Husker Links: The 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

By Bryan MacKenzie
@Bry_Mac

The last few years have been difficult for Michigan fans. Obviously, they’ve been difficult for everyone, but if you had to add a modifier to anyone to improve their lives recently, “Michigan football fan” hasn’t exactly been “guy who invested heavily in sweatpant futures in February of 2020” or “Tractor Supply medical supply rep.” So while Michigan basketball provided a nice pick-me-up during these Troubled Times, Michigan football provided a crappy, losing, literally disease-ridden season, followed by an offseason of job rumors and general ennui.

However, if you were anything like me, there was one thought that occasionally crossed your mind that always brought a smile to your face. Not a big beaming smile, but a little grin. A moment of welcome levity in a dark time. A touch of light on a dreary day. Two little words that had the same effect as finding a five dollar bill in your coat pocket from the winter before, or hitting the trash can with a wadded up paper towel from across the room on the first try:

“Scott Frost.”

Upchurch

Scott Frost’s first three years at Nebraska were the real life equivalent of the caricature people draw of Jim Harbaugh’s tenure at Michigan. The brash, aggressive golden boy former quarterback returns home to revive and reestablish a once-proud program that has fallen on hard times, only to fall flat. But where Harbaugh’s record has been underwhelming, Scott Frost’s record hasn’t been within a Tanner Lee arm-punt of “underwhelming.”

[After THE JUMP: Whereas…]

A 15-23 record, which is worse than Rich Rodriguez’s 15-22 mark at Michigan. A 10-19 conference record and failing to get to .500 in conference play in any season, despite playing in the Big Ten West. The defense that can’t stop anyone from scoring (they’re surrendered >29 points per conference game in each of Frost’s seasons). The Scott Frost Day jokes. Oh, god, the Scott Frost Day jokes.

It’s got a seal and everything

So, when Nebraska started the season with a Week 0 loss to Illinois, it is was easy to mentally drop them into the “lol, Nebraska is Nebraska and will always be Nebraska” bucket. We had other stuff to worry about, like sturdy, reliable programs like Washington and Wisconsin and Northwestern. So if I, as the worst time traveler in the history of time travel, returned from this moment to immediately before the Western Michigan kickoff to tell you, “Nebraska rolls into October 9th at 3-3, and is probably the best team Michigan will face in the first seven weeks of the season,” you would’ve been understandably skeptical.

This is how I too remember Adrian Martinez (Upchurch)

But look at Nebraska since that opening catastrophe against Illinois. Since then, they’re gaining 6.9 yards per play and surrendering only 4.9 yards per play. They’re giving up an average of 12.6 points per game. They played the #6 team in the country to the wire, and absolutely should have beaten the #11 team in the country. They’re fresh off a 49-point thrashing of the defending Big Ten West champions. They have a senior quarterback who is averaging 9.8 yards per attempt, has rushed for 69 yards per game at over 5 yards per carry (even including sack yardage), and has thrown only two interceptions on 150 attempts. They have the #20 SP+ defense and the #34 offense in the country. They’re… good. Not great. But good.

I know it seems crazy. The ONE THING we thought we could count on in these crazy times was Nebraska being mediocre. But Vegas has this as a 3 or 3.5 point game. SP+, who *loves* Michigan to an extent that makes Michigan fans uncomfortable, has Michigan by 3.6 points. And this is a night game in the building that still holds the restless soul of Denard Robinson’s elbow. Alas, Scott Frost finally gets the signature win he’s been seeking for four years. But don’t worry, you can still celebrate Scott Frost Day however you see fit. Nebraska 27, Michigan 20

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COUNTERPUNT

By Internet Raj
@internetraj

For over a decade, I’ve harbored a hidden, intractable anger. A silent rage that simmers at my core but bubbles over almost every time I watch college football. Indignation that an organization could boldly conjure up something so incoherent and nonsensical yet trot it out on our television sets every Saturday afternoon with a self-satisfied air of smugness.

At first glance, you might think I’m talking about Michigan football, which admittedly fits the bill of a hubris-addled consummate disappointment. But no, that would (a) be too obvious, and (b) thwart the long-winded, circuitous writing style I have mastered to disguise my complete lack of technical football knowledge and satisfy Seth’s recommended 500-word target for Punt-Counterpunt. The true focus of my ire is not an on-field product, but one wedged in almost every 2-minute commercial break.

The Car Fox.

The fucking Carfax Car Fox.

On the surface, the Car Fox seems like yet another innocuous, and dare-I-say cute, use of an animal mascot hawking a harmless product. Even a moment of further inquiry, though, topples the trembling house of cards logic deployed by the Carfax marketing department. First of all, the company’s name is “Carfax.” This in itself makes fine sense because “fax” is a stylized version of “facts” and Carfax is a company that sells vehicle history reports (i.e., literal “car facts”) to consumers and businesses. No, that’s not what bothers me. It’s the wholly nonsensical and arbitrary leap from “fax” to “fox” that lights the kerosene-soaked furor in my soul. I have combed through minutes and minutes of Carfax commercials and not once is it ever explained in the canon of the Carfax Cinematic Universe how the company can, with a straight face, make the jump from “fax” to “fox.” There is absolutely nothing that links these two words other than the fact that they… kinda sound the same?

I’m only at 305 words so I gotta wring more out of this Carfax shit, so let me just say that the Car Fox is complete and utter bullshit, a shameless output of a chain of logic unmoored from any semblance of rationality. And it’s not just that arriving at “fox” from “facts” that irks me. It’s that the Car Fox is presented to the viewers with such galling shamelessness, built on the implicit assumption that we are collectively so stupid that we’ll just blindly slurp up the corporate slop being served by the Carfax industrial complex. The sheer brazenness of it all, like if Urban Meyer had given his fingers a deep sniff and turned to an Ultra HD 8K camera and winked. Honestly, fuck you, Car Fox and fuck everything that you stand for. Alright, now I’m at 384 words, so this is where I should probably start pivoting to talking about Nebraska.

Facts -> Fax -> Fox

When Michigan plays Nebraska today, you’ll invariably see more than a handful of Carfax commercials, and when you do, know that that leering Car Fox is stoking the embers of my fury. But that won’t be the only incoherent, jumbled mess on your television. There will also be Scott Frost, a guy who will lose to you by 50 and say his team “outhit” you. A guy whose offense shows signs of promise only to be crippled by a bonehead play, decision, or penalty. A guy who at first glance made all the sense in the world—the prodigal son returning home to Lincoln—only to be revealed as a complete sham. Scott Fox.

Some of the more discerning readers of this column might be sensing a case of meta-hypocrisy. Is Raj really complaining about the tenuous logic in going from “facts” to “fax” to “fox”? The same Raj whose Counterpunt column is literally the built on the back of nonsensical metaphors and analogies that heavy-handedly segue into a few empty words and shallow gestures about the week’s game? Well, to that claim, I only have one response: I’m at 587 words now, so goodbye and go blue.

Michigan: 46, Nebraska CornFoxers: 24