The Blue Board

The big difference always, and I mean always comes with the added year of experience, weight room, film break down and learning from mistakes. We tend to forget that 19 and 20 year old bodies change into 21 & 22 year old bodies. In the NFL it makes a slight difference in each year of experience. However, in high school and college the difference is so great it's almost immeasurable. If you have a dog shit player his sophomore year, he most liklely wil lbe a dog shit player his jr and sr year, but trust me on this, if you have players with a modecum of football acumen and a bit of desire and talent, the growth you see is immense. Michigan's players from 2010 to 2011 had a desire, a fairly decent iq and a ton of films to see where they were messing up. Growth comes from that.

So UM didn't finish in the top half of the league for a few years, were you predicting last year a middle of the pack record? That would be much better but it still wouldn't be good. What could you have pointed to to claim it would exceed that?

That's the Michigan difference!

We are on the same page, I agree, Rocky didn't.

The big difference I was talking about, you edited out of the quote. I was comparing your discussion of MSU's Oline to Michigan's defense and how the big difference in the 2 is Michigan had a coaching change, MSU doesn't.

Here's the funny thing. He'll count a guy with 2 or 3 starts as a returning starter for Michigan, and accuse people of blind homerism who don't recognize their experience. But, he just casually ignores that Treadwell and Burkland both will be back on the OL, and both started until they were hurt in the ND game. So, their return might make the running game better. In addition their loss last year obviously hurt the running game (which gained more yards against Michigan than any other team Michigan played anyway).

Exhibit A why you don't just go pull a stat and start spouting off.

This is the whole problem with this. MSU fans have been using this 'fab 5' thing for so long, and have distorted the facts for almost as long, that the younger fans take these myths as truth. If you take Weber out of the equation, what one or two other fab 5 guys got was spare change. The others implicated were not part of the fab 5. UM did not pay anything to anyone, which you imply you say the U of M payments, right? Do you honestly believe that Martin told Weber 'here's 200K, enjoy it, and you never have to pay it back if you just promise to go to Michigan'? Martin didn't care where CW went. He was a loan shark/money launderer who considered these kids as transactions. Many kids in and around Detroit had dealings with this crook, and guess what, a lot of them didn't go to UM. But all that said, it doesn't absolve the University from blame, Fischer should have, and did know, and he should have come forward. And trust me, it was a dark period for Michigan when it came out. Many would have been happy/relieved to just take the death penalty, and based on what happened, we basically did.

But the main point that I was making by posting the Perles smack was, WHO CARES?. It was 20 years ago, some things have changed, and some things haven't. I rarely see UM fans trashing msu for that garbage, and yet, the Fab 5 (minus 1) are all now long gone from the NBA, UM's BBall program was so clean they couldn't nor do I believe they even wanted to compete. When is it time to let that crap go?

I agree with Rocky that those guys are returning starters for MSU along the Oline. What they produced for the season as a whole is less than 4 ypc.

Have a good day Nigel.

But then again, they'll be returning, most likely bigger stronger faster quicker, hopefully smarter. We'll see.

Actually, after looking it up, Michigan State's ground game hasn't been very good since 2007. The numbers really surprised me. I expected their numbers to be much higher than this.

Yards per game average with national ranking
2008:130(78th)
2009:136(73rd)
2010:152(64th)
2011:137(78th)

There are two things I gathered from this:
1. Michigan State shouldn't expect a huge increase in their running game. Under Dantonio, they've been consistently getting about the same amount of production year in and year out.

2. Michigan State doesn't need a high powered ground game to win. They're going to play the field possession game and beat you with their defense.

What they produced when they played Michigan was 5.5 yards/carry.

You know...the Michigan Defense that was #1 in BigTen rushing defense (BigTen games).

You know...the Michigan Defense that gave up 115 yards/game in BigTen games, but gave up 213 to Michigan State.

You know...the Michigan DL coached by Hoke and Mattison.

I agree. It’s been over 20 years now, and it’s one of the first things that are brought in every discussion by trolls and non-trolls alike. I’m sure some of us bring up MSU’s transgressions, but that’s only really the trolls who want you to feed into that stuff IMO.

Fab 5 was one of the biggest scandals in the history of NCAA of sports. Bigger transgression, bigger story therefore it gets brought up more.

Even ESPN brought it up again in their documentary the other year. Can't really fault people for discussing it.