WTKA Roundtable 11/2/2017: There’s Rain and Then There’s Rainman
[Patrick Barron]
Then he's going to throw a touchdown and it's like ooh he's calm and collected again.
Things discussed:
- The Petersing! Exciting to see he was hitting his checkdowns, varying speeds. So calm and cool. O’Korn had a particularly bad game to get himself pulled. The margins here are small: don’t get carried away.
- Good idea to wait until Rutgers?
- How did O’Korn stay ahead of this guy? There are practice guys: Bolden memorized the offense but didn't learn how to play football. Could be that explains O'Korn's practice performance vs his on-field performance.
- The Peters Progression: Spring game was just the lunch menu. His sister went through the leadership crucible at Purdue in volleyball. He was so cool, laid back, Yzermanian even.
- Section 38 has three dancers. Scott Childers wants to get the whole section dancing.
- The ground game mauled people. Felt so good.
- Hey remember Rich Rod?
- Ohio State vs. Penn State: no, Don, we aren’t happy about it. Barrett looked like a Heisman player in that one—definitely not like he looked when they played Oklahoma.
- Is the run game sustainable? If the passing game can keep the safeties off yes, because they’re blocking well.
- Minnesota: the weather could screw Michigan by taking away the part of the game where we’re superior.
You can catch the entire episode on Michigan Insider's podcast stream on Audioboom.
Segment two is here. Segment three is here.
THE USUAL LINKS
November 3rd, 2017 at 11:47 AM ^
I will say that I enjoyed this roundtable more than any other this season.
November 3rd, 2017 at 9:10 AM ^
I love the "all legs and hair" comment regarding Kareem. Dreads on a ball carrier are a reminder of our favorite player. I'm really excited to see him develop into the Power-Denard over the next four years.
November 3rd, 2017 at 9:15 AM ^
Where's Wallace? Where's Wallace!
November 3rd, 2017 at 9:30 AM ^
David Pumpkins in the background on above pic. Solid!
November 3rd, 2017 at 9:59 AM ^
going to be that guy for a minute. I don't think that Autism references should not be thrown out as casually as they are right now. This is not at you, just in general. It is a punchline for some but an everyday reality for others. It is not at all what is reflected in that movie and is not a useful reference for "savant like passing ability" or any other reference. I think the Peters discussions can happen without going with that stuff.
Mini-rant concluded. Neg if must.
November 3rd, 2017 at 10:03 AM ^
November 3rd, 2017 at 10:11 AM ^
some folks know him better than I do. Never met him myself. I see him on the sidelines and in a helmet. Perhaps he is quiet and more introverted, but I don't see that as "flashes" of anything except for being quiet and introverted. Maybe others know more about him than I do.
November 3rd, 2017 at 10:12 AM ^
See, my interpretation is different even than that. It's not that Peters actually resembles an autistic savant--it's that the internet managed to blow up some minor tidbits about Peters' disengaged personality and supposed lack of vocal leadership into this idea that Peters is basically Rain Man, when in fact he is probably just a quieter type of person and maybe didn't yet have enough confidence in his grasp of the offense to be ordering people around.
November 3rd, 2017 at 10:19 AM ^
think for me, all I am saying is that "autstic" and "quiet and lacking vocal leadership instincts" are so tenuously related that the reference just makes no sense. Like I said, I wasn't targeting you, it is just a strange talking point.
November 3rd, 2017 at 11:18 AM ^
Right, but that's exactly why it's funny. It's an absurd exaggeration.
Of course, now that the joke has been analyzed and explained, it is no longer funny. Hooray.
November 3rd, 2017 at 11:24 AM ^
bad.
Or maybe not. Maybe it is good that a talking point other than that can be established.
Or maybe tomorrow everybody be talking about how is he Atypical, like that one dude in that one show..
November 3rd, 2017 at 10:35 AM ^
...you can look at it anyway you want. However, I don't think the whole "Rain Man" memes attached to Brandon Peters are in any way poking fun at autism (or its variants) as a whole. They are poking fun (and mildly so) at one very specific person - a fictional character in the movie Rain Man.
Do all the Tyrone Biggums memes make fun of all black people? No. Tyrone Biggums memes make fun of Tyrone Biggums - a fictional character in a comedy show.
November 3rd, 2017 at 12:11 PM ^
Rain man memes don’t make fun of white people, they make fun of people with autism.
November 3rd, 2017 at 12:39 PM ^
You are proving my point (while I think you were trying to disagree with me).
November 3rd, 2017 at 1:43 PM ^
You said that Rain Man memes only poke fun at a fictional character, and then used Tyrone Biggum as an example and said Biggums memes don’t make fun of black people.
But that is a strawman argument, as the question isn't whether or not these memes have anything to do with race (Rain Man ones obviously don't, Tyrone Biggums memes only do insomuch as crack addiction is stereotypically linked to black people). But, the Biggums memes clearly poke fun at stereotypes about crackheads, just like Rain Man memes make light of the realities of autism.
The issue really isn't whether or not Brian et al. are using some light joking about autism (they definitely are), it's whether or not it is going too far.
IMO, it really isn't a big deal because, as EGD explained, Brian is really more making fun of the insider journalists who totaly took off with the staff's rumblings about Peters, and just taking it to the hyperbolized extreme.
November 3rd, 2017 at 1:56 PM ^
My point is that regardless of how you interpret the OP's Rain Man meme, that might not be the intent. One poster interpreted it as making fun of autism. I did not see it that way as I mentioned in my earlier reply. I view it as making fun of the finer nuances of a fictional character.
As for Tyrone Biggums memes. Well, many people (including people on this very board I believe) think those memes are offensive for some of reasons you touched on. I don't interpret it that way...and neither do you it seems. Like me, you view it as making fun of the crack habit of a fictional character.
So you see, you were proving my point. :)
November 3rd, 2017 at 2:20 PM ^
did not view it as anybody making fun of autism, I viewed it as adhering to a fairly widely disseminated misunderstand of what autism is and isn't. "Shy," "quiet," "quirky" have become almost synonyms for autism, in the same way that some people who want the house "organized" before they watch a movie say "I am being so OCD right now" without understanding that real OCD is some really shitty stuff. "Autistic" is now used interchangeably with "odd person" when the reality is that autism is a particularly brutal concoction of turmoil.
November 3rd, 2017 at 3:05 PM ^
In the context that people using the idiosyncracies of autism (in this case, those of Raymond Babbitt) are a "punchline" to a joke. Punchline is usually synonymous with a joke. If thats not the case, then I misinterpreted it. Mea culpa!
November 3rd, 2017 at 3:20 PM ^
will put it another way and then be done with it. How has the insertion of autism and aspergers as any part of the discussion enhanced any part of the discussion with regard to Peters? That is my point. It is gratuituous. The very same discussion (with humor et. al.) could be had without a consistent flow of hip zingers that sideswipe a debilitating nuerological condition that has nothing to do with anything.
November 3rd, 2017 at 3:35 PM ^
They are jokingly calling Peters Rain Man to show how absurd it is to make any judgments on his character based on some wild extrapolations of coaching staff rumblings. If anything, they are confirming what you are saying--that the gulf between being quiet or shy and being on the spectrum is immense.
November 3rd, 2017 at 3:31 PM ^
but we're not saying the same thing.
You are saying there is nothing wrong with the memes themselves, as they only "make fun of the finer nuances of a fictional character."
I disagree with that, as I think the fictional characters are given behaviors and characteristics which are stereotypically ascribed to certain minority groups--people with crack addictions and ASD--thus making the memes inherently at least a little offensive.
Where we do agree is that, even though Brian et al are using the Rain Man meme for Peters, they are not truly saying Peters is anything like Rain Man (which I think would be offensive to all parties involved, but you apparently would not). Instead, they are actually doing the opposite: by jokingly calling him Rain Man, they are poking fun at the journalists by demonstrating how hyperbolic and absurd it is to do so based on only the minimal insider rumblings about his demeanor coming from the coaching staff.
And now the joke has been sufficiently beaten to a pulp.
November 3rd, 2017 at 3:35 PM ^
...is to use another meme
November 3rd, 2017 at 12:53 PM ^
As we learn more about these conditions and how they affect people, comparisons like this will no longer be socially acceptable. For now, it's still okay. It's not that different from the '80s when it was cool to call people retarded or make jokes about retardation and Down's Syndrome.
I am not suggesting that anyone should chastise the OP or other folks who talk casually about these conditions, and I am certainly not judging anyone. Just saying that I believe terms like "aspie" and casual autism references will eventually go in the same bin as calling someone a "'tard" or saying things like, "are you retarded or somethin'?"
November 3rd, 2017 at 1:46 PM ^
This is getting ridiculous. Nobody is making fun of people with autism or Asperger's Syndrome. Context matters.
November 3rd, 2017 at 10:16 AM ^
I get the idea that Bolden was a "memorizer", a guy whose brain is more about downloading than instinct, so it didn't translate well in games. (It probably wasn't nerves; he did well against opponent's plays he'd downloaded, too.) I don't get the feeling that's O'Korn's issue, though, because that shouldn't be as much of an issue on offense, and he frankly seems to do better during broken plays than executing a script.
I think he's just not comfortable in games. In practice, you can screw up and not cost your team anything. You can stop and do-over. The guys coming at you are your buddies. When you're not afraid of doing it wrong, it's easy to do it right. I can believe that O'Korn in practice is comfortable with the offense, makes reads at least as well as Speight and can see the field with confidence to the point that he was neck and neck for the starting job two years running.
Games are different. Now you've got the team, the school, TV cameras and all the fans on your back. You don't know what the opponent is thinking, what adjustments they'll make, how they'll try to trick you. Every step, every motion, every throw matters. If you screw up you can't just rep it again. I'm sure Harbaugh simulates this pressure as much as possible, but there's no foundation of security that is practice, that I don't need to be perfect. So he doesn't trust what he sees, he second-guesses, he hesitates, needs to make that perfect decision. . . note it's not like he's not doing anything, just that it takes him too long to make up his mind. He knows interceptions can destroy a week's worth of hard effort from the entire team so he won't throw unless he's 100% sure. He's terrified.
That's NOT to say he's a weak person. If anything, he seems to say I'd rather get hit in the ribs with a helmet powered by 270 pounds of angry meat than make a mistake that costs my team. It means his brain probably isn't wired in that particular way QBs need to be wired to operate at peak performance in game conditions. Most people try to make the best possible decision in the least amount of time it takes to decide. Press someone and they'll go "gimme a second! gimme a second!" Pressure tends to make people slow down, and pass rush is trying to rob you of that time. So QB play hinges less on making good decisions as fast as you can under pressure -- that's impossible in games -- but making a decision fast enough that it's good. It's extremely counterintuitive, not everyone can do that, and it says nothing about their character. It just means they don't have a QB's brain, and I think John O'Korn doesn't.
He shouldn't hang his head in shame, but he probably shouldn't have been a QB.
November 3rd, 2017 at 10:20 AM ^
is a MAC level QB. That is not an insult to him, that is just what I saw. You could plug and play him in any Thursday Night MAC-tion game and he would look right at home.
November 3rd, 2017 at 1:05 PM ^
November 4th, 2017 at 12:05 AM ^
Obvs there are certain things that are a lot different, but their situations are probably about as close as they could be. Brooke came in as a highly-touted recruit, was an immediate starter at DS but clearly behind four-year starter Amanda Neill at libero (Neill was in basically the same role as Peters: four-year starter but only two at libero since Carly Cramer was a fixture there), then was on track to be the starting libero her sophomore season ... but the Boilers landed another solid recruit, Natalie Haben, and Peters stayed at DS. So she had another year of that next-person-up focus instead of the defensive-leader focus she might have been expecting ... and with Haben a year behind her, she might never have ended up at libero.
But Haben got injured, ended up not being able to continue her career, and now Peters is the starting libero, with the job clearly hers if she keeps playing at this level. (It has also seemed the case in the past that Dave Shondell sometimes favored an upperclassman at libero rather than a younger and perhaps better player.) She's done nothing so far this year to suggest anyone else has a crack at her job.
The comparison tails off at that point, since a libero doesn't have nearly the impact on a volleyball defense that a QB has on offense (a closer analogy would be a PG on defense: directing traffic, making some plays, but also heavily reliant on teammates to cover the rest of the court), but if Brandon ends up contributing at a level that mirrors Brooke's path, and if Michigan continues to grow their running game into full-on steamroller mode, maybe certain less-than-optimal things in the football world will be corrected. I miss when I could hang out with friends who are inexplicably MSU or OSU fans (thankfully most of the Ohio friends I have are Team Not-OSU) and talk about Michigan football.
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