[Reminder: submit your #MGoPumpkin to win $200 towards a stay in the new hotel downtown. So far I think Noah Neidlinger is gonna win, unless Michigan scores on the play John Zainea drew up.]
Falk getting his. From the Jug thread.
Dear Diary took a bye last week and it couldn't have come at a better time. My football place was pretty sore for the 168 hours after the one with poor Paul Bunyan being mandled by the least deserving yups to ever play for a program I am preconditioned to think the worst about.
Misery for our company. CR found some more football fans for our healing circle by consulting novelist Jon Rowe, who offered a list of commensurate moments. A sampling:
- The Band is On the Field from Stanford's perspective
- Leon Lett's muff
- Auburn returns Bama's field goal attempt
- Baylor gets a 99-yard fumble return on its face when it could have kneeled
- Furman goes for 2 up 15-14 with 7 seconds left, but its 2-point conversion is intercepted and returned and they lose 15-16.
- The immaculate reception
- Wait, what? Why is the MSU game on this list I thought I'm supposed to feel better?
- In range for a field goal to avoid a historic upset…AGAIN? Stop bringing up Michigan!
- An uncharacteristic offensive explosion should have ended when Anthony T—
- Colorado, down…STTTTTTTOOOOPPPPP@!@@@@@@@
In conclusion every bit of luck that goes our way ever again is wholly deserved, not that we'll be able to enjoy it because self-awareness is cruel.
Self-awareness isn't always cruel. Math—I mean good math—doesn't do things like overrate the last thing to happen. And out of the randomness comes good news from our resident advanced stats collator Ecky Pting:
Ecky also did this last week for win probabilities. Right now we are looking at 9 or 10 wins most likely, which is to say Ohio State's a coinflip and 85% we get there without collecting any dust. And if you like statistics dust, here's a quaint little piece from the 1980s. It's called "Good at Football Again"
Etc. Alum96 has the stock report and a By the Numbers on Minnesota in the forums. MaizeJacket should update the Coaching Changes diary before we discuss. Best and Worst and Inside the Boxscore from last week.
[Hit THE JUMP for Harbaugh costumes layman's guess at 2016's QB]
Best of the Board
PEOPLE WHO DRESS LIKE JIM HARBAUGH
The Chewbacca costume of 2015 is:
MGoBloggers dressing as Harbaugh for work today reported a 60% jump in intensity and 400% increase in enthusiasm—historians at Bentley noted that they could find no other examples such prodigious leaps in the history of man. However I wouldn't recommend going Harbaugh for everybody:
What do you think of @ColinCowherd's Halloween costume, @CoachJim4UM& @umichfootball? pic.twitter.com/nnWDoZYZYb
— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) October 30, 2015
That is the second-most awkward costume choice since Darth Vader went as Chewbacca. The first is when Louisville's athletic department went as transvestite racial stereotypes, which I guess for the South before the Civil Rights movement…nevermind it was this year. FTR I'm going as the Brown Jug.
WHO SHALL INHERIT THE EMPIRE?
Mr. Yost decided to use the bye week to sandbox next year's depth chart. This of course immediately turned to thoughts of the position Rudock will vacate this January. I know no more than you do, which are the trickles from Sam Webb and what happens when 2 and 2 come together. That said, here's one layman's handicapping of the 2016 Michigan Quarterback Battle Royale:
John O'Korn: 50% – The wily gunslinger we took from Houston leads in practice but he's very unpolished and might not be the best fit opposite the kind of defense Michigan should return.
Taysom Hill: 25% - The torch has been officially passed to Mangum at BYU. If (and that's a big two-letter word) Hill is healthy enough to keep playing football after his umpteenth injury, considering he tried to commit to Harbaugh at Stanford until Stanford wouldn't allow him to enroll in January, Michigan seems the most likely destination. He's probably just done.
Shane Morris: 6% - Harbaugh has worked miracles before, and there's a lot of good dough here to cook with (namely an arm and athleticism). However Morris is a two-year project if he remains at Michigan, since it's taking all of this year just to tear away the bad crust from Borges's various microwave recipes. Perhaps once that mess is gone the light will go on instantly. Physically Shane's already there, but to call his good parts raw and his bad parts manifest is underselling the scope of the disaster. That's why he's above the freshmen, but his overall chances to start next year are still quite low.
Zach Gentry: 5% - We're now getting into big maybes. Gentry of all the candidates currently enrolled has the highest upside, but he's starting from the furthest behind. It's possible he takes a big leap this offseason and wins the job in late fall, but barring that huge leap he's still very much a part of the distant future, not the immediate future.
Alex Malzone: 5% - Gentry in reverse. Malzone arrived on the polished end of true freshman distribution, but by the end of fall he remained well within the freshman bell curve. He's been progressing on pace to be a guy you unwrap as a RS junior, but kinda like John Navarre or Matt Gutierrez, Malzone needs to get close to his ceiling to be a good option.
Wilton Speight: 4% - The playing time he's getting this year means little; I read more into the fact that Michigan stated they'd take the shirt back off Morris if Rudock has to miss any extended time. However it does mean something. Speight is kind of the Geoffrey of the Angevin options. If Taysom the Young King Hill dies early, and Harbaugh II Curtmantle has been betrayed by all of his legitimate sires (O'Korn: you were the best; Shane: you I loved...) and hasn't the time to squire a new generation of Plantagenets with gentle Alais, Speight can be standing there like "I'm your only option father. I'm all that's left."
And Harbaugh Fitzempress will just look at him like "uh, not happening Geoff" then go on a Peter O'Toole drunken rant about how he has no sons; just three whiskered things, but no sons. Then he'll quietly arrange for Speight to marry Constance and transfer to Britttany.
In other words the chances of Speight starting next year are about the same as this being the last time I make an extended The Lion in Winter metaphor on this site. It could happen, but not if the guy who makes the call has any say.
Brandon Peters: 3% - He is enrolling in January and is already far enough ahead in general QB development that he might even be at Henne 2004's level by fall. That is still inadvisable unless the other options really aren't happening.
Victor Viramontes: 1% - Captain Insano's only plausible path to playing time next year would be as a change of pace option option, if Michigan finds its passing game isn't in good shape. If he starts next year things have gone very wrong.
Random Transfer: 1% – Every current redshirt junior in football has a shot at this job. It won't be clear if Michigan is even pursuing anybody else until next spring.
THE POST-BUMP BUMP
Homecoming 1974 vs Minnesota (via Ann Arbor District Library)
How long was it before Bo filled said House that Yost built and Crisler paid for every cotton pickin' Saturday? It didn't happen right away despite 24-12, though that helped. As you've noticed with Michigan State, having a team get good all of a sudden does not mean the fans will suddenly fill the building every weekend. This is a lesson that Bacon got into deeply in Endzone: building loyalty happens very slowly and deliberately.
Canham used all sorts of promotions to get Michigan fans trickling back in and staying in their seats. And I don't mean short-lived promos. He made going to Michigan games an integral part of community, and made sure communities grew up inside sections and outside at tailgates, always selling the experience, not the team. He made it about the fact that this isn't about making money, and used the scarcity principle. He made it such an awesome deal, and was so transparent and authentic about it, that you could give your loyalty to Michigan and know Michigan wouldn't ever use it against you. Because few endeavors have the patience, the love, or the product to do that with, it was a rare treat, and ultimately, spectacularly successful. But even that took half a decade to accomplish.
ETC. Grantland react thread. Yost's first contract at Michigan. Get money for MGoBlog every time you buy on Amazon. Favorite jug moment.
Your Moment of Zen:
