LATEST STORIES FROM THE HOOVER STREET RAG
Pious men and dirty fiends
There are heroes and villains, and there are humans. We are not angels and demons, gods and monsters, zeroes and ones. We are fallen angels. We are brilliant beasts. We are between the gutter and the stars. Some of us are closer to the gutter, and others are closer to the stars.
So we are all part angel, part demon. We can imitate Grantland Rice's Great Scorer and tally up a...
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21 days ago
Discuss
Mr. Etiquette's guide to surviving a boring meeting
Dear Mr. Etiquette,
I recently had to travel one and a half hours from home to give a big speech at a big meeting. After giving my talk, I had to listen to a gentleman with intellectual and affiliational deficiencies give an incredibly boring speech. After listening to this half-wit ramble on for a few minutes, I stood up and ordered him to sit down and shut up. Under further review...
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23 days ago
Supervillain recruits East Coast
I thought Simpsonized Dantonio looked liked more Seymour Skinner.
My wife said Frank Grimes. You make the call!
Dantonio!
He'll sting you with his dreams of bowl games and good times.
Beware Dantonio!
His twisted twin obsessions are his hatred of Michigan
And hiding his players' crimes.
He'll welcome you into his lair,
Like Jim Tressel welcomes a new vest...
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24 days ago
Celebrate Alabama's #1 Recruiting Class in Style!
So Nick Saban is it again, grayshirting Atlanta RB Justin Taylor with an loophole-errific promise of a job offer while he's not playing football.
If Crimson Tide fans can celebrate their "national championship" with obnoxious T-shirts, Tide haters should get to celebrate this turn of events with a T-shirt of their own. In honor of the reports that Saban and Taylor...
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28 days ago
Michigan Backcourt Theater Episode 1119: Timeout Chasers
ZACK NOVAK, STU DOUGLASS, TIM HARDAWAY JR., and TREY BURKE leave the Crisler Center after an intense practice.
ZACK NOVAK
Oh man, that was brutal! I could sleep for days!
STU DOUGLASS
Yeah, I haven't worked so hard since that time I managed to dunk against Tennessee. I'm exhausted.
TIM HARDAWAY JR.
I'd love to get some shuteye too, but Trey and I promised the...
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29 days ago
Fair-enheit 27-9
Warning: nuclear-grade nerddom follows.
People in 49 of the 50 United States, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, seem to be grousing about the "unfairness" of the BCS system this week. Fortunately for everyone, my multiple graduate level courses in probability & statistics at Michigan taught me how to design a perfectly fair college football season...
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January 11, 2012
Brendan and Brady's Downton Abbey Marathon
What is a 'week end'? What is 'nightmare fuel'?
BRENDAN GIBBONS knocks on the door to BRADY HOKE's office in Schembechler Hall.
Hey coach, I need some academic help.
Sure thing, son. What can I do for you?
I'm taking a history course on Edwardian England this semester, and with the Sugar Bowl and the celebrations and all the girls wanting to celebrate Mardi...
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January 08, 2012
With the truth closing in, I must insist: we need a myth
Oh, man! I am so excited for the BCS Championship game! Will Tyrann Mathieu, Morris Claiborne, and the rest of LSU's defense be able to stop Trent Richardson and Alabama's offensive line? Will LSU redshirt freshman OL Elliot Porter be able to open some holes for Michael Ford and Spencer Ware? Will Alabama LB Alfy Hill be able to close those holes and keep LSU's offense in check?...
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January 06, 2012
Conference bowl records mean nothing: A guide for the innumerate
A lot of stupid people who work for prominent publications are saying a lot of really stupid things these days. They are arguing that the Big Ten is a horrible terrible no-good conference because its teams went 4-6 in bowl games and that's terrible and "can't be spun." They are arguing that the SEC is the greatest conference since the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE...
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January 05, 2012
Deserve Victory
As a historian, I find myself often fascinated by World War II propaganda posters*, because they are not only early forms of internet memes, but they need to convey a sense of what one person can do to move the nation forward. So, leave it to the British, once the world's mightiest empire but by 1940 one faltering and flagging, but still proud, still resolute, still believing...
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January 05, 2012
You have to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?
First off, gentle readers, I'm sorry I couldn't get the post title to appear in small caps. Blogger's not cool like that.
Sometimes things don't go your way. I was going to spend a lovely Christmas with my wife and enjoy a relaxing new year, but fate, a.k.a. staphylococcus aureus, stepped in and I spent Christmas hacking up my lungs and New Year's Eve at the...
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January 04, 2012
Rhapsody in Blue
I will write up a full post-game, post-season hosanna to Team 132 when I have time to think and breath, but for right now, three thoughts:
1).
Junior. Hemingway. Period. True at First Light.
2).
Little Bill Daggett: "I don't deserve this... to die like this. I was building a house."
Will Munny: "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it."
3)...
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January 04, 2012
B1G/Pac 12 Matchups Matrix
Because I am nothing if not insanely curious about this, the following is a matrix of the last time each Big Ten school faced each Pac 12 school, along with the essential range of the number of times they have played since 1936. There are eight matchups that have never occurred, those are in red with a white 0 in the cell.
This, this is what I do.
Light pink is a matchup that...
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December 28, 2011
Michigan Defense Theater 3000 Experiment 1114: Sugar Mutiny
THEME SONG
In the not too distant future, Saturday A.D.
There was a guy named Jordan, not too different from you or me
He worked at Schembechler Institute, just another face in a maize jumpsuit
He did a good job cleaning up the place, but his bosses kinda liked him so they made him play in space
(Curse you GERG!)
We'll send him speedy runners, the best we can find
He'll...
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December 19, 2011
Everyone else has a solution for the BCS, so why can't we?
NCAA institutions are a varied lot: both private and public, both large and small, both teaching-oriented and research-oriented, both colleges and universities. However, without doing the research, there is at least one thing that I am certain every single one of them has: a professor of statistics.
The Michigan Statistics Department has an awesome logo. That is all.
In this...
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December 07, 2011
Hoke of the Rising Sun
So, inspired by this:
and coupled with a distinct love of Eric Burdon and the Animals, as seen here:
We now present "Hoke of the Rising Sun"
There is a game in New Orleans
They call the Sugar Bowl
And it's part of the reviled BCS
The debate can take its toll.
Now Johnny is our tailor
He sewed my new jerseys
Our head coach is a gamblin' man
who wouldn't...
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December 06, 2011
Aleph Borges: A Season in Review
If you don't get the title reference, turn to page 274, then come back. This post will still be here, as it exists in all points in time and space.
Oh God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of athletes in space.
Hamlet, II:2, as paraphrased by Jordan Kovacs
That
same chilly morning that Ricardo Rodríguez was fired, after an
imperious...
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December 05, 2011
Oversigning bowl: Just don't watch.
Elliot Porter will not be playing in the LSU-Alabama Oversigning Bowl.
Some time ago in this space, I explained why the Urban Meyer Rule should be obsolete and why an LSU-Alabama rematch was desirable, namely, because both schools are dirty ******* oversigning grayshirting cheaters. I have received my wish, as #3 Oklahoma State faces #4 Stanford in the Fiesta Bowl, a.k.a. the national...
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December 04, 2011
In Michigan, first you get the power, then you get the sugar, then you get the women.
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December 04, 2011
I wish there was some word to describe the pleasure I feel at viewing misfortune
Who me? It was a clean hit!
I've been waiting over two long years to have events transpire that required me to update this: the new and improved "Sparty, No!" quiz on Sporcle.
P.S. If you don't get the title reference. If Community weren't on NBC, the Sparty of television networks, I wouldn't have to presume many of you won't get the title reference.
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December 04, 2011
So Many Bears
So, one of the hot trends for Christmas 2011 is NCAA Mascot Pillow Pets. They're cute, they're spirited, and they're roughly $30. Looking at the Big Ten's assortment, some of them make perfect sense. (And before I get angry letters, I could not find ones for Indiana or Northwestern.) To wit:
This Brutus Buckeye looks pretty much like the real thing.
All this...
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December 01, 2011
Seal Block Week 14: The Grand Finale
Thanks everyone who voted for the Seal Block Top 25 and for everyone who slogged their way through 14 weeks of exciting academic symbolism! Before revealing the final poll results, I'd like to award a couple of special jury prizes. I looked for 126 seals and some schools make it easy to find and some make it almost impossible. The first special prize goes to Buffalo for the most...
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November 30, 2011
Thank you for being so prompt and suggestible.
At 6:50 PM yesterday, we demanded someone prank the Big Ten Championship Game.
At 9:24 PM yesterday, this appeared and the college football blogs and twitters went berserk today.
Well done, anonymous person, who appears to be an employee of the Indianapolis Convention Center. Well done.
The rest of you, behold our power!!! And please make sure to donate those flat-screen TVs to...
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November 30, 2011
Crescat inconstantia, vita excolatur, or, roll 'em up in a carpet and throw 'em off a bridge
When I was but an undergraduate at the University of Western Ontario (before moving on to a superior school for graduate studies), my fellow engineering students would boast of the great pranks that engineering classes of yore had pulled, such as sawing a car in half, welding it around a flagpole, and rewiring it so that it could still start. But in the time I was there, the great...
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November 29, 2011
Breaking! Must credit HSR. Urban Meijer hires assistant coaches.
Although some news reports indicate that Urban Meijer is, in fact, not a store and actually a human being who goes by the unlikely name of "Urban Meyer," this is a clearly-perpetrated smokescreen designed by the Ohio athletic department in order to misdirect Michigan from knowing their true plans. However, we here at Hoover Street Rag have not fallen for the ruse, and we...
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November 29, 2011
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