the ncaa is ignored

Brindley should hear his name tonight [Bill Rapai]
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Unverified Voracity Goes For It
Brian • June 28, 2023 • 1:03pm

RIP. Sad week for the Michigan family, as Mister Simpson and Ryan Mallett both died far too young. Mallett drowned off the Gulf Coast—apparently one of 11 people to lose their lives to rip currents in the past two weeks. Simpson's death is under investigation by the Cincinnati police department. Keep their families in your thoughts.

Toe meets leather. Warde Manuel asserts that the changed Big Ten format will not affect The Game:

“The Game will remain at noon in the regular season when we play,” Manuel said on “In the Trenches,” a podcast produced by Michigan Athletics. “We’ve had great fan enjoyment of that game, and being at noon. Great television response in terms of numbers of people who who watch that game. I think there’s no need to move it to any other time. It’s really been become a part of that series and people sort of set their calendar, set their clock to watch that game at noon on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.”

This of course sets up the unappetizing possibility of an immediate rematch for the Big Ten championship, but aside from some wacky bloggers making wacky, impossible suggestions—Seth and I are specialists in this department—I'm not sure what the alternative is.

Also note the assumption that the Game will be at noon, which is technically not guaranteed—Fox could choose another Big Ten game for their #1 overall pick—but is about as certain as anything in this crazy mixed-up world.

Math wins. There used to be a cottage industry around here: fourth-down clucking. We still mention it from time to time, but the section on the podcast that used to mention unforgivable Brady Hoke decisions has mostly been reduced to things like "ehhh… that's really close." That's because college football has gotten a lot more aggressive on fourth down. Bill Connelly provides a graph:

image

Since there are occasional correct punt decisions even in the top two categories college coaches are probably approaching optimal. I also enjoy the big spike in 2020, as the college football collective decided that nothing mattered lol. Then they were like "oh… that worked" and kept going for it.

Michigan was not on the leading edge—you probably know this—but chose its spots superbly:

Meanwhile, Michigan went for it just 21% of the time (87th) but picked its spots well and profited by 5.3 points per game (ninth). Jim Harbaugh's Wolverines converted 17 of 21 attempts (81%, second in FBS) and scored 81 points after those 17 conversions. Opponents scored only seven points after the four failures.

No decision was more important, bold, and correct than Michigan going for it on fourth and one in their own territory early in the third quarter against OSU. Meanwhile, the Buckeyes:

I imagine this is high on the list of offseason priorities in Columbus. It'll be interesting to see how that number changes this year. If it stays stubbornly low it could be a sign that Ryan Day's just a finesse kind of guy.

[After THE JUMP: yeahhhh we're just going to ignore you thanks]

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