This week in grimace emoji. Good news: COVID case fatality rates are plummeting. Bad news: it seems like a large reason why is that the average age of the infected is also plummeting, because:

Before and After. COVID-19 is real and the real implications for ignoring basic precautions. #mileg #COVID__19 pic.twitter.com/COEe8qPZW6

— Sam Singh (@singhsam94) June 23, 2020

I am dubious that The Youth are going to change their behavior, and The Youth cluster around college football players for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, what happens if and when someone has to go to the ICU? This is napkin math but napkin math is probably enough in this situation:

Maybe it's lower than 0.1%. Or maybe only 5% of players catch COVID. Then again, maybe 30% do. The exact numbers are wildly uncertain. But, to a first approximation, it strikes me as fairly likely that at least 1 player ends up in the ICU with COVID, which I think ends the season

— Mile High Brendan (@MileHighBrendan) June 22, 2020

That probably shouldn't be the reason. We accept the inevitability that football will produce Eric LeGrands already. The reason should be the inexorable exponential math when R > 1. But that's not easy to put in a news broadcast.

Anyway, buy HTTV! We'll figure out something you'll enjoy even if the season is one FCS game! 30 pages of hardboiled detective Phil Martelli novella? Wait, come back, I didn't mean it!

[AFTER THE JUMP: some good cornerbackin']

Golly. PFF briefly removed this tweet. I assumed that was because someone had screwed up a database query and accidentally limited it to Michigan players, but it was merely because they'd grabbed the wrong 22 for the photo:

Lowest completion % allowed by a B1G DB since 2014:

1. David Long Jr, Michigan ('18) - 29.0%
2. Channing Stribling, Michigan ('16) - 30.2%
3. David Long Jr, Michigan ('17) - 31.0%
4. Jourdan Lewis, Michigan ('16) - 31.7%
5. Vincent Gray, Michigan ('19) - 32.4% pic.twitter.com/mYM3KMTxdo

— PFF College (@PFF_College) June 22, 2020

Michigan's defensive style has something to do with that. Press man coverage is high risk, high reward. So does Michigan's pass rush in the 2016-18 period. Still pretty remarkable, especially when you see Vincent Gray sneak on that list.

That's a good sign; I'm still bracing for some backsliding. Gray's sample is maybe 40% of snaps in a season and is thus less predictive than we'd hope. Also he didn't jump out when I charted in the way Lewis and Long did.

This tweet also prompted one of the worst attempted dunks I've seen in a while:

pic.twitter.com/6wShWSgWC4

— Ventrilloquist Mike (@_TG12_) June 22, 2020

A classic example of terrible coverage: almost getting a finger on a ball while three feet off the ground.

Hell yes. An oral history of the Landon Donovan goal against Algeria? Why yes I might click on that, especially  when it includes a section obliterating the official from the Slovenia game who inexplicably overturned Maurice Edu's goal. Bob Ley on antagonizing Michael Ballack:

Bob Ley, ESPN 1979-2019: I was at that match, and I go back and I still look for that foul that took away [Edu's] goal in much the same way that I look for how much Michael Ballack was offside in 2002. I still give him s---. "Ah Bob, you're such an a--hole."

I recommend the whole thing.

Also in things I clicked so hard I broke my mouse. A Freekbass deep dive at the Athletic:

“People thought this is gonna be the new alma mater,” Mandell said. “You’re supposed to be laughing about this. It was supposed to be fun. Then it turned into an anger release at Notre Dame for not winning football games.”

Notre Dame supported Mandell, but that didn’t stop people from leaving raging voicemails on his office line. Some demanded he resign in disgrace. There were charges that he had singlehandedly ruined Notre Dame’s reputation around college football. Worries that the video would scare away recruits. Fears that after the football program had bombed the previous three seasons and was paying its former head coach $18 million to not coach, this would make the Irish a running joke.

I'm not sure the anger was mostly about not winning football games. As Matt Hinton described it at the time:

• The new Notre Dame hype video undermines everything Notre Dame claims to hold dear. Whatever pretense Notre Dame ever had to possessing some kind of unique, dignified otherness that set it apart from the craven secularists of college football has been completely and utterly destroyed forever by a guy named "Freekbass" pretending to play guitar and what appears to be a rapping hobbit who majors in library sciences:

YouTube comments: Disabled. Black people associated with this "hip" marketing campaign: Negative five. Irish Guard cloggers: On suicide watch. The Irish are now aesthetically obligated to join the "Hang Time" Division of the TNBC Conference circa 1996.

Michigan would blunder down the same path a few years later when they enlisted a satanic collective of dog groomers to create "In The Big House," which featured lyrics like "in the big house, yeah" and "it's a really big house, y'all" and "uh yeah this domicile is expansive screeeeeeee."

What stands out about these two monuments to People Are Just In Charge Of Things is how cringeworthy they remain years after the fact. I couldn't stand more than 15 seconds of "We Are Notre Dame," and that's the one I'm supposed to like because it's my rival's problem.

Uh yeah good call. Michigan is not going to host a presidential debate:

“Given the scale and complexity of the work we are undertaking to help assure a safe and healthy fall for our students, faculty and staff and limited visitors — and in consideration of the public health guidelines in our state as well as advice from our own experts — we feel it is not feasible for us to safely host the presidential debate as planned.”

This eliminates the possibility I will forget about the scheduled debate and go downtown into a hellish maelstrom of takes. Instead, Miami will get to host that debate because Florida's approach to COVID is to assume it is the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

Incoming. Hockey is in the midst of announcing their incoming class on their twitter account. They haven't gotten through everyone but they have resolved the one question I had about the composition of the class by announcing this gentleman:

Our first defenseman of the group is @Sholtz024, who led @PentictonVees D-men in scoring this season!#GoBlue | #NewBlue 〽️ pic.twitter.com/3DTQZ59gqD

— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey) June 23, 2020

So:

• G: Erik Portillo
• D: Jacob Truscott, Owen Power, Steve Holtz
• F: Kent Johnson, Thomas Bordeleau, Brendan Brisson, Josh Groll, Philippe Lapointe

Holtz a 1999 birth year, so he's out of junior eligibility, and is from Michigan. He is likely to be a 7th or 8th D who gets a minimal amount of money.

Holtz was one of a group of three D who had publicly announced Michigan commits without flipping elsewhere. (This used to be a group of four until Jake Harrison flipped to UNO.) That leaves Ethan Szmagaj and Cole McWard to defer or decommit. It'll probably be the latter since Michigan has just one spot on D next year (Cam York's) and has three D committed. Two of them (Luke Hughes, probable top ten pick in 2021, and Ethan Edwards, probable ~3rd rounder this year) have higher profiles than Szmagaj and McWard; the third is Luca Fantilli.

Etc.: The decade in a headline. Why Marco Rubio's NIL bill sucks. You can sign the petition to rename Columbus, Ohio, to "Flavortown." Eli Brooks heads into year four.