Wings Look Sharp Out of the Gate

Discussion has been taking place deep within the caverns of television obscurity (thanks for nothing ESPN!!!) about the NHL's most exciting line thus far into the season. Obviously my bias is towards Zetterberg, Datsyuk, and Holmstrom and for good reason other than my love for my Wings. Ottawa's Heatley, Spezza, and Alfredsson is phenomenal, yes, as well as Tampa Bay's Lecavalier, Prospal, and St. Louis; all of which are unbelievably talented production lines. However, sticking to the numbers, there is no line like the #1 line in Detroit. Holmstrom, Datsyuk, and Zetterberg have combined for a total of 50 points (20 goals, 30 assists) through 13 games! Match that to the 39 points put up by Heatley, Spezza, and Alfredsson and 35 points for Lecavalier, Prospal, and St. Louis. Not to mention the fact that most of time the Wings star line is on the ice, Nick Lidstrom is back on the blue line. This star power has yielded the most points in the NHL thus far, and given the Wings the best record in the NHL. The talent on the Red Wings is, again, unbelievable this season. Production from the 2nd and 3rd lines is also prominent thus far and this season is looking good out of the gun barrel. Baseball is long gone, and as college football is winding down, start paying closer attention to some special talent in Hockeytown.

It's State Week

This kind of stuff makes me happy and given the time of year it has been deemed necessary. The games in East Lansing as of recent have been close and I anticipate this year to be no different no matter how inferior State's team is. It was an overtime finish in 2005, a touchdown difference in 2003, and complete and utter horseshit in 2001. Watch video and smile. Or frown if you're a spartan.

Stage 1: Denial

Disclaimer: I do not plan on turning this blog into a place to bash the likes of OSU/Notre Dame-esque teams but something has been churning in my mind for a bit of time now and the likes of ESPN et al have swept it under the ever-so-annoying "The media shouldn't rip on Notre Dame because they're popular just like Nascar is popular and the NHL isn't' and we need to encourage and praise what is popular like Notre Dame" rug. That being said, I do not hate Tyrone Willingham, and I feel like blaming an inexcusable season on a coach that has not coached your team for 3 years is just simply ludacris.




Notre Dame faithful have put the blame on this abysmal 1-7 start on a number of scapegoats. Some of these include Tyrone Willingham's lackluster recruiting classes during his last two years in the holy appointment. Another scapegoat is the rebuilding nature of this year's team following the loss of talent to the NFL (or to day jobs in the case of Darius Walker). The most unbelievable part of this is that the two Willingham classes of 2004 and 2005 were justifiably terrible compared to Notre Dame's top ten recruiting classes of 2006 and 2007, but were actually quite GOOD(!?!) when compared to the rest of the teams across the country. These classes of 2004 and 2005 were especially not bad enough to excuse having one of the worst, if not the worst, offense in the nation and a defense to follow suit. Here's what I mean:


Methods:
I have assigned values to each players incoming rivals.com start rating (1 pt per start out of 5) as well as averaging the year of each of the 22 starting players on offense and defense. (1 pt for freshmen, 2 for soph, 3 for junior, 4 for senior and 5th years). Simple stuff. Compare them to a team that is actually on the winning side of things this year, possibly a team that Notre Dame has faced. YAY! Boston College! BC is 8-0, and defeated Notre Dame 27-14 this season. And we'll throw South Florida and West Virginia in there just for fun.


Year ---Notre Dame Ranking (Rivals)---BC----South Florida----West Virginia

2003 ---------12th ---------------------------24th -- -----NA-------------46th
2004 ---------32nd---------------------------24th--------43rd------------47th
2005 ---------40th---------------------------49th--------50th------------31st
2006----------8th----------------------------59th--------59th------------52nd
2007----------8th----------------------------58th--------58th------------23rd


School----------Average Rivals Ranking-------Age
Notre Dame
Offense -------------3.5 stars-----------------------2.8 (almost junior average)
Defense -------------3.4 stars-----------------------3.4 ( juniors and older)


Boston College
Offense -------------3 stars-------------------------3.1 (juniors)
Defense -------------2.8 stars-----------------------3.3 (juniors and older)

Now, comparing recruiting classes based on Rivals.com ratings is dangerous. It is not always true that the best recruiting class yields the best team 4 years down the road or else USC would never lose. (especially to Stanford, UCLA, and Oregon State) But what these ratings does is give a pretty good idea of the level of athleticism of the players at that particular point going into their freshmen year of college and can also give general insight into the talent levels available on particular teams.

This might appear to be nitpicking and the differences appear small but the difference between a 1-7 team and a 8-0 team are HUGE. Adding to it is the fact that the strength according to these ratings on offense for ND is their offensive line which has been near comical this season. Comparing the classes during the two dark years of recruiting for Notre Dame to ANY of the 80 or 90 teams that had worse recruiting classes in 2004 and 2005, 1-7 is still unbelievable. Stop blaming Willingham, stop Stop STOP! The athleticism is there. We are also completely disregarding the stockpile of unbelievable talent available from the most recent top ten recruiting classes over the last two years. If fingers need to be pointed at such a low time in Notre Dame football history, point them at the here and the now. Believe it or not, Charlie and his staff may not be immortal. Charlie's offense may just simply be too complex, but it is still CHARLIE'S offense. Tyrone's classes were not great, but they were not Duke, Temple, and Florida Atlantic bad either.

Great coaches can take mediocre players and create a good teams. Taking good players and going 1-7 is beyond me. 30,000,000 dollars later...

See rankings for yourself at http://http//rivals100.rivals.com/teamrank.asp?SID=880

Quote of the Indefinite Time Period

"I call that communist football. I'm so tired of it. Good, red-blooded Americans snap the ball, hand it to the guy and have a normal run game or pass game."

Linebackers coach Steve Szabo on spread offenses

I do not care if this was the daily quote in the Michigan Daily. I hate the spread. I love it that Coach Szabo said this at the press conference. Steve Szabo is my new man crush.

Week 9 Michigan vs. Minnesota

Minnesota is just plain bad as expected. However, what would a day watching Michigan football be like without the weekly, "Oh My God is this really happening???" Mallett came back from handing Minnesota a 10-0 lead and did a half-way decent job on the way to 34 unanswered points.

Things I learned:
- A full blown rotation of running backs next year including Brown, Minor and Grady could be potentially magical. However, I would not be that upset if the zone blocking schemes were just plain gone next season. I'm becoming a little more agitated every week with the limited play call options given the current schemes. In addition, next year will be difficult to simply "outexecute" everybody that knows zone left is coming when Brown/Minor/Grady do not have Jake Long and Adam Kraus to run behind. But what do I know, I never played the game...I look forward to somebody telling me I'm wrong.

-Mallett is improving. This is gooooooooood news following my disgruntled attitude following his performance last week at Illinois.

-Minnesota is bad and I have homework to do.

Future Onslaught of Nonconference Sludge v.1.0

There is nothing better than the big games that happened that didn't have to during the first 4 weeks of the college football season. Nonconference schedules have taken a hit since the implementation of the BCS, with major conference teams scheduling auto-wins in order to protect their BCS title hopes. Scheduling cupcakes, however deteriorating it is for college football, is completely understandable with the magnitude of the sport in this country and the ramifications of a single loss in a championship run. Hats off to the schools who still go for the glory...unlike Penn State, who's future nonconference over the next couple years stands out as the most disgraceful.

2008
1. Ohio State @ USC
- Yessir, that's Southern California and not the South Carolina and the old ball coach. Early season match ups with Texas and now USC might be the only thing I enjoy coming out of that god-awful state.
2. Auburn @ West Virgina
- Mighty SEC defense vs. Pat White/Steve Slaton/Noel Devine...if Pat and/or Steve are still around, this game is definitely something to write home about.
3. Arkansas @ Texas
- No McFadden but this game still may have huge implications for the assumed inflated Texas preseason ranking.
4. West Virgina @ Colorado
- West Virginia gets the "Big Brass Balls and Didn't Know It Yet Award" for scheduling Auburn and Colorado even though at the time that this schedule was being concocted, Colorado was probably losing to Montana State. Now this may be a tougher test than expected for a potentially high-ranked W. Virginia team.
5. Oklahoma @ Washington
- Jake Locker should be exponentially better next year given his current true freshmen status as the quarterback for Washington. Also, remember the last time Oklahoma traveled to the Pac-10? YEAH! Oklahoma got screwed like an prom date by a hungover Pac-10 officiating crew.

6. Michigan State @ Cal
- Potentially a blowout but Big Ten-Pac10 match ups during the beginning of the year have often yielded intriguing results. More importantly, MSU needs to play good teams at the beginning of the year before the annual mid-season slide to worthlessness.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Tennessee @ UCLA, Georgia @ Arizona State, Virginia Tech @ Nebraska, Hawaii @ Florida (one year too late dammit)

Week 8 - Michigan/Illinois

Michigan 27 Illinois 17

Michigan pulls out the road win in Champaigne this weekend, 27-17, after fighting back from an early 14-3 deficit. The early deficit can be attributed to the flat start by the special teams and defense in the first quarter. Henne and Manningham both left the game with injuries returned shortly thereafter while Carlos Brown filled in for an injured Mike Hart. Henne's return for next week against Minnesota is unknown at this point.

Weekend observations:

Illinois, outside the confines of the greater Chicago area, is astronomically bland. Why the founders of an institution of higher learning decided to put a university in the beautiful city of Champaigne beats the heck out of me. There must be a river. Who cares? It sucks.

Despite the existence of a bitter rivalry between Illinois and Michigan, of which only Illinois fans know about (shhh it's a secret), the fans in Champaigne did not quite live up to their reputation of being completely less than welcoming to visiting wolverine fans. Appalachian State apparently beat us at some point this season based on the comments recieved from EVERYbody wearing one of the misprinted "Fuck Michigan" shirts. However, nothing tops the donkeyface dropping appalachian state jokes with 0 minutes remaining in the 4th quarter. (HAHA ohhh the nerve!) The general football IQ among fans was quite low, possibly the worst ever. Holding calls were missed frequently according to the band parent sitting in the 18473920th row of the upper deck. He seemed pretty legit but i forgot my TELESCOPE so I wouldn't trust my own judgement.

Things I learned:

1. Carlos Brown is not Mike Hart, but did a decent job stepping in during a big primetime night game and running against 11 opposing players who knew exactly when and where he would running at all times, often leaving his only option as running into the back of Jake Long catching a piggy-back ride for a moderate gain.

2. Ryan Mallett is not Chad Henne. Apparently the Michigan playbook takes 349 pages to explain the zone run. What is concerning is that in week 8, after enrollilng early for spring practice, Ryan Mallett still looks young and scared, even with the gross magnitude of dumbing down of the offensive playbook. Start reading dude!!!!!!!! "Touch" is also apparently spelled "stare down recievers and throw it as hard as I can". If Carlos Brown hadn't started to live up to a smidgen of his potential, next season could appear to have some rain clouds on the horizon. (Acknowledging the fact that Manningham may be gone too)

3. Donovan Warren is my new man crush. After the first Illinois touchdown...could've been his fault, maybe someone else's blown coverage...he redeemed himself entirely with solid play throughout and a sexy interception just to twist the blade that was already lodged deep within the loins of the Illinois passing offense.

Next week: Minnesota

Minnesota has been recruiting for the run dominated offense since the invention of the wheel, and new wonderboy Tim Brewster brings in the ever-so-exciting spread offense to the Gophers in his first year as head coach. What does that equal? Losses to Florida Atlantic and North Dakota State. No game breakdown is necessary for next week. Minnesota is just plain terrible and Michigan should have an easier time with them than Eastern Michigan a couple weeks ago. Hopefully, another spread offense doesn't lead to....nevermind, I don't wanna talk about it.