Bill Simmons had a fun warmup to this year’s NFL season in which he provided a handful of funny insights.  Included among them was the below take on why it sucks to attend an NFL game live, something with which I’m in total agreement.

Prediction VI: Blackouts of home games will become the signature media story of the 2009 season. You’ll hear way too much about it. Here’s my take: This isn’t about the economy. It’s about the fact that it’s more fun to stay home and watch football than it is to sit in crappy seats to watch any team ranging from “lousy” to “mediocre.” It just is. For many fan bases, here are the two choices every Sunday:

Door No. 1 (more expensive): Traffic, parking, long walk to stadium, lousy seats, lifeless state-of-the-art arena, TV timeouts, dead crowds, drunk/bitter fans, more TV timeouts, hiked-up concession prices, PDAs with jammed signals as you’re searching for scores, even more TV timeouts, long walk to car, even more traffic.

Door No. 2 (less expensive): Sofa, NFL package, HD, fantasy scores online, remote control toggling, gambling, access to scores, seven straight hours of football, cell phone calls, beer and food in fridge, no traffic.

I can see going through Door No. 1 once a year just to remind yourself that going to an NFL game sucks. But eight times a year? Unless you had good seats, or unless this was your only excuse to get out of your house and get plastered, why would you? It’s a blue-collar sport with white-collar ticket prices. This blackout trend would have happened whether the economy was suffering or not.

Well, so much for that.  My one-game streak of successful prognosticating came to a screeching halt today.  Wow, what a kick in the nuts that game was.  If you would’ve told me that the Irish would put up 490 yards of total offense while scoring 34 points, Jimmy Clausen would throw for 336 yards and 3 touchdowns with no picks, Golden Tate would catch nine passes for 115 yards and two touchdowns, Michael Floyd would go 7-131 and a touch, Armando Allen would rush for 139 yards and a touch, Clausen would not be sacked once, the Irish would go 4-5 in the red zone, and the Irish defense would have ten tackles for loss, two sacks and a pick, I would’ve pretty much guaranteed an Irish victory.  Instead, the Michigan Wolverines managed to make the plays that needed to be made and sent a dejected Irish squad home with a 38-34 loss.

A few observations:

• The Irish should’ve won this game.  They were the better team, hands down.  If they play this game ten times in a row, the Irish take eight out of ten from Michigan.
• This loss is not on Weis or Jimmy.  Though Weis had some questionable calls (particularly down the stretch), I thought he called a great game on balance.  And Jimmy put in yet another superb performance.  He had some rather uncharacteristic misses on a few routes, but he played a smart game and put the ball where it needed to be about 90% of the time.  Plus, he avoided the rush masterfully and went another game with no picks.
• Speaking of Jimmy, his stats so far this year: 651 yards passing, 7 touchdowns, no picks.  By comparison, Colt McCoy has thrown for 654 yards, 5 touchdowns and 2 picks.  Tim Tebow has thrown for 425 yards, 5 touchdowns and no picks.  Jimmy is the real deal and should absolutely be getting some Heisman love this year, though I’m sure he’ll be dinged because his team can’t dig down and pull out tough victories, despite the fact that he does plenty to put his team in a position to win.
• The Irish offense has arrived and is legit top-ten caliber.  The defense, shall we say, is still on its way.  It seems pretty clear that the Irish are going to have to straight up outscore their opponents if they stand a chance of winning this year.
• Hats off to Tate Forcier.  He strikes me as one of those guys who’s totally unlikable, but the dude’s a baller who will be a thorn in the Irish side for the next three years.  Freshman or not, he was a total force this game and the sole reason Michigan pulled off the victory.  And that move on Darius Flemming that left the Irish LB searching for his jock while Tate scrambled 41 yards was sensational.
• Hats off to Dick Rod as well.  He called a smart and opportunistic game for which Jon Tenuta had no answer.  He’s still a Dick, though.
• The glaring weakness of this Irish squad is their run defense.  They simply do not have the size and (surprisingly) speed along the front seven to stop opponents’ rushing attacks.
• I was surprised by how poorly the Irish secondary played.  I guess scrambling QBs end up making higher percentage throws because they’re able to buy time for their wideouts to get open, but I would’ve expected better coverage out of the Irish DBs.  Walls had a brutal game and I have no idea why the coaching staff would prefer McNeil over Blanton.  As one of the team’s true playmakers and a strong tackler, Blanton should be on the field as much as possible.
• Speaking of the secondary, I’m tired of seeing Sergio Brown go all spaghetti-armed and get bounced off of people he’s trying to tackle.  I’d like to see Jamoris Slaughter or Gary Gray get more looks at the nickel back, as they’re both much better tacklers.
• The defensive line is simply not good.  Ethan Johnson is playing way out of position, the Kerry Neal project has been a total failure, Ian Williams pulls off some great disappearing acts, and Kapron Lewis-Moore is playing about a year too early in his progression.  They should move Johnson back to DE, rotate Neal with Lewis-Moore at the other spot, and team Ian Williams up in the middle with Hafis Williams, with both players being spelled by Brandon Newman and Tyler Stockton.  Just put some big bodies in the middle there and hope they can at least occupy some blocks to free up the LBs to make plays.
• Speaking of the LBs, Brian Smith pulled off another disappearing act after talking plenty of smack in the pregame.  This is reminiscent of how he was nowhere to be found last year at BC.  And what’s with starting Manti Te’o and then sitting him for the better part of the game after the first series?  Seriously, WTF?
• The officiating was the worst I’ve seen in a long while.  I hesitate to blame the loss on the zebras, but they did plenty to help Michigan along.  You know how they say a ref could call holding on every play if he wanted to?  Well, they wanted to today, particularly when the Irish had the ball.  Armando Allen gets a TD called back for sniffing the sideline.  Michael Floyd gets pushed down by a DB following a tackle right in front of a referee and gets no flag.  Golden Tate was basically hugged by the Michigan secondary the entire game but only gets one pass interference call.  Just brutal.
• Aside from the penalties (some of the phantom variety), I thought the Irish offensive line did a great job, keeping Jimmy upright most of the game and opening up enough holes for Armando Allen to put up the best game of his career.
• Michael Floyd is a total stud.  He was abusing Boubacar Cissoko the entire game.  The kid got absolutely destroyed by Floyd.  I’m wondering why Weis didn’t keep going to that well.  Each time Jimmy saw Floyd matched up in man-to-man, he should’ve checked out of the play and just thrown Floyd’s way.  That play was money all game long.
• Ben Turk, put away that redshirt and start warming up that leg.

Despite the extraordinary disappointment this game represents, not all hope is lost.  The arrow on the Irish is still pointing up, and if they can find a way to bounce back next week against MSU, then they still have a good shot at finishing the season 10-2.  It’s a bit disconcerting, though, how Weis’ Irish squads don’t seem to have the fortitude to reach down and pull out the tough victories.  Add this game to last year’s UNC, Syracuse and Pitt games as examples where the Irish demonstrated an inability to hunker down and pull off the win when their backs were against the wall.  As it turns out, the incomparable Kirk Herbsteit was right when he predicted before the season started that this game would represent a critical turning point for the Irish.  If they can rally around this heartbreak and pull off a string of victories ahead of the USC visit, then things will turn out just fine for the Irish.  If they don’t, this thing could go off the rails pretty quickly.