Preview Central: Notre Dame vs. Michigan

Let this get you in the mood for the game.


After one week of football, there are only three things we know going into this game:

1. Denard Robinson is for real.  Really, really, real.
2. Michael Floyd is going to have his pimp hand nice and ready for Michigan's secondary.
3. Everyone else in the country is rooting for some way that both teams can lose this game.

Is UConn the Big East contender that everyone proclaimed them to be in August?  (Bonus question, does that even say anything positive about them when Rutgers takes a half of football to get warmed up against Norfolk St., Pitt is still coached by the Wannstache, and Cincinnati looks downright pedestrian under Butch "Sloppy Seconds" Jones?)  Was Michigan's defense that effective in stopping an experienced UConn offense, or did they stop themselves?  What about the UConn defense that spent all of last Saturday taking worse pursuit angles than a squad put together by a high school for the blind?

On the other side of the fence, what about Purdue?  Did Allen and Wood terrorize a competent defense, or is this unit the same 94th ranked rushing D from last year?  Was Purdue's back seven responsible for neutralizing Michael Floyd, or does that honor go to Dayne Crist?  Does anyone think Robert Marve can be a productive quarterback outside of Robert Marve?

This Must Be the Place: UConn

My continuing effort to frame the 2010 football season within the context of songs by the Talking Heads:




Home, is where I want to be.

I certainly felt at home Saturday afternoon.  That feeling has been a long time coming.  There was a certain comfort and security that hung over my Michigan fandom early in life.  I went into every season with the explicit expectation that the team would win the Big Ten and challenge for the national championship.  You can probably blame this on 1997 national championship, which happened just around the time I really started to understand the games I was watching in the greater context of seasons and programs and history.  Before the 1997 national championship I rooted for UM because my father did, and that meant by extension I did too.  After the national championship my love of Michigan football was now crystallized in the realization that the team I loved was the best, whether they really were or not.  The love grew from there until I finally joined in to that game day tradition as a student.  Blue was always the only way to go.

Half Full or Half Empty? Secondary

If you want a full fledged preview of this year's team, you are in the wrong place.  Your first stop should be MGoBlog or your local newsstand for a copy of this year's Hail To The Victors (also written by Brian from MGoBlog).

Hopefully the secondary isn't glass number 3.

Over here at Dreaded Judgement, we (the royal we of course, lets keep these Lebowski references going) like to deal more in abstract scenarios.  How could things turn out?  What should send the majority of the fan base scurrying under the nearest rock, and what possibilities are there for large scale improvement?

To answer these questions, I will try to look at each position group individually and give one reason for overjoyed optimism and one for suicide inducing pessimism.  This Half Full/Half Empty series will touch on all of the position groups by this Saturday, when we will start to get a real idea of where we stand.  With that said, lets start with the bad news...

The Secondary.