Indiana Links: Preview, The Podcast, FFFF Offense (chart), FFFF Defense (chart). Something's been missing from Michigan gamedays since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one… something like Punt-Counterpunt. PUNT By Bryan MacKenzie@Bry_Mac Like most born-and-raised Michiganders, I grew up a Detroit Lions fan. Back there and back then, it was kind of like the idea of having a smoking section in a restaurant or putting CFCs in breakfast cereal. Maybe not GREAT for you, but certainly nothing that would cause serious long-term problems. I was nine in 1991 when the Lions made the NFC Championship Game, part of a stretch where the Lions made the playoffs six times in a nine year stretch. It seemed harmless. Eventually the true physical and emotional toll of Lions fandom became clear, but by then I was hooked. But at some point in the late ‘aughts, when Michigan was adrift under either RichRod and Brady Hoke—those years blend into a morass of ‘oh right that happened’—I decided that enough was enough. I couldn’t put mental energy into Michigan on a Saturday AND the Lions on a Sunday. It wasn’t healthy, and I didn’t enjoy it. And I made an active decision to emotionally divest from the Lions. Tell me about your childhood… It was, and remains, a freeing feeling. Once the final whistle blows in the Michigan game, my emotional football load is lifted. But now, because I don’t have the kind of burning, seething, all-encompassing focus on what every snap of every game means for my favorite team, I’ve become the kind of casual generic fan that I can barely comprehend when I think of college football. In fact, I’ve become the worst kind of fan: The Fantasy Football Fan. [After THE JUMP: Snowmaglobin.]