Friday Friday Friday....

by SCM on Jul 17, 2009 6:00 AM CDT in College Football

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Happy Friday folks, the following may be at least somewhat thought provoking...

1. You may have heard that the Michigan Football team amassed a gut-wrenching 30 turnovers last season... mmhmm 30, in the process, we finished the year ranked 104th in turnover margin (sigh). 30 turnovers in and of themselves have to be a certain sign of a failed season no? I certainly would argue so, but in combing over stats from last year you get the following...

Cincinnati: 30 turnovers and a record of... 11-3
Tulsa: 30 turnovers and a record of................ 11-3
Hawaii: 37 turnovers and a record of.... 7-7

All three of those teams were ranked below 80th in turnover margin.

2. 54 University of Michigan athletes earned "Big Ten Scholar" awards for this past year's work in the classroom. One of the recipients? The Space Emperor himself. Congratulations to all of these students, well done!

3. Western Michigan OL Phillip Swanson writing a column for the New York Times this year... know thy enemy?

4. Another "woah" moment from a somewhat ambiguously titled article: The Risk of High School Football Tackles

But most important, the study showed that the average linear accelerations resulting from the impact of a high school football tackle exceeded those that occur at the college level. Impacts to the top of the head had the greatest speed and force. Among high school players, blows to the front of the helmet were about 10 percent more common and carried three more "Gs" of force compared to college players.

The study looked at a rather small n of 35 players, but analyzed a much larger 19,224 impacts, that's quite a few if you ask me.

5. Rich Rodriguez knows it's British Open week, and even though I'm not sure how long it will continue, I can't get enough of seeing Tom Watson out there with guys who are literally less than half his age.

via blog.mlive.com

And what would a Friday be without some old fashioned WolverineHistorian goodness?? Enjoy and have a fine weekend my friends!

Lloyd didn't run the score up... well hardly ever, but here? Well this was deserved in every conceivable way.

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Comments

2 things

1) Watson still at 2-under through 10. Very much in the hunt.

2) It doesn’t surprise me much that high school tackling is “harder” than college tackling if only because many high school athletes aren’t taught the proper technique, and instead just use their helmet as a “weapon” when bringing somebody down. My roommate in college said that in high school he used to just drive the top of his helmet into players when making a tackle, and it worked. He also said in college you couldn’t get away with it as much. I think the technique is better in college, so you get less “shortcuts” like helmet-weilding, which leads to less “top of the head” impacts. Interesting stuff, regardless. Any thoughts from the crowd?

Like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli.

by Beauford on Jul 17, 2009 10:01 AM CDT reply actions