Minnesota Links: Preview, The Podcast, FFFF Offense (chart), FFFF Defense (chart).

Something's been missing from Michigan gamedays since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one… something like Punt-Counterpunt.

PUNT

Bryan MacKenzie is out this week. Fortunately I know a guy.

PUNT

By Nick RouMel
Counterpunt Emeritus

A “Catch-22” has come to be understood as a paradoxical situation, one in which neither of two choices is either possible, or desirable. It comes from the eponymous 1961 novel by Joseph Heller, set in World War II. The protagonist, John Yossarian, pilots a B-25 bomber in Europe. After watching too many friends die, he wants to quit. He cannot wait to fly enough missions so that he can be reassigned. But every time he gets close to being finished, his megalomaniac commander keeps retroactively raising the requisite number of missions, ultimately to an impossible number—from 25, eventually to 80.

Yossarian still has one way out. He can show his commander verification that he has had a mental breakdown, and then he would be excused. But when he sees the flight surgeon, the Doc explains the “Catch-22” the Army Air Force employs: an airman would have to be crazy to fly more missions, and if he were deemed crazy, he would be unfit to fly. Yet, if an airman were to refuse to fly more missions, this would also indicate that he is sane, which would mean that he is sufficiently fit to fly the missions. Thus the paradox—Yossarian’s “Catch-22.”

After MSU was graciously allowed to join the conference in 1950, the Big Ten had, as its name suggests, ten members. This went on, mathematically correct, for forty years until Penn State joined in 1990. The conference, paradoxically, did not change its name, though the logo cleverly contained a hidden number 11:

[After THE JUMP: Blockbusters and beepers.]

Nebraska joined in 2011. Then Rutgers and Maryland in 2014. The conference breathed for a few years. Then alignment insanity arrived: Oregon, Washington, USC, and UCLA will be joining the conference next year. That’s 18 teams!

Since I became a season ticket holder in 1990, I have tried to attend a different away game whenever possible. From the cow manure smell in Champaign-Urbana, to having a knife pulled on me at OSU, I covered them all. Two years ago I visited Maryland, which serves crabcakes and beer, and last year Rutgers, which claims to be the site of the first college football game of all time.

This year’s schedule allowed me to check off, back to back, the two venues I hadn’t visited: Nebraska, and Minnesota. When I planned this trip last year, I thought, like Yossarian, I would have flown all my missions and be able to retire. Abashedly, I was wrong. I am already planning my road trip to Seattle for next year’s Washington game.

I must be crazy to want to stop this pursuit. This year’s trip led me from a lawyerly business trip in Marquette, to a bonus visit to Lambeau for the Lions’ pasting of the Packers.

That sea of blue are celebrating Lions fans.

Then to Lincoln where the polite Husker fans repeatedly apologized for how bad their team was. These were two actual t-shirts I saw:

[right: by Patrick Barron. I saw a green version too.]

One explained to me: it’s a great atmosphere until you’ll be up by 20. So spake the corn-fed prophet.

Up by 20.

Minnesota is my last-minute assignment today. Seth asked me to pinch-hit for Bryan MacKenzie and I am only too happy to write off this trip for tax purposes do a solid for my former writing partner. I am looking forward to more polite and apologetic fans.

So I think we go three for three on my road trip. I’d be crazy to think otherwise.

MICHIGAN 31, MINNEHAHA 10

 

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COUNTERPUNT

By Internet Raj
@internetraj

When I wax nostalgic about Friday nights in the 90’s and the early aughts, certain memories trigger a flood of vivid sensory recall from the deepest recesses of my hippocampus. The symphonic crack-pop-whoosh as I open a can of Surge soda and poured its fizzing bubbling goodness into the chalice that was my free plastic cup from McDonalds. The hot, melty volcanic cheese of a Pizza Hut stuffed crust oozing into my mouth. Feeling like aristocratic royalty as I artfully cut through a thin layer of freezer burn on my Viennetta Cake. Carelessly (because I had ESP enabled, of course) pulling the Sony Discman out of the cavernous pockets of my JNCO jeans, smashing play, and listening to Bizzy Bone melodically sing “Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone Bone…” through the hot foam of my Koss headphones. The dopamine rush of turning the rotary dial on my T V to Channel 7 at 7:58pm to settle in for another thrilling installment of TGIF.

And, above all else, the pure anticipatory glee of hearing your parents say, “Let’s go rent a movie”. Unlike today’s sterile, deterministic world of algorithmic gratification and limitless excess, “Let’s go rent a movie” in the 1990’s conjured a uniquely exciting sense of adventure. There were not terabytes upon terabytes of streaming content floating in the ether, ready to be plucked by the long spindly fingers of a Netflix data scientist, diced into bleak grey cubes of personalized monotony and instantaneously served to you while you lie on the sofa and the cold aluminum of your Apple TV remote, beached on the tiny sliver of skin exposed between your now-too-small shirt and increasingly tight pants, drifts up and down in sync with each lethargic breath.

No, in the 1990s, you got in your parent’s car, drove to the neighborhood Blockbuster and were confronted with real mystique and real scarcity. You didn’t have algorithms, Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB to shape your tastes; you relied on the random local newspaper critic, Ebert, and word-of-mouth from your friend Greg. You didn’t have access to millions of titles ready to stream on a moment’s notice; you had to trawl through a physical retail store and hope there was a physical VHS tape propped up behind the empty cover of the movie you wanted to see. By all objective measures, this bygone era was worse in every way: worse technology, more scarcity, less options and less information. But on a primal, old-man-shouting-at-the-clouds level, I still pine for those simpler, more challenging yet more rewarding times.

Friday Night Mecca

Today’s game against Minnesota marks the 20-year anniversary of one of the more memorable chapters of the historic Brown Jug rivalry and it evokes similar Blockbuster-tinged memories of a young Internet Raj. On October 11, 2003, I was 16-year-old, a rabid Michigan fan, and doomed to what I thought at the time was an unspeakably cruel fate: I had to attend my cousin’s wedding in Chicago and could not watch the game.

“Not being able to watch the game” was like getting to Blockbuster and not finding a copy of your first-choice movie. There was no backup – no iPhones, no YouTube TV, no way to track the game. Sure, you could sneak in a portable radio, but because I wasn’t in the Michigan market, I’d only be able to hear generic score updates on the local sports radio station on the :15 and :45 of every hour.

But, in the strangest twist of fate, my Dad had a beeper for work that, through some technical wonder that I still haven’t pieced together (and don’t want to out of fear of ruining the magic), was able to fetch sports scores. And so, I followed one of the most memorable comebacks in Michigan football history: scoring 31 points in the fourth quarter and winning 31-28 on a last second Garret Rivas field goal. And I followed it all on a monochromatic 1-inch screen that was devoid of all context – I had no idea how touchdowns were scored, how was scoring them or any other statistical information.

But, in some Neanderthalic way, it was a thrill. Constantly hitting refresh like a 77-year-old Grandma gambling away her retirement fund with every pull of a slot machine in Atlantic City. Joyously celebrating and sharing score updates with the similarly information-starved Michigan fan wedding guests at my table. It was a primitive, but wild ride. Today, I’ll probably watch four simultaneous noon games on a YouTube TV quad-view, like a gluttonous king. It will be awesome and I’d never give it up, but it won’t have the austere charm of “watching” a game on a damn pager.

I had to stay up late just to see a snippet of these highlights on ESPN.

I say all of this because I won’t be watching the game tonight, either. I’m typing this Counterpunt on a flight from Singapore to New York, where I’ll visiting family and having a dinner out. Sure, I’ll have an iPhone out and may sneak a few seconds of streaming here and there. But, twenty years later, I’ll be returning to my Blockbuster roots. It’s a nice reminder that sometimes, history does repeat.

Michigan 38, Minnesota 35