Yay Journalisms!!!!

Well, as the countdown reaches a fever pitch round these parts, the daily battle to stay occupied and to soak up any bit of news concerning your team or any team for that matter sometimes yields fantastic results... observe dear reader:

An anonymous author for the Hazelton, PA Standard Speaker gives you the kind of low-down nitty gritty football detail that you and I crave:

"I disagree on Penn State. The Nittany Lions will win nine or 10 games. I’ve been accurate on my Penn State predictions the past few seasons."

Naturally, you read on with great interest as you are certain that there will be a reality-altering explanation for this assertion... and you read on, and you scan further down the page, and.... well... really there is none. Zip. In fact it simply jumps on to another topic completely. What do you expect? The man has been accurate, and damnit that was certainly good enough for Sam By-God Walton, it will have to be good enough for us.

10-2 I say!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What makes this "article" fantastic is it is the kind of non-sequiteur rant that you can only get from a crotchety old fan of any team. What takes it to the next level is that this was published by a paper. News worthy? Certainly not. An entertaining read? Well it certainly had me chuckling away.

Which brings me to this... Stew Mandel's glorious response to a questioning of the validity of Michigan's occupation of the 24th spot in the first Coaches Poll... (second page just over half-way down).

"I hate to beat this to a pulp, because I've said it several times before, but Michigan's offense is going to stink this season, and nothing short of Charles Woodson's return and/or a 1997-caliber performance from the defense will render Michigan a top-25 team. Which leaves only one possibility: There must be a bylaw in the coaches' poll -- much like the one that requires them to vote the BCS title-game winner No. 1 -- mandating the Wolverines' inclusion."

If someone would like to point out the difference between the first quote further up on the page and this one, by all means educate away. No knee-jerk responses here, no need to get into a spitting contest, but I think it will be nice to have this quote to look back on as the season rolls along, you know just in case ol' Stew happens to be correct... or if all the moons around Jupiter align and we make a first-down this year we can ask Stew what happened with his crystal ball. I don't know how after 125+ years of never having to replace playmakers on the offense it finally caught up with us... God, I wish we had recruited some more players!

Have we really reached a point where it's time to lambaste a team that's ranked 24th as overrated?? Stew seems to think so:

"I wrote a few years back about the recurring phenomenon of Michigan's overinflated preseason rankings (quite prophetically, I might add; that was the year they started No. 4 and finished 7-5) -- but this is the most flagrant case yet. [...] All at a time when the new coach is trying to implement an offense for which he currently lacks the proper personnel?"

Ding, ding, ding!!! There it is! Lacking the proper personnel for his offense! Journalism sticker for you Stew! That brings the running total of references to this lazy and completely devoid-of-any-sort-of-research point to 2,743 thus far this offseason... and still two weeks left to go!

Now listen, if you happen to think that Michigan is not deserving of such a lofty ranking, by all means you are entitled to your opinion... but, uh, to say this is the "most flagrant case yet"... at 24th?

I honestly cannot think of another time when Michigan lost a bunch of play-makers and guys on the O-line and was able to so much as cross mid-field the following year or ever got so much as a contribution from guys who had to step up to replace former stars... (videos courtesy of WolverineHistorian)