You’d think the heart of the football season would bring out the best in vintage & unique Wolverine memorabilia.   Having patrolled the auction site pretty consistently for the past couple years I can tell you the selection has been lackluster as of late.  Either that, or I’ve become a memorabilia elitist and desensitized to cool stuff after producing over 100 editions of eBay Watch.  Anyway, it never fails that there’s something out there worth discussion, this week it’s these wire photos from the 1948 Rose Bowl against USC.   Here’s a few for you, click to see more from the auction: First up a shot from above the Rose Parade.  I love this shot because I don’t recall seeing many aerial photos from the era and this one’s pretty sharp.  I’ve been to the Rose Parade a couple times and to me, it’s of course a wonderful tradition but on the morning of the big game I’d rather be a) resting after a big New Year’s Eve in LA, or b) tailgating down the street outside the stadium.  One thing that cracks me up about the parade is that it effectively cuts off traffic from LA to the stadium if you don’t know where to go (and no one from Michigan knows where to go): Next up, another cool shot.  It’s…

  Maureen Dowd of the NY Times is required reading twice a week, no matter how you lean politically.  Ask Lloyd Carr. In today’s piece, Dowd tosses around some ideas about how to save print journalism, including this beauty: Self-described print press “fanatic” Mortimer Zuckerman, who owns The Daily News and U.S. News & World Report, proposed to Forbes that the federal government could save newspapers by allowing sports betting on newspaper Web sites. Further: I tracked down Zuckerman in Jerusalem on Tuesday to ask him about it. “Newspapers are so critical for public dialogue and holding public officials responsible,” he told me. “And who’s going to be able to afford original reporting in the next five years? Very, very few.” He said some British newspapers make millions on betting games like Bingo. “People are spending money on what is basically a social vice anyhow,” he said. “So why not use it to preserve the First Amendment? It’s not a perfect solution, but it is a solution.” While I like the idea of being able to conveniently plop down a few bucks on the game, I’m weary of folks turning to gambling to solve all of our problems.  Or taxing soda or sports tickets for that matter. Robo-Journalism Maybe this will help.  Also recently published in the Times.  A group…

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). *…