College Football: Illinois in rough waters and other topics

Note: most photos from yahoo.

Michigan 31 Illinois 14

How bad was this game? Judge for yourself (first half drive logs)

The score was 14-0 at the half; Yards were 231-8 after 1 quarter, 295-19 at the half.
Or I’ll put it another way: Michigan broke a 68 yard off tackle run on the second play from scrimmage; that was more than triple the yards that Illinois was to get in the entire first half.

There was still some hope after the first half; Illinois did stuff Michigan on 4′th and inches at the goal and Michigan missed a short field goal (very windy day).

The teams traded fumbles:

But the stadium was dead, dead, dead.

The third quarter saw Michigan pull out to 17-0, but then Illinois went to a “hurry up” tempo and then appeared to block better. A nice long drive saw Illinois cut it to 17-7.

Then the defense got a stop and Illinois started to drive! But with 11:50 to go in the game, UM intercepted a pass and ran it down to the Illinois 22. The fans started to leave right then! 10 points down…11:50 to go, and many of the fans gave up!

Eventually Michigan punched it in to push it to 24-7.

Still, Illinois drove it 80 yards to pull to 24-14 with just over 3 minutes to play. Then Illinois tries an onside; Michigan recovers and then scores on a run to push it to 31-14 and put the game away.

My analysis
True, the offense has yet to score a first half point in any of their previous 4 games. The totals have been 7, 14, 7 and 14 points. The offense looked good three times: against I-AA (ok, FCS) South Dakota State and against Northwestern (67′th on defense, gives up 29.1 points per game) and Indiana (110′th in defense, 37.7 points per game). They looked ok against Arkansas State (Sun Belt first game with a new coach) and Western Michigan (89′th in defense, gives up 32.1 points per game).

They struggled against Ohio State, Purdue, Penn State and Michigan. The Arizona State game was the team’s best win, but that was lead by the defense.

To me this means: it is the competition.

The offensive line: is struggling. They don’t give the quarterbacks time to throw and they don’t open holes…at least they didn’t until Illinois went to a “hurry up”. I wonder if this is the result of a bad blocking scheme, a lack of execution of the scheme (inexperience?) or the athletes getting overwhelmed. I don’t know enough to draw an accurate conclusion; I do know that there aren’t many holes and that both Illini quarterbacks are under constant pressure.

ND-Maryland

I listened to much of this game on the drive back and saw some at the end.

Maryland is not playing especially well at the moment but this was still a nice win for the Irish. Note: the Irish have gone to weird helmets, rock music and are pushing for more things. This is probably a step in the right direction.

Yeah, I heard about “tradition” but let’s face it: what is now tradition was an innovation at one time. And let’s remember that Knute Rockney was a great innovator; in fact he probably would have lead the way with these reforms.

SMU-Navy
(photos from here)

Navy got out to a 24-10 lead and held on to beat SMU 24-17. Remember that the Ponies beat TCU earlier this year; this was a nice win for Navy. President Bush attended this game.

UT-Missouri
UT didn’t have a good offensive performance and only scored 5 points against a mediocre Missouri team. Texas can gash a bad defense though.

Books on evolution, jobs for veterans and demotivational posters

Books on Evolution

Larry Moran (biochemist) has compiled a short list of books on evolution:

There have been lots of new books about evolution in the past decade or so. I tend to divide them into three categories:

1. The Standard View: These are books that basically support the Modern Synthesis with some small tweaks here and there. They do not advocate major shifts in the way we look at evolution. Books by Richard Dawkins (The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution), Jerry Coyne (Why Evolution Is True), Sean B. Carroll (Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom, The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution), and Ken Miller (Only a Theory) fall into this category.
2. The New View: Some books make the case for a new way of looking at evolution. I’ll call it the “New View.” Many of Stephen Jay Gould’s books fall into this category (The Structure of Evolutionary Theory). He refers to it as extending the modern synthesis. Most of the “extension” is based on a pluralist, rather than an adaptationist approach but other modifications are important. Two recent books by Michael Lynch (Origins of Genome Architecture) and Eugene Koonin (The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution) fall into this category. It’s a view that I share.
3. The Radical View: Some books advocate a more-or-less complete overthrow of the Modern Synthesis, replacing it with the author’s pet theory. Examples are: Marc Kirschner, and John Gerhart (The Plausibility of Life: Resolving Darwin’s Dilemma), James Shapiro (Evolution: A View from the 21st Century), Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan (Acquiring Genomes: A Theory Of the Origin Of Species), Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müllerand (editors) (Evolution – the Extended Synthesis), many others.

This is something to check out if you are shopping.

President Obama’s weekly address

Social/Education
Do you have thoughts on this picture?

I got this from here.

I think that one’s reaction is a product of one’s life experiences. My wife didn’t like this at all; she saw the “women are dumb” aspect. Personally, I saw this as a generic cry of anguish that I know that I get when I get stuck or frustrated.

But I can see how others might see this differently.

Windy Illinois

How windy was it this morning? I walked 8 miles on a flat course; the first 1.05 miles out was 15 minutes; the same 1.05 mile back was 13:10; same effort in each case.

But it was a nice 8 mile walk on a surprisingly warm day. Lots of sunshine and leaves.