Thursday Quick Hits: Not All Students Will Wear Maize on Saturday

By Sean · Thursday, September 25, 2008 · 3:32 AM |  Share | 1 Comment 

• As you probably already know, Saturday’s game against Wisconsin is a Maize Out. What you probably didn’t know is that there are plans to have a group of people in the student section wear navy shirts (they will be handed out at the game) in hopes that a block “M” will be formed. The idea came from Penn State’s “S-Zone,” which is a lone blue section that outlines an “S” in the sea of white shirts.

  Although I do like the idea, this has the makings of being an epic failure. I say that mainly because the students simply don’t stay in one spot throughout the course of an entire game. People move around to sit with their friends or simply because it gets too crowded in certain sections. If the people in the block “M” part of the student section stay there the entire game, then this will be a success. But I just don’t expect that to happen.

  My prediction is that the block “M” will exist prior to kickoff, but by the end of the game the navy will look more like a blob than anything else. I truly hope I’m wrong and this turns out to be a great new tradition, but I’m just really skeptical about if this can actually be pulled off.

• Carlos Brown appears to be 100% healthy for the first time in a long time.
• The coverage map for the Michigan-Wisconsin game can be found here. ESPN is going to use the reverse mirror setup again, meaning that if you are out of the ABC coverage area you will still be able to see the game on ESPN. The only problem is that the chances of the HD feed working correctly for the reverse mirror are slim. ESPN has had problems with it all season long and still don’t seem to have the issue resolved.
• Michigan’s opponent on Saturday, Wisconsin, and their opponent on October 11, Toledo, both played Fresno State already this season. Wisconsin went on the road and beat Fresno State by a score of 13-10 nearly two weeks ago. At the time the victory was considered to be impressive as Fresno State was seen as a potential BCS buster. However, after this past weekend that sentiment may have changed a bit.

  Toledo played host to Fresno State on Saturday and lost 55-54 in double-overtime. What you can take away from the near upset is that Toledo is better than most expected, Fresno State is overrated, or nothing at all. I personally would probably lean toward taking nothing at all away from it as comparing teams based on common opponents never usually is a good idea.

  Even so, the fact that Toledo scored 54 points, though the game went to two overtimes, does make me a tad bit more concerned for when they come to Michigan Stadium next month. At the same time, though, it gives me a little hope for Saturday’s game against Wisconsin as the Badgers were only able to put up 13 points against Fresno State. Again, that may mean nothing at all, especially since Wisconsin is coming off of a bye week, but it does provide me with a little hope that Michigan can upset the Badgers.

• John Beilein had a Q&A with 30 local high school coaches.
• As Adam Rittenberg points out, the Big Ten is likely going to have a lot of bowl eligible teams this season. That could spell trouble for Michigan since there’s a good possibility it will take 7 wins to go to a bowl game. My belief is that Michigan will have enough trouble getting 6 wins, so 7 really would be a tall order.
• Adam Rittenberg also did a “tale of the tape” with Michigan and West Virginia, and the comparisons are very interesting. As I’ve said before, I expected WVU to fall into mediocrity with Bill Stewart at the helm, but I never would’ve guessed they would be this bad so quickly.