M-Uconn Prediction

M 24
UConn 28

My Favorite Michigan Player This Year

My favorite Michigan players this year (based on things that have nothing to do with football) are:

#28 Matthew Cavanaugh S
#5 Vladimir Emilien S
#5 Tate Forcier QB

Game-by-Game Predictions

UConn L
at Notre Dame L
Mass W
Bowling Green W
at Indiana L
Michigan State W
Iowa W
at Penn State L
Illinois W
at Purdue W
Wisconsin L
at Ohio State L

I know there are lot of (what appear to be) upsets. This is just what my gut, and my guessing brain, feels/thinks will happen

CFRC

With 36 rankings, M has dropped to #69. Right below Minnesota. Oof.

Conference Champion Predictions - mostly wild guesses

ACC - Georgia Tech (over Clemson)
Big East - Cincinnati
Big Ten - Wisconsin
Big Twelve - Oklahoma (over Missouri)
C-USA - Houston (over UCF)
Mid American - CMU (over Ohio)
Mountain West - TCU
Pacific 10 - Stanford
SEC - Florida (over Auburn)
Sun Belt - Troy
WAC - Boise St

BCS MNC - Florida (over Boise St)

The All-time cup ends up with Oregon St (via Alabama - Arkansas - Tex A&M - Mizzou - Oklahoma - OK State - Oregon St in the Holiday Bowl)

Countdown to kickoff - day 4

October 15, 2005

Michigan 27 - Penn State 25

Undefeated Penn State came in to Michigan Stadium to take on the 3-3 Wolverines. Michigan had just found a way to lose to Minnesota, while to Gophers were playing for overtime. The Nittany Lions were ready to end 8 years of frustration against Michigan.

My cousin Mary Ann and her husband Kent had come to the game. Kent was on crutches from what we would later find out was a broken hip. But he hobbled the 9 blocks to the game.

The defenses were the story early. Michigan broke through for 10 2nd quarter points to lead at the half. PSU finally added a field goal just before the end of the 3rd to cut the lead to 10-3. The 4th quarter was very unlike the rest of the game.

Early in the 4th Penn State tied it up on a 3rd down Michael Robinson QB draw (I remember screaming to watch for just that!). On the next snap - Michigan gave up the lead. Chad Henne scrambled for good yardage and as he was being wrapped up - the ball ended up in Alan Zemaitis's hands - he ran it in 35 yards for the score. Henne sure seemed down to me, but the call stood. The PAT only made it worse. The Lions kicker, Kevin Kelly ended up with the ball and ran it in for 2 points. In 20 seconds M went from up 7 to down 8. The fans around us were booing lustily. Although I had been negative - especially with the obvious QB draw TD - I chose to reverse cheer. Whatever the idiots in front of us complained about - I cheered for. Michigan had played pretty well, and although this would become "the year of infinite pain" it wasn't going to be today.

Henne lead a beautiful drive back down the field culminating in a perfectly thrown ball to Mario Manningham for the TD. Mike Hart ran in the 2-point conversion to re-tie the game at 18 with 9:32 left.

Michigan's defense held and the offense produced a long Garrett Rivas field goal putting M back on top 21-18 with under 4 minutes left. Marcus Ray picked off a Robinson pass, but M couldn't do anything with it and Penn State was left with 2:46 on the clock and 81 yards to go.

This time the defense just couldn't stop Penn State and Robinson. His totally unsurprising QB draw put PSU back in front with under a minute left. Things looked bleak. Here's a tip to JoPa - don't kick it to Steve Breaston...

Michigan drove down to the 10. They faced a 4th and 4 with only one of Lloyd Carr's two seconds remaining. Henne found Manningham wide open and insanity reigned!


Mary Ann and Kent enjoyed the outcome very much as well. Someone was nice enough to switch seats so that Kent had a spot right behind a tunnel to be able to spread out a little. Although, IIRC this is the game where Mary Ann had to call someone a "fat ass" to keep enough room on the benches for both she and Kent. When they finally made it back to our place in the darkness, we got to enjoy another great Michigan win (and Penn State's only loss)!

M Blogs

I decided to put all of the M blogs to my feedreader because the way I had them set up before (on a Google Home page) I only read the ones on the top of the page, and missed entire blogs. This way, I will miss many many posts, but I will get much better idea of which blogs I like and are worth reading. There are about 30-35 blogs, plus some comments have rss feeds also.

A few days after I put all of them on, I went out of town for 4 days with no internet access. So when I returned there were 193 M football blogs (that doesn't count MGoBlog which will stay with my regular feeds so I never miss it). I doubt if any of those posts will be read, as there were about 110 of my regular feeds that I have to weed through.

Of the M football feeds I have read, though, there are a couple of trends that aren't surprising, but are definitely annoying.

1) Unreasonable optism: I think the most popular record predicted for M in these blogs (by the authors and the commenters) is 8-4, with many more saying 9-3 than anything below 8-4.
2) Not unlike the commenters on MGoBlog, there are opinions that are considered gospel, and if disputes that opinion all other posters (and the author sometimes) gets all over them. An example is that Toussaint was picked as the started running back or the #2 by an entire panel (5 or 6 people) on one blog. I hadn't seen him any higher than #3 on anyone else's list or MGoBLue.com or pretty much anywhere. Either they know something I don't, or they are stupid sheep.

Overall, I'm sure I will miss about 70-80% of all posts once the season is going and I am here on weekends (other than on gamedays). But that will still be better than missing entire blogs for the entire season.