Huzzah! Yay fall sports!

Hey kids.... it's that time again, as can be seen by all the similar posts below about high school football games and whatnot. Well dare to be different I say--I refuse to make my post about high school football. Even though I probably should, because I'm the writer that covers the team with Joe Boisture.

Instead I'd prefer to talk about college football, because in all honesty I care about it more. And I know many of you do, too. Namely, what is going to happen to UofM football this season, and will Michigan State thump us? These are the questions I want answered, and all of us are hoping will go our way. Well I'd put my money on Nick Sheridan starting against Western Michigan and Tate Forcier trading off starter position with Denard Robinson by the end of the season.

I mean let's be honest, Forcier and Robinson are little guys compared to Sheridan, which is really kind of scary when you think about how unimpressive Sheridan's size is... or at least, before he put on almost 30 pounds. Sheridan is now a 6'1" 210 pound player. Forcier and Robinson are both about 180.

I also predict that this will not be the magic year. It just won't. I know everyone is hoping and praying for a two-year turnaround by new coach Rodriguez. But it's not going to happen. Yeah, I know OSU did it, and USC did it. But I don't care. We just didn't have the recruiting last year, and we don't have the size. Last year we went 3-9. This year I'm predicting we go 8-4 or 7-5, based on my swing game. Below are my picks for this season's schedule.... which, let's be honest, has the FLUFFIEST start-up ever...

Western Michigan (W)
Notre Dame (W)
Eastern Michigan (W)
Indiana (W)
@ Michigan State (W) **
@ Iowa (L)
Delaware State (W)
Penn State (L)
@ Illinois (L)
Purdue (W)
@ Wisconsin (W)
Ohio State (L)

The Michigan State game is my swing game... I had to pick that we'd win because I hate Spartans (Sorry, Don). But I feel like the momentum we'll have from our first four games will either be really good practice or a retroactive confidence booster. I'm afraid that when we meet state we won't know what hit us, because of the talent differential between the Spartans and teams like Western/Eastern/etc. On the other hand, playing teams like that has its uses, and there really should be no way the kinks aren't worked out by the time we travel to East Lansing. So we'll see...

As far as Iowa goes... every time has to have their melt down. I think after playing state, we'll be mentally drained, and we'll lose our ground. But we'll pick it back up with a confidence booster against Delaware State.

I picked several Big 10 losses because I think we don't have our stuff together yet this year. And regardless of how we start, I think we'll struggle from our lack of depth... and whether I like it or not, I think we need more time before we can confidently predict wins against teams like Illinois.

I did, however, pick a win over Wisconsin... mainly because if we managed to beat them during last year's meltdown, we can probably manage to do it again. But Ohio State is a wash... so don't make me cry by bringing it up.

So that's that.... hopefully things go as planned, or that maybe even the Wolverines are capable of surprising me. Please, please surprise me.