Introducing... the Drevnometer

The first few days after Jim Harbaugh was hired were heady days for fans of pun-based offensive coordinator rating systems. First we got to retire the Nussmeter - which, let's face it - was a bit of a stretch and, honestly, too painful to update on a regular basis by the end of last season. The less said of it, the better.

Second, rumors swirled that Harbaugh was going to bring 49ers offensive coordinator Greg Roman with him. While bringing an NFL coordinator to the college game is usually a recipe for disaster, in this case, it was a recipe for an endless smorgasbord of puns! Popes! Sins! Emperors! Orators! Numerals! It was such an embarrassment of potential riches that we had already worked out three possible ratings based on the speculation alone. To top it all off, Greg Roman totally looks like Craig:

As soon as we got our hopes up, those hopes were brutally dashed when Harbaugh hired Tim Drevno as OC. It's like he doesn't even consider the punnability of his assistants' names when making hiring decisions! But we here at HSR have been making horrible puns for so long that when we started, Adam Jacobi was still calling puns the lowest form of humor.

So, undeterred, we looks for ways to make puns on the name Drevno. It's an anagram of "vendor." There's a Gene Drevno school in Torrance, California. And, uh, that's about it. Not much to work with. A search of articles about his time at Stanford indicated that his offensive line earned the nickname "Tunnel Workers' Union". That had a little promise. Whatever the hell's going on under Seattle's the bottom of the scale, Detroit-Windsor's somewhere in the middle. But can you name 10 famous tunnels off the top of your head? Neither could we.

Desperate for ideas, we went to Google Translate, typed "drevno" into the box, and clicked "Detect language." There was a hit - Croatian! - where apparently "drevno" means "ancient." There are lots of ancient things! Ancient Ones! We can work with this. There are dozens to choose from.

The problem is that it's hard to fit a good ranking system. Is Cthulhu worthy of a higher ranking than Sheb-Niggurath? Where does Azathoth fit into all this?  There are two many choices and, frankly, Dave Brandon's fired now, so it's time to leave unspeakable terrors in the past.

A solution was finally found on the Civ Fanatics message board. They had a poll rating the ancient wonders, which provided a convenient full ordering of ancient history. Science demonstrated that the Hanging Gardens and +6 food is the best, and the Statue of Zeus and a 15% city attacking bonus is the worst.

We therefore introduce, with much fanfare and rambling, the Drevnometer! May it last more than two seasons.

The Drevnometer kicks of the 2015-16 season at 2 because when you have two quarterbacks, you get a two. The Great Lighthouse lets you see further, but it's no help on grass.

The Nussmeter exhibits poor time management

We updated the Nussmeter to 3 after the Rutgers game, but failed to make a post announcing it. After numerous delays, we have now updated the Nussmeter post-Penn State. It's at 2, which is the bland and impossible-to-open Brazil nut.



We can only hope that Michigan doesn't join Brazil in finding out what it's like to be outscored at a ratio of 7:1. But, look, a glimpse of days long past: Denard highlights!

The Nussmeter Continues To Be A Top Priority

Based solely on the performance of the players, the Nussmeter would have held steady at 1. But after a game where the Michigan offense actually became a national scandal instead of a mere local embarrassment, we have no choice but to introduce a new level:

Should it become necessary, the Nussmeter can and will start working its way through the negative transfinite ordinals. Unfortunately there is no largest transfinite number, as that would come in handy if a Harbaugh gets hired.

The Nussmeter is the Loneliest

Several times last year, Michigan's offensive performance reached such depths that I needed to hastily add new levels to the Borges-O-Meter to describe them. The Nussmeter addressed this design flaw by defining an absolute zero, the buckeye. Should the offense put in a performance where they directly yield, via turnovers and safeties, more points than they actually score, we can define negative numbers on the Nussmeter by adding one buckeye each time we go down one level. But for this week: the offense scored 3 points and was directly responsible for none of Utah's points. So they get a filbert.

Did you know that Filbert Fox is the mascot of Leicester City? Yet another team that outscored Michigan's offense this weekend.

The Nussmeter is Little in the Middle

A fairly nondescript performance by the offense and the Nussmeter moves back up to a bitter almond 4. But hey, Jake Butt's back! We can work with that!

I LIKE JAKE BUTT AND I CANNOT LIE
All you other brothers can't deny
That when Miami runs by with a bad coverage plan
And leave him open in the flat
He gets SPRUNG

<record skip, bad blog post shorthand indicating something zany just happened>

Wait. The offense may have been better than the previous week, what with them scoring points and all, but the 2014 Michigan offense is still a pale shadow of 1990s glory. So the only appropriate song about Jake Butt is 2014's pale shadow of "Baby Got Back":

Nussmeter: We check the charts and start to figure it out

Some things will never make sense: drinking a pot of coffee before going to bed, invading Russia in the winter, and willingly rescheduling Appalachian State. But some things do make sense! The very idea of combining nuts and gum and now, the Michigan offense!

@mgoblog that all made a lot of sense!
— Spencer Hall (@edsbs) August 30, 2014

@mgoblog ☆。★。☆。★ 。☆ 。☆。☆ ★。＼｜／。★ Doug Nussmeier ★。／｜＼。★ 。☆。。☆ ☆。 ★。 ☆ ★
— Aaron Geschiere (@AGeschiere) August 30, 2014

@mgoblog •☆*´¨`☽¸.★*´♡¸.★*´♡ ( ☆* Doug Nussmeier ´`★.¸¸¸. •°´♡¸.★*´♡¸.★*´♡
— max (@maxaiden) August 30, 2014

If the offense can surpass ten yards per play, we can kick the Nussmeter up to 11 too. Next week in the 2007 nostalgia tour: Oregon wins 39-7, Notre Dame loses 38-0.

Long live the Nussmeter!

Doug Nussmeier presents a quandary for fans of arbitrary meters ranking offensive coordinators. He is the most famous Nussmeier in the world. There has never been a Jorge Luis Nussmeier out there writing Nobel Prize-winning magic realism. He is no Todd Grantham, who allows Louisville's defense to be ranked according to Downton Abbey characters (I rank his hire a solid Ethel).

We therefore turn to etymology. Nussmeier comes from Low German and means, roughly, nut farmer. So, to replace the Borges-O-Meter, please welcome the Nussmeter. From this day, we shall rank Michigan's offensive performance by comparing it to the appropriate kind of nut. We refer to "nut" in the culinary sense: botanical drupes and nut-like seeds are part of the Nussmeter.

The Nussmeter has 12 levels, listed below:

0. Buckeye

The Nussmeter already has a big advantage over the Borges-O-Meter: there is clearly a nut we can call the absolute zero of nuts. The Nussmeter can never go negative. Thanks to Craig for finding the appropriately terrifying buckeye image over two years ago.

1. Filbert

According to Wikipedia, filberts are "are commonly used as 'filler' in mixed nut combinations." So that's pretty bad.

2. Brazil nut

Brazil nuts are a pain in the butt to crack and not worth the trouble of cracking. They're a good source of selenium, which makes them better than filberts.

3. Chestnut

For when the offense gets roasted on an open fire.

4. Almond

"Eating even a few dozen at one sitting can be fatal." The offense is all right but you wouldn't want large doses of it.

5. Red Pistachio Nut
6. All-Natural White Pistachio Nut

7. Walnut
8. Pecan

The walnut and pecan are the only nuts associated with bowl games. Diamond Walnut sponsored the San Francisco Bowl before it became the Fight Hunger Bowl we know and acknowledge. I was surprised to learn that the pecan is the only nut to ever have a bowl game itself named for it. The walnut and pecan thus symbolize bowl-capable offensive performance.

9. Cashew

The opposite of the filbert: the nut you pick out of the mixed nuts.

10. Macadamia

The most expensive of the nuts by weight. Can survive in Hardiness Zone 10. Would be at the top of the charts, if not for:

11. Nuts and Gum

Together at last! The Tlön of the nut world.

The Nussmeter starts out at Level 5, red pistachio nut. There are a lot of flaws that are being dyed over right now but, if they get straightened out, we could have something Wonderful.

Here is the Nussmeter in its GIFfy glory: