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I figured this is an opportune time to discuss Rich Rod. Or at least some things about him. Or at least just mention Rich Rodriguez because everyone else is doing that today.

For some reason, I got the idea to compare and contrast Rodriguez’ stint as the Michigan football coach with Obama’s stint as the President of the United States.

Quiz
For each item below, please mark whether it applies to Rodriguez (R) or Obama (O):

1. Appealed to the younger crowd
2. Was very polarizing – most people were either very for or very against him
3. Took over a program that was in decent, but not great, shape
4. Was brought in to shake things up a bit – change from the traditional ways of doing things
5. Neglected the duties of his prior job in order to transition to his new job
6. Brought in his own people as assistants
7. He had great plans and had great potential, but reality didn’t cooperate
8. In fact, the program got worse under his watch
9. Read fine from a teleprompter but said some controversial things in unscripted moments
10. Tried to make some shady deals and brought fraud to a previously clean program
11. The other power in the organization was replaced during his term and caused him to reconsider his ways
12. Believed you don’t need much of a defense
13. Didn’t care much for the kicking game either

Can you think of any other quiz questions about Rich Rodriguez or Barack Obama?

Based on the popularity existence of last year’s article predicting bowl games in haiku form, I present to you this year’s all-haiku bowl game predictions. Still America’s only all-haiku college football bowl game predictions.

These are listed in order of date (earliest first). Some picks are whom I think will win, and some picks are whom I want to win. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which is which.
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The Big Ten announced the names of the new divisions today, and they also unveiled the new logo. I would have been very surprised if they had used the logo I designed for them, since I don’t even know that I did that.

Reaction to the new division names and the logo has been fairly consistent – no one likes them. Well, no one other than Commissioner Delaney.

I agree with all the fans out there. The Big Ten would have been better off keeping the temporary names of X and O. The new names, Legends and Leaders, are way too cheesy. They are meaningless and therefore worthless.

They are meaningless in that the teams were arbitrarily assigned to one side or the other. There’s no reason why one team is a Legend as opposed to a Leader. The names can have meaning, but they were not used that way.

For instance, Michigan State is a Legend although they are the third most recent addition to the Big Ten.

And Michigan uses the word “Leaders” to describe itself in its fight song, but it is not in the Leaders division.
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A couple weeks ago, Tuesday Morning Quarterback (TMQ, AKA Gregg Easterbrook) announced a new football prediction algorithm – the Davis Postulate.

The Davis Postulate states that existing trends will likely continue, so a team that won last week will win again this week. And vice-versa.

I have added it to the list of NFL prediction methods over on Some Fun Site.

I have both the Davis Postulate (which checks only the previous week and so includes the bye) and the Davis Postulate, Extended (which checks who has the longer current streak and skips byes).

Enjoy!

(p.s. More Yards Wins is still the leader, both in 2009 and 2010.)

The older two kids went with me to a baseball game this past weekend. They appreciated the game in two different ways.

Beta watched as much as he could and enjoyed it, asking when we could come back. This was his first baseball game.

Alpha read as much as he could and enjoyed it. This was his third baseball game.

And they both ate as much as they could, despite the fact that we had a regular dinner just before leaving for the game.

All the home-team players get introduction songs. Whenever a player comes up to bat, the stadium operation plays, at full volume, a particular song for that player.

I noticed that they are all hard songs. Not difficult hard, but edgy hard. Hard country, hard rock, hard rap, etc.

I decided on what song I would want, should I ever become a professional baseball player – Christmas Eve in Sarajevo.

Next on the list: football. We’ll probably start with a local high school game, since college and pro tickets are a bit expensive.

College football is about to start, but people are already looking ahead to next year.

Because next year is when things change.

Significantly.

And maybe I’ll resume using complete sentences and paragraphs.

As you should all know by now, the Big Ten becomes the Big Twelve in 2011. And the Big Twelve is reduced to the Big Ten at that time.

And the Big Ten has assigned its members to one of two divisions, and there will be a conference championship played between the winners of each division.

The big story is that Michigan and Ohio State are in separate divisions. The Big Ten Conference floated some ideas out there and got a bunch of criticism from alumni.

So the conference’s decision was to still have Michigan and Ohio State play each other on the last game of the regular season just like they do now. But since the division winners will have been determined at that point, the game won’t count for much.

As a Michigan fan and blogger, I am compelled, nay bound, by the laws of blogging, to add my opinion to the internet.

I don’t like it.

No, not the internet. Or my opinion. I like those. What I don’t like is the Big Ten Conference’s decision. But, since I am not an alumnus of either school, I guess the Big Ten doesn’t give my opinion much weight.

I think that the Big Ten couldn’t win at this one, no matter what they did. But they could have done better.

If I were in charge, I would have put them both in the same division. The game would still be at the end of the regular season, but it would matter. So what if you don’t have a solid anchor team on the other division? It’s not like Michigan has been pulling its weight anyway and will be the automatic winner of its division every year. I think some of the other teams would be fine anchor teams for a division, and a division could be healthy and competitive without UM or OSU in it.

But since they didn’t do that, they could at least move the game. I don’t mind rematches; I do mind back-to-back rematches. In the case that Michigan gets its act together and wins its division, it could play Ohio State twice in a row. Sure, there might be an extra week or two in between the games, but it would still dilute them. A matchup early in the season (and that counted for the conference results) would make for a better game and season.

The Big Ten chose the second-worst possible scheduling format for Michigan and Ohio State. The only worse one would have been not playing each other.

I heard this morning that Michigan State is going to raise its tuition 5% next school year.

Normally I would have dismissed such an announcement, but I thought the timing was interesting.

Very interesting…

For those of you not near Lansing or Cleveland: Tom Izzo has been the coach of the MSU basketball team for a while, and he has attained success. He was considering jumping from college to NBA to take the job as coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, but he finally decided to stay at MSU.

His announcement was earlier this week.

See the connection?

Izzo stays at MSU -> MSU has to raise tuition

Don’t tell me you don’t believe conspiracy theories…

It seems a little too coincidental to me. Do we know what MSU offered Izzo to stay at MSU? Do they maybe need a little extra cash for a “retention bonus”?

No, we don’t know.

But it is fun to speculate.

My take on the whole choice is this: going pro is for college students, not for college coaches.

Izzo’s probably better off staying at MSU.

Disclaimer: Yes, I know that MSU’s budget, set a year ago, had already proposed this increase. Consider this post tongue-in-cheek.