Help Fund Two New Giant Flags at Yost!

The Children of Yost, Michigan hockey's student section, is working on a project that is making me tingly with the potential for awesome.  With this said, we're copying their fundraising appeal from MGoBoard so you can help them out, if you are so inclined.

If you've been to Yost Ice Arena for a Michigan hockey game in the past two years, you're probably familiar with the student sections' giant Swedish and Texan flags.

Next season, we plan on adding two more giant flags to our arsenal, and we would greatly appreciate your support in our fundraising efforts.  

Because we are not, and never will be, a University-sponsored student group, we cannot seek funds through the Student Activities Fund. We are very grateful to the Eckert family, who handmade the Swedish flag and donated the Texas flag, but now we seek support from the entire Michigan family for these next two flags.  

Below (in the first comment) is a link to our Paypal account. Our fundraising goal is $600, which will cover both flags (one of which will be a custom design) and shipping. We had issues setting up on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, so we're just going to keep it simple with a Paypal account. We'll keep you posted on our progress via @ChildrenOfYost on the Twitters.  

Thank you, and Go Blue!

While the flags are a surprise, we have been assured at the awesome sauceness of said project.  We wouldn't post this if we did not approve, so if you're so inclined:

Update:  And thanks to your help (and that of Mr. Aaron Ward, the goal has been reached.  Well done!)

One Hurdle Left

• UM Hoops on Iowa.
• Maize n Brew with a couple of good pieces
• Varsity Blue with tempo-free analysis.

The first Michigan basketball game I ever attended was in the late '90's – '98, I think – and I don't remember all that much about it. It was a home game at Crisler and Louis Bullock was the face of the team. I think we were playing UCLA, for some reason, and Michigan won, but it was kind of a letdown. My love of college hoops had been fading for a while. It was a big deal when I was a second-grader allowed to stay up late so I could watch Michigan clinch its lone NCAA tournament crown back in 1989. I watched the Fab 5 slice and dice through the Big 10 all the way to the brink of two more championships. In 8th grade, when we were out of our house while it was being remodeled, I did my homework on my grandfather's screened-in porch while listening to the post-Webber crew on WJR.

But the game started to slip away from me. As so many others have said, the Robert Traylor Wolverines were an unloveable bunch. Little by little the extent of the Ed Martin scandal began to come out, and it became easy to drift away from basketball and over toward hockey. In my time as a student ('99-'04), I attended exactly zero regular-season basketball games. The Ellerbee teams were a joke, and the Amaker ones still had the cloud of post-season bans and scholarship reductions hanging over them. When they managed to get something right (Jamal Crawford), it wouldn't pan out.

I started paying more attention when Daniel Horton joined the team, following along with the Daily's coverage and watching on TV when I could. I was excited enough by the NIT berth that I attended the Missouri and Oklahoma home games, although I had to hit refresh on ESPN for the Hawaii score while I sat in the Media Union doing Controls homework. Even if it was only the race to be the 65th-best team in the country, the NIT championship win over Rutgers felt like Michigan basketball was finally back. Of course, we know how the Amaker era ended. We weren't back. It's only a trip to the NCAA tournament that can end this program's decade in the wilderness. It's a chance to put aside banners in storage and record-book asterisks. It's the chance to start a new era of Michigan basketball, founded on the backs of kids from Detroit and Flint and the cornfields of Indiana. But first we have Iowa.

Burn the ships.

Charity begins at EDSBS

This is a very simple call to arms:

1). Read this post from Every Day Should Be Saturday

2). See that Michigan is winning at the moment, but that Ohio State is hot on its heels.

3). Follow these five points:

I) Make a donation online to the American Red Cross, CARE, or the International Rescue Committee.

II) Email the donation confirmation to kevin@fanblogs.com and state your team affiliation by 8pm EDT on Wednesday, May 14th. BE SURE TO STATE WHETHER YOUR DONATION GOES FOR YOUR TEAM OR AGAINST ANOTHER. Either way it counts, but we want you to have some fun with it, too. (Author's Note: I'd rather we go pro-Michigan than anti-Ohio State, but it's your donation.)

III) Results will be displayed at Every Day Should Be Saturday and Fanblogs throughout the week, with the final results shown by Thursday, May 15th.

IV) The winning school will have its colors displayed at EDSBS and logo/mascot shown on every page at Fanblogs.

V). Mondo important reminder: ALL DONATIONS MUST BE IN TO FANBLOGS BY 8PM EDT (5PM PDT) TONIGHT.

4). Profit (mostly in the human spirit sense, but still, you know, profit.)

Let's do this thing gang!

Finding the Level

I'm going to do something very strange in the realm of a college coaching search. As a fan, I'm going to ask people collectively to calm down.

Now, I know, that immediately casts suspicion on me as a). an apologist, b). a Bill Martin lackey, or c). completely dispassionate with regard to Michigan football. I can assure you, I am none of those things. But the problem is this: We, the alumni, the fans, the media, and anyone else you care to throw into that "we", want a resolution to this search because we want to KNOW. We want to know who shall be the steward of Michigan's program for the next few seasons. We want to know whom our autumn Saturdays shall be entrusted to, and we want to know to whom the awesome responsibility of maintaining the winning seasons and bowl streaks shall fall. We want to know because not knowing is one of the single worst feelings that we, as human beings, can experience. Because not knowing is the worst combination of hope and fear. We pounce on every rumor, every morsel, every third hand bit of gossip, every crazy conspiracy theory, because it's better than the nothing we have. So as we start to listen to all of those things, with little, if any, ability to judge the validity of the source's information and we start to panic. We get our ire up because we want an answer NOW. We want to stop looking like a laughing stock to the rest of the country. We want to know because even a bad choice is still a choice. So we're in a collective uproar, and I think we need to stop.

I want to trust Bill Martin. You don't get to his position in the business world by being dumb. But yes, I know, the world of intercollegiate athletics is not the same as the business world. Well, Martin's learning. Martin also is facing down several factions, each pulling him in different directions, all having some level of power over him, if not in reality, perceptually. So he must try and find a way to make this work, and right now he's kind of stuck. He'll get it right, I'm sure of it. It just may take some time. I'm so sure, in part because I want to believe he will. But I think the biggest factor here is, Martin needs to get some spin control out there. He needs to be talking to people and taking control of this situation, because the longer he lets the situation percolate without resolution, the worse the speculation becomes, and the hotter the temperature becomes. (Heck, even just saying Mike DeBord will not be the head coach next season would be a huge step towards turning the temperature down, but he can't do it for fear of offending Coach Carr.)

So, my friends, my fellow Michigan fans, I just suggest remaining calm. There's not a whole lot we can do right now, and there will be time enough for fretting when a decision has been made.

No Ned, No Justice

We here at the Hoover Street Rag rarely stray from our focus on Michigan athletics and our beloved marching band, but there are times when it is necessary, nay demanded. Such a time is now. A'Mod Ned, the be-crutched FIU combatant in the Battle of the Orange Bowl, is up for the Deadspin Hall of Fame, and the vote is very close indeed. We are staunch supporters of this American hero, and we urge you to vote early and often. Remember: No Ned, No Justice.

The Ladies... Hot Blogger Bracket and Shameless Self-Promotion

We here at the Hoover Street Rag are usually not ones for self-promotion, but when something is in the name of good fun and our very honor is on the line, we make an exception. (OK, I do, I don't know how Geoff feels, but I'm pretty sure he's got my back on this one. I also feel bad that this is our 100th post. But it's just the way the numbers fell.)

As some of you may know, the blog Ladies... began their long-awaited Hot Bloggers Bracket today. One of the many entries is yours truly, CDB. Why? Because the Ladies... are a group of Deadspin commenters who I have come to know over the last year and who are consistently hilarious, so in the name of good fun, I entered. I earned a 19 seed in the NL West. Out of 22. I'm not going to lie, that stings a little. I know I'm not the best looking guy, but remember, this is about hotness, and hotness can include things like wit, charm, guile, and the ability to string together several humorous sentences in a row. Nevertheless, my competition, HG from You've Been Blinded is currently stomping me like a narc at a biker rally. He's wearing eye black, how can I possibly compete with that?

(P.S.: I do not know HG and in reading his site today, he's a rather talented blogger with keen insights and well written pieces. We will not mind losing to him if it comes to that. This is not about him, however.)

And then it struck me.

Michigan has more living alumni than any University in the United States. What if I make this not about defending my honor, but the honor of our beloved University? What if I told you that I am the ONLY Wolverine blogger in the region, would that change your mind? What if it weren't me you were voting for, but all of the Michigan bloggers out there? All of the Wolverines?

(Of course it's worth noting that Caesar himself, Brian from MGoBlog, is the #9 seed in the Campbell Conference and really, if anyone deserves Michigan fans love, it's clearly him, but just play along. Oh and vote for him. Someone has to defend our honor, and he's at least a single digit seed.)

And what's worse, we suspect that part of our low seeding may have come from the fact that we openly questioned the SEC's Supremacy Complex (I had to submit a piece of writing from HSR and chose "Quag-Meyer", my effort to explain why Urban Meyer is a whiny bitch). Are we really going to stand idly by and allow the SEC and its apologists to continue to hold over our heads that they are the only true conference? No, we must rise up and defend our sacred honor, the right of good Midwestern people to watch some of the best college football in the country week in and week out! A vote for me is a vote against all of the MSM tyranny that tells us that the Big Ten isn't good enough when we know better!

A vote for me is a vote for the sacred and holy traditions of Michigan athletics. The winged helmet, the chants at Yost, pinch hit home runs to win NCAA Baseball Regionals! Of the Victors, and the MMB, of Bo, and of the the poorly lit morgue that is Crisler Arena, (wait, scratch that last one...) A vote for me is a vote for everything you love about Ann Arbor on an autumn Saturday, of as it was, and again it shall be. A vote for me is a vote for the memory of three Heisman Trophy winners, for Bullwinkle antlers, and for Ty Law knocking the ball down in 1994! This is who we are, and what we should be about.

We are proud, we are strong, we are Michigan, and we must rise up to defend that which we hold most dear by voting for the only true Wolverine (that we know of) in the region, CDB. Let us make sure that we truly are the Champions of the (NL) West!

Ladies and gentlemen thank you for your time.

Vote here

Trash talking commentary here

(Paid for by the committee to get CDB at least a respectable margin of defeat in the bracket.)