I think it's up

If you've come directly to mgoblog.blogspot.com, you are seeing the Old Site. Probably. MGoBlog 3.0 (beta, oh god, so beta), can be found at mgoblog.com. A couple minor things are still iffy if you're running IE 7, and God help you if you're on IE 6. (Get Firefox, and email me about problems.) I plan on making it usable, if not pretty, for unfrozen caveman browser in the near future.

If you're seeing this in your feed reader, you are most likely a super-ancient mummy MGoBlog reader, and you should be commended for that. But you'll have to subscribe to the new feed if you want to keep getting MGoBlog in your reader. Anyone who's subscribed to the feedburner version should be fine.

Excelsior!

Happy Holiday Of Choice

You ever notice that when a blogger puts up a post titled "Happy HOLIDAY X" it's just his way of copping out of a post that day? Yeah.

Happy Memorial Day!

Here's a conciliatory youtube video:



Also, Michigan's regional for the baseball tourney:

1. Arizona
2. Michigan
3. Kentucky
4. Eastern Michigan

The puck drops Friday at the Fish, and then they'll probably pick the puck up and play some baseball.

Na Ga Da

New York wins; no content today. On and, as they say, poppin' Monday with a UFR of the West Virginia-Rutgers game.

Possible Disruption In Service

A friend is getting married in New York, so I will be out thataway the next few days. Should be a post per day, as there are a couple items mostly completed, but there's a small chance I'll be super busy or something. Just FYI.

It's Contest Time Again

Last year, MGoBlog had a highly successful contest to create a new banner for the site. Unfortunately, Baxter Allen's winning banner...

... lasted all of three hours into the season before You Know What. It was replaced with

1. the happy kitten forever blog,
   
   
2. crying girl banner for Emo Week,
   
   
3. That emu for Emu Week,
   
   
4. the "It's Morning In America" banner that spurred a serious discussion in the comments about whether or not it was totally offensive to even have to gaze upon the visage of Ronald Reagan,
   
   
   and...
5. the banner by Fred Simmons you see above,
   
   hastily pressed into service after a cadre of superstition experts concluded that a restoration to normal service simply could not be risked.

Despite all this, we're going to have another contest, and if we lose to Utah we can blame the whole freshman-quarterback no-seniors-on-offense thing, mkay?

So: dust off your photoshop and whip up something killer. Mail it to mgoblog@gmail.com with the subject "banner"; in about two weeks I'll collect the candidates and put a poll on the site so readers can vote for their favorites.

The winner receives this fabulous prize package:

• An MGoShirt of their choosing.
• A copy of Hail To The Victors 2008 (2007 book link).
• A single MGoWish that can be redeemed for anything reasonable of the winner's choosing: a post that addresses a specific topic, increased coverage of something or another, or increased emphasis on a particular technical task.

Go, and capture the zeitgeist.

Hello From Denver

Items:

• It's snowing like a mother; Saturday it will be 60.
• There is a woman on the local news actually named "Amelia Earheart," no foolies.
• This area of Denver is the designated convention-center type thing and is pretty cool, but a little weird: right next door to a candle shop is a payday loan place. And not two blocks from this shmancy Hyatt Regency is a ghetto pawn shop/dive bar area.
• A few people have inquiring about a potential beerfest; if you are so inclined our party will be retiring to the Wynkoop Brewing Company -- recommended by Starbucks baristas when prompted for a snooty microbrew bar -- after the game for the celebration/wake, as is appropriate. Map. I look sort of like this, except now more like a dirty hippie and less like a middle-aged housewife.
• I've got a couple mailbag questions answered so I might as well post 'em.

Programming Note

I'm leaving on a jet plane for Denver early Thursday morning, and leaving in an SUV Wednesday night because said jet plane departs from Chicago. Then I'm going to be busy finding reasonably priced tickets and watching both semis, and skiing the next day. The upshot for the reader:

• No content Thursday other than an open thread. Maybe something late depending on the quantity of revelry.
  
• I will try to get something up Friday but it's going to be late in the day, 6 or 7.
  
• I plan on going WOOOOOO until I get tear-gassed, brah, if Michigan wins the national title and will be flying back early Sunday, so celebratory content this weekend is not likely. If we lose, I'll wait till Monday for sure.

Posting will be as normal tomorrow.

I Am Lame

So I'm flying to NYC today for some R&R. Had planned on getting content up but things are a bit more hectic than I expected. Woo for lack of planning... no content today. Content will be sporadic next week, but not nonexistent.

No, *Your* Genitals Are The Shiniest

It's January, late January, and that can only mean one thing other than constant Terrelle Pryor fretting: college football blogger awards. Full details can be found at Rocky Top Talk and Every Day Should Be Saturday; things are much the same as they were last year: open nomination process, final voting open to college football bloggers only.

There are a few changes. Some awards required sufficient research on the part of voters to educate themselves that the nefarious cabal behind them felt they were better off as jury prizes. We have a realistic view of the amount of effort -- zero --that will be put into the voting by most participants, and the end result is usually Big Blog reining victorious no matter the merits of the smaller blog's offerings. By getting even more elitist we hope to make things more democratic. Or at least more interesting than "hey... this also goes to Orson."

There is also a second national championship award offering, because it wouldn't be college football without multiple, contradictory votes on the same damn thing. The "People's Champ" award, so named to make fun of Auburn fans and not to honor The Rock, is another national championship sort of award with one exception: final voting is open to all, not just bloggers. As such, Orson will obviously win it but what the hell.

Readers will probably be a little pissed off they can't vote on the final ballots, but you have an opportunity to contribute now. There is a nomination gizmo for you use. Therein you can vote for any number of things once per day; the final numbers spat out by the gizmo will heavily influence the award nominees. This is especially important in the more specific categories like "Best Post" or "Best Multimedia Thing"; everything that's nominated will get dug out and reviewed by the award committee. So if there's some post you remember being awesome, please point it out to us. If you can't remember the URL, hell just describe it and we'll find it. If you are so incredibly opposed to PHP that you can't bear to use the gizmo, leave a comment. Just please help us in the gargantuan task of winnowing the ever-expanding blogosphere into a few shiny nuggets.

Gizmo.

Gizmo.

The nomination gizmo.

Final Blogpoll Logistics

It'll be Thursday sometime in the afternoon. For voters, your deadline is 11 AM EST; the ballot entry form is located here.

General Offseason Plan

Hello! Given the traffic numbers around these parts, most of you came aboard during this season. Those of you who were around this summer get free hats.* Those of you who were around last summer get free lycra bodysuits.** If you are still around, you should know the following things about the offseason around here:

• Posting will slow. When things are happening, I'll generally keep up an in-season post rate of 2 or 3 a day, most of considerable length. This usually happens around signing day and in the week or two before the season. If the hockey team and basketball team are doing things of note, that may be any time until March or April. If not -- and this season the basketball team definitely fits under "not" -- there will be about one post per day.
  
• Basketball will not have a lot of effort dumped into it. They're really brutal this season and I'm just not that into college basketball. Hideous refereeing, that kiddie three-point line, and games against Northwestern are detraction enough when your team is better than the Wildcats. When it's debatable? Not so much.
• Hockey will get regular coverage. I know 99% of you don't care. This is your fault, and you should feel shame.
• Attention will wander. Not everything around here will be Michigan-related during the summer. I'll occasionally post about the Pistons and other things.
  
• Projects will be undertaken. I have heard the cries for a more structured comment system and will endeavor to make that a reality; give me a couple months. I tentatively plan to move to wordpress, integrate a vbulletin system, and resurrect MGoBoard now that there's sufficient traffic for people to use it. This is a major reason for the offseason slowness: the extra time allows me to do other things.
  
  Also planned: more stats and stuff.
  
• The book returns. Last year I edited Hail To The Victors 2007; a 2008 version is in the works. Charts! Graphs! Hopefully something by Johnny from RBUAS!
  

There will be a number of UFRs: one for the Citrus, one for the Fiesta, and a couple other WVU games of recent vintage. I hope to get the Pitt game and maybe another loss or two and explore what can go wrong, but haven't found those online yet. Let me know if you find it.

*(Offer not valid.)
**(Whoah.)

Holiday Schedule

12/22 - 12/26: Nonstop 'Sheed Jingle Bells on repeat:



No blogging.

12/27 & 12/28: Ohio State UFR. Merry Christmas.
12/29: (Ideally) Orson-style VEQ.
12/30: Citrus Preview.
12/31: Off.

May be some wiggle in here, but the four things above I promise by the New Year.

Poll Delayed

The company that hosts the poll software has pulled the plug on it temporarily, as the increased traffic here was causing excessive loads on the server. I'm trying to work around the problem but a lot of voters were locked out of voting this week and I can't access the existing votes, so no poll today. Hopefully this gets resolved ASAP... if I had to guess I'd say there won't be a poll this week.

Content Late Today

A snafu occurred and I have to re-do the second half for the defensive UFR.

Some Site Stuff

The Dot Com. Thanks to the kind assistance of Drew Montag from UMGoBlue.com I've acquired the rights to MGoBlog.com, now a valid place to point your browser to get to this location. No more "blogspot" when explaining this place to your friends.

In the offseason I might move off blogger to a Wordpress blog located there; we will see. There are Wordpress plugins that would allow the blog to have a better commenting system, diaries (probably), and other cool stuff that I've wanted to implement for a while. Downsides: given the levels of traffic MGoBlog is receving, a dedicated server might be required, which is more expensive than the current hosting thing, and this place has amazing google juice. It's on the first page for "Michigan Football," in front of MLive and GBW. (But behind the MZone. Damn you, MZone!) Giving that up would suck. But it's under consideration.

Ads, Ack. Ah, grim "monetization." As this is now a profession it's unfortunately a requirement. If you don't have adblocking you are probably noticing a big banner on the right hand side of the blog. I am testing out some ad stuff; I hope this isn't too bothersome. At the moment I'm pretty annoyed with the Ad Council stuff -- it moves! I hate it when ads move -- and this might be temporary to the extreme; I hope to strike a balance between irritation and paying rent. Any suggestions are welcome.

Stubhub stuff. If you're looking for tickets to the game, the left sidebar has a number of Stubhub affiliate links. Like this one for Ohio State. It helps the blog if you use them, and you like helping the blog, right?

UFR Note

I'm trying to pull down the game so I can bring forth some highlights... this is not going that well. So a double-barrel UFR blast tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to do video clips, but maybe not. There's not that much to discuss about the defense: it sucks.

The Sweet Morphine Of Low Expectations

Well, yeah, that sucked. But way less than last week because Michigan declared itself to be no-fluke pure suck by about midway through the second quarter. I was given the opportunity to disconnect and erect a wall of sarcasm between myself and the team, and this I did. There's no pain here, just a steady drip of resignation. Mmmm.

So I'm all out of rage. The reaction at this point: whatever. Who's the next coach? For the first time since 1968, Michigan is going to go looking; chances are the next guy isn't currently working at a MAC school. Unless it's Brady Hoke. Maybe he can bring back Stan Parrish! Oh, the tingly bits are tingling at the mere possibility.

Anyway, I'm going to Chicago to day to watch Brazil tear through the USMNT like it's Michigan's defense, so content will have to wait until tomorrow. This is just a heads up that I'm out here and will be posting with alacrity this time. No need for kittens when you've already set the clock ahead to next year. UFR will be abbreviated as per the standard practice to ignore plays which have no outcome on the bearing of the game. Garbage time started right after Dixon's third long touchdown of the day and charting will cease there, though I'll go in and grab all the Mallett plays to evaluate how he did. (Not well is your answer.)

One thing: yes, Les Miles is back on the table. I know I wrote a big long post claiming he was not a candidate for anything, and I still remain fairly skeptical, but a large portion of the "not a candidate for anything" post rested on the dual assumptions that

• Michigan would not be looking for a drastic change in the tenor of the program, and
• Lloyd Carr's personal enmity would be a major negative.

IE: it was written in the expectation that Carr was going out on a high note instead of as Bump Elliot with a national title. Obviously this is not the case and Carr's opinion is likely to carry little weight with an athletic director already inclined towards national searches that acquire proven winners instead of, say, Mike DeBord. So Miles is no longer a longshot. I got a solid tip from someone claiming that he would jump at the job if offered, FWIW, and his public non-statements in the past week about the Michigan job tend to reinforce that vision. He has a specific $1.2 million buyout for Michigan, but that's nothing. Someone will step forward and donate that much if it comes to that.

FYI: UFR

It is coming. It took an inordinately long time to get even a crappy copy of the game down and then there was the whole hairshirt selection and test-drive process, which was time consuming. I am through the first quarter now and hope to have it up tomorrow-Thursday. We're up 14-7! I hope this ends well!

Unverified Voracity Killed The Internet Star

Oh, programming notes. Oh yes. So. Um. A few things:

• On the morning of the Appalachian State game you can catch me on WJR at 7:35 AM. Should be about ten minutes. More likely you'll be asleep, but...
• if you think that's a ridiculous time to get up I will also be on WAAM 1600 for their pregame show. Starts at 10 AM, tentatively scheduled for a half-hour. Also...
• This fall I will be on Channel 4's "Sports Final Edition" on a weekly basis. SFE runs at 11:30 Sunday nights (-ish, depending on Sunday Night Football's length). The first probably very nervous and horrible one will be this Sunday. It's only three minutes so chances of communicating useful information you don't know are probably pretty slim, but during the season there will be clips of plays and a sort of UFR-y breakdown of them, which will hopefully be cool. So, yeah. There's that. I am accepting donations of cigarettes and blindfolds.

Marques Slocum! Right. Facebook indicates that Marques Slocum is dinged in some fashion:

Marques 'Grand Marques' Slocum

is f***in' mad right now cuz im f***in' hurt but its cool cuz ima be back real soon, ima grind through dis bitch! EARLY!

(BTW: Jesus, Marques, do you have to have every single available Facebook widget on your profile?) There was a post on the Rivals free board from "Master Raptor" -- who has been accurate in the past -- indicating that Slocum had a dislocated shoulder, but that was disputed. I submit that Slocum knows if he is hurt or not, so he is.

Yeah, whoops. MVictors has a nice review of HTTV 2007 with a salient criticism:

- No where did the guide break down Michigan’s special team units. How is Zoltan going to win the Heisman if he doesn’t get some mention this publications such as this?

This is true and it is my bad; it was like a week before publishing that I realized I had totally ignored special teams. But he likes the rest of the book! So does my Grandma! Buy it!

Whoops

So I had already crossed a national border before it occurred to me that the explanatory post never got put up. So here it is: I was in Canada enjoying some R&R, cut off from the internets, and thus the posting has not occurred. I'm back in full effect tomorrow. Now if you'll excuse me, there's an internet to catch up on.