Unverified Voracity Re-Emerges

With the talking. Russ Levine of Football Outsiders had already scheduled me to be on the new FO Seventh Day Adventure podcast, which, depending on how you look at it, is either great or awful timing. This is sort of an extended version of the various radio appearances I've done in support of the book, in case you're interested in what that's going like. Results (I call Morgantown a "hole"! I pick ND! Woo!):


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There's a lot of discussion in there about Michigan and its future, it's not all Washington-Boise picks.

In case you were wondering... Garnet 'n' Black Attack, nee Cock 'n' Fire, asks this in the wake of the AP's decision to allow I-AA teams in:

Now, there comes this question of the BlogPoll: Will we allow FCS teams in? I, for one, would be opposed to this, since it would undermine the whole "We watch more games than the media pollsters" argument. If you add FCS teams, we'd be either excluding or including them more on gut feeling or a good win or two than on an actual examination of how they play, since there are very few that are consistently on television.

But I think it's a fair topic for discussion.

Yet another reason to wish this upset had happened to anyone else: any statements about how friggin' stupid this decision might look like sour I-AA grapes. But what the hell: this is a moronic decision by the AP that reflects the mentality of its voters. The AP voters can't even track the entirety of I-A, and now they deign to rank a team they very likely didn't even see play in their massive upset and will not see play the entire rest of the year. There's a reason Appalachian State was the biggest upset ever: I-AA teams cannont compete with the top I-A teams. And what if Appalachian State loses to D-II Lenoir-Rhyne this weekend? Do we rank Lenoir-Rhyne? Once you let I-AA teams in, why not D-II or D-III teams in? Should we put the NFL in there too? What about women's volleyball teams? Pollsters are already set an imposing task without having to consider whether or not a team that plays in an entirely different division should be ranked. But if your mentality is that you can look at a bunch of scores and then rank the teams, it makes sense. Thus the AP's decison.

Aigh. USA Today talks to the Appalachian State coach. Quotes of interest/disgust follow. How easy are we to prepare for?

Coaches and players did not begin looking at video of Michigan until the third week of August, Moore said.

Maybe our DTs should have done lots better?

"My center (Brett Irvin) is a redshirt freshman who hasn't played a game in more than a year. Will he be able get any movement on their tackles? And he hadn't played in front of more than 15,000 people."

Do we not have a dime package?

"We noticed that four- and five-wideout sets caused matchup problems for" Michigan's secondary, Jackson said. "It enabled us to create gaps in the defense."

Argh Gittleson?

Brown, the 6-6, 310-pound lineman, noticed Michigan's players were "out of shape. Their defense was struggling to get to the ball," he said.

(I don't actually know that I buy this: the D was much more effective in the second half and a large portion of the problem was with angles and playcalls.)

Hurray! This video of Oregon's win over Houston is remarkable since it's shot from one endzone. It shows: misrepresentations of the Duck D, slow-mo cheerleader sexytime, and a whole lot of zone reads:



We surrender. (Via the Diag)

Etc.: Hawaii's AD: kind of a dick. ESPN has a huge piece on Jalen Rose. Pirates don't say "arrgh"? OBVIOUSLY. Pirates say "HHHYYYYARRRRR." Also an Illinois guy disses the Big House, which is probably because he only saw it when Illinois was playing in it.

RBUAS. And there's a new blog called "Genuinely Sarcastic" with Good-Bad-Ugly from AppSt. Surprisingly not all "ugly".