Seventh heaven

Today mark's one year since last New Year's Day, when I watched as Michigan Football ended a disappointing season with a bowl loss to South Carolina, then got over it and posted a bunch of new Mario Manninghams from Sportlots.  That means it's been seven whole years since I spun off this here blog from the original Too Many Grandersons!

I think the calendar rolling over deserves a quick recap of Michigan sports and my collection progress from 2018.

The football team went 10-3 with those 10 straight victories coming after a season-opening loss to CFP semi-finalist Notre Dame.  The Wolverines avenged 2017 losses against Wisconsin, MSU, and Penn State thanks to newfound offensive success that can largely be attributed to transfer QB Shea Patterson.  Unfortunately the team wilted in a beatdown in Columbus, then looked just as flat in the Peach Bowl loss to Florida.  Questions abound for the 2019 team, but lots of returning starters and an outstanding recruiting class could portend good things.

The hockey team, meanwhile, enjoyed a bit more success, losing the conference tourney to Ohio State before edging Northeastern and bombing BU in their NCAA tourney regional, heading to yet another Frozen Four.  Their season ended there with a 4-3 loss to Notre Dame, but it was a vast improvement over the previous year.  Super talented D Quinn Hughes was a big part of that, and I'm anxious to see what he can do this year before heading off to the NHL.

Finally, Michigan Basketball was the toast of Ann Arbor in 2017-18 thanks to a very good regular season that gave way to a conference tourney title that included double-digit wins over Michigan State and Purdue.  In fact, John Beilein's squad swept the Spartans, including another 10-point win in East Lansing.  After an early February loss to Northwestern his guys won 14 straight, only seeing the streak end in the March Madness final against Villanova.  That included the incredible scene immortalized above when a Jordan Poole prayer lifted Michigan to a crazy one-point, buzzer-beating victory over Houston, not to mention a win against the tournament's Cinderella, Loyola-Chicago.

Beilein continues to reward the patience of the athletic department and fans; to add to his already impressive resume of two finals appearances with Michigan, his team went undefeated in this season's 13 non-conference games, two of which were North Carolina and revenge against Villanova.  Who knows what great things April could bring this season?

As for my Michigan PCs, things were less roller coaster and more like a well-oiled machine.  I had 15 trade packages to show off, some of which were actually TMM-specific, so that was great.  The year was a productive one in getting more player collections put together and posted, with more good things on the way this year.  And I hit a big milestone with--what else?--a Mario Manningham card, my 2000th hit from my alma mater.  Besides those heavy hitters I added lots of other cardboard (and more) to those collections, and that also looks to be a trend I'll be able to continue in the new year.

Here's hoping things get even better for Michigan and that 2019 is a happy BLUE year!

Happy New Year and blog birthday! Featuring Too Many Manninghams from Sportlots

Well the season didn't end the way I hoped:  Michigan, up 16 points, made too many mistakes against a South Carolina team that switched roles with the Wolverines in the second half.  Just like five years ago this campaign ends with a heartbreaking bowl loss and a negative outlook towards next season...for now.

But you won't see any insipid hot takes over here.  Over the last couple years I've learned to let disappointment and negativity go when it comes to sports, and I feel better as a result even when things don't go my teams' way.  Instead I'm proud of what this team did and I eagerly await the 2018 season and what it could bring.

Speaking of 2018, today is the sixth anniversary of this here blog, one I started because my collecting interests skew heavily towards my alma mater.  Six years later it looks like a good decision: TMM is at about 100 fewer posts than TMV, and the latter had about a 16-month head start!  Happily I feel like I've found a nice balance by shifting my Michigan-related baseball PCs to the senior blog while this one mostly features football and the other big sports.

So in honor of another college football season in the books, another year of this here blog's existence, and a certain "Super" namesake, here's a bunch of Mario Manninghams from Sportlots (but not too many!):

The first scan starts off on a high note with a pair of Michigan uni cards from 2008 Press Pass and 2010 Sweet Spot.  I bought a box of Sweet Spot way back when it came out but never finished the set, but fortunately I've since added a few of the Wolverines from the nice looking product.

The other 2010 entrant is card #2 in the group, a base from Prestige on a design I don't care for as much as I usually do.

Then we have six appearances from 2011, leaning heavily towards Panini brands.  First up is the forgettable Adrenalyn XL, a weird game-type set that's just not that great.  After that we get a much better trio in Certified, Donruss Elite, and Finest before finishing up with Panini's Gridiron Gear and Prestige once again.

Today's other scan begins with one more trio of 2011s:  Panini's Rookies and Stars plus its Longevity base set version (as opposed to the parallel insert) and the usual solid effort from Score.  Down the middle is a Topps run of Prime Retail and its Blue parallel plus the Retail version of Strata (and whatever the hell is supposed to be going on in the background).

A horizontal base from Panini's 2011 Threads is a nice way to end things with a cool design plus one more look at Manningham with the Giants, the team for which he's best known.

These 16 new Manninghams give his PC a new count of 168, once again letting me start this year of collecting on a positive note.  And if you like seeing his cards posted here, just wait until I get to my Black Friday COMC haul, which was very Mario-friendly!  Until then, watch for a few more Sportlots posts over here in addition to the ones I've been running on TMV.  And while you're at it, please keep sending me any Manninghams you have--I just can't get enough!

2015 Michigan gameday #13: vs. Florida

mgoblue.com

Happy new year, everyone!  January 1 is not just a day of celebrating flipping the calendar over to another year--it's also the day when I commemorate another new beginning:  the inception of this here blog!  It was four years ago today that I spun off this new blog from TMV to highlight all things Michigan, and somehow I'm still going strong.  Thank you to everyone who follows, reads, comments, and sends me more Wolverines cards to feed my addiction!

With that out of the way, there's more business to get to.  The Wolverines have made it back into a bowl game, and better yet they're playing on New Year's Day, the traditional and best day for bowl games.  Michigan's 9-3 record has earned them a matchup in the Citrus Bowl against 10-3 Florida, a game that looks pretty even on paper thanks to each team's excellent defense.

Of course I still have happy memories of the last time these two played, eight years ago in the Capital One Bowl.  In Lloyd Carr's final game as Michigan's head coach, the Wolverines stunned everyone by coming out in a spread offense and putting up 41 points to Florida's 35, defeating the heavily-favored Gators led by Tim Tebow and Urban Meyer.  It was the last hurrah for my favorite draft class, helmed by Chad Henne, Mike Hart, Mario Manningham, Jake Long, Adrian Arrington, and others.

The Wolverines are favored by four points today, but as we all know by now that doesn't mean anything.  I hope our seniors, including grad transfer QB Jake Rudock, get to go out as winners and bring first-year coach Jim Harbaugh a bowl victory to put a nice bow on an unexpectedly resurgent season.  Let's start 2016 on a high note and ride that momentum to a top recruiting class and an even better season this fall!

LET'S GO BLUE!

 

Happy 2014, or, out with the old and in with the Blue!

I took care of recapping 2013 and my main 2014 expectations over on the other blog, but decided I had some good stuff to cover here as well.

But first, a celebration is in order as today is this here blog's second birthday!

Two years ago today I posted some crap, and here we are, 319 posts later.  I don't think I make too much of a secret that this is my favorite of the two blogs as my Michigan fandom trumps all else, even though it means a smaller audience than TMV.  Doesn't matter to me, though, I still have tons of fun posting here!

Ok, onwards to...looking backwards.

2013:

Last year was a mixed bag for Michigan.  The football team stumbled to a 7-6 finish and has a lot of work to do on playcalling and much, much more.  The hockey team missed the NCAAs for the first time in pretty much forever.  Still, UM basketball Cinderella-ed itself to a fairly close loss in the final, giving Wolverines fans plenty to cheer about!

Things were much rosier when it came to my collection.  As I said on TMV today, I've still got a ton of stuff I need to scan and post in terms of 2013 purchases, but I still met every one of my Michigan PC goals easily:

• Baseball:  200 (actual as of 1/1:  243)
• Football:  750 (759)
• Unique football PC subjects:  100 (124)
• Hockey:  75 (112)
• Overall:  1100 (1139)

I also put a ton of work into existing and brand new player collections, mostly from baseball.  I'm currently collecting 28 former Wolverines, and of those, I'm working on pursuing 20 to completion--at least, my definition of completion.  I'm also excited to announce right now that at least three more players will join that count before long.  You can hit the Player Collections link to see who's there right now, and if you haven't already, take a gander at the "Many More Michigan Men" posts I've written up for most of the new guys; from those players, Barry Larkin (who's actually an existing collection, but whatever) remains, and I'll get to him very soon.

Thanks to focusing an increased amount of attention on those collections this year (and a bit less on hits from the other sports), I managed to complete Matt Miller's non-1/1s, and as I teased on TMV, I actually managed to score the remaining cards for a couple other guys, which I'll be posting soon.

Meanwhile, the following PCs are now at 50% or above:  Jason Christian, Jake Fox, Chris Getz, Rich Hill, Bobby Korecky, Ryan LaMarre, Rick Leach, David Parrish, Zach Putnam, J.J. Putz, Clayton Richard, Bobby Scales, and Geoff Zahn.

Some of my favorite 2013 additions from all PCs included:

The cards that allowed me to complete these three nameplates

This '08 Triple Threads White Whale auto, my second of Hill

This beautiful Jim Abbott manupatch auto

This Barry Larkin 8x10 courtesy of Play at the Plate

These Absolute Memorabilia Signing Bonus plaques of Anthony Thomas and David Terrell (which I still need to hang!)

This sick triple UM CB relic from Enough Already!

And my first of (hopefully) many Denard Michigan uni autos

Meanwhile, on the trade front, I received new stuff from 25 different trade packages.  A crazy TEN of those came from one person:  crazy Canadian card connoisseur Doug from Sports Cards From the Dollar Store!  Thank you once again to everyone who contributed to my collection last year, and I look forward to dealing with many of you (and more!) in 2014.

2014:

So what's in store for this year?  Milestones and projects, baby.  Among the things I can look forward to in 2014, I'll likely see the following:

• My 250th Michigan Baseball hit, and very likely #300
• My 100th Rich Hill hit, which, just to reiterate, would be ONE HUNDRED HITS OF RICH HILL
• My 800th football hit and beyond
• Football milestones reached, such as
• 70:  Jake Long
• 50:  Mike Hart
• 40:  Adrian Arrington, Jason Avant, Mario Manningham
• 30:  Leon Hall
• 20:  Brandon Graham and David Harris
• 150 hockey hits and beyond (hell, probably 200, unless Doug runs out of money to ship cards)
• 1200 all-sport hits and counting
• Several player collections completed

And here's what I'll be working on all year:

• Those player collections.  As always, my #1 priority is Rich Hill, but as those are getting tougher to find, I'll spread the love to the rest of the group

• Nameplates.  I've got a few others in the works and can't wait to show them off when they're done.

• Michigan TK Legacy M Go Blue autos.  It's a large set but I'm up for the task of adding so many new names to my collection.  In fact, I scored a bunch in late December that I'm looking forward to posting as soon as I can get to them.

And of course I'll be doing the usual random collecting and trading like the rest of the known world.  Please join me in making 2014 a happy BLUE year!

Michigan gameday #13: vs. South Carolina, plus, happy birthday and happy new year!

Before I get to the gameday portion of this post, there's a couple things I need to take care of first.

To start with, HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY!  I hope everyone has a safe, productive, and happy 2013, and that each one of you has another great year of blogging and collecting.  Thanks again to all of you who make this hobby fun and rewarding.

No, I didn't mean to insert a "Happy birthday" GIF here--it's time for some Alison Brie!

Next, it's time to celebrate a birthday that's pretty easy for me to remember since it falls on the first day of each year:  today is the one-year anniversary of the creation of this here blog!  A year ago today I finally took the plunge and spun off the Michigan collecting-centric portion of my blogging after thinking about doing so for a couple months.  One year later, I'm definitely happy with the results.  First, I'm no longer annoying the hell out of the mostly baseball-heavy followers of TMV.  Second, I've been thankful for the small following of readers who appreciate some of the posts I've written here, most of which cover additions to my growing Michigan sports PCs.

I have no plans of stopping anytime soon either thanks to the support of readers like you.  I'm also thankful for my co-author, Jeff, who's provided some quality content himself, and made sure at times that this blog had more than one post per week.  It's great to have another voice that's just as passionate about Michigan sports and collecting as I am, and I hope that partnership continues into 2013.  On a related note, if any other collectors would like the opportunity to chime in with some guest posts this year, please let me know and I'll see what we can do!

So thanks again to all of you who have made this second blog project of mine, one that covers a school and hobby near and dear to my heart, worth it.  Here's to a 2013 of great collecting and blogging!

Alright, with all that out of the way, it's time to get down to business.  Even as I write this post, Michigan and South Carolina are both in Tampa, Florida preparing to square off at 1 pm EST in the Outback Bowl.  #18 Michigan finished the regular season 8-4, a bit of a letdown after a fantastic 2011, but the Wolverines look to finish strong against yet another SEC bowl opponent in enemy territory.  #10 South Carolina ended the year at 10-2 with its only losses at the hands of good LSU and Florida squads.

This will be only the third all-time meeting between the teams, and that's one feature of bowl games that I can certainly appreciate.  Consider this one the rubber match as the teams have split the series to-date.  It will be interesting to see how the Wolverine offense continues to grow with underclassman Devin Gardner at the helm due to Denard Robinson's lingering injury issues.  "Shoelace" will be Michigan's wild-card, however, as he could appear at pretty much any position on the field at this point, including rumors of kick return duties.  The Wolverines will need all the help they can get against a talented SC squad highlighted by stud DE Jadeveon Clowney, who's simply been a sack machine and TFL wiz for the Gamecocks.

For myself and my fellow Wolverines fans, here's hoping that Brady Hoke and Denard Robinson have some of the magic of last year up their sleeve as they battle the myth of total SEC superiority.  LET'S GO BLUE!