Thanks for the kind words. And yes, anything to bend reality our way, even if it means relying on the AJC's latest "trend that really isn't a trend" article.
And we love the break in "Steven's Last Night in Town" when the cordless phone rings.
Looking at the data at Statistically Speaking, how can we conclude that we haven't been damn good the past 6 years. We are the best team in our conference with a totally rockin' regularity.
And I think the use of that data is to really separate out the elite teams from the good or just bad. Winning away from home in college football is the mark of an elite team. There are only two teams over the last 6 years that are below .500 at home in the Big Ten. Winning on the road is hard. And doing so means you're the best of the best.
Are those $100 bills on Ginn's jacket shaped like a hand flipping "the bird"? uh. okay.
Anywaaaay, yeah those stats are a decent rebuttal to those with Short Term Memory Syndrome, but more precisely, "outsiders" need to understand a few important things about Michigan fans:
7. We take a bunch of shit for granted, like stomping on the same 6 Big Ten teams every year (PU,IN,IL,NW,WI,MN), whether it be at home or away. So basically, if we take that feat for GRANTED, then our head coach receives little or no CREDIT/GOOD WILL for accomplishing said feat.
6. What really sucks for the head coach is that if Michgan DOES lose to any of those 6 teams, one shiny finish nail gets tapped into his coffin. Get enough of those little nails tapped in and its time to bury his ass.
5. MARGINAL CREDIT/GOOD WILL is granted for beating Iowa and Penn State. Yes, we CARE about our record against these perrenial powers, which is why CREDIT is given for WINS against them, but these guys aren't our blood rivals, against whom VICTORY is essential.
4. Win your bowl game. This is usually a showcase game, so it's important for the health of the program and the pride of the alumni. Perhaps it can be argued that a guy by the name of "Bo" proved that you can lose this one like clockwork and still have bullet-proof job security. But I think that winning your bowl game in this day and age is much more critical than the kindler, gentler days of the Big Two and Little Eight. Today's Michigan head coach BETTER win his bowl game more often than not or those aforementioned nails WILL be tapped into his coffin.
3. Beat Notre Dame. Pardon the drama, but we've got this epic battle for cosmic supremacy going on with those holier-than-thou jackasses. It's all about the pride of being able to say "Most Wins" and "Winningest Team". You can't do that if you keep losing to the Domers.
2. Beat Michigan State. Make no mistake about it, the head coach needs to win this one with regularity or his ass WILL get canned.
1. Beat Ohio State. It's not called The Game for nothing. The truth is, the staggering importance of winning this game had almost been forgotten amongst Michigan fans (and perhaps the coaches, too?). Shit, Bo won 4 of his last 5 against tOSU, and Mo and Lloyd went on a 8-2-1 tear before IT arrived. IT has a 4-1 record against Michigan. And IT is going to get Lloyd run out of AA if this sort of shit continues to happen very much longer.
Doesn't the data show that it's still the Big 2 and the Little 8? Well, 9 now. But still.
It wasn't until, like, my 50th listening before I noticed the phone ringing in that song. Ah, Ben. Let's hope that "Songs for Silverman" was just something he had to get out of his system, like "Fear of Pop"...
I would hypothesize that the Minny and PSU home/road data is caused by travel. Specifically, Minny plays in the most idiosyncratic home field in the conference (which helps them at home and may hurt them on the road) and PSU is in the middle of BFE, even for people from Iowa. Also, the schools may be the most difficult travel destinations and (speculation here) may play more home night games than the others.
The Gophers top the list because they schedule three joke non-conference home games every year where they run up a ton of points and get embarassed whenever they have to go on the road.
Conference games only, Maize... ha!
The Spirit of Bill Oliver didn't call me "a maze and blue queer" or anything, but an Ohio State fan just called me a Michigan man in a not too complimentary way.
Check it out:
http://www.everydayshouldbesatur...9#comment-
10338
Now that the Buckeyes' boosters have pegged me for a Wolverine fan, can someone please teach me the secret handshake?
Good god, man. I think that thread drew very clear lines for a few dozen people as to the desired outcome of the Michigan-OSU game.
I think you're right about that, Brian.
As a native Georgian and lifelong college football fan, I always watched the Michigan-Ohio State game with interest but not concern. It was an important game because of the history of the rivalry and the stature of the programs, but I didn't have any emotional investment in the outcome.
Now, however, the nature of the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry has become clear to me, as expressed in the following S.A.T.-style analogy:
Michigan : Ohio State :: Georgia : Auburn
The analogy works to an almost creepy-scary degree of accuracy.
Michigan and Georgia are large state universities with long institutional histories, both academically and athletically. (When Charles Knapp took over as the president of the University of Georgia in 1987, he even cited the University of Michigan as one of the state universities he intended to use as a model of public higher education when upgrading Georgia's national stature as an academic institution.)
Both Georgia and Michigan have run relatively clean football programs while getting hit hard for transgressions in their basketball programs. Both Georgia and Michigan have in-state rivals (Georgia Tech and Michigan State) that play erratic football, suffer from a strong "little brother" complex, and consider the state university a bigger rival than the state university considers them.
Across the aisle, the lame defenses of flagrant cheating and crude lowbrow insults offered by O.S.U. fans at E.D.S.B.S. sounded exactly like similar remarks I have heard form Auburn fans all my life. Brian's tale of his visit to Columbus parallels precisely the experiences of Georgia fans who have visited the Ugliest Village.
Auburn clearly has the most obnoxious fan base in the S.E.C. and it is becoming evident to me that Ohio State has the most obnoxious fan base in the Big Ten. Tommy Tuberville and Jim Tressel exude equal amounts of smarminess and each has been maddeningly successful at defeating his rival. The A.U. bumper stickers that tout Auburn as "THE university of Alabama" even echo O.S.U.'s odd insistence upon being known as "THE Ohio State University."
Maybe we should schedule an Auburn-Ohio State series to coincide with my proposed Georgia-Michigan series, as it is increasingly apparent to me that Michigan is, in many ways, a Midwestern Georgia and that Auburn is, in almost every respect, Ohio State with a Southern accent.
Oops! That's "from," not "form." I should know better than to post a comment while I'm trying to each lunch. My bad.
Three other points on the similarities:
1) Georgia-Auburn and Michigan-Ohio State are two of the most noteworthy college football series between border state (rather than in-state) rivals.
2) Both series have long histories of games played in cities called "Columbus." Obviously, O.S.U.'s home games against U.M. are played in Columbus, Ohio, but, before Georgia and Auburn went to a home and home arrangement, the Bulldogs and the Plainsmen met at a neutral site in Columbus, Georgia.
3) From the 1960s to the late 1980s, Michigan was coached by Bo Schembechler, who came to Ann Arbor from Ohio State, where he was a protege of the Buckeyes' greatest coach, Woody Hayes. From the 1960s to the late 1980s, Georgia was coached by Vince Dooley, who came to Athens from Auburn, where he was a protege of the Tigers' greatest coach, Shug Jordan.
Eerie.
That was "eat lunch," not "each lunch." Dang. I'd better quit while I'm behind.
Here's the more articulate version of what I was trying to say before:
http://www.xanga.com/tkyleking/4...72775/
item.html
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