Happy Holidays

This comic strip says it perfectly...

"99 Percent"

Good news today for Michigan fans... Michael Hart has declared that he is 99% confident that he'll be wearing Maize and Blue again next year. That's right, after finishing #5 in the Heisman voting in his Junior season, Michael Hart is most likely returning. Chad Henne has said that he will be back as well, stating that he has unfinished business, including beating Ohio State.

One of the greats

I know it's from a while ago, but this clip shows one of the greatest interceptions I've ever seen (Not that I'm biased at all...).



What makes the clip even better is watching away from the ball to see the receiver get planted into the ground by a linebacker.

Michigan is left out in the cold

Florida is playing Ohio State in the National Championship for one simple reason: Voters forgot what they were voting for. The people with ballots are supposed to rank the teams based on one single criterium. It doesn’t matter if one scenario would result in a “rematch,” or if one team hadn’t won their conference. The votes should only depend on this: Do you think Michigan or Florida, each with one loss, is the better team? Once USC lost, several voters, who had put USC ahead of Michigan to avoid a potential OSU-UM rematch, suddenly switched their #2 vote to Florida to achieve the same end. They forgot that they were supposed to be voting for the quality of the team, not for the National Championship game they most wanted to see. For the last couple weeks, members of the media have been at fault for framing the debate incorrectly. Time after time, they’ve been debating whether there “should” be a rematch. It doesn’t matter if there “should” be a rematch. It matters only whether Michigan is the second best team!

To that point, let’s look at the facts. Many will argue that both Florida and Michigan have one loss, and that Florida played a tougher schedule. Maybe so, although I think it’s debatable. Although the Big Ten was down this year, I think the SEC is somewhat over-rated. Yes, I know how blasphemous that statement is, but I’ll back it up with facts. First remember that Florida’s SEC championship opponent, Arkansas, is the same team that was destroyed in the opening game of the season, 50-14, by USC. Florida, as I’ll detail a little later, played a joke of a non-conference schedule, relying only on the strength of the SEC to bring its overall strength of schedule up.

Let’s take Vanderbilt as an example. They were 4-4 in SEC play, and lost narrowly to both Arkansas and Florida, the two teams playing yesterday for the SEC title. This is the same Vanderbilt that, with a conservative game plan on the first game of the season, Michigan beat 27-7, out-gaining Vanderbilt by more than double the yards (381-171), and dominating them on the ground (246-42). In fact, while Michael Hart ran for 146 yards in that game, Vanderbilt’s leading rusher was their QB, Chris Nickson, who rushed for 22 yards on 16 carries. Against mighty Arkansas, Vanderbilt out-rushed the Razorbacks 240-170 in a 2 point loss! Sure, Florida played Vanderbilt tougher than Arkansas: Vanderbilt only out-rushed Florida 93-88, and out-gained them 298-242 in a 6 point loss. Vanderbilt, the mediocre SEC team that was dominated by Michigan, was narrowly beaten by the top two SEC teams, despite out-gaining each of them in the rushing game. Urban Meyer was wondering what style points were. Look at those games, and maybe you’ll understand.

As Gene Wojciechowski of ESPN wrote:

“Ask the coaches at Vanderbilt (the Commodores played both Michigan and Florida this season) who is the better team, and the consensus pick -- privately, of course -- is the Wolverines. Florida has more speed and a handful of players to die for, they say, but Michigan is more physical, would control both sides of the line of scrimmage, have wonderful wide receivers, and are led by a senior quarterback who doesn't make many mistakes.”

Let’s not stop there, though. As I mentioned above, let’s look at how Florida proved itself against non-conference opponents. Their non-conference schedule included Southern Miss, Central Florida, West Carolina, and Florida State. Those teams have a combined record of 20-28, even though, of those teams, only FSU plays in a major conference. Michigan’s non-conference opponents (Vanderbilt, Central Michigan, Ball State, and Notre Dame) had a combined record of 28-21, with Notre Dame finishing near the top 10 in the nation, and Central Michigan winning the MAC conference championship.

Again, speaking of style points, Michigan only played two games decided by 7 points or less: a 17-10 win on the road over Penn State, and a 3 point road loss to #1 Ohio State. Florida, on the other hand, had 5 games decided by 7 points or less: Tennessee (1pt), Georgia (7pts), Vanderbilt (6pts), USC (that’s South Carolina, not Southern Cal! – 1 pt), FSU (7 pts). That doesn’t even include their 10 point loss to Auburn. Despite the common belief that Florida played the toughest schedule in the nation, Florida and Michigan’s schedules were actually fairly similar, and even middle-of-the-pack for Division 1A (#47 versus #53 out of 119 teams), according to Mike Greenfield’s Team Rankings. With such similar schedules, what matters is style points. Michigan dominated its schedule, with the exception of a 3 point road loss to the best team in the country. Florida struggled through many of its games, and lost by double digits to a team that didn’t even play for the conference championship.

Michigan is a much more complete team than Florida. Most voters would agree. Too bad they voted for the match-up they wanted instead of the match-up of the top two teams. People talk about the BCS system being broken, and about their fears of putting the decision in the hands of computers. In this case, it was the voters who erred, not because they were wrong, but because they forgot what they were voting for.