You Can't Go Home Again

Goodbye old friend.(Photo by Michael Barera)

Let me start off by saying this is in no way a complaint, because it would be the stupidest, pettiest kind of complaining that I could do.  It's not a complaint.  At most, it's a nostalgic longing for a youth that probably never was in the first place.

My goodness, it's shiny.  Shiny and bright.  That was my initial reaction.  I hadn't been to Yost since the renovations.  I had been to Crisler, and I had been to Michigan Stadium, but I had not been to Yost.  The Crisler renovations really didn't mean a whole lot to me because I didn't spend a lot of time at Crisler*.  Michigan Stadium's renovations happened so slowly, that I had time to get used to them and other than the shadows and night games, I don't know how much they really impacted me.  It was a net positive, but nothing that went, wow, this is perfect either.

*-I think I went to three total basketball games at Crisler between 1996-2000.  I did get to see Brian Cardinal play for Purdue during his eight year residency, and I did get to see Brian Ellerbee execute a perfect psychological warfare plot of moving the Michigan bench chairs as close to the baseline as possible when the opponent was shooting on that side in the first quarter, only to then move them well back in the second half, creating the illusion of space.  If Tom Izzo could actually put Michigan State's bench chairs on the court during the first half, I know he would.)

But Yost, well, I spent a lot of time at Yost.  Between 1996-2006, I went to 105 college hockey games, of which 77 were Michigan games, of which 46 were at Yost.  If being a Michigan football fan is part of being something larger than yourself, being a Michigan hockey fan is like that, but smaller, more intimate.  There is definitely a metaphorical secret handshake, and you come to understand that not everyone will get it, but you also tell yourself the right people will and that's all that matters.  For almost all of those games, my college roommate Dave was along side of me.  So we have a whole complex series of in jokes and shared memories about Michigan hockey.

But, life happens.  You grow up, you get a job, you get married, you have a kid, Big Ten Network starts showing more and more hockey games and all of the sudden your trips to Yost become fewer and further between.  I was actually struggling to remember the last time I went.  My email archive tells me it actually may pre-date the Big Chill, so yeah, it's been a while.  My son had never been to Yost for a game, even though we held his first birthday party there (which also pre-dated the renovation.)  I had seen photos, I had heard the stories, but I had not actually been in there.

So myself, my wife, my son, our niece and nephew, and Dave, went to the game on Saturday.  Penn State was an easy ticket to get and sure enough, we had great seats in section 14 (up high, you could see all of the action.)  So when we went in, what struck me was that the front is largely the same building that it always was, where I went in 1998 to pick up my student tickets, the displays have been updated but still have that hand-made charm they always have had.  But then you walk down the corridor along the State Street side and it's just, it's angular, and bright, and shiny.  It is a clear celebration of Michigan's glorious hockey past, and I learned a bunch of things that I had either forgotten or taken for granted.  The execution is top-notch and should be saluted.  The Michigan bubble hockey game, awesome.

And then you enter the arena itself and it's just so bright and airy and open.  You can see everything, and nothing feels like it's closing in on you.  The seats are shiny, aluminium, and reflective, and the scoreboard is streaming HD video advertisements to you.  If you had no knowledge of what Yost was, this place would be amazing.  The uncovered windows restoring Yost to its original 1920s glory are just the icing on the cake.

And yet...

Yost was dark, dank, cramped, and angry.  It was cold and unwelcoming to friend and for alike.  And mind you, I only ever started going to Yost after the mid-1990s renovation, so it was actually nicer then than when Michigan began to reascend in the world of college hockey.  The wood bleachers were lived in, the things that had fallen beneath them were something no one should ever want to see (I saw the Facebook photo album, I can't unsee it.)  There was a raucousness, a rough edge, a hand spun feeling to being there, even if we had all learned the chants from one another.  It's so easy for students now to coordinate something like a Don Cherry night, and I am glad they do, because college is supposed to be stupid fun, but I hope the memories are the same for them, that they will have the same depth, the same meaning.  Because we cared about this place deeply, even when few others would have.  And it's still here, but it's not what it was, and maybe that's OK.  But the shock of seeing what was lost in the name of progress and revenue streams, well, I'll get over it some day.  But just not right now.

History Time! Michigan Enabling and Statehood Acts

Many states proudly post the text of the legislation establishing their statehood on their governmental web site. Michigan does not do this, probably because the Enabling Act of 1836 has the shameful title of "An Act to establish the northern boundary line of the State of Ohio, and to provide for the admission of the State of Michigan into the Union upon the conditions therein expressed." So, as a public service at the start of Year 178, here is the text of the Michigan statehood act of January 26, 1837.

An Act to admit the State of Michigan into the Union, upon an equal footing with the original States.

Whereas, in pursuance of the act of Congress of June the fifteenth, eighteen hundred and thirty-six, entitled “An act to establish the northern boundary of the State of Ohio, and to provide for the admission of the State of Michigan into the Union upon the conditions therein expressed,” a convention of delegates, elected by the people of the said State of Michigan, for the sole purpose of giving their assent to the boundaries of the said State of Michigan as described, declared, and established, in and by the said act, did, on the fifteenth of December, eighteen hundred and thirty-six, assent to the provisions of the said act, therefore:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the State of Michigan shall be one, and is hereby declared to be one, of the United States of America, and admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, in all respects whatever.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That the Secretary of the Treasury, in carrying into effect the thirteenth and fourteenth sections of the act of the twenty-third of June, eighteen hundred and thirty-six, entitled, “An act to regulate the deposites of the public money,” shall consider the State of Michigan as being one of the United States.

APPROVED, January 26, 1837.

After the jump, the aforementioned Enabling Act of 1836.

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:

It's not all good news

The Borges-O-Meter is sadly retired. Perhaps the new offensive co-ordinator will be Larry Paz, Steve Neruda, or Mike Garcia Marquez. Until then, we soldier on and learn as much as we can about the works of Adolfo Mazzone.

Lost in Space

Luna-Lost in Space-1995
(Sorry gang, can't embed, but you can listen along)

You heard it all before
And said your case was tragic
You heard it all before
And now they say it's magic

You need
Time off
For good
Behavior
And you know there's something else
But you can't give a name
Someone's selling all your heroes

And it seems such a shame

Maybe the worst part about being 7-6 is that one literally cannot know if things will get better or worse next year because both possibilities seem equally probable.  People like to say "Michigan was just three plays away from 9-4" which, OK, sure, (A Gibbons make in the Penn State game, the two point conversion in the Ohio State game, I can accept both of those as they were so late in the game, the quantum realities that exist from that point are limited, especially the Gibbons field goal.)  We were also easily two plays away from being 5-7 (Gibbons misses in the rain in Evanston, Akron connects on the final play of the game).  So 7-6 is probably right and fitting, win some, lose some.

But it really is hard to know what to think for next year, which is probably for the best that we can have some time away from this, some distance before we must contemplate the future, in both short and long terms.  There is talent, I know it because I have seen it and because everyone who seems to know these things better than I do tells me so.  The question is, can there be improvement?  Will there be improvement?  Because I think the athletic department knows there has to be.

The Athletic Department is in a bind.  It is facing the worst home football schedule in Michigan's history, an increasingly disgruntled, or at the very least, discontented fan and alumni base, who feels increasingly hit in the wallet when asked to re-up for season tickets, facing a Michigan Stadium atmosphere that feels less and less like the one that people cherished and more and more like a multi-level marketing...wait, sorry...synergy machine that we're told is the future because the people who get to make these decisions want to create the future, whether or not anyone wants to go along with them for the ride.   By the same token, they want to sell us on the glory of the past, which starts to feel more and more like imperial decline, like remembering the high water mark of the empire and silently (or sometimes more loudly) fretting that the grandest days are behind us (Notre Dame reclaiming the winning percentage mark after ten years in part because they made up SEVEN games on Michigan in the last two years would be a good example of that kind of fear in a more tangible form.)

And by the way, as guilty of this as I am, don't think for a moment that collectively telling ourselves that this is all just 2013's fault isn't a symptom of this fear.  Because the alternative is far darker.

Maybe the greatest gift of growing up is that you can still appreciate things that meant so much to you in your childhood and young adulthood without being consumed by them.  I still care about this program, about this team, about these players, but it no longer drives my mood for a week.  It's the realization not that there are more important things, though there are, but that willingly handing your emotional state to things well outside control is just a really poor decision for one's temperament.  (I would like to thank the Detroit Lions for helping me reach this realization sooner rather than later.)

So, come August, well cheer again, we'll get excited about the players who made significant strides during fall camp, we'll look at the schedule and try to find those nine wins, knowing that we're not going to Indianapolis without some good luck.  We'll say goodbye to our friends from South Bend, because it is ending because of the new world order, and we'll welcome some new "friends" from the East for the same reason, looking at them sideways the way one one might with step-siblings (Yes, there's a Brady Bunch joke there.  Yes, I am declining to make it.)  We'll show up and we'll hope and we'll complain and we'll wonder, going up, or going down?  Because right now, we just don't know.

Farewell Team 134.  Godspeed to you Team 135.

Smash Mouth Football

It started here...

As if we all haven't been through enough, BWW bowl announces a Smash Mouth concert as part of the pre game festivities.
— Everett Cook (@everettcook) December 20, 2013

Then this happened...

[chorus] Hey now You're mediocre Head to Tempe Go, Play Hey now You lost to Penn State Are you surprised this bowl's lame? [next verse]
— Scott Bell (@sbell021) December 20, 2013

And, well, since bad song parodies are a thing we do here...

Somebody once told me the SEC is gonna roll me
But they ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
We were looking kind of dumb with our offense in the 'gun
In the shape of an "I" it's what the Borge said

Well, the hits start coming and they don't stop coming
If you don't block, can get the ground running
Didn't make sense not to block or run
Your lizard brain isn't smart so your OC gets dumb


So much to do, beat UConn by three
Couple of bounces might have prevented some bad beats.
You'll never know if you don't go
But then Gibbons misses two off his toe


[Chorus:]
Hey now, you're mediocre
Head to Tempe, Go, Play

Hey now, you lost to Penn State
Are you surprised this bowl's lame?

It's a hot seat and they say it gets warmer
They're fired up now but wait 'til your O Line gets older
But the media men beg to differ
Judging by the hole in the B1G ring picture

Safety depth is getting pretty thin
Gardner's gettin sacked, makes it tough to win
Sparty couches on fire. How about yours?
That's the way we like it as we say stuff untoward.

[Chorus 2x]

Somebody once preened should we call a bubble screen
I need to make plays in space
I said yep what a concept
Just got to execute better myself
Ignoring the calls for O-Coordinator change


Well, the hits start coming and they don't stop coming
If you don't block, can't get the ground running
Didn't make sense not to block or run
Your lizard brain isn't smart so your offense plays dumb

So much to do, beat UConn by three
Couple of bounces might have prevented some bad beats.
You'll never know if you don't go
But then Gibbons misses two off his toe

[Chorus]

And all DB wants is gold
Need a title to break the mold

Yosef Looks Familiar

Appalachian State announced a new alternate logo this week called "Victory Josef." Reaction from the Internet has been mixed. ASU alumni are reportedly supportive of the new logo, but they also liked the "Hot Hot Hot" video, so their taste is questionable at best.

It's a bold move rolling out new product in advance of next fall's Clonus Horror at the Big House. All those ASU shirts in Columbus must be getting worn out by now. But Yosef looks awfully familiar. Let's turn him 90 degrees and switch out his hat:

There we have it. Brian's been working on the inside over there to make sure The Horror doesn't happen again. Now let's put him back in profile:

"Panic and Run Around Screaming" is perfectly good advice after realizing how much you shelled out for a 2014 home schedule featuring Appalachian State.

Valiant

Toledo Blade/Andy Morrison

from Latin valēre: to be strong

In the end, it was for them and we're just happy to have been a part of it.  This isn't about moral victories or taking solace in the margin being closer even if the result was what most of us expected at the beginning of the week.  It is for them.  If we doubt that, just look at Devin Gardner's face as he meets with the media after the game.  He doesn't look that way because he let us down, no, it is because he knows he let his teammates down, even if the reality of the day contradicts that feeling.  As much as any person on the field, he got his team in a position to go for that win when very few people outside of their locker room thought it was even possible.  Then they didn't get that win, and the feeling sucks, and you try telling him otherwise.

But perhaps the most telling reaction to Saturday is the seemingly overwhelming approbation, both local and national, for the decision to go for two.  Hoke said that he asked the seniors if they wanted to do it and they claim to a man, they said yes.  I respect the decision even more for one of the core principles of leadership, trust your people, believe in them.  The players, in the end, owned that choice as much as Hoke.  Win or lose, they all owned the decision.  Hoke gave his players agency in a world where all too often they are treated as interchangeable parts in a machine.  In the end, eleven moving parts couldn't make it happen because of eleven other moving parts with the directive to stop them.  In another reality, they did make it.  But neither set of players in these parallel realities will ever know how the other feels, but as I said yesterday, to once again draw on the wisdom of the War Doctor, "at worst, we failed doing the right thing, as opposed to succeeding in doing the wrong,"

We spend so much time obsessing over what it means to be a "Michigan man" to the point where we are readily parodied for it. But Saturday reminded me why we end up loving these teams and these players, win or lose.  We do get those occasional glimpses of just how much this means to them, how much they truly embrace the ethos of team, instead of it slowly becoming a marketing gimmick to repeated at halftime.  They're not perfect, but neither are we.  But I was reminded, as the Tom Brady speech to Team 134 was replayed on the video board during the game, the players in that room all chose Michigan, just like all of us did, alumnus, student, and supporter alike.  The circumstances of that choosing will vary from person to person, but like the decision to go for two, we own that choice.  We may get frustrated by any number of things, we may be upset by the outlook for the future, but it is only because we care so deeply about that choice.  It defines us in ways that we don't even always want to acknowledge because society frowns upon the level of devotion that we may grant to a secular entity.  But the things that define us, shape us, inform us, all serve to reflect to the world what we hope to see in ourselves.  So we can find a way to be angry with the result, but be proud of the effort, because we are gifted with a first-rate intelligence, one with is "the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

So to Team 134, that latest link in the Maize Chain of Being, we salute you.  We are reminded of the words of our University's co-founder in the wake of the fire that destroyed Detroit in 1805: Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus; or "We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes."

In the end, perhaps this was an exercise in reminding us of the meaning of valiant and while it always feels better to be victorious and valiant, we can always try to be valiant nonetheless.

Perfidious Vindication

In September, we wrote:

To avoid any further confusion, there are at least three feats of co-ordinating derring-do that will permit Al Borges to reach the pinnacle that is Tlön. Those three feats are [include]:

• Repeat what just happened against Notre Dame on November 30. 

41 points. Same as Notre Dame. 143 more yards. One less turnover. So we go from -10 to 10. Positive Tlön was achieved. But still. Dammit. Dammit dammit dammit dammit dammit.

The First Question

First of all, David is right, I should have switched over at 2:50 to the "Day of the Doctor" and it would have been a much better decision.

Fundamentally, the question of this season is not about disappointment, or frustration, or youth.  The first question of this season is more fundamental than this season, it's the core of all consumed culture: "For whom does this thing exist?"

When an author writes a book, for whom are they writing it?  Are they writing it for themselves? For the potential audience? For the money? For the fame?

When a television show is created, for whom is it created? For the network? For the audience? For the advertisers?

When a team plays a sport, for whom are they playing? For themselves? For the fans? For the ownership? For the paycheck?

That we have never fully answered these questions speak to the fact that there are no right answers, there are no good answers.  This is what leads to our frustration.

Disappointment can only come with expectations.  If you expect nothing, you have a much more difficult time being disappointed.  If you expect something, anything that fails to reach that expectation inevitably becomes a disappointment.  But this leads to an even greater paradox, as it is virtually impossible to live your life in such a way to expect nothing, because as things happen, human nature is to ask for more, to want more, to expect more.

Think about it.  After Notre Dame, in spite of the 0-yard pick six, the trajectory was upwards, the hopes were seemingly limitless.  And then Akron happened, and as we sat in disbelief, we talked ourselves into the hiccup.  But then Connecticut happened and hey, we're not that good, maybe, but we're 4-0 and there's a bye coming up, we'll get it fixed.  And we did, hey, the Jug is saved.

Then Penn State, which was its own nightmare, we suck, wait, we're coming back, wait, we got this, wait, what the hell is this drive, wait we got this, wait Gibbons no, wait, we got this, wait Gibbons no again, wait, we lost it.  But hey, four overtimes, could happen to anyone.  Then Indiana and the record setting offense, and we'll get it sorted out by the time we head to East Lansing.

Then November came, and it mostly comes up blank in my mind.  Part of it simply is that I have been moving, and weekends have been committed to unpacking, slipping the games in when I can. But even then, you just knew, it wasn't going to work, it wasn't going to be right.  Somewhere, Michigan forgot how to play offense, and the madness has set in.

So now we're looking at The Game, and well, five years ago, I spoke of that season as a scar, well-won, but the years since have left us with more scars, achieved in uglier fashion, to the point where as much as you want to ignore the scars, it takes tremendous effort to do so.  We're spoiled, and yes, we should know it, and yes, we do, but when you long for something that may be long gone, that will likely never come back, and even if it does, it will certainly not be the same, it makes the absence so much harder.

But again, it's back to the fundamental question: What if this isn't for us?  What if we really, in the end, don't matter in the equation?  What if we tell ourselves a collective lie because we want to believe that we matter, when the reality is we don't? If we don't, it makes all of the shaming, the ranting, the fan credentials presentations, well, that doesn't matter either, does it?  We're just revenue streams to be tapped, background ambiance to be thrown into a game telecast.  We don't have an impact, and yet, it is possible that these things can mean more to some of us than they do to the players because they're part of the thread that connects our days.

So where does this leave us?  What is the answer?  Well, there isn't one, except to say that we're all going to choose our own paths to the answer, and hopefully we shouldn't judge too harshly the paths chosen by others.

The best we can hope for right now is something of a football miracle, but they've happened before.  It is perhaps a bridge too far to ask for a miracle, but it is certainly not beneath any of us to hope for one.  Because as always, hope dies last.

The Web of Fear

I switched over to "The Day of the Doctor" at 2:50. YOU SHOULD HAVE TOO AND I DON'T CARE HOW BIG OF A NOT-NERD YOU ARE. The Borges-O-Meter is back to -10.

In spoiler-preventing white text after the jump, some things that happened in "The Day of the Doctor" that could be used to explain the offensive performance. Highlight to see.

I don't know Davey

This photoshop is as realistic as expecting a successful
Michigan run out of the I-formation.

There are times for rational analysis and there are times for STRONG TAEKS: The only person who has less understanding than Al Borges of what an offensive lineman can and cannot handle is Richie Incognito, no offense. OK then, carrying on.

Bill Barnwell writes at Grantland about David strategies and Goliath strategies. The purpose of David strategies is to increase the variance in the outcome when you clearly are at a disadvantage: a recent example of this is Jacksonville's risk-taking against Denver, which kept the game close for about a half. Spread offenses developed as David strategies - smaller teams developed ways to neutralize their size disadvantage through speed and misdirection.

MANBALL is essentially a synonym for Goliath strategy. Alabama can execute MANBALL. Stanford can execute MANBALL (provided they're not playing Utah). If you have superior athletes, you don't have to make clever play calls. If everyone executes the plays properly, you'll end up ahead. Low variance is what you want if you have the initial advantage.

What happens if we have pinnepedian, Whitlockian, patience? Suppose Michigan's great recruiting classes keep coming in and the players are coached up properly and the line play becomes effective. (Possibly next year, possibly the year after that.) Will MANBALL be effective then? Sure, it'll get you to nine wins, but, at some point, you'll be in the hole against Ohio State or Michigan State or Rutgers or against an SEC team in a - God forbid! - national semifinal. What then? That's when it's time to use a David strategy, break a tendency, take a risk. Maybe you'll lose big, but you'll give yourself a chance to come back and win a game that you should have lost. It's better than trying the same thing that stopped working again and again and again.

What's the ceiling of a MANBALL team with a coaching staff that shows no inability to get creative when things aren't going well? Maybe Michigan gets all the breaks in every game one year and wins it all. Most likely, it's back to the bad old days of 9-3 or 10-2 and perennial trips to central Florida.

Goliath strategies work against Indiana's defense. They don't work against Michigan State's. They apparently don't work against Nebraska's either. MANBALL always hits a brick wall eventually.

The Borges-O-Meter has finally reached Tlön, though not in the way we hoped. Setting incredible offensive records one week, then following it up - after a bye - with two astoundingly crappy performances. That's otherworldly. A Stygian otherworld is still an otherworld.

Identity Crisis

Michigan fan, plane crash witness, and general good follow on Twitter stefanielaine tweeted this out after Michigan's weekly Monday press availability:

yep, after Week 10 sounds like a good time for that RT @chengelis: Hoke says he will get a handle on this team’s personality after MSU game
— stefanielaine (@stefanielaine) October 21, 2013

It occurred to me as I read this tweet that, sarcasm aside, I agree with Stefanie's assessment, and yet, I also believe that Brady is telling the truth as he understands it.

If you think about it, in Year 3 of the Hoke tenure, he is at a peculiar crossroads. He has two and a half classes of his guys, all young, and two and a half classes of guys who came to Michigan during Rich Rodriguez's tenure (I chose that phrasing carefully, there are Rich Rodriguez guys and guys who were coming to Michigan no matter who the coach was, which happened to be Rich Rodriguez.)  The veterans should be leading the team, and they are, in their own way, but they are also chasing phantoms.  They are chasing their departed captains who held them together during the roughest days of the transition.  They are chasing the idea of being Superman, of lifting the team on their shoulders and doing everything, because that is how you become a Michigan legend, that is how you become beloved by legions of Michigan fans.  They're chasing something that doesn't exist because it never existed last year.  They've told themselves if only, if just that one bad thing hadn't happened, ignoring the other things that did happen.

So Brady's in an odd spot.  He's kind of the nice guy stepfather here, he wants to reach out to the guys who didn't pick him as their coach, but he's also been here long enough that they should know who he is by now.  But does Michigan know who it is?  Hoke has classic "MANBALL" tendencies, but I think he also wants to win, so does he ignore what he prefers to win with what he has?  Does this willingness to be flexible and yet inflexible, and yet still flexible create scenarios like Michigan State 2011, Iowa 2011, Nebraska 2012, the second half of Ohio State 2012, Penn State 2013, and now Michigan State 2013 where the desire to be one way leads you to believe that you can do something well if you just believe hard enough, evidence to the contrary be damned.

But as I came back to this post, I also realized something else.  We hold athletes to an impossibly high standard, which is why it is so easy for them to seem like they are failing.  We want them to give their heart, body, soul, and mind every week to a game that is violent, unpredictable, and often times just plain unfair.  We want them to do this knowing the risks inherent in the game, the risk of injuries short and long-term, the risk of their physical and mental well-being, and we also want them to be model citizens, thoughtful, insightful, funny, and sincere.  We want them to want it more than we want them to win, which might well be an impossibility as fans are irrational and single minded.  So when they do not meet the impossibly high standards held out for them, they are disappointed in themselves, and we're disappointed in them, and that's unfair.  We demand answers, but not the truth.  We want fixes, but are usually unwilling to accept that they may take time.  We want hard questions asked without realizing that those kind of questions are not how the game works, taking game however you might like it to mean.

So yes, we're disappointed.  We're struggling to find answers.  As I have said before, the hardest part about college football is that it is the sport that most lives simultaneously in the past and in the future without being willing to live in the present.  I know understand why this is.  The present is usually disappointing.  The past can be gauzed over, shot with a soft filter, edited down and out the nastiest parts, smoothing the roughest edges.  The future holds unlimited promise, even when there appear to be clouds on the horizon, we tell ourselves it will blow over.  But what is right now is maddening because it's a riddle without a solution.  We don't know what the short term future holds because the immediate past is not as instructive as we hoped it might be.  We want a 1973 Michigan team in 2013 college football world, and that creates psychic tension.  It is not that much different than the people in the 1920s who wanted the fruits of modernity but also still wanted to be the way things were in the 1870s.  To quote "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."  Old systems have collapsed, the old ways of doing things don't exist anymore and as much as we want to lean on tradition and history and heritage, those things do not block, they do not tackle, and they do not adapt.  All of those things are tools.  In the hands of a capable craftsman, they can produce great works of art.  In the wrong hands, they can be used to destroy raw material.  In the hands of those who lack vision and foresight, they can be used to make something mediocre, leaving the viewer to wonder what might have been.

So one-third of the season left, time to make something of it.  What is made is a choice left in the hands of the craftsmen.

The end of "The Savage Detectives"

At the end of Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, the following picture appears with the question, "What's outside the window?"

I now know what could be outside the window and have gaps that massive in its line.

The Borges-O-Meter is now broken.

More Bye Week Follies: Pro Football 1861

There's no kind of post I enjoy writing more than a post that confuses the hell out of Brian Cook. Since dipping for the Adventure Time well worked out last time, here's a review for their fine football video game, Pro Football 1861.

Pro Football 1861 is available in the free version of the Beemo app. B-MO is a character who is essentially a walking, talking, GameBoy. The paid version of the app also include Kompy's Kastle and the delightful Conversation Parade. You also get some ringtones and wallpaper and other stuff kids might like.

Pro Football 1861 features two dueling Abe Lincolns, one controlled by the human (or other sentient creature), and the other by Beemo. CPU Abe throws passes at human Abe, and human Abe moves to kick the passes back over CPU Abe's head.

Each time you successfully kick the football over CPU Abe's head, you earn 33 points. If you need help understanding Al Borges's disapproval of bubble screens, imagine that each pass that CPU Abe throws is a bubble screen and that, if a player on the opposing team kicks it back over Devin Gardner's head, then his team earns 33 points. Under such rules, using bubble screens would indeed by absolute folly.

I'm losing 99-0 because I stopped to take the screenshot.

First one to 999 points wins. You can see why college football has never adopted this rule, as no Michigan State game would ever end.

But I came back to win because I wanted the "YOU WIN" screenshot.

1861 was actually a low point in the history of college football, as Harvard followed Yale's lead and banned all football-type games as overly violent. There was also a war going on which college administrators hopefully thought was of greater importance. However, it would be fun to see an actual football game based on actual reconstructions of various 19th-century rules. Imagine being able to control Team 1 as they battled mighty Racine College!

Pro Football 1861 gets three stars out of four, as it will keep you occupied for 5 to 10 minutes if you need to keep yourself occupied for 5 to 10 minutes. However, it is still a joke game from a cartoon for kids and not an authentic football simulation game; those seeking the latter should consider the Madden series of games, which I understand is quite popular.