Oh my nerves are shot. You get the feeling we really haven’t scratched the surface on the man that is Lloyd Carr. I just saw this link on mgoblog’s m.go.licious links. Pete Thamel of the New York Times was on campus this week and spent some time with our coach. According to his post Another Side of Carr, Thamel reveals prior to his Monday presser Carr approached him with a question, ““Do you know Maureen Dowd?”. Carr went on to praise Dowd for her intelligence and style. Dowd of course writes the ‘Liberties’ Op-Ed column in the Times and is a big time liberal. Along with Thomas Friedman, she is part of the A-Team of columnists appearing each week on Wednesday and the coveted Sunday editions. I doubt that a copy of the Times never made it to Bo Schembechler’s desk during his days roaming his building on State State, and if he ever got wind of Carr’s praise of Dowd you can bet he have a few words. Old Bo was a vocal conservative and I’m sure he kept things that way inside Schembechler Hall. Is our man Carr turning the political leanings of the athletic department toward those of our students, faculty and town? Elsewhere: Check out this week’s Sports Illustrated’s piece on the Detroit Lions practice squad…
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To go along with your Michigan lawn gnome
A few items of interest from around the web, here on Wednesday evening before the battle for the Little Brown Jug: – Just posted on mgoblue.com, for sale is a replica commemorative coin that is being used on Novermber 17th as the flip coin for the big game. It features the likeness of Woody on one side, and Bo on the other. Have to assume the Buckeye captain will call ‘Woody’ when the teams meet at midfield but we’ll see. For those who need to add to their collection of knicknacks, and knicknacks. – Frank Deford on NPR this morning, discussing the ridiculous nature of the college bowl system: “No fair or rational system can choose just two teams to play for the title. ‘Dancing with the Stars’ is a more genuine athletic competition.” – Earlier this week Mgoblog on Lloyd Carr: Carr has once again picked his charges up off the mat and driven them towards respectability. We can wish this peculiar talent of Carr’s was less firmly established, but we should be thankful for it at the same time. – And finally back to the Little Brown Jug, an excerpt from this week’s Game Notes press release: The trophy disappeared from the trophy case of the Michigan Athletic Administration building in 1930 and was not found until 1934.…
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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…
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Field Passes on Maloy Auction
Act fast! As part of the charity auction to benefit the Pat Maloy memorial scholarship, Lloyd Carr and the football program offered up 2 pre-game field credentials (and 2 tickets) to the big game this Saturday against Minnesota. The auction ends at 6pm EDT today so act fast! There’s plenty of other cool stuff being auctioned over the next several days. Check out Featured Items for the premium including a Tom Brady Super Bowl autographed ball which already has an asking price of $1,200. I still can’t believe what has happened to that dude.
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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,…
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WTKA to broadcast Ufer Game today
Ann Arbor’s WTKA will be broadcasting the 1976 Michigan vs. Stanford game, which the Wolverines won 55-0. You can hear the great old Ufer voice starting at 1:30 pm EDT today. If you’re out of town you can catch the stream on wtka.com. More on Ufer here from this site. Beat Illini!
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Danielson is Still a Cock, but…
He’s right about this stance. I heard CBS color man and former Detroit Lion/Boilermaker Gary Danielson raising his concern about the college football overtime rules. He’s not opposed to the format; his issue is with the suits that steer policy on NCAA statistics. His beef is that the NCAA recognizes overtime statistics on level with those that occur during the first 4 quarters. As we know, the start-from-the-25-until someone-wins approach to handling regulation ties was instituted in 1996. What hasn’t been widely discussed is that dispensation of the stats rolled up during the indefinite OT period. Big Gary maintains that the numbers rolled up in overtime shouldn’t count in the books. Teams should get a win or loss in overtime, and the record books should leave it at that. I don’t know why he started this stance; I don’t know if it is personal (he doesn’t appear to hold any Purdue records of note) or whether it is just a bonafide take. Either way he’s right. Statistics in college football don’t hold the same distinction as those in sports such as baseball. Records related to the quarterback position, for instance, have been written and rewritten over the past two decades without a lot of fanfare. There can never be pure apples to apples historical comparisons in stats in most major…
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It’s Fumblitis, Daddy-o – Michigan’s First Night Game (1944)
More on the First Night game With the night game with Illinois this Saturday this is a good opportunity to follow-up to my post on Michigan’s first night game back in 1944 at Marquette. Greg Kinney of the Bentley museum recently sent me a few articles he found on microfilm that provided another photo from the game and a few more tidbits. In the original post I found a picture from the Marquette yearbook of the game, and it was clear that Michigan was playing with some type of painted ball. The info Kinney sent me shed some light as a reporter noted “The Wolverines have been using a yellow ball in practice sessions this week..” This new game photo provides another shot of the pale pigskin: A few other choice quotes from the pre- and post-game stories about the trip to Marquette: The M coaches on playing at night: “Crisler and his aides would rather have met in an afternoon contest. “But,” as one Michigan coach said, “variety is the spice and maybe we’ll like night football. Who knows?”. From the post game article, some criticism from the local press: “If Michigan is to successfully open defense of the Big Ten football title…Fritz Crisler’s gridders may have to display a better brand of football..” Wow, origins of a football…