Unverified Voracity 10/21

The News From Ann Arbor

What could the news be? Michigan lands really, really big defensive lineman? Someone has devised a way to poke Angry Michigan Safety Hating God in the eye?

Find out at 11 ypsi~dixit. (OMG EVIL TEASER!)

Sadly useful is this EDSBS article on internet fandom and coping with loss. Orson parts the Red Sea of whack job message board posters (guilty) into two violently opposed groups, the "St. Fandrew":

The St. Fandrew type will take to message boards proclaiming their own blind faith in their coach as evidence of their superior virtue and character, indirectly accusing everyone who disagrees with them of the things they boast of being

... and the "Master Shake":

The question for the Master Shake fan is not WHO is to blame, but how to fire the coach, the staff, the groundskeeper, revoke scholarships from all enrolled players, slaughter the existing mascot, burn the stadium to the foundations, sow salt on the ground, and build an entirely new program from foundations on up.

EDSBS's dichotomy is something that rings true across the land. Bill of Eagle In Atlanta declares that BC fans are either "rah rahs" or "wah wahs"; the RCMB has regular, hilarious sectarian struggles between the "Sunshine Blowers" and the "Demand Excellencers."

I am a bad person for many reasons. One of them is the fact that I find Syracuse blog Orange44's tribute to Syracuse's dismal season--a photograph of a crying child at the start of every post--endlessly hilarious.

That is all.

Excellent things that demand reading: Gunslingers goes all Vijay on us and does a lot of comparative yardage and scoring sorting to try and determine exactly which undefeated teams are fradulent or non-. Dave Sez continues its series of fantastic analyitical football articles with something of particular interest to Michigan fans wondering wither Jerame Tuman: the waggle. All Things Longhorn indicates that Jeff Sagarin should not be taken seriously by using his numbers to assert that the Big Ten is the best conference this year.

Sunday Morning Quarterback presents its Thursday Morning Quarterback column on Friday. Confusion! He says this about Michigan-Iowa:

Two teams about which everyone, thus far, has been wrong, wrong, wrong - neither of these ubiquitous top 10 and 15 preseason picks is even ranked! SMQ has kept the faith with Michigan, who continues to seem to him very solid all the way around despite some, shall we say, inconsistency. But Iowa's following last season's come-from-nowhere script to T, only with a better running game, and might rise up and roll like a train through the Big Ten/Eleven the rest of the season. The beast is awakened, and tied for the league lead...
IOWA 27, MICHIGAN 21

I think perhaps the "only with a better running game" misses a key issue, that being that you could probably feature the Iowa defensive line on Orange44's posts and no one would be able to tell the difference. But I've quite literally been as wrong as possible ("this will be the least enjoyable game I've ever seen in Michigan Stadium") this season, so I strongly suggest you think the opposite of what I do. And what I'm thinking now is that you should not send me one million dollars.

Iowa partisan Mark Hasty's Pickin' On The Big Ten also predicts dismal defeat:

It’s sad when you don’t know whether to be afraid of Michigan or not. This game is at Kinnick, and the Revenge Factor for the Hawkeyes is pretty high, so I’m leaning towards “not.” I just hope I’m right.

BED 24
BECOME WHAT YOU ARE 31

Seconded about the sad part.