Wolverine Liberation Army

“…but the Detroit netminder has the intangible edge of having won three previous Cups, including the most recent one.” ~ CBSSports (Surprisingly NOT Doyle or Dodd).

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“…but the Detroit netminder has the intangible edge of having won three previous Cups, including the most recent one.” ~ CBSSports (Surprisingly NOT Doyle or Dodd).

Popularity: 1%

[For Alabama fans, Indignation]

Even though this topic has wasted more energy than Al Gore on a bender, I’m once again alternatively surprised/frustrated/amazed/sadforourfuture that legions of people are incapable of understanding the central issue here.  This isn’t about how 70 + 25 > 85.  Or how Nick Saban “plans for attrition and that’s why he oversigned”.  I mean, I’m totally incapable of matching deprevity wits with someone that believes Nick Saban plans for players to commit assault or sling blow.  Maybe he does, in which case I’m sure the NCAA would like to have a word with USC him.  Hell, even the SIX medical scholarships given out are at least keeping the player in school.  All in all, it’s totally common to have 15% attrition right? Right?  Just admit it Alabama fans, you want to win and you don’t care how.  It’s fine, we’ll accept this.  We don’t agree, but we also don’t live in Alabama, so call it a draw.

Let’s look at this brief quote for 2 seconds and see if it’s worthy of any outrage, or at all comparable to Saban’s policies:

Rich Rodriguez said, “Stay tuned. There’s a couple guys I’m going to sit with here. Just guys that maybe if they’re not doing all their responsibilities and doing what they need to do to be part of our football program may not be back. I hope that’s not too many.”

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The Motor City Bowl is the pre-eminent bowl game on the calendar and all Big 10 teams strive for an invite to this presitigious game. (We’re going with that as long as Michigan is in the driver’s seat for the MCB.)

The WLA would like to learn as much as it can about potential MCB suitors from the BigTen, so we sent a questionaire to some fellow BigTen bloggers. First up is dedicated steel worker and blogger, Travis, from Hammer & Rails. Last month, gamblin’ extraordinare Jamie Mac ran down the odds for Purdue to get to the Motor City Bowl. He concludes:

Purdue,  3/1

Purdue is only a season removed from being Motor City Bowl Champions. The program knows what its doing as far as mapping out a successful season and ending in Detroit. Last year was a down year in Joe Tiller’s swan song. Now that he’s left town to hawk oatmeal and Our House season DVDS, perhaps new blood surges the program back into the mix. Purdue will need to step up against better competition as their woeful 4-24 mark against bowl teams can attest. Purdue will need to improve, although not too much, mind you, to make it back to Detroit.

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A few years ago, I was young. It’s true – I was in my twenties and years away from struggling to stay awake at 11 PM, getting hangovers due to preospterously small amounts of alcohol, and stressing about things like mortgages, investments, marriage, and god knows what else. My priorities were simple: having a good time. If it didn’t meet that criteria, I wasn’t interested.

When I was a student at Michigan, I wanted a night game to occur like nobody’s business. Every Saturday night I watched games beamed from Southern locales, bringing me images of unbelievably sloshed hot chicks adorned with facial stickers and Mardi Gras beads shrieking into camera. The booze-fueled crowds seemed cranked to eleven at all times, and friends who had been told stories of the high likliehood of anonymous sex with an attractive coed in the student section in Baton Rouge. Needless to say, I was all in. Night games! Bring ‘em on.

That is to say, I understand the desire for night games at Michigan. I understand the desire for a raucous crowd. I understand the desire to stand all game and scream at the top of your lungs. I was a student at Michigan. At no point did I not think that the games I went to see, were for me – for the students. I knew there were others there, but they weren’t as much a part of the school as I was at the time – they didn’t walk the campus, go to class with the players, and take part in the social life the way I did. I, like most students, it seemed, largely felt a sense of ownership. Whether what I wanted differed from thousands upon thousands of what alums and other adult fans whose financial footprint on the team was much larger (due to elevated ticket prices, personal seat licenses and other contributions, not to mention the sheer number of them) never registered. Fuck them – we wanted the noise of Camp Randall and the drunken debauchery of the SEC. And let’s be honest – the desire for night games is a desire for a longer pre-game drinking period, leading to crazier crowds.

Here’s the thing, though: Nobody stays young. All day booze-fests put you in bed by 3 PM, your wife and kids may not be down to be out until 1 AM for a football game, and the LSU co-ed with the lei and the Mardi-Gras beads looks like she’ll probably give you chlamydia. I can still stand all game, but I’m just 31. But, as someone who suffers from early-onset arthritis (mild, at this point) due to a number of sports injuries, I can understand why some people may not want to do so.

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