Per an email from Sara Wilcox of Guinness World Records PR. I emailed earlier this week asking if Guinness had completed their certification: Thank you for your inquiry to the Guinness World Records press office. Yes, a Guinness World Records adjudicator was on site and verified the following record – Highest attendance for an ice hockey match The largest confirmed audience for a game of ice hockey was 85,451 people at "The Big Chill at the Big House" between the University of Michigan and Michigan State University at Michigan Football Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, on 11 December 2010. This number is in pretty sharp contrast to the 113,411 claimed at the game on Saturday. More later. I noticed this number hasn’t been reported on their website just yet. Update: One possibility is that while they’ve certified the “record” this 85K figure was just an initial count. Via a tweet from @MichiganHockey (MichiganHockey.net) that figure may just be the tally of the tickets scanned and the full number will follow. We’ll see. While I didn’t think the crowd was larger than UConn it certainly must have been over 100K, no? Update #2: MichiganHockey.net found a blog post from Guinness on an update on the count – confirming this is still in flight. Update #3: AnnArbor.com chimes in, referencing the…
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Groban Jokes Still Hot
More proof that Josh Groban jokes are still on fire, caller ‘Mark from Novi’ dialed up Sam Webb during the recruiting round-up on WTKA 1050AM this morning and killed it: [display_podcast] . The full segment is here, and as Sam recaps the visits on the Big Chill weekend. The theme? It was an outstanding event for all involved but recruiting and more importantly, commitments, are in limbo with the coaching situation.
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Lovely Parents – Big Chill | Sights & Sounds
It was quite a day in the Big House yesterday and Michigan smoked the Spartans 5-0 in front of 113,000 plus. A few notes: Sam and Ira firing up the Victors Lounge before the game. Ira taught fans the traditional Yost chants all week but the classic “UGLY PARENTS” was left in the chamber in the shut-out. An example of the nice touches they included – the hockey team going under the Go Blue banner before the game Mike Hart was in attendance. I asked him if he smoked peace pipe with Jim Harbaugh. Hart told me he’d support whomever is Michigan’s coach, including Harbaugh, but reminded me that Rich Rodriguez is our coach. Teams assembling for the national anthem. My weak lens doesn’t illustrate the view from the 6th level of the press box. Surprising to me, you could actually following the puck very well up there. Unfortunately I couldn’t see the stealth bomber fly over from the photo deck but it got rave reviews from folks in the stadium. Funny – I didn’t see this on the rack at Moe’s Almost 5 minutes into the game I left the photo deck and headed to my east side seats. The West lower concourse was a mess – huge lines. There was no wait to get in on the…
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Lightly Chilled (Pregame Notes and Photos)
I popped over to the stadium for a few minutes to get a flavor of the action and the scene. Notes: Achtung! Media relations announced that they have CLOSED both golf courses tomorrow due to the weather. Fend for yourselves! mgoblog’s game preview is up. Check out The Only Colors for the Spartan preview if nothing else for the photo that leads off the post. I ran into the pyrotechnic crew (at least a dozen guys). From the sound of those cats, it’s going to be pretty good. If-Dwight-Scrute-were-in-charge good. Tune into WTKA 1050AM for the pregame show. I’ll be doing a Big Chill edition of This Week in Michigan Football Hockey History. It involves life, death, ice and you might even from Red Berenson in the middle of the segment. And here it is: [display_podcast] FWIW – I’ll likely be in the Victors Lounge tomorrow if you have the means. A few photos for you, enjoy. It was beautiful out there around lunch time: A view of the Blue line from one of the benches Refrigeration in Exexcelsious deo From the student section
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Ice Evolution
On Monday Red Berenson taught Sam Webb and the rest of the media a little bit about ice. Here’s what he said (thanks to Ira at WTKA for the clip): [display_podcast] Building on Red’s description of the surface for Saturday’s game, I thought it’d be cool to take a look at how the ice has evolved over the years. Where did I find a lot of this info? John U. Bacon’s outstanding book Blue Ice of course, get yours if you don’t. “Outdoor/Outdoor” Ice (1900-1916): Michigan hockey, or at least something like it, started after the turn of the century as students formed ‘The Huron Hockey Club’—a group of students that played the game on the Huron River and its “outdoor/outdoor” ice. According to Blue Ice, in those early days instead of sweaters they wore bowler hats, coats and ties. In lieu of pucks they used things “tin cans, wood blocks, frozen fruit and even packed horse manure.” I’m guessing you could also find a little bit of “maize ice” near the woods back in those days. For years the group lobbied the athletic department unsuccessfully for funding and more importantly, for its place amongst the other varsity sports. “Indoor/Outdoor” Ice (1916-1927): The sport (and ice skating in general) was growing in popularity as the years went on. Eventually the…
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How the Gator Got #3
I’m not exactly sure how I got to this point, but I’ve posted a few times on the intricacies of the bowl picks between the Gator Bowl and Insight. It started back in October when I found this nugget on a Gator Bowl press release: The Gator Bowl will share, with the Insight Bowl, the third and fourth pick in the Big Ten Conference after the BCS. The Gator Bowl and the Insight Bowl will each submit, to the Big Ten Conference, their team selection…Should each Bowl desire the same team, the selection order will be decided by the flip of a coin.. Then a reader showed me this story by Garry Smits on jacksonville.com which had a slightly different version of what was worked out, including a pre-emptive coin flip earlier this year: The other bit of good news is that the Gator Bowl won a coin flip with the Insight Bowl in the Big Ten offices in Chicago (Catlett called heads). Therefore, the Gator Bowl will get the third Big Ten selection after the league champion goes to the Rose Bowl. While I believed the story above (why would they make that up), I wondered why the glossy Gator Bowl press release was so specific about the relationship between the bowls and what prompted the change. So Monday…
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Berenson’s Advice for Burns, Michigan Soccer team
Thanks to this weekend’s overtime win, Coach Steve Burns and his Wolverines are headed to the final four. Did you know that the Michigan men’s soccer offices are upstairs at Yost along with Red and the hockey program? I asked him today if he had any advice for Burns and crew as they prepared for the trip to Santa Barbara: “No, not really. I like the way his team has done it. When you’re a coach sometimes you have to lead your team when things aren’t going well, and you have to get out of the way and the players take over and lead when they are going well. It’s a question I asked him last week, ‘Who’s leading the team, the coaches or the players?’. He said the players. I said, ‘Good,’ because that’s the way it should be this time of year.” “The advice is keep doing what you’re doing. It doesn’t get any tougher, it just gets better. It sounds like they are in every game and they know how to win on the road. This will be great for them.” “You know what? Those guys have worked so hard in that soccer office over the years and it’s nice to see them finally get rewarded on the field and in the NCAA tournament.” On his vicinity…
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Caption Needed
Update 12/7: A new prize option, the Ufer Meechigan t-shirt, see below. <insert snarky caption here> Rich Rod was a bit subdued in the press conference today, here meeting with the media before the video portion. That’s Dave Brandon in the background fiddling with his Blackberry. He was at the Junge Center today to formally accept the Gator Bowl bid. mgoTim has the nuts, bolts, twigs and berries for you. One item of note for the uniWatch crowd: Michigan will don the home blue uniforms in the game according to Dave Ablauf of Media Relations. (Hat tip to reader Brian S. for asking me the question earlier today). Got a winning caption? Submit it in the comments of this post. If someone comes up with an epic caption you’ll get one of these awesome Bo Schembechler wearing headset shirts compliments of the wonderful folks at Moe’s/Underground Printing. Update 12/7: Or, how about this beauty? Hot off the press the Bob Ufer ‘Meechigan’ t-shirt: