then change their mind because they fell in love. Those clowns in Congress (and Parliament and Congreso): what a bunch of clowns.
The cost of requesting an Employment Authorization Document is normally $380, but it's free if you file it together with an I-485 petition. Under certain circumstances where it could have been filed for free, border officials could be authorized to issue an emergency EAD for $380. Paying that much would have sucked when it could have cost me nothing, but it would have sucked less than missing three weeks of work.
Easiest solution of all: USCIS could add a section to the I-485 instructions listing the set of forms that normally require a filing fee, but do not require any fee when filed along with an I-485. Then anyone filling out the form could see the set of forms that go together with the petition for permanent residency and make sure to fill out all of the relevant ones.

I'm not going to say this situation wasn't ultimately my own fault, and I'm not going to get into the issue of how law enforcement should treat immigrants who enter illegally. But seriously, why on earth would you want to make it such a pain in the ass to people who are willing to follow all the proper procedures and jump through all the hoops and make sure everything is legal? Why are there so many hoops in the first place? To bring this back to college sports, why would anyone want to screw over a kid like Chester Brown, who, even if he is in violation of immigration law, clearly didn't violate it intentionally and wants to make things right so he can go play for Georgia?

I thought that I would write this up and publish it as my overly long, long overdue introductory post because one thing I think we can all agree on, regardless of political persuasion, is that "paperwork error by scientist applying for residency in the U.S. prevents him from doing science in the U.S. national interest" is stupid.

This concludes my story of how I ended up with three weeks of forced vacation, and during that time I became addicted to writing ridiculous pop culture parodies and making terrifying photoshops for HSR. Thanks to those of you have left kind comments on my posts or sent nice tweets to the @hooverstreet Twitter account. I have access to the @hooverstreet account, but you can reach me directly at @schnoxl, which is my personal account, if you have something you'd like to say about this or any other post. Thanks to Craig and Geoff and Jeremy for having me here!

Pious men and dirty fiends

2012-01-23T20:51:00.000-05:00

There are heroes and villains, and there are humans. We are not angels and demons, gods and monsters, zeroes and ones. We are fallen angels. We are brilliant beasts. We are between the gutter and the stars. Some of us are closer to the gutter, and others are closer to the stars.

So we are all part angel, part demon. We can imitate Grantland Rice's Great Scorer and tally up a person's good deeds and tally up a person's evil deeds and see which column adds up greater. Tallying up Joe Paterno will take a long time. He is not a hero, but the list of his good works goes on for pages. He is not a villain, but the magnitude of his bad deeds is so immense. How do we know what counts for more? I don't know. Maybe if you give me a hundred years of hindsight I can figure it out. Maybe the lesson is that a person's Great Score can't be calculated except by the Great Scorer. Maybe we don't need to know the final score.

I don't have any special insight that hasn't been said better elsewhere. The good people I know that attended Penn State have a problem. To many, the phrase "We Are Penn State" means, at least partially, "We Cover Up Child Rape." I'm just a particularly silly blogger, so I'm going to cite the best of my species as he cites First Thessalonians: "Test everything; hold fast to what is good."

Joe Paterno was not an angel. He was not a demon. I don't know if we should call him a good man or a bad man; all I can say from a distance is that he was a human. We should hold fast to the good he did. We must remember the tests he failed horrifically.

All of us, from Michigan to Pennsylvania to Maryland and beyond, can carry on the legacy of good works Paterno left. But we also have to make a promise. The community at PSU can promise "We are Penn State. We failed our children. We will not fail them again." All of us can promise "We will not fail our children." All of us can promise: we will not make the same mistake. We will not be silent. The most important thing wasn't Sandusky. The most important thing is to do everything we can to make sure there isn't another Sandusky.

Continue the good, put a stop to the bad, and every day we can make the world a little better.

Mr. Etiquette's guide to surviving a boring meeting

2012-01-21T20:10:00.000-05:00

Dear Mr. Etiquette,
I recently had to travel one and a half hours from home to give a big speech at a big meeting. After giving my talk, I had to listen to a gentleman with intellectual and affiliational deficiencies give an incredibly boring speech. After listening to this half-wit ramble on for a few minutes, I stood up and ordered him to sit down and shut up. Under further review, I feel this may not have been the best course of action. How should I have handled this situation?
Sincerely,
Mike D., East Lansing, Mich.

Gentle listener to the gentle reader who is gently reading this column to you,
Meetings are a fact of life in the business world, and, try as we might, we will never be able to give complete attention to every speaker at every meeting. While ideally a proper businessperson would never "tune out" a speaker, etiquette acknowledges that sometimes our concentration lapses and we have no choice but to do so. In this situation, it is paramount that we let the meeting proceed as though we were giving our undivided attention. Therefore, while we may cope with a dull or uninteresting meeting in many different ways, the best way to deal with such a situation is to be neither obtrusive nor douchey.

Mr. Etiquette has prepared a chart of possible responses to a dull meeting that he hopes you will find useful. As you will no doubt be able to determine from the chart, your response to the situation was indeed less than ideal.

The lower-left icon of this chart is slightly unsatisfactory as it presumes that the individual attempting to cope with a boring meeting is attracted to female brunettes instead of male brunets. Mrs. Etiquette suggests, as a service to my gentle readers who are so inclined, that this column link to these pictures of Kit Harington so that they may modify the chart to their satisfaction.

Bearably yours,
Mr. Etiquette

Supervillain recruits East Coast

2012-01-20T17:18:00.000-05:00

I thought Simpsonized Dantonio looked more like Seymour Skinner.
My wife said Frank Grimes. You make the call!

Dantonio!

He'll sting you with his dreams of bowl games and good times.

Beware Dantonio!

His twisted twin obsessions are his hatred of Michigan

And hiding his players' crimes.

He'll welcome you into his lair,

Like Jim Tressel welcomes a new vest.

With free second chances and a bail bond in case of arrest!

But beware of his scholarship offers,

And his couches that emanate smoke,

And on Fridays the lunchroom serves pig's blood and burgers and Coke!

He hates Brady Hoke!

Celebrate Alabama's #1 Recruiting Class in Style!

2012-01-16T22:37:00.000-05:00

So Nick Saban is it again, grayshirting Atlanta RB Justin Taylor with an loophole-errific promise of a job offer while he's not playing football.

If Crimson Tide fans can celebrate their "national championship" with obnoxious T-shirts, Tide haters should get to celebrate this turn of events with a T-shirt of their own. In honor of the reports that Saban and Taylor signed a contract on a napkin, we offer up this stylish homage to Alabama's national championship shirt:

The "script A" logo is a trademark of the University of Alabama. Use protected as parody.

Michigan Backcourt Theater Episode 1119: Timeout Chasers

2012-01-16T11:00:00.000-05:00

ZACK NOVAK, STU DOUGLASS, TIM HARDAWAY JR., and TREY BURKE leave the Crisler Center after an intense practice.

ZACK NOVAK

Oh man, that was brutal! I could sleep for days!

STU DOUGLASS

Yeah, I haven't worked so hard since that time I managed to dunk against Tennessee. I'm exhausted.

TIM HARDAWAY JR.

I'd love to get some shuteye too, but Trey and I promised the girls we'd deliver the leis we picked up for them at the Maui Invitational.

JENNY RYAN enters.

JENNY RYAN

Hey guys, finally got some flowers for your ladies?

TREY BURKE

[carrying a large box] Yeah, we got 'em right here.

TREY notices a suspicious looking red and green van parked nearby.

TREY BURKE

Hey, there's usually nobody parked here this late except for Coach B and the staff. I hope nobody's in troub...

ZACK, STU, TIM, TREY, and JENNY are simultaneously hit in the backs of their heads with blunt objects, knocking them unconscious.

CUT TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

Our heroes awaken.

STU

What the heck is this place? Where are we? [notices a video camera] Hey cool, that is one awesome camera!

JENNY

This place stinks. It smells like Van Bergen dropped a deuce in here. I'm going to figure out how to get the life support systems running.

ZACK

Hey, Tim and Trey, we should go exploring. That's weird...a bunch of numbered doors...and behind them...a theater? What the hell?

CUT TO:

THEME SONG

In the not too distant future, Saturday A.D.

There was a guy named Zack, not too different from you or me

He worked at Schembechler Institute, just another face in a maize jumpsuit

He distributed mail all throughout the place, but his bosses kinda liked him so they made him set the pace

(Slow it down!)

We'll send him tall defenders, the best we can find

He'll have to thread it through them all as we monitor his mind

Now keep in mind he can't control when the games begin or end

He'll try to keep his sanity with the help of his backcourt friends...

BACKCOURT ROLL CALL!

Douglass! (Polarize!)

Jenny! (Hustle!)

Tim Jr.! (It gets better!)

Treeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyy! (I'm awesome!)

If you're wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts

He's got a meal card and it's set on earth so you can really just relax

For Michigan Backcourt Theater 3000.

FADE IN TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

STU has ensconced himself behind the camera and is devoting his time to recording the proceedings for eventual use in a court of law.

JENNY

Zack, Trey, Tim! There's a bunch of weird buttons here. And there's a red one that's flashing.

TIM JR.

Since things can't get much worse, we might as well push it.

ZACK pushes the red button.

CUT TO:

INT. CASTLE KORNHEISER

SAGE STEELE

Hello, Wolverine nobodies! It is I, Sage Steele, most prominent female member of the sports media who attended one of Michigan's rival institutions.

CUT TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

TREY

According to your ESPN bio, you went to Indiana. So as long as we stick to talking about basketball, that's cool.

CUT TO:

INT. CASTLE KORNHEISER

SAGE STEELE

You won't be so flippant about Hoosier football when I become a board-certified asshole! You can't get any decent airtime on ESPN unless you're a board-certified asshole. Without certification, I'll have to share airtime with Colin Cowherd, or, ugh, Skip Bayless. I've hired two notorious Michigan-based assholes as my henchmen: Mark "Observer" Snyder and Mike "Bobo" Valenti.

MARK "OBSERVER" SNYDER

I just won an award for being awesome.

MIKE "BOBO" VALENTI

Spartans rule!

The doorbell to CASTLE KORNHEISER rings.

SAGE STEELE

That must be ESPN Vice President Norby Williamson. I'm bound to get a promotion when he sees what an asshole move I've pulled.

The doorbell to CASTLE KORNHEISER rings. BOBO opens the door after briefly being confused by the doorknob and NORBY WILLIAMSON enters.

SAGE STEELE

Norby, look at this dick move! I've kidnapped the Michigan basketball team's backcourt and imprisoned them. Just try and tell me Olbermann & Patrick ever pulled anything like this.

NORBY WILLIAMSON

Well, kidnapping five basketball players is impressive, but Michigan players? That hurts the Big Ten Network more than it hurts us. As an asshole move, it's 4/10 at best. If you'd stolen North Carolina's team and replaced them with impostors, like Vitale did before they played Florida State, that would have been a true Bayless-like move.

SAGE STEELE

Damn it! Well, I've got a backup plan. Observer, bring me Timeout Chasers.

MARK "OBSERVER" SNYDER brings SAGE a film reel. SAGE takes it and hits him in the head with it.

SAGE STEELE

[to the Satellite of Yost] All right, it looks like it's not enough to kidnap you, I also have to torture you. Since you've got a theater up there, it's time for you to enjoy...Timeout Chasers!

CUT TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

Lights start strobing and flashing in the Satellite of Yost.

ZACK, TREY, and TIM JR.

We've got game film sign!

CUT THROUGH NUMBERED DOORS TO:

INT. DRAYMOND GREEN'S APARTMENT, EAST LANSING, MI

DRAYMOND GREEN lies on the filthy couch is his filthy apartment, lying half-naked and splaying. He is eating cold, three-day-old HUNGRY HOWIE'S pizza. He is wearing a stained Under Armour T-shirt with the slogan, "We must protect this CASTLETON."

TREY

No, movie, I will not accept this as our star!

DRAYMOND gets up and opens up his fridge. It is empty. He then goes and sits in front of his computer and grabs his phone.

DRAYMOND GREEN

Hello? Is this Coach Merchant? I've got something awesome to show you at the airport. My grandmother is turning 75, and she's going to celebrate by skydiving with Sparty and finishing her dive by dunking a basketball! We've got to get her to come before games! Call Coach Izzo, he should see this too!

CUT TO:

EXT. JEWETT FIELD, MASON, MI

SUZY MERCHANT and TOM IZZO arrive at the terminal at Mason Jewett Field, where they are met by DRAYMOND GREEN.

TOM IZZO

Draymond, what's this all about? You know Lamarr Woodley would never let your grandmother be seen with Sparty. What are you really up to?

DRAYMOND GREEN

Well coaches, I did lie about my grandmother. But I've got something more awesome to show you. See this plane? It looks like an ordinary plane but it is, in fact, a time transport! We can use it to move forward or backward in time. I figure the coaches can use it to do extra film study during halftime, so we'll be really ready to dominate the second halves of games! I got the idea from Hermione Granger's time-turner in the Harry Potter movies.

SUZY MERCHANT

I don't know, Draymond. Does it really work?

DRAYMOND GREEN

Let's take it for a spin and find out!

DRAYMOND, COACH MERCHANT, and COACH IZZO board the plane. DRAYMOND sets the time co-ordinates to December 14, 2061. Once the plane reaches a safe height, DRAYMOND activates the time transport and the plane advances into the FUTURE.

CUT TO:

INT. BTB CANTINA OF THE FUTURE!

DRAYMOND lands the plane at Ann Arbor airport, and he, COACH MERCHANT, and COACH IZZO explore Ann Arbor.

DRAYMOND GREEN

Wow, huge crowd at Michigan Stadium. Hey, we've been out of the country for a while. What's up at the stadium?

BTB BURRITO MAKER

First round of the playoffs! Top seed Michigan vs. #16 seed Slippery Rock. New attendance record of 258,601. Coach Fritz Crisler Mk. 3 has really got the team playing at their best.

SUZY MERCHANT

I can't believe college football would ever get a simple playoff system in place.

BTB BURRITO MAKER

Yeah, I never thought it would happen either, but after Tuscaloosa seceded from the U.S. so that Alabama could claim 150 national championships, everyone finally decided something had to be done.

DRAYMOND GREEN

[hugs Tom] My friend here went to State. Are they in the playoffs?

BTB BURRITO MAKER

Oh man! They would have been if a holding penalty hadn't negated their last second touchdown against Slippery Rock. They ended up #17, first team out.

TOM IZZO

God damn Slippery Rock.

Pictured: A Green "S" we can get behind.

CUT TO:

EXT. JEWETT FIELD, MASON, MI

DRAYMOND, COACH MERCHANT, and COACH IZZO return to the present day.

SUZY MERCHANT

We should show this to Coach Dantonio. There are a lot of moments in Spartan football where we could use a do-over.

DRAYMOND GREEN

No! I haven't had time to test it yet. We're all connected. Think of the ramifications!

TOM IZZO

Oh, what's the worst that could happen?

COACH IZZO leaves, phone in hand.

DRAYMOND GREEN

Hey Coach Merchant, wanna take another trip to the future? See what's going on with the basketball teams?

SUZY MERCHANT

Sure, they have to be kicking ass.

CUT TO:

EXT. POST-APOCALYPTIC WASTELAND

As the time transport advances into the future, the lights of EAST LANSING suddenly go dark, and are replaced with fire pits and flaming couches.

SUZY MERCHANT

Oh no! Coach Izzo must have given Dantonio and the football team access to the time transporter!

DRAYMOND lands the time transport next to the ruins of the BRESLIN CENTER. A group of thugs wearing pads and brandishing automatic weapons point their guns at DRAYMOND and SUZY.

TOM GHOLSTON (WILL GHOLSTON'S FIRST COUSIN ONCE REMOVED)

Who the hell are you? Follow us or die.

TOM leads DRAYMOND and SUZY into a makeshift throne room and locks them in chains. An ASTRONAUT is in a corner, making PANINIS. An aged, bruised, and scarred BRAD NORTMAN is locked in a cage in another corner, where a warrior runs into him every five minutes. An elderly JEREL WORTHY sits on the throne.

JEREL WORTHY

On your knees, strangers! Do you know how Spartans came to rule the country? After we were denied our right to play in the 2012 Sugar Bowl, we used the newly invented time transport to kidnap all of the college football players. The resulting riots from football-deprived fans tore this country apart, and we used the time transport to seize control of whatever remained. Bow down before me!

DRAYMOND GREEN

You fool! It didn't have to be this way!

JEREL WORTHY

You dare to question the mighty Spartan football team! Tom, kill them!

TOM GHOLSTON fires at DRAYMOND and SUZY but misses, accidentally shooting off their chains!

SUZY MERCHANT

Sparty, no! Dammit, those smug Wolverines are right. That is fun to say!

DRAYMOND and SUZY run back to the time transport, and head back to the present day.

CUT TO:

EXT. SKIES ABOVE INGHAM COUNTY, MI

DRAYMOND and SUZY's time transport materializes under heavy fire from a duplicate time transport containing TOM IZZO and MARK DANTONIO.

MARK DANTONIO

We have to stop Draymond and Suzy, Izzo! Stop and aim that Uzi!

TOM IZZO

Is this really necessary? I need him to play basketball!

MARK DANTONIO

Who cares about basketball? The only things that matter are football and complaining about how smug Michigan fans are! [grabs Uzi, shoots Tom]

MARK DANTONIO erratically fires the Uzi at DRAYMOND's time transport, causing DRAYMOND and SUZY to crash in a tree on the banks of the RED CEDAR RIVER.

DRAYMOND GREEN

[in serious pain] I have to get back to the airport and stop Dantonio from stealing the time transport!

CUT TO:

EXT. JEWETT FIELD, MASON, MI

DRAYMOND GREEN #2 stumbles back to the airport, where he sees MARK DANTONIO secretly constructing a duplicate time transport. He gets his phone and calls himself.

DRAYMOND GREEN #2

Draymond! You have to get to the airport immediately! Dantonio is stealing the time transport!

DRAYMOND GREEN #1

Who are you? How do you know about the time transport?

DRAYMOND GREEN #2

It's too hard to explain! Just get to the airport a.s.a.p.!

MARK DANTONIO looks up and sees DRAYMOND #2 on the phone. He pulls out an Uzi.

MARK DANTONIO

All right, Draymond, you better come here. You and I are taking a trip to the past. We're going to put an end to Ann Arbor once and for all.

DRAYMOND #1 arrives in time to see MARK DANTONIO set the time transport to December 1836. He sets the co-ordinates of his own transport to December 1836 and gives chase.

CUT TO:

INT. FROSTBITTEN CONVENTION, ANN ARBOR, MI, DECEMBER 14, 1836

DRAYMOND GREEN #2 and MARK DANTONIO land their time transports on the south bank of the Huron River. DANTONIO sets out in chase of DRAYMOND #2. DRAYMOND #1 lands his time transport on the bank of Allen Creek.

MARK DANTONIO

You're running out of room to run, Draymond!

DRAYMOND GREEN #2

I've got the entire Michigan Territory, Hudson's Bay Company Territory, unorganized Dakota Territory, Oregon Territory, Republic of Texas, and Republic of Mexico to run through! That's further than you can run!

MARK DANTONIO starts firing his Uzi, drawing the attention of the convention attendees, who have already been infiltrated by DRAYMOND GREEN #1.

DRAYMOND GREEN #1

You're through, Dantonio! I just told Stevens T. Mason that you're an Ohio spy!

MARK DANTONIO

But I work for the finest school in all of Michigan, Michigan State University! Um, Michigan Agricultural College?

STEVENS T. MASON

Why must you fill this room with lies? The finest and only school of higher learning is the Michigan territory is the wonderful Catholepistemiad! Get him!

STEVENS T. MASON and LEWIS CASS beat MARK DANTONIO with the butt ends of their rifles.

LEWIS CASS

Now that this Toledo War is finally settled, I hope that we can learn to wait to define state boundaries until such time as their northwesternmost regions are properly surveyed and defined.

DRAYMOND #2 and DRAYMOND #1 meet.

DRAYMOND GREEN #1

If only we could play together, we'd be the best frontcourt ever!

DRAYMOND GREEN #2

Damn NCAA anti-clone regulations.

DRAYMOND #2 flies back to the present in the time transport. DRAYMOND #1 does a bunch of stuff until his timeline catches up to DRAYMOND #2's.

JOHN S. HORNER

I propose that, in honor of the strange identical twins who defeated the Ohio spy, we name the capital of our new state Castleton!

LEWIS CASS, STEVENS T. MASON, and JOHN S. HORNER

Huzzah!

CUT TO:

INT. DRAYMOND GREEN'S APARTMENT, EAST CASTLETON, MI

DRAYMOND destroys the time transport software, USB drive by USB drive. His phone rings.

SUZY MERCHANT

Hey Draymond, I just wanted to let you know I'm all right. I'm so happy you stopped Dantonio.

DRAYMOND GREEN

Coach Merchant! How did you survive?

SUZY MERCHANT

Because this script has massive plot holes! Somehow all those time travel shenanigans kept Coach Izzo from dying too!

DRAYMOND GREEN

Here's to incoherence!

CUT THROUGH NUMBERED DOORS TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

TREY

Zack, there's something about this movie that confuses us.

ZACK

Yeah, that was weird. What do you find so confusing?

TREY and TIM JR.

Everything!

ZACK

Well, I still don't know why we're imprisoned, or why we had to watch a horrible movie. Let's all dress up like Spartans.

ZACK, TREY, TIM JR., and STU all put on HOPLITE HELMETS, CRIMSON ROBES, and TUNICS. JENNY puts on a CHITON.

EVERYONE

We're Spartans! Nooooooo!

FADE TO:

INT. CASTLE KORNHEISER

NORBY WILLIAMSON

So, Sage, your torture made them dress up like ancient Greeks? That's hardly torture at all. At least they were upset, so it wasn't completely pathetic.

SAGE STEELE

No, no, I can do much better! Just watch.

NORBY WILLIAMSON

You're not ready to host your own show yet. You're not a big enough asshole.

As NORBY starts to leave, he notices MIKE "BOBO" VALENTI lying half-naked and splaying on a couch.

MIKE "BOBO" VALENTI

[half asleep, muttering to himself] Most Michigan fans are nothing but Wal-Mart Wolverines. Daryl Stonum's DUI arrest means Brady Hoke's program is full of thugs, but the multiple arrests of Michigan State players just show that Mark Dantonio is giving young men well-deserved second chances. Brady Hoke got so fat by eating kittens. John Beilein killed and skinned the kittens for him. Denard Robinson wouldn't last 5 plays in the SEC. Michigan can't have been able to get Mitch McGary to commit without re-opening the Ed Martin money train.

NORBY WILLIAMSON

Wait a second. This "Bobo," he is your henchman?

SAGE STEELE

Yes, he is. I taught him everything he knows. Which isn't much.

NORBY WILLIAMSON

You trained him? He is a Grade-A asshole. I'll tell you what. You can have the late late night slot, 12:30-1:30. But this Bobo, he gets three hours every Saturday morning. He's a real dick!

SAGE STEELE

Well, it's better than nothing. You guys in the satellite, if you're sleeping, record my show. [pushes the button]

CUT TO:

CLOSING CREDITS

Thanks to the authors of the FIRST AMENDMENT and the TEACHERS OF AMERICA. Thanks to the CITIZENS and OFFICIALS of RUTLAND, VERMONT. Thanks to WOMEN'S BASKETBALL for existing so that I can actually cast female public figures for the female roles; that's a big improvement over the football episodes. SAGE STEELE was born in the PANAMA CANAL ZONE, which has nothing to do with anything but I thought was cool enough to mention. The character of TOM GHOLSTON is the son of one of WILL GHOLSTON'S cousins who doesn't like him very much, and yes, the astronaut was a Community reference. Keep circulating the TAPES.

CUT TO:

STINGER

MARK DANTONIO

It's time for you decide if you're gonna be one of my team players or not.

Fair-enheit 27-9

2012-01-11T19:41:00.006-05:00

Warning: nuclear-grade nerddom follows.

People in 49 of the 50 United States, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, seem to be grousing about the "unfairness" of the BCS system this week. Fortunately for everyone, my multiple graduate level courses in probability & statistics at Michigan taught me how to design a perfectly fair college football season. It's really easy! First, you make an infinite number of clones of all the players, and then have each set of clones play a 120-team round robin. Once everyone's done, we figure out which team had the largest average number of wins, and there ya go, there's your national champion! If two teams end up with the exact same average number of wins (an event that can occur, but with probability zero - that's the kind of silliness you deal with in graduate courses in probability), we can whip up two new batches of clones and have them play a championship game.

Of course this can't happen. If I could produce an infinite army of clones, they'd be divided between securing my benevolent dictatorship and playing far deadlier games than football for my amusement. But this is how probability works. Axiomatic probability theory is based on the understanding that if we play the same game multiple times, we'll end up with different outcomes, so we should figure out what would happen if we played the game an infinite number of times. The fact that this is the basic approach to the subject is why explaining probability and statistics to the Paul Finebaums and Michael Weinrebs of the world is a fool's errand. Don't even bother trying to explain it to people who can't even count to 85.

In theoretical computer science, there is a formal definition of fairness. Roughly, it says that if you visit a state x infinitely often, and an action a can occur from the state x, then a will occur infinitely often. In real life, we don't get to work with infinite amounts of time and space, so we can't design a system that's formally fair. Since we only get 12-14 games to work with, we'll have to make some compromises to be reasonably fair, like Tony Hoare suggested back in 1978.

Tony Hoare. Sounds like he should be a wide receiver for the Steelers.
Looks like the old British dude he is.

In my thought experiment I don't have to put effort into designing a fair playoff system because I have a regular season that is infinite in scope. In real life, we have to reach a compromise between weighting a finite regular season that provides a lot of information about who the best teams are and a playoff that allows us to settle any outstanding questions. The constraint we have is that we have to decide on the playoff format before the season and thus the question is, how many teams should be in a fair playoff system?

I believe it's reasonably fair (in an informal sense) that a team be excluded from the playoffs if they have demonstrated over the course of the season that they are almost certainly not the best team in the country. So we need to estimate the number of teams that could reasonably be the best after a 12 game season.

There's a straightforward way to do this, if you have the clone armies. First you have the clone armies play their seasons and then rank them from #1 to #120. Then you have the clones participate in playoffs of different sizes, and see how often the #1 ranked team wins, how often the #2 ranked team wins, and so on.

Now here's the twist. We don't have clone armies, but we have a clone of FBS that we call FCS. They played a 20-team playoff this year, and they've played 16-team playoffs in prior years, so we can use the data from FCS to estimate how highly a team needs to be ranked to have a reasonable chance. Here are the 11 most recent FCS champions, and their seeds going into the playoffs:

Year	Team	Seed
2011	North Dakota State	2
2010	Eastern Washington	5
2009	Villanova	2
2008	Richmond	7
2007	Appalachian State	7
2006	Appalachian State	1
2005	Appalachian State	2
2004	James Madison	7
2003	Delaware	2
2002	Western Kentucky	15
2001	Montana	1

So, ten years out of eleven, the winner comes from the top seven seeds. In 2002, Western Kentucky got lucky and went on a run, upsetting #1 McNeese State in the championship. Based on eleven years of lab experiments in Chattanooga, TN and Frisco, TX, I think we can conclude that a playoff should include at least seven teams. There's no reason for seven other than, "the data says it's quite possible the team ranked #7 may actually win the playoffs."

The top seven teams in the BCS before the bowls were: LSU, Alabama, Oklahoma State, Stanford, Oregon, Arkansas, and Boise State. Based on the results of the regular season, it's extremely difficult to argue that any of those teams definitively demonstrated that they weren't the best team in the country. The easiest argument is against Arkansas because they lost to both LSU and Alabama, but maybe a different rating system with less human input would have ranked them lower.

I've written my piece about how the current BCS rankings are unfair, and now I'm combining it with an argument about why a two-team playoff is unfair. So my solution is twofold. First, replace the current human and six-computer ranking system with a crowd-sourced, open source, computer ranking system. By using only open source algorithms, all the voters put their biases up front. By crowd-sourcing, we can have enough voters that the biases of different voters cancel each other out. (Ideally, we'd have an infinite number of voters, but that's the axiomatic probabilist talking again.)

At the end of the season, we'll take the top eight teams and have a playoff. We use eight because it makes an easier playoff than seven, and we use seven because that's the number of teams FCS results tell us have a reasonable shot of winning. (Kansas State would have been the eighth team in 2011-2012.) The results from FCS suggest there's little difference between the top 4 and the next 4, but it seems fair that the top 4 get home games as a reward for those slight differences. Semi-finals and finals can be played at predetermined sites.

There's one last piece of unfairness I'd like to eliminate even though eliminating it causes logistical difficulties. Every team but the national champion should have to lose. If there's an undefeated team ranked #9 or worse and they played a reasonably strong schedule, the playoffs should be expanded to let them in. The #8 team could host the leftover undefeated team the week before the quarterfinals start. It just seems wrong to me that a team can win every game and still be declared a loser.

So there's my proposal. Fairer rankings with silly human biases eliminated, combined with an 8-team playoff because I thank the FCS data shows a 12-game season's not long enough to definitively eliminate the top 8 from consideration most years. I hope you found the probabilistic arguments sound, will leave a comment about it if you didn't, and I appreciate you taking the time to read a lot of URNBALL.

Brendan and Brady's Downton Abbey Marathon

2012-01-08T16:53:00.000-05:00

What is a 'week end'? What is 'nightmare fuel'?

BRENDAN GIBBONS knocks on the door to BRADY HOKE's office in Schembechler Hall.

Hey coach, I need some academic help.

Sure thing, son. What can I do for you?

I'm taking a history course on Edwardian England this semester, and with the Sugar Bowl and the celebrations and all the girls wanting to celebrate Mardi Gras with me, I'll already way behind on my reading. I need a tutor to help me get caught up!

Lucky man, Brendan! You don't need a special tutor. I can get you caught up lickety-split. Just come by my house on Monday night and be prepared to take notes.

Monday night? Isn't that the BCS national championship?

Yes it is, but as obscure blog The Hoover Street Rag points out, both LSU and Alabama are dirty recruiters, so it really doesn't matter who wins. I was going to start scouting out Alabama for our game in September, but now I figure there's no point until we know who's going to wind up in St. Saban Memorial Hospital. Don't worry about the BCS. I've got a much more entertaining and informative evening in store for you, son!

Yes sir, Coach Hoke! I will be there on Monday!

Monday night. BRENDAN rings the doorbell at STATELY HOKE MANOR.

Brendan! So glad you can make it. I just got this 65" plasma TV. Jamie Morris and Big George's hooked me up. It's even got those $300 gold-plated audio cables that don't actually do anything, but what the heck...we earned it this year, son. It's got all sorts of other features that Kelly will figure out for me, but I know how to use the PS3 and set up Netflix Instant. That's all we need for us to be good to go.

We're going to...play video games? Watch movies?

No, son. We're going to watch Masterpiece Theatre and immerse you in Edwardian England. Now where's that PS3 remote?...Here we go.

BRADY pushes play.

I'm Laura Linney, and this is Masterpiece Classic.

The opening credits to Downton Abbey begin.

Laura and I would watch this whenever I got a break during the season. Do you know where I got the idea to tell you about the brunettes? [points at TV] Look at 'em! Now I know Elizabeth McGovern's a bit old for you generation, but she can get your ol' ball coach's heart burning! But we've also got Lady Mary...she's the impulsive one...Lady Sybil...she's the headstrong one...Lady Edith...she's the jealous one who's not a brunette, and downstairs, there's Daisy. Don't worry about her too much...she's sweet, but really dumb.

Wow...wow...wow! Holy moly is Maggie Smith old!

[angrily points at Brendan] Shame, son! Have you no respect for the classics? Next time you hit the weight room stop by Coach Carr's office and ask to borrow his copy of Laurence Olivier's Othello. Not only will you learn about the tragic consequences that can result from mistrust and backstabbing within a team, you will learn that young Maggie Smith was a stone cold fox. Both valuable life lessons.

You're not ordering me to hit the weight room during the offseason, are you, Coach?

Oh no, that would be wrong. That would be so much worse that hooking you up with free tattoos and lying to the NCAA about it.

It would be worse than looking the other way if an agent gave Denard $290,000 in gifts.

It would be almost as bad as checking up to make sure you're attending summer classes, or giving the assistant coaches a bonus out of my own pocket. [shakes head] So very, very wrong.

BRENDAN and BRADY watch the first two episodes.

Coach, I've been thinking. Matthew Crawley and Mr. Bates, they're kind of like Coach Rod and his staff. It doesn't matter to the Dowager Countess that Matthew is the rightful heir and that he's well-off in his own right. He's "poor" because he can only afford one servant and he seems like a country bumpkin to them, even though he's a decent fellow. It's like she's decided he can never be a "Downton Man." And Mr. Bates. Can't the servants give him a chance? He's a war hero! He seems like a decent guy who'll get the hang of everything once he has a little time to adjust.

Brendan, you have to look at it from Mr. Carson's point of view. He's got a difficult job to do and Lord Grantham demands perfection from him. Even a good man like Mr. Bates can be a liability if he can't do the job. You know there are lots of good guys who have to sit on the bench on gameday because they're just not as good at their position at they need to be. He has to maintain the tradition of excellence at Downton Abbey, and sometimes that means you have to be unforgiving in demanding excellence.

Think about Lord Grantham too. He understands he didn't build Downton Abbey and he wasn't the only one responsible for making it what it is. He understands he's just one link in a chain that stretches back generations. He feels that maintaining the traditions of his family is more important than doing what would be easiest in the short term. You can see that he wants to keep Downton Abbey in the family and somehow give it to Mary, but his hands are tied by law and tradition.

Now that I think about it, you're sort of like Mary. You're the guy Michigan could have given the head coaching job to in 2008 to "keep it in the family," but you weren't quite ready yet. Maybe Mary will mature as the series progresses and they'll find a way to establish her as the heiress.

Oh, I don't know if I'm like Mary. I'm definitely not as pretty as her, and I bet no one calls her "Ol' Pizzafarts." [epically points through the space-time continuum] I've got my eye on you, Spencer Hall.

BRENDAN and BRADY watch episodes three through five.

Wow, Daisy sure is dumb. But this whole incident with Mary and the Turk is hard for me to understand. Last week, it seemed like any woman in New Orleans was willing to show me her breasts, and none of them got in any trouble over it. But 100 years ago, a woman can be raped and get punished for it?

First of all, don't think things have gotten that much better for women in 100 years. The amount of victim-blaming and accusations leveled at accusers in sexual assault cases is horrifying. You should take a women's studies course as an elective. For much of history, high-born women were valued for their virtue instead of their intellect or their other abilities. When you have an unconventional lady like Mary, a rumor of lost virtue, no matter how scurrilous, can severely damage her marriage prospects. This is why the Dowager Countess feels it's so important to separate Cora's wealth from the entail, so that Mary will have independent wealth and be a desirable bride despite being "weird" for an Edwardian lady.

I'm trying to put this in terms I understand. Who at Michigan is like the Turkish ambassador? One of the players who transferred or quit?

[breaks out the flaming double-point of rage] Brendan, Brendan, Brendan! You are young and you have to learn: there are no perfect analogies! No one at Michigan is as bad as the Ottoman elite in the final days of the sultanate! The late Ottoman empire was corrupt and venal and it's a quite appropriate fate for a member of their elite to have his corpse farcically dragged back to his bedchamber in the middle of the night! You'll learn more about this later in your course, but you can't compare anyone to the Turkish elite during World War I. You just can't. Got it?

Yes coach. I understand... Um, that Thomas, man, what a jerk!

BRENDAN and BRADY watch episodes six and seven.

Oh, man, Sibyl was really lucky to get away from that riot without any serious injuries. She's lucky that Mr. Branson scores so high on protective instincts!

We're never going to stop making fun of The Blind Side, are we? All you have to do is find the right metaphor to be a good football coach! Treat the quarterback like he's part of your family! [laughing]

But all the coaching you gave me this year was telling me to think about women on beaches and brunettes.

That's different. You're a kicker. Coaches don't know how to teach you guys any actual skills.

An uncomfortable pauses ensues.

Hey...Sibyl scores high on protective instincts too, helping Gwen get a job as a secretary.

I liked Gwen. It's a shame we won't see her in Season Two.

Rose Leslie, the actress, is going to be on the new season of Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones was all right, but that's a show that hates brown hair! Lena Headey and Emilia Clarke are both natural brunettes, but they had their hair dyed until it was almost white.

When Emilia Clarke is naked and eating a horse's heart, we really don't care what color her hair is, Coach.

Oh! Oh! Keith Stone like the cardiovores! I'd read the books before the new season starts, but a busy head coach doesn't have time to read thousands of pages of fantasy novels. I can't wait until Catelyn and Robb avenge Ned's death though!

Uh...um...er...I gotta get home and go to bed, Coach. Long day of classes tomorrow, plus I'm gonna go see Coach Carr.

All right son. Remember to come by Sunday night, and we can get caught up on the start of Season Two!

With the truth closing in, I must insist: we need a myth

2012-01-06T10:28:00.000-05:00

Oh, man! I am so excited for the BCS Championship game! Will Tyrann Mathieu, Morris Claiborne, and the rest of LSU's defense be able to stop Trent Richardson and Alabama's offensive line? Will LSU redshirt freshman OL Elliot Porter be able to open some holes for Michael Ford and Spencer Ware? Will Alabama LB Alfy Hill be able to close those holes and keep LSU's offense in check?

...wait...what? Elliot Porter is redshirting this year because he was grayshirted last year? Alfy Hill was kicked off Alabama's team because, after initially accepting his high school grades, they changed their minds and decided they weren't good enough?

Now November 4, 2011 is eleventy bajillion years ago in Internet time, but that's when the Wall Street Journal called this game what it is, the "Super Bowl of Oversigning." And July 16, 2011 is even older, and that's when the Gainesville Times ran an in-depth piece about oversigning and how Florida and Georgia were upset by it. When your abuse of scholarship limits is so shady that Florida and Georgia are saying, "hey that's going too far," you know something's wrong.

And this isn't a single year problem. Brian Cook's been fighting the good fight for ages. Oversigning.com has talked about nothing else for years. Yet somehow, now that LSU and Alabama are reaping the rewards of their dishonesty and mistreatment of college kids, everyone's shutting up. We know why ESPN won't say anything - they're televising the damn game. We know why CBS won't say anything. They have a huge contract with the SEC and won't risk it by doing any actual journalism. But there's no reason for us not to say anything.

Elliot Porter's at LSU now, and he thinks he understands things. He's drunk the LSU Flavor-Aid^* and he says, "college football is just a business." Time to bust out the small caps of Death: Sorry Elliot, it's not a business. You know how you can tell it's not a business? If it were a business, LSU would have sent you a nice paycheck every couple of weeks for the work you've done this year. Businesses pay their employees for services rendered.

So LSU and Alabama are going to pretend that this is a business, as long as they don't have to give the players any cash. Fine then, you shittiest shitheads that were ever shat from yo mama's shitholes. Play your stupid game for the right to be the 33^rd best professional team in the country. Even the Colts would kick both of your oversigning, grayshirting, loophole-exploiting asses back into the Gulf of Mexico. We've already seen that the Dolphins can send Nick Saban crying to Tuscaloosa as fast as his bony coward ass can take him.

The BCS decides the mythical national champion. We all know this is a joke and Oklahoma State, and maybe Stanford and a few others, had as much right to play for the championship as Alabama did. If we're going to have an MNC this year, let's at least make it a good myth. Let's not have a myth where cheaters exploit loopholes and prosper, where slimy athletic departments lie to 17- and 18-year-olds and don't get punished, where winning hollow unscrupulous victories is more important than behaving honestly and fairly.

We can pick whatever myth we like, so let's pick a better one. Oklahoma State beat Stanford and they won the national championship at the Fiesta Bowl. It's not a great myth: crazy old billionaire buys his alma mater a national championship is not exactly an uplifting life lesson, but it's better than the alternative. And Mike Gundy is a better hero for our story than either Saban or Miles: he's famous for making an ass of himself by standing up for his players, not for finding loopholes to get rid of them.

The BCS is an evil joke perpetrated by Phil Knight's wheels of immature cheese. Our myth has a slightly better joke. Since Oklahoma State is our MNC, we've made the shirts they should have received after beating Stanford. Here's the design (click for larger version):

Logos are registered trademarks of their owners, so this design is for non-commercial use only. Use protected as parody and as political speech.

^*Craig would be mad at me if I didn't get the details of the Jonestown Massacre correct.

^**Congratulations to McMaster University of Hamilton, Ontario, the only university football national champion who won their title as a result of a rational system. If Nike had made them a shirt, it would have said "McMasters of the gridiron."

Conference bowl records mean nothing: A guide for the innumerate

2012-01-05T16:13:00.003-05:00

A lot of stupid people who work for prominent publications are saying a lot of really stupid things these days. They are arguing that the Big Ten is a horrible terrible no-good conference because its teams went 4-6 in bowl games and that's terrible and "can't be spun." They are arguing that the SEC is the greatest conference since the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE despite being 4-2 because shut up that's why and they're the ess-eee-see.

Now we like our statistics here, and what we like better than our statistics is fundamentally sound analysis of our statistics. So we're going to do a fundamentally sound analysis of conference bowl game records, and let you all in on the secret: they're meaningless.

The topic is statistics and probability, so I'm going have to be careful and longwinded because our language is not designed to discuss these topics briefly. For our first analysis, we're going to concentrate on the Big Ten. We're going to propose a null hypothesis and that hypothesis is that each of the bowl games the Big Ten teams were played in were perfectly evenly matched. That is to say, each team had a 50% chance of winning its bowl game.

To see if the Big Ten was really bad, we're going to perform a standard statistical significance test. We would expect the conference to win half of its bowl games, and so we need to calculate the probability that they would win four games or fewer given the null hypothesis. This probability is called the p-value. For the B1G, it's the sum of the probability that they would somewhere between 0-4 games inclusive. Using basic combinatorics, we can calculate this probability as (1+10+45+120+210)/1024 = 37.7%. In order to reject the null hypothesis, we need the p-value to be no greater than 5%. So based on the 4-6 bowl record, we can conclude...nothing! Maybe the B1G is as good as everyone else, or maybe not. We can't say. We could modify the null hypothesis slightly and make each B1G team a slight favorite, and we still wouldn't be able to reject that hypothesis. So we don't know if the B1G is better, worse, or the same quality as the other conferences. There's not enough information.

There's never enough information. If a conference plays in less than four bowl games, the p-value can never be less than 5%, so we can rule out concluding anything useful about the quality of the Mountain West, WAC, Sun Belt, and Independents immediately. If a conference plays in 5-7 bowl games, they have to lose all of them to reject the null hypothesis in favor of the hypothesis that they suck, and they have win all of them to reject the null hypothesis in favor of the hypothesis that they're really good.

If a conference plays 8 or 9 games, we can reject the null hypothesis in favor of the "they suck" hypothesis" if they win zero games or one game, and we can reject it in favor of the "they kick ass" hypothesis is the lose zero games or one game. If a conference plays 10 games, "they suck" if they win two games or fewer, and "they kick ass" if they win eight games or more.

The Big East, MAC, and CUSA have each played four games so far and are 3-1, so each conference will finish with either a 3-2 or 4-1 record. Those cases give a p-value of at least 18.8%, so we learned nothing from the bowl games. The ACC went 2-6, which is bad, but not so bad that we can conclude that "they suck." The SEC will go either 4-3 or 5-2 - we're excluding LSU/Alabama because one of them has to win and one of them has to lose - and neither of those records proves "they kick ass." The Pac 12 is 2-5, which is bad, but not statistically significantly bad. Also, to be fair to them, they would have done better if they'd had USC in their bowl lineup instead of UCLA.

That leaves one conference left, the Big XII. They're currently 6-1, and they have the chance to go 7-1 if Kansas State beats Arkansas in the Cotton Bowl. If KSU wins, then the p-value for the Big XII will be 9/256 = 3.5%. We may have significance. The Big XII can prove that "they kick ass!"

But, as ~~Chris Berman~~ Lee Corso (edited) would annoy you by saying, not so fast, my friend. The significance threshold of 5% only counts if we're doing one comparison. We've done eight comparisons here, and that increases the probability that at least one of our null hypotheses will be rejected eightfold. So the correct thing to do here is a Bonferroni correction and reset our threshold for significance to 5% divided by 8, or 0.625%. Thus, even if KSU wins, we still won't have enough data to conclude "the Big XII kicks ass."

So there you have it. When pundidiots get behind their keyboards or in front of their TV cameras and say, "The B1G sucks because they went 4-6" or "The Big XII rules because they're 6-1," they are full of shit. There is 100 years of classical statistical analysis that can be used to demonstrate that they're full of shit because they're jumping to conclusions that can't be made from the data. The only way for a conference to prove its superiority or inferiority in bowl games is to play in a lot of them (at least eight) and win all of them or lose all of them. If anyone can provide an example of a conference going either 0-8 or 8-0 in bowl games, let me know about this rare occurrence where we learned something useful about conference strength from them.

Of course, if we really wanted to evaluate conference strength, we could go back to the regular season, look at how teams perform in non-conference games and how strong their non-conference schedules were, maybe factor in things like margin of victory, and work it all out using a fast computer...but no, we're not allowed to do that. That would be unsporting.

Note for experts: there are issues regarding the independence of the different tests we're taking and for a completely rigorous analysis we probably need to break out heavier statistical machinery. But I just wanted to get the main point across, which is small sample size = no conclusions can be made.

Deserve Victory

2012-01-05T09:40:00.002-05:00

As a historian, I find myself often fascinated by World War II propaganda posters*, because they are not only early forms of internet memes, but they need to convey a sense of what one person can do to move the nation forward. So, leave it to the British, once the world's mightiest empire but by 1940 one faltering and flagging, but still proud, still resolute, still believing that their glorious past could lead to a glorious future, and well, you see where I'm going here.

So here we are, at the end of the 2011 Michigan season, and I'm a little annoyed. Grantland's Michael Weinreb** has taken to calling Michigan's victory in the Sugar Bowl emblematic of the Big Ten's "faux success" and referring to this season as "one of the emptiest 11-win seasons in college football history." I mean, I was annoyed and then I remembered Weinreb is a Penn State alumnus and has probably spent most of the last few months staring into what the future looks like and it's only the abyss staring back at him. Fine, Michigan's Sugar Bowl victory is largely because Virginia Tech handed the game to them. But hey, Michigan was in a position to take what was given to them and they took it. Fine, Michigan's Sugar Bowl victory is part of the Big Ten's "faux success" except for that pesky "Hey, with Michigan going to a BCS game, everyone else slotted one game up (coupled with the toxicity of Penn State, who didn't exactly look like they were thrilled to be at the TicketCity...oh look, Case Keenum just threw another TD pass.) and played three de facto road games (pointed out by David Thorsley, @TAMU in Houston, @Florida in Jacksonville, and @Houston at Dallas.) So whatever, in the end the fact that a national writer took the time to take a swipe at Michigan's win actually made me happy, for the simple reason that you don't take that kind of swipe at a team unless they're back near the top of the heap.

Credit again to David for getting so much of what I wanted to say into his post-game column yesterday but the notion of "deserving victory" has struck me. How do we define the notion of "deserving victory"? How do we even know if we deserve anything? Deserving is built upon our notions of merit, fair play, and justice. Deserve, itself, comes from the Latin for "devoting one's self to service". Which means that deserve is subjective, There's no way we can say that Michigan "deserved" to win anymore than we can say Virginia Tech did not "deserve" to win because its in the eye of the beholder. How do we know? Do we question the effort in practice, in the weight room, in watching film? We don't. We cling to the notion of deserve because we desire a world that is just, that is fair, that makes sense. We have been painfully reminded in 2011 that college football is best when it does not intersect real life, but rather exists in an ethereal plain above real life, and it is because it exists as a pseudo-fantasy realm adjacent to the real world, we also peg our desires for that which is too rarely seen in the real world, justice, fairness, meritocracy, on the outcomes of these games. We also know these things do not exist in the world of college football any more than they do in our own life.

One of the best lessons I ever received about being a college football fan came from my friend Mike nearly a decade ago when he said, very simply to me "You have to remember that the other team is trying to win the game too." It's obvious now, in retrospect, but it completely altered my vision of Michigan football, from parochial orthodoxy to seeing Michigan in the context of the larger college football landscape. Virginia Tech was trying to win the Sugar Bowl just as much as Michigan was. Mistakes were made, regrets will be had. In the end Michigan will go down as having won a 23-20 overtime game that was by no means a classic, but still a part of the tapestry of that game's history.

Did Team 132 deserve victory? I'm not sure, and I can never be sure. But I can be sure that their courage, their cheerfulness, and their resolution brought them victory. Courage in David Molk and Ryan Van Bergen and Taylor Lewan playing through significant injuries. Their cheerfulness in Brendan Gibbons' now pantheon "Brunette girls" answer. Their resolution in what they demonstrated throughout this whole season. This is not one of the all-time great Michigan teams. It's not the 1997 team, it's not the 1901 team, it's not the 1969 team. But it's the 2011 team and people are going to look back on it and smile, because they will remember the 11 wins, the magic under the lights, the release of getting the Buckeye monkey off their backs, and the improbability of that Sugar Bowl victory. If you make the case that any season that doesn't end in a national championship is a essentially empty, well, I feel for you, because your standards are so high, you can't enjoy the ride. The joy of college football comes when players who pass through your life briefly, but live for a long time in your memory get to celebrate a victory, one a long time coming.

Thank you Team 132. Team 133, the future starts now.

*--For no good reason, I had to include this one I found in looking for the two above. All I know is that this guy is really annoyed with Canada.

**-Weinreb also, hilariously, in his closing paragraph, attacks the fact that Michigan didn't even win its own division (an argument rendered moot by the fact that neither did another team playing in a BCS bowl in the Superdome and the stakes are a little higher for them) and that the success will be short-lived for the next decade with the arrival of Urban Meyer at Ohio State (I understand Meyer's resume and I do not scoff at it, but the notion that Michigan is going to be steamrolled by Ohio State simply because Urban Meyer is their coach. You'll forgive me if I don't believe it until I see it.)

You have to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?

2012-01-04T21:07:00.000-05:00

First off, gentle readers, I'm sorry I couldn't get the post title to appear in small caps. Blogger's not cool like that.

Sometimes things don't go your way. I was going to spend a lovely Christmas with my wife and enjoy a relaxing new year, but fate, a.k.a. staphylococcus aureus, stepped in and I spent Christmas hacking up my lungs and New Year's Eve at the University of Maryland hospital in Baltimore. Tuesday was my first full day at home, and the only reason I was able to stay up to watch the Sugar Bowl is because I slept from 2:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon. The silver lining of all this in the short term is I got to watch a lot of bowl games. Capital One Bowl Week is best experienced while being hospitalized for pneumonia.

(If any of you ever say anything bad about the Belk Bowl, I will tell you what the Belk Bowl distracted me from in the emergency ward. You will regret having said anything bad about the Belk Bowl and will never do such a thing again.)

Sometimes things do go your way. I don't think there's a single thinking Michigan fan on the planet who isn't saying, "Oh yeah, the horseshoe up Brady Hoke's butt must have had a horseshoe up its butt that was transmitting signals to the horseshoe up Jareth Glanda's butt." Sometimes the broken fake field goal somehow works. Sometimes the pass that should have been intercepted goes through the defender's hands and becomes a touchdown. Sometimes it's like winning the lottery. It just happens.

Horseshoe not shown.

In a football game, if something goes your way, it means it didn't go someone else's way. Poor Danny Coale. The man has the greatest moment of his life, and two minutes later, some man in a booth tells him, "Sorry, didn't count. The ball jiggled." It was the right call, but can you imagine having the best thing you ever did taken away? Poor Justin Myer. He steps out on the field in an emergency and kicks four field goals, only to have the fifth one go wide. Fortunate Brendan Gibbons gets his chance, and he becomes a hero to brunettes all over the nation.

Hail to the victors valiant. Hail to the vanquished valiant. It's no less of a victory because our team got some lucky bounces. Somehow, by a millimeter, by a millisecond, Michigan kept its promise to Team 132 and those who stayed were finally champions.

I've always looked at Michigan sporting traditions as something as an outsider. Maybe it comes from having attended Michigan for graduate school. Maybe it comes from being a foreigner. Maybe it comes from being the sort of natural cynic who would go to graduate school in a foreign country. Maybe it comes from having been in Ann Arbor at the end of the Carr era, but the term "Michigan Man" never made much sense to me. It seemed to be a linguistic velvet rope. On the one side were Lloyd Carr, Chad Henne, Mike Hart, and the people who were "in." On the other side were Rich Rodriguez, Les Miles, Jim Harbaugh, or whoever was being denied entrance to the club that day or said the wrong thing.

I can be depressingly literal-minded, and it seems to me that a Michigan Man is someone who was at some point associated with the University of Michigan. Every one of us gets to hold his or her head high because Raoul Wallenberg was a Michigan Man, and every one of us has to lower his or her head in shame because Ted Kaczynski was a Michigan Man. This is real. This is part of what it means.

But there's also a mythical level. A Michigan Man (or Woman) is infused with strength, pride, dedication, perseverance, loyalty. Belief in this mythical person is what makes Michigan Michigan. And let's face it, for 5-6 years, the mythopoeic Michigan Man was missing in action. Rich Rodriguez looked for him and couldn't find him and couldn't be him. Lloyd Carr might have forgotten how to be him. Braylon Edwards and a lot of the alumni demonstrated that they weren't him.

One of the reasons the Michigan Man got lost is that from the day Bo Schembechler arrived until the day some team from Boone, North Carolina, arrived in the Big House, it wasn't hard for a football player to be a Michigan Man. Pride was easy. Strength was easy. Lapses of dedication and loyalty weren't very noticeable. And then suddenly, and far faster than any of us expected, it all went to shit.

One of the things I like to do each Christmas is read Terry Pratchett's Hogfather, by far the deepest popular investigation into the meaning of Christmas and the nature of belief. (If you haven't read it, there's a 4 hour miniseries version available on Netflix Instant. The downside of the miniseries is that it probably doesn't make much sense if you haven't read the book. The upside is that it stars Michelle Dockery from Downton Abbey.)

What Brendan Gibbons was thinking about, 11:45 Eastern Time, January 3, 2012.

The basic plot is that someone is trying to kill the Hogfather (Santa Claus) and that Death, the grim reaper, has taken over his role to prevent the Hogfather from dying. Near the climax, Death gives a speech about believing in the little lies like the Tooth Fairy and the Hogfather so that we can learn to believe the big lies, like justice and fairness and mercy. But surely justice and mercy are real, you say? Not so, says Death:

Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy.

Grind Angell Hall down to dust. Tear down the Big House. Raze the Duderstadt Center. You won't find a particle of loyalty, a fermion of perseverance, a boson of pride. What Team 132 has taught me is the mythopoeic Michigan Men doesn't exist and can't exist. David Molk, Mike Martin, Ryan Van Bergen, Junior Hemingway, and all the rest have shown me the truth of what Death says at the end of his speech:

You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?

There are no Michigan Men, no Michigan Woman, that can ever live up to the standard we set for ourselves. We can never be perfectly loyal. We can never always be as strong as we need to be. We can never persevere enough. We can never hold on to our dedication indefinitely. We can let our pride become arrogance. But for Michigan to be Michigan, we have to believe in Michigan Men, in Michigan Women. How else can we become them?

The seniors of Team 132, who have gone through more shit in 4-5 years that most of us will have to go through in our lives, believed in Michigan Men. And now they are them, as much as it is possible. It's easy to think you're a Michigan Man when everything's going right, when you're winning 9-10 games every year. To go from winning 3 games, to 5, to 7, to 11, they had to prove they are. And now the rest of us have a new set of leaders and best to believe in.

I'm sorry to end this post on a sour note, but we also got to see what the opposite of a Michigan Man is yesterday. They hang out over on MSU Team 115. The mythopoeic Michigan Man concentrates on being the best person he/she can be, and doesn't worry about disrespect or mistreatment or others' arrogance. He/she just gets down to business and strives for excellence.

Lloyd Carr, Rich Rodriguez (failings and all), and Brady Hoke worked to mold Michigan Men. Mark Dantonio works to produce Michigan State Boys. Sorry, Mike Hart, MSU isn't Little Brother. MSU football isn't related to Michigan at all. Little brothers eventually grow up and become men in their own right. MSU football isn't about making proud men, it's about making whiners and bullies. Let's hope Team 133 can take care of Team 132's main piece of unfinished business, and give Mr. Teatime Gholston and the rest of them a long overdue visit from the inner baby-sitter.

Those last two paragraphs were kind of a downer. Here's another picture of Michelle Dockery to make up for them.

Rhapsody in Blue

2012-01-04T00:49:00.002-05:00

I will write up a full post-game, post-season hosanna to Team 132 when I have time to think and breathe, but for right now, three thoughts:

1).

Junior. Hemingway. Period. True at First Light.

2).
Little Bill Daggett: "I don't deserve this... to die like this. I was building a house."
Will Munny: "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."

3). Yesterday, before the bowls started, I watched PBS's broadcast at Live from Lincoln Center from this past New Year's Eve in part because they were playing "Rhapsody in Blue", one of my all-time favorite pieces of music (this video will go away soon, but worth it if you see it today).

Watch New York Philharmonic Bernstein and Gershwin New Year's Eve on PBS. See more from pbs.

So for posterity, I snagged this Fantasia 2000 clip and will allow the free flowing experiment in modern music take us into the off-season.

Bless you Team 132. Bless you. Hail!

B1G/Pac 12 Matchups Matrix

2011-12-28T16:01:00.000-05:00

Because I am nothing if not insanely curious about this, the following is a matrix of the last time each Big Ten school faced each Pac 12 school, along with the essential range of the number of times they have played since 1936. There are eight matchups that have never occurred, those are in red with a white 0 in the cell.

This, this is what I do.

Light pink is a matchup that has only occurred once.
Deep Yellow (old school maize if you will) are matchups that have occurred two to four times.
Yellow are matchups that have occurred five to nine times.
Light green are matchups that have occurred 10-19 times.
Light blue are matchups that have occurred 20-49 times (in this case, just OSU/USC)
The Darker Blue are matchups that have occurred 50+ times (which is Colorado/Nebraska from their old Big 8/Big XII days.)

I'll have more on "dream" initial matchups in 2017, but for now, make use of this data as you see fit.

Michigan Defense Theater 3000 Experiment 1114: Sugar Mutiny

2011-12-19T09:30:00.000-05:00

THEME SONG

In the not too distant future, Saturday A.D.

There was a guy named Jordan, not too different from you or me

He worked at Schembechler Institute, just another face in a maize jumpsuit

He did a good job cleaning up the place, but his bosses kinda liked him so they made him play in space

(Curse you GERG!)

We'll send him speedy runners, the best we can find

He'll have to stop, tackle them all as we monitor his mind

Now keep in mind he can't control when the games begin or end

He'll try to keep his sanity with the help of his D-Line friends...

D-LINE ROLL CALL!

Martin! (I'm Captain!)

Heininger! (Left side!)

Van Bergen! (Where've you been?)

Rooooooooooooooooh! (I'm sophomore!)

If you're wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts

He's got a meal card and it's set on earth so you can really just relax

For Michigan Defense Theater 3000.

FADE IN TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

JORDAN

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Satellite of Yost. Since Coach Hoke and Coach Mattison have given us a little time off after we beat Ohio, I've dusted off my old set of encyclopedias so we can study up on our next opponent, Virginia Tech.

VAN BERGEN

Jordan, this encyclopedia is completely worthless for my biography of Gary Danielson.

ROH

Yeah, Jordan, it's really old. It lists Woody Hayes as a "fairly stable young football coach at Denison University."

VAN BERGEN

It mentions the forward pass as a charming theory.

ROH

It calls Lafayette College a perennial power.

VAN BERGEN

Its list of college football's winningest programs is: "McGill: 1."

ROH

It says that using your hands to hold the ball is illegal.

VAN BERGEN

It's got a picture of the Big House.

JORDAN

So?

ROH & VAN BERGEN

Capacity 72,000?

JORDAN

So what you high-minded encyclopedia snobs are saying is that you want a new set? I'll get you a new set. You know, they got me through college.

ROH

You're still in college.

COMMERCIAL BREAK. INSERT ROTEL JOKE HERE.

JORDAN

OK, you bellyachers, I got you a brand spankin' new set of encyclopedias, each page with an Internet uplink so you can constantly update 'em.

ROH & VAN BERGEN

Man, this is incredibly up-to-date! Forty-one pages on Lana Del Rey alone!

JORDAN

Well, I think I've more than answered your encyclopedia grievances.

ROH & VAN BERGEN

No! It was much more fun to read the old ones and not have Jimmy Wales or GorillaWarrior or some Nickelback-wannabe programmer constantly personally appealing for me to give them money.

JORDAN

Whatever. The Mads are calling.

JORDAN pushes the red button.

CUT TO:

INT. FREEP 13

DREW SHARP

Your film this week is a piece of cheese called Sugar Mutiny. I'm not exactly clear what the mutiny is about, exactly. But it's got that guy in it, you know, from the other film.

CUT TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

JORDAN, ROH & VAN BERGEN

We've got game film sign!

CUT TO:

INT. FREEP 13

DREW SHARP

With football season just about over, Gerg, it's time to begin Phase Two of our operation. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

TV'S GERG

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

DREW SHARP

[slaps Gerg] Only I get to laugh maniacally!

CUT THROUGH NUMBERED DOORS TO:

EXT. LANE SPACIUM

NARRATOR

Seven seasons ago, our overpopulated college football landscape built the Coastal Division, a self-sufficient group of teams that would be home to hundreds of players on their way to a new and uncolonized championship game. Our current players have come to accept the Coastal Division as their home, and work to create a better conference for their freshmen. While most of the players of this generation are content, there are some who have grown restless and impatient.

INT. BUFFALO WILD WINGS CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS, MINNEAPOLIS, MN

MIKE LONDON and PAUL JOHNSON enter as ominous music plays.

PAUL JOHNSON

It was cruel fate to be born after the forward pass was legalized, but I intend for it to one day be illegal again!

MIKE LONDON

It was cruel fate to be hired to coach for a middling program in the fifth-best college football conference in the country.

PAUL JOHNSON pushes a button on a panel hidden deep within BW3 headquarters.

PAUL JOHNSON

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

MIKE LONDON

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

PAUL JOHNSON & MIKE LONDON

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

CUT TO:

INT. WORSHAM FIELD IN LANE SPACIUM

During preseason scrimmage, LOGAN THOMAS rolls out of the pocket on a routine passing play, and, seeing his downfield receiver well-covered, double clutches. Suddenly, a sprinkler pops up out the grass. A hard-charging KWAMAINE BATTLE trips on the sprinkler and tears his ACL. CALLENDRA "CASEY" BEAMER starts to run out onto the field screaming, but is restrained by defensive co-ordinator BUD FOSTER.

CUT TO:

INT. COASTAL ONE

COMMANDER FRANK BEAMER

Computer, open file on "Bellarian Behavior."

1980s-STYLE FUTURISTIC COM-POOT-OR

Bellarians, aka Virginia Tech Competitive Cheerleading Team. Non-football-based practitioners of cheering. They only appear in this parody script because it wouldn't be complete without them.

CASEY BEAMER enters.

COMMANDER FRANK BEAMER

Casey, next time there's an injury on the field, let the medical trainers handle it.

CASEY BEAMER

But, Dad, I was there! The quarterback chickened out!

COMMANDER FRANK BEAMER

Casey, meet quarterback Logan Thomas. Logan Thomas, this is my daughter, Casey.

LOGAN THOMAS (aka LO-GUNS THOMAS)

Listen, lady...

CASEY BEAMER

Account Manager for the Carolina Panthers!

LOGAN THOMAS (aka TRENT STEELBEEF)

Listen, Account Manager for the Carolina Panthers lady! I couldn't throw the pass. The pocket collapsed suddenly, and there wasn't time to checkdown to the auxiliary backup receiver. Don't you think I realize a good lineman is lost for the season, a lineman I respected and loved?

CASEY BEAMER

Oh, I didn't realize you knew him. I know I'm just repeating lines from the original Space Mutiny script, but isn't this a really dumb thing to say?

CUT TO:

INT. THE FUTURISTIC BASEMENT OF LANE SPACIUM

PAUL JOHNSON

We have made an alliance with the space pirates and intend to force Commander Beamer to abandon his quest for the championship game and divert course for the Belk Bowl.

MIKE LONDON

You know this alliance violates galactic law, but so be it! I've had enough of being the second-best program in my own commonwealth. Third, if you count James Madison.

DAVID CUTCLIFFE

No, no! The law must be upheld! This is mutiny, this is treason, which I warn you I must report to Dick Vitale. He will shatter your eardrums if you do not abandon your plans immediately.

PAUL JOHNSON, MIKE LONDON, AL GOLDEN, and BUTCH DAVIS lead their teams to severe beatdowns of DAVID CUTCLIFFE's DUKE BLUE DEVILS.

PAUL JOHNSON

Is there anyone else here who would like to confuse victory with treason?

CUT TO:

INT. DOWDY-FICKLEN STADIUM, GREENVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA

CAPTAIN BUD FOSTER

Look out, space pirates!

RUFFIN MCNEILL

We have laid claim to this sector of turf. Leave at once or we will blow you to astro-dust!

LOGAN THOMAS (aka REX BULKHEAD)

Let's kick some ass!! [girlish scream]

LOGAN THOMAS (aka BRICK ABSWEILER) leads his team to a 44-16 victory over the EAST CAROLINA SPACE PIRATES.

FADE TO:

INT. CHICK-FIL-A — BLACKSBURG, VIRGINIA'S HOTTEST NIGHT-SPOT

LOGAN THOMAS (aka FURIOUS BRADLEY), JAYRON HOSLEY, and CASEY BEAMER are all grooving to the finest in CHRISTIAN ELECTRO HOUSE MUSIC.

CASEY BEAMER

[to LOGAN] Can a woman buy a man a drink in your galaxy? Holy frak, this dialogue is so bad it's impossible to parody.

LOGAN THOMAS (aka MUSCLE WILSON)

In my galaxy, sure, but in this galaxy, buying me a drink is an NCAA violation. I'll have to buy my own diet lemonade and waffle fries.

MIKE LONDON and PAUL JOHNSON enter, approach JAYRON HOSLEY, and forcibly remove him from the premises.

CASEY BEAMER

Hey, this is interesting. I know Jayron. What are those two coaches doing with him?

CASEY and LOGAN (aka CHEST KEENUM) leave the Chick-Fil-A, and see PAUL JOHNSON shooting JAYRON HOSLEY with a BW3 T-SHIRT GUN. JAYRON collapses to the pavement, and PAUL JOHNSON and MIKE LONDON drive off.

CASEY BEAMER

Do you know what this means? All of the other Coastal Division coaches are corrupt! If they've broken galactic law, that's a mutiny. We can call the NCAA on them!

LOGAN THOMAS (aka NATE SIZZLEHOUSE)

My guess is that the NCAA is too busy setting up an LSU-Alabama rematch for the BCS championship to worry about the Coastal Division.

CUT TO:

INT. WORSHAM FIELD IN LANE SPACIUM

BELLARIANS

Golden...fate has come for you...

AL GOLDEN enters with an bunch of frakkin' soldiers called the MIAMI HURRICANES.

COMMANDER FRANK BEAMER

Men, I run this spacium as a ship of peace. But against Al Golden and his men, there can be no quarter. Logan, if you'll accept, I'd like you to lead this team into battle.

LOGAN THOMAS (aka BULKARRI RAMBO)

OK, men, divide yourself into three groups. One group will be in charge of scoring points. The second group will be in charge of keeping Miami from scoring points. The final group will be in charge of special teams. Now let's kick some ass!!! [girlish scream]

JAYRON HOSLEY (hey, he died! actually, he had a concussion) has seven tackles. Chasing down LAMAR MILLER near the sideline, JERON GOUVEIA-WINSLOW's momentum carries him past the benches and over the RAILING into the front row of seats, causing a Lisfranc fracture that knocks him out for the season. LOGAN THOMAS (aka MARK MCLARGEHUYGE) goes 23/25 passing as the Hokies win, 38-35.

AL GOLDEN

Ah, screw it, nothing is worth the sanctions we're about to get. I'll just wait for Paterno to retire, and then take the job at Penn State. [phones rings] Wait, what? [long pause, looks horrified] Dealing with the fallout from stripper abortions is nothing compared to that. I guess I'll stay at Miami.

CUT TO:

INT. BOBBY DOWD STADIUM, ATLANTA, GEORGIA

BELLARIANS

Johnson, your time is at an end...

LOGAN THOMAS (aka VONTAZE BLOWFIST) and the Hokies are immediately surrounded by YELLOW JACKETS.

PAUL JOHNSON

Jeremiah, soften him up.

JEREMIAH ATTAOCHU punches LOGAN THOMAS (aka CRUNCHNEY UPSLAB) after a third-down stop, drawing a personal foul.

PAUL JOHNSON

Frak! Ye gods, I didn't mean moisturize him, but I did mean hit him legally during the course of the play!

Seeing that JEREMIAH ATTAOCHU's foul has cost GEORGIA TECH the game, PAUL JOHNSON flees on the RAMBLIN' WRECK. LOGAN THOMAS (aka CALEB PECBUSH) and CASEY BEAMER jump into a spare MODEL A and set off in pursuit.

LOGAN THOMAS (aka LUKE SQUATLY)

Look out, we're reaching speeds of three!

PAUL JOHNSON impressively makes a sharp 180-degree turn on the RAMBLIN' WRECK and sets his sights on LOGAN THOMAS (aka E.J. MANMUSCLE). LOGAN (aka CRUNCHEY LEGAUX) and CASEY jump off the MODEL A. PAUL JOHNSON, unable to control the RAMBLIN' WRECK, hits the MODEL A and plows it into THE SHAFT, where it explodes with the force of over 9,000 FORD PINTOS and sets off an enormous conflagration.

BUTCH DAVIS leads his TAR HEELS up to the conflagration, then orders them to stop.

BUTCH DAVIS

Forget about it! We'll never get through there! This mutiny is over, and my ass is so fired that I'm going to be replaced by a hat!

CUT TO:

INT. SCOTT STADIUM, CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

BELLARIANS

The time has come for London...

LOGAN THOMAS (aka JUSTIN BLASTMAN) leads the Hokies into Scott Stadium. They are heckled mercilessly by the fans of their in-commonwealth rivals.

COMMANDER FRANK BEAMER

Football? What it is good for? I don't know. Always seems to bring out the worst in fans.

The Hokies take a 28-0 lead one minute into the fourth quarter on a DAVID WILSON run. MIKE LONDON hides in an exhaust vent.

MIKE LONDON

Logan, it doesn't have to be this way! We can work something out!

LOGAN THOMAS (aka TANK CARDCHEESE) throws a meaningless touchdown pass to put VT up 35-0. LOGAN (aka JAKE FEELTHEBURNER) then goes and farts into the end of the exhaust vent, causing MIKE LONDON to retch.

COMMANDER FRANK BEAMER successfully pilots the Hokies to the championship game, where they are promptly conquered by THE CYLONS CLEMSON.

CUT TO:

INT. THE FUTURISTIC BASEMENT OF LANE SPACIUM

Ominous music plays as the camera pans around the wreckage. The camera finds and zooms in on Virginia Tech athletic director JIM WEAVER, whose apparently lifeless body is seated against a pillar. After a very very long time, his eyes open.

JIM WEAVER

Oh frak! How in the gods' names are we going to sell 17,500 Sugar Bowl tickets?

CUT THROUGH NUMBERED DOORS TO:

INT. FREEP 13

DREW SHARP

All right, gentlemen. Now that the football season is over, I have to go and write a bunch of articles about how John Beilein eats kittens and small children and put a stop to your basketball team's good play. That means you are now disposable. Gerg, push the black button.

TV'S GERG's finger slips and he pushes the PURPLE BUTTON. Lights start strobing and sirens start wailing.

DREW SHARP

Oh crap! You've activated the bureaucrat signal!

NCAA President MARK EMMERT teleports into FREEP 13.

MARK EMMERT

The bureaucrat signal indicates the Michigan players have been receiving illegal benefits here. Is that correct?

JORDAN

[through the satellite link] That's not true at all! Drew and TV's Gerg have forced us to watch terrible parodies of terrible movies all season! We didn't want to!

MARK EMMERT

According to Section 3811, Subsection 206, Sub-subsection 132 of the NCAA rule book, players forced to receive extra audiovisual benefits against their will are required to either cover their eyes or stick their fingers in their ears in order to receive as little benefit as possible. Did you do so?

JORDAN

No, sir.

MARK EMMERT

In that case, you are not eligible to play in the Sugar Bowl until you make restitution. The NCAA estimates the value of watching four parodies of awful movies at $20.00.

JORDAN

Well, I guess we can go without cream cheese on our bagels for a little bit. Will you accept Canadian Tire money?

MARK EMMERT

[scans the NCAA rule book] Surprisingly, there's no rule saying you can't pay in Canadian Tire money. We'll have to form a committee to take care of that in case this happens again, but for now, you're free to go play in New Orleans.

MARK EMMERT pushes a MAIZE & BLUE BUTTON. The door to the SATELLITE OF YOST unlocks and opens.

JORDAN, ROH, VAN BERGEN, HEININGER, & MARTIN

Woo-hoo, free at last!

MARK EMMERT beams back to Indianapolis. Lights stop strobing and sirens stop wailing.

DREW SHARP

Well, Gerg, now you've done it! What are we going to do now?

TV'S GERG

We've got those New Mexico season tickets - I'm going to go early and see if Bob Davie will give me a job.

DREW SHARP

I might as well head down to Albuquerque with you. That way I'll be fairly close to Tucson, ready to pounce when Rich Rodriguez makes a minor paperwork error. Push the button, Gerg, and let's go.

CLOSING CREDITS

Thanks to the authors of the FIRST AMENDMENT and the TEACHERS OF AMERICA. There actually are 41 pages on Wikipedia that link to the LANA DEL REY article. The role of CALLENDRA "CASEY" BEAMER was written for NICKI CLYNE. CASEY BEAMER is barely a public figure, and thus I thought it would be inappropriate to parody THE BALD IDIOT SCENE, a fact for which you should be grateful. A Google search for "BLACKSBURG NIGHTCLUBS" yielded no useful results, which is why I set that scene in a CHICK-FIL-A. The Space Mutiny names I thought up but didn't get to use were "MORRIS CLAYBONE," "RAY-GUN IRONSTRONG," and "DONT'A THICKTOWER." Keep circulating the TAPES.

STINGER

LOGAN THOMAS (aka BRICK HARDWELL)

[girlish scream]

Everyone else has a solution for the BCS, so why can't we?

2011-12-07T20:53:00.001-05:00

NCAA institutions are a varied lot: both private and public, both large and small, both teaching-oriented and research-oriented, both colleges and universities. However, without doing the research, there is at least one thing that I am certain every single one of them has: a professor of statistics.

The Michigan Statistics Department has an awesome logo. That is all.

In this post we will discuss two of the many problems with the BCS. The first is that there are humans involved in the formula who are swayed by things such as "brand name," "reputation," and "whatever bullshit Gary Danielson spews during the fourth quarter of the SEC Championship game." Vishnu Parasuraman at Grantland proposes replacing the polls with a committee. The only effect that would have is that the biases of "brand name," "reputation," and "Gary Danielson" would be hidden in a board room in Indianapolis instead of being out in the open for us to mock. Lloyd Carr is the sort of person who'd be on the selection committee, and he's already a Harris Poll voter. You don't see the NCAA putting Ken Pomeroy on the March Madness committee.

This is not to say that computers are unbiased; the second problem with the BCS is that the computer rankings are hobbled and slanted by the silly biases of Jeff Sagarin, Peter Wolfe, Wesley Colley, Kenneth Massey, Richard Billingsley, and some dudes at the Seattle Times (a.k.a. Seattle's fourth best newspaper, behind the Stranger, the Weekly, and the Sinner). Only six. That's ridiculous.

My solution to these problems: no more committees, no more polls. Only computers. But not just six computers, that's not enough! In order to come up with a reasonable BCS computer ranking formula, we need hundreds of rankings. Every school in the NCAA should be invited to submit a team ranking system before the start of the season, and the official football rankings should be a combination of hundreds of rankings created by the smartest statistics students at all of the NCAA's member institutions.

Here's the plan. After the jump.

Part I: How to make an algorithm

0. Rankings will not be allowed to take into account conference affiliation, preseason rank, records from previous seasons, fanbase size, and other such irrelevant factors that are routinely applied in the current system. The only exception is that rankings can use Bayesian methods from a preseason prior distribution to develop early-season rankings, as long as this is no longer needed by the end of the year. (This is what the Sagarin ratings do to get weekly rankings until all the teams are well-connected.)

1. The NCAA will provide a sample input of the data it will provide each algorithm, using prior seson data. In a change from the current computer rankings, the data set will include all play-by-play data.

2. Each member institution that cares to participate will submit a rating. Each rating algorithm will be open source and posted to an official NCAA website 60 days before the season starts for analysis and/or derision.

3. Each algorithm will be required to not reward margins of victory greater than 20 points (to prevent running up the score) and will be required to implement a "garbage time detector" specified by the NCAA to determine when a game is out of hand. Teams may receive higher rankings for reaching garbage time earlier in the game.

4. Each rating system will output a ranking, giving its highest ranked team a score of 1 and its lowest ranked team a score of 0. Algorithms may rank FCS and lower divisions if they desire, but the results must be scaled so that the lowest ranked FBS team has a score of 0.

Part II: Aggregating the algorithms

Once all of the individual rankings are tabulated, they will be aggregated into one absolute ranking. The procedure for this is as follows:

1. The scores for each team in each ranking will be averaged to get a mean score for each team.

2. Each ranking will be evaluated against the mean score using a deviation statistic which is

The 10% of rankings with the worst (i.e., largest) values of the deviation statistic will be discarded. This step is done to eliminate extreme deviations from the group consensus. (e.g., voting New Mexico #1)

3. The scores for each team in the remaining 90% of the algorithms will be averaged, yielding a final mean score. The rankings will be calculated by ordering the teams according to the final mean score.

Example: Suppose the Big Ten were to abolish its divisions and choose its championship game participants this way. Each of the 13 member schools of the CIC would submit a ranking. Here are the sample rankings:

We calculate the deviation statistic for each ranking, resulting in the following scores for each ranking:

Chicago: 1.10
Illinois: 1.67
Indiana: 0.83
Iowa: 0.86
Michigan: 1.31
MSU: 1.07
Minnesota: 1.53
Nebraska: 1.70
Northwestern: 0.90
Ohio State: 1.25
Penn State: 0.83
Purdue: 1.73
Wisconsin: 0.97

We find that Purdue's ranking deviates the most from the mean score, so we discard it (with 13 teams, the worst 10% rounds to just one ranking) and calculate the final mean score from the remaining ~~eleven~~ twelve rankings. The final ranking is thus #1 Wisconsin (0.96), #2 MSU (0.92), #3 Michigan (0.81), #4 Nebraska (0.72), #5 Penn State (0.61), #6 Ohio State (.444), #7 Northwestern (.443), #8 Iowa (0.33), #9 Purdue (0.26), #10 Illinois (0.22), #11 Minnesota (0.11), and #12 Indiana (0.01).

Part III: Answering your questions

Won't schools try to game the system to rank their own team as highly as possible?

Of course they will! Just like they do now in the Coaches' Poll. The first improvement over the current system is that every school will have the chance to game the system this way. The second improvement is that is their ranking will only be one out of at least a hundred and the biases of different schools (e.g. Michigan & Ohio State) should cancel each other out. Also, since a school's ranking won't count in the final mean score if they deviate too far from the poll consensus, the programmers will have to be clever to design their algorithms to boost their school's rank without getting their poll tossed. If a school figures out a way to do it, then they should be rewarded for being smart. And since the code is open-source, every other school can pull the same trick the next year, giving the sneaky school at most a one year advantage.

Won't this be incredibly confusing?

Yes and no. On the one hand, with so many different ranking systems as part of the code, it will be very difficult to figure out the implications of different game outcomes. From the point of view of the coaches and players, the only thing they need to understand is winning is better than losing, winning medium is better winning small, and winning big isn't any better than winning medium. On the other hand, because the entire codebase will be open source, an enterprising analyst can study everyone's algorithm and figure out how and why different scenarios could play out. By giving everyone access to the ghost in the machine, it will be easier to predict than a system where we have to guess at whatever the voices in the heads of Harris Poll voters are saying. During the last week of the season, ESPN could give real-time poll updates as each game ends, which would be a much better use of their time than guessing at what the polls will say.

Won't this still cause a problems if there is no clear #1 vs. #2 matchup?

Yes it will. But the same principle can be used to pick the teams in a playoff of any size - for example, six. In fact, modified versions of the same basic procedure could be used to pick the at-large teams for March Madness or the Frozen Four. All you'd have to do is change the football statistics used to make the individual rankings into basketball or hockey statistics.

You're very vague about this garbage time detector thing.

That's because while I know a fair amount about statistics in general, I'm not an expert in advanced football stats. The garbage time detector would probably be based off of win probability added. Garbage time could go into effect when a team has a 95% chance of winning the game, and would be maintained as long as the team maintains a high probability of winning. This is the part of the process that still needs work.

Why would you eliminate polls that are far from the consensus? Maybe they're right and the majority is wrong.

Maybe so! But, if each ranking is independently trying to arrive at the true ordering of teams and each ranking has its own random biases, the "wisdom of crowds" should take over and the consensus ranking should be close to the true ranking. There may be a version of the central limit theorem out there you could use to actually prove this.

However, just to make sure the consensus isn't wonky, we'll propose one last twist. There will be a prize for the "best" ranking. We'll evaluate the best ranking according what I call the upset statistic, which is:

where M.O.V. is margin of victory. The intuition is that a good ranking is one with as few upsets of highly-ranked teams by lower-ranked teams as possible, and that if a really low-ranked team blows out a high-ranked team, there's probably something wrong with your ranking. This upset statistic is based on the integer-valued rank an algorithm gives a team, not the continuous number between zero and one, and is thus very difficult to optimize.

The prize would be scholarship money for the winning school's ranking team, and could be either given out by the NCAA directly, or a corporate sponsor could get naming rights in return for ponying up the scholarship dough. I suggest we call it the "Dr. Pepper Ten Student Algorithm Poll." It's not for innumerates! Seriously though, don't drink Dr. Pepper Ten. Don't reward hyper-misogynist crap advertising.

Hoke of the Rising Sun

2011-12-06T20:12:00.001-05:00

So, inspired by this:

and coupled with a distinct love of Eric Burdon and the Animals, as seen here:

We now present "Hoke of the Rising Sun"

There is a game in New Orleans
They call the Sugar Bowl
And it's part of the reviled BCS
The debate can take its toll.

Now Johnny is our tailor
He sewed my new jerseys
Our head coach is a gamblin' man
who wouldn't settle for three.

Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is to go on fourth and one.
And the only time he's needs to punt
Is when the game is won.

(Organ solo)

Oh Brady tell Al Borges
Not to do what he has done
Don't put Denard under center
He's better in shotgun.

Well, Mattison dials up blitzes
And a Michigan defense regained
Just play a stout run stopping D,
Don't let them move the chains

Well, there is a game in New Orleans
They call the Sugar Bowl
And it's part of the reviled BCS
The debate can take its toll.

Aleph Borges: A Season in Review

2011-12-05T21:07:00.001-05:00

If you don't get the title reference, turn to page 274, then come back. This post will still be here, as it exists in all points in time and space.

Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of athletes in space.
Hamlet, II:2, as paraphrased by Jordan Kovacs

That same chilly morning that Ricardo Rodríguez was fired, after an imperious confrontation with his athletic director in which he only for one instant stooped to sentimentality and fear, I noticed a new advertisement for some smartphone or another had been posted on the billboards of Interstate 8; the fact deeply grieved me, for I realized that the vast unceasing universe was already growing away, and that this change was but the first in an infinite series.

One month later I had left San Diego de Alcalá for good and while setting up my office in Schembechler Hall, I was greeted by my predecessor, one Calvino Argentino Magi, who now holds some sort of subordinate position on a stravenue in the outskirts to the north of Sonora. Calvino Argentino is a substantial, black-haired man of refined features. His football activity was constant, passionate, and versatile, but in Ann Arbor it was ultimately insignificant.

On February 8, 2011, I took the liberty of enriching him with an offer of a bottle of Bell’s Winter White Ale. Calvino Argentino tasted it, pronounced it “interesting,” and, after a few snifters, launched into a poem on which he had been working for many years called the Augural Canto, Prologurial Canto, or simply Prologue-Canto.

I begged him to read me a passage, even if only a brief one. He open a desk drawer (one of the drawers which I had not yet cleaned), took out a tall stack of tablet paper stamped with the letterhead of the Bentley Historical Library, and read with ringing self-satisfaction:

There is no life - no life without its hunger;

Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;

But when you come and I am filled with wonder,

Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.

“A stanza interesting from every point of view,” he said. “The first line wins the kudos of the humanitarian who wishes to fight hunger in San Francisco. The second moves from Mott to Mattison (implicit homage to George Mychaliska), not without revitalizing a technique whose lineage may be traced to Diane Warren. The third - baroque? decadent? The fourth, unabashedly gnostic, tells of a secret few men other than I have seen.” Calvino Argentino read me many other stanzas and about midnight, I took my leave.

Two Sundays later, Magi phoned me for what I believe was the first and only time in his or my life. He was very upset; at first I didn’t recognize his voice. Dejectedly and angrily he stammered out that the now unstoppable pair Brandon and Madej, under the pretext of buildling a basketball practice facility next to Crisler Arena, were going to destroy part of the Transportation Services building. He said that if Brandon and Madej persisted in their absurd plans, then Bernstein, his attorney, would sue them ipso facto for damages, and force them to part with a good hundred thousand for their trouble.

Bernstein’s name impressed me; his law firm, frequently advertised on television, is one of proverbial tenaciousness. I inquired whether Bernstein had already taken the case. Magi said he’d be speaking with him that afternoon, and in that flat impersonal voice we drop into when we wish to confide something very private, he said he had to keep the building because in one corner of its cellar there was an Aleph. He explained that an Aleph is one of the points in space that contain all points.

“The Aleph?” I repeated.

“Yes, the place where, without admixture or confusion, all the places of the world, seen from every angle, co-exist. I revealed my discovery to no one, but I did return!”

I tried to think. “I’ll be right over. I want to see it.”

I hung up before he could tell me not to come. On Keech Avenue, a passer-by asked me to wait - Magi was in the cellar of the Transportation Building. He came by shortly afterwards.

“We’ll duck down right into the cellar. I must forewarn you: you’ll lie on the tile floor and fix your eyes on the 132nd tile on the pertinent wall. I’ll reascend the stairs, close the door, and you’ll be alone. Some cockroach will spy on you -- easy enough to do! Within a few minutes, you will see the Aleph.”

I come now to the ineffable center of my tale; it is here that a blogger’s hopelessness begins. How can one transmit to others the infinite Aleph, which my timorous memory can scarcely contain? In that unbounded moment, I saw millions of delightful and terrible acts; none amazed me so much as the fact that all occupies the same point, without superposition and without transparency. What my eyes saw was simultaneous; what I shall write is successive, because language is successive. Something of it, though, I will capture.

The Aleph was probably two or three centimeters in diameter, but universal space was inside it, with no diminution in size. Each thing was infinite things, because I could clearly see it from every point in the cosmos. I saw Fielding Yost run from Depot Street down State Street to campus, saw Bill Martin, María Sue Coleman, and Ricardo Rodríguez meeting in an office in Toledo, saw Brandon Herron score and not score two touchdowns as lightning crashed across a blood-red sky, saw Louis Elbel scratching words and notes as rapidly as possible on a train leaving Chicago, saw a weightlifting room being torn apart and rebuilt, saw Theo Reddick outrun the Michigan secondary and instantaneously knew that Roy Roundtree would make it right, saw Dave DeTarr lead his team in perfect harmony at White Stocking Park, saw Shawn Crable’s helmet collide with Troy Smith’s, saw Mike Hart in unfamiliar green on the visitor’s sideline and knew he would someday return, saw a jug left abandoned in the University of Minnesota Armory, saw Ricardo Rodríguez sell Roundtree a vial of snake oil, saw my former protegés from San Diego de Alcalá fight bravely and Ryan Van Bergen fight more bravely still, saw Fritz Crisler’s Mad Magicians take the field at Yankee Stadium against Army and later, when I returned to my quarters, I recorded all the plays I could recall, saw what we can only describe as “The Horror,” saw Vincent Smith run, throw, and catch a touchdown in the same game, saw the earth from Apollo 15, a pale blue dot hovering in space, saw a desperate coach diagramming a play on the wall of the visiting coaches’ office in Notre Dame, saw Greg Mattison repair a stunned defense at halftime in Ryan Field, saw the door to Bump Elliott’s office close again and again, saw Greg Robinson at Mudpuddles in Kerrytown, purchasing a stuffed beaver, saw the vertebrae in Denard Robinson’s neck slowly twist back into place, saw the eddies and swirling currents above Spartan Stadium and I - foolish Borges! - thought in my vanity that I could teach young Robinson and young Gardner to see what I had seen, saw 10 athletic directors cast 6 votes for Ohio over Michigan, saw Nick Sheridan play an impossible and amazing game on the Metrodome carpet, saw a game ball delivered from the heavens by a man in a jet pack, saw Charles Woodson reach heavenward and pluck the football from the sky above the sideline, saw a stack of CARA forms lying unattended in an overstuffed file in Brad Ladabie’s office, saw Junior Hemingway make a touchdown catch in Iowa City and I knew simultaneously that he did not, saw a synapse fire in the brain of a PRMC staffer and the filming of “Space, bitches, space,” saw a cockroach call Michael Rosenberg on a cellular phone and the vile smile on Michael Rosenberg’s face as he wrote down what he heard, saw J.T. Floyd spend an entire game no more than five feet from Michael Jenkins, saw Lloyd Carr held aloft by a jubilant team while Tim Tebow sat alone, saw three overtimes and one unlikely miraculous final stop, saw four F-16s fly overhead and Brandin Hawthorne fly into Brett Maher, saw a record of 8-0 at home, saw professors grading Tate Forcier’s exams and wondering how it was possible, saw the look of sheer terror on Will Hagerup’s face, saw 11 tired, jubilant men fall from victory formation as a football-shaped grenade hit the ground, saw the Aleph from everywhere at once, saw the earth in the Aleph, and the Aleph once more in the earth and the earth in the Aleph, saw my face, saw your face, felt dizzy, and wept with joy.

I had a sense of infinite veneration, infinite pity, infinite redemption, infinite pride.

Calvino Argentino’s shoes occupied the highest step. In the sudden half-light, I managed to get to my feet.

“Tremendous...Yes, quite...tremendous,” I stammered.

Out in the street, on the steps of Michigan Stadium, all the faces seemed familiar. I feared there was nothing that had the power to surprise or astonish me anymore, I feared that I would never again be without a sense of déjà vu. Fortunately, after a few sleepless nights, some silly fellow tried to argue to me that the BCS made sense, and I was surprised and astonished that anyone could believe such a thing.

Postscript. Ten months after ground was broken on the new basketball practice facility and after Calvino Argentino Magi had settled in Arizona, there is one observation I wish to add with regard to the nature of the Aleph. Incredible as it may seem, I believe that there is (or was) another Aleph; I believe that the Aleph of the Transportation Services Building was a false Aleph.

Let me state my reasons. What I saw related to Michigan football and only Michigan football. I did never see what Mike McQueary saw nor did I ever hear what Laurie Fine heard. Had I seen all that was good and all that was evil, I would have tried to stop the evil, even if the Aleph had told me it was inevitable. Also, I did not see that Seth at MGoBlog would make a “Funes, His Memory” reference last week or I would have written this sooner.

Does the true Aleph exist, within the heart of a stone? Did I see it when I saw all things, and then forget it? One morning during practice, as I watched J.B. Fitzgerald practice from the coaches’ box above, the truth of the Aleph came to me: it is located on Frogstar World B, guarded by a man named Gargravarr, goes by the name “Total Perspective Vortex,” and has only been seen by two humans, Arthur Philip Dent and Tricia Macmillan.

Oversigning bowl: Just don't watch.

2011-12-04T21:06:00.001-05:00

Elliot Porter will not be playing in the LSU-Alabama Oversigning Bowl.

Some time ago in this space, I explained why the Urban Meyer Rule should be obsolete and why an LSU-Alabama rematch was desirable, namely, because both schools are dirty fucking oversigning grayshirting cheaters. I have received my wish, as #3 Oklahoma State faces #4 Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl, a.k.a. the national championship for non-cheating schools (*). So for rematch haters like me, it's the best of both worlds, if we assume both worlds are strange places where we just can't have a 4+ team playoff. We can ignore the SEC circle-jerk and still have something resembling a true national championship between the two best teams that don't completely mistreat their athletes. It's going to be weird for the last game of the season to be NIU-Arkansas State, but, like every other season, it's been a weird season.

(*) I'm sure if someone went all Freep on them, we'd find they'll guilty of tons of stuff too, but likely nothing as evil as promising a kid a scholarship and then stealing it away. Also, let's not forget that the Fiesta Bowl is run by frauds and cheaters.

In Michigan, first you get the power, then you get the sugar, then you get the women.

2011-12-04T20:39:00.000-05:00

I wish there was some word to describe the pleasure I feel at viewing misfortune

2011-12-04T07:29:00.001-05:00

Who me? It was a clean hit!

I've been waiting over two long years to have events transpire that required me to update this: the new and improved "Sparty, No!" quiz on Sporcle.

P.S. If you don't get the title reference. If Community weren't on NBC, the Sparty of television networks, I wouldn't have to presume many of you won't get the title reference.

Update Dec. 4 6:45 PM: You guys love the schadenfreude:

So Many Bears

2011-12-01T22:30:00.001-05:00

So, one of the hot trends for Christmas 2011 is NCAA Mascot Pillow Pets. They're cute, they're spirited, and they're roughly $30. Looking at the Big Ten's assortment, some of them make perfect sense. (And before I get angry letters, I could not find ones for Indiana or Northwestern.) To wit:

This Brutus Buckeye looks pretty much like the real thing.

All this Nittany Lion is missing is his traditional jaunty scarf.

Looks like Buckingham Badger, no doubt. Horrifying, yes, but it does look like him.

Why Goldy Gopher's image comes up like security camera footage, I'm not sure.

I think this is what Herky looks like. Even has the black pants.

He's big big big. And he's red red red. And that's how he came to earn the name Big Red.

And then there are four that completely make you question what the marketing people were thinking, which is exactly what we did. Please help us decide which of the four of these is the greatest crime:

1). Illinois

"Hey, so what's an Illini anyway?"
"Well, allegedly it used to be an Indian chief, but they dropped that imagery a few years ago. Ahh, to heck with it, make it a bear with a 1950s style Indian headdress. We'll say he was at the First Thanksgiving or something."
"Sir, don't you think people will wonder why the bear is a Native American?"
"Do I look like I care?"

2). Michigan State

"Hey, Michigan State has like one of the NCAA's most popular and famous mascots, right?"
"Yeah, whatever, biceps are hard to transfer to a pillow pet. Make it a dog."
"But sir, what do dogs have to do with Sparta?"
"I don't know. I'm going to go to my office and watch 300 and I'm sure I'll come up with something."
"Shouldn't we at least make it like a Greek breed of dog? Like a Molossus or something?"
"You're putting way too much thought into this. Just make it cute and a little needy, like it's the little brother of the litter."

3). Michigan

"Sir, this one's a bit tricky. Michigan is legendary for their resistance to the mascot. They're very big on their symbols like the winged helmet and the block M."
"Good, then we should include those."
"Right, so we'll get the traditional blue jersey, and the block and and the winged helmet, all on a Wolverine. But wolverines are scary looking. Since we're targeting small children, do we really want to give them a representation of a godless killing machine, nature's most perfect land based predator?"
"You're right, make it a grizzly bear instead."
"So a wolverbear?"
"No, just a grizzly. Make it cute though."

4). Purdue

"Not going to lie sir, Purdue Pete is kind of creepy looking. But I think we're OK, because Purdue's actual mascot is the Boilermaker Special and kids love trains. We'll just make a fun train one."
"Nope, trains are too hard to pull off. You know, idea, let's..."
"Make it a bear. Sir, come on, every time we get stuck, you tell me to make it a bear. Besides, how would people even know the bear was representing Purdue?"
"Put a hardhat on him?"
"I hate you."
"I know."

Seal Block Week 14: The Grand Finale

2011-11-30T20:08:00.000-05:00

Thanks everyone who voted for the Seal Block Top 25 and for everyone who slogged their way through 14 weeks of exciting academic symbolism! Before revealing the final poll results, I'd like to award a couple of special jury prizes. I looked for 126 seals and some schools make it easy to find and some make it almost impossible. The first special prize goes to Buffalo for the most sensible protection of their graphic identity. The gray stripes mean that an interested party can see it clearly, but can't pass it off as official. Emblematic of the wrong way to protect your identity is South Carolina, who has a great seal but makes it impossible for anyone to appreciate it. SC was disqualified from the Top 32 due to this crappiness. (Penn State was also disqualified from the Top 32 because it was, quite literally, the least I could do.) Penn also deserves mention for their clever bait-and-switch: their shield is based on the Penn and Franklin family coats-of-arms and is used on their merchandise. It's widely considered to be their seal, but their actual seal is the seven books of the liberal arts. The trivium and quadrivium: the original 3-4 defense against ignorance.

The second special prize goes to the most badass seals I found while searching. In third place is the U.S. winner, Davidson College, for featuring the brutal murder of a snake. Second place goes to Sweden's Lund University. It's a lion, wearing a crown, holding a frakkin' longsword. He's reading the Cabela's catalog in order to devise the most up-to-date countersafari techniques. "Do you know what those poachers won't be expecting?" he's thinking to himself. "A pride of lions armed with swords!" The year 1666 was a good year to be founded because years containing "666" are inherently badass.

It may be my Canadian jingoism showing when I declare Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University the winner, but no, that's some serious badassery. Dalhousie's named for its founder George Ramsay, 9th Earl of Dalhousie, and their shield and coronet, consisting of the eagle, crown, and unicorn head, comes from the Ramsay family coat of arms. For the Ramsays, the shield is supported by a gryphon and a greyhound, but, at some point, Dalhousie officials said, "To hell with that! That's not badass enough. We're adding some freakin' dragons." And so they did. They also get bonus points for using the only nonconfusing Latin abbreviation of a placename in North America.

And now, the 25 best seals in FBS! After the jump! I have written a haiku to celebrate each one.

Also receiving votes: 32. Arkansas, 31. Iowa, 30. Pittsburgh, 29. Georgia, 28. UTEP, 27. Missouri, 26. Louisiana-Lafayette.

25. San Jose State
It’s Tower Hall, not
Mission San Juan Bautista.
But still, Vertigo.

24. Western Michigan
Its roots are showing,
but the tree of wisdom should
have its roots showing.

23. Kansas State
KSU suggests,
rule by obeying nature
and growing cash crops.

22. Tulane
A football-shaped seal’s
a better idea when
your team’s not awful.

21. Toledo
If in Ohio,
It’s best to pretend you’re not.
Toledo’s in Spain.

20. Akron
A rising phoenix
born in the ashes of Le-
bron’s reputation.

19. Oklahoma
A farmer at work
Sowing the seeds of knowledge
and the seeds of corn.

18. Cincinnati
In the coming year,
Vote UC’s famous alum:
Taft 2012.

17. Hawai'i
Haiku is a poem
And a town on Maui too.
Malamalama.
(Haikus are much easier
to compose in Hawaiian.)

16. Virginia
Thomas Jefferson
designed UVa’s seal and
made some Post-It Notes.

15. LSU
Pelicans eating.
The grossest thing in nature.
Heralds didn’t know.

14. Southern Utah
A heraldic bomb
went off in Cedar City,
leaving this cool seal.

13. Northwestern
First line in English.
Secundo in Latini.
Tritos, Ellada.

12. Idaho
Woman sees sun rise.
The only thing missing is
russet potatoes.

11. Memphis
The new Memphis seal
is both classic and modern.
Horus salutes you.

10. Boston College
The Jesuits know
Boston once had a hill that
was called Mount Whoredom.

9. Notre Dame
Ronald Reagan said,
Let’s win one for the Gipper.
They finished in ninth.

8. Georgia Tech
We hate UGA.
We stole the door from their seal,
added a cool gear.

7. Michigan
The most successful
color scheme in all football.
Easterbrook approves.
(But he is still a jackass
who writes the same thing each week.)

6. San Diego State
SDSU built
a nice adobe building
‘shopped into a seal.

5. Alabama
The girl in the seal
is really a nurse at Saint
Saban Hospital.

4. Oregon
Mount Hood is pretty
but can’t be seen from Eugene.
Maybe Beaverton.

3. Stanford
The founders noted,
Palo Alto Means “Tall Tree.”
A mascot was born.

2. Navy
It’s a Navy seal.
But it’s not a Navy SEAL.
Googling can be hard.

1. Army
Eagle with arrows,
Stolen from the Iroquois,
But still really cool.

Only one point separated Army & Navy in the final vote, so if you don't like the result, it's your own fault! In the spring, we will not be ranking the seals of D-I basketball, because I am not crazy enough to do that.

Thank you for being so prompt and suggestible.

2011-11-30T12:34:00.001-05:00

At 6:50 PM yesterday, we demanded someone prank the Big Ten Championship Game.

At 9:24 PM yesterday, this appeared and the college football blogs and twitters went berserk today.

Well done, anonymous person, who ~~appears to be~~ successfully posed as an employee of the Indianapolis Convention Center. Well done.

The rest of you, behold our power!!! And please make sure to donate those flat-screen TVs to the Dan Quayle Educational Center.

Crescat inconstantia, vita excolatur, or, roll 'em up in a carpet and throw 'em off a bridge

2011-11-29T18:50:00.000-05:00

When I was but an undergraduate at the University of Western Ontario (before moving on to a superior school for graduate studies), my fellow engineering students would boast of the great pranks that engineering classes of yore had pulled, such as sawing a car in half, welding it around a flagpole, and rewiring it so that it could still start. But in the time I was there, the great pranks of yore were but legends, and we had been reduced to throwing paint filled balloons at buildings and calling pointless, needless, vandalism "pranks."

Such is also the case with College Football. In the halcyon days gone by, a prank against Big Football and Big Media would require complex planning resulting in stunning beauty: sabotaging a nationally televised card section stunt, for instance, or hacking into a PDP-8 computer in order to take over the game scoreboard. These days, such pranks consist of hacking a player's Twitter account or putting a sign that says "penis" behind Kirk Herbstreit on College Gameday. Though similar in spirit to the pranks of yesteryear, these efforts require little fortitude and little skill and will soon be forgotten by all except Google's cache.

But this devolution of pranking can be stopped, and the place where we make it stop is the inaugural Big Ten Championship Game. Much like Caltech objects to the Rose Bowl as a symbol of the perceived supremacy of athletics over academics, there is an institution in the Midwest that has the right to make the B1G Championship Game its prank playground. To put it in terms that geeks and nerds will understand:

Yes, the Big Ten's prodigal comrade, the triskadekic member of our conference and its Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the place where 65 years ago they cried "Enough!" and actually put academics ahead of athletics. The University of Chicago is the school with the brainpower, the deviousness, and the temerity necessary to restore pranks to their rightful place in big time college football. And what better place to do it than in Indianapolis, home to the headquarters of the moral turpitude that is the NCAA? And, seriously, Michigan State is playing. We need the possibility of non-Dean Winters related mayhem to have some reason to care.

As outsiders, we implore Chicagoans to take their rightful place as the kings and queens of Midwestern pranksterdom. However, we know that like all institutions, you may suffer from bureaucratic inertia that prevents you from forming new traditions. So, in order to help give birth to a new annual source of dread for Jim Delany, we humbly propose building upon your current traditions with the following.

For as true a scavhunt experience as we can provide, download the list in PDF or TeX format, or read it in HTML after the jump.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: Under no circumstances should you attempt to undertake this scavenger hunt and we accept no responsibility for anything that happens to you should you attempt it.

____ Construct a scale model of the geography of the Big Ten in the style of the Game of Thrones opening credits. [+15 points]

____ We're going to need a sturdy table to hold all the models. This one should do nicely: http://cdn3.sbnation.com/imported_assets/886049/THROUGH-THE-TABLE.gif [+20 points]

____ A test or assignment from any course that is the equivalent to a course offered at Chicago, upon which one of the starting players of the championship game received an A grade or better. [+4.0 grade points]

____ An official game program from Chicago's last Big Ten victory, a 7-6 win over Wisconsin on October 31, 1936. [+13 points]

____ A tattoo from Fine Line Tattoos of Columbus, Ohio of any equation appearing in Michael Spivak's calculus textbook. Bring your receipt. [+5(n+1) points, where n is the number of integral signs in the equation]

____ There's no need to bring Urbana-Champaign into our community. Instead, bring us Urbana Champaign from Community. [+50 points]

____ Documents certifying that one of your team members has had his or her named legally changed to Thomas, Tommie, Thomasina, or any other name that can be reasonably shortened to "Tom." [+15 points]

____ It is said that Brian Cook's hair is like Samson's in that it is the source of his inveterate blogging prowess. Bring us his hair so that we can donate it to Locks of Love and a cancer survivor may develop the power to break down every second of Michigan football. [RPS +10 points]

____ The Big Ten Network has 168 hours of time to fill each week, and very little programming with which to fill it. Film and edit a pilot episode of "Maroon Sports Report" so that BTN fans can keep up-to-date on the accomplishments of Chicago's varsity athletes. [+22 points]

____ Indiana high school quarterback Gunner Kiel has reopened his recruitment. Commit a recruiting violation whilst trying to convince him to attend Chicago. [+10 points]

____ A group of at least four Northwestern students living together in violation of Evanston's "brothel law." [+(n-3)² points]

____ Nebraska's greatest cultural achievement, Carhenge, is for sale. Purchase it and convert it into a real life Angry Birds level. [+30 points and 3 stars]

____ Iowa's Hawkeye Express needs a new car. Paint a Metra car black and gold to get a head start on its refurbishment and repurposing. [+25 points]

____ Chicago football legend Andy Wyant was nicknamed "Polyphemus" for reasons that seem to be lost to time, as pictures clearly indicate that he had two eyes. Prepare an origin story for his nickname. Points determined according to the amount of entertainment the Judges receive. [+5 points]

____ Hang Time! Running together. Hang Time! Did you know they made 104 episodes of that show? We wonder what happened to the cast. Please tell us "where are they now?" [+5 points per cast member]

____ On U.S. Route 41 between Chicago and Indianapolis, re-enact the classic cropduster scene from North by Northwest. [+10 points, +41 points if you actually dust crops during the re-enactment]

____ The most recent newsletter for the Quayle Vice-Presidential Learning Center in Huntington, Indiana has a wish list of items that the Center would like donated in order to improve its programs. Deliver them an item from their wish list. [+c/20, where c is the cost of the item in dollars]

____ SOCKFACE!!!!! C'mere, you little scamp. [+20 points]

____ At the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Elkhart, take pictures of the plaques honoring every member of the Hall of Fame who is not a white male. [+2 points per picture]

____ Construct a drum larger than Purdue's Big Bass Drum. At Judgment all the constructed drums will play together in a drum circle and then be unceremoniously destroyed, because EVERYONE HATES DRUM CIRCLES. [max(0,S-16π), where S is the surface area of your drum in square feet]

____ In November 2009, WTHR-TV exposed health violations at Lucas Oil Stadium (L.O.S.). Bring us a picture of your team's logo next to some mouse droppings in the stadium. [+2 points per dropping]

____ Change the team names on any L.O.S. scoreboard to "Archers of Loaf-crosse" and "LAXshmi Singhers." Stay out of the...DANGER ZONE! [+184 points]

____ Program the retractable roof at L.O.S. to open and close seven times, to the rhythm of the opening riff of Seven Nation Army. If time permits, continue playing the rhythm of the main theme from the first movement of Bruckner's Fifth Symphony. [+777 points]

____ Identify the lab in Europe from which Peyton Manning received his experimental stem cell treatment, and obtain a phial of stem cells from them. [+666 points]

____ While Mark Emmert was president of the University of Washington, he was too busy planning his next job as president of the NCAA to fight the state's 50% cut to education funding at UW. Remind him of this failure of leadership by taking a 50% cut from the sign outside NCAA headquarters. [+167 points]

____ A link to a thread on the Red Cedar Message Board that avoids the use of profanity (as defined by George Carlin). [+1 point per profanity-free post, -5 points if any post contains a naughty word.]

____ Scale the Gus Grissom Monument in downtown Mitchell. [+10 points]

____ Photograph your team outside Jay Cutler's childhood home in Santa Claus. Be good. That is part of the arrangement. [+6 points]

____ The Arizona Cardinals' jerseys are just faded second-hand Chicago Maroons jerseys. We would like them back. [+1 per replica, +5 per authentic, +50 per game-worn. 3 jerseys max.]

____ To prevent such a laundry disaster from happening again, photograph a team member presenting a container of color-safe bleach to a player or coach for the Cardinals. [+5 points]

____ We will bring the lensgrinders. You will bring the prescription. Grind a pair of eyeglasses for Dan Capron. [+21 points]

____ Chicago's top secret plan to re-enter and dominate the Big Ten is nearing completion. Draft blueprints for a new football stadium for U of C, to be located in Jackson Park. [+50 points]

____ Famous Indianapolis steakhouse Charles Mulligan's has closed. Bring us the famous poster of Charles Mulligan. [+ all the bacon and eggs we have]

____ Prepare a one-man or one-woman show explaining all the ways in which I have violated the spirit of scavhunt, designed a road trip through Indiana that makes no sense, and otherwise spit on traditions that are not my own. [+0.001 points]

Breaking! Must credit HSR. Urban Meijer hires assistant coaches.

2011-11-29T12:29:00.001-05:00

Although some news reports indicate that Urban Meijer is, in fact, not a store and actually a human being who goes by the unlikely name of "Urban Meyer," this is a clearly-perpetrated smokescreen designed by the Ohio athletic department in order to misdirect Michigan from knowing their true plans. However, we here at Hoover Street Rag have not fallen for the ruse, and we have discovered that Urban Meijer has all but locked up the following assistant coaches, who will be revealed after the jump.

Strength & Conditioning Coach: Art Van
In this post-Mike Barwis era at Michigan, the strength training techniques used by Art Van may seem antiquated, but there is no denying that they get results. By following a strict regimen of team sofa lifting, mattress removal, and recliner delivery, Ohio players will develop the strength to move heavy objects like opposing linemen, the dexterity to squeeze large objects through very small doorways, and the control to move quickly without damaging surfaces or upholstery.

Offensive Line Coach: Wallside Windows
Coach Wallside has plenty of experience sealing up lanes for hot or cold air to enter a home from outside, and this experience will be useful to O-Lineman needing to seal off attacking defenders. Furthermore, Coach Wallside has plenty of experience opening up sightlines allowing clear views of the yard or field and should help the Ohio line give Braxton Miller plenty of lanes in which to throw. Lastly, his cheer of "We Can Do That. We are the Factory!" is very motivational.

Defensive Backs Coach: Belle Tireman
Coach Tireman always makes sure that players can move fast and stop and change directly quickly, even under the harshest conditions that a midwestern autumn has to offer. He should have the Ohio secondary rolling smoothly and we must hope that Denard Robinson continues to improve his accuracy in order to counteract Belle Tireman's coverages.

Running Backs Coach: Vernors
Coach Vernors bring an effervescent personality and a wealth of experience going back to 1866 and the earliest days of college football itself. He is especially fond of the bubble screen and hopes to deploy it to full advantage against the Wolverine secondary come next November.

Special Teams Coach: K-Mart
Something of a surprising hire as his stock is fallen since his heyday decades ago, K-Mart is an intriguing choice for special teams coach. His very name, "K-Mart," indicates his skill in recruiting and training kickers for maximum success. He should be very good at helping punters "lay away" the football into the coffin corner, and his kick return schemes may help an Ohio player earn the nickname "Blue Light Special."

Wide Receivers Coach/Recruiting Co-ordinator: Amway
No one knows better than Amway the importance of recruiting and he can be counted on to recruit relentlessly on behalf of Ohio, but his abrasive style may drive away a few recruits. As wide receivers coach, he understands the importance on multi-level routes and should help design easy pass plays for Miller, who will quickly shoot up to the top of the football pyramid in his sophomore year.

Compliance Director: Joumana Kayrouz
In order to promote a new atmosphere of compliance at Ohio, Urban Meijer has thought outside the (big) box and brought in Joumana Kayrouz to head up compliance. Kayrouz's expertise in personal injury cases will ensure that Ohio will not abuse medical redshirting or greyshirting and that Ohio players will get the best medical care in the nation. Though widely known as a lawyer for the plaintiffs, her familiarity with the tactics used by motivated investigators will help to ensure that Ohio is compliant with all NCAA regulations.

That is quite a coaching staff. I hope that Brady Hoke, Al Borges, and Greg Mattison are up to the challenge of facing them.

I'm confused by this Urban Meijer thing

2011-11-28T20:07:00.001-05:00

I have to admit that I am befuddled by today's announcement that Ohio is hiring an Urban Meijer as their next head football coach. It was my understanding that the Meijer clan is exclusively rural and suburban, and having checked the central areas of Detroit, Lansing, Kalamazoo, Chicago, and Cincinnati, I am uncertain as to whether this Urban Meijer even exists. The smaller new concept store in Melrose Park, Illinois, near the CTA Blue Line may be the Urban Meijer, but I am not certain. I thought that Grand Rapids would be the most likely home of an Urban Meijer, but it turns out that even there they are merely suburban in location. It may be that Ohio plans to design, break ground, and construct an Urban Meijer in Columbus in time for the 2012 football season.

Having a store serve as head coach causes obvious logistical difficulties. Not only will Urban Meijer be unable to travel to road games, he (all news reports have been referring to the neuter Urban Meijer as a he) will not be able to fit inside Ohio Stadium without severely cutting into its seating capacity or covering up a significant portion of the field. No wonder, then, that there are rumors that Luke Fickell will stay on as assistant head coach, as Ohio will need a more ambulatory coach to handle gameday sideline duties.

Urban Meijer's inability to move will definitely affect his ability to recruit as he will be unable to make home visits to promising players - it goes without saying that hiring capable assistants as recruiters will be a must. However, when recruits come to Columbus on their campus visit he should be able to relate to them well: being ensconced in the inner city should give him a deep empathy for the problems of recruits with unstable family situations, and his competitive prices on thousands of items make it clear that he has something to offer every recruit.

The New York City-based Reputation Institute ranks him as one of the Top 30 most reputable coaches, but a scan of the Meijer corporate website shows a potential willingness to look the other way when it comes to NCAA violations. The first problem is their motto, "Higher standards. Lower prices." While higher standards are clearly laudable at any academic institution, I believe it was lower prices on tattoos that got Ohio into the NCAA mess in which they are currently embroiled. Looking deeper into the website, it appears as though Meijer offers team members the ability to "save instantly on thousands of products not at stores." If Urban Meijer participates in this offer Ohio will be looking at serious sanctions as a repeat rules violator.

Despite those concerns, I think Michigan fans should be wary of the many positives that Urban Meijer will bring to the Ohio program. Based on my scouting of the Ann Arbor-Saline Road and Carpenter Road locations, he will be up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week coaching his players, breaking down film, devising game plans for upcoming opponents, and he will always be sure to keep some of his focus on "that corporate headquarters up north." He will also have excellent ties with Big Ten Network sponsors as he will have shelves stuffed with Rotel products. If he brings the Meijer values of being customer-centered, having a competitive spirit, and promoting freshness and familyness to Columbus, he will definitely improve the Buckeyes' record next year while promoting teamwork and loyalty, and Ohio will be a force to be reckoned with on and off the field.

Winter's End

2011-11-27T20:18:00.001-05:00

If you're a Michigander, you know that winter is miserable. As much as the first snow fall of the season might be entertaining and even maybe a little bit pretty, while snow days may be a nice respite from the daily grind, the reality is that it's cold, dark, wet, and miserable. You stay inside, you may get seasonal affective disorder, and you wait for spring. You may be so desperate for any sign of spring, you seize false hope, only to see the snow return with a vengeance, the darkness fall. No matter what the calendar says, the end of winter is a feeling and you know it when it happens.

Beginning in December 1776, Thomas Paine, the pamphleteer of the American Revolution and the world's first blogger, wrote a series of tracts called "The Crisis" in which he detailed the Continental Army's war efforts to that point and worked tirelessly to both raise the spirits of the common patriot and implored them to not give up the fight. The first volume begins with one of the most famous opening paragraphs in all of American history:

THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.

Yesterday was not a perfect process, but it was a perfect ending. Michigan's defensive game plan was very likely "Fine, Braxton Miller, beat us with your arm." He very nearly did. Until I saw the replay that showed the misread on the coverage on Ohio State's first touchdown, I honestly thought Greg Mattison was channeling Greg Robinson, as if to remind us of what we had left behind before actually putting into play the defense we had come to know and love during the last two weeks. But it worked well enough. It worked well enough because everyone played within themselves. Denard played like the experienced junior quarterback we have believed he could be. Fitz ran like the Fitz we have come to know and love. The senior triple threat of Junior Hemingway, Martavious Odoms, and Kevin Koger will all get touchdowns on Senior Day. Team 132 will have their moment: imperfect in the process, perfect in the ending, as perhaps is fitting of their legacy.

When Washington was encamped on the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River in late 1776, he needed a win, badly. He had fled through New Jersey after the disaster at Brooklyn Heights, basically saving the Continental Army only under the cover of massive fog. Everything that could be against Washington was. Enlistments were up at the end of the year, meaning that Washington would lose even more from his force, which was already down a full 90% from the men he had with him on Long Island, and he could not only see that the Continental Congress was losing faith in his ability to lead, but he himself was beginning to have doubts: "I think the game is pretty near up." But Washington came up with a plan, a bold, audacious gambit. He would attack the Hessian garrison in Trenton, New Jersey. The finest soldiers of fortune in all of the world, considered by the Pennsylvania Dutch in Washington's army to be the devil in the flesh of man, and the ragtag Continental Army was going to attack them, crossing on Christmas. With a password of "Victory or Death", they set to their task. But first, Washington had read to his men the first volume of The Crisis, seeing that it lifted his spirits, it might do the same for them.

Quitting this class of men, I turn with the warm ardor of a friend to those who have nobly stood, and are yet determined to stand the matter out: I call not upon a few, but upon all: not on this state or that state, but on every state: up and help us; lay your shoulders to the wheel; better have too much force than too little, when so great an object is at stake. Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. Say not that thousands are gone, turn out your tens of thousands; throw not the burden of the day upon Providence, but "show your faith by your works," that God may bless you. It matters not where you live, or what rank of life you hold, the evil or the blessing will reach you all. The far and the near, the home counties and the back, the rich and the poor, will suffer or rejoice alike. The heart that feels not now is dead; the blood of his children will curse his cowardice, who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole, and made them happy. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death.

Paine implored his readers to not just stand by the Army in the field, but to take action to help the cause, to keep the faith and know that things would get better, but that they could not get better without that faith. In many ways, it's Tinkerbell theory, something only continues to exist because you believe in it and woe be unto you if you want to find out if it's truly the case.

I stood there, as many of you did, I am sure, watching the last two minutes, whispering prayers to Providence that the massively frustrating sequence that saw the replay official continue a bizarre tack of deciding that anything that could go Michigan's way on a replay would not, even if it defied logic, only to see a double whammy penalty on a beautiful rollout by Denard to see Michigan face 3rd and 25 and kick a field goal, going up just six points rather than ten. The knot in the pit of my stomach was a constant reminder that I simply have seen too many shoes drop to believe that this was going to be something good until the clock read zeroes. I saw too many small things going wrong, a long throw that was just a touch too long, a thunderous hit that was just an inch too late. But in the end, Courtney Avery signed the document, settled the accounts, and put Michigan into victory formation. For the first time in seven long years, it was zero day, it was the vernal equinox, Winter was over because winters end. Those who had held fast against the currents, against the arctic chill that had blown through, and the first blooms of a new spring budded on the fake grass of Michigan Stadium. The winter of our discontent hath ended, made glorious summer by this son of Hoke. The dog days are over, and while there will be new challenges, new frustrations, new annoyances, those will come in a new season. Because winter does finally end, even if it was longer than you wanted it to be.

Ohio: Beat.

(edited at 1:00 PM on 11/28/11 to fix the formatting issues. Sorry about that.)

Ohio. Beat. Arts & Crafts.

2011-11-27T10:03:00.001-05:00

I'm sure Craig will have a longer game column up for you later today, but for me two words will suffice: Hell. Yeah.

Many of you saw our Denard Robinson periodic table iron-on shirt design, and one of you was kind of enough to take a picture of my chest yesterday at the D.C. alumni bar - I love you, entertaining loud drunk guy! However, some of you are probably thinking, "Those are his 2010 stats. Why would I want to remember 2010?" Well now you can remember 2011 Denard instead with the updated version of the shirt:


Click for 1600 x 1600 version!

To make your Denard T-shirt, follow these instructions:

Download the mirror image version of the design.
Purchase an inexpensive T-shirt from a craft store or elsewhere.
Purchase iron-on printer paper (e.g. Avery 3271) from your local office supply store.
Print the mirror-image version on the iron-on paper. Follow the instructions that come with the paper to make the T-shirt transfer. Kids, make sure to have parental supervision.

The stats have been updated for 2011 with his slightly less impressive passing and rushing numbers, but with the infinitely more impressive 10-2 replacing his 4.44 fake 40 time.

You may also be saying, "Sure, I love Denard, but what about our seniors? They deserved to beat Ohio this year more than anyone." That is true, and over the next month or two we'll put out periodic table designs for each of them. We'll be starting right now with my beloved D-Linemen:

For the linemen, the numbers on the left are total tackles and TFLs.

All designs freely available under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license. Please attribute to "The Hoover Street Rag" and link to this post if applicable.

Michigan Defense Theater Experiment 1112: Brady Hoke Conquers the Buckeyes

2011-11-22T08:16:00.000-05:00

THEME SONG

In the not too distant future, Saturday A.D.

There was a guy named Jordan, not too different from you or me

He worked at Schembechler Institute, just another face in a maize jumpsuit

He did a good job cleaning up the place, but his bosses kinda liked him so they made him play in space

(Curse you GERG!)

We'll send him speedy runners, the best we can find

He'll have to stop, tackle them all as we monitor his mind

Now keep in mind he can't control when the games begin or end

He'll try to keep his sanity with the help of his D-Line friends...

D-LINE ROLL CALL!

Martin! (I'm Captain!)

Heininger! (Left side!)

Van Bergen! (Where've you been?)

Rooooooooooooooooh! (I'm sophomore!)

If you're wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts

He's got a meal card and it's set on earth so you can really just relax

For Michigan Defense Theater 3000.

FADE IN TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

JORDAN

Hi, everyone. It's just a regular Thursday in most of Windsor, but it's Thanksgiving here at the Satellite of Yost. I'm Jordan Kovacs and the D-line and I are counting the things we are thankful for.

ROH

I'm thankful for Coach Hoke and Coach Mattison for finally teaching me how to play defense. And I'm thankful for Coach Borges for improving the offense to the point where we don't have to carry them anymore.

JORDAN

Roh, I'm not looking for sarcasm right now! We should be genuinely grateful for Coach Borges and the offense, who help us out when we're not at our best. Although, admittedly, it's been a while since we haven't been at our best.

VAN BERGEN

I'm thankful for Jim Delany and Don Beebe, who have worked together to make the Big Ten bigger and better than ever.

HEININGER

I'm thankful for the 100,000+ fans that come out and support us every home game. I'd name every one, but we do need to play a game on Saturday.

JORDAN

Indeed you should thank them, Heininger. And I'm even thankful for the Mads, who have furnished the Satellite of Yost with a fabulous stuffed animal collection. Hey, they're calling right now.

JORDAN pushes the red button.

CUT TO:

INT. FREEP 13

DREW SHARP

This week I've decided to take a break and let TV's Gerg handle the invention. What could possibly go wrong? Take it away, Gerg.

TV'S GERG

Have you been subject to taunting, threats, or even violence as a result of your Michigan fandom? Especially from fans of schools who know deep down that, no matter how many times their favorite team may best Michigan on the athletic field, any Michigan graduate can rebut their boasts of superiority by logging on to usnews.com and saying, "Scoreboard?" Well I have the answer for you. It's the camouflage Michigan shirt, where you can where the maize and blue with pride without your rivals ever knowing.

DREW SHARP

Ugh, that's repulsive. Where the hell is the maize and blue? And what the heck is "gulo gulo"?

TV'S GERG

Glad you asked, Drew. According to the Michigan Identity Guidelines, the official web colors for maize and blue are #FFCC33 and #000066, respectively. If you average these two colors in CIELAB perceptual color space, you end up with #FFC8C6, or bright pink! So instead of wearing maize and blue separately, you wear them together and no one is the wiser! And "gulo gulo" is the taxonomic name for wolverine. You don't have to worry about an angry rival fan knowing something like that.

DREW SHARP

Well, Gerg, that's absolutely inane. What did you idiots over there come up with this week?

CUT TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

JORDAN

Well, sirs, the latest trend in sideline playcalling is large placards featuring random-seeming images, like the ones they use at Oregon. In keeping with Coach Hoke's mantra about the Michigan Team, we've decided to make playcalling signs using famous Michigan alumni as the images! For example, suppose Roh and I are suppose to show blitz on the right side, but fall back into coverage. You could signal that play like this:

JORDAN

In the upper left we've got Claude Shannon, founder of information theory, telling us to "communicate." Civil War General Benjamin Pritchard tells us to communicate "blitz," and Ann Coulter tells us to do so on the "right." Mike Wallace tells us to "cover," just like he covered the news on 60 Minutes! Roh and Van Bergen, I see you guys have made a sign as well.

VAN BERGEN

That's right, Jordan. As far as we're concerned, the D-Line is doing just fine, and it's you guys in the secondary and the linebackers that need to step it up. So we've made a sign featuring Arthur Miller and Apollo 15 Commander David Scott to say "make plays in space."

ROH

And to drive home the point, the bottom half of the sign features Jazz Age playwright Avery Hopwood and Space Emperor of Space Zoltan Mesko, again saying "make plays in space!"

CUT TO:

INT. FREEP 13

DREW SHARP

If I could sum up this week's experiment with four pictures, they'd just be different poses of me retching and vomiting at your silly antics. Instead, I'll just tell you that it's called Brady Hoke Conquers the Buckeyes. It's got Gene Smith in it or something. Gerg, send them their film.

CUT TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

JORDAN, ROH and VAN BERGEN

We've got game film sign!!!

CUT THROUGH NUMBERED DOORS TO:

INT. OHIO STADIUM, COLUMBUS, OH

Ohio head coach LUKE FICKELL and athletic director GENE SMITH survey the situation glumly.

LUKE FICKELL

Our players, fans, and children are so sad! All they do is sit around and watch Michigan programs.

BOMAR and GIRMAR are sitting in front of the television watching HOME IMPROVEMENT.

BOMAR

I'm sad because I got kicked out of Oklahoma over $18,000 in illegal benefits and, as a result, my NFL career ended with me being cut in favor of Sage Rosenfels. If I had come to Ohio, I could have made six figures during college and still be playing on Sundays.

GIRMAR

My husband bought me a Golden Globe Award, but my acting career is still the butt of jokes to this day. It's very disheartening.

Offensive co-ordinator JIM BOLLMAN enters, scowls, and twirls his mustache.

JIM BOLLMAN

Why should we care if our children are sad or about their silly Michigan programs? This is Ohio! We used to be the program of warriors! Of coaches who would run out on the field and tackle opposing players and openly pay their own players! Is this what we've become?

GENE SMITH

Enough Jim, I've had it with the sadness! We're going to go to Michigan and bring their pride and joy, Brady Hoke, here to Ohio to make our players and fans happy again! According to my calculations, we're most likely to find Brady Hoke here. [points to a spot in the mid-Atlantic] Let's go!

FADE TO:

EXT. FINE LINE INK TATTOOS, COLUMBUS, OH

DEVIER 'DROPO' POSEY is sitting on a bench outside the tattoo parlor. FICKELL, BOLLMAN, and SMITH pull over in the OHIO EXPRESS ROCKET-VAN.

JIM BOLLMAN

DeVier, you must be the laziest Buckeye in Ohio. Getting yourself suspended for 10 games? And now you're sitting outside the tattoo parlor again!

DEVIER POSEY

I was only sitting outside the tattoo parlor to remind myself never to go into the tattoo parlor again.

GENE SMITH

[sighs] I suppose we'd better take him along with us.

DEVIER 'DROPO' POSEY climbs into the rocket-van.

FADE TO:

INT. LANE STADIUM, BLACKSBURG, VA

LOGAN THOMAS is practicing passing drills when the Ohio ROCKET-VAN lands on the 50-yard line.

LUKE FICKELL

All right, Brady Hoke, get in the van! You're coming with us to Columbus!

LOGAN THOMAS

What are you talking about? I'm Logan Thomas, QB for the Virginia Tech Hokies! If you're looking for Brady Hoke, you need to go to Ann Arbor. [pause] Oops.

JIM BOLLMAN

[pulls out a phaser] Now that this ACC "football player" knows our plans, we'll have to kill him!

GENE SMITH

No Jim! ESPN made us promise to only kill Big East players. We have to keep the ACC ones alive. Better take him along with us too, though.

CUT TO:

INT. SCHEMBECHLER HALL, ANN ARBOR, MI

LOGAN THOMAS enters BRADY HOKE's office at phaser-point.

BRADY HOKE

Son, I'm afraid you'll have to turn over that Virginia Tech hat. In this office, I want to see Michigan gear and only Michigan gear.

LOGAN THOMAS

[stammers] I'm...I'm afraid I don't have a choice. [takes off hat, gives it to BRADY] The...the Buckeyes made me!

JIM BOLLMAN enters, carrying the phaser. GENE SMITH and LUKE FICKELL follow.

GENE SMITH

Brady Hoke, you're coming with us to Columbus, to teach our kids about joy and football and making plays!

BRADY HOKE

[to LOGAN] It's all right, son. I'll come along. Some problems can never be solved with violence.

CUT THROUGH NUMBERED DOORS TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

VAN BERGEN

[singing] Open up your heart and let the Lloyd Brady Christmas in.

We'll gather at the Big House with our next of kin.

ROH

And great football can be our Saturday afternoon thing.

We'll decorate one foot of bench and gather round and sing.

JORDAN, HEININGER, ROH and VAN BERGEN

Oh, let's have a Lloyd Brady Christmas this year!

We will fingerwag you if you think we're full of fear!

VAN BERGEN

It's my way or the highway, this Christmas in Ann Ar-r-bor.

I'll have to smash your kneecaps if you bastards touch Denard!

ROH

I got the word that Pryor has been getting free new cars.

I think that sad old Raider should make room for some new scars, ohh,

JORDAN, HEININGER, ROH and VAN BERGEN

Oh, let's have a Lloyd Brady Christmas, one and all.

And this can be the haziest...

This can be the laziest...

This can be the Bradiest

Christmas of them aaallllllllll!

INT. FOX 2 NEWS STUDIO, SOUTHFIELD, MI

SHERRY MARGOLIS

Shock waves resounded across Michigan today as beloved Wolverines coach Brady Hoke has been kidnapped by Buckeyes! From Keweenaw in the northwest to Monroe in the southeast, Michigan's public leaders have pulled together to develop a rescue plan for Coach Hoke. A rocket will soon be on its way to Columbus to rescue him from his captors. For an update on the rocket's progress, we go live to an ongoing press conference in Ann Arbor.

CUT TO:

EXT. FRANCOIS-XAVIER BAGNOUD BUILDING, ANN ARBOR, MI

HARRIS MCOYSTERSTONE

We are hard at work building a rocket to rescue Brady, but our maps of Ohio are so poor. The only directions we know to Columbus are "South until you smell it, east until you step in it." We already have the walking technology to determine when we step in it, but our artificial olfactory technology is not yet ready! We are working around the clock to finish the rocket because we all love Brady!

FADE TO:

INT. OHIO STADIUM, COLUMBUS, OH

DEVIER 'DROPO' POSEY enters, laughing hysterically.

DEVIER POSEY

Oh man, Brady Hoke is hilarious! He tells the best jokes. "What do you call an Ohioan who is completely incapable of expressing excitement about sporting events? Joe Buck-eye!!!" [falls down laughing]

BOMAR and GIRMAR also laugh hysterically, even though the joke is NOT FUNNY. LUKE FICKELL and GENE SMITH enter.

GENE SMITH

Brady, I'm glad to see you getting along so well with Bomar and Girmar. And you've made them smile again. But now it's time to see what we've brought you here for.

CUT TO:

INT. DREESE LABORATORIES, COLUMBUS, OH

LUKE FICKELL

This is our greatest invention, the Play-o-tron 1000. If you input the right parameters, it will develop the perfect playcall for any game situation! For example, suppose I'm up by seven after just scoring a touchdown. What does the Play-o-tron say?

LUKE FICKELL pushes a button. The PLAY-O-TRON 1000 whirrs, gears turn, belts convey, and at the end of the line a piece of paper is printed.

GENE SMITH

This play says to go for two. I'm not so sure about that - better send it to Illinois.

LUKE FICKELL

Well, let's see how it says we should defend 3rd and short against Joe Bauserman. [pushes some buttons on the PLAY-O-TRON, waits for printout] It says we should put 11 in the box and ignore the pass entirely. Sounds reasonable.

GENE SMITH

Brady, we need you to design some plays on the Play-o-tron to make our kids happy again!

BRADY HOKE pushes some buttons and produces some clever plays. After a hard day's work, everyone leaves happily.

CUT TO:

INT. DREESE LABORATORIES (AT NIGHT), COLUMBUS, OH

JIM BOLLMAN enters, looks around sneakily, and opens a panel on the PLAY-O-TRON 1000. He switches the red and blue wires.

JIM BOLLMAN

By switching up the wires on the Play-o-tron, the plays it spits out will be utter nonsense, and that will convince Luke and Gene to get rid of Brady for good. Bwa-ha-ha!

CUT TO:

INT. DREESE LABORATORIES, COLUMBUS, OH

DEVIER 'DROPO' POSEY leads LOGAN and BRADY into the computer room.

DEVIER POSEY

Something's gone wrong with the Play-o-tron! All the running plays it's producing are designed to produce negative yardage!

LOGAN THOMAS

Look at these other plays! This one calls for a two-quarterback formation. Can you imagine Braxton Miller and Joe Bauserman on the field at the same time? [shudders]

BRADY HOKE

No, no, no. These plays won't do at all! [folds up double QB formation plays, stuffs them in his pocket]

BRADY inspects the PLAY-O-TRON-1000.

BRADY HOKE

I see the problem. Someone must have 'accidentally' switched the red wire and the blue wire. Logan, if you can move the red wire to the proper position, I'll move the blue wire to where it belongs.

The PLAY-O-TRON-1000 whirrs back into motion, producing plays for a classic pro-style offense. JIM BOLLMAN enters, brandishing a phaser.

JIM BOLLMAN

All right, Brady Hoke! I've had enough of your meddling in Ohio. It's time to put you out of commission for good.

DEVIER POSEY

Wait a second, Jim! You should see all the awesome plays he programmed into the Computron! [accidentally grabs the stack of negative yardage rushes].

JIM BOLLMAN

[inspects the plays] Say, these aren't that bad. But still, it's time for Brady to go.

As JIM BOLLMAN raises the phaser, DOMINIC CLARKE enters firing a BB gun and shoots BOLLMAN in the chest.

JIM BOLLMAN

Oh no! My plans are ruined! [falls to ground]

LUKE FICKELL and GENE SMITH rush in.

LUKE FICKELL

I always knew ignoring minor gun violence issues would come in handy some day.

GENE SMITH

[picks up stack of bad plays] Well, Brady, you've done what we brought you here for. The people of Ohio are so grateful for your assistance. Let's get you back to Michigan!

LOGAN THOMAS

Uh, I need to get back to Blacksburg too!

BRADY HOKE

Come along, Logan. You'll have to stop by Ann Arbor and get your hat back. But don't get your hopes up on staying. We already have two great quarterbacks. [smiles impishly]

FADE TO:

CLOSING CREDITS

LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR CHILDREN'S CHORUS

Sing "The Victors" and dream

Soon you'll hear Team, Team, Team

On Grey Cup day you'll wake up and say

Hooray for Brady Hoke!

B-R-A-D-Y H-O-K-E, yay!

Hooray for Brady Hoke!

Hoo-raaaaaaaayyyyyyyy for Braaaaaa-dyyyyyyy Hoooooooke!

CUT THROUGH NUMBERED DOORS TO:

INT. SATELLITE OF YOST

ROH

Jordan, I'm confused by this week's experiment. If Coach Hoke was kidnapped by the Buckeyes, wouldn't it have been national news? Wouldn't he have at least told us, his beloved D-Line, about it?

JORDAN

I don't know about it being national news. We've been imprisoned by the Mads for weeks and no one seems to have noticed. Curse that lazy mainstream media!

VAN BERGEN

Hey guys, you know how Coach Hoke is holding some surprises back for the Ohio game? Maybe this is one of them! The halftime arrest of Ohio's coaches and athletic director would be one hell of a surprise!

ROH

Yeah, especially if it were incorporated into the Michigan Marching Band's halftime show. I imagine Coach Hoke and Scott Boerma are preparing a musical tribute to The Shawshank Redemption as we speak.

VAN BERGEN

I don't think this year's Ohio coaching staff is redeemable though. I think the MMB should prepare a salute to "The Wonderful World of Oz." The Buckeyes will think the italicization is a typo until it's way, way too late.

JORDAN

All right, that's enough of that. You know that if that happened, they'd just bring Urban Meyer out to coach the rest of the game. What do you think, sirs?

CUT TO:

INT. FREEP 13

TV'S GERG

Well, Drew, I don't have any money, so for Christmas I bought you the only football-related thing I could afford: New Mexico season tickets for 2012. They only cost $5!

DREW SHARP

Well, Gerg, I don't like you very much, so I bought you UNM season tickets for 2012 as well. [inspects the tickets, get angry] Dammit Gerg, our tickets are right next to each other! We're going to be stuck together all next fall watching Bob Davie try and coach!

TV'S GERG

I think we got tickets next to each other because these are the only two sets of season tickets UNM has ever sold.

DREW SHARP

[sighs] Push the button, Gerg.

CLOSING CREDITS

Thanks to the authors of the FIRST AMENDMENT and the TEACHERS OF AMERICA. Thanks to MGoBlog user MAIZEDOUT1982 for the LLOYD BRADY picture featuring FACEPALM GUY. Thanks to LLOYD BRADY for being LLOYD BRADY. Thanks to FACEPALM GUY for being FACEPALM GUY. Thanks to MICHAEL J. NELSON, composer of the tune for "A Lloyd Brady Christmas." Thanks to Professor Emeritus N. HARRIS MCCLAMROCH for his decades worth of contributions to the control and aerospace engineering communities. Thanks to DOMINIC CLARKE'S PREDILECTION FOR VIOLENCE for providing a useful DEUS EX MACHINA. Keep circulating the TAPES.

STINGER

BRADY HOKE

Oh no, I'm not tired. But my fingers are.

Seal Block Week 13: As bad as the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving halftime show

2011-11-21T07:21:00.000-05:00

If you haven't already done so, be sure to vote for The Top 25 university seals! We will announce the results a week from Wednesday. In the meantime, we take you on a grand tour of the dregs of academia as we celebrate the Worst Seals in the World!!

Imagine, if you will, a universe in which the Stanford Tree goes off and establishes its own college. You don't have to imagine very hard, because the resulting college would be roughly the same as Evergreen State College, the winner for worst overall seal. Its motto is omnia extares, or "let it all hang out." I believe the concept behind this seal is that the drawing is supposed to represent a childlike sense of discovery and wonder. However, it more accurately represents a childlike inability to draw and/or use an Etch-A-Sketch. I think the student body at ESC is quite content with their seal, but they could do much better by commissioning their most famous alumnus, Matt Groening, to draw a new one. If they want a drawing done without lifting the pen, they could go with this one.

Despite being (deliberately) poorly executed, there is an OK concept behind Evergreen State's drawing. Some schools just started out with a bad idea, and they are the winners of the Worst Concept award. In third place is Bethune-Cookman University, who took the New Mexico State triangle concept and ran with it. The three dates honor the founding of Bethune (1904), Cookman (1872), and their merger (1923), and the three words indicate that you'll get three-quarters of the education you'd get at a 4-H club. In second place is Central Florida for its previously-discussed Nyan-Horse design. But the winner in this category is Governors State University of Illinois for its circle and triangle, which may be intended as a top view of the Space Needle. I think that the governors of Illinois were too busy selling Senate seats and government contracts to worry about graphic design.

An early front runner for worst concept was Oakland University for what appears to be a blank piece of paper. However, upon further research, we discovered that the piece of paper is actually intended to be Ulysses's sail from The Odyssey, which is actually a pretty good concept. So Oakland wins the special prize for worst execution to concept ratio.

Our first reader nomination came from Joe, who nominated the University of Somalia in the category of Worst Font for having "not a terrible font, but a terrible font for a university seal." Unfortunately the university was shut down in the mid-1990s chaos so I wasn't able to confirm if this was a legitimate official seal. However, it was still good enough for second place behind Colorado's wacky bubble font. In third place we have Macalester College as a representative of the modern trend of using a sans-serif font when a serif font would be much better. When you have a classical scene with a woman, you can cover her breasts with a shirt or justify the scene as "classical" with serifs in your font. Sans-serif just makes it look naughty.

While Macalester's topless woman is an unusual symbol, it's not completely out of place in a Minnesota college's seal. In the category of Most Incongruous Symbol, we consider symbols that truly are completely out of place. In third place is the College of St. Elizabeth of Louisiana New Jersey, whose seal features a pelican in her piety. While this is an ancient heraldic symbol, in the US it has been co-opted and become a symbol of Louisiana. Still, it's not as out of place as the waves at the base of Bucknell's seal, a very odd choice for a university in the West Branch Susquehanna Valley. First place goes to the University of Findlay, which has taken Ohio's obsession with including mountains to the extreme. The Great Seal of Ohio contains a view of Mount Logan near Chillicothe (Thanks to reader M Fanfare for researching that), but Findlay has somehow expanded that into a raging river flowing through the cordillera of northwest Ohio.

"Bucnellensis" is a ridiculous sounding Latinization of a word and would be a winner in the Worst Use Of An Ancient Language category if we weren't trying to avoid repeat winners. Reader Mark nominated Harvard for its division of one word across three books. This is a common feature of university seals, but that doesn't make it any less silly. In second place is Middlebury College of Vermont, which included so many Latin abbreviations that it's almost impossible to know what college it represents. The winner in this category is Tufts University, whose Latinized form "Tuftensis" is even sillier than "Bucnellensis." A special mention goes to the now-closed Northwestern College of Watertown, Wisconsin, for coining the ridiculous word "Watertowniensis." Would it have been so hard to translate "Watertown" and get "Aquipolitanum"?

Among FBS schools, boredom was epitomized by BYU, whose seal is just its acronym. Third place Cal Poly Pomona manages to combine boring and confusing with a strange black-and-white depiction of its ceremonial mace. We considered several schools with boring colonnades on their seals for second place, including Mississippi and Central Washington, but ultimately awarded the place to the College of Charleston, where they've had 241 years to come up with something better and failed. They couldn't even win Most Boring, as relative newcomer CSU-Dominguez Hills, best known as home to the L.A. Galaxy, takes the category. They did something with semicircles and left it at that. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be.

Reader Mark also nominated Roxbury Community College of Massachusetts for the unlikely combo of Most Boring and Creepiest. He writes, "The adult is looming over the younger person (child? malnourished teen?), showing no regard for personal space, and doing God knows what under whatever putative table that book is sitting on. The lack of content in the book is similarly worrisome, either as the smaller person is focusing on its blank pages to push back the pain or looking at something so filthy that it can't be reproduced." After such a description I could never consider this seal to be boring, but it runs away with this category thanks to its incredible creepiness per gallon of ink ratio. The terrifying unblinking eyes of Wisconsin and Colorado State take second and third, as their creepiness required careful attention to detail.

While Roxbury packs a ton of creepiness into just a few lines, some other schools went way in the opposite direction and produced the Most Needlessly Busy seals. In third place is Nebraska, who compartmentalized everything that UNL has to offer into seven sectors, which is about three too many. In second place is Florida, who converted the state's Great Seal into a two-color monstrosity featuring a densely filled-in blue foreground on a lightly filled-in blue background. However, the winner in this category is Dartmouth, whose seal is so complex that they have a simplified version that is still ridiculously busy. A voice yelling from heaven, a mysterious triangle with Hebrew writing in the sky, flowers and a stream in the foreground. No detail was spared, and many details should have been.

Busy seals have the redeeming quality of being somewhat timeless, a quality not found in the Most Outdated seals. In third place is Kent State, where they have good reason for pretending it's still 1969. Purdue, on the other hand, was neither founded in the 1960s and has accomplished much since then, so there's no reason for them to remain frozen in time. Winner Pitzer College in California was founded in 1963 but its motto of "Mindful of the Future" contradicts its seal, which is very clearly stuck in either the past or underneath the Party Tree of Hobbiton.

No school deliberately tries to have a funny seal, but there are several outstanding nominees for Most Unintentionally Hilarious seal. Oregon State takes third place because their seal predates the reason that it's funny and it's not really their fault that the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium came along and ruined everything for them. In second place is NYU, where they chose to depict the aspect of Greco-Roman tradition most hilarious to modern sensibilities, the nude racing. Without the laurel, this is either the Naked Mile or the Undie Run without the undies. Even though it provokes juvenile giggling, the leaders of NYU have made a conscious decision to ignore the callow humor. On the other hand, the first place winner in this category, Union College of Nebraska, probably has no idea what's so funny about its seal.

To conclude we honor seals that didn't really fit into any other category and are thus honored as being the Wackiest seals. Calvin College seems to be commemorating Mola Ram in The Temple of Doom by serving up a heart on a hand. They also forgot to include their's school's name. Union College of New York went with Minerva pushing her helm above her head, but the helm doesn't seem to have any eyeholes, making it the winner for Worst Hat. Carleton College's seal depicts a flying Bible illuminating works of classical knowledge, or maybe the Bible is in the process of attempting a table stunt on Greek tradition. Either way, flying Bibles are wacky!

Next week we reveal the Top 25 seals. Be sure to vote if you haven't already!

A Sermon on Thanksgiving

2011-11-20T22:46:00.001-05:00

Oh, Hi Denard!

Though problems persist, turmoil has vanished.

Though the memories linger, the wounds have healed.

Though the clouds hover, the storm has passed.

Joy has returned.

I missed you. I missed you more than I realized. I missed this feeling. I cannot even remember the last time I had it. Complete, unadultered joy. No questions, no fear, no complaints, just joy. I wanted to say the 2007 Notre Dame game, but that was actually coming off of the heels of arguably the darkest darkness, so instead I'll drop back to 2006 when Michigan destroyed a #2 Notre Dame team in South Bend 47-21. The difference today is we know better. In 2005, we thought 7-5 was "the year of infinite pain" (and even that year had…"Henne…Fires to the end zone…TOUCHDOWN Manningham, Michigan wins!") It's different and it's better. We've been down in the hole, and now, here we are, all of the sudden, looking at the possibility that this team could be headed to a BCS bowl. Just one more obstacle remains. The most important of all obstacles. The Game.

And since I proved last week I am not above using the hoariest of cliches, allow me to now list what I am thankful for with regard to Michigan football:

Greg Mattison and his understanding of blitz schemes.
Brady Hoke and his understanding of the rivalries and his willingness to go for the throat.
Al Borges and his realization that he had Denard Robinson at quarterback.
Denard Robinson for being so easy to appreciate as both an athlete and as a person.
Fitz Toussaint for the way he's making the second and third cut.
Tay Odoms for sticking with it, even when reason and logic would have forgiven him otherwise.
Rich Rodriguez for the athletes he brought to Ann Arbor during his three seasons here.
Jordan Kovacs for doing the things that a former walk-on can do with commitment and effort.
David Brandon for creating the future*
The Michigan Marching Band for the weeks when they are not doing fanservice to the student section.
DTE Energy for making lemonade out of lemons.
The student section for getting there mostly on time and for being an auditory play clock for the team when they were heading southbound in the first quarter.
Nebraska fans for being classy and passionate without being jerks.
Jon Falk for being Jon Falk
The Michigan Daily sports reporters for killing it. Every. Single. Week.
The awesome people in my well curated MGoTweet feed.
Brian Cook for saying better what most of us are thinking.
Geoff for, five years ago, giving me a place to say all of this that was on my mind, and for having a killer tailgate.
Jeremy, for doing awesomely underrated stuff on here.
David, for being the rookie of the year for his awesome contributions here.

So go, eat some turkey, enjoy some great games on Thursday and Friday, and then remember that Saturday, at noon, in front of the largest crowd watching a football game anywhere in America that day, only two words matter. Two words only.

Beat Ohio.

*-No, I'm really not thankful for everything that has been done to create the future. I just worry if I don't say it, it looks like I am ungrateful for those future creations which I do enjoy.

Dear Bo

2011-11-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

November 17, 2011

Dear Bo,

You have no idea who I am and you probably wouldn't care much beyond the fact that I am a Michigan alum and football fan. You'd probably throw me a cocked eyebrow and a headshake when you heard that I am a blogger, because I'm one of those damn media types, and what's worse, I'm pretending to be a media type. But then you'd probably laugh and move on to whatever it was you were planning to do next. This is my best guess based on what I have been told about you and from what I have read. But I hope you understand that in writing this letter to you, or perhaps moreover, to your spirit, I'm trying to make sense of a world that's changed so much in the five years since you left.

There are those who claimed that your passing was a curse, that your death the day before the #1 Ohio State/#2 Michigan "Game of the Century" was operatic in nature, but ultimately a harbinger. That your passing took the last bit out of Lloyd's will to give it his all, that it cost us a win in the Rose Bowl, and then that led to the Appalachian State disaster and the Oregon nightmare. But that's too simple, too easy. Curses are the name we give to a series of unfortunate events that can easily be better explained by logic and investigation and ultimately faulting ourselves. Since we do not want to do that, we're cursed. It absolves us of any guilt. And yet, I cannot help to believe that maybe there is something here. Not the curse, but the loss of the anchor. It is said when Pericles died during the Peloponnesian War, a certain way of thinking died and it ultimately cost the Athenians their golden age. While you had been retired for more than a quarter century before your passing, you were still the pater familias because you had never really gone away. You'd left the family business in the capable hands of the second son, not the one you envisioned, but one who was working hard to uphold the good name of the business. And then all hell broke loose.

I'm not going to rehash the last five years for you, because they're a mess and because Bacon did a great job covering it, as I am sure you would have suspected. (He keeps doing an impression of you around these parts, and it's pretty spot on. I'm assuming you haven't seen it because you don't get Big Ten Network where you are. I presume this is because Mark Silverman is only so good.) But the reality is, we're in a new place now, kind of like where you were when you got here in 1968, except the landscape is even more high pressure, even more potentially toxic, even more self-immalatory. In the past year alone, two "successful" Big Ten coaches saw their tenures end, both because they essentially didn't tell someone something they were bound, either by rules or by law, to tell. It's a different world than the one you left Bo, Twitter alone would make you throw a headset. This weekend, instead of playing Ohio State the weekend before Thanksgiving, Michigan now plays Nebraska in a Big Ten Legends Division game trying to keep pace with Michigan State, because the season now stretches to Thanksgiving weekend, Nebraska's now in the Big Ten, there are two insanely named divisions, and there's going to be a Big Ten championship game, and the Spartans may be playing in it. I'm comfortable in saying I'm pretty sure you would not approve of any of those things.

All of that said, the world, both inside college football and beyond, still has a lot of you in it. Start in Baton Rouge, where one of your former players is running the #1 team in the country and doing it pretty much as a slightly crazier version of you. Or look at the work that Dr. Billy Taylor is still doing with his expanded Get Back Up Foundation, helping to treat addicts and put them on the road to recovery. Look in the locker room, where Jon Falk's still there, still doing his thing better than anyone (and telling us some great stories about you.) Or look up at U of M Hospital, where your Heart of a Champion Resarch Fund is rolling along. Or simply upon State Street, whereanother of your former players is running the Michigan Athletic Department, following in the grand tradition on Canham's marketing prowess with a low-key but ever present ferocity and a number of 21^st century twists. These are just a few of the most prominent examples of your former players doing great things, but that wouldn't surprise you. It's what Michigan men do.

There's not a statue of you at Michigan Stadium Bo, but you know that's not how Michigan does things. But in borrowing the words which inspired Michigan's state motto, "If you seek his monument, look around," you don't need a statue. Your monument is in the phrases "Those Who Stay Will Be Champions." and "The Team. The Team. The Team." and, unfortunate as it might be, "A Michigan man will coach Michigan." Your monument is the fact that the Big Ten Coach of the Year trophy is named for both Woody and yourself. Your monument is our program, as you would remind us, a link in the chain from Yost to Kipke to Crisler to Oosterbaan to Bump to you down to Mo and Lloyd and yes, even RichRod, and now Brady. Your monument is in our memories of you, five years gone, but not forgotten.

We've been warned in the past week about the dangers of any one coach having too much power; we can see the stark reminders of investing too much in a football coach as anything more than a football coach. So maybe you left at the right moment, maybe the plan is not ours to question, because maybe you just weren't made for these times. But that doesn't mean we can't miss you.

My thanks to you,

Craig Barker

P.S., someone else you knew paid you a pretty exceptional compliment about always doing the right thing.

Seal Block: Vote for the Worst! Vote for the Best!

2011-11-14T17:09:00.000-05:00

So we are all finished ranking the official seals of the school in the so-called Football Bowl Subdivision. You can browse the whole series of posts here.

To finish off the series, we want input as to the best and worst university seals there are. For the best, the Top 32 are available in one image: (click to enlarge)

We're going to whittle that down to a Top 25, so post your Top 25 vote in the comments, or tweet it to me @schnoxl.

But before doing the best, we're going to vote for the worst. For the worst, you can nominate any post-secondary institution you want from anywhere in the world. The categories you can nominate schools in are:

Worst Concept
Worst Font
Most Outdated Design
Most Needlessly Busy
Most Boring
Creepiest
Worst Use of an Ancient Language
Most Incongruous Symbol
Most Unintentionally Hilarious

I will evaluate your nominations based on the strength of your case, so if you really feel a school deserves to win a particular category, write up your case and make it funny.

The worst overall seal will not be a contested category, as we already know which college will be the clear winner in that category, and that college are clearly happy with that outcome.

We'll reveal the worsts next week and the bests the week after that, so submit your nominations asap!

Seal Block Week 12: The Independents and FCS cheer them on to their rivals

2011-11-14T16:52:00.001-05:00

To finish off Seal Block's regular season, we consider the FBS Independents. Because there are only four and we know you need quantity as well as quality in order to best kill time, we're also including the six FCS schools that "won their way" into Seal Block by defeating FBS schools this year. Congratulations, FCS schools! The symbols of your identity can now be made the subject of fun.

10. BYU

What it's trying to say: A commonly used short form for "Brigham Young University" is "BYU."

What it's actually saying: Please don't think too much about the life and times and wives of our school's namesake.

At least at New Mexico State, someone had to have had a tiny glimmer of inspiration to say, "I know! Triangles!" BYU couldn't even reach that level of creative process.

9. Richmond (def. Duke 23-21)

What it's trying to say: May the Eye of Providence watch over our search for knowledge.

What it's actually saying: Why are they setting an eye on fire?

Once you start going freaky with the imagery, bringing in clouds and disembodied eyes, you have to go all in with the freakiness. You can't wuss out and put a book and a flame in the bottom half of the seal. Richmond is a noted center for advertising companies (VCU's advertising graduate school is considered among the best in the nation) so you'd think some Don Draper type would have pitched them a better seal.

8. Indiana State (def. Western Kentucky 44-16)

What it's trying to say: We read books by candle light.

What it's actually saying: There are TWO LIGHTS!

I didn't dock Indiana State for having a book with no writing in it. I think it's clear from the direction of the lines that there's a second light source above the candle that is so bright that it's making the writing invisible. Craig thinks ISU should use this as the image on their seal instead, and I can't say he's wrong.

7. Sacramento State (def. Oregon State 29-28)

What it's trying to say: Our seal design committee did a great job!

What it's actually saying: If you're really careful, you can fit the initials "SS" into your seal without making people think of Nazis.

Sacramento State used to use a version of the Great Seal of California and that was awesome. Then someone said, "We need a seal unique to Sacramento. I know! I'll form a committee!" And thus a committee was born, and in turn it soon gave birth to a bland and uninspiring seal.

6. North Dakota State (def. Minnesota 37-24)

What it's trying to say: Corn! And other stuff too. But mostly corn.

What it's actually saying: Did we mention the corn?

It's the T.G.I. McAppleChili's of seals: just a bunch of crap thrown on the wall, and most of its ingredients are made of corn.

5. Sam Houston State (def. New Mexico 48-45)

What it's trying to say: It's Sam Houston!

What it's actually saying: That's Sam Houston all right.

Unlike BYU, Texans are not unwilling to put the founder of their religion on a school's seal. The official religion of Texans is, of course, Texas.

4. Notre Dame

What it's trying to say: Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and in the hour of our exams.

What it's actually saying: Is the pope Catholic?

The six-pointed star in the upper left of the shield is the Star of Mary, not the Star of David, which is how you know we're dealing with Catholics and not Jews for Jesus. The full name of Notre Dame is "Notre Dame du Lac," hence the waves at the base of the shield. Everything about this screams popery, which is as it should be.

3. Southern Utah (def. UNLV 41-16)

What it's trying to say: Even in Southern Utah, we are aware of the existence of heraldry.

What it's actually saying: It's Arkham University! Meet the dean, Harley Quinn.

When I did a GIS for Southern Utah's seal and got the above result, it was the biggest positive surprise I received in searching for school seals. I did not expect it to be that awesome. A nice shield and helm, a rising phoenix, blue and white mantling all over the place - it really disguises the fact that "Learning Lives Forever" is a pretty lame motto.

1T. Navy

What it's trying to say: Sea superiority through science!

What it's actually saying: Try as you might, you are unable to avoid making a Village People reference.

1T. Army

What it's trying to say: We impart the warrior wisdom of Pallas Athena.

What it's actually saying: Oh crap, Sparty's taken over West Point. This blog's going to Gitmo.

I may be a furrener, but there's one thing I know about the U.S. of A.: never break a tie between the Army and the Navy. Access to military heraldry give the two elder service academies a ludicrous advantage in coming up with great designs.

Navy first. The Naval Academy seal (not to be confused with a Navy SEAL) was created by Park Benjamin Jr. when he heard that the University Club of New York was opening a new building that was to be decorated with the seals of many institutions of higher learning. As the USNA did not have a seal at the time, he made one and did a good job, fitting in the classical Greek trireme, trident, and hand of Poseidon. He did not do as good a job dealing with the fact that his daughter eloped with Enrico Caruso, which you can learn more about by reading the fascinating Wikipedia article linked above.

Now Army. The rising eagle with the 13 arrows in its talons is an official American heraldry staple, and even this Canadian has to admit it is fucking awesome. The helm of Pallas Athena is good because it means wisdom, whereas a nearly identical Spartan helm would be bad because it would just symbolize war. (Yes, I'm picking on you, Sparty.) The 3D styling of the seal is excellent and it makes the shield look like a delicious cake, which is always a plus.

Conference rankings after Week 11:

Four awesome seals put the Independents on top. Next week: the worsts. The week after that: the bests. There will be voting.

F. Scott Louverture

2011-11-13T15:16:00.001-05:00

Photo by Melanie Maxwell/Ann Arbor.com

"There are no second acts in American lives."

Over the last few years, we've been told, by anyone who holds an opinion on the matter, what Michigan football is and how it should look and feel. I've always viewed that notion as a mirror which reflects one's view of what one wants football to look and feel like. As I've said before, I have weaknesses for running backs that blend power, speed, and the ability to make the key cuts and fundamentally sound safety play. Jordan Kovacs has done a great job this season with the latter, but since Mike Hart left Michigan, the former has been solely missing. (No offense Brandon Minor, I liked you a great deal as a back, but durability issues man, durability issues.) So when Fitzgerald Toussaint emerged as the lead running back for Michigan after what seemed to be an interminable search, I wondered if he would be "enough" or could he become something more, something greater.

"Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle."

I think we can all agree that yesterday's game was a classic example of "left wanting". Though Michigan had a two score lead, on the road, against a team that considers Michigan its arch-rival*, it still felt like all of the missed red zone opportunities were going to come back to haunt Michigan, because we're taught that when you don't put the boot on the throat, it will cost you. Except, it didn't. Michigan's defense looked like "Michigan defense" again, they made stops, they pressured the quarterback, and while they made some mistakes (4th and 26?!?), they did enough that Michigan's counter punches on offenses were enough to bring home the eighth win of the season, one better than last year, ensuring a .500 record in the Big Ten (which shouldn't be a big deal, but come on...), and ensuring a .500 road record for the year (yeah, four games is not the best sample size on that.) Michigan may not be Michigan again, but an eight win season, with a solid chance to win either of the last two games, if not both, well, isn't that what we were clamoring for? Isn't that what we so direly wanted? I've said it before, but it's true, the last four years changed us as fans. For the first time in a very long time, certainly in the modern modern era, we know what the depths of despair look like in college football, so we appreciate not mediocrity, but the realization that true ecstasy in the college football sense requires perfection, and perfection is so rare that it cannot and must not become commonplace.

(*-Seriously, the Illinois people have an unhealthy obsession with Michigan. It's kind of a compliment when you think about it. It's also hilarious.)

"Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck."

Am I wrong here, or did like every replay review go against Michigan yesterday? I realize that replay reviews are supposed to get things right, but man, every single break went against Michigan yesterday and Michigan still won. Sometimes you don't need luck.

"You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say."

If I've been quiet on the last week's major story, it's because I simply do not know what to say that either hasn't already been said, or that would make much sense. Besides, Spencer Hall and Joe Posnanski handled this (along with hundreds of other writers far superior than I am) and when you feel like every thing has been said, at some point you just realize you have nothing to add. But I realized I did have one comment eventually that I wanted to make. It has been so easy to show this last week as the final straw of a rotten system, that college football is irredeemably broken and that we should be ashamed to love it, feeding the rotten system. Perhaps those people are right. But the longview says something different. The longview says that college football has always been screwed up. College football has always meant too much to too many people, it has always been a target for critics for any number of reasons. The violence, the money, the institutional racism, the money, the overemphasis of athletics over academics, the money, the lowering of admissions standards in the name of winning percentage, the money. The criticisms are out there, and they are fair. If you wanted to walk away, no one would blame you. Our greatest danger is in making college football more than something than it is, fulfilling narratives established by ourselves, or by the media, to short hand our way through life in a metaphor. If we understand what it means and do our best to not assign it value beyond that, its power to shock us when it fails to live up to any higher standard is diminished.

So, in the final end, bring on Nebraska, learn from the past, and make a better tomorrow.

Unreality

2011-11-08T14:34:00.007-05:00

I'm sorry, but this is almost certainly going to be a total mess. In all cases, assume "alleged" is inserted in front of anything that hasn't been proven in a court of law.

I've come to the conclusion that the worst part of college football is when it bumps up against reality. The world is often a brutal and horrible place. Football is supposed to be an escape for all of us, something that we can care about that doesn't really matter. And when that wall comes down, it's almost always uglier than the facade. It seems like it's usually an extra benefits case, which is disappointing enough, but this? The sexual abuse of minors? It's simply appalling.

I loathe what is alleged to have happened at Penn State. It's nightmarish in its scope, and at least half a dozen people could have stopped it, including the revered leader/spiritual godfather of one of the premiere programs in college football. How does this not make it to the real cops? How can anyone sit with this for nine years? Sexual predators exist, and that's sickening enough, but how can anyone let this guy operate after what Mike McQueary witnessed?

I guess the (admittedly trite) answer is that people are often terrible, and even good people make horrible choices. It sounds stupid and obvious, but it's a hard thing to accept. Anyone who knows someone who works as a homicide cop or a medical examiner knows for sure that this is true. They've probably seen a baby who was shaken to death by his parents, overdoses, drunks, crack murders*, a teen who didn't know the gun was loaded, and a woman who killed herself by driving off a freeway overpass with her dog in the car. All too often people are horrible or weak, and people in sports aren't exempt from that, no matter how respected they are.

Penn State should clean house, from the president on down. Anyone who knew about this and didn't go to the police should be gone. Maybe it'll crater the program, but so what? It couldn't protect ten-year-olds from a DC who'd been retired for four years, possibly as a result of NEARLY IDENTICAL allegations. Who cares whether it can protect its red zone from Nebraska?

*Pro tip: If you're dealing crack, don't let your penniless addict client live with you. And if you do, definitely don't leave a hatchet lying around.

Seal Block Week 11: The Sun Belt torches secondaries

2011-11-07T19:44:00.000-05:00

Considering that this conference is called the "Sun Belt," they have a strange obsession with artificial light in their seal designs. Torches. Lots and lots of torches, as though there were no sun in their belt at all. Hopefully the Big East has pitchforks, so the SUNBEAST will be able to fight off all sorts of villains.

9. Middle Tennessee State

What it's trying to say: Food can be exchanged for goods and services.

What it's actually saying: Tennessee has more detail than can be adequately shown in a one-color seal.

MTSU's seal is a simplified version of the state seal, with the word "Murfreesboro" added, for obvious reasons. Tennessee's state seal is in full color and doesn't look too bad. MTSU uses one color and it looks terrible. But MTSU's real identity crisis can be found deep in its identity guidelines:

You know how you know when a school has a branding problem? When their official style guide tells you not to use their logo without the wordmark, because people will probably not know what the logo stands for.

8. Louisiana-Monroe

What it's trying to say: Hey, look! We didn't use any pelicans!

What it's actually saying: Maybe we should have used some pelicans.

ULM makes a book the principal element of its seal and doesn't put writing in it, always a bad sign. Perhaps they could have used the pelican in a different attitude, maybe teaching her chicks how to read from the book.

7. Arkansas State

What it's trying to say: The light of learning opens doors.

What it's actually saying: We're gonna burn the arch off this mutha-fucka.

Rule #1 of using torches in graphic design: do not place the torch so that it looks like it's setting something on fire that it shouldn't be. Arkansas State's arson is a minor error compared to Liberty University's. Of course, at Jerry Falwell's school, book-burning may be a feature, not a bug.

6. Troy

What it's trying to say: Holy macaroni! Our torch is in the THIRD DIMENSION!

What it's actually saying: Heinrich Schliemann? Who's that?

Rant time. You are Troy University. You share your name with the setting of the oldest work of literature in the European canon. You could have used any symbol from The Iliad on your seal and it would have been appropriate. Ships sailing on a wine-dark sea. Boar-tusk helmets. Achilles sitting around pouting in his tent. Patroclus kicking ass on a chariot. Hector's burial rites (spoilers!). Not to mention all the non-Homeric sources delving into the stories of Aeneas, Cassandra, the House of Atreus, and so forth. You have a huge vein of ancient symbolism and imagery to mine for your seal, and what do you go with? A fucking torch.

5. North Texas

What it's trying to say: We're in Texas!

What it's actually saying: If we remove the capital T, no one will notice our seal is almost identical to A&M's!

Most of the less prominent Texas schools that use the Lone Star in their seal manage to fit in some other symbol that describes the part of the state they're in, like Texas Tech's cotton bolls or UTEP's Rio Grande. UNT's leaders couldn't think of anything to say about Denton.

That's unfair. The old Denton County Courthouse is on the NRHP and would like nice on a seal. However, the perfect seal for UNT would feature two scholars - one young, one old. The young one would be giving a lamp of learning to the older one, representing youthful energy and enthusiasm. The older one would, in return, give the younger one a book or a scroll, symbolizing the knowledge that years of experience have given him. Yeah, it's the Mean Joe Greene Coke commercial transformed into academic symbols, but don't tell me it couldn't work!

4. Western Kentucky

What it's trying to say: We've got a cupola!

What it's actually saying: Our first experiment at creating "Life" and "More Life" went horribly awry and escaped. It was codenamed "Big Red."

"The Spirit Makes the Master" sounds like the name of a Peter Davison Doctor Who episode. Speaking of which, when will Nu Who bring Georgia Moffatt back? She was as cool as a fez and a bowtie combined.

3. Florida Atlantic

What it's trying to say: I can see a new horizon underneath the blazing sky./I'll be where the eagle's flying, higher and hii-iigher.

What it's actually saying: You really don't want to enroll in our Semester At Sea program.

¡Queme los barcos!

2. Florida International

What it's trying to say: You know we're international because we've got a globe.

What it's actually saying: "Who's playing that music?" "And where's all that liquor coming from?" "It's a party, Marge. Doesn't have to make sense."

You know that episode of The Simpsons where the Yale admissions officers tell Mr. Burns, "You know, Yale could use an international airport?" Well, FIU was actually built on the original site of Tamiami Airport, and its oldest building is the abandoned control tower, now called "University Tower." No wonder Yale is jealous. This factoid has nothing to do with the seal, which is perfectly cromulent but embiggens my feelings of boredom.

1. Louisiana-Lafayette

What it's trying to say: We're in the heart of Cajun country!

What it's actually saying: We're in the heart of this commemorative plate!

Has your university's seal inspired the flag of an entire region? No? Then it's not as cool as UL-Lafayette's, which inspired the official flag of Acadiana, which in turn inspired a short Wikipedia article explaining all the symbols on the seal, which in turn inspired me to not contribute anything original here.

Conference rankings after Week 11:

The Sun Belt is meh, but slightly prettier meh than the MWC. Next week: The independents and FCS.

COUNTERPOINT: The Urban Meyer Rule Must Go

2011-11-06T06:49:00.008-05:00

So it turns out they're equally "good."

As much as it pains me to disagree with this blog's senior proprietor, I must argue in favor of abolishing the Urban Meyer Rule and setting up an LSU-Alabama rematch in the BCS championship game. Were it not for the modern barbarism of overtime, last night's match would have ended in a 6-6 tie. Truly a score that even the Big Ten greats of old would appreciate! And then both teams would be undefeated, which, as an SEC fan would tell you, is how it should be.

Now some will say that Alabama had their chance to topple LSU and that they failed, so why should they deserve another? While I am sympathetic to that argument, there is a counterargument in favor of a rematch I find more compelling.

We all know that LSU and Alabama are dirty fucking cheaters that sign way too many recruits and then use dubious methods such as grayshirting or claiming medical hardship to keep their team roster at the scholarship limit. I say we let them go off and have their precious "BCS Championship" and, if there is a consensus #3 vs. #4 matchup in one of the other BCS bowls, we argue forcefully in favor of that being the true national championship for teams that don't fuck over 17- and 18-year-old kids.

The most likely way for this scenario to go down is for Stanford to lose once down the stretch, Oklahoma State to lose to Oklahoma, and Boise State to remain undefeated. We could then end up with #3 Boise vs. #4 Oklahoma at the Fiesta Bowl. Ironically, the dirty fucking cheater of bowl games would benefit most from this scenario, but this is big-time NCAA sports. At least one cheater has to prosper.

So I say rematch! But I also say, who cares who wins? The true national champion will have been decided a week earlier.

The Curse of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

2011-11-04T20:16:00.005-04:00

This is the ad that the University of Wisconsin has been running during its football games.

On October 7, this ad became incorrect when Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Wisconsin alumna and President of Liberia, was awarded a share of the Nobel Peace Prize.

On October 7, Wisconsin was ranked #4 in the country with a 5-0 record. Since that date, they have gone 1-2 and given up a touchdown play of at least 40 yards in each of those three games, even to Indiana. They have fallen from national championship hopeful to third place in the Big Ten Southeast Division.

If I were a university running an ad boasting about how many Nobel Prize winners were associated with the school, not only would I hastily update the ad if an alumna received a Nobel Prize, I would make a big show of hastily updating the ad.

I believe that Wisconsin is doomed to disappointing results until they fix their ad. Sirleaf's other FBS alma mater, the University of Colorado, is 0-4 since she was awarded the prize. I do not think any curse is involved there. I think they are just bad at football.

UPDATE (11/5/11, 7:40 PM): Wisconsin defeats Purdue handily, but gives up a 30-yard TD pass. Perhaps the curse's power is diminishing slightly? Also, Colorado loses again.

The Urban Meyer Rule

2011-11-02T07:51:00.000-04:00

I'm officially getting out ahead of this.

I would just like to remind America that no matter who loses the LSU-Alabama game this weekend, the loser is AUTOMATICALLY disqualified from consideration for the BCS National Championship game under the Urban Meyer Rule.

The Urban Meyer Rule came about in 2006 when Florida's then-coach Urban Meyer successfully campaigned for his Florida Gators to get into the BCS National Championship game by arguing that Michigan had already had their shot at Ohio State and thus should not get a second chance. Nothing changes in 2011. Not the fact that the loser of that game will come from the SEC. Not the fact that the result could be closer than three points. Not the fact that the game was played earlier in November than the final week. Not the fact that it may be the home team that was the #2 instead of the #1 team. Nothing changes. If Michigan doesn't get a rematch, neither of these teams do. It's black letter law.

Mr. Meyer set his precedent, the SEC must be held to the same standard by the BCS and the poll's voters that Michigan was held to in 2006. Otherwise, the BCS is just a trave...oh, right.