Book Review: Three and Out by John U Bacon

I read the book in four days. If you know me, you know that is unbelievable!

My main thoughts after reading this book is that I feel sorry for Rich Rod. I actually found myself wishing he was still the coach. Ok, maybe not. But I do feel sorry for the guy.

The deck was stacked against him from day one:

-ridiculous job search which probably left fans and supporters thinking he was the 5th best choice

-He was not coached up about M in the first few months about how to win over support

-Perception he didn't understand M tradition

-Lloyd Carr offered to sign any transfer papers for existing players

-Lloyd left the cabinet bare

-Rich Rod's defensive coordinator did not come with him

-The Free Press was out to get him (rosenberg)

-no QB in year one

-the AD who hired him retired after his third year

Problems arising from RR's own fault:

-the defense got worse each year (how can this be????????????)

-he failed to convince supporters he is a Michigan Man and did embrace the tradition

-despite offensive improvement, he could not win in the B1G

-worst special teams EVA

I would like to believe if he had a shot at year four Michigan would be just as good as 7-1 under Hoke. HOWEVA, you look at the defense and you wonder if we would ever see improvement. And the special teams also. Hoke has turned the defense into above average! The offense is not racking up as many yards but is scoring effectively in the red zone rather than turnovers on downs and missed field goals.

At 7-1, Michigan has IOWA, ILLINOIS, NEBRASKA, and OHIO. I like to think we will win at least two or maybe even four of the remaining games and have a shot at the B1G title game. We shall see.

Bedtime Routine FML

Our kids are good sleepers; I shouldn't even be complaining. They sleep through the night and they sleep in their own bed. But the bedtime routine is something I do not look forward to.

Our 4 year old was in a crib until he was about 2 1/2. Everything was great - we lay him down, he falls asleep. However, when we put him in a toddler bed, everything went to hell. He would come out of his room 50 times before settling in. Literally one of us would sit at the top of the stairs to keep putting him back in his room time after time.

Things have gotten better since then. He still comes out of his room to tell us he has to go to the bathroom, he needs a drink, or because he has to "tell us something." But most nights that is just once or twice.

The purpose of this post is all the little stuff. When we tell him it is time to go up, he says he wants the other one of us to do it. So if I am the one who says "ok, its time to go up for bed" he will be like "no, I want mommy to do it." and it pisses us off because neither one of us wants to take him up so if it is my turn, she will say lets go up and then usually he will want me to do it.

Next he walks up the stairs SO SLOW. I'm like, let's GOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Then we need to brush teeth, and he has to be the one to put the toothpaste on the brush. Then he needs a drink of water, but if he drinks too much he will wet through his diaper. So it is always a fight about how much water gets to drink. Then he wants some kid mouthwash and he has to be the one to measure out the proper amount. Again, he just takes a long time to do these things and they must be done on his terms.

Now it is time to lay on the floor and put on his two diapers ( a normal one and a pull-up - he still soaks through both of these on a regular basis). The struggle here is WHERE on the floor he will lay down. He picks a new spot every night and sometimes decides to switch spots in the middle of changing, which really pisses me off because I have to crawl around the floor following him. Sometimes during this process he gets noisy and I get afraid he will wake up his little brother, which is a separate issue.

Finally, he is in bed (he has a regular bed now) and I lay in the bed with him to read a story. I let him choose the story and then he is likely to change his mind once I start....Without fail, before the first paragraph is over, I am yawning.

Now the story is over and we are downstairs and he is coming out of his room within one minute saying he has to go potty. This process takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. So if we take him up at 8:30 it is 9pm by the time he is in his room for good. After an exhausting day, we are usually going up by 9;30-10 which doesn't exactly leave much personal time in my typical day....

The Definition of Clockwatchers

Tonight we were watching Snow White as we were starting out bedtime routine. My favorite part is the heigh-ho song, so that is where I always start it out. Truth be told, I like the song.

Grandma bought the movie for the 4 year old's birthday, so we've had it a couple weeks and the kids love it. We've probably watched it 5 times. So tonight I noticed that the heigh-ho song starts at exactly 5pm, quitting time at the ol' dwarf mine.

See:

Safe to say these dwarfs are clockwatchin fools.

I just thought of another good example. Schmidt's last day of work.

I love how it is his last day of work EVA and he is just sitting at his desk staring at the clock. If it were my last day of work before retirement I would probably be out of there before 5!

Ford Field Loud

For Father's Day this year, I took my dad to the Atlanta Falcons @ Detroit Lions game yesterday at Ford Field. The last few years we went to Tigers games but I decided to switch it up a little this year because I thought the Lions might have a chance to be good this year. After a great 5-0 start, I was right; they are looking pretty good.

Yesterday we left early to go tailgate, but barely made it into the game on time due to extremely long lines. The Lions started with the ball and promptly went three and out. While the Lions were on offense, the stadium was pretty quiet. But as soon as the Falcons got the ball, Ford Field fans went to work. I COULD NOT BELIEVE HOW LOUD THE STADIUM WAS! And it was like that the entire game. Every defensive possession for the Lions the crowd was deafening.

I say this as a sports fan who has attended a myriad of events: games at Michigan Stadium, Spartan Stadium, The Palace, Ohio Stadium, Breslin Center, Comerica Park, Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, etc, etc. I've witnesses playoff games, the equivalent of B1G Championship games, NCAA National Championship games, etc. NEVER have I heard a crowd as loud as the Ford Field crowd yesterday, and it was a regular season game to boot.

Why was it so loud? It was clear to me the dome made all the difference. It resonates.

Michigan State Logic

Last night I call a call from Sparty complaining about the Gholston suspension for tomorrow's game hosting Wisconsin. He was called for two personal fouls against umich last week; one for a late hit/helmet twisting of Denard Robinson well after the play on the bottom of the pile, and one for punching Taylor Lewan at the end of another play.

See? See.

As you can see, these were two blatent penalties and clearly unnecessary roughness.

The B1G suspended Gholston due to the Lewan punch.

In fact, for comparison purposes, the B1G suspended Jonas Mouton of Michigan in 2009 for a similar play.

Show? Show.

Sparty is complaining about the suspension saying, the Wisc game is the biggest game of the season, how can you suspend one of our best players for our biggest game? So if State was playing Minnesota next it would be OK to suspend him but not if they are playing Wisc? My point is that it doesn't matter what the next game is, you can't go around doing this type of thing and not expect some fallout.

Deficit Discussion

For the past couple of years everyone has been paying attention to the US deficit/debt problems. After reading an article on CNBC today about the issue, where a senator was quoted as saying that obviously we cutting spending wasn't going to fix the problem by itself and we need to cut spending and raise taxes jointly for the fix, I started wondering how the government revenues look today vs 2000 when we had a massive $200 Billion budget surplus.

So I did a google search and came across this website: usgovernmentspending.com. According to this site, which seems legit, in 2000 we had tax revenue of 3.7 Trillion. In 2010, we had tax revenue of 4.2 Trillion. Hmmm. That looks like a 15% increase in revenue, on top of 200 Billion surplus. In a 2-3% inflation environment, I can see how you might have swung to a deficit during this period, but overall, revenue doesn't seem to be the problem. Let's take a look at government spending over the same time period:

2000 Total Government spending; 3.2 Trillion (my memory tells me we had a 200 billion surplus back then, but according to this site it was even larger)

2010 Total Government spending: 5.8 Trillion

The growth in spending is 80%. What the ef?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am left wondering how this could happen. Is it more people on Social Security, the IRAQ/AFGAN wars, Medicare part D? Let's take a look at the spending in 2007 before the financial crisis and before Obama's stimulus plan:

2007 Total Gov't Spending: 4.9 Trillion. So it looks like a lot of the spending was baked in prior to the crisis.

Based on this research it is clear to me that government revenue is not the problem, the spending is the problem. Revenue has been growing slowly over the past ten years, while the rate of change of spending has been out of control. So why are our elected officials on record saying the solution must include higher tax revenues? It seems to me if we can just roll back some of the spending increases over the past several years we would be in much better shape. Instead, the President and Congress can't seem to cut anything. I vote for a mandatory balanced budget amendment.

Blog Update/Apple Air Product Review

For my zero readers out there, you may have noticed I have not posted in about a year prior to this past week. There are several factors for my disapearance (lack of time (busy at work, kids, etc), lack of motivation), but the biggest factor is because of the computer situation.

In March of 2010 my laptop contracted a virus and I was unable to access the internet (I strongly recommend keeping your antivirus software up to date)! So I bought an Asus Eee netbook. The netbook was attractive because it was cheap (just $300) and small. I continued posting with the netbook, but then the hard drive crashed (by no fault of my own). I sent the computer back and they replaced the hard drive for free because it was within the warranty period. Then in March of 2011, we went on a family vacation to Disney and I carried on the netbook along with my iPad on the plane. When I was unpacking at the hotel, the netbook screen was shattered. I could not believe it! The iPad screen was perfect but the netbook was destroyed!?!?!?!? (testament to the quality of iPad hardware vs netbook hardware)

So within one year one laptop was killed with virus and I replaced it with a netbook which broke twice. WTF?!?! I was upset and not ready to spend new money on yet another laptop, and not going to invest in having the old laptop formatted and reloaded because the hardware was old. So I decided to see if the iPad could go it alone. I started using the iPad exclusively using LOGMEIN software so I could access my desktop at work and still have windows, which is required for my job. It worked pretty good, but it obviously is not good for typing long entries, etc, and the blog suffered.

Last week I decided to bite the bullet and get a new laptop. But I decided to change it up and get an Apple Air book. It was a tough decision because the Apple is $1,000 vs a netbook of $300 or a regular laptop for $6-700 or so. Another key point was that I still need windows for work. I figured I still have LOGMEIN, which works well. I can also load windows on the apple. While I have not done that yet, I still may.

As far as price goes, I am hoping the higher quality of hardware will allow the air to last several more years than a netbook would. You can just tell it is put together ten times better than the Asus netbook.

The mac software took a little getting used to, but I feel pretty comfortable with it already. I was worried because I haven't used a mac since college!

In conclusion, I am happy with the purchase. HOWEVA, if this air book crashes or breaks it will cause me to bleed baby blood from my eyes (I plan on taking care of this baby(!

Fox Robots Have Taken a Back Seat This Year

You know how I feel about those Fox Robots.

For the 2011 NFL season I was hoping like hell they would retire the damn things. They would stand there on the side of the screen doing jumping jacks and stupid things like that. After reading my blog, the Fox execs appear to be phasing the robots out of their broadcast. They are still involved slightly, but no longer on the screen for what seems like minutes at a time after each commercial break.

Fun with Three Billy Goats Gruff

The other night I was reading my four year old a bed time story - Three Billy Goats Gruff. It's one of his favorites - we probably read it once a week. Sometimes I am Big Billy Goat Gruff, Hunter is Middle Billy Goat Gruff, and Jacks is Little Billy Goat Gruff. To date, I have no idea why the goats are called "Gruff."

The purpose here is to point out a huge plot flaw in the story. It's not as glaring as the Little Red Riding Hood issue, but significant nonetheless. The point of the story is that the three goats need to get across the bridge to get to the rich grass to graze. But under the bridge is a Troll who eats people who cross the bridge.

The goats are afraid to cross the bridge because of the troll. So Big Billy Goat Gruff comes up with a plan. Little billy goat gruff stars across the bridge and when the troll comes up to eat him he says, "oh you don't want to eat me, I am little. Next my big brother middle billy goat gruff is coming and he will be a better meal for you." So the troll lets LBGG cross safely.

Next Middle BGG crosses and uses the same tactics as LBGG. So the troll agrees to allow MBGG cross in order to wait for BBGG.

So here comes BBGG. The troll comes up to stop him and BBGG easily uses his horns to throw the troll into the river, who is never to be seen again. The End.

So let me get this straight (keep in mind BBGG can easily throw the troll into the river): The three goats are afraid to cross the bridge because of the troll. So BBGG's idea is to allow the weakest goats to cross first armed only with the argument that a fatter goat is on his way. What if the troll was starving? What if the troll didn't buy this pitch? LBGG would surely be fucked.

At this point, I am not sure if MBGG would be eaten or if he is strong enough to kill the troll. But obviously their best chance was to send BBGG to fight the troll in the first place. Why risk the lives of LBGG and MBGG in the first place? What is going through the mind of BBGG? He needs to step up and go across the bridge first and protect his younger brothers. While he is the hero of the story, in my eyes he is weak and stupid.

And why are we reading our children bedtime stories featuring a big bad wolf and a deadly troll? WTF?

Hokamania Update

Michigan is 6-0, following up last year's 5-0 start and 2009's 4-0 start. Those years finished 7-5 and 5-7 respectively. The prior two year's starts both included wins vs ND and beating IU to open B1G play. But this year, we have opened up B1G play 2-0. We are ranked 10th nationally. Can it stick?

I have no clue.

This is MSU week, and with the Spartans winning three straight, they are favored by 3 in Vegas to win their fourth straight in the series. Of course, this is unthinkable to me, but the risk is very, very real.

I think we have a good chance to win. Our defense is much improved and the offense has started to find its identity with the coaching change. State, on the other hand, has regressed from last year. With they are 4-1, they have looked weak at times, particularly at ND. Their defense has been a positive, but the offense was supposed to be strong and has been surprisingly inconsistent lead by QB Cousins- as a 3rd year starting senior, I would have expected more. But the season is not over and he can still salvage a trip to Indianapolis.

I truly believe we would have still had a decent season under RR, but you can't ignore the regression in defense and special teams under his command. Clearly he is an offensive minded coach, but there is no excuse for your defense to get worse and worse every year. This is Michigan for Godssake! I figured the defense would be better simply because of more experience, but RR had not proven this would be the case.

Under Hoke, the offense started out shaky. They seemed to have lost their identity playing half i-form and pro-style and half spread n shred. But after six games they seem to have ironed out those wrinkles playing more towards Dilithium's strengths. The rushing attach is one of the best in the country lead by Denard and I think if they can keep the passing attack simple for him he can improve as he did against N'western last week.

The defense has been the true surprise. We were just about dead last in passing defense last year, and I think we gave up an average of 40 points per game to close out the season. As mentioned, I expected some improvement because of experience (we returned just about everybody and gained Wolfolk back from injury) but that does not account for poor scheming and game plan by RR and GERG. Mattison and Hoke have gone back to basics (tackling, etc) and the turnovers have been in our favor, and with the adjustments made during the game (it seemed like even under LLLLLoyd we were out coached in the adjustment category), we are a MUCH improved defensive team. We no longer are required to score a TD on every offensive possession to stay in a game.

Remaining schedule:

@MSU - winnable, but will be tough

Purdue, home - easy win

@Iowa - should be a win

@Illinois - winnable, but will be tough

Nebraska, Home - winnable, but will be tough

Ohio, Home - win (no choice, must take advantage)

Summary of remaining schedule: 6-0 as of today, with all 6 remaining games winnable. Is this likely? No, but I have hoke. Vegas has us favored in all save MSU. Can we split? YES, which would put us at 9-3. I believe we can easily win 4 and get to 10-2 and possible put us vs WISC in indy.

At this point, I believe Hoke has returned Michigan to (potential) glory. As Ohio crumbles, Michigan rises. This is MICHIGAN.

Fun with Little Red Riding Hood

Tonight I was reading my four year old Little Red Riding Hood as a bedtime story. Let me just say this story has many flaws in the plot, and I intend to point out just one - see below.

As you may recall, LRRH is walking to Grandma's house with a basket of goodies for Grandma because she is sick. As she is walking through the forest to Grandma's house, she is approached by the wolf. There appears to be nobody nearby. As clearly stated in the story, the wolf would like nothing more than to eat LRRH. And it is also made clear that this is quite a wiley wolf. There is nobody around, and the wolf wants to eat LRRH. Clearly he could take advantage of the situation and eat her right on the spot - so what does the wolf do?

He comes up with an elaborate plan to sneak off to Grandma's house and wait for LRRH there. The wolf takes the risk of complicating the situation by changing the setting and involving more people.

As you know, this ends terribly for the wolf. He sneaks off to Grandma's house, enters the house and Grandma faints in fear, he then puts on Grandma's nightgown and hat and gets in bed (can you imagine the wiley wolf taking off Grandma's nightgown and putting it on himself)?

LRRH comes in the house, realizes with the big ears, big eyes, and big teeth it is not Grandma (she doesn't realize it is not her until she is standing next to the bed), and escapes the house unharmed. As the wolf is chasing LRRH out of the house, the wolf is shot dead by a hunter who was tracking the wolf all day.

The wolf made a fatal mistake by playing games. Obviously the right move would be to eat the little girl on the spot. Instead he decided to make things hard on himself and it ended up costing him everything....

Moral of the story - always take a trick you can win?