Let's get pumped up ... or something

This press conference video (courtesy of Coastal Carolina coach Dave Bennett) has been floating around the interwebs for a couple days, but I didn't have a chance to watch it until this morning. It must be shared. Watch it. Now.


I'm literally speechless.

Catching up promises not to sue

It's all about Oklahoma: Baylor apparently is 100 percent on board with my assessment from the other day: The Big 12's viability is dependent on Oklahoma. Baylor will only waive its right to sue Texas A&M for its proposed SEC departure if Oklahoma promises to stick around in the Big 12, and that's something OU isn't quite ready to do:

Oklahoma, meanwhile, has no timetable for reaching a decision on whether to stay in the Big 12 or pursue a move to the Pac-12, according to a source with knowledge of Oklahoma's decision-making process. Last Friday, university president David Boren said the school would evaluate all of its options.

Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione isn't against becoming part of a 16-team conference if that's what Boren decides, although it's not seen as ideal, the source said. The source said Oklahoma would not be divided in the process.

So the choices are (a) basically the status quo and (b) CONFERENCE REALIGNMENTOCALYPSE HIDE THE CHILDREN AAAGHGHH. And it's up to Oklahoma.

On a related note, this part makes me laugh:

A source with knowledge of Baylor's situation said the Bears' first choice is to stay together with the remaining nine Big 12 schools and pursue a 10th for expansion.

Really? So Baylor would rather be part of a solid conference now centered in Texas than be cast adrift into a sea of uncertainty with little hope of financial or competitive relevance in the future? That's some top-notch investigative reporting from ESPN. I mean, is there really an alternative?

But Baylor, like Missouri, Kansas, Kansas State and Iowa State, isn't sitting idle. Neither is the Big East, which has reached out to the Big 12 schools that could be left behind if the conference were to lose two members (Oklahoma and Oklahoma State) or four (the Oklahoma schools, Texas and Texas Tech), the source said.

The Big East would be willing to expand to 12 football-playing members and 20 for men's and women's basketball in order to stave off a potential raid from the SEC (West Virginia), the ACC (Syracuse and Connecticut) or even the Big Ten (Pitt or Rutgers), according to sources.

OK, let me rephrase that? Is there a viable alternative? The Big East seriously wants to go to 20 (!!!) teams for basketball, including a clump of five in the Southwest? Scheduling would be a nightmare. And while basketball is a delightful game of peach-basket-y goodness, football pays the bills, and the Big 12 leftovers would do little to make the Big East more relevant in that regard. This is just getting ridiculous.

Brian at MGoBlog said it best the other day: "When Texas is playing Kent State on Thanksgiving, everyone will realize how stupid they've been."

Notre Dame to start Tommy Rees against Michigan: No surprise here. Rees was far better than Dayne Crist last week, going 24 for 34 racking up almost 300 yards and two touchdowns in his one half of play against South Florida. If not for T.J. Jones forgetting that he was playing football for about five seconds, Rees probably would have accounted for 27 points and led a comeback win from a 16-0 halftime deficit that was partly the result of Dayne Crist going 7 for 15 with a pick.

Rees did go 4-1 down the stretch last year after one of Crist's knees fell apart for the 37th time, but he wasn't exactly dominant in those games: He averaged about 200 yards, two touchdowns and a pick against Tulsa, Utah, Army, USC and Miami. And only one of those games was on the road: Against USC (in a rain-marred slopfest), he went 20 of 32 for 152 yards with two touchdowns and three picks. Still, he's been significantly more potent than Crist in producing points, and that's what matters. For what it's worth, I was hoping Crist would start against Michigan (homerism FTW).

As for Crist, his relatively disappointing career is probably at its functional end. For most of last year and the week leading up to the USF game, Brian Kelly was talking about how Crist was the best quarterback in practice and seemed to have a better grasp of the offense and blah blah blah. The fact of the matter is that in the games, he never produced at the level Kelly needs for his offense to be any good. With Rees just a sophomore and having (obviously) more long-term viability, my bet is that he's the guy from here on out. Whether that's a good thing for this year's high hopes remains to be seen.

Damn it, K.C. Joyner: So I saw this headline that read "Joyner: Wolverines can't handle Irish offense," and it excited me in a demented way. Given my take on some of K.C. Joyner's recent ... ummm ... "analysis," I thought, "This thing is gonna be ripe for a fisking," and I proceeded to laugh like Mr. Burns while rubbing my hands together in evil-old-man fashion.

Sadly, I was wrong; his argument is actually backed up quite well with logical and relevant statistics. Example: Notre Dame averaged just over 8 yards per pass attempt and just under 7 yards per rush against South Florida, which returned the large majority of a defense that finished in the top 20 last year in almost every significant category.

And this is pretty much exactly what I was saying in my Week 1 recap:

Had it not been for a couple of bad decisions on passes by Crist and Rees that turned into interceptions; a mistake by wide receiver T.J. Jones not to look for a pass on a crossing route that turned into an interception; a fumble on a run that could have been blown dead and instead turned into a touchdown return for South Florida; and a missed chip shot 30-yard field goal -- then the Irish could have easily posted 30-40 points in this contest. All of this is not to excuse the Irish for making mistakes that cost them a game they should have won, but it does give us an idea of just how much potential Notre Dame has on offense this season.

The hope (from a Michigan fanboy standpoint) is that Rees' first start on the road -- at night, on national TV and in front of the largest crowd in the history of the sport -- contains lots of the "oops I didn't see that linebacker"-type errors that first-year starters typically make.

Miami to start Jacory Harris against Ohio State: Stephen Morris' ascension to the top of the depth chart lasted all of one (uninspiring) game, as Al Golden announced Thursday that interception machine Jacory Harris will get the start Saturday. And in the coachspeak-iest terms possible, Golden said Harris actually won the job in camp and was simply returning to the spot he had rightfully earned:

"Jacory won the job in camp," Golden said. "... It was primarily because of the body of work that Jacory put together in training camp, his experience and obviously what we saw in the game. The things that we needed in the game were really things that we thought Jacory could give us at this stage."

In other words, "I'm not very comfortable with the other guy but don't wanna throw him under the bus so toughness camp experience senior leadership yadda yadda." Morris was OK against Maryland -- he finished 19 for 25 for 195 yards and ran for a TD -- but he didn't throw a touchdown pass, did throw an ugly pick-six in the final minute and was primarily responsible for two straight delay-of-game penalties (that's hard to do, BTW). Harris might throw 14 interceptions Saturday, but he's also a senior and is less likely (I think) to have a composure-related meltdown that makes the game unwinnable.

Golden basically said as much later on:

"There were some things in the game the other night that I think (Harris') experience and maturity would have helped immeasurably," Golden said. "So that's the decision that we made."

The big question is whether Harris will continue to keep the job if/when he plays like the Jacory Harris we've seen for the past three years.

It's good to see things are under control at Ohio State: In a laughable revelation, it turns out that the three Ohio State players who were suspended for the opener after supposedly receiving some sort of "benefit" at a charity event actually received $200 in cash. Yup.

The records released Thursday night indicate the athletes gave varying accounts for why they received the money and who they received it from.

Two of the athletes said they believed the money was for working at the event while a third said he believed he was receiving money from a teammate. They were invited to attend the charity event by a former Buckeyes player.

All three believed that Ohio State had approved attending the event, even though it had not. Ohio State's NCAA compliance department requires that athletes ask for and receive written permission to attend promotional or charitable events.

The records, a copy of the violations that Ohio State forwarded to the NCAA, do not point to a clear source for the money. All names were blacked out in the material released to The Associated Press.

I blame Jim Tressel. He's clearly a rogue employee. And it's good to see that Ohio State's comprehensive compliance training is having such a positive impact on the players (insert "isolated incident" joke here).

This would be a good spot for my favorite quote yet from AD Gene Smith, who put out a press release late last week that didn't name the players or clarify what they were suspended for but said the school was seeking their immediate reinstatement:

"We take this matter seriously," athletic director Gene Smith said in the release. "Our commitment to institutional integrity is steadfast, and we must hold everyone associated with our athletics programs accountable for lapses in judgment. We believe in transparency with the NCAA, all regulatory bodies and all of Buckeye Nation."

I literally can't believe the words that come out of this guy's mouth. Mind-bottling.


Wanna see Texas football? Hahahaha good luck with that: The Longhorn Network will probably make a lot of money once people can actually watch it, but as was the case with the Big Ten Network when it first launched, that's turning out to be a little harder than expected. According to this summary of a press release, ESPN has reached agreements to bring the Longhorn Network to roughly 174 people in the state of Texas via the likes of Grande Communications and Bob's Backyard Cable Provider.

This is pretty much all you need to know:

The current list of providers carrying LHN and locales served are Verizon FiOs, Consolidated Communications, En-Touch Systems, E-Tex Communications, and Mid-Coast Cablevision/Texas Mid-Gulf Cablevision/Bay-City Television).

And not one on this list services Central Texas.

I bet the bars in Austin were busy Saturday (and will be again for whatever the next crappy game is that's relegated to LHN).

As always, The Onion nails it: No commentary necessary:

INDIANAPOLIS — The NCAA unveiled a new set of college football recruitment rules Monday, restricting teams from communicating with high school athletes using anything other than a wink or a raised eyebrow.

The only way to level the playing field for programs and temper the influencing of young athletes is to limit coaches to six of these facial movements toward a player in any given week,” said NCAA president Mark Emmert, who earlier vetoed a proposal from schools that wanted to use the more suggestive half-smile, head nod, and rubbing of thumb, index, and middle fingers together to denote “cash.”

“Coaches are advised that their facial movements must be made at least 20 feet away from the athlete and for a duration of no more than five seconds. The gestures may not be repeated if they go unnoticed.”

It should be noted that the "file" photo with that story is of Lane Kiffin. I heart The Onion so much sometimes.

The SEC says yes to A&M (the drama-less one)

And it's official ... kind of:

The member presidents of the Southeastern Conference unanimously voted to accept Texas A&M Tuesday night as the league's 13th member, but the Aggies' official acceptance has been delayed by the potential threat of legal action.

The SEC's presidents and chancellors want assurances that no individual Big 12 school will sue for contractual interference over Texas A&M's departure before accepting the Aggies into the conference.

Baylor has not given that assurance to this point, according to sources.

"We were notified yesterday afternoon that at least one Big 12 institution had withdrawn its previous consent and was considering legal action," University of Florida president and SEC chairman Dr. Bernie Machen said in a statement released Wednesday. "The SEC has stated that to consider an institution for membership, there must be no contractual hindrances to its departure. "

The SEC received written assurance from the Big 12 on Sept. 2 that it was free to accept Texas A&M as a member, Machen said.

Baylor is all, "LOL JK we hate u guyz now."

There's a Big 12 teleconference scheduled for this afternoon -- bet that'll be interesting. I'm skeptical that anybody actually wants to take this to court and turn it into a long, drawn-out, expensive sideshow, but when long-term financial viability is at stake, anything goes.

As for the SEC, the acceptance was unanimous but sounds like more of a "why not" than a "MUST HAVE MOAR TEXAS A&M":

"Texas A&M is a great school, but we don't' want to involve ourselves in any legal action over all of that," said David Williams, Vanderbilt's vice chancellor for university affairs and athletics.

He added that "all 12 schools are together on that statement."

So as long as the SEC doesn't have to put in any effort whatsoever, it's all good. The legal stuff is up to A&M.

The guess here is that all the Big 12 presidents back down from their big talk and start looking for a replacement ... as long as Oklahoma's still on board. If OU says "nuts to this" and starts making flirty eyes toward Larry Scott and a hypothetical Pac-16, the Big 12 will be gone and the SEC will be reenacting Sherman's March through the ACC to pick off whatever it can to keep up (realignment speculation FTW). But as long as Oklahoma and Texas are around, everybody else will have a home and Houston or SMU or BYU (or whoever, but definitely not Notre Dame) will end up being a not-exciting-but-acceptable replacement for A&M. The Big 12 can survive.

What say you, Prevail and Ride?

Brilliant.

Random and entertaining historical tidbit

According to College Football Live's "this day in history" feature on Twitter, it was exactly 31 years ago today (that's 1980, journalism majors) that Herschel Walker ingrained himself in both Bill Bates' forehead and college football lore. This would be incomplete without the never-gets-old* video:


*Unless you're Bill Bates, a 1984 Pro Bowler and three-time Super Bowl champion who's still known primarily for getting trucked in legendary fashion.

Week 1: The games that wouldn't end

So ... that was interesting. If I liked my football games with three halftimes (I don't), it would have been the best weekend ever. As it is, I got robbed of some football and watched three games -- among many others, obviously -- that had a combined nine hours worth of weather delays. This would've been annoying if not for the fact that I was actually, you know, watching college football again, which made everything else irrelevant.

Let's get to the recap:

Michigan wins shortest game ever: Srsly. For the first time in modern history, a Michigan game ended early, meaning Brady Hoke got to celebrate his first win while toweling off in the locker room rather than singing "The Victors" in front of the student section. A few bizarre stats: Michigan scored two touchdowns on defense, had just five complete offensive series (not including the kneeldown at the end of the half and the drive that was stopped by the final weather delay) and averaged almost 8 yards per play yet finished with 288 total yards. The defense looked terrible on the opening drive before starting to get through on blitzes and murdering Alex Carder on a regular basis ... ... and that was the end of the competitive part of the game. I felt a little deprived when I realized I was gonna miss out on a full quarter of football, but given the weather/field conditions and the potentially devastating impact of an injury to somebody like Denard Robinson, I'll take the win and move on.

LSU puts up 273 yards and beats Oregon by two touchdowns: I'm not quite sure what to say about this one. LSU's running game and defense both looked pretty good, but getting outgained by 60 yards and winning because you got 21 points gift-wrapped via four turnovers isn't necessarily a sustainable formula. At some point, the quarterback play will have to be better -- even '09 Alabama needed some occasional good performances from Greg McElroy. On the flipside, Oregon looked pretty sloppy but won't lose many games like that one. There were three devastating fumbles -- two by freshman uber-recruit DeAnthony Thomas and one by fill-in punt returner Kenjon Barner (way to drive, Cliff Harris) -- all by guys in new roles and all leading directly to LSU touchdowns. If Oregon jumps on Thomas' first fumble (which came early in the fourth quarter and led to a string of 14 LSU points in about 3 minutes), it's a totally different game down the stretch. Oh, and stop saying "Oregon's out of the BCS title picture." If it comes down to a bunch of one-loss equals (as it often does), a team that started in the top five and suffered its only loss in a neutral-site game in Week 1 against another top-five team stands as good a chance as anybody.

Notre Dame plays for six hours and commits a billion turnovers: If you watched Notre Dame's first drive of the game or first drive of the second half (or both), you watched the game in a nutshell: ND strolled down the field, got inside the 10 and then turned it over in disastrous fashion. There was also a muffed punt, an end-zone interception by Dayne Crist and a missed 30-yard field goal that turned out to be pretty important in a 23-20 loss. In the midst of all that was a three-hour weather delay that served as Tommy Rees' warmup time after Crist was pulled for probably the last time in his career. Rees was far more effective in the second half -- he threw two interceptions, but one was on a desperation bomb in the final minutes and one was a throw to a crossing T.J. Jones at the South Florida 5-yard line that hit Jones right in the helmet and bounced conveniently to a USF defender, causing Brian Kelly's head to explode. See? It was an ugly game, so the easy thing would be to write off Notre Dame and laugh at Lou Holtz. But here's the thing: Total yards were 508-254 (!) in favor of Notre Dame. If the two aforementioned possessions end in touchdowns (instead of a 96-yard fumble return for a TD and an interception), Notre Dame wins in relatively comfortable fashion. I'm totally regretting that 10-2 prediction, but I'm not convinced this team is a disaster just yet. Maybe after next week.

Gene Chizik is still livin' right: The knockdown count was at about 9 1/2 seconds Saturday before Auburn got off the floor against ... umm ... Utah State, scoring 14 points in the span of three minutes (with the help of the best onside kick in history) to pull out a ridiculous 42-38 victory. The offense was all over the place but had the effective moments you'd expect from a Gus Malzahn offense. The defense was a disaster; giving up 448 yards to freakin' Utah State -- a bad WAC team playing on the road with a true freshman quarterback (!) -- could mean horrific things for SEC play. Gene Chizik's quote pretty much tells the story: "Offensively and defensively, we're a long way off of being able to win very many games right now." That 7-5 prediction is looking pretty optimistic right now.

Boise State cruises past Georgia (in Atlanta) as everybody yawns: OK, let's face the facts: Boise State is one of the 10 best programs in college football right now. A good chunk of last year's senior-laden team is now in the NFL or farming potatoes or whatever, yet Boise went on the road (basically) for its opener and beat a ranked team from a major conference for the third straight season. People always say, "Well, it's easy to get up for one game." If it's so easy, why can't anybody ever get up for Boise? Answer: It doesn't matter, because Boise is a legitimately elite team. Watch the games and then tell me otherwise. Unfortunately, there won't be another real test this season -- the TCU game looked interesting before Friday night, but I have a hard time envisioning Boise being seriously challenged by anybody the rest of the way, which means we're looking at another undefeated season, another BCS bowl and another stupid debate about whether Boise should get a title shot (should but won't).

Oregon State might be really bad: Sacramento State 29, Oregon State 28. The score says it all. And in case losing to an FCS team at home doesn't seem embarrassing enough, here's a fun fact: Sacramento State went 6-5 last year. We're not talking about an Appalachian State-esque, FCS-title-caliber program here. Washington only managed to avoid a similarly humiliating fate against Eastern Washington with an endzone interception of Bo Levi Mitchell -- the former SMU quarterback who threw for 473 yards Saturday -- with 52 seconds left. Meanwhile, Indiana and Purdue established themselves as equally pathetic Big Ten bottom-dwellers: Indiana lost 27-20 at home to a Ball State team that went 4-8 last year (Brady Hoke and Nate Davis aren't there anymore), while Purdue needed a 10-point rally in the final minutes to beat Middle Tennessee State 27-24.

Game of the Week: Easy call: Baylor 50, TCU 48. Unbelievable game. Robert Griffin was flat-out unstoppable as a passer, which was shocking to both me and TCU's defense (by the way, picking that D for my fantasy team is looking like an awesome decision right now). His stats: 21 of 27 for 359 yards with five touchdowns and no interceptions. In case you're wondering, his efficiency rating right now is a ridiculous 250.58 (lol), which leads the country by about 25 points. And that wasn't even the craziest part of an all-around crazy game: TCU came back from a 47-23 deficit to take the lead (!) at 48-47 with 4 minutes left before Baylor drove for the game-winning field goal. Let's say it one more time: Baylor is actually good!Player of the Week: Griffin. No contest. Honorable mention: USC sophomore wideout Robert Woods and Oregon State freshman running back Malcolm Agnew. Minnesota literally could not cover Woods in the first half -- he had three touchdowns in the first 29 minutes and finished with a school-record 17 catches for 177 yards. He's good. And Agnew was the only non-disastrous takeaway from the Sacramento State debacle, racking up 223 rushing yards and three touchdowns in his first career game. He should fit nicely into the Jacquizz Rodgers/Yvenson Bernard role of "5-foot-7 Oregon State running back who's irritatingly difficult to find and tackle."

Play of the Week: This punt return (courtesy of Arkansas receiver Joe Adams) is ridiculous in and of itself, but the undaunted pursuit of a helmetless defender is what puts it over the top. Just watch:



Obligatory Maryland uniform reaction: I might be in the minority here, but I didn't hate the jerseys. The shoulder design was a little crazy but was essentially just flag-pattern trim on a white jersey -- it didn't make me wanna stab my eyes out like some of Oregon's wing-related abominations. Ridiculous level: 7 out of 10. The helmets, on the other hand, were atrocious. There's a limit to how many colors/designs you can cram onto a helmet, and UnderArmour vastly exceeded whatever that number is. Ridiculous level: 10 out of 10.

Post-Week 1 top 10: For reasons mentioned earlier in this post, I'm not quite ready to jump on the LSU bandwagon. I'll stick with Oklahoma and Alabama at the top for now. The rest is kind of a crapshoot; the last two spots could go to any combination of Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, Oklahoma State ... you get the idea. It's still early.

1. Oklahoma
2. Alabama
3. LSU
4. Oregon
5. Boise State
6. Wisconsin
7. Florida State
8. Stanford
   
9. Nebraska
10. South Carolina
    

The Hoke gamble and the uncharted road

You already know my general-sense expectations for Michigan this year. If you don't, here's the very brief summary: 8-4 record, slightly worse offense, significantly better defense. That's the headline version.

The full story is slightly a lot more complicated.

When people ask me the inevitable "What do you think about Brady Hoke" question, I sort of dumb it down so I'm not explaining myself for 10 minutes. What I think about Brady Hoke is that he has an unspectacular career record and not enough meaningful experience to make me feel comfortable. He also has been the coach for six months now, and in that time he has made the best coordinator hire of the offseason (something that fits into his history of hiring really good coordinators), kept every important piece of the team intact through the coaching transition and gotten 23 commitments for a 2012 recruiting class that most services are calling the best of the country. Oh, and Ohio State has completely imploded, leaving recruits dangling from the Ohio recruiting tree and an unknown position coach as the guy in charge (temporarily).

If coaching changes are a gamble, hiring Brady Hoke was like going all in with jack-10 and getting jack, 10, 10 on the flop. Things are looking way, way better than anyone could have expected. In about 16 hours, we'll get to find out how he does in those tricky game things.

. . . . .

FYI, this is not a team preview. If you want that, you're gonna have to head over to MGoBlog to read the roughly 30,000 words he's posted in the last five days (!!!) on every position group, heuristic and various topic of debate. He also his own version of "the story," which is basically, "This team will be OK but not great, so be realistic about your expectations and revel in the mind-blowing things Denard does on a weekly basis." That's my interpretation, anyway.

But no matter where or what you're reading, all predictions/projections/expectations are things that are based on uncertainties. That isn't usually the case for teams that return 20(-ish) starters, but it becomes the case when you hire a coach with nearly polar-opposite philosophies from the guy he's replacing.

When Brady Hoke sits/stands in front of a microphone and talks about power football and the girliness of zone blocking and how the spread doesn't properly prepare a defense, he's talking like you'd expect a Michigan coach to talk. He's also talking about things that are pretty difficult to reconcile with what we've seen from Michigan over the past three seasons. This is a team that was built to run the spread, has a QB sculpted by God to run the spread option and has a defense that was intended (and has been very, very unsuccessful) to stop all the typical spread principles.

Fortunately, one of the few things Hoke has established is that what he says doesn't really have much impact on what he does (or, more specifically, what his coordinators do). Hoke lets his coordinators do what they do best: At San Diego State, Al Borges ran a shotgun, three-wide, one-back set the large majority of the time while Rocky Long ran a true 3-3-5, the kind RichRod wanted to run if it had ever been able to find somebody who knew how to do it. At Ball State, he let Stan Parrish (he of the hilarious head coaching record) run a shotgun-heavy spread so Nate Davis could tear apart MAC-tastic defenses. Long story short, when Brady Hoke has been successful, it's because he hasn't really done the things he tells people he wants to do.

Al Borges has a much more extensive history. It usually involves some sort of a "pro-style" offense, but it varies depending on the personnel. Back when he was at UCLA with Cade McNown, it was bootleg city. With Jason Campbell, Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown at Auburn, it was a lot of handoffs of all varieties and some wildly effective play-action. At San Diego State, it was boatloads of shotgun and some (gasp) zone read.

What does that mean for Michigan's offense? You'll have to read between the lines and/or watch a lot of seemingly useless preview videos to figure it out, but we can get a decent idea:


Borges has told everybody who will listen that he will be running more shotgun than ever before and doing things he's never done before to "tailor" the offense to Denard. Every MGoBlue video I've seen features at least one zone read out of the shotgun for every generic I-formation hand0ff. That interview above includes a QB lead, which was basically Michigan's base running play last year.

Summary: The offense won't be that different. When you have Denard, one real tight end, no fullbacks, an army of small-but-effective slot guys and an O-line built more for getting to the second level than crushing defensive tackles, this is what you have to do.

On a related note, these comments from a roundtable-style Heisman discussion on SI.com -- where pretty much everybody agreed that Denard Robinson will be the first high-profile candidate to "fall out of the race" -- made me laugh a little and shake my head:

Brady Hoke wants a dropback passer in a traditional offense. Robinson seems ill-fitted for the new style. ...

There are going to be system issues with new offensive coordinator Al Borges. Word is Michigan wants to be more of a power-running, pro-style passing attack.

Negative. Brady Hoke and Al Borges might "want" those things eventually, but they don't exist right now. This is what happens when you read/conduct interviews but don't actually observe any football.

The passing game will be a little different. RichRod's passing game was fairly primitive in that it basically used the threat of the QB running plays to open up hilariously easy throws in the middle of the field. Some of those were fun. But when the defense didn't need to respect the run, the results were disastrous. Here's a chart put together by somebody who's better than me at making charts. The numbers on the left side are Denard Robinson on "passing downs" in 2010:

	Passing Downs	Season totals
Runs	23
QB runs (YPC)	19 (7.9)	256 (6.6)
Comp/Att	31/71	182/291
YPA	5.7	8.8
Scrambles (YDs)	5 (31)
Sacks	4
TD/INT	0/5

Gack. This is why Al Borges is overhauling the passing game. Michigan's ability to run for 5.6 yards per carry last season despite having no healthy, legitimate running back is the reason he won't be overhauling the running game.

In short: To the casual observer, Michigan's offense won't look that different. There will be more stuff from under center (with bootlegs probably becoming a regular feature) and there will be more advanced pattern trees in the passing game, but Denard will still average 15-plus carries a game and will still operate out of the shotgun probably 60 percent of the time (or more). This isn't the equivalent of Paul Johnson showing up at Georgia Tech, installing the triple option and then running it 700 times. The changes to the offense will be gradual enough that if you squint, they'll barely be noticeable as long as Denard is the guy running the show.

On defense, the question isn't what the scheme will look like -- Greg Mattison says it's a 4-3 under, which means the linebackers are shaded to the strong side of the formation -- but whether the product will actually be better. No, scratch that. The product will be better. Greg Robinson was an unmitigated disaster running an incorrect version of the 3-3-5 that may or may not have been forced upon him, and with that mess gone, any competent replacement would be better. Greg Mattison is more than competent: He was a very good defensive coordinator at Michigan, Notre Dame and Florida before running the not-too-shabby Baltimore Ravens defense for the past three years. And Urban Meyer recently called him "the best recruiter in the country." So yay for that.

For the first time in at least four years, Michigan has a good defensive coordinator who knows exactly what he's doing and will do it all season. This is soothing after ... well, you know.

There are actually plenty of capable parts on defense: Mike Martin is a legitimate All-American at D-tackle (hopefully his ankles stay intact this year), Craig Roh could lead the Big Ten in sacks now that he's playing defensive end (where he should have been forever) instead the dumb linebacker-type position he was forced to play in the 3-3-5, Ryan Van Bergen is a good defensive end/defensive tackle, Kenny Demens looks like a potentially excellent middle linebacker and Troy Woolfolk is back at corner after suffering a broken ankle last fall that doomed Michigan's secondary to depths previously unknown. And there are no freshman starters, something else that couldn't be said at any point in the past three years.

So how much can a team improve in one offseason when it keeps almost all of its relevant parts, moves those relevant parts into more practical positions (for the most part, anyway) and gains a real system being taught by a real defensive coordinator? That's pretty tough to quantify, because there aren't a lot of prior examples of a team going from such an abyss of incompetence to something near the opposite end of the spectrum. I mentioned a while back that Stanford skyrocketed about 80 spots last year in the relevant defensive categories under Vic Fangio, and Illinois had a similar (but not quite as extreme) turnaround under Vic Koenning; if Greg Mattison were named Vic Mattison, we'd be golden.

Realistically, that level of improvement doesn't seem likely ... except moving up, say, 60 spots would put Michigan at 50th in total defense (yeah, that means the defense was 110th last year), and that's about where I think they should end up given the strengths, relatively minor weaknesses, experience and D-coordinator. An above-average defense isn't out of the realm of possibility. But if that doesn't happen for whatever reason -- if Martin gets hurt or Demens regresses or Woolfolk has lost too much of his ability or the iffy safeties can't cover anybody -- I'm not sure what the floor is. In a relative sense, "better than last year" is the worst-case scenario; in a compared-to-everybody-else sense, I don't know what that means.

So ... that's where we stand. The tl;dr version that's slightly more informative than the first paragraph of this post:

• Brady Hoke says all the things sportswriters love to hear about toughness and time of possession and stuff that doesn't really mean anything, but he hires excellent coordinators and gets out of their way, which might be his best quality (and that's not a backhanded compliment -- IMO, the ability to delegate is massively underrated and was essentially RichRod's undoing).
• The offense won't look much different this year. Al Borges has explicitly said that he'll be using more shotgun and is tailoring the offense to fit what Denard does best, and practice/scrimmage videos basically bear that out.
• The defense will be better. There is no possible way it ends up worse, and I'm not even concerned about the possibility of a jinx by saying that. It can't be worse -- it should be significantly better, but exactly how much better depends on a number of things that are just about impossible to predict. Average-ish (which would require massive improvement) actually seems reasonable.

. . . . .

This is the part where I should write something witty and conclusive. I don't know what to say. I feel like I have a decent idea about what this team will look like, but I could be wrong since all those assumptions are based on limited practice videos and assumptions of health and whatnot. There are so many things that are the same and yet so many things that are different; that formula could yield something good, bad or anywhere in between.

And the big-picture outlook carries the same qualifiers. Like I said earlier, coaching hires are a huge, everything-in-the-pot gamble. If you hire Nick Saban, you're going in with pocket aces. If you hire Brian Kelly, you've got king-queen. If you hire a mid-major coach with a .500 career record, you're basically flipping a coin and hoping for the best. All the positive "OMG we hired Rich Rodriguez" stuff turned out to be wildly wrong for various reasons that don't need rehashing, and all the criticism at the time of Hoke's hire might turn out to be just as wrong -- things are certainly leaning that way a few months later. But the games must be played before that decision can be made. Nobody will care about spectacular recruiting classes and tingly "this is Michigan" speeches if he doesn't win any more games than the last guy. I hope he does, because (besides the obvious reasons) he's doing everything else right.

The countdown is at T-minus 16 hours. I don't know where this is headed, but I'm ready to find out.

Sinking into sweet uncertainty

On January 8 (or thereabouts) of every year, I watch some team celebrate and then think to myself "WTF am I gonna do for the next eight months?" It's depressing; for Hunter S. Thompson, it was too depressing.

I've never been very good at writing flowery, elegant prose. I don't have the attention span or the ability to connect that many thoughts. So this is where I steal from the most perfect summation of college football fandom that's ever been written, a piece that should be required reading before kickoff every season.

Courtesy of the always-brilliant Spencer Hall at EDSBS:

I don't have a clue what will happen with John Brantley, or the Florida defense, or to Alabama, or Georgia, or Michigan, or USC, or Western Kentucky, or any other team. There are depth charts, and rosters, and points spreads and buses and planes headed to various points to play on various fields. Everything but those is filling the space between diversions staged to liven up the otherwise dull expanse of a working week.

I do know, however, that like everything else this experience, this randomness we do each fall means so much more to me now than it did before. It is not enough to admit that your seriousness becomes that much more serious when you reproduce. Your arbitrary passions, your silliness, your distractions become that much more intense now, if only because you understand how limited a resource they are. The whistle blows. The conferences order themselves. Then you will face the winter again, holding the note and understanding the urge to write those words on a sheet of paper: "Football season is over."

It's relieving to be reminded that I'm not the only person with what might be considered an emotionally unhealthy attachment to college football. Michigan winning in dramatic fashion makes me happy; Michigan losing in painful fashion makes me sad and/or angry; Brock Mealer touching the banner makes me emotional. Somebody who doesn't pay attention to college football wouldn't be able to understand any of these things, and I wouldn't be able to explain them. But to me, those moments are so, so sweet, both in their scarcity and their meaning.

When I wake up on a Saturday morning in the fall, my stomach is upset and my body is twitchy. Is that unhealthy? I don't care. The anticipation is overwhelming -- anything could happen, and all of it will be amazing.

Yeah, stumble til you crawl (Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhh),
Sinking into sweet uncertainty.

Sweet uncertainty indeed.