Well, it turns out that post I made almost a year ago isn’t the last one ever. A lot has happened since then. A lot that probably warrants dedicated posts on this shitty blog. Michigan’s football coach was fired, then went to jail. Warde Manual is… scheduled to be fired? Football comedian James Franklin was hired by a team outside of the Big Ten. Actual comedian Adam Sandler somehow still has Wisconsin convinced he’s an actual football coach. Jonathan (not L) Smith was fired from MSU. Pat Fitzgerald was exonerated from the hazing allegations at Northwestern and then hired as “Not L’s” replacement at Michigan State. All of these deserve dedicated articles, but I just checked and there’s an $800** renewal fee for this website due in October, so unless I can move it to a cheaper host, we don’t have that kind of time. So for today, let’s pick one topic and see where we are in a month.
So we were “Up North” over labor day and the weather was not permitting me to tempt injury by continue to wakeboard at age 40. So instead of spending the day on the boat, my family decided to spend the day in Mt. Pleasant. One of our stops was to local guitar/record store “B’s Music.”
NO! STOP IT!!!
What?
You got to play that damn Dave Grohl signature guitar and now I’ve had to listen to you butcher Foo Fighters songs for the past week and a half! I’m sick of it! Write something about Football or the next time you’re not paying attention, I’ll renew this site for 10 years and turn it into a Warde Manuel fan page.
Fine*…
Michigan lost to Western. No, they didn’t I know. The NBC clock was wrong. The in-stadium clock had a second left when the Western player touched the ball from out of bounds. I still can’t believe they overturned the initial call. I still think Western should have won the game. I think I would have actually preferred it. They deserved the win. At the time, I thought, the win doesn’t really matter for Michigan. Their season is over. That was the most disappointing performance I’ve ever seen. Bryce, the $10 million QB looks like a bad high school player. The offensive line that I thought would be a strength, looked terrible. The best running back combination in the country… sucked. 9 penalties for 80 yards. They’re losing at least 5 games this season.
And then somehow they beat Oklahoma. Now I don’t know what to think… Maybe they took Western for granted. Maybe the offense all were still drunk from an early DKE Tahitian party the night before. Maybe Western is actually good. Or maybe Oklahoma isn’t that good. Maybe I reverse jinxed them by putting my imaginary $2 on Oklahoma in Tim’s pick-em league. Probably that one. … The running game was still terrible. The team still took too many penalties including some really stupid ones that could have cost them the game (Jyaire’s unsportsmanlike on a third down stop on Oklahoma’s own goal line… and STOP RUNNING INTO THE PUNTER!!!).
Here’s my honest and most optimistic take. This year we could be Iowa with talent. The penalties should get cleaned up. The defense I think is very good (at least when the starting line isn’t tire/off the field). Without stupid penalties, they’ve given up essentially 10 points in two games and scored 7 of their own. The punter was probably the MVP (very Iowa). If Oklahoma’s defense is actually good, then Bryce and the offense are at least functional. He’ll still have games where he can’t (or refused to) read a defense and locks on a receiver even if he’s double covered pre-snap on a slant. But, he can run. The running backs and offensive line will probably improve, or just look better against weaker defenses. Oregon might not be that good after all. They’ll still probably lose to Indiana and Ohio State, but there could be some enjoyment to be had this season… at least between the commercial breaks.
Throw the ball to JJ. And stay away from the (figurative) DKE house.
*It was a sweet guitar though…
Yes it was.
**Shameless attempt to guilt people into more donations? Maybe.