Came in my mail today, always a great day each summer. My wife brought in the mail and I spotted that brownish yellow envelope from across the room. There’s nothing special about the artwork on the tickets, which you may have already seen on mgoblue.com’s ad for single ticket sales. Each ticket has the opponent’s logo along with the same shot of the stadium and field. One exception is the one designated ‘Maize Out’ game (Wisconsin), which features a shot of the student section donned in Maize gear. One change to the tickets themselves: they’ve added a recommended gate number alongside section, row and seat, best I can tell the first time that’s been done. Also within the ticket book is a notice to call the athletic department if you need wheelchair accessible seating in future seasons.
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The Power Index
At the suggestion of an MVictors contributor, I’m going to release a weekly index featuring the Big Ten and Notre Dame. 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, while including a couple twists. After talking with a few guys, we thought it might be cool to rate these select teams in a blend of human polling and computer simulation. Each weekend pollsters 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. Ratings assume the teams would play on a perfectly neutral field (like Ryan Field, har har). 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 data. * I think this beats simply slotting these teams 1-12. The index shows a…
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Inside the 2008 adidas Jersey
Thanks to ‘Michael’ who sent these stealth photos of inside the new 2008 Michigan football uniforms, featuring a few surprises: Inside the shoulder pad, a listing of conference championship years: An homage to Bo and a message for the current players: mgoblue on the inseam:
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Tom Harmon Goes for Schlitz Gusto
I love this ad from LIFE Magazine in the days leading up to the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics featuring Michigan Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon. Old 98 is featured as an NBC broadcaster who likes his Schlitz beer with a little extra gusto.
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Rodriguez on College Football Live (YouTube)
Via wolverinesFTW: He mentioned in the interview that he shot an honest 79 this summer on the links. Really? Coach, Sir Charles thinks your swing is ugly:
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Foote to MSU: “y’all always gonna suck” (audio)
Continuing the roll of Michigan athletes, coaches and beat writers on the WDFN 1130AM Stoney and Wojo radiothon is former Wolverine Larry Foote. As usual, Foote came hard and came raw. He hit on a variety of topics including what it’s like working out with Mike Barwis, his Steelers, and like Jalen Rose yesterday, took time to blast MSU. Notes:– Thinks this team will “shock a lot of people” based on the conditioning they are going through.– He confirmed Barwis is “a psycho”, “a freak”, is “nutso”, and has “some screws missing.”– Said Tyrone Wheatley’s been working out just “testing it out.”– Said he “had a dream” about the Detroit Lions’ season. “9-7 and they make the playoffs.”– When asked the obligatory Brett Favre question: “he’s definitely being selfish.” For your ringtones and tailgate mixtapes, here’s just Foote’s message to the Spartans as he signed off, “Go Blue and Michigan State, y’all always gonna suck.”
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Lou Holtz: Avoid Jason Peter (audio from Jim Rome)
Did anyone out there hear the segment with former Nebraska stand-out and recovering drug addict Jason Peter on Jim Rome today? I caught it in the car, I’m looking for the audio to post. If you’ve got it please send it along. Even if you know the story you’ve got to hear him tell it. In a nutshell, his younger brother Damian was a highly rated Holtz commit to Notre Dame. The summer before he was to enroll he was injured in their swimming pool and was perhaps minutes from never walking again. He eventually recovered but it ended his career. According to Peter, Holtz never called his brother once when he was in the hospital. Nothing. When his brother eventually enrolled at Notre Dame, none of the coaching staff ever approached him about the injury or offered any assistance. Me writing this doesn’t do justice to the passion of live interview, so I’m trying to get it for you. I’ve heard a few things about Holtz and I’ve heard his motivational speech, I’ve seen some of the messes he’s created and I listen to him on ESPN. All this said, there are two sides to stories like this and we really should hear what Holtz has to say.
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Lloyd Carr on WDFN 7/24 (audio)
Coach Carr called in to support 1130AM WDFN in Detroit to support Stoney and Wojo’s radiothon. He shared his disdain for the Big Ten media day going on right now, and updated us all on his recent travels. He discussed his athletic prowess and that his golf game is catching up with his natural skills. Carr’s also enjoying catching up and spending more quality time with former players. Things of course turned to Rodriguez and he was asked if he wished anything was done differently in the hiring. He paused, then hinted at some concerns about today’s coaching contracts but quickly said he was looking forward toward the team, their challenges this fall. Carr admitted he has not read 1 pre-season magazine. Carr said he knows there are a lot of very good players coming back, and he thinks the attitude is solid and excited about the conditioning and thinks things will be many people “pleasantly surprised” by this team. Much more in the 13 minute segment. I especially liked his final message for the radiothon hosts, enjoy:
