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Congratulations!  I'm really…

Congratulations!  I'm really happy for everyone on this board, and particularly those who have been around since the RichRod years.

Living in Seattle, and having the Huskies as very distant secondary rooting interest, I've watched enough of their games to say that they were a legitimate team-- certainly better than some other teams that have made it to the finals over the years.

I know that most of you will cherish this year for a long time, maybe forever.  I still re-watch games from Ohio State's 2002-2003 and 2014-2015 seasons and still enjoy them.

I'm hoping the Buckeyes can turn things around and get it back to us winning five per decade and you winning five per decade, but right now your Offensive Line seems like it's built and rebuilt every year in a modern German or Swiss industrial factory; if one piece gets bent or disappears, another one is delivered and installed and the machine just keeps operating at peak efficiency.

Well, in any event, the point is that you folks endured some rough years, and things looked pretty bleak, particularly in the Covid year; and you are too great a University, team, and fanbase to deserve that.  So again, congratulations on an undefeated season and a convincing playoff run.

Congratulations to the…

Congratulations to the University of Michigan, their football team, and fans.  I'm happy for all the regulars on this board, particularly those that have been around since the Rich Rodriquez years.

I'll also wish you a conditional "good luck"-- while my primary rooting interest is Ohio State, I do have a Masters degree from the University of Washington, so I'll be backing them if they beat Texas.  Otherwise, I hope you're able to enjoy a National Championship year.

What sign stealing can…

What sign stealing can accomplish using film (like the All-22 film, which does not contain any signals, so is useless) and TV broadcasts (which show maybe one or two shots over the course of an entire game of the signals) and on gameday, pales in comparison to what can be accomplished when you record every signal and every corresponding play for 10+ games on a single opponent.

There's the signs that a team uses, which can be changed during the week if it's really necessary.  Then there's the system that is used, which cannot reasonably be changed during the year, because the players need to be able to decode the signals in one or two seconds-- it needs to be almost instinctive.  As an analogy, the system would be the rules of grammar and syntax, while the signals would be the particular words that are used.

If all you know is the signals, then you're not going to gain an advantage when the other team changes their signals.  But if you were able to learn their system, now you've got a simple translation exercise.  You spend the first half recording the signals and corresponding plays, and then, crucially, you plug that data into the system you've deduced through the 10 games' worth of film.  Now you know what all the signals mean in the 2nd half.  As I'm sure you're aware, Michigan was losing to OSU 20-17 at the half, and beating PSU 16-14 at the half, before going on to collectively outscore them 52-6 in the second half.  That could be due to Michigan's greatness, but it's not unreasonable for someone to wonder if they went from not knowing what plays were being called in the first half, to knowing exactly what plays were being called in the 2nd half-- which is the pattern you would expect to see in the scenario I outlined, where you have an accurate model built, and only need to do a correlation exercise on the new signals.

Here's a very oversimplified example of what I'm talking about.  Let's pretend that offense is so simple that you only need to signal in the three pieces of information: the formation, the play, and the check-down play if the QB gets to the line and doesn't like what he sees.  We'll even further oversimplify this and say that there are only 26 plays to choose from.

Now let's assume that a team wants to make it non-trivial for other teams to steal their signals.  They can only make the system so complicated, before it leads to too many mistakes with players getting the calls wrong.  One way to do it would be to have pictures on signs that you can hold up.  There are 3 pieces of information, but every play, you're going to hold up 4 signs; one of them is a dummy, serving no purpose other than to make it confusing for someone trying to decode their signals.  In this system, signals are always read left to right.  To further confuse sign-stealers, when reading the signals, you don't always start at the far left; instead, you start at the position corresponding to the down number, and wrap around to the first spot if you would need to read beyond the 4th spot.  So on 1st down, the dummy signal would be the 4th, because the players would just read 1st=Formation, 2nd=Play, 3rd=CheckDown Play.  But on 3rd down, the 2nd spot would be the dummy, because players would read 3rd=Formation, 4th=Play, and 1st=CheckDown Play.  The final element of the system is that all the players really need to know about the signs being held up is the name of the picture-- for example, is that a picture of a "plane" or an "airplane".  That's their rote memorization, and you can reasonably expect them to memorize all new signals in a week, because for the vast majority of them, they're going to intuitively know the name by looking at the picture.  We stipulated 26 different plays; each one of them corresponds to a letter, A-Z, and that never changes-- it's an inherent part of the system.  So Play A is indicated if an Apple is shown, or if an Airplane is shown, or if Asparagus is shown, etc.  (If you really wanted to get paranoid, you could make sure that like 25% of the pictures use a name that isn't the first or second name that a signal stealer would guess- for example, instead of a P for Plane, or A for Airplane, it's actually U for United, because the team always flies to games on United Airlines.)

You cannot figure that system out using only the sources that teams normally use.  The All-22 Film does NOT show the signals-- it's quite useful for scouting other teams' tendencies, and looking for tells, like if the RB leans further forward on a run play than on a pass play; but it's absolutely useless for signal stealing. The vast majority of the data that you'll have access to is what you collect on game day-- not nearly enough, and not nearly enough time to analyze it.

In contrast, with your database of at least 700 plays (in the case of OSU, where we know of at least 10 games that Stalions bought tickets to), and plenty of time to run statistical analyses (correlation, regression, etc.) or, maybe even better, Machine Learning, you can absolutely expect to figure this entire system out.  The only mildly tricky bit is that a human would need to separate out the first letter of the picture names as its own variable, as statistical methods wouldn't know that the first letter is significant, and even an ML model is quite unlikely to be capable of that with only 700 plays.  But you've got someone who specializes in signal stealing, who probably knows how a lot of systems work; unless the team that uses this hypothetical system has invented a completely new idea, some other team has used the first letter idea, so it's no great stretch of the imagination to believe a human would think to make a separate variable for the first letter.  Everything else is trivial.

That's one way that Michigan could benefit from collecting this data, even when the opposing team changes their signals.  Those other teams are relying on their experience with past signal stealing operations, and believe they just need to change the pictures themselves; but in this case, their entire system is busted, so they would have needed to change how the pictures are decoded, as well.

I obviously have no way of knowing what Stalions did with all the data he collected, but I will say that it's absolutely the first thing I would think of doing.  I'd let several instances of Machine Learning algorithms rip, while I'd use statistical analysis software to try to figure out what I can on my own.  Between the two, with enough data, I should be able t break any system that's simple enough for college players to be using.  On gameday, I know which of the 4 pictures has the formation, which one has the play, and which one has the CheckDown play.  I know that what's important is the first letter of the name of the picture.  30 plays should be sufficient for me to figure out all of the common signals, and at least a few of the less common ones.  No other team is going to be able to do the same thing.

I lost a fair bit of respect…

I lost a fair bit of respect for Sam when he went on his personal jihad against Ryan Day.  In the first place, it isn't particularly relevant where the information came from; he should be concerned with whether Michigan was breaking any rules, and if so, what the impact was and what the potential punishments might be.  But more importantly, there simply isn't direct evidence proving that Ryan Day had any part in this.  He told so many people, using highly emotional and inflammatory language, that Ryan Day personally hired a PI firm, suggested that the firm used illegal means to search Michigan's computers, and was orchestrating the release of information to make Michigan look bad, when there was never any proof for any of that.  It's now looking like most of that was completely delusional on his part, and that the initial report to the NCAA probably came from U.S. Integrity, a firm that the NCAA pays to look for anything related to gambling (point shaving, etc.).  As to why U.S. Integrity might have wanted to take a look: from the time Harbaugh was hired until the end of the Covid season, Michigan was about .470 Against the spread (ATS).  Since then, Michigan is around .740 ATS.  Hall of Fame level coaches can sustain maybe .530 or .540.  So while it's true that Michigan might have just made an absolutely monstrously huge jump in quality, and bookmakers haven't caught up yet and continue to set the lines too low, it's also possible that something fishy is going on, and that's what U.S. Integrity gets paid by the NCAA to look into.  Note that they may well have found zero evidence that anything related to gambling was going on-- we don't know one way or the other-- if they did find evidence of what could potentially be an against-the-rules operation that was helping Michigan, they certainly would have reported that.

To the extent that all this is just fans being depressingly (albeit predictably) tribal and yapping at each other on message boards, Sam's reporting doesn't matter.  But I genuinely believe that his position and reputation, along with his strident, aggrieved tone, could very well have led someone to take action against Day or his family.  The worst-case scenario would be some whacko with a gun, but a more reasonable scenario would be something like a hacker stealing the identify of some of his relatives, which is a crime with a sickening, painful, prolonged recovery process for the victim.  Sam was just one short step shy of standing on top of a horse-drawn wagon with a torch in one hand and a pitchfork in the other, yelling to the villagers that Ryan Day is a witch that has cursed the town, and that he needs to be burned at the stake in order for the drought to end.  

But up until this incident, I agree that he has been among the most accurate "Insiders" that I know of.  He always puts a pro-Michigan spin on things, but that's normal and expected of any fan site, and he seemed to have a good feel for where the line was between "spin" and "lying".

Why is it clear that…

Why is it clear that Michigan didn't gain an advantage?  If they weren't getting an advantage, why was was Stalions-- a low-level analyst that had no business being part of the limited number of people allowed on the sidelines-- standing right next to the OC when Michigan's offense was on the field, and right next to the DC when Michigan's defense was on the field?  Michigan was totally okay with him distracting both their coordinators with information that had no impact?  And why were all the other Big10 coaches and ADs so upset, taking the highly unusual step of asking the commissioner to punish Michigan this year?  Please don't stoop to citing conspiracy theories about OSU controlling the conference, or everyone being jealous of Michigan's success.  Over two dozen successful adults (coaches and ADs), from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of agendas, were all (or almost all) in agreement that Michigan had done something so serious that waiting for an investigation to conclude wouldn't be fair.  If you're trying to claim that all of them lied because OSU told them to, or because they're jealous of Michigan being really good for less than 3 years, you are so far lost in your need to defend Michigan that logic and rationality no longer matter to you.

This might matter in terms…

This might matter in terms of evaluating the sign-stealing allegations narrowly.  Right now, I think the far bigger danger is Lack of Institutional Control.  You've got an analyst (not a numbered member of staff) who is is allowed to stand right next to the OC and DC on gameday, and the Head Coach doesn't ask any questions?  The analyst refuses to cooperate with either Michigan or the NCAA's respective investigations, which is in and of itself a serious violation for the NCAA, but also could be used as evidence of LOIC.  Now you've got an actual assistant destroying evidence.  And of course the Covid recruiting issue that Michigan suspended Harbaugh for at the beginning of the year is still open, so that would also conceivably count towards a LOIC argument.  I honestly don't know if this amounts to LOIC or not, but that's definitely what I'd be worried about if I was Michigan.  And if this isn't enough in and of itself, how many other things need to emerge that Harbaugh wasn't aware of, before the NCAA says, "There was just too much going on in your program that you didn't know about, you clearly weren't doing your job at making sure everyone was following the rules?"

Yahoo Sports is actually…

Yahoo Sports is actually extremely well respected, and have a history of breaking new stories that turn out to be factual.  I honestly have no idea what else Yahoo does, or if they're relevant in any other way; but for sports news, they're legitimately top-notch.

The fundamental two facts…

The fundamental two facts that I keep coming back to when trying to reconcile all of the various takes are:

1) Stalions was standing beside the OC when Michigan's offense was on the field, and standing by the DC when Michigan's defense was on the field.  Based on what other coaches have said, it's almost unthinkable that someone with Stalions' position would make the list of the limited number of people you have on the field, and doing so risks someone questioning whether he should actually be counted among the numbered staff, in which case Michigan would have had more than the maximum allowed.  Why was he doing this?  Why was he allowed to do this?  I find it very difficult to reconcile any explanation that Michigan didn't gain any advantage, or only gained a trivial advantage, when he was in the OC's and DC's ear on numerous occasions caught on film.

2) Based on the commissioner's account, which has not been contradicted, all or almost all of the other Big10 coaches were very upset about this, with several of them getting quite emotional.  Then all or almost all of the ADs were upset as well, though (as one would expect) they voiced their concerns in more measured terms, with less emotion. The idea that this was because of some vast conspiracy seems to me to be utterly delusional and without any merit.  These are real, live, flesh and blood, successful people, with homes and families and friends.  They're competitive, yes, but to believe that all of them colluded to pretend to be upset over something they really thought was trivial, beggars belief.  And the motivation just doesn't make any sense.  OSU dominated the Big10 for 15+ years, and these schools never got together to try to take them down-- individual coaches did things (like Maryland waiting until the week OSU played them to report Chase Young for accepting a loan), but there was nothing coordinated.  What's more, Michigan has only been dominating for 2+ years; there's just no way other teams have built up resentment at Michigan's success.  If anything, some of them have to be secretly celebrating that OSU isn't steamrolling the whole league anymore.  Some of them may have a bit of an axe to grind with Harbaugh for consistently testing the boundaries of what's permissible, but I simply don't believe they would hate him enough to willfully lie and misrepresent themselves in order to get him into trouble.  So the fundamental question is: Why were all of these coaches and ADs so upset?  Again, I can't reconcile that level of reaction with the notion that Michigan didn't gain any advantage, or gained only minimal advantage, from Stalions' operation.  There's a limit to how upset you can be about another team breaking a rule, if they didn't gain anything from it.  Many of the Big10 coaches had been discussing how successful Michigan was at sign stealing over the last 2+ years, before they had any reason to believe Michigan was doing anything wrong; it's possible that Michigan gained so much of an advantage, that opposing coaches were calling each other and asking what the heck was going on. 

Any proposed explanation for what was going on needs to address both of these facts, and most of the explanations I've seen don't.  The explanations I've seen almost all focus on the mechanics of how the operation was alleged to have worked; I think it's way more significant to focus on the outcome first.  Before trying to solve a murder, you first need to be sure that a murder took place.  If this is a "no harm, no foul" situation, then I don't think it matters that much what the NCAA finds in terms of how the operation was run; there's just a hard limit on how bad any punishment could be.  But while a lot of people seem to be taking comfort in Coach Prime and other notable figures claiming that sign stealing has minimal benefit, I don't think any of those people understand what can be accomplished with 10 games' worth of film, broken down and fed into a database, and then analyzed using standard statistical methods, or maybe better yet, Machine Learning.  Ultimately, I think we can pretty well determine the answer to whether there was real harm or not by getting the answers to the two questions I posed above: why was Stalions in the coordinators' ears on gameday, and why were the other coaches and ADs in the Big10 so pissed off, to the point of demanding immediate action?

If all it took was a team to…

If all it took was a team to change signs for a game to make the alleged information Michigan gathered useless, this would be a non-story.  This is just one of many ways in which what Michigan is alleged to have done is significantly different than what is possible using only legal scouting.

Michigan recorded at least 10 Ohio State games, that we know of.  Why?  Why would Stalions feel the need to record that many?

I believe that the most likely explanation is because he wasn't just stealing the signs, he was building a model.  That's certainly what I would do, and what any of my co-workers who work in cryptography would do.  That model is able to detect correlations and patterns; in the case of Machine learning models, it can detect patterns that humans can't even understand (that is, they don't correspond to any reasoning or explanation that we can articulate.)

So if Ohio State changes the signals they're using, because that's normally sufficient to defeat advanced scouting, but they don't change the underlying system being used, they have a very good chance of figuring out the meaning of those signals at some point during the game, as they continue to feed each signal and the corresponding play that was run into the existing model built from over 500 previously recorded plays.  

If this is the hypothesis, one can make several predictions about how this would play out.  One of those predictions is that Michigan would gain no, or very little, advantage from the time the game starts up to the time where they've finally entered in enough data about that day's signals/plays, such that the program "cracks" what the signals mean today.  Then, you'd see a sudden and dramatic impact, as Michigan would know what all or most of the signals mean for the rest of the game.  An example of what that might look like would be if they were trailing Ohio State 20-17 at the half, and leading PSU at the half by a slim 16-14 margin, and then went on to outscore those two teams by a cumulative 53-6 score in the second half.  Is sign stealing the only explanation for that difference?  Of course not!  But it is consistent to what we would expect to see if Michigan (or Stalions, if you prefer) was benefiting from a model built from a truly massive amount of data.

Nothing that the other Big10 teams who were responding to Michigan's advantage by beginning to share signal stealing data about the Wolverines with one another could accomplish would be even remotely as effective as this hypothetical scenario.  The coaches were not sharing game film, nor were they sharing detailed descriptions about every signal they observed on every play; they were sharing their observations/guesses about what the signals meant.  That's just not even vaguely the same thing.  

I will say this, unambiguously: if, as a result of coaches cooperating, any team was able to know the exact play Michigan was going to run, accurately and consistently, for a substantial portion of any game, that is unsportsmanlike behavior, unethical, and deserving of punishment.

I will also say that I think suspending Harbaugh was a bad decision by the Big10.  My reading of the rules is that they are allowed to do it, because the rules explicitly give the commissioner broad power to act in matters of sportsmanship, and explicitly include coach suspensions as a legal remedy; I think that's ridiculous, and hope they spend the offseason giving a lot more thought to how the sportsmanship rules are written.  I think it creates the impression (accurate or not) that the Big10 is in a rush to judgement; I don't think it actually has all that much of an impact (if he couldn't coach during the week, that would be a different story); and it casts doubt on any game that Michigan might lose during this three game stretch, which would be frustrating for both Michigan fans and the fans of the team that managed to beat them.  That being said, I think the University's response has been insanely over-the-top.  This punishment is a slap on the wrist, and if it is unfair, I think they would have been better off using that unfairness at a later date, when the NCAA finishes their investigation and begins discussing punishments, as a way to lessen those penalties, which are almost certainly going to be much more severe than a 3 game (gameday only) suspension for Harbaugh.  A "reduced sentence for time served" type argument.  But I recognize that I don't have access to all of the information that the Michigan President and AD did, so it's possible there are consequences that I'm not aware of.

You're speculating.  We don…

You're speculating.  We don't know what an impact it had, because there has never before been an operation (that we know of) like this.  We know what an impact it can have if you just try to decode the opposing signals on game day, or if you use the rare signal caught by broadcast television plus what  your learn on gameday, or any of the other legal ways of gathering data about opponents' signs.  What we don't know is what the effect is of putting over 500 plays, with the signs and what play was run, into a single database, and then analyzing it, using either statistical models or machine learning (or both).  It is simply not possible for anyone other than a few people at Michigan to say what impact that had (assuming that the allegations are true).  If it allowed UM to know all the details of every play for long stretches of the game-- say, for example, the entire 2nd half-- then you can take every quote you've heard about the impact of sign stealing and throw it out the window, because all the examples of sign stealing that people have up to this point are much, much less useful than that.  

We simply don't know the impact, and probably won't until the NCAA finishes their investigation.  But it's ridiculous at best, and deliberately misleading at worst, to take comments about the historical effectiveness of sign stealing, and claim that they apply to the sign stealing operation that Michigan was allegedly running.  There is a greater than zero probability that for some games, Michigan knew literally every play the opposition was calling, and that is NOT the result that you get when you successfully steal signs when collecting information just from legal sources.  

I honestly have no idea what the impact was, but I don't think anyone else, including ex-players and ex-coaches, do either, because that level of information is unprecedented, and some of the techniques for analyzing it (e.g. using off-the-shelf Machine Learning) haven't even been practical for more than a few years.  I do think that the other Big10 coaches believe that Michigan was gaining a much larger benefit than normal sign stealing.  Despite what a vocal minority of crazy fans and commentators are claiming, the rest of the conference didn't get together and conspire to make up fake complaints and then do great acting jobs on a call with the commissioner.  That's fake-moon-landing level conspiracy theory thinking.  The coaches are genuinely upset and angry about the advantage they think Michigan was getting.  Now, it could certainly be the case that they're wrong, but again, I don't think we'll know until the NCAA investigation wraps up.

For UM, I think that by far…

For UM, I think that by far the most concerning parts of the letter are those that convey how serious the NCAA is taking this. 

JH is suspended for 3 games, or not suspended for 3 games-- it probably doesn't amount to anything.  He'll be able to coach all week, and he'll finalize the gameplan.  He doesn't call the plays anyway.  The position coaches decide who's going in and going out.  As a practical matter, he's deciding when to go for it on 4th down (which should be an almost automated decision anyway, based on Analytics and that week's gameplan), and when to call timeout (which can occasionally be a real question and have an impact, but in the vast majority of games, doesn't decide the outcome.)  For some coaches, you'd include being able to work on the referees, but if anything, I think a temporary coach is going to garner more sympathy from the refs than Harbaugh, who many of the Big10 refs seem to dislike.

The NCAA on the other hand... the President of the NCAA himself arranged and participated in the call to inform the Big10 and UM of the investigation, which (according to the letter, anyway) was highly unusual, and only done because the NCAA had "highly credible evidence" about the scheme, which was "unprecedented in scope" and could have "a serious impact" on games-- enough of an impact that the NCAA was concerned about the integrity of the remaining 2023 games.

I think the conference punishments pale in comparison to what Petitti's letter implies about what the NCAA might do.  If they seriously took the unusual step of informing the conference about an ongoing investigation into a member school (which is apparently not normal), because they felt that the outcome of Michigan's remaining 2023 games could be altered by this sign-stealing operation, then you have to be concerned about how they'll look back on the already played games from 2021 to present.  If they truly believe, as Petitti claims, that the impact is great enough to make it impossible to ensure a game is fairly played, it's hard to imagine the NCAA allowing the outcome of the games played in those years to remain on record.

Of course, it's impossible to know until the NCAA has had time to complete their investigation.  but in terms of what UM fans should be concerned about, I think JH's suspension isn't even in the same solar system as what Petitti implies about the NCAA's investigation.

Even fast-tracking this, the…

Even fast-tracking this, the NCAA investigation is not about this year.  They just can't move that quickly.  My assumption is that a "very fast timeline" means they'll have finished before next football season starts.  I'd be completely shocked if they're capable of moving any quicker than that, and actually getting it done by July of 2024 would be moving quite fast for the NCAA.  Please note that I'm just speculating, I don't claim to have any special knowledge.

Neither OSU nor UM fans are…

Neither OSU nor UM fans are being rational.  OSU fans are seriously posting about the possibility of the death penalty.  UM fans are dismissing the idea that knowing exactly what plays your opponent is going to run for long stretches of games could possibly be more than a Type 3 violation, and even worse, continue to blame Day for being the source of the investigation, when there is only moderate circumstantial evidence to that effect.  

You say that OSU fans won't believe the truth when it comes out.  If it turns out that the forensics firm hired to break into Matt Weiss' computer found all of this stuff, and the firm was owned by a college football fan of some program other than Michigan, and they had their company go to the NCAA about it, are UM fans going to admit that they went crazy-train-off-the-rails in their zeal to crucify Day for something that they had literally zero hard evidence for?

Honestly, the complete confidence with which most online UM fans are denying even the barest possibility that UM did anything seriously wrong, or that Harbaugh could in any way be culpable, leaves exactly the same sickly taste in my mouth as the Trump supporters who believe that he's never done anything wrong and is just the victim of a Deep State conspiracy.  And as I said in the beginning, online OSU fans aren't being any better, as they immediately dismiss any suggestion that this could just be a single person acting alone, or that Harbaugh was convincingly lied to about the way the high-quality signal stealing was occurring, or that the NCAA will determine that UM exploited a loophole in the scouting rules to great success, but is not guilty of breaking any rules.  The utter conviction that Harbaugh is responsible for a severe infraction is not even vaguely warranted by the evidence we currently have available; all we can say is that it's possible, and that hopefully by the time this is resolved, enough facts will have been collected that the NCAA and the Big10 will have complete confidence that they understand exactly what happened.

Reading both teams' forums is depressing, and makes me despair for humanity.  It's one thing to handle a nation of Trump supporters by halfway-sort-of convincing myself that they're mostly uneducated, not very smart, and are the victims of the most successful "propaganda and lies disguised as news" operation the world has ever seen.  It's another thing to see lawyers with degrees from a prestigious institution like UM behave in exactly the same way, just on a different subject.

The word "rescind" has a…

The word "rescind" has a common connotation of being permanent, but being permanent is not part of the actual definition.  It would be perfectly normal to say something like, "I'm rescinding my last offer because my home inspector found some issues that are going to need to be fixed.  I'll have my agent get back to you with a new offer within the week."  Or "I'm rescinding my offer because I've been approached with a more favorable opportunity.  If that doesn't work out, I'll get back to you immediately."

If JH cannot sign the contract at this moment in time, and does not have 100% legally-binding assurances that he will be able to sign that exact contract at some point in the future, then I think "rescind" is, while not the best choice of words, still a far cry from warranting an accusation of "dishonest journalism".

I have not been active on…

I have not been active on this blog since last season, having chosen to distance myself just a bit from my college football obsession.

As an Ohio State fan, please allow me to congratulate you on your back to back wins in the rivalry.  I had already written Harbaugh off, which was obviously a huge error in judgment.  

Michigan is a great university, and for the most part, has a great fan base; and I've enjoyed being on this blog for almost a decade now.  I'm glad you've got this monkey off your back, though of course I wish that didn't necessitate the Buckeyes losing.

Good luck in the playoffs!

EDIT: Reworded the last sentence, as it could have been read as a shot at UM's chances in the playoffs, which is not what I intended.

The new DC (Jim Knowles)…

The new DC (Jim Knowles) knows what he's doing.  Watching the same personnel actually get off blocks this year is amazing.  I realize they're supposed to learn that in Pee-Wee league, but it seemed like a foreign concept for the last three years or so. 

Should be a lot of fun to see Corum vs. a well-coached OSU defense.  I can't imagine him not getting yards; it's just a matter of whether they're consistent enough to sustain drives.  

Plus, Knowles' defensive philosophy is to get everyone on the team comfortable with the idea of giving up a few big plays per game.  He's willing to surrender a couple of 1 or 2 play touchdown drives, if it means that they're committing more resources on the other plays.  So they are, by design, going to give UM opportunities for shots downfield.  The difference between hitting the two that Knowles is willing to live with vs. the four that means the offense needs to score 49+ is, obviously, huge.

They're not mutually…

They're not mutually exclusive.

The single biggest factor in…

The single biggest factor in whether an employee is happy or not, is whether they like their manager.  Or at least, there's research backing that position, which is often cited in the business world.  I haven't personally looked into the methods used to determine that.  Having worked full time at Oracle for a couple of years, Microsoft for 22+ years, and now Unity for 4 years, I'd say that anecdotally this seems to be true.  I've known way more people who have left their job because they hate their manager than those who have left because of compensation or security.

This isn't an attack on Harbaugh.  I don't claim to have any idea about what goes on in the football program.  It was more a reaction to the list of five factors you gave-- a "general" reply, not a "specific to Gattis" reply.

One factor that sometimes…

One factor that sometimes comes into play when a player decides to go early, is if they accomplished what they wanted to do in college.  I'm sure all of Michigan's players believe they can win it all, but I also think most of them are realistic enough to look at how dominant Ohio State/Alabama/Clemson/Georgia have been, and conclude that for the next few years, making it to the playoffs is most likely as good as it gets.  Then combine that with not just beating, but dominating the Buckeyes.  Unless a player is obsessed with MSU, I think that for a lot of the young men facing this decision, this year might have checked a lot of the items on their 'what I want to accomplish in a Michigan uniform' list.

Another thing that such a great season can do is get a player to over-rate himself.  The optimism and euphoria swirling around the program can have an impact on a player's general state of mind, which can cause him to look at the 'glass half full' side of any weaknesses or doubts he might have.

From what I gather reading the other comments, it seems like these concerns probably didn't factor into Hinton's decision; but give the slew of early departures, one or both might have been a factor in some.

Edit for typo.

Julian Fleming was the #1…

Julian Fleming was the #1 rated recruit at any position when he came in, and barring bad luck, will be healthy for the first time next year.  Marvin Harrison is as talented as any wide receiver on the roster.  Emeka Egbuka has been the best kick return Ohio State has had since Ginn, and the only reason he's not already a household name at WR is because he was sitting behind everyone else.  That's before you add in their four incoming WR's, who are rated the #9, #10, #15, and #23 WRs in the country.  Ohio State's WR corps next year will be as good, if not better, than this year.

The Buckeyes' success next year will depend entirely on what their new Defensive Coordinator can do.  There is too much talent there to be performing as poorly as they have in recent years.  Part of it is their secondary being so talented that they get drafted early, having 'learned on the job' but not having stuck around long enough to pay dividends; but mostly, it's coaching.  Even average defensive coaching would produce a top 30 defense with the kind of talent OSU trots out every year, and a program like Ohio State should be able to do a hell of a lot better than an average DC.  It wasn't crazy for Day to give Coombs his first ever crack at being a DC, but it was a gamble, and it failed big time.  

I assume this was shorthand…

I assume this was shorthand for, "Utah wins that game with a healthy QB while Ohio State still needs to play the whole game without 24 scholarship players, including two 1st round wide receivers, their first-day draft pick starting right tackle, and four defensive starters."

In which case, yes, you're probably right.

I grew up in Columbus, so I…

I grew up in Columbus, so I root pretty hard for OSU, own a bunch of merchandise, etc.  But I also just love college football; Saturdays in the fall, I usually watch football from 9am to 10pm (I live in Seattle, so it's east coast noon kickoffs through at least most of Pac-12 after dark).

I don't hate or even dislike Michigan or Michigan fans.  It's wonderful to have such a great rival.  A rival that excels at football, but also academically, and is largely scandal free.  It's great to have a rival with amazing traditions-- be it the winged helmets, or the fight song, or the all time wins, etc.  I've got zero interest in trolling or saying things designed to make UM fans angry; I just love to talk about college football.

I found mgoblog back in 2013 when I was doing some sort of internet search on David Foster Wallace, and Brian had mentioned him a couple of times so those hits came up.  I remember thinking something like, "Why is a Michigan sports site talking about DFW?"  I loved Brian's writing so much-- funny, erudite, clever, entertaining, and sometimes even insightful (though more often about society than about football, I think).  So I stuck around, and have been telling my wife for the last several years that when Michigan does beat OSU, I'll be bummed, but a big part of me will be happy for Brian and the rest of you long-suffering fans.

I'm glad you didn't know I'm a Buckeye fan-- not because I'm worried I'd be ostracized or mistreated, but simply because this is a Michigan site-- I've got several OSU sites I belong to, I can talk Buckeye football to my heart's content there.  I do throw in my $.02 when folks are already discussing the Buckeyes if I think the conversation is potentially interesting, but (hopefully) not just to 'represent' my team.  It's reassuring to know that I don't come off as too much of a 'behind enemy lines' sort of figure.

Anyway, mgoblog and Surly Horns are the two most intellectual and fun college football sites I know of.  Surly Horns was better back when it was Shaggy Bevo, and mgoblog was better before BPONE had taken hold, but they're both still great communities, and I'm genuinely happy when you get to have days like this-- I just hope they don't happen too often at the Buckeyes' expense!

Congratulations and Good…

Congratulations and Good Luck!

I am a Buckeye fan, but I'm happy for (almost) everyone on this site-- Brian most of all.  Michigan was the better team today, and that rushing attack was (while painful and infuriating as an opposing fan) a thing of true beauty-- the very best of Big10 football on a snow day.

I hope Michigan wins the Big10, and at least makes some noise in the playoffs.  

Enjoy the win and the season, good luck the rest of the year, and see you in the Horseshoe next year!

No team has ever made the…

No team has ever made the playoffs with 2 losses.  OSU isn't going to be the first-- well, this year at least.  They don't have any big wins this year-- MSU was way overrated, and everyone other than maybe like 1/3 of Spartan fans knew it.

In recent years, the stadium…

In recent years, the stadium has been like 35-40% red at kickoff.  It will be interesting to see if this year will be any different.

You mean the one that got…

You mean the one that got Coombs effectively relieved as Defensive Coordinator, and replaced by Matt Barnes?  If you think that play will still trash OSU next week, you haven't been paying attention.

OSU's most consistent weakness on defense is short to intermediate routes straight down the middle.  Their linebackers have struggled getting enough depth.  

Penn State and Michigan are…

Penn State and Michigan are the only other teams in the Big10 to have elite athletes.  Not as many as OSU, but at least some.  Even when Wisconsin or MSU are having great years, they just don't have the horses to be truly relevant on the national stage.

If the Big10 had created divisions where Ohio State and Michigan were in one, while Penn State, Wisconsin, and MSU were in the other, the last decade would probably have been more fun for everyone other than, possibly, Ohio State fans.  

Ohio State over Wisconsin in…

Ohio State over Wisconsin in the 2014 Big10 Championship Game, when Wisconsin was favored, was total dominance.  OSU would need to keep the shutout to make this game inarguably better.

But yeah, it's bad.

Stroud was ranked the 2nd…

Stroud was ranked the 2nd best pro-style QB in his class, and in the top 50 players at any position.  He had offers from schools like Georgia, Michigan, Penn State, Oregon, and USC.  Even as a 19 year old playing in his first year, he's breaking records at OSU.  He certainly benefits from one of the strongest WR group in CFB history, but just because they're great doesn't mean that he's average.

This is the best OSU offense I've seen since at least 1998, and I wouldn't be surprised if the 2021 version is better than even that offense.

That being said, their defense is mediocre, and they have evidently made the decision that their running game will be a supplement to their passing game, rather than the other way around, which could (as you point out) work against them in inclement weather.  I'd give Michigan something like a one in three chance of winning, which is much higher than I would have predicted before the season started.  If you somehow convinced me that UM wasn't going to set 15+ downs on fire by running straight into a stacked defense, I'd go closer to 1/2, but I'll believe that when I see it.

I think skepticism about…

I think skepticism about Tucker's head coaching ability and probable long term success is definiely warranted, for many of the reasons given by bronxblue and also some of the replies to his comment.

On the other hand, I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that he doesn't pan out.  It depends on how much and how quickly he learns and improves, and on the quality of assistant coaches he can attract.  This year could turn out to be a lucky season that gets him a big contract that MSU winds up regretting for years to come.  However, I don't think it would be a miracle if this season winds up being evidence of a new head coach maximizing his limited resources and putting his team in position to take advantage of some breaks, which he uses as a building block to build a better program.

Time will tell.  If I was forced to bet, I'd bet he's fool's gold; but I wouldn't want to bet my life or a really large amount of money!

There have been a couple of…

There have been a couple of games in which referees with known or probable rooting interests for the Buckeyes have made borderline or bad calls that benefited Ohio State.  That's unacceptable, and the Big10 needs to do better about ensuring impartial refs-- ideally, I'd like to see all refs who have no affiliation with any Big10 teams.

That being said, the idea that there is some vast conspiracy and that UM is routinely screwed by officiating is totally false and should be beneath Wolverine fans' dignity to suggest.  If I needed to choose one single game from the OSU/UM series as an exemplar of egregiously wrong, consistently unfair calls and no-calls against one of the teams, I'd look no further than the 2018 game, in which the officials appeared to do everything in their power to help Michigan won.  No one talks about it because OSU won, but if they had lost, there would be a hundred videos on Youtube containing highlights of how pro-UM the referees were that day.

You're wrong.

The reason…

You're wrong.

The reason replay allowed the incomplete call to stand is because using an entirely different camera angle, the receiver's right hand came off the ball for a moment, and it wasn't clear if the ball was securely grasped using just the left hand alone.  

The foot was clearly in bounds at the time the receiver initially caught the ball, from every angle.

The call was not confirmed by replay, it was just allowed to stand.  That means that had it been called complete on the field, that would have been allowed to stand, too.

But I don't think it was worth complaining about, yet alone tweeting about.  He should be spending his time working with Wilson and Day figuring out why the suddenly can't score touchdowns inside the redzone.

But was it straight from The…

But was it straight from The Smiths, or via Mark Ronson?

Hafley is going to be a…

Hafley is going to be a fantastic coach for a long time, but he's still probably too green to hire next year.  Three years from now, well... 

Before you decide to die on…

Before you decide to die on this hill, you should pause, breathe, and ask yourself how ,much your ego and desire not to be wrong is at work.

The game was well within reach when the final interception took place.  Your column seems to be an attempt to explain X's and O's, to be somewhat objective.  To claim that McNamara was so flustered and so off that he couldn't complete two or three passes in a minute is pure "feelings ball".  It's unproveable. 

It's also quite likely to be complete horseshit.  Fans are way, way, way more emotionally fragile than top athletes are, and it would be wise to refrain from projecting how you would react to how they did react.  If Cade was such a delicate flower that he would in his own head, anxious and afraid, with one minute to go and a real shot at becoming a Michigan legend, he almost certainly never would have played and competed well enough to earn a scholarship at a P5 program in the first place.  It's far more likely that he was pumped, excited, and focused on doing what he needed to do. 

With one minute and no time outs, you need to take a chance or two; the MSU player made one hell of a one handed interception with his back to the line of scrimmage, and it didn't work out.  If you legitimately think McNamara was so rattled that he couldn't have moved them 50 yards in a minute, that says more about your defeatist mindset than it does about Cade or the Michigan football team.

It's not complicated.  The…

It's not complicated.  The video from different cameras is time-synced.  The replay officials find the best angle for determing when the fumble occured.  Then they find the best angle to show when his shin was down.  Then they check the times to see which one happened first.  Done.

There doesn't need to be, and often won't be, a single camera angle that shows the best view of both the fumble and the player being down, but all FOX shows are the non-time-synced view from multiple angles.  Unless you've seen the angles the replay officials used, along with the time stamps of each, you are not in any position to determine if the call was correct.

That being said, I think measuring to fractions of a second  on reviews when basic stuff like spotting the ball is only accurate to like 2 feet, and holding by offensive linemen isn't called like 4/5 times, with little rhyme or reason for why it is called the other 1/5 times, is silly.  I'd prefer it if replay were used to overturn egregiously bad calls, rather than very close calls.

All that was shown on the…

All that was shown on the broadcast were replays from one angle at a time.  

In the actual replay booth, they are able to sync views from different angles.  So they can find an angle that conclusively shows the ball coming out of the QBs hands, and then find a different view that shows conclusively when the shins touch.  They can sync the two, so they can conclusively determine which one came first.  It's an important replay capability, which has been shown from time to time on some broadcasts-- I don't recall which channel or under what conditions, but we've seen how it works.

It's ridiculous to authoritatively state that either fumble was called wrong after replay, unless you have seen the composite/synced views that the booth presumably used to make the calls.

Stroud was injured to start…

Stroud was injured to start the year, when all of his throws were high.  Since the week he sat out, he's been deadly accurate.  Like every QB, he can misfire and make bad decisions when under pressure, but the notion that he has some sort of proclivity for throwing high is just not backed up by facts.  There's plenty of film from him in HS and he wasn't prone to throwing high, the coaches have seen him in practice for 1.5 years and he wasn't prone to throwing high, and the only games he had that problem in college were when he was injured badly enough that they actually sat him out for an entire game.

That being said, of course Michigan's chances of winning the game go up precipitously if they consistently get pressure on OSU's QB, whoever it is.

I'll be shocked if Georgia…

I'll be shocked if Georgia doesn't wind up with 2 losses.

If Stroud's accuracy issues…

If Stroud's accuracy issues really were because of a sore/injured shoulder, and it's now rested, OSU's offense should be one of the best in CFB.

The jury is very much out on the defense.  They (of course) have highly rated recruits everywhere, but they're starting a number of true freshmen.  They also effectively changed defensive coordinators (in practice, if not in title), which could really help, or could just set them back.  Rutgers is not the team to expose Ohio State's weakness, which has been intermediate and long passes. 

They'll go as far as their defense carries them, and they've got plenty of games to figure it out; but they also have to improve a *lot* to be back to Fully Operational Death Star status.

It's a long season.  Teams…

It's a long season.  Teams like Georgia and Ohio State may improve more than Alabama improves-- certainly, they have more room to, that's for sure.

I mean, I'd bet Alabama against the field right now at even odds.  But if you gave me like 3:2 odds, I'd take the field.

Michigan's only touchdown…

Michigan's only touchdown was on a flea-flicker.  I can imagine Wisconsin fans saying the same thing.

Does McNamara's throwing…

Does McNamara's throwing motion look off today to anyone else?  I kept thinking he was short-arming it, but that didn't quite feel right; I think what it actually looks like to me is like he's throwing darts-- not in the sense of throwing very fast line drive passes, but in terms of the throwing motion.  It's like he's not coming over the top, and the motion seems abbreviated.  

I can easily believe I'm imagining things.  Does his motion look odd today to anyone else?

Most fancy stats are placing…

Most fancy stats are placing Michigan higher than many of us think they should, for the simple reason that Michigan has zero turnovers.  Algorithms often break down with extreme inputs, and zero turnovers is not something you see for a full year, and not something you see very often for a 4 game stretch.

While Michigan deserves credit for not turning the ball over-- and in fact, you could argue that one of the reasons the offense hasn't been more explosive, is because they're playing it safe, so you should reward them for the good that comes from that, not just penalize them for the poor-- the algorithms just don't seem to handle 'zero' very well.  If Michigan plays as they have all year against Wisconsin, and even wins the game, but has a couple of turnovers, you'll see the fancy stats drop Michigan more than you probably intuitively think they would.

"Harbaugh's brand of…

"Harbaugh's brand of football" is a really under-rated observation.  The offense just isn't fun to watch most of the time.  Throwing the ball around, getting the ball to the best skill players in creative ways, and other modern tactics are just plain more fun to watch.  3 yards in a cloud of dust is really frustrating, when you see teams with less talent doing so much more.

I think one way to make this…

I think one way to make this work smoothly is to just go into every game telling the starting and backup QB, "We're going to try really hard to get the backup one full series while the other team still has their starters in.  We're not sure when it will be, it depends on a lot of things, but we're going to try."

Usually this will probably mean getting the backup in sometime in the 3rd or 4th quarter when you're up by 3 scores.  But if the starting QB is stumbling for whatever reason, it could be in the 1st or 2nd quarter.  That would give the starter a chance to watch the action from the sideline, chat with a coach, and hopefully get back to a good mental state.

Brian's writing is the…

Brian's writing is the entire reason I'm here.  Around eight years ago, I did some sort of web search for "David Foster Wallace", and one of the links was to an article written by Brian on this site.  I enjoyed the hell out of it, and started reading through his past articles.  I decided he was in my top 5 list of people I'd like to have a beer with.

I think his writing was more fun then, because he was more optimistic and less jaded; but it's still very, very good.  I sometimes wonder if he'd be happier making a living writing about something else, and following Michigan sports as a fan; but obviously I am in no position to say one way or the other-- it's just an idle thought.

As an Ohio State fan, I say…

As an Ohio State fan, I say this with all seriousness and no hyperbole: the Buckeyes' pass defense is so awful-- so significantly worse than Rutgers'-- that no matter how bad you think Gattis is, he is not bad enough to avoid calling lots of pass plays in The Game.

At the college level, almost…

At the college level, almost every very good-- and every elite-- defensive lineman is held on almost every play.  College football would be literally unwatchable if they called it even half the time it happens.  They usually seem to save it for the really egregious stuff, but they don't even call it then 100% of the time.

Ohio State has all the…

Ohio State has all the pieces to be a playoff team by the end of the year, but I don't think it's likely; they have issues at LB and DB that have been going on for enough years now that there's no real reason to believe they'll get them fixed by November.  Still, it wouldn't be a miracle if they did.

For some reason, I can just never bring myself to believe in Penn State.  But I could imagine them getting in with a loss to Michigan or MSU or whoever, as long as they beat OSU and with the Big10 championship.

Iowa is #5, but they are not a playoff team.  I mean, there's always a non-zero chance they go undefeated and get in, but that would be a fluke.

I'd put Michigan in the same category as Iowa.  There's a non-zero chance they go undefeated and make it to the CFP, but I don't think they're a legitimate playoff team.