The talk is motivated by the „generational phenomena” that occur in the representation theory of algebraic groups in positive characteristics. The representation theory of quantum groups is known to provide a first step approximation to modular representations. Lusztig was the first to suggest that there should be „algebraic structures” that provide further steps towards modular representations beyond quantum groups. None of these structures are known today, even though some candidates have been suggested by several authors. In the talk I want to motivate the generational idea and then introduce a model category that makes the proximity of modular and quantum representations quite transparent. Using this category I want to show that the generational problem seems to be closely connected to finding generalizations of binomial coefficients.