"Eyes up!" English shouts to Michigan's defensive players.
After giving brief instructions, the defensive staff leaves the room as the lights are turned down.
Captain Shawn Crable points to the door, signaling for a visitor to leave, too, so that the defensive players can be alone for a ritual they've done for more than a decade under the well-read Carr.
"I've never been in there, but I know they recite one of Rudyard Kipling's poems," English says while waiting for an elevator.
"Do you still know it?" English asks graduate assistant coach Glen Steele, who helped Michigan win the 1997 national championship as a defensive end.
"The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack," Steele says, ending the passage without hesitating in an elevator.
Ask any guy who played defense for Michigan since 1997 and they'll know this poem. Seriously.
How this works again:
- Readers predict the final score of a designated game by placing a guess in the comments, preferably in the format of [M score][hyphen][Opp score], for example "41-0" or "35-0 Michigan", or "28-0 Go Blue", or "42-0 Harbaugh!" etc.
- The three guys who read this part holler at people who post in a different format
- First person (by timestamp) to post a particular score has it.
- If you got it right, I contact you for an address by your MGoBlog account email, and you give me some time to get that to you.
- If nobody got it right or I don't hear from the winner(s) we push it to next week or let it go.
About Last Time:
38-0. Oh. Oh. Oh. DemetriusBrown got an I♥♥ shirt, and we donated to the Mike Hart Family Foundation, both of which being things you can do too.
This Week's Game:
We've all been starting our sentences with "With all due respect to the tremendous job…" for a few years now, haven't we? Michigan will try to end that sentence (ha!) against Mark Dantonio's legendarily stingy defense which isn't as bad as it looks in the secondary because they've really just been saving everything for this game. And the greatest quarterback of all time, Connor Cook, and the best player in Michigan even though his teammate who went to Michigan is now in the NFL Aaron Burbridge. And that offensive line which is just pretending to be hurt to lull Meatchicken into a sense of security. We are meatchicken. They are Michigan State! Show some due respect.
Also Dairy Store ice cream—if you could call it ice cream because according to my little brother*—there's some law that a substance that uses that much cream does not even count as ice cream it's just frozen yumminess. Seriously no sarcasm: Dairy Store.
And on the Line:
I personally requisitioned this shirt after meeting most of the 2002 secondary's depth chart and they all knew it.
That asterisk
* [I was born in 1979, my brother 1981. I don't think they let you change that.]
Fine Print:
One entry per user. First user to choose a set of scores wins, determined by the timestamp of your entry (for my ease I prefer if you don't post it as a reply to another person's score--if you do it won't help or hurt you). Deadline for entries is 24 hours before the start of the game. MGoEmployees and moderators exempt from winning. The algorithm finds the winners as it chooses. The algorithm is self-correcting. The algorithm consistently runs power. The algorithm locked Rutgers out of Jersey. The algorithm shows no disrespect to the greatest university in the history of Ingham County.