A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
'Is it to be or not to be?'
And I replied 'Oh why ask me?"
It's Korea out there in user-generated content land, and it's my job to triage. The only way to make it through sane is Hawkeye-level satire, and making fun of people who take themselves seriously, and not looking too hard at the antics of certain people from Toledo. Okay Radar, state your business, in one word or less:
- Reshp1: 289 yards for zero points.
One word or less.
- Glewe: Mental toughness.
That is two words.
- Glewe: Mentaltoughness.
Ah, you're a football coach I see. Try an English word.
- Glewe: Psychology.
- Ehatch: Depressing.
- Gulo_Gulo: Lines.
- MGolem: Edge.
- Dnak438: W—
Didn't you go already?
- Dnak438: I wrote another one.
Oh. Well thanks. I'm still putting it in etc.
Etc. Worse. Students. Plays. Wallpaper.
[After the jump: the pain grows stronger, watch it grin.]
Best of the Board
THE PAIN GOES STRONGER WATCH IT GRIN
OSU lost its band director but is still kicking our butts in halftime show concepts; this one included the Batmobile (with smoke coming out the tailpipe!) and the theme from M.A.S.H. with a not very subtle suggestion for all of us. Wait, what are the words to this song again? Did they really just suggest…? Well damn, band. No, I am way too impressed to be offended.
I see this, then think about MMB's ode to Dave Brandon for last year's Game, and I has a sad.
WHY YES, PRESS COVERAGE DOES IMPLY YOU MAKE CONTACT
There were a couple of threads with coach-type unaffiliated people making the obvious observation about the cornerback play that doomed Michigan last week.
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| Theory: the defensive changes really didn't do Countess any favors. |
A snippet from a guy who played college football:
Simply put these db's are not being coached correctly and are being allowed to get away with poor technique. Very poor. In press coverage, yes the objective is to disrupt the time and rhythm of an offense. Even more importantly, be physical as most receivers hate to be hit and to block.
I mean, yes. It was a failure exactly on par with running a 3-3-5 and not ever blitzing a linebacker. If the corners are playing press-man and they let the WR get a free release inside, you've neutered the ONE THING that makes this strategy successful. Roy Manning's friends are my friends, and they universally told me that he's going to be a major program head coach some day. They won't say this but having Roy coaching this position appears to have been a "let's put him somewhere because we need this guy" decision by Hoke, and you are seeing the results of a guy who never played cornerback trying to teach a new style of defense to cornerbacks. They will say that press technique is very hard to get down because receivers can do so many different things to you. Teams that do it consistently groom upperclassmen for the job.
Where do they go from here? I don't know. They're limited in staff but if there's some loophole where they can fly in Todd Howard for emergency CB coaching they should do so immediately.
If Michigan decides not to scrap AGGRESSIVE, which they can probably roll with Taylor and Lewis if not the rest of the depth chart, the greatness of Countess that got the #2 jersey on him in the first place is going to be the casualty. Having Blake play up in the WRs' grillz is Jake Ryan in reverse: a read-and-react dude being asked to play RRRAAGGHRRR. Countess is an NFL-level dimeback—the kind of heady player who can thrive in a cover 2 defense—and even under better circumstances (like, if they had a guy who knew anything about playing cornerback coaching cornerback)—there's just no way you can turn that guy into Darqueze Dennard. Countess's game is quick-thinking and baiting interceptions so that the QB won't trust himself to throw that direction.
EVERY HOCKEY JERSEY SINCE LONG LONG AGO IN 2010
Compiled by Wolverine Devotee:
The three at right are the latest. WD's reaction is "Again?" Mine is "Nailed it!"
As you can see, they had an aesthetic problem the last few years in that there were three to six completely different designs they might wear on any given day, let alone colors, and all of those designs had problems. The weasel was always awful, the "MICHIGAN" throwbacks got weird when they emphasized the M, playing around with various striping patterns and whites just made them look more NHL, and the Rangers-style angled "MICHIGAN" would look silly except when you remember Steve Shields[EDIT: gah I meant Turco; anyway it was the script Michigan when both played]. The swapping was disorienting and would have killed any chance of instant recognition if it wasn't for the winged helmets. Is that Team Sweden? A Buffalo throwback? The Predators? Chris Pronger-era St. Louis? Oh it's us! Also I am not a fan of big stripes down the sleeves, and am a dark navy extremist. The darker the better; leave the royal spectrum for Delaware I say.
All they've done is simplified the Block-M, which was the favorite when I did that uni bracket years ago, and used that design across three color schemes. With the hockey uniforms, the wings already make us unique; the jerseys should just remind you we're a classic. WIN. WIN. WIN. Please stick to these three for the next 20 years (they won't last more than a year but I can ask right?)
PUT YOUR CHARITY WHERE YOUR MOUTH-BREATHING IS
With this board, you can turn anything into a charity drive. Reshp1 suggested having the half-fulls go up against the half-emptys, and whoever amongst the teeth-gnashers who turned out to be wrong have to donate that.
POSBANGING FOR TICKETS
A reader gave us his season tickets, and this is how I chose to give away the first pair: name the person you would take and let the readers vote with their reader moderation buttons. Right now it's a dead heat between Darker Blue, Kjydmd, and GodwinWolverine95.
REMEMBER WHEN THIS HAPPENED BEFORE?
I guess we have to put the Notre Dame game in some sort of perspective, so here's Eric in Dayton putting it in perspective of Michigan's worst losses since Bo. For each he listed the result of the season, except where the blowout loss WAS the end of the end of the season.
WHAT MAKES BEILEIN A GOOD LEADER?
For one he didn't take MBA classes that ask questions like "what iz LEADERSHIP?" Leadership just means making good decisions when you're responsible for doing so; a strategy is only repeatable in like circumstances; and innate traits are innate. I have great scorn for questions like "identify a leader and describe one characteristic and one strategy" because they imply that what made that guy successful is repeatable.
But if we must play: The strategy is the Two-Guard Offense, which he has been running for 30 years with much varied talent, so he knows what he needs to recruit for it, and how to adapt it to his talent, and how best to teach it. The innate trait is adaptability; Beilein avoided the same fate as Rich Rod by scrapping his own 1-3-1 defense as soon as it wasn't working. In a more subtle but perhaps more telling example, going up against a Syracuse outfit that could hardly have been constructed better to deal with that Michigan team, Beilein tweaked his offense in a way nobody had seen before (because he never had a player like that before) to key it from McGary in the post. I'd place adaptability just before ethics in the traits that make Beilein a great coach, but both are crucial.
Loyalty and magic recruiting juju will get you a decent grade from any professor who'd ask that question, but loyalty is only as strong as the thing you place it in, and what seems like scouting magic is really just an effect of a guy who's spent an extraordinary amount of time adapting lots of different things to the thing he knows. Beilein's "loyalty" level is rather weak—he'll have no compunction about benching leader/11th year senior Jordan Morgan when the NCAA breaks the charge rule, for example. What made Beilein the last coach in the green room is the his understanding of, and his will to do good.
Yes, this is a business lecture from a poor guy on the internet who's managed to fail two businesses before turning 35. But I've seen several businesses built on the same premise as Beilein's program—MGoBlog among them—and can vouch that surviving your ass off until you learn enough to not suck anymore while being so ethical as to attract other ethical people who want you to succeed is a viable model.
ETC. Annual turnover margins since '84 show Michigan used to be better at football than a majority of teams they faced. One of our soldiers came home. Let's make a Special K playlist. He went to Eastern Michigan!
Your Moment of Zen:
Brian eating his lemon, from the unified lemon thread: