Dear Diary,
Happy Easter, and Chag Sameach. While the bulk of you are eating chocolate and painting/finding eggs, my tribe has Passover. Aside from eating matzah and the related constipation the holiday has a traditional dinner, or "seder." The dinner has a script: symbolism of the various traditional dishes, four questions of the "gee, I wonder why we're eating matzah?" variety recited by a kid, followed by the story of how Pharaoh was smart for being long wheat in the ancient futures market but was unsuccessful in labor issues.
In recent years our family has been adding fianc�s, wives, etc., who grew up with slightly different traditions and very different views on what makes an appropriate Seder. The big argument's over the orange. This is a thing we started doing like 10 years ago which I love and some people completely despise. The parable for this goes that one day an orthodox rabbi said there would be a woman rabbi (actually "woman on the bimah") when there's on orange on the Seder plate. So: plop.
In January MVictors and Hoover Street wrote their epic "The Clans. The Factions. Defined," which brilliantly defined the various sub-groups of Michigan fandom. The party lines haven't gone away in three months. There's always that one topic that?
: Oh G-d, not again.
Um, can I help you??
: I am MisoBOgon. The only true Michigan fan. And I'm only stopping by to tell you how sick I am of hearing you people whine about "The Process." And I can tell from your intro that's exactly what you're about to do.
Actually, no, I was?
: Let it go. It's over. Move on.
Who??
: Misopocatur, the one true Michigan fan. We have our coach. We have Mattison. We have Denard's smile. Let it go.
: Plussed for mentioning Denard's smile.
Look, I don't know where you people are coming from?
: 'From where you people are coming,' you mean, assuredly. Real Michigan fans, e.g. myself, Misopuroy Jacket Patch, do not end sentences with prepositions.
?from whence you people have come but really I was just going to write a Dear Diary about how ridiculous all of this Internet bickering is becoming.
: So quit bitching and it'll stop.
: RRRRrrrraaaaaaa
Oh come on.
: RRRRrrrrooddd. Ninja Slot UFR +12. Decimated DefenseRRRRRRRRRR
: You obviously don't know what you're talking about. I, for one, am glad to be back to normal.
: Negged!
Guys, guys, what the hell??
: Isn't it obvious? I've been tracking user data pretty closely and it seems the various fan factions who were scattered by the last three years' events are coming back together for some Michigan football talk and encountering?each other.
: Agree. I don't have enough points to make a new thread but I just wanted to say my daughter's starting U-M in the fall! Go Blue!
Ah. Well that explains all the bickering this week. Anyway what I was gonna?
: 'going to'
? say is welcome back to anyone who left us over the last few years. As Decaturogon or whatever above mentioned, it's probably high time for the Michigan fan base to come back together. You know what we need for that?
: Easy: stop bitching.
: He just didn't get the wins. It's that simple. Let's move on.
PEOPLE: 
!
? ? ? 
?
? ? ? 
?(smug)?
If all of these be-hatted folks can co-exist in my head* we can all exist together in a room that seats 115,000.
At the risk of making this post sound any more Maize & Brewish, in honor of Passover, here's a list of what I consider sufficient to be classified a Michigan fan:
- Rooting for another team as well. (Dayenu)
- Rooting for M now, but used to not be (Dayenu)
- Rooting for M, but not having gone to the University of Michigan (only State fans care about this, and that's because few people will root for State if they didn't go there or have another close connection to the program.) (Dayenu)
- Rooting for M, but not supporting the current staff or individual members of the program. (Dayenu)
- Rooting for M, but not supporting former staff or members of the program. (Dayenu)
- Rooting for M, but not reading/watching the right material. (Dayenu)
- Rooting for M, but representing the university or the program badly. (Dayenu)
- Rooting only for Michigan in one sport. (Dayenu)
- Being able to experience long periods of ambivalence when Michigan's not winning. (Dayenu)
As for ranking who's a good fan and who's a worse fan ? the topic of a removed board post this week ? I think peoples' definitions of that are so wildly different as to make the trite-ass "it's different for every person" cop-out true in this case. But let's be sure, eh? Fandom poll!
For each factor, just indicate how important each is in how you might rate fandom. My purpose is just to see if there's any consistency at all, even among a group as insular as a blog's readership.
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.
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* In my life I've been all but the 2nd Estate. But there's time yet.
Seriously, all of these narratives are in my head at once.
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More Surveys!
Left: Two guys we're pretty sure have pictured themselves as Ray Lewis.
Right: what the board thinks of our moderating job at present.
It's survey week at MGoBlog. The first by umhero is probably the most inadvertently useful bit of recruiting news I've ever read. It asks the board to vote on who they think will end up in the class, and reactions are so lopsided I feel like I know the kids' decisions better than they do. I'll let him do the honors of results but the poll is here. By the way hero, pollcode? That's so 2009!
Survey Two is results-oriented. That is wingedsig published the results of his 500-person study on MGoBlog's board moderation, which proves two things: the pos/neg system isn't near perfect, and there are at least 20 females on the Internet!
Orange!
Finally in surveys I give you justingoblue, who responded to Brian responding to a Mailbag by surveying Title IX and demonstrating quite succinctly that it has doesn't regulate coaches' salaries:
I took a look at the law itself, and have concluded that coaches salaries do not have to be equivalent, both through reading the law and through anecdotal evidence as told by UM's salaries.
Justin took the salaries of the revenue sports (coaches, then coaches and assistants) and the numbers changed. He ends with 30 coaches for women's sports and 18 for non-revenue men's sports. The mean salary is pretty close (both over $80K) and explainable by the ladies' coaches being incredibly good at their jobs.
For example softball is No. 1 in the country right now, and Tennis just won the Big Ten Championship again!
Orange!
When We Were Slaves in Egypt?
The Spring Game's technically not a game, but it's enough to bring monuMental back (to the future)!
Look closely and you'll see the 1901 team's secret to scoring a point a minute: Time Traveling Denard Robinson! Also time-traveling Hoke.
In another past blast, JimLahey wrote up his encounter with Lloyd Carr at the WESPY Awards (Windsor Essex Sports Person of the Year). It's so vintage Carr:
The conversation was about 8-10 minutes long and we mostly discussed literature and philosophy. There was a great point in the conversation when we talked about writers who make their work inaccessible to most people by unnecessarily writing in complex schemes just for complexity's sake. I said I preferred the simple, classic, and understated genius of writers like Mark Twain and Charles Dickens, whose complexities come from the depth of their characters. He agreed.
That little part right there is the Diary of the Week, because remember how the part about Carr that we all loved was absolutely unique and genuine and wonderful? Read the short diary and you will too.
The other candidate for DotW was stubob's statistical attempt to create a new metric (which he calls "effectiveness") for offensive and defensive play. Right now it's mostly raw data that says what we already knew about last year:
Defense, on the other hand, was great in the rain against Purdue, better-than-average against ND and Illinois (per drive, remember), and shelled by MSU, the other MSU and Wisconsin. This should not be news.
But he's getting some help from the comments and promises to pick apart SD State games next so keep your eyes open because I've got a feeling Part II's gonna get good! Bonus: one of those enlightening, wordy exchanges that the comments section used to be back in the before time* broke out at Comment 3.
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* My recollection of the before time was a lot of sarcasm from WLA and Brian a lot less worried about pissing people off, but then I came late.
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Orange!
Paige Butcher Amanda Peet Xenia Seeberg The Avatars of Second Life Daniella Alonso
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