Breakdown Sports

Embed from Getty Images "Written in Chalk", get it? Like Written in Stone" or "Written in Blood" but chalk because chalk boards. Also a 'Buddy and Julie Miller' album , who I never heard of before but here's a plug. In reality it should probably be "Written in Dry Erase Marker or: Accidentally Written in Permanent Marker on a Dry Erase Board because Someone Put it Here and Now Look, I Can't Erase It, Damnit", but that wasn't as catchy. Anyway, the idea here is absolutely to be speculative. Yes, I'm going to try to ground this series in logic. No, it's not always going to be logical. That's how great ideas are made. "Written in Chalk" was always one of my favorite parts of coaching that wasn't the actual act of coaching. It was collaborating with the staff, it was drawing some things on the board and constantly asking "what if?" And once you did that someone else asked, "and what if w...

The Current System's Problem Way back when, Rivals developed a method of ranking recruits. They used between 1 and 5 stars - or more realistically, 2 through 5 stars - and that was ok. Then other recruiting services came along and used the same model. And now it's just the expected model. But that doesn't mean it's the right system. Many fan bases look at recruiting rankings, and if they are high in them they trust the source; if they are low: not so much. In my mind, this is an inherent problem from the recruiting ranking system. Players cannot so simply be placed in an area between two and five stars. The sites often fail at displaying why a recruit is say a low 4-star rather than a high 3-star. In my mind, they don't effectively breakdown and explain: what's a recruits ceiling; what's a recruits floor; what is the recruit really good at; what does the recruit need to work on, and what type of system the recruit fits best in. What I Want to ...

So...I've going for it. I've decided to start my own blog. In many Michigan circles, I'm known as Space Coyote, but I've been around the block with a few other monikers as well. With this first post I want to detail what this is going to be all about. This is not just a Michigan football blog. To start, I hope to focus primarily on the Big Ten. Yes, much of my initial focus will be on Michigan, as many of my initial readers will be from that circle, but eventually I want to be able to attract fans of different teams because a lot of this information pertains to them as well. I hope that doesn't alienate readers, as I want to be as unbiased as I can. I want to give an objective, thorough look at football, from a coaches point-of-view, so that other fans see what I do when I watch college football. The goal is to look more in-depth than other sources you will find. In the past, I've worked for several bloggers to do in-depth game breakdowns. I want to look at ...