never again please

Dude. Larry. We have to talk:

Coming off a 2-27 season, the Bulldogs will play at Michigan at Crisler Center on Thursday, Dec. 21, according to a contract for the game obtained by MLive. U-M will pay Alabama A&M a guarantee of $95,000 for making the trip. Coach Willie Hayes' team finished No. 351 out of 351 teams in both the RPI and Kenpom's efficiency ranking in 2016-17. Its lone wins came over Mississippi Valley State (344) and Prairie View A&M (313). The Bulldogs finished last in the Southwestern Athletic Conference.

This is literally the worst possible game Michigan can schedule. Not only is it an offensive blowout in the making the likes of the Delaware State football game, it is poison to Michigan's RPI. Any SWAC team is an anchor; the worst SWAC team is even more so. A win against a team like Alabama A&M hurts your RPI. It would be better to simply not play that game.

Compounding matters:

John Beilein has previously indicated that there's a chance Michigan will not play a 31-game slate. He told reporters at the NBA Draft Combine that due to a condensed schedule -- the result of two Big Ten games being moved to early December and the conference tournament being moved a week earlier to Feb. 28-March 4 -- he will not shoehorn in an ill-advised game simply to get to 31.

You're not even going to play a full schedule because of Jim Delany! If you've opened the door to not playing games, this is the game you do not play. Nobody buying a season ticket is going to miss it. You are actively harming your RPI by playing it. An intrasquad scrimmage would be better preparation for the rest of the season. There is literally no reason to do this. And yet. Here we are.

I wrote about how to make your schedule pretty five years ago. (Not coincidentally, Alabama A&M was on the schedule that year as well.) Find high-win teams from lower leagues who you have a 98% chance of beating instead of a 99% chance. This has a material impact on your NCAA seedings, as this year's tournament amply demonstrated. A patently undeserving Minnesota got a five-seed this year because they paid attention to the RPI's flaws:

MN is a 5 because their NCSOS is 27. It is 27 because MN played the following 20 win luminaries. — mgoblog (@mgoblog) March 12, 2017

They don't have boat anchors like Maryland-ES, Kenesaw State, Howard, and Central Arkansas. — mgoblog (@mgoblog) March 12, 2017

That and that alone was why Minnesota got a 5 seed and Wisconsin, which had a superior resume by any measure that was not an archaic and barely-tuned formula, got an 8. This matters, and every year Michigan plays two to four of the worst teams in the country. You're killing your father, Larry.