More on The Alliance™ from Andy Staples

I could really see it being hit or miss depending on your fandom. Is it worth it just for Michigan Football news? Not in my mind when MGoBlog exists. 

But as a Chicago sports fan, it's hard to find better analysis of the Cubs, the Bulls being #Back, everyone in town going gaga over Justin Fields, etc. Few outlets have put more resources into covering the Blackhawks' horrible sexual harassment scandal (lots of the folks involved still have jobs! and are running the 2nd investigation!), and the write ups of an infamous Chicago youth hockey coach's sordid scandals have shone a light where it's been much needed. 

If you want sports beyond what MGoBlog offers, I think it's a good resource. 

We will fill that missing gap for you.

Hey, that means their writers are the same as everyone else (including people who post in these fora).  I'd be willing to bet that most of the people who watched the Alabama and OSU games were rooting for Alabama and OSU.  In contrast, I'd bet most of the people watching our games were rooting against us.

Michigan fandom, were you get the worst of both worlds.  Regular losing and everyone still hates us.  Sure would be nice if we weren't (for some inexplicable reason) everyone else's Superbowl.

I'm an Athletic subscriber. You likely have read more of the site than me, as i'm only intermittent reader, I never felt the writers were particularly unfair to Michigan. The Michigan 'beat writers' seem to write typical 'beat writer' type stuff, informational, a bit of fluff, a bit of "team sources aka PR". 

Brendan Quinn’s articles on UM hoops make the subscription worth every penny.  Plus they have great MLB and NHL coverage and Nick Baumgardner does great work covering the Lions and occasionally UM football.  I think they’ve kind of struggled with their main UM football writer, so I would totally understand if the only reason you got a subscription was for UM football coverage, which pales in comparison to the content on this blog.

As a regular reader, I have no idea where you developed this take. But it's wholly ungermane to the article at hand. The big news here is that the B1G has a strategy to one-up the SEC, and help keep lots of other schools viable. (That they might vote together in creating a playoff championship series that didn't skew heavily toward the SEC goes unexamined, but is important.) 

The other big news is that the UM comes third behind UA and OSU in drawing eyeballs to sets. This despite a decade and more of struggle. That's huge, and should underline how much is at stake for Harbaugh this year. Regents and the U leadership, looking at these numbers, must understand how close they have come to killing the goose that laid the golden egg. 

I subscribe basically for everything except Michigan football coverage. They have a great stable of beat writers so you can get in depth coverage of a lot of different programs in one place.

And as mentioned below, it's very similar to the SI of old in that their human interest features are consistently riveting and well-written. There was a story a couple years ago about the Arkansas State coach who lost his wife to cancer that was both painful and beautiful to read 

By using the Alliance they can call themselves the Allies, which would leave the other side as...

I looked up some numbers for PSU: a couple Iowa games, Minnesota 2019 were on the list.  MSU 2019 was pretty close too, just missed by a few tens of thousands (that for a lousy game in the rain in a year MSU was terrible).  MSU 2019 somehow had higher ratings than MSU 2017 (the 4-hour thunderstorm delay was likely a huge factor here, otherwise the latter would have been 4MM+).  Auburn 2021 will likely be on the list.

I suppose your argument was "ha ha, PSU/MSU are only riding our coattails to get on this list!" 

Which, I'm not going to argue PSU is as big a brand name as U-M, but PSU does carry its weight in elevating the conference's profile and TV contract. 

If its matched across standings like the basketball challenge we wouldn't have to worry about playing an upper level team...

We also already have a Pac 12 team on the schedule in Washington, so our schedule wouldn't look any different even under this alliance. Which is really most true for any year in the next decade, we would probably replace the Texas and Oklahoma games with an ACC or Pac 12 team and ND is likely included in the ACC so wouldn't impact those years. It could maybe change the 2022 and 2023 schedules which currently suck but doubt it really moves fast enough for 2022. Its really just a meaningless PR stunt and I don't get why people are treating it like it matters.

This would still be great. Remember when the non-con was 3 real teams? Notre Dame, Duke, Arizona, or Cal or when they played TAMU a few years in a row?

Granted, usually one of those games was Duke, Vanderbilt, or Kansas or something, but they were real teams at least.

I love good football and good football games. Of course I love it when we win them all, but outside of 1997 that's not something that happens.

I know right?  Imagine if Michigan had to play someone like Washington this year?

I think if they sign up two games with the Pac and the ACC per season I think you almost have to go back to 8 Big Ten conference games.  Really should probably do that either way.  9 conference games will put you at a disadvantage when the playoffs expand.  

Ohio State has already signed up to play Arizona and Duke in football for the first three years of the alliance.