2018 northwestern

Ticket Watch: AAAAAAAHHH also AAAAHHHHHH

Seth • November 20, 2018 • 4:45pm

That Sponsor: TicketIQ of course. We like them because they’re the ticket site that doesn’t hide the fees. The online sites with official connections to the schools all have about the same inventory and prices, so if you go that route go with the one who gives us money and isn’t trying to hide the fact that they make some until you’re about to buy.

The Board: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

Game	Get-In	Was	OK Pair	Was	Good	Was	6+	Was
OSU	$276	$284	$317	$378	$597	$435	$578	$505
B1G CG	$109	$85	$145	$120	$365	$187	$134	$85
MBB vs UNC	$61	$50	$95	$75	$207	$85	$62	$50

I added the UNC game because those started jumping up, but with Michigan basketball you can usually find good seats close to gametime. Unsurprisingly The Game is the biggest ticket in the world this weekend.

Cheapest tickets by section as of 4pm Tuesday:

D Deck $365
C Deck $296
Club $1,338
B Deck $402
A Deck $271 (1 ticket at $271, then jumps to $421)
AA Deck $540

A reader reported finding a few on Ebay but when I looked the ones that didn't look skeezy had been gobbled up. Craigslist has been a black hole all year.

Going to Ohio State

Tickets: Michigan fans held off for awhile but the buying spree has begun. Tickets are appearing in singles around $275 and getting snatched up immediately. I don't expect a total takeover but the market is responding much like the Northwestern game did, where Michigan fans are intent on going and waiting to snatch up seats when they get close to reasonable.

So what's your strategy here? I think you're going to have to bite the bullet on this one. Ohio Stadium has a lot of bad seats—the original design was for a 70,000-seat amphitheater, and filling in the open endzone only gets that to about 85,000. The last 20,000 seats were built the only way they could: vertically. So the bleachers go up, and then further up, and then even more up, and all the while the angle increases and the steps are more slippery. The architecture is Brutalism, the style the fascists loved for its ability to make a human feel oppressed and insignificant. It succeeds. If you're further down in the upper deck you already feel pretty high. If you're up in the 30th row you're going to be feeling the weather and getting a bit dizzy. The sidelines, as you can imagine, are better than the corners. For a $20 difference, if you can find seats further down it's best to do so.

Parking: Go garage. The secret is the parking structures on campus, if you arrive early enough. The 12th Avenue garage and the Neil Avenue Garage are by the hospital and adjacent to their version of the union. They'll fill up by 8 or so, but that should be your first target if you didn't pre-buy a spot. The 11th Avenue Garage will probably fill up next, followed by the 9th East garage. The nicest part is you get to walk past the field where Michigan's band warms up, then warm up yourself in the newly renovated "RPAC" building, a mix between a student union and IM building. And that's right next to the stadium.

If you've got time to spare, campus proper is right there—whether someone comes away thinking Columbus is a cement-and-box-store Midwest hell or "kinda nice" is directly correlated to whether or not they walked the Oval.

Are Their Fans Really That Bad? Yes. Certain areas have worse tailgaters than others and the majority of people there aren't the kind who will waste a Natty Ice by pouring it on a 70-year-old Michigan fan's head. However the percentage of those who will, and the sheer number of Ohio State fans who will be there even if they're not going to the game, means your chances are very high of encountering at least one of the kind of person everybody thinks about when you say "Ohio State fans."

Most of the time if you ignore them and travel in a group that doesn't particularly capture their notice you'll be able to slip by with just some ill-natured jabs. As much as the school and some of their better fans have tried to stamp this out, the cultural practice of getting into at least one fight with a Michigan fan remains. I've had the most problems crossing their athletic campus lots to the west of the stadium. If you wear a cape and walk around with a Zach Smith toy you will attract them. You'll also attract a few Ohio State fans who want to tell you that those other people don't represent all Buckeyes. They won't say so to those other people though.

This is another reason to try to stick closer to campus: campus police are visible.

[After THE JUMP: Indy, if you dare]

gotchya [Patrick Barron]

Neck Sharpies: Trapping the Slant

Seth • October 30, 2018 • 10:38am

Waaaaay back in the nonconference portion of the season Michigan was getting repeatedly gashed by slants. The problem hit a crescendo against SMU, and their excellent little slot bug James Proche.

SMU threw six slants for 44 yards on 4 completions; only on the last did a safety make a play on the ball, and there’s a big reason for that we’ll get into further down. As the season’s progressed, however, Michigan’s gotten much better not just at defending slants but convincing opposing offenses not to even bother with them by running trap coverages. Why were we bad at them before? Is that a hole in our base defense? What’s a trap coverage? Let’s discuss.

Defending Slants and Fades with Man Coverage

The reason Michigan was bad at slants was they were bad/unlucky last year at fades, and made a conscious decision to be align in a way that made fades harder and slants easier.

Michigan likes to run a lot of Cover 1: man to man defense with single high safety. They also like to blitz their linebackers and play them aggressively against the run. The coverage has help inside on deep plays but no help outside, and small help underneath. Offenses learned long ago that you can put a Cover 1 slot defender in a bind by threatening him short/inside (a slant) and deep/outside (a fade). Both routes start by running directly at this guy, trying to get him to flip his hips to defend whichever of the two you’re not running.

[After the JUMP: a wild Mon Calamari appears]

MGoRadio 4.4: What If Episode I Was Good

Seth • October 5, 2018 • 7:12pm

NOTE: The beginning of this recording got clipped so I had to steal it off the YouTube recording. The badness only lasts 1 minute.

1 hour and 26 minutes

The Sponsors

We can do this because people support us. You should support them too so they’ll want to do it again next year! The show is presented by UGP & The Bo Store, and if it wasn’t for Rishi and Ryan we’d be all be very sad ex-SBNation employees with “real” jobs.

Our other sponsors are also key to all of this: HomeSure Lending, Peak Wealth Management, Ann Arbor Elder Law, the Residence Inn Ann Arbor Downtown, the University of Michigan Alumni Association, Michigan Law Grad, Human Element, and Lantana Hummus

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1. The UFR Segment

starts at 1:00

Shea Patterson didn’t have his best game. But it is wasn’t his worst game. Northwestern dropped a lot of guys into zone and made him uncomfortable. Michigan being in comeback mode changed the offensive gameplan a fair bit. Nico Collins is now the short yardage receiver. Run game was fine. Blocking was solid. Brian issues an apology to Michael Dwumfour. Devin Bush didn’t do 65 crazy things. It’s time for full time Josh Ross..

2. The Ufer Segment, wsg Director Dan Chace and Bob Ufer?

starts at 24:36

We welcome Dan Chace, the director of Football's Valhalla: The Bob Ufer Story, which premieres TONIGHT right after the podcast at The Michigan Theater downtown. Also with us: Ufer impersonator Dennis from the OC.

3. Maryland Preview

starts at 38:48

Maryland beat Texas! But it was a terrible game to watch and was played in “4 inches” of water. DJ Durkin is gone from this team and so is the Cover 1, the 4-3 over, and they’ve filled the team with transfers, including a guy that got passed by Illinois. Safeties play pretty deep and have a guy resembling an MSU safety. The Terps bring Kasim Hill and Piggy back from last year along with a fleet of jet smurfs.

4. Gimmicky Top Five: Strongly Held Opinions About Things That Don’t Matter

starts at 58:07

Reid McCarthy from Ann Arbor Elder Law joins us for this segment. Brian wants his will to include mailing dinner plates to random people. The guys talk a lot about Star Wars, mostly about how the prequels could have been good: