The joy and agony of expectations, from Armour Square to Ann Arbor

Fouad Egbaria

As I sat watching the White Sox take on the Cubs tonight, not long after Big Ten Media Days wrapped up not far away at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, I was reminded how expectations can distort.

A White Sox fan since I had the agency (and interest) to make the choice, my expectations for the squad were middling entering the season. I expected, pretty much, what the Sox are at now: hovering around .500 (with tonight's win against the Cubs, the Sox inched back to .500, at 50-50, a true paragon of mediocrity).

But the South Siders surprised in April, starting the season on the heels of the truly silly LaRoche saga with a 23-10 run.

Just like that, those previously modest expectations evaporated. The first Cubs-Sox World Series was sure to happen, the first since Teddy Roosevelt's administration -- before the first World War, before the formation of the National Park Service, before, well -- you get the picture.

Alas, April proved to be a mirage. The Sox plummeted, losing their once-sizable division lead in the blink of an eye.

I don't have time to tune into every game anymore, but I still tune in when I can, even now. And when I do -- or when I hop on the Red Line toward 95th to catch a game at U.S. Cellular Field -- I'm just looking to consume the sport in its rawest form. Watching just to watch, to see something fun: maybe a home run, some fireworks, a meaningless win. It's all in good fun.

And if those things don't happen, it's fine. Bereft of the weighty albatross of expectations, you can hold your head high, no matter the result.

Meanwhile, on the gridiron, behold a different view.

Michigan is being talked about -- not just Harbaugh and his endeavors, but Michigan as a whole. No, not "is this the season coach X gets fired" talk -- Michigan is being discussed as a possible playoff team. How crazy is that? Two years ago I watched Michigan eke out a miserable win against Northwestern in Evanston, wondering how this Michigan program could possibly be cut from the same cloth as the one I saw in 2000, when Drew Henson's Wolverines battled Northwestern (and ultimately lost) in an spectacle of offensive pyrotechnics, back when they were still novel things.

This is far different than 2007, when Michigan entered the season ranked in the top 5 after a brilliant 2006 season capped by losses to good Ohio State and USC teams. It made sense, then, to have expectations. The 2007 season was meant to be a logical continuation of 2006.

Does it make sense now, to have those expectations? Is it logical, tethered to reality, believable? Yes, the pieces are all there, but after Michigan lost to its three toughest regular-season foes last year (and in spectacularly poor fashion against Ohio State), I'm not sure the same level of preseason certainty can be had.

That's what I would think, if Michigan didn't have Jim Harbaugh, the motor behind it all, the ultimate X-factor. Given Harbaugh's clear penchant for baseball, and the baseball theme of this post, it should be noted that his career coaching WAR is impressive, worthy of consideration when pondering the future.

This summer, Harbaugh has worn seemingly every jersey under the sun, traveled more than Carmen San Diego, angered SEC coaches, traded Twitter barbs with said coaches and wore a Michigan ballcap during his Media Days appearance. The whole enterprise, the idea of it, has picked up steam, gathering hype and attention magnetically.

With all of that, of course, comes expectation. And at a certain point, hype gives way to imminent reality. The season will start and all of the offseason antics will become a distant memory, a pleasant diversion, a rallying cry, a beacon of pride leading the Michigan fan base away from an era in which there was not much pride to be had.

While I love the White Sox, I look forward to having expectations again. Sports are made by stakes, and stakes are raised up high or brought down to the Midwestern earth by the lever of expectation.

Many fans expect a Big Ten East division title, a Big Ten title, a playoff appearance -- even more than that, possibly. None of those things are totally unrealistic. There are question marks lingering, but not necessarily enough of them to invalidate the hype.

A callback to his younger days in Chicago, Harbaugh will throw out the first pitch tomorrow at Wrigley Field, adding to the now expansive inventory of "Harbaugh throws a baseball" photography. I can't say whether he'll throw a ball or a strike.

I will say this: I expect the latter. And if he doesn't, we'll laugh and move on.

But come September, October, November, that will change: the games are no longer just fun and games. Everything indicates, however, that Harbaugh, the rest of the coaching staff and the players are ready for what's to come.

But what about the fans? What happens if Michigan falls at Iowa or Michigan State? Or, once again, at OSU, keeping that Henson-led 2000 team as the last Michigan outfit to win in Columbus?

Those moments mark the point when the taut line of expectation whips back against those who expect.

But failure and success are each meaningless by themselves without the idea of the other. The taut line slackens when none of it matters at all.

As time marches on toward kickoff, the line tightens and tightens with each day. It extends forward, like a sharp line drive, girded by expectations and hope.

Will it fall, shattering upon impact by virtue of its hardened material? Maybe. But maybe it won't.

And if it doesn't, Michigan can tight-rope across that line, all the way to what once seemed an unattainable light in the distance.

A Familiar Feeling, A New Feeling

In less than 72 hours, Michigan will take the field time zones away from Ann Arbor, in a stadium of red and white on a Thursday night. Like the beginning of every campaign, there's a growing sense of a paradoxical far-off imminence (something that is probably a magnificent word in the German lexicon not available to English speakers).

The first game is near, yet far. We are all hurtling through the dark and dusty space that is the offseason -- a wormhole beckons. Next to it is a sign: "Here for college football." It is both far away and very close, the wormhole. Who knows how long it will take to get there, and what will happen once there.

You spend hours and hours waiting, but really they're months. February passes, and then you wake up one day and the snows have melted for good. A walk outside without an umbrella becomes a foolish venture in the rainy days of spring. Summer hits, those dog days.

Then August. August, August, August. Time stretches and bends and distorts. As a fan, it almost feels closer to football on Aug. 1 than it does on Aug. 31.

But it's game week: finally.

This time, things are different. Not in the sense that "Michigan is back," or anything like that. Things are different -- and as I write this, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what it is.

*** 

I haven't written here in a while -- life has gotten in the way. Nothing has changed about my obsession with Michigan sports, the obsession that pushed me to start this thing on a perfectly uneventful summer night five years ago.

But as anyone knows, when you get a little bit older, things change, particularly once you are no longer a student (undergraduate or graduate) and are, what they might call, a "real person." This is a terrifying metamorphosis, for all of the obvious reasons, but perhaps one of the least consequential subset of changes is the way fandom changes over time.

For the first time last year, I found myself getting up during game action to grab something from the kitchen. There was once a time when, once the game started, I did not move from my sitting spot, as if tethered to it for eternity or the end of the game, whichever came first.

Last year, during the Indiana game, I vaguely remember falling asleep during a portion of the third quarter. It was a long week and a dreary day, and even the surprising success of Ann Arbor's own Drake Johnson couldn't fend off a doze.

Maybe I was tired. Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe it was something else: indifference, a dissipation of pointless resolve.

***

A counterpoint, exemplifying said pointless resolve. Once, as a freshman at Michigan, in 2007, I stayed for the duration of the Oregon game. Until the bitter end, I always thought, and that didn't change then. A reasonable person would think of the hours wasted at a game that was headed for dissatisfaction: I, like some indeterminate thousands in that stadium, decided to stay, out of some misplaced sense of duty (or, less romantically, the selfish ability to say, years down the road, that I stayed, pointlessly).

Even after the hire of Jim Harbaugh, the offseason took hold, and I will admit -- and this is alarming to write -- that a cousin of indifference continued to hold sway. Life has a way of flicking away less consequential things, sports and the watching of them. At least, it tries to do that.

And so the months went by, and Harbaugh stories rolled in: the summer of Harbaugh. He helped people involved in car accidents, he endeared himself to many by stonewalling Colin Cowherd, he upset coaches far away by setting up camps on their turf, he recruited, he talked about Bo, he unleashed the crazy.

And yet, slightly older me viewed it from afar, bemused but not invested, yet. We've seen this before, after all. Contrast this approach with what I imagine would have been my reaction to all of this as an 18-year-old, or a Michigan sophomore, or even someone a year out of Ann Arbor, and the gulf is vast.

I would have once yelled upon hearing the news of the Harbaugh hire, shared every story I read about his antics, texted and called friends and family to talk about the man who had returned.

Just the other week, I explained to someone how I thought a 7-win season in 2015 is a reasonable expectation, as if I was in a lukewarm conversation about mutual funds or a plant-based diet low in cholesterol or the hopes of an NFL franchise. They could lose to Minnesota, you know. Utah is assuredly a loss, I posited. The gap is too wide between Michigan and the teams at the top, Michigan State and Ohio State.

Let's wait until next year, I thought. But then next year, the linebackers are gone. And next year, the mutual fund of quarterbacks, Jake Rudock, is gone, leaving a yet-unproven Shane Morris and a parade of even-less-unproven young signal callers. And next year, Michigan has to travel to both East Lansing and Columbus. Worries, all of them.

It seems as if life, and its worries, have infiltrated the safe space that has always been college football. Even when it isn't safe (see: 2014 Michigan football, or, really, almost anything from the past eight years), it was something to be excited about, to invest in and not care about the repercussions.

The beginning of each season was once like what I imagine the moment when a first-time skydiver steps to the edge, the infinite air ahead and below and above. But, over time, it became something else: something to be approached reasonably, with caution, with care.

This, it goes without saying, is a regrettable development.

Sometimes, it takes something small to kick you out of something like that, to climb out of a place where caution and reason exert their influence, like a 3-yard hitch on 3rd and 5.

The other day, I read this story about Harbaugh's reaction to a phone call from Michael Jordan. As a native of Illinois, something clicked. Here was Harbaugh, revered by many to be the man destined to return Michigan to a prior state, reacting with awe to a call from -- and I unabashedly say this, despite the aforementioned pseudo-cynicism -- MJ, a hero of my childhood.

"Come onnn, who is this?" he said.

I don't know if that transcription is an embellishment, or a reflection of the conversation. Did he really say "onnn," like someone truly awestruck, like, for example, me if I received an unexpected phone call (a redundant phrase, of course) from Michael Jordan?

Did he? You might think this a splitting hair, a negligible footnote.

It matters, not because of its inherent truth or untruth, but because its truth or untruth doesn't matter.

And with that realization, as I've come to it now, I realize that I'm ready for football. I'm ready for the weekly parade: the afterglow of the previous game extending to Monday and Tuesday, the beginnings of mental preparation on Wednesday and Thursday, the imminence of Friday, and the anguish and exaltation of Saturday morning.

Harbaugh was awed, I believe, because, quite simply, I think that he was. I really do. It fits with the picture of him as a person, simultaneously aware and unaware of his station in the football universe. It's an agreeable thought, a simple one.

In the summer of Harbaugh, with the man preparing to take his first Michigan team into a season -- how weird is that to type, even now -- he took the time to reflect on a summer phone call with Michael Jordan.

Come onnn. Jim Harbaugh, coaching Michigan?

It's real. No, really.

In a rush, it's all coming into picture. The little human interest stories, the camp quotes, the discussions of his personal quirks, were all seemingly disparate dots, disconnected but amusing, like a standup comedian connecting on approximately two-thirds of his or her jokes. A good show, a spectacle, maybe even memorable.

But they hadn't formed up together, a picture of meaning.

I don't know how many games Michigan will win, but the picture, in these last few weeks, has started to become more clear. Michigan has a coach, a great coach, who has returned to the place of his youth, a place in which he won games and made declarations (guarantees, even).

Forget the football storylines and the personnel hand-wringing: that is a story to cling to, an idea worth investing in, like the idea of the Rich Rodriguez offense was worth investing in or the lovable yet stern persona of Brady Hoke once stood as a beacon of something more. But, of course, there's more to it than those vestiges of Michigan's recent past.

This, this is a story. A combination of proven excellence and quixotic wanderings of the mind. We are witnessing a homecoming, different than any other we've seen.

And if this sounds like a building cult of personality -- if you'll excuse one more intrusion from Cynical Fan -- well, I suppose it's too late for Cynical Fan to pump the brakes on that train. It's out of the station, screeching across the tracks from Salt Lake City to State College, leaving sparks in its wake like a continuous fireworks show, laughing metallically into the quiet heart of America, bombastically announcing its presence wherever it goes.

College football was never meant to be reasonable. It was never meant to be analyzed. It was born in a nebulous era when you got maybe one game on TV, or were able to huddle up to a radio, with the hope of hearing something worth remembering. It was born in an information void: you took what you could and filled in the gaps with mythology.

For a little while, I forgot that. Remembering that, I think, was the greatest victory of this offseason.

And this is the moment when I, the previously cynical, walk up to the edge in that college football skydiving aircraft.

What lies below? Who knows. A soft landing spot, maybe, or perhaps not.

But, you know, there's no story in the would-be skydiver who didn't skydive, who stayed in the plane and upon bumping down on a remote landing strip, drives home safe and sound.

It's 2015, the only 2015 season there will ever be. It's 2015, the only first-Jim-Harbaugh-season there will be. It's 2015, the time-space home of the only summer of Harbaugh there will ever be (there will be other summers, in which Harbaugh does Harbaugh things, but this is the only summer of Harbaugh). It's 2015, the only time this particular version of newness will ever be before us.

Forget the rest: that's the crux. That's all there is, and all there needs to be.

The Season

The character of a season is a funny thing.

It's a feedback loop; you feel good, then better, then better. You feel bad, then worse, and worse. The season in February, May and July is exactly what you want it to be. The season changes by the day as it rocks in the calm and violent waters of the offseason, with all of us on the same vessel, hoping for a future that is bright.

In January, following the post-bowl malaise or excitement, the next season is an unrecognizable blip, a constellation of stars in the shape of something that you can't recognize until someone points it out to assure you that that is the Big Dipper, yes, yes it is.

In February and March, the squeaking of shoes and pounding of the rock drowns out the urge to stargaze for a time. The urge persists, a residual cosmic microwave background of subtle feeling -- it's an ice cream cone you had once on a hot summer day as a kid or the first time you felt something that wasn't a direct product of adult supervision. You know it's out there, was out there, and for a second, you wonder if those facts are even true. Was the ice cream that cold and that good? Did Denard Robinson burn rubber on fields across the Midwest?

In April come the rains -- or, in Chicago, the snow persist, falling lightly upon all the living and all the college football fans. But spring games pop up all over the landscape like so many rogue flowers burying stakes in the unforgiving terrain of sidewalk cracks, yearning for light and water, as is their biological imperative.

And then it all goes away, melting against the return of the sun, which, in these parts, is a nomad of sorts, coming and going as it pleases. The leaves bask in the glow as the thwack of bats symphonizes the song of summer.

In July, the air takes on the smell of bratwurst and flags fly high on the beaches and front porches of America, whistling against the breeze. It is like entering a hall of mirrors, where everything feels familiar yet unrecognizable. Amid the noise, something incubates.

Then August, and boom. The puzzle is missing pieces, but it begins to take shape. Is it too late to go back? Can we go back, to January, April, July? Is it too late to reject the imposition of reality, instead of enjoying a vague, limitless future?

Pads pop and helmets metamorphize, first pristine and gleaming then scratched and weathered. Somewhere in between, football has begun to happen, in Ann Arbor and Columbus and Tuscaloosa, in South Bend and Norman and Los Angeles and Lincoln, in Tallahassee and Knoxville and Austin and Eugene.

On the doorstep of the future, depth charts are no longer things to be hopeful or despondent about; they just are. What you've done is what you've done, and what you are is what you are.

Banners unfurl and bands boom as teams run onto the field for the first time during August's last hours. Things then fall apart, or they don't. There's no in between.

Then it's over.

---

The air slips out of the whole thing, slowly, then suddenly. Purgatorial January introduces itself, a new subletter you won't take the time to get to know. The snow packs the ground, layer upon layer, blanketing the past in forgetful white. For a time, we slip into amnesia, forgetting what just happened or, a different sort of amnesia, remembering it in some other light, something other than what it was.

The college football fans sees his breath, then it goes away. His shirt is drenched with the rains, then not. Sweat trickles in summer, then not. Then it is time again, to do it all over.

He doesn't find the character of the season then -- no. That comes much later, if at all.

January through August moves with the same rhythm each year. But from August through the first week of January, college football builds its identity for that year, like a child stepping into the world. You don't know what it means to be 18 when you're 19 -- you certainly don't know it when you're 18.

But, years down the road, when you look back and try to push away the fog, try to remember what made one season different than another, you just may know. I don't know what 2013 meant, or the year before it, or the year before.

And when this old season comes to a close, I don't know what it will mean, either. With time, maybe the meaning of the season will become clear, as our lives speed along and memories stick to seasons like barnacles clinging to a boat in a storm.

Then again, maybe each season is just a season, a collection of games dependent upon luck and weather and physiological frailties. Maybe each batch of results is just an agnostic exclamation of uncertainty; maybe Michigan is back, maybe Michigan is doomed, based on so much carefully curated evidence.

More likely, the character of a season is not a statement, but a feeling, a departure from the rhythmic norm of the offseason months. Disappointed in 2005, surprised in 2011, elated in 1997. It's really very simple, when you think about it.

The season is a feeling, years down the road -- I say that with a certainty I admit I might not have. But, it is my choice to make it, so I do.

And, years down the road into the future -- a horizon with all dimensions and none -- the character of the 2014 season emerge, when that feeling becomes clear.

The season itself is an introduction. You say hello and know its name; its character comes later.

Beginnings

Fouad Egbaria

No matter how old we get, and how hard we try to convince ourselves that sports are just a game, it just isn't so.

I've spent the last few years disassociating myself from things like recruiting coverage, at first because I found myself increasingly irked by the nature of it all; after all, I'm now older than the oldest Michigan football player on the roster. But, on a more practical level, grad school this past year has cut into my time by a significant amount, so that I almost didn't have a choice to pay attention or not.

With school and the job hunt occupying my mind (and the Chicago Blackhawks' run to another Stanley Cup), this was an oddly detached offseason for me. In years past, an injury to a player like Jake Ryan would have sent me into a frenzy of panic. This time around, not so much. Maybe the "he'll be ready by October" prognosis lessened the blow, but I think a growing acceptance of entropy has more to do with it.

Other than using the occasional one-sentence paragraph (I know, I know), the best thing Medill has taught me over the past year is this: Get to the point.

I haven't been very good at that over the years. For anyone that has read this blog, I have a tendency to, shall we say, expound a bit too much. I mean, this is just football, right? Should I really be writing 2,000 words or more about people I've never met?

I don't know anymore. Maybe that's okay, maybe it isn't. In any case, it's something I think about now that I didn't think about before. I don't know if it can be described as a creeping cynicism about the state of things--the issue of pay-for-play, the NCAA's nonsensical defense of a student-athlete model that is for the most part a serious oddity, the increasingly inescapable sleeper hold of money--but things aren't as they once were in many respects. This is not a bad thing; it is always good to question things. Say what you will about the journalism industry today, but if there is one trait we can all agree upon as the foundation of good journalism (or even good thinking, generally), it is the existential need to question anything and everything.

For the first time in a while, this offseason came and went without much consternation from me. The month of August, as always, is a time warp in and of itself, with days becoming weeks and weeks becoming years...but everything before that

I guess I'm not doing a very good job of getting to the point. Perhaps that is because I don't know what the point really is. I've sat around looking at the schedule, calculating satisfying scenarios in my head: 10-2 would be great, but what if both losses came to Michigan State and Ohio State? What about 9-3, with wins against the aforementioned foes and losses against, say, Notre Dame, Penn State and Northwestern (or Nebraska)? Would that be any better?

I don't know, but thinking about this sort of thing inevitably boomerangs back to one basic thought, one that I've expressed in some form here countless times: college football (and any sport, really), are about people and moments. Years from now, Michigan's 8-5 season will be but a vague memory, a historical footnote. But, Roy Roundtree's catch against Northwestern, Devin Gardner's pyrotechnics against Minnesota and Iowa, Denard Robinson's touchdown run at the Horseshoe...these are moments that will forever live on.

As a 24-year-old pseudo-adult, that's really all I find worth grabbing hold of in this game. The outcome is beyond our control, of course, but the curation of those outcomes is not.

Will Fitzgerald Toussaint bounce back to his 2011 form? I don't know, but I'll enjoy watching him try.

Will Devin Gardner live up to the offseason hype and build upon his 2012 run as the starter? I don't know, but I'll enjoy watching him try.

Will Brady Hoke keep Michigan undefeated at home as Notre Dame, Nebraska and Ohio State roll into Ann Arbor this year? I don't know, but I'll enjoy watching him try, pointing left and right at anything and anyone willing to be pointed in the right direction.

A mere 88 hours remains until the Wolverines run out onto the field again, the 134th iteration of Michigan football. This one will be different than the last, and the next one will not be this one, for better or worse. We have one opportunity to experience this team in its current form. With the constant roster flux of incoming recruits and saddening departures, it's often difficult to separate the macro from the micro.

If you take a step back, the big picture becomes clear, imperfections and all. A clean slate beckons, calling for eyes and ears. Once the old season is over, the slate is cast among the rest, a dusty pile of slowly disintegrating memories.

It's always freshest at the beginning; when the banner is touched on Saturday, so begins a race against time.

Pac 12 South Preview: The Odyssey and Other Familiar Stories of Personal Relevance

Already blabbered about: SEC West, SEC East, ACC Coastal, ACC Atlantic, Big 12 (Part 1), Big 12 (Part 2), Pac 12 North 

So, I got a little lazy last week and decided not to finish the Pac 12 preview in a timely fashion. With that said, this will probably be the last preview, because the time spent to page views ratio is pretty grim, not unlike Nick Sheridan's completion percentage on passes going farther than five yards past the line of scrimmage. Yeah, that means no Big East preview (or worse, MAC, Conference USA, etc.). I have my limits. 

After this post, I promise that it'll be all Michigan the rest of the way until 9/1. No more of this "talking about other teams" business. I will do this in spite of the fact that there is really nothing Michigan-centric to discuss/write about right now other than maybe some Denard Robinson fan fiction and possibly a season overview that features some variation of the following: "the 2012 team will have a worse record than last year's team but will actually be better." You know, mostly annoying things. Anyway, here's some stuff about the Pac 12 South for all you tens of search engine wayfarers getting ensnared in this shoddy SEO web. 

This man wears sunglasses inside--at least, I think it's inside, but since it's the Pac 12 he might also be on the top of a mountain somewhere getting all zen and whatnot--and might actually be good at coaching football, which flies in the face of pretty much every pre-conceived notion regarding Lane Kiffin that you've ever had. 

Prologue 
The 2011 season in the Pac 12 South was like when you're watching Jeopardy and you're just killing it, getting every answer right and generally making your friends look like they're operating on a plane of existence several levels beneath yours. After a while it just gets sad, and you just sit out a round to let somebody else shine for a little while. You jump in and nail that question about Rachmaninoff just to remind everyone who the boss is, but you generally let your weaker peers fight for second best. 

Anyway, don't pretend like you didn't cheat on a few of those questions...yeah, I'm looking at you, USC. You know what I'm talking about, the 'ol "mouth the answer right as the guy on TV says it, pretending like you knew it before but just wanted the pleasure of feeling like you came to the realization of that answer at the same exact time as this ridiculous dude with the encyclopedic brain" maneuver. We've all done it. Hey, I've done it, and I'm not proud of it but dangit not getting a single question before Trebek takes you into that first mid-round commercial break is not a good look, man. 

Shameless Self-Promotion Time (8/15/2012)

One item of self-promotion today: I wrote a post over at Maize n Brew about Al Borges. It's fairly lengthy, but I talked about everything from his career to date to basic expectations for the coming season.

Despite the 2011 offense's issues, Borges is an accomplished guy who very clearly knows what he's doing. This offense is in good hands (imagine that sentence being read in Dennis Haysbert's voice). In fact, between him, Hoke, and Mattison, I find him to be by far the most interesting during press conferences.

Miscellaneous Minutiae, 8/9/2012

FSU trivia to impress your friends with. Question: who was the last Florida State wide receiver/tailback to catch/rush for 1,000 yards in a single season? I'll give you a second. Done pretending to think? Well, if you said Anquan Boldin and Warrick Dunn, you are either: a) a FSU fan b) Phil Steele or something or c) somebody who just pulled the "smart phone under the table on trivia night" cheating maneuver.

If you didn't know the answer, then you are probably a little bit shocked (at least I was, particularly with the answer for tailback. Warrick Dunn? Wow. I'm not sure there is another bit of trivia that truly shows how far FSU had fallen during the last five or six years of the Bowden era. Matt Hinton writes writes this year's "Is FSU for real?" post, which is especially topical after I, for the second year in a row, plugged my nose and picked FSU to do some nice things in 2012:

The skill positions have been no less of a revolving door. Devonta Freeman and Rashad Greene were encouraging in their debuts, but hardly revelatory enough to peg either as an emerging star in an offense that has had astonishingly few of them over the last decade: FSU hasn't produced a 1,000-yard receiver since Anquan Boldin in 2002, or a 1,000-yard rusher since Warrick Dunn in 1996.

Kind of crazy, right?

Hey, you guys. Did you know that people in the South care so much about football? It's true. They just want it more. That's why they're so good. Rick Bragg, author of All Over But The Shoutin', actually wrote this:

An award-winning author of books on Southern history, Rable is not a native Southerner but grew up in another football incubator, in Lima, Ohio, in the swirl of Ohio State-Michigan, rooting for the Buckeyes. He came down here to see real obsession. He once exited Tiger Stadium as the faithful chanted: "Go to hell, Ole Miss, go to hell."

"And," he says, "we weren't playing Ole Miss."

Ah, yes. "Real obsession." That can definitely only be found in Dixie.

It's difficult to be too hard on Bragg because he is speaking as a sort of chronicler of the South as opposed to an active participant and/or endorser of its most ridiculous manifestations of insanity. He even mentions that he does not tie his worth to the outcome of the game, which is a nice sentiment that I like because many people have that problem.

Still, the entire piece was tiresome, worse, even, than an SEC team's fans chanting "S-E-C!" after a bowl victory instead of singing their school's fight song. Thankfully, we have Spencer Hall to make fun of these sorts of caricaturized, hackneyed drivel:

One time, COLORFUL REGIONAL ANECDOTE.

My uncle once worked at a turtle factory, where they make turtles and sometimes shotguns and pies. South Carolina had just beaten Georgia, and the plant manager was a big ol' South Carolina fan. He was just standing there, a-hootin' and a-hollerin' about, "woooo Go Cocks" when my uncle just up and popped him in the temple with a .38. THAT'S DEDICATION. Second degree manslaughter got the word "laughter" in it, and that's something I learned by watching Gallagher.

Homespun folk wisdom for its own sake, devoid of real depth or any sort of probing complexity, is an unfortunate way to have to describe something written by a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner like Bragg. I almost feel bad striking at something that is obviously heartfelt, but it is lazy writing, not to mention a passive-aggressive, literarily dressed up version of hollering "S-E-C" over and over again in some poor Yankee's face. 

On "luck." In light of this week's Big 12 previews and the discussion of "luck" with respect to Kansas State's win total and Oklahoma State's defense (i.e. TO margin), this post from Bill C on the issue of luck pertaining to Oklahoma State's 2011 defensive performance was fairly topical:

Let's summarize: Oklahoma State's defense was absolutely a bit lucky in 2011. They picked off about five more passes than they probably should have, and they recovered about four more fumbles than they probably should have. A swing of nine turnovers can obviously make an enormous difference over the course of the season. (They did, after all, benefit from about 3.4 turnover luck points per game.) That said, this defense wasn't based entirely on lucky bounces. Yes, OSU allowed a ton of yards. (They ranked 107th in yards per game allowed.) That's what happens when you a) face Arizona, Tulsa, Texas A&M, Missouri, Baylor, Kansas State, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Stanford, and b) do so with your own offense running at a nuclear pace (and therefore face a ton of plays). 

Michigan was also lucky last season, in the colloquial sense as well as the statistical "well that probably wouldn't have happened in most trials" one. Per Bill C, thing that are not attributable to luck include defending passes (i.e. interceptions+PBUs) and forced fumbles. Things that are mostly luck-based? Fumble recovery and interceptions. The whole "is fumble recovery rate mostly luck?" debate is one that has raged on many times at MGoBlog, and the best answer that I can come up with is this: it is luck and it isn't, which isn't much of an answer at all. Is a certain outcome attributable to "luck" if that outcome's likelihood (i.e. a recovered fumble) can be increased with a specific and narrow focus from a coaching staff? I would say yes and no. You can practice it, but at the end of the day a football is a prolate spheroid that bounces without rhyme or reason, and when you throw a pile of 250-320 pound dudes into the equation, cause and effect is like in a jungle of white noise. Something something preparation something opportunity.

As we all know, Michigan was tied for first in fumble recoveries last year with, you guessed it...Oklahoma State. I will be completely honest. I have the utmost confidence in these coaches, but there's a bubbling undercurrent of worry when you combine the above, the loss of 75% of the defensive line, and a frightening lack of depth at several positions. On the bright side, there aren't very many Big Ten offenses that appear to be exceedingly scary.

Underneath Michigan's #6 scoring defense was a team that was 36th in 3rd down conversion percentage defense, 39th in run defense, and, as mentioned, 1st in fumble recoveries. Against the better offenses on the schedule, namely Notre Dame and Virginia Tech (and Ohio State, obviously), Michigan was decidedly a bend-but-don't break group. Take Martin, RVB, and Heininger away from that defense and that dam starts to get quite a bit leakier, the margin of error smaller.

Of course, guys have gotten better over the summer. I don't mean this to be completely doom and gloom. Michigan's back 7, while not exactly supremely athletic, returns intact and should be very good.  The defensive line has its own questions: Campbell, Roh's move to SDE, Ryan's potential move to WDE, Jibreel Black on the inside, whether or not guys like Washington give us anything, and the overall readiness of Ondre Pipkins.

Instead of thinking about the dispassionate pendulum of turnover "luck" swinging back the other way counter to Michigan's interests, I'm just going to keep saying "trust the coaches" and playing the Jake Ryan running down David Wilson play over and over until September 1st.

Alabama secondary. Some general fluff about the Alabama secondary, Saban's favorite positional group and object of much spleen and OCD-ing. As mentioned in exhaustive detail during the position previews that I did a while back, the Tide have to replace three starters in the secondary, all NFL draft picks (Dre Kirkpatrick, Mark Barron, DeQuan Menzie). FS Robert Lester returns, but somebody needs to fill the shoes of the departed top-10 pick Mark Barron at SS. DC Kirby Smart on Vinnie Sunseri (son of new Tennessee DC Sal Sunseri):

"He's not Mark Barron, he's not trying to be Mark Barron; he's trying to be Vinnie and he's done that well," Smart said. "He makes a lot of big plays."

Well, we'll see about that. As for Sunseri's challengers:

Sophomore HaHa Clinton-Dix should also see significant action, especially when Alabama goes to its nickel and dime packages. Five-star freshman Landon Collins, who boasts a strong 6-foot, 202-pound frame, certainly looks the part of an SEC safety but will have to pick up Saban's and Smart's system quickly if he hopes to make an immediate impact.

Clinton-Dix has been talked about as an option at corner as well, so this is no surprise. Either way, all options here are very talented but young and inexperienced. I would imagine that Al Borges would have to find a way to scheme against this relative weakness (and I mean relative).

IT'S RAWLS-ERRING TIME. First of all, official position re: Toussaint. If he plays against Alabama, I would be fairly disappointed.

With that out of the way, I've already figured Toussaint's absence for that game into my worldview, so it's time to think about the backups. Al Borges made an explicit nod to sophomore mooseback Thomas Rawls, which isn't so much a depth chart surprise, really, but an explicit nod from this coaching staff is something worth clinging to on this day, August 9th, 2 Anno Hokeini. 

"We're just going to the next guy -- we're not really changing anything," Borges said during a news conference at Schembechler Hall. "Thomas Rawls is going to be that next guy. Vince is going to do what he's done, and on we go.

 Ramp up the speculation machine, but I have to think that Toussaint is not playing on September 1st. Anyway, in theory a guy like Rawls being Michigan's main option is nice against a team like Alabama. In theory. For a power back to get anything going, you need a line built to block for that sort of back, something that Michigan decidedly does not have. I don't care how "angry" Rawls runs, but I'm pretty much having visions of Rawls having to run through guys in the backfield just to get back to the line of scrimmage. A power back that hasn't really proven anything other than the fact that he can run over Jarrod Wilson plus a line that is good to very end at tackle but not exactly powerful in the interior, seems to me a recipe for a 10-12 carry, thirty-something type performance.

For some reason, I think that Stephen Hopkins will have his number called many times on 9/1. Michigan needs to do just enough to afford Denard some credibility and a modicum of space when he does in fact tuck it and run. Borges name dropped Rawls, Vincent Smith, and Justice Hayes, but I think Hopkins has to have his best game of his career of Michigan is going to even match their anemic Sugar Bowl output.

More? UMHoops on Zak Irvin's summer. Spoiler alert: he's very good. Dana Holgorsen got himself a 6-year extension at WVU. That noise was the collective resigned exhalation of Big 12 defensive coordinators everywhere.

From Stewart Mandel's mailbag, he says that Michigan "probably should [be ranked #1]" if Michigan beats Alabama. That would be cool.

Big 12 Preview (Part 2): Intruder(s) In the Dust

Already blabbered about: SEC West, SEC East, ACC Coastal, Big 12 (Part 1) 


It's time to finish up the Big 12 by taking a look at Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas Tech, TCU, and West Virginia. Yes, West Virginia in the Big 12 is still not something that I have completely assimilated into my college football worldview. 

Say, man, you got a bad defense? It'd be a lot cooler if you did. 

Prologue 
The 2011 season for the Oklahoma State Cowboys might have been its most exhilarating and disappointing season at the same time. As for the exhilarating part, the Cowboys went 12-1, winning a Big 12 championship along the way for the first time since the league formed in 1996. Excluding the 2010 season, it was their first double-digit win total since 1988. It was a wildly successful season built on the back of a juggernaut of an offense that didn't miss a beat at all even with OC Dana Holgorsen's departure for Morgantown. New OC Todd Monken called the plays for an offense that finished 3rd in total offense (behind only Houston and Baylor) and second in scoring offense (behind only Houston). Led by AARP member Brandon Weeden (GET IT BECAUSE HE WAS 28 AND THAT'S OLD FOR A COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYER), receiver Justin Blackmon, and tailback Joseph Randle, the offense essentially was an athletic refurbishing of Russia's "scorched earth" policy. Only, instead of scorching its own earth, they, you know, incinerated Big 12 defenses instead. 

As for the disappointing part, I think you know what I mean. Their one loss on the road against Iowa State, combined with an SEC favoritism built on the back of the previous five seasons, led to the Cowboys getting passed up by Alabama for the second national title berth. It's difficult to argue that Alabama did not have the look and feel of a national title team, but the strange, labyrinthine non-logic of college football would seem to do away with the notion that a "best" team could ever truly be decided. By that I of course mean that maybe the Cowboys would not have fared better against LSU than Alabama did, but I see no reason why they should have been denied the chance. 

In lieu of criticism of Oklahoma State's defense--and by extension Big 12 defense as a whole--mostly finding its source in Dixie, the most under-the-radar stat of the 2011 season was the fact that OSU ended the season with the #1 turnover margin. I don't remember people offering undue criticism to Auburn in 2010 for having a less than stellar defense, so I still don't understand why OSU was hammered for not putting up the same defensive stats that teams like LSU and Alabama did. Regardless, it was a wildly successful season for Mike Gundy, one that will be remembered for many years to come in Stillwater. 

The Texas teams presented a bit of a mixed bag. Mack Brown's Longhorns bounced back after a horrible 5-7 season in 2010 to go 8-5 last season. However, it was still a disappointing season for Texas in a number of ways. Despite having a ferocious defense and a pair of very good tailbacks in Malcolm Brown and Joe Bergeron, the Longorns's quarterback play let them down. Its been two seasons since Colt McCoy left for the NFL, and Mack Brown is still looking for a capable signal caller. After the collapse of the Garett Gilbert experiment in 2010 (and his ensuing transfer), the position shifted its focus to two youngsters in Case McCoy and David Ash. Ash put up better numbers across the boards but didn't exactly separate himself from McCoy in the race to secure the position. 

Despite the much-maligned Greg Davis's resignation in 2010, the 2011 offense wasn't much better, co-coordinated by former UT QB Major Applewhite and Bryan Harsin. The Longhorns finished 55th in scoring, 54th in total offense, and 89th in passing efficiency. With most of 2011's staunch defense and Bergeron and Brown both returning, its fairly clear that one of these two quarterbacks will need to seize the position and provide at minimum reliable play if this team is going to approach its former formidability. 

Texas Tech, on the other hand, was quite the opposite in almost every way. Quarterback Seth Doege put up monster numbers all season, most notably against Oklahoma in what was the Sooners' home loss since 2005. Unfortunately, the defense was still the sieve that you would imagine it to be. The Red Raiders finished 144th in total defense and near the very bottom in scoring defense (117th). No matter how potent your offense is--a notion that is still kind of amusing when attached to a head coach of Tommy Tuberville's decidedly conservative offensive reputation--you are not going to win very many games. And, in 2011, they didn't. After the Oklahoma upset took them to 5-2, TTU lost out, finishing 5-7, their first sub-.500 season since 1992. 

Next, we have the newcomers from Fort Worth. TCU started the season with a disheartening loss at Baylor that officially set RGIII mania into motion and also forced people to ask questions about what used to be an indomitable defense. Fortunately, on the back of QB Casey Pachall, the Horned Frogs finished what was otherwise a strong season. After a slip up in OT against SMU, TCU won out, including wins against Boise State and a bowl win against a sneakily solid Louisian Tech team. It is probably a testament to Gary Patterson's coaching acumen that an 11-2 (7-0) season could even be slightly painted with the brush of disappointment. With that said, while TCU was not exactly terrible on defense last season (as mentioned yesterday, most of the important metrics put them right on the fringe of the top third in the country), they will need to return to their defensively elite ways if they want to hope to keep the offenses in their new conference in check. 

Lastly, we have West Virginia, coming to the conference fresh of a national humiliation of Clemson during bowl season. Despite a puzzling 26-point loss at Syracuse in October and another loss at home against an improving but not exactly fearsome Louisville team, WVU proved themselves to be a team worthy of serious recognition by season's end. Additionally, despite losing by 26 to LSU at home, it was arguably one of the "closest" 26-point losses that I've ever seen (as I mentioned yesterday). The fact that Oklahoma State ran basically the same offense last season that they did when Holgorsen was in town lends some credence to the fact that the Cowboys would have had more success against LSU then SEC partisans would have led you to believe. 

In short, while the Big 12 still does not have enough teams for a conference championship game, this will yet again be the most exciting conference in America for the offensively inclined. It can be argued that the TCU and WVU additions were just as strong as the SEC's chosen pair of newcomers, but that will be proven or disproven in the years to come. 

Big 12 Preview (Part 1): Old Faces In Changing Times

Already blabbered about: SEC West, SEC East, ACC Coastal, ACC Atlantic

Among many other things, 2011 gave us the Stoops face. I know that feel, Bob. 

I've covered the SEC and ACC at length already, coming to the conclusion that we're looking at LSU-Georgia and Virginia Tech-Florida State title games this season (despite my better judgment after jumping on the FSU bandwagon last pre-season). Now it's time to venture out westward to the new look Big 12. Since the conference no longer has enough teams for a conference title game as of last year, there are no divisions. So, I'm just going to break these previews down into two groups of five, alphabetically. Today I'll take a look at Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, and Oklahoma.

Way Too Early Expectations-o-Meter: Jon Horford

People I've already talked about: Tim Hardaway Jr., Jordan Morgan, Matt Vogrich 

Career To Date 
Jon Horford--brother of Al, son of Tito--committed to Michigan on March 26th of 2010, two weeks after Evan Turner had ended what was a disappointing third season for John Beilein. At the time, Jon was a spindly 6'8'' 200 pound sort, a 3-star recruit. He boasted offers from only Michigan and Providence, according to Rivals; his Scout profile also indicates an Alabama offer. Tim's "Hello" post at MGoBlog from two years ago also notes that he got an offer from Cal and a non-zero level of interest from Michigan State. Needless to say, he didn't have the sort of recruiting hype that his brother did when he enrolled at Florida to play for Billy Donovan. 


That said, Horford brought something that Michigan didn't have much of at all: height. At approximately 6'8'', it seemed like he had a little room to grow even more. He now stands at 6'10'', according to his official profile on MGoBlue. 


There are quite a few interesting (and amusing) observations cited in that Hello post. For example, Dylan of UMHoops: 

But at the end of the day he just doesn’t “wow” you like you would expect a high-major big man to. He got ripped of several rebounds and doesn’t appear to be a tremendous shot blocker, despite being the tallest player on the court. He is very slender from the mid-section down and had to pull up his shorts after about every play. Horford’s shooting form is also screwy and will certainly get some attention once he is playing for a division 1 coach.

This was after lauding his overall mobility, finishing touch, and passing, observations which were echoed by basically every other scout. Even more intriguingly, from the same post: 

His brother Al was solid at the same stage and with hard work, ended up a two-time National Champ and NBA Lottery pick. Jon is on the same path.

This was, however, from December of 2007. As a rising junior, it's clear that Jon probably isn't the same caliber of player as Al was. At the same time, Jon was robbed of a chance to prove himself after an injury last December that caused him to miss the rest of the season (i.e. the entire conference schedule).

So, the recruiting skinny on Horford? Wait for it...he was really skinny (yes, ZING). As a 6'8'' guy weighing somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 pounds, there was literally no way he could compete in the GRITTY and TOUGH Big Ten with those measureables. Since matriculating to Michigan, however, Horford has put in him major time in the weight room, as he is currently listed at 250, which is kind of ridiculous to be honest with you.

His freshman year went about as expected: 6.8 minutes per game, 2 ppg, and 2 rpg. There had been some major cognitive dissonance coming from scouts. He was both a versatile post guy who needed some work in the wight room and a major project type prospect. After his debut season, it was pretty obvious that he was more the latter than the former. That's not to say that we won't get any better, because he very obviously will, it's just that it will take a little bit longer for him to do so.


Last Year
At the beginning of last season, pre-injury, he definitely seemed stronger down low on the boards and on defense. Sure, Michigan's non-conference slate was pretty soft, especially if you're no including the tournament in Maui, but you have to start somewhere.

Sample size issues abound re: Horford's sophomore season, but in the nine games he appeared in, there were signs for optimism. His minutes went up (10.8 mpg) by four, and his field goal percentage (53%, up from 48%), rebounds 3.6 rpg, from 2.0 per), and points per game (2.7 ppg, up from 2.0) all went up accordingly. He was moving well, passing well, and looking like a very useful player off the bench for a team sorely lacking in size. Even shot-blocking, which was noted as a negative for him (i.e. he should be much better at it given his height), became a useful aspect of is game. He blocked 11 shots throughout his entire freshman campaign; last season he swatted 9 shots in only 9 games.

People will remember last year's trip to Maui as the official beginning of the Trey Burke Experience, but looking back, Horford had himself quite the tournament as well. The Memphis and UCLA games were incredibly encouraging performances for him, on both ends of the floor.

Unfortunately, as mentioned, a right foot injury would eventually sideline him for the remainder of the season. Despite intermittent reports that he would possibly make his way back onto the floor, he apparently never quite recovered enough to risk playing him. Eventually, Beilein put the possibility of a  return to rest for good in February.

On the bright side, Horford did not exceed the requisite 30% of games played, making him eligible for a medical redshirt, affording him three more seasons of eligibility.


Things That Were Good
Again, sample size and all that, but Horford's performance in Maui, specifically against Memphis and UCLA, was pretty tremendous. Overshadowed by Trey Burke's surge into the collective college basketball consciousness, Horford dropped the following stat line in 12 minutes against Memphis: 6 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, and, most encouragingly, 4 blocks. Given the aforementioned concerns about his shot-blocking ability not matching up to his height, this outing would have perhaps signaled the beginning of the repudiation of that fact (if not for the injury). 


The UCLA game might have been even better. In 19 minutes, a career high, Horford scored 12 points, also recording 7 boards, 3 blocks, and 2 steals. UCLA wasn't very good last year, but it's still a game against a major conference team, and Horford looked surprisingly dominant. There was a lot to be excited about, and perhaps the most notable thing in all of this is that when he went down, he was sorely missed, and it wasn't just because Michigan had lost a guy who happened to be tall. Horford appeared to be on his way to a season of shot-blocking and put backs on the offensive glass. It's difficult to say what sort of impact he would've had on Michigan's season as a whole, but it's safe to say that Michigan could have used him during the conference schedule. 


Things That Were Bad 
There isn't much "bad" to talk about because his season was cut short before we really got to see him play against the best of the Big Ten. If I had to pick something, he was pretty much  non-factor in Michigan's two other big non-conference games against Duke and UVA. In 10 combined minutes from those two contests, he went 0-4 with only 1 rebound and 1 turnover. But, again, sample size applies to the bad as well as the good. 


If Horford Was A Literary Figure 
William James. This one is clearly somewhat of a stretch, as William James wasn't really a literary figure, per se, but...this section in general is somewhat of a stretch, right? Jon, like William, has largely lived in the shadow of his brother William Al, is talented in his own right in spite of the general lack of mainstream recognition. 


Things That Would Be Prettyyy Prettyyy Prettyyy Good 

• Keep swatting. We'll see how much of a shot-blocker McGary is, but as far as known commodities go, Morgan isn't one and neither is Biefeldt (probably). McLimans is used sparingly. As such, Horford represents a significant majority of Michigan's shot-blocking ability. Not to be that guy, but altough I think that shot-blocking is probably the most overrated defensive quality there is, it doesn't hurt to have it at your disposal. Horford flashed the ability to be a legitimate force in the paint against Memphis and UCLA (he also recorded blocks against Iowa State and Oakland). 
• Run the floor. Like Jordan Morgan, Horford's scouting report was replete with observations regarding his mobility for a big guy and his ability to run the floor. Again, for as much as people criticize Wisconsin, Michigan was actually a fairly slow team last year as well, so it's not like Michigan will be running up and down the floor like it's a track meet. That said, if Jon can pick up a bucket or two or sheer force of will by beating his man down the floor, that might be all Michigan needs from him offensively. 
• Develop some sort of shot. Like every Division I recruit that is 6'8''+, Horford put up nice offensive numbers in high school. Scouts noted that he had some solid moves in the low post, and although his arsenal was fairly unpolished and he could be pushed away from the basket, there was clearly some sort of offensive capacity to be chiseled out of that block of marble called potential. Morgan has developed his own niche on the team, running the floor and muscling his way inside to some tough put back points. In lieu of not having a jumper, Morgan has worked on and executed a little jump hook that still isn't perfect but is definitely deployable. Horford needs to start figuring out what his thing is. He hilariously attempted 8 threes as a freshman...although he went 1/8, I'm not sure 

OFFICIAL EXPECTATIONS FOR SOMETHING THAT IS FOUR MONTHS AWAY FROM STARTING
Horford and Morgan are obviously different players with different body types, but a lot of the same verbiage applies for both. Both have room to improve offensively, and by that I don't mean that either can become a regular double digit scorer. Rather, for players like these two, it's important to develop a niche, something that Beilein and the primary scorers can trust in every once in a while. Not unlike hockey, where you have "core" guys and then "secondary" scoring to supplement that top shelf talent, Morgan is without a doubt a secondary scorer. This is admittedly a minor quibble, since what I'm talking about is a short jumper or post move that would be used maybe two or three times a game, if that. 


Otherwise, I would like to see Horford build upon his strong start to last season. Against the better teams on the non-conference schedule, he came to play on both ends of the floor, blocking shots, picking up boards, and putting back bunnies here and there. I'm no doctor, but his foot injury seems like something that could easily be aggravated or re-injured, so Beilein will have to play his minutes by ear early on. Assuming that everything goes according to plan and he remains healthy, I see Horford, like Morgan, having a somewhat imperceptible uptick in his stat line that doesn't quite underscore how much he will have actually improved. 


In short, I think Horford will begin to flash the skill this season that he showed in 9 games last year. How much his stats go up is somewhat immaterial, especially given that the front court has gone from a barren wasteland to verging on, dare I say it...very deep. He's been around for two years now, though, so I don't know that his minutes will go back to what he posted in 2010-11. Something in the neighborhood of 3.0 ppg, 4.0 rpg, and between 1-1.5 blocks per game would be a solid expectation for a player who I think will surprise people this season with what he is capable of doing. 

Watershed

With a month to go until the start of Team 133's season--and fall camp starting soon--this is probably the last chance to sit and reflect on last year's team and this offseason as a whole before things start to pick up again. This is a time for the consumption of formulaic positional rankings posts, W/L predictions, and any other number of pre-season drudgery, sure, but it's also a time for thoughtful consideration of the things that have happened in the world of college football in the last year or so, Michigan-related or not.

Michigan finished last season at 11-2, its best record since the 2006 season. Needless to say, Michigan exceeded the hopes of even the most optimistic sort; personally, I had Michigan going 8-4, with losses to Notre Dame, Iowa, Illinois, and Nebraska. Like many Michigan fans, I was uncertain about Brady Hoke's ability to return Michigan to respectability and/or greatness...that is, until his opening press conference. After that, it became fairly obvious that he was the proverbial "good fit", and that many of the problems that plagued the RR regime would not be an issue under Hoke. I think I've mostly done away with the inescapable shame stemming from my brief and UNACCEPTABLE period of pre-press conference questioning of the hiring/The Process. But, as our old friend Rich Rodriguez once said: it's in the past.

The season began and it was immediately obvious that things were different. After Western Michigan had some early success moving the ball, Mattison's defense hunkered down and looked altogether like a unit that was receiving actual attention and coaching as opposed to being the ancillary complement to the offense that it was under RR (and I say that as a former RR uber-fan).

The Notre Dame game was...something. Almost a year later, I still don't know how to describe it. The title of the Monday game recap I did for that game just about sums up my ongoing state of mindless WOOOO-ing regarding that game. It has become a dream-like substance that requires revisiting because of its exciting nature and yet in some paradoxical way loses some of its merit in the process. Watching last yea's Notre Dame game during one of the BTN's numerous offseason airings is kind of like explaining a joke to someone. Some things, when picked apart too much, lose their mysticism.

With that said, it was an unforgettable experience to be in the stadium that night. An midsummer autumn night's dream, it was.

Despite it all, there was still the creeping underlying notion that not only was Michigan very lucky to win, there was still the possibility that, like the previous two seasons featuring heart-stopping victories over the Irish, Michigan might not be all that good for all its theatrics. However, those concerns were allayed as the season went on, partly due to a relatively easy schedule but mostly due to a defensive renaissance and a strong running game.

As I stood in the Superdome terrace this past January, watching the confetti fall and listening to Junior Hemingway's voice quaver under the atmospheric weight and mountains of circumstance, I marveled at how little all of this meant to me. Let me explain. The fact that Michigan had gone 11-2 was unbelievable, made even more remarkable by the fact that it was probably a top 5 season in my career as a watcher of Michigan football (dating back to approximately 1996, the season holding my first real-time memories of watching) in a year which no one expected to be nearly that good. Michigan had won its first BCS game since the turn of the millennium, the Orange Bowl game on 1/1/2000 against Alabama. All of this was done with essentially the same roster that RR had the year before. Think about it: the odds of Michigan experiencing a similar statistical defensive turnaround again during your lifetimes is highly unlikely (which, I guess, is a good thing). The end product of Michigan's season was spectacular, but not nearly as impressive as the path Michigan took toward reaching that end.

Yet, none of that mattered to me. What did endure was the fact that players like Mike Martin and Ryan Van Bergen and Junior Hemingway all stuck it out, despite having the misfortune of attending Michigan during its leanest stretch since the '60s. They improved year by year, incrementally but noticeably, and they were endearing and fun to watch. Michigan did not win a national title or a Big Ten championship last season, and yet I found it almost on the same plane of worship as the 1997 season. In past years, I would have been upset that Michigan had lost to Michigan State and Iowa the way that they did, that Michigan had simply bungled yet another opportunity to win a national title (not that that was a realistic outcome), but last year I really wasn't.
---
Many other changes in my fandom have come to pass in the past year or so. As anybody who reads this humble blog with any sort of regularity would know, I've become decreasingly passive-aggressive in  my distaste with the business of recruiting, a distaste which has become more and more unconcealed by the day. I'm not sure exactly when this transformation took place, but maybe this is the natural result of getting older and become slightly more mature (only slightly).

I generally think that the mania surrounding Terrelle Pryor's recruitment was the beginning of the end for me with respect to the hyper-obsessive following of recruitment. I, like most other Michigan fans, had an almost nonsensical obsession with the tracking of Michigan's recruiting efforts. I spent time reading recruiting round ups on MGoBlog and elsewhere, mindlessly storing names of various recruits in my brain--mental storage space that could have been occupied by something useful, and yes, brains do work exactly like pay-for-storage businesses--that often had no realistic chance of landing in Ann Arbor: a wideout from California, a tailback from Georgia, a defensive end from Florida.

Maybe it was graduating from college--and consequently finding myself older than even Michigan's senior players--that did it, but eventually I realized that this recruiting hobby was all mostly an incredible waste of time. The fact that I was no longer worried about what this would mean for the precious vitality of my Michigan fandom/Mandom was a harbinger of other wholesale shifts in my philosophy as a college football fan.

Like others, the Penn State scandal, among many other more consequential things, allowed me an opportunity to reassess what I find important about Michigan and all the connotations that go along with being affiliated with Michigan, as a fan of its athletics and a recent alumnus.  This is in no way meant as some sort of haughty reaction to the Penn State fan base's response to the scandal (generalization is a bad thing), but it has become very obvious to me, in the year and a few months after graduation, that what makes me miss Michigan does not begin and end with football, or basketball, or hockey.

At the same time, with the PSU scandal, the NCAA issues at Ohio State, Oregon, Miami, UNC, and elsewhere, the NCAA's seemingly arbitrary timetables and rationale for the levying of punishments, in addition to the insanity of realignment and the playoff debate, this offseason was also one that fostered a burgeoning nihilism regarding the game that I have held above all others. Other than Michigan football, I follow Michigan football, four pro teams, and Michigan hockey to a lesser extent, but there has never been any question which sports reigns supreme in my eyes. However, all of these things started to make me question my admittedly very, very naive perspective of college football as this inviolable concept.

Unfortunately, college football at a macro level is becoming increasingly unappealing, like looking at anybody under those doctor's office fluorescent lights: everything looks a little bit worse. It's not that I dislike change, it's just that being older and thus more capable of understanding the minutiae of the business--and oh is it a business--of college football makes for a significantly more conflicted experience. In fact, it makes for an infinitely more conflicted experience, because without said knowledge, the only conflict is the ultimately Knowing the pettiness of these proceedings and the frivolous nature of most discussion about college football (and sports in general, really), have forced me to think twice about this obsession. Ignorance truly is bliss.

After a while, as I did with recruiting, I stopped paying attention to the daily bits of innuendo in the world of realignment and the playoff debate, and I was much better off for it. Both of these targeted downsizings of my fandom allowed me to retreat to a more local, Michigan-centric level. However, it also gave me an opportunity to devote more time to understanding the rich tapestry of variegated tradition that is college football, one which I think is unsurpassed in the world of sports.

I've written ridiculously long posts about each Alabama positional group, previews of the SEC East and West, the ACC Coastal and Atlantic, and, in the coming weeks, posts on the Pac 12, Big 12, and Big East. When I first started this blog two years ago, there was literally no way I would have even considered doing any of these things, let alone writing at length about any of them with some level of comfort.

Reading Pre-Snap Read and various team-specific websites--whether independent ones or teams' respective SB Nation sites--has allowed me to increase my knowledge about college football exponentially. Never before would I have considered reading a lengthy offseason post about, say, Northwestern, but I have done so this offseason. As a result, I will enter this college football season with a body of knowledge dwarfing what I had going into any other season.

Speaking of Northwestern and following along with the theme of a more macroscopic, non-Michigan-centric view of the college football landscape, I will be attending Northwestern this fall for grad school. As a result, I have taken to reading blogs like Sippin' on Purple and Lake The Posts with regularity, almost as regularly as I read MGoBlog and EDSBS, which is saying something. This would explain the seemingly frequent Northwestern references here throughout the last three or four months. The point is, my appreciation for the game as a whole has driven me to do things like, gasp, maybe care a little bit about teams other than Michigan. This doesn't even have to do with some absolute value of fandom, which is not the zero sum game that many so called superfans make it out to be (i.e. that supporting another team in any way somehow subtracts from your love of your first team). Rather, it's an expression of appreciation and curiosity, both of which are decidedly good things. I'm not saying that I'm going to miss Michigan games to go watch the Wildcats play, but I might end up DVRing and watching them later. At no point in the past have I ever thought about doing that for any team, let alone Northwestern.

I mean, in no other offseason would I have been as equipped to write a post like this about Iowa or one like this about Northwestern. It just would not have happened, and I think that's partly a testament to the writing practice that I get on here as well as my willingness to venture out into the great unknown of college football, also known as "teams other than Michigan."Believe it or not, there are a lot of great and interesting things going in the world of college sports outside of the University of Michigan; familiarizing yourself with these things, in my opinion, actually serves to make you a better Michigan fan and/or Michigan Man (if you're that sort of person).

But Fouad, why are you saying all this when you said before that this is all frivolous and basically a waste of time? Well, you're right. This is frivolous, and if there is anything that has changed the most in my outlook in the past year or so, it's that this is: a) supposed to be fun and b) that this is so laughably not life and death.* You would think that the latter would be obvious, but it's amazing and honestly somewhat frightening how much the actions of a squad of 18-22 year olds can affect the psyche of an otherwise well-adjusted adult human. Whereas games like the 2010 Penn State game and the 2009 Michigan State game (and many, many others) left me in a world of hurt, I found myself shrugging off Michigan's 2011 losses fairly easily. Progress!

*A phrase in the sports fan's lexicon that is almost matched in thoughtless by the analogies drawn between sporting events and things like war or other disasters.
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I've said this about Denard approximately 372 times in the last couple of years, but if there is anything to take from college football, anything worth tethering yourself to, worth clinging to like it is the sole source of nutrition for your fandom, it is the memories of the players themselves and the component parts of your favorite triumphs. The latter is, of course, in contrast with the remembrance of the end result of the triumph itself--the fact that it yielded a win, the final score, yardage totals, records set. Remember the way that Denard ran that first time against Western Michigan, not that he would go on to break all sorts of records that in the end are sterile and meaningless things. Drop a statistical nugget, an ugly bundle of numbers, into your metaphorical pool of memory and it sinks to the dark bottom. Drop the memory of Denard dropping the snap, picking up and running past everyone on his first play floats, even runs, atop the surface of those same mental waters.

These people that we watch every Saturday are not only players, they are human beings with a set of differentiating characteristics that make the existence of another person like them literally impossible. As such, each player, even the little-used or the not very good, should be given their due respect. Even Jareth Glanda produced a memory for Michigan fans to lock away and store forever, a point of raw memory that many will recall thirty years down the road when thinking about the 2012 Sugar Bowl. Sure, it helps that Michigan won, but Glanda's simultaneously hilarious and timely "reception" might prove to be a more lasting note in the annals of Michigan football than the fact that Michigan won the Sugar Bowl, a glorified exhibition game.

Also, lest I verge too far into the realm of the morbid, it is always good to appreciate these players that give their time, their bodies, and their minds to Michigan, simply because you never know how much longer they (or anyone else, really) will remain in this world. This is true of everybody in every walk of life, but for a sport that is often, as I said, considered "life and death" by some, it is important to remember what life and death actually are. Death is final. The extinguishing of a life is final. Your sadness after a Michigan loss compared to these things is like the Earth's place in the Milky Way galaxy: it is an incredibly insignificant speck of dust in a larger speck of dust within a Universe holding billions and billions of these larger specks.

That little spot is how important the result of sporting events ultimately are vis-a-vis everything else in existence...i.e. not very. Still, there is considerable good to be found therein. 

As we approach, I will pour more time into this sinkhole of an obsession, running down my various predictions for various teams, players, conferences, etc. Whether or not the things I write here are widely read, this has been a fun thing and a good outlet for my thoughts on the teams and sports that I love. In a way, creating this blog and tasking myself with formulating thoughts on various offseason and in-season happenings has subconsciously molded and changed my opinions on a lot of things: recruiting, realignment, playoffs, the overall intentions of the principle players of college athletics, the ultimate importance of any of this stuff.

Let us praise great men and appreciate what has been accomplished. Just as importantly, let us question the things that need questioning. If this post seems incredibly disjointed, that's probably because it reflects the inefficiencies and hypocrisy of the NCAA and collegiate athletics. In a way, such an entity can only be responded to in kind with a similarly disjointed and conflicted message. Even so, this is a good time to tinker with that message, to reformulate and recalibrate the reasons and mechanisms of our fandom.

In a month, the season will start and there will be plenty to talk about. The Alabama game will produce some sort of significance, good or bad, a sort of barometric measuring of the strength of Michigan's football program. Michigan will travel to Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Ohio State, and will attempt to end Michigan State's winning streak at home. Very soon, there will be a lot to talk about: narratives to build up and deconstruct, statistical models to analyze and fit to certain theoretical frameworks, and a bevy of new memes and hilarious gifs.

For now, let's also savor this ephemeral silence. Very soon, things will become much louder.