You came in here talking about academics. How ironic.

maybe

[/quote]
So the NCAA puts on a hard cap. So what? Student athletes and coaches will always find the gray areas. So you're limited to 20 or whatever hours of any kind of athletic involvement or physical activity. Are you going to police whether guys do situps in their room? Are you going to have your compliance team making sure that nobody's running to class? Are you going to ban TV watching so nobody inadvertently "scouts" next week's opponent by watching them get crushed by USC? [/quote]

The NCAA can define what makes a "voluntary workout." X number of players working out together for Y amount of time in an unofficial football practice would be a good start. They could separate individual routines from the cap, and probably not include watching tape alone.

enforcement is easy. Take the bowl eligibility from a few big programs who get caught and suddenly the coaches believe that it's not in their best interests.

Saying that it is undesireable doesn't make it impossible. Common mistake so I'm not calling you dumb.

HEY GUISE ONLY 5 PEOPLE TO THE WEIGHT ROOM AT A TIME.

LOL

just stop already ffs

Not to mention a complete bastardization of the word voluntary.

You can put a cap on voluntary team activities. If someone wants to live at the gym, or organize a players' only workout, that's obviously beyond anyone's control, but anything team-oriented can be controlled.

No it can't. What's going to stop 10 kids from getting together and working out?

See my edit. What you suggested is fine too, as long as it isn't organized/essentially forced by the coaches.

thought you guys might be interested
Here is the number crunching on what Michigan can expect this year based on a weighted average of preseason 'expert' polls

Wins p

12 0.08%
11 0.57%
10 2.14%
9 5.49%
8 10.77%
7 16.99%
6 21.49%
5 20.62%
4 13.71%
3 6.19%
2 1.72%
1 0.22%
0 0.00%

The NCAA already does define what makes a voluntary workout. And I would be willing to wager a substantial sum that nearly all or all of the "excessive" workouts described in the Free Press article meet the existing test for voluntariness. You and I might not think they're voluntary, but according to the existing standards they were.

There are also plenty of existing regulations dealing with unofficial practice sessions. Again, I would be willing to bet that nearly all or all of the "excessive" practices - which seem to be primarily 7-on-7 drills - are within the existing letter of the law. There are regulations up the wazoo dealing with workout time, too.

How would a hard cap change anything?

Answer: It wouldn't. It's just a different set of rules. There are still the same incentives to bend them as much as possible - you get better individually and have better results as a team by spending more time on football. QED.

And LOL at enforcement being easy. That would require the NCAA to actually do something. Think about all the violations you've read about the last few years and compare that with punishments that have been doled out. A big part of the problem is that the NCAA for the most part relies on institutions to police themselves. And nearly all institutions do - to the extent that they're required to do so. That's why every major program is going to have all kinds of paperwork saying that compliance staff did checks and signed statements from players saying they complied with the limits.

For the NCAA to take action in this case, I think they would need to effectively say "yes, your records are in order and yes, you technically haven't violated any rules, but you violated the spirit of the rules and therefore we're going to punish you". Not going to happen. The NCAA is legalistic enough that it won't happen in the first place, and any court worth a damn would overrule any sanctions in a heartbeat if the NCAA did take action.

Translation: None of the 'experts' has any idea what this season holds.

What did Phil Steele predict again?

Who was the idiot who put 12 wins within the range of possible outcomes?

1 in 5 chance of 8 or more wins sounds optimistic to me but I like it.

so average 5.922 wins this season according to da polls.

How is it that not one person suggested 0 wins from a team that went 3-9 last year, yet someone suggested 12 wins?

look at our schedule. i'd agree that its more likely for us to go undefeated than not win a game because we play del st, cmu and western

fyp.

And I don't know that anyone actually predicted winning 12 games, I suspect that MT2R's formula assigns a distribution around each predicted outcome - and that someone was optimistic enough to project 9 or 10 wins which would be enough for there to be a non-zero chance of 12.

Each Dead Money post is somehow worse than the one that preceded it itt, which is truly remarkable when you reflect upon the ****tiness of his initial post.

I think Michigan has a better than 1 in 5 shot at winning 8+ games. Much better. The preseason polls may not agree, but I think they surprise a lot of people. Plus, I think they ran bad to only win 3 games last year.

oops... sorry for the trouble in language... no one said 12 wins... I should've mentioned the methodology

-I gather preseason expert polls that rank teams ordinally 1 to 120
-I weight these polls based on previous accuracy to come up with one final ordinal poll
-through magic, this poll is turned into a power ranking---well, not magic, more like the a weighted average of previous computer system rankings for those ordinal spots
-this power ranking can be used with team specific home field advantage to project spreads for each game a team plays
-that spread is turned into odds of winning a game based on a weighted historical database of every college game spread and result since 1993
-from there, it's just adding up the wins and losses

-this year, there is also an inclusion of the likely distribution of forecasting errors among the original weighted preseason power poll based on back-testing of the data

none of this would stand up in a rigorous scientific journal, but it is good enough IMO

It's official: Tate's starting.

lol do you people have no clue how predictions work? obviously no one said theyd go 0-12 or 12-0 lol. They have a certain % of winning each game. As long as they have atleast a 0.1% chance in each game they do indeed go 12-0 a non zero % of the time.

if this season was played out 1,000 times Michigan would on avg go undefeated in 8 seasons. thats all its saying.

Carlos Brown gets the start as well.

I was just thinking back to season openers of previous years. The most memorable win was the comeback against Washington in 2002. After several UM placekicking mishaps in the game, Philip Brabbs got the call for the game-winner from 44 yards. The most heartbreaking loss in my memory was the 1988 Notre Dame game. Mike Gillette's 50 yard field goal to win the game drifted right. An absolute gut-wrenching loss.

App St wasn't a more gut-wrenching loss? I would think it would be after the big Manningham catch that seemed to somehow rescue a victory only to see it slip away again.

App St wasn't even close to #1 for me.

If I had to pick, it would be the MSU/UM game in I think 1990 when UM was #1. They scored at the end to go down 1 and went for 2 (there were still ties). Desmond Howard is blatantly tackled on the 2 pt conversion, no call, he still almost catches it but doesnt, gg us.

#2 probably clockgate. I have never been so upset at a referee.

oorrrrrrrr, 1 vs 2 game of the century.

ftr, appy st was either 1 or 2 for me.

i remember all the others mentioned, but just the way that it happened. the high hopes that year, the fact that i was in a bar of osu fans and all 50 tv's went to the mich/appy game because the osu game ended 10 minutes earlier, ugggggh.

but yeah, the 1 vs 2 game, yuck.

i actually think oregon the next week (after appy) was top 5, just because i refused to believe it was over in week 1.

The '88 game was worse. Losing to the eventual undefeated National Champ by narrowly missing a field goal in a rivalry game in primetime national tv was sickening. While App St. was hugely embarrassing, it didn't exactly cost us a chance at a National Championship opportunity.