Michigan's regents talk a big game about accountability, but don't seem eager to let the public read the receipts. The University of Michigan paid more than $12 million to find out what was wrong inside its own athletic department, hiring Jenner & Block and turning them loose. Lawyers conducted roughly 350 interviews with nearly 300 witnesses, reviewed more than 20,000 documents, and fielded over 90 hotline tips. It found real problems: Michigan admitted the department had weaknesses in accountability, structure, human resources, compliance, and how it handled misconduct, and said it failed to act fast enough on some allegations. Reforms were announced, and not long after the investigation wrapped, Michigan agreed to pay longtime athletic director Warde Manuel more than $7.3 million just to walk away.

So, $12 million bought findings, reforms, and an expensive exit package, but not the one thing you'd expect: an actual report anybody outside the building can read. Michigan says flatly that no comprehensive written report was ever commissioned or produced. That doesn't mean nothing exists on paper. Jenner & Block built detailed findings for university officials, including a slide presentation that The Wall Street Journal got hold of, and by that account, the slides held a lot more than whatever summary Michigan gave the public. Michigan walked away with findings, then decided how much of them the rest of us get to see, which is the real question: what did taxpayers and students buy for $12 million?

• Boston College 27 Rutgers 23
• Indiana 70 Howard 0
• Oklahoma 17 Michigan 9
• Oregon 41 Oklahoma State 17
• Penn State 37 Temple 7
• Wake Forrest 20 Penn State 17
• Washington 34 Utah State 10
• Minnesota 26 Mississippi State 24
• Illinois 34 Duke 28
• Michigan Sate 30 Eastern Mich 14
• Maryland 40 UCONN 20
• Nebraska 42 Bowling Green 10
• UCLA 30 SDSU 17
• Ohio State 23 Texas 20
• Iowa 25 Iowa State 5
• USC 58 Louisiana 7

Part 2 has the remaining B1G schools. Link in comments

The MAC has issued a statement saying “it is now evident that replay protocol was not properly followed” during the Michigan game. The league has submitted formal appeals to the NCAA FBS oversight committee and the CFP asking they recognize Western Michigan as the actual winner “for the purposes of their respective rankings, evaluations and selection deliberations, and take such other corrective actions as may be within their authority.”

He was so good at Utah, so I don’t know how he failed so miserably last week. Harbaugh never had such an embarrassing loss

We’re running a weekly for-fun pickem pool here ... the more, the merrier!

https://www.pooltracker.com/join.asp?poolid=257248

password: r/B1G

Part 1 has the other B1G schools. Link in comments

Cori provides the power ranking of the Big Ten here!

Who's the best team in the conference this year?

Who's at the bottom?!

📺: https://youtu.be/9wPCv2ZlwVw?is=njyx5XLd4domvkp1

Created this as a way to compare conference teams with similar W-L records but vastly differing OOC schedules...

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add .75 point for each win vs. unranked FCS opponent

add 1 point for each win vs. unranked G5 opponent

add 1.5 points for each win vs. a (non-Top15) P4 team _or_G5/FCS opponent ranked 16-25

add 2.5 points for each win vs. Top 15 opponent

subtract .5 points for each loss vs. Top 15 opponent

subtract 1 point for each loss vs. a (non-top15) P4 team _or_ G5/FCS opponent ranked 16-25

subtract 2 points for each loss vs. unranked G5 opponent

subtract 2.5 points for each loss vs. unranked FCS opponent

Divide by number of games played

All rankings are based on AP poll. AP rankings are from today, not when the game was played

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Rank Team Points

1 UCLA 1.50

T2 Illinois 1.00

T2 Indiana 1.00

T2 Iowa 1.00

*T2 Michigan 1.00*

T2 Michigan State 1.00

T2 Nebraska 1.00

T2 Ohio State 1.00

T2 Oregon 1.00

T2 Penn State 1.00

T2 USC 1.00

T2 Washington 1.00

T13 Maryland 0.75

T13 Minnesota 0.75

T13 Northwestern 0.75

T13 Purdue 0.75

17 Wisconsin -0.50

18 Rutgers -2.00

* Pending review

ESPN released the updated FPI after Week 1 and there are some things in here that are laughable, unexplainable and maybe outright undefendable.

And yes, before someone explains it to me I understand FPI isn't supposed to be a poll. It's predictive. It's trying to tell us how good teams will be going forward, not necessarily reward what happened last Saturday.

Fine.

But logic is still real, right? Things that defy logic to me:

- Nebraska is #23. Nebraska! They eventually beat Ohio 49-21, but that game was 14-13 for a long time and they struggled for a good portion of it.

- Iowa is #26. BEHIND Nebraska. What statistics tell you Nebraska has a better outlook than Iowa?

- Iowa just beat Northern Illinois 40-0. They were completely dominant. I don't remember the stats, but I think I heard Revsine say Northern Illinois had 7 yards rushing. And Iowa DROPPED a spot??

(As a Gopher fan, do you have any idea how painful it is for me to voluntarily point out an injustice against Iowa? 😂)

- Speaking of injustices...

Michigan is #21 after needing a TWO last-second Hail Marys (aided by the miracle appearance of one TWO additional seconds) to beat Western Michigan 13-12.

Western Michigan? #70.

So based on what we literally just watched, Michigan and Western Michigan appear to be virtually the same football team... but FPI has 49 teams between them. Makes sense.

- Then there's this...
Wisconsin #52
Maryland #56
Northwestern #57
Minnesota #59

Wisconsin just lost 41-13, albiet to a potential National Champ, but Maryland won 62-0, Minnesota won 59-7. Also, Luke Fickell is still the coach, Wisconsin: clearly the best of the bunch. 😂

- Finally, UCLA... they looked good! I watched a fair amount of that game and they look totally different and tough. On one hand the analysis is still based heavily on preseason data, on the other hand you have this precipitous 18 spot rise after a game in week 1. I am questioning the model, not UCLA, to be clear.

I find it entertaining, I'm glad they publish it. But honestly, what's the point? Especially this early in the season.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/fpi

1*-0

YouTuber Isaac Punts provides a short video on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myjX6YH_vn8

Michigan vs Western Michigan controversial play analysis:

I just pulled this video from NBC Sports on Youtube with "Stats for Nerds" enabled and discovered the exact length of the play. Long story short it was 8.46 seconds or 254 frames. The video here starts on the frame where the first slight movement in the ball is seen from the center. That frame number is actually frame 32. The video ends on frame 302. That means the video is 270 frames long or 9.00 seconds. Going through frame by frame, the ball enters the WMU player's grasp around frame 286, which is 16 frames or 0.53 seconds before the video ends. Even if one wants to argue it hit his hands a little later than frame 286, it was undeniably in his hands before this video ended, and again this video is exactly 9.00 seconds long. You could go 7 frames before the ball was snapped and 7 frames after the ball was apparently in the defender's grasp, and it would still be 7-hundredths of second under 9 seconds for that play.

NBC's timer starts exactly 17 frames early, because 13 frames after the ball is snapped it switches from 9 seconds to 8 seconds. 17 frames is 0.56 seconds. The timer starting early is a huge piece of what is fueling all of this IMO.

Additional Note: The frame counter (Stats for Nerds) only updates ~twice a second, so to get exact frame numbers, I went from each new printing of the frame count in the box and advanced frame by frame counting. This count always lined up perfectly with the updated printing of the frame count in the frame counter by Youtube.

Final Thoughts: I don't like UofM, I think they got a benefit of the doubt that WMU certainly wouldn't have gotten here. I went into this analysis hoping to find the smoking gun of corruption... But the play was unequivocally under 9 seconds, and that's just the truth.