• Do M Men sell their tickets to strangers?

    Between ebay, Ticketsnow and Stubhub there are about 2,000 tickets to the Michigan-Ohio State game on November 17 currently for sale. Not one of the tickets sold on these sites will anywhere close to the $60 face value of the ticket. Michigan’s policy on selling tickets is pretty clear. First, they can not be sold on University property at all although the authorities generally look the other way at all the activity outside Crisler before the game. Second, the back of your ticket states “This ticket shall not be sold above face value..” and it is understood that your tickets could be revoked if your caught selling for more than face. Looking closer at some of the available tickets on StubHub I saw 4 together…in my section, in my row. Bollocks! Given the location I have to assume that some season ticket holder is selling his soul these beauties to make a tidy profit. I get that a) the real cost of these tickets is very high, especially those facing the maximum required donation, b) times are a little hard out there, c) folks should have the right to try to make a buck, d) there are times when people just can’t make the game or live out of town. But…..by putting those tickets out on the market means I…

  • Path to Pasadena Now Clear

    What a great win last night for this team and for Henne, the kind of gutsy performance that people will remember for years. By coming off the bench twice to save this game and this season, Henne put his footprint on this post-apocolyptic 6 game run right next to that of Hart. And hats off to Manningham and Arrington who played their butts off all day. Quick takes on this game: Fumbos in the Booth – Why wasn’t the Arrington catch in the endzone immediately reviewed by the replay officials? Carr had to use a timeout to get them to look at it- what were they doing? Just because it was correctly overturned (eventually) doesn’t excuse those clowns in the booth. That was a huge, huge play and if Carr didn’t step in it looks like it wouldn’t have been overturned. The Difference – Carr deserves a lot of credit here for how this team played. Other than Ryan Mallett’s miscues and a bad pass from Henne that resulted in a pick, the team played a very error-free game. Their first penalty wasn’t until the fourth quarter and you saw solid play in the kicking game and M didn’t drop many passes. This is a well disciplined team while Illinois could have won this game if not for bad penalties,…

  • Big Ten Rose Bowl Tie-Breaker Rules

    10/25/2009: The Big Ten rules changed in 2009, FCS games played is no longer a factor.  Click here for more. 11/8/08 Update: Spartan fans, that Iowa win over PSU is a buzz kill. Had Penn State won out and lost to Michigan State, Dantonio and company would go to the Rose Bowl per the rules below. Not to say that Ohio State won’t lose again but I think that’s unlikely. As reported by Jim Carty and noted here, I’ve confirmed the rule changes to the Big Ten tie-breaker. The rule change applies to the Rose Bowl only, but it does penalized Big Ten teams for scheduling teams from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), aka the former Division I-AA. I got this from the Big Ten offices, who also mentioned that this would be put online at bigten.org ASAP: METHOD TO DETERMINE BIG TEN CONFERENCE AUTOMATICREPRESENTATIVE TO THE BOWL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES Effective for bowl games following the 2006-09 regular football seasons, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) will consist of five (5) bowl games: BCS National Championship Game, Rose Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, Orange Bowl, and Sugar Bowl. Participation by a Big Ten Conference member institution will be determined as follows: a. BCS National Championship Game. In the event the conference has one or two football teams ranked No. 1 and/or No. 2…

  • Projecting Michigan’s 2008 BCS Bowl

    Filed under for what it is worth, here’s where some of your major (and not so major) sources have Michigan ending up this season. Complete BCS bowl projections are tracked here. All the major sources have the Wolverines ending up in the BCS. Each also assume M trips up somewhere along the way or doesn’t pass another undefeated squad to make it to New Orleans for the BCS Championship. CollegeFootballNews (Scout.com): Michigan vs. Hawaii, Orange Bowl ESPN (Ivan Maisel): Michigan vs. Texas, Rose Bowl ESPN (Mark Schlabach): Michigan vs. Oklahoma, Rose Bowl SI.com (Stewart Mandel): Michigan vs. Rutgers, Rose Bowl I think the Rose Bowl is probably the right pick. While you can expect that Michigan would run through the Big Ten schedule up until Wisconsin and Ohio State, there’s still the matter of Oregon and Notre Dame in the next few weeks.

  • Pee in the Cornflakes

    Just learned from classmate Rosey that Corwin “Cornflakes” Brown is leaving the staff of the New York Jets to take the defensive coordinator job at Notre Dame. This hurts. It always hurts when a player or coach becomes affiliated with a rival, but a captain? Cornflakes served as captain for the 1992 Wolverines, who were Big Ten and Rose Bowl champs. The team was also undefeated but didn’t win the national title because three of the games amazingly ended in ties. This team took the tie to a new level. [Michigan trivia buffs, check yourself on ‘How many Michigan teams were undefeated in the 1990s?’]. When they weren’t tying people they were kicking ass. The 1992 Wolverines scored more than 30 points on 8 of 12 games, including putting up 61 on Houston, and tossing a 63-spot on Minnesota. Brown was popular with the Michigan students when he played. It is confirmed that one group of madcaps even painted C-O-R-N-F-L-A-K-E-S on their pasty bare chests during one game. He’ll have his hands full with the Irish, who were smoked by his former school, LSU and USC this past year (and each of these teams put on the brakes late in the game).

  • USC Kicker Found Dead

    I saw this first on the Michigan Zone blog. Sad to hear that USC’s kicker Mario Denalo was found dead at the bottom of some cliff. He had a lot of success at USC but played pretty poorly in the Rose Bowl, incredibly missing two extra points. Here’s more.

  • Stubborn DeBord Wouldn’t Change a Thing

    Oh this is a beauty. You won’t believe these comments from Michigan offensive coordinator Mike DeBord. I was never really sure about this guy. There is a legion of folks in Mount Pleasant that can’t stand the man and what he did for the Chips. But this quote really chapped my ass. Here’s DeBord addressing the press on how he’d attack USC’s defense knowing what he learned during the game: “I’d run the ball again. When you’re getting sacked, tell me how you’re going to keep throwing the ball and you’re going to make improvements. I don’t understand that. So no. I’d run the ball. I wouldn’t do anything different.” WHAT? What don’t you understand? You stubborn man. Carr shouldn’t have DeBord’s head for this. I’d like to chalk this up to DeBord being a smart ass, but it doesn’t sound like he was.