More later on this.  Kind of wrestling with how you rate an athletic director.  Coaching hires?  Overall success of the teams?  Financial health?  Facilities?  On continuing/enhancing Michigan brand and tradition?   Coke vs. Pepsi?  Would love your take in the comments and a brief poll: [poll id=34]

Granted, it’s pretty silly to talk about Big Ten championship scenarios sitting three games in at 1-2 in the conference, but this was a topic during the Monday press conference at the Junge Center.  Stevie Brown (and others IIRC) discussed the possibility of winning the rest of their games and claiming the Big Ten Championship, maybe even earning a trip to the Rose Bowl.  Brown: “I have a feeling,” Brown said. “I don’t know if anybody else has a feeling, but I have this feeling. If we can win out, I think we have a chance that we might be able to make it to the Rose Bowl.” Brown acknowledged they’d need some help. Taking a look at that help, the Rose Bowl is effectively out of reach purely via the automatic Big Ten bid.  To even get to a tie-breaker, these things must happen: Michigan wins out.  Of course. Iowa loses twice.  Those will likely have to be Saturday in East Lansing and in November in Columbus.  Certainly possible.  The rest of the slate is at home against IU, Minnesota and Northwestern and you have to assume they’ll handle those teams. Michigan State loses at least one more game after beating Iowa, perhaps to Penn State or at Purdue.  State doesn’t face the Buckeyes. Penn State and Ohio State…

Getting down to where the original Little Brown Jug came from back in 1903 (Red Wing, Minnesota).

  “Double personal foul #23: Excessive No. 1’s and unjustified use of a neck roll” Via Lance at umgoblog who dug up this gem.  It’s Rich Rodriguez, #23 for West Virginia picking off a punt pass against Joe Paterno and Penn State back in 1984:   Jeeeezz coach, lighten up on the vintage 1980s Miami #1 celebration.  And I love the former walk-on, patrolling the secondary with a neck roll!

Someone dialed up WTKA this morning to offer an explanation as to why the MMB went with the ‘Opera’ set, after Delaware State’s band did their thing.  He said that a parent of a band member told him the more traditional set was a deliberate attempt to come off as more of a stereotypical “Ivy League”-like routine, almost as a joke in the wake of The Approaching Storm’s performance.  I don’t know if that’s true, or if as some have suggested, Michigan simply didn’t want to upstage TAS, or maybe more likely, the MMB wanted to demonstrate acoustic quality over flash.  It’s certainly not a huge deal to me, but with much talk about bands I’ll offer this: I grew up watching games in Spartan Stadium.  I remember one year the Michigan band came in and did their thing, probably in the early 80s.  At one point they dropped their instruments and ran around, I forget why, but I remember thinking, ‘Wow, those bastards guys are damn creative.’ This band seems to have stretched traditional limits over the years, including my favorite, the Jaws theme played at the 1976 Orange Bowl (white pants!) where they formed the shape of a person swimming along peacefully before being engulfed by the Great White shark: The Oklahoma band was thoroughly ‘served’ in ‘76…

Given we’re halfway through the schedule, I’m reinstituting the weekly MVictors Power Index, which rates the Big Ten and Notre Dame.  As discussed last year, while there’s many solid polls out there including the excellent BlogPoll, the thought would be that it’d be cool to rate the teams tightly within our purview. Each weekend pollsters (select group of contributors from Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Michigan State) will rate each team against the others and assign a simple score: * ‘2? indicates Team A would beat Team B in the upcoming week with reasonable certainty (approximately 80% of the time) * ‘1? indicates a toss-up * ‘0? indicates a loss with reasonable certainty (80% of the time). Ratings assume the teams would play on a perfectly neutral field. The totals are tallied and an index is created using a perfect score (11 match-ups x 2 points or 22 points) and the teams are ranked.  What I like about this: * Having the Irish rated in the mix of the Big Ten teams. As a Big Ten fan, you know you slot the Irish in your head; now we’ll have a data point. * I think this beats simply slotting these teams 1-12. The index shows a more detailed level of separation between the teams (although maybe not this year). *…

Former Michigan fullback Aaron Shea dialed up Ira Weintraub and Sam Webb on WTKA on Friday to fire back at the comments made by Rick Leach on Thursday.  Notes: “I wanted to talk about what Rick Leach said yesterday.  I was really disturbed about how he called out Coach Carr.” “There’s not a bigger Michigan Man than I know than Lloyd Carr, and look who he learned from: Bo.  Bo coached Rick Leach and for him to call Lloyd Carr really, frankly, pisses me off.” Shea then went on to defend Carr’s decision to sit in Erik Campbell’s suite in Iowa City, and I agree. “I want to let everyone know—don’t ever question Coach Carr’s loyalty and for Rick Leach to say that…I tell you what, I hope I don’t cross paths with Rick Leach for a long time.” You can hear all of the WTKA 1050AM podcasts here.

A few notes from the game, a few minutes after Michigan resounding win: No offense to Delaware State, The Approaching Storm and the nice folks from Dover.  But if we must put these FCS teams on the slate they’ve got to at least be upper-tier programs, like maybe our winged brethren Delaware.  Having a game today beat a bye week— but just barely.  This game was no fun for me after watching the first two possessions.  The student section was maybe 3/4 full at kick-off: The closed captioning at Michigan stadium was debuted today.  I think it’s a nice idea and I’m all about improving the game experience for the handicapped, but I wonder how helpful this really is to the hearing impaired: Rodriguez emptied the bench of course, but didn’t go to “R. Calhoun”…a fan who was in full pads, helmet, gloves, etc., and ready to get in the game.  Seated right up the gut in section 23, he even wandered down to the sideline gate to share a few observations: The prohibition of bags into the stadium of was in full effect again today, and I noticed these guys atop the northeast tower looking for serious troublemakers.  I want these guys on that wall.  I need these guys on that wall: I enjoyed checking out WTKA’s Bud Light…