It's Very Important That You Not Suck Today

As we head into this weekend's very big series with Michigan State in hockey, a few things to get to first:

The SunBelt Conference released its absolutely hilarious article about the findings when they had the Alamo Bowl tape reviewed by "Independent reviewers". Check out some of this stuff...

Our officials are a little ahead of our game, but the play is catching up fast.

Quarter 1 – 9:23: Head linesman rules the runner is down. The ball
comes out just prior to the runner’s knee touches the ground. All three
reviewers agree that this was an incorrect ruling. The runner recovered
his own fumble so there was no impact on the game from this call. The TV
announcers criticized the Replay Official for not reviewing the play.
Replay guidelines do not allow the Replay Crew to review a fumble play once the
runner has been ruled down by the officials on the field. Since the runner
was ruled down, there can be no “over-turn.” Actions by the Replay
Official were correct.

This is still my least favorite rule in all of sports. The NFL--at least for one week--was encouraging their officials to let the play play out and then make a ruling on the field after. But after the one week when the announcers talked about it non-stop, I never heard from it again, which is disappointing. I don't get how a runner can't fumble when they're down by contact, and you never see the refs allow a review when the call on the field was that there wasn't a fumble, and then Henne's fumble on the 1 against ND gets reviewed and overturned. Something wasn't right there....

This is the best one:

Quarter 4 – 2:39: 4th down pass play near the goal line. A bang-bang
pass play that was ruled as an incomplete pass by the crew. The sideline
view looked like a good defensive play. The end zone view at slow-motion,
frame-by-frame speed showed the defender’s hand and arm on the receivers
back. Two reviewers did not have regular speed view of the play from the
end zone – only the slow motion replay. Both thought Defensive Pass
Interference should have been called. The Sun Belt Coordinator of
Officials had a “live” view of the play from the end zone (basically the same
view as the deep officials’) and felt the “no call” was appropriate because the
pass was behind the receiver and there was some question that the movement of
the receiver to reach back for the pass caused the “turning action” and not the
contact by the defender. This was one of those plays that could go either
way and would make half the people happy and the other half upset.

At least we're not trying to skew peoples' feelings on this one: "Bang-bang play" "It looked good from the sideline" "The two reviewers that ruled against us only had the slow-motion view" "It could've gone either way". I love the SunBelt.

And about the last play of the game:

After the muffed backward pass (#6), the Nebraska players and coaches in the
team area came onto the field thinking the game was over. Some players and
coaches from Michigan also came onto the field at this time. During the
last advance by the Michigan player (after backward pass #7) there were players
and coaches from both teams on the field. The officials ruled that the
actions by the players and coaches who came off the sideline were
Unsportsmanlike Conduct fouls, not illegal participation fouls.
Unsportsmanlike conduct fouls that occur during a live ball situation are “live
ball fouls, penalized as dead ball fouls,” and are enforced from the succeeding
spot. Since there was no time left in the game, there was no succeeding
spot, thus the game was over.

So we're ignoring the fact that 1) They never threw a flag to call an unsportsmanlike foul on anyone, 2) The Nebraska players took away half the field from Mike Hart, 3) What the hell is a live ball foul, penalized as a dead ball foul? Does that mean on the last play of the game, you can do whatever you want to your opponent because there won't be a succeeding spot? Does this seem weird to anyone else?

Spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin:

Quarter 3 – 9:02: Nebraska is awarded a touchdown on a low pass in the end
zone. Replay reviewed the play right away and “buzzed” the crew, but got
no response. Replay Official noticed an “Error” message on the pager base
and had to reset the pager system. After the reset, he was able to notify
the crew that the play was under review. Fortunately, in this case,
Michigan felt strongly that the ball was not caught and called time-out.
This gave the Replay Official enough time to reset the paging system. The
touchdown catch was correctly over-turned as an incomplete pass by the Replay
Official. In hindsight, the Replay Official should have notified the
Referee that he tried to shut the play down prior to the Michigan time-out and
that there was an equipment malfunction. If this had happened, the Referee
would have re-instated the Michigan time-out.

In hindsight, your officials are stupid. There's gotta be a better way...give the guy in the booth a flair or something.

Quarter 4 – 6:06: Quarterback’s arm is hit from the backside and the
Referee correctly rules a fumble, not an incomplete pass. Quarterback’s
forward motion of his arm is an “empty hand” movement, meaning the ball is loose
in his hand as a result of the defender’s hit, prior to his arm going
forward. Replay reviewed the play from several angles and confirmed the
Referee’s ruling on the field, thus, no stoppage of play was required. The
television broadcasters were very critical of the Replay Official for not
stopping the game and reviewing the play. Stopping the play was
un-necessary because the Replay Official had already confirmed the ruling on the
field.

Is there anyone that actually thinks this was a fumble, or at the very least that it was possible for the replay ref to "review the play from several angles and confirm the Ref's ruling on the field" before Lloyd burned another timeout. Didn't this play ultimately end up getting reviewed? So did the replay ref change his mind? Did he bend to Lloyd's pressure? Or was the play close enough it should have gotten reviewed all along? Just another case for coach's challenges in my eyes.

None of the three reviewers found any evidence that the game was too fast for
the crew. At no time did any official get beat to the spot on the field
that correct CCA mechanics dictated for that official. Every goal line
play and every end line play was correctly covered, and there were no
positioning errors by the crew.

I'm not sure that's what anyone was talking about.....

What a great read. I needed a laugh like that.

Despite the fact that I don't follow football recruiting that closely anymore since it doesn't really matter who we get, we lose 3-4 games a year anyway, it was still nice to see us pull in Steve Schilling, if for nothing more then I won't have to read a bunch of "Lloyd can't close!" posts. Mgoblog has more information than you could possibly need about him.

I'm not sure how I forgot to mention Petway's attempted murder via elbow in my post about the basketball game. Why is this such a big deal? Did he actually even elbow the guy? Whether he meant to or not, it was one of the big turning points in that game, and it was nice to see one of our guys sack up. Who is a bigger public enemy in East Lansing right now for something that really wasn't all that bad: Petway, or Jack Johnson?

Going to hockey now: This is a really big series for us. Sweep the Spartans--hell, even take 3 of 4 from the Spartans--and we're back in business. Miami's 11 point lead does look daunting, and there's probably no way to catch them, but we do have 3 games in hand. Win 'em and suddenly it's only a 5 point lead. And it's not like their schedule is a cakewalk (not to say ours is either). They've got a series at Ferris this weekend. Hard to imagine them taking 4 points there, so the door's open if we don't suck this weekend.

On USCHO's front page right now, they have a picture of Colton Fretter with the caption "Colton Fretter and The Spartans are NCAA tournament contenders". I must've missed the new rule that allows you to win the NCAAs getting shutout every game.

From Paula Weston's column:

Rick Comley is not a fan of Tuesday nights.
After Michigan State lost to Ferris State, 2-1, Tuesday night, the MSU head coach said, "Tuesday scheduling is very destructive for a team."

Well Rick, if you hadn't been a "Courtney Sims" about your schedule at the start of the year and not asked Michigan to move one of the games to a Tuesday night, your team would've had one extra day in there. Plus, amazing as it sounds, Ferris had to play Tuesday night too. And they were in a 6 games in 12 days stretch. But they aren't bitching. Go have a pity party with the Angry Midget.

LuvD1Hockey on USCHO posted a breakdown of all of Jack Johnson's penalties. I don't have the link to the original post, but this goes to Gomer's quoting of it: Jack has 106 PIMs this year with only 8 of them coming from tripping, hooking, and interference. I love Jack. Saying he would break Michigan's PIMs record and become the most hated player in college hockey was my best predicition of the year. The worst? "Why does everyone think Wisconsin is going to be so good this year??"

Get it done tonight Michigan. At least show some effort unlike 2 weeks ago. I want to get the "Just like basketball" chant going. Or going one step further "Just like football, basketball, and life". GO BLUE!