arrogance is not a feature

See if you can spot Upchurch in his bucket hat | my phone

There’s a Kryk article in the 2011 HTTV about how Nebraska and Notre Dame spent much of the first bit of the 20th century beating down the doors to the Big then-Nine (actually nine). In the days when everyone had to travel by train, Lincoln was WEST man. As for Notre Dame, they were well within the conference footprint, but far outside the preppy conference’s idea of a fit. Said Kryk:

“[Expanding beyond nine members] wasn’t the biggest reason for keeping Notre Dame out. Academic snobbery was, followed closely by religious prejudice. The Big Nine was run by academic elitists, and they viewed the education provided by religious institutions of higher learning such as Notre Dame as purely second-rate.”

If you know your University of Michigan history, you’ll remember James Burill Angell’s biggest battles with regents and the rest of the brass were around his hiring Catholic  faculty and saying nice things about papists. It’s a little snapshot of the prevailing prejudices of the day, and the genesis of the Notre Dame psyche.

You’ll also know that from these early days we too were arrogant enough to go it independent for a time. But while Michigan evolved toward benchmarks of greatness that involve our in-conference rivalries, Notre Dame’s established themselves as a fearless lone wolf. It’s why we balk when our chief rival is moved to another division, while they see nothing untoward about canceling the Michigan series to guarantee one West Coast game per year.

Fast forward a century with plenty of independent glory and this is what we hath wrought: a group of exceptionalists who are in many ways truly exceptional. Like how a mountain range of new or recently renovated megaliths spring out of an industrial Northern Indiana town. Like how in this craven era they can play on dirt and grass in an 80,000 seat bowl with no jumbotrons, no bad seats, and overlooked by a great big mural of religious figure who may be praying, may be calling touchdown, or may be exclaiming “Oy vey.” And yet they will also exclaim six times, with Michigan in attendance, that their fight song is the greatest. They will mike their band and have them drown out the visitors’ whenever our guys strike up. They’ll blare pump-up music deep into the opponent’s snap count on 3rd downs. And they’ll scoff at our 100-years-late invitation to finally sign on as half-members of the Virginia and Duke conference, keep the extra home game of this now odd-numbered series, and then tell Yost’s team to go screw.

Calling them arrogant when we’re the school that shows up to other stadiums with a trailer painted all over with the message “mine’s bigger” is pot-kettle-ish. They are the hot chick, and we can’t have them anymore. Cue the diaries of Notre longing. Start with conference realignment at the end game as oakapple, rehashes the four axioms that drive college football relationships. Then DanRareEgg reminisces over the latest series that spanned, with a few two-year hiatuses, from Dan Devine to Denard’s derps. Big Will the Gazelle thinks canning the Michigan rivalry to keep MSU and Purdue is a departure from the “We’ll play anybody, any time” ethos that built the ND brand. And if you’re really not ready to let go, here’s k.o.k.Law with a present tense poetic retelling of his ‘06 experience.

Let’s do THE JUMP here, and rejoin for the weeklies and the best of the board.

YOU TOO CAN OPEN YOUR MOUTH IN PUBLIC WITHOUT GETTING PEOPLE MAD

NOT YOU

Don't. This is the easiest and best way to go about it. What does everyone think of David Baas? Exactly. We think David Baas won the Rimington award. We do not think he has some weird grudge against his younger doppleganger or is Joe Morgan.

If you have to, do not say anything about Denard. Nothing you can say about Denard will meet the standards of the Michigan fanbase, which thinks he is made of rainbows and sweetness and light and will brook not even the slightest criticism. For instance, saying…

You looked fantastic for five games against nobody. That's what you did.

…as a way to "blast college athletes' sense of entitlement" is taking a cheapshot at a guy playing opposite the worst defense in the history of man. Many people will make the internet annoying for a day until the next outrage.

More importantly, it's inane because Denard is the least entitled athlete at Michigan in a very long time. We get it: you hated Rich Rodriguez to the point where you'll roll your eyes at Denard Robinson. You can stop it now.

If you do say something about Denard, at least own up to it. Desmond Howard's response to this was to claim his comment was about "fans and the media," and while the fuller context of the quote does soften it somewhat it mostly emphasizes how bizarrely inappropriate it is to grab Denard Robinson of all people as a "perfect example" of entitled kids.

I mean, it's not like there's anyone else in Michigan's recent past that fits that bill slightly better—

If you have successfully piloted your speaking away from Denard, don't imply the kids currently on the team are lazy and soft. This is called "projection," a malady that often befalls middle-aged men past their glory days. The people on the team have worked very hard for little reward because there are a lot of people who aren't on the team for various reasons. So when you say the effort was "lacking" or Michigan "toughness" is back you are telling Ryan Van Bergen, who can stuff your desk-job-having ass in a can, that he's failing you.

This isn't very nice. Also, the opposite is in fact the case.

If you have managed to not talk crap about the players, you are most of the way home. Congratulations! Now you've only got three topics left:

• Rich Rodriguez is the devil. Accurate! So very accurate. But also played out. Everyone in the room will be envisioning you beating on a dead man. How did that go in the last season of The Wire? You didn't watch The Wire? You only read Rudyard Kipling books? Well, let me tell you: not so good. Also it was biting dead people but telling you that is pointless until David Simon writes a book of illustrated allegories featuring animals. How hard would I buy this book? So, so hard. I digress.
• Shuffling the fullback so you can run a power play at a defense that knows what's coming but is powerless to stop you is the only way to play football. Also very, very true but so obvious in the aftermath of Rodriguez being the devil that it hardly bears mentioning. You are trying to bring the Wisdom Of The Michigan Program to the public, but the public already knows that part in its bones. Fooling people is for communists. The wages of spread are turnovers.
• Brady Hoke is a cuddly bear-god who you, 6'9" high school tackle Zach Banner, should definitely play for. Now we are talking. This is a matter that the public is uncertain about—just look around here a few months ago—and Zach Banner is definitely uncertain about, being one of the few high school players in the country who has not leapt to play for our magic-poopin' cuddly bear-god. This is a topic of major interest amongst laymen and scholars and may result in honorary degrees from prestigious institutions if expounded upon at sufficiently withering, recruit-ensnaring length. Bonus points(!) awarded for pointed contrasts with Jim Tressel.

Escuche y repita. Like last year's Ohio State season, the last three years never happened. They are the Godfather III, the lying-newspaper-guy plot from The Wire, the Brian Ellerbe era… right… forgot. Kipling. Forget this bit.

Remember: the last three years never happened and therefore cannot be commented on BRADY HOKE MAGIC POOPING BEAR GOD SAY IT DO IT NOTHING ELSE

SPECIAL BO-ERA DUDE ADDENDUM: it is not racist that Corwin Brown was not hired by Michigan and you should stop saying that because it's not helping Corwin Brown any.

 
soak it in

This week in limited concessions to SEO. So it turns out Esquire googled AJ Daulerio and found this site's bluntly titled piece on him in the aftermath of the ESPN sex tantrum that outed some woman no one had ever heard of for dating some guy no one had ever heard of. They quoted me, so score. That makes me essentially Tom Brady. If I was not getting married in five months this might have had some utility.

I unsubscribed from Deadspin's feed a while ago when they removed full feeds because there was too much junk to wade through just to get to "Dead Wrestler of the Week" or Tommy Craggs writing something long, so I've lost track of what's going on with athlete dongs. Apparently this is:

The topic turned to a video Deadspin had posted of a drunk girl having sex in a bathroom stall at a sports bar in Bloomington, Indiana.  After a few days of trading emails with the girl, who was begging to have the video taken down, he refused to take it down.  Then the girl's father contacted Daulerio to let him know "You gotta understand, I've just been dealing with watching my daughter get f---ed in a pile of piss for the past two days."

So, awesome. We've moved beyond the thin veneer of "making ESPN acknowledge its sexism" or "Josh Hamilton is a hypocrite" or "Brett Favre is someone you've heard of" and we're just randomly holding up unfortunate young women not connected to sports in any way for internet leers. At least no one's pretending anymore. Except of course Daulerio is, so here's Tom Fornelli ripping him for it.

We'll always have Notre Dame. Tate Forcier transferred, completing his destiny. He used Twitter to make his announcement. It's sad and obviously omits "class" when it talks about the various places he worked hard. In retrospect it's all just so obvious. Homeschooling, yo. It either turns you into Tim Tebow or… not Tim Tebow.

This was cosmically ordained. Now Tate Forcier is the avatar of the Rodriguez era: high expectations, fun here and there, eventual letdown, premature termination. I'll miss the moxie. In memoriam:

BONUS INCEST SPECULATION: I wonder if he'll end up at San Diego State? He's from San Diego. He has a redshirt year, and SDSU's QB graduates after 2011. Those Montana rumors from earlier now have a lot of credence, but if he's willing to sit out a year home seems like an attractive option.

This is hard, veteran fluff. Mattison is saying some awfully nice things about Brady Hoke:

"When Brady got the job (at Michigan last Tuesday), I said to myself, 'If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this with Brady,'" Mattison said. "I wouldn't have gone to any other college team. I wouldn't have changed what I was doing for anybody but Brady.

And you can't have a defensive coordinator hire without the magic word:

"You put the best front and the best coverage out there, and the intention is to be aggressive," Mattison said.

Jarrett Irons also says Mattison is a "helluva" recruiter.

Speaking of recruiting, not to be, like, you know but… Michigan has eight coaches. Seven are white and one is Fred Jackson. Most are old, and even the young-ish ones look like old white guys spiritually. This 1) is bad, 2) looks bad, and 3) can be offset if the last two guys are "energetic recruiters" in the same way Zack Novak is "heady."

If Vincent Smith is having problems I'm not sure he's got anyone he can talk to with any clue what it's like to be a poor black kid:

I am sorry to hear your troubles. In these times I always turn to the advice of Robert Goulet.

The only thing separating this staff from your local realtor is Mark Smith's terror at being photographed. For a lot of reasons, we need some people on staff who know who Waka Flocka Flame is. (No points awarded for knowing of the existence of a "Small Wayne.")

I've heard the last two assistants are likely to be guys without ties to Michigan but there's a guy out there who seems like a natural fit: Corwin Brown. He's a secondary coach, and Michigan needs a secondary coach. He's currently with the Patriots but his role one of those assistant (to the) position coach roles the NFL invented to give anyone who gets fired a job. He's probably not making an exorbitant amount of money.

Brown wasn't a good defensive coordinator but ND defensive backs developed pretty well under his guidance and he was a monster recruiter for them. Since I have mentioned him as a plausible candidate there's no way he gets hired, but the fit seems obvious.

The DL coach, meanwhile, can barely know what a defensive line is since Hoke and Mattison are on staff and should only touch down in Ann Arbor to drop off signed LOIs. Beyonce for DL coach?

[Side note on yesterday's post on Mattison: the 12.1 PPG number I cited isn't right. It was around 17 points per game. Oddly, I got this erroneous info from M's own database, which said opponents scored 157 points in '95.]

All tapes have not been erased. If you're wondering, there will not be a Gator Bowl UFR because what's the point? I do have the Utah-SDSU game from this year and I'll do the offense from that game after Signing Day. I might pull some Picture Pages from the defense if I can find something that illuminates the difference between Greg Robinson running a 3-3-5 he doesn't understand and Rocky Long running the D he invented, too.

But anyway someone did bother to look at the tape of Michigan's bowl demolition. Here's Craig Roh playing DT on first and goal:

This would be a seven-yard touchdown up the gut. Surprise. That play features errors by Mouton, Demens, and Kovacs and is yet another item to add to the pile of reasons Greg Robinson was a bad idea.

Not a feature. I'm arrogant. I know this for a lot of reasons but there's a statistic to back it up: the Michigan version of quiz bowl (a dynasty, BTW) held intramural tournaments occasionally and my first couple years in college I played in them. They kept extensive stats, and I was in the top five in correct answers. I was number one by a mile in incorrect answers*. Arrogance is not a feature, it's a bug.

There's a response to my post about Will Smith and robots and Michigan's hidebound image of itself on Maize 'n' Brew that "loves" the arrogance of Michigan fandom that I can't disagree more with. Arrogant fans are above all unpleasant to be around, no matter if they're on your side or not. When I was in Chicago for Blogs With Balls there was barhopping wherein I hung out with various Chicago based bloggers. One was Brian Stouffer of House Rock Built. I'm not sure who the other was. Stouffer's a really nice guy. The other guy was ND Nation in the flesh, a guy who actually brought up the African-American grad rate canard in a conversation with a stranger he'd just met. That sort of clueless insecurity is arrogance.

Also, this:

We are an arrogant program, and I am an arrogant fan.  I don't argue with Brian's awareness of the arrogance, but I think there's more to it than that.  He's right - "certain outsiders" can't really teach me, or many of us, anything.  Yes, many of the things rivals say about Michigan are true.  And yes, our bowl game opponents and OOC opponents will say Michigan just "lines up and comes after you" because that's what Michigan does.  Sure, we haven't won a majority of those games (even in the past thirty or so years, Michigan's bowl record isn't fantastic) but the formula works.

Is this:

Ned Flanders: Pardon me, neighbourinos. Some of our boys are lost in your town. You wouldn't have happened to see them, by any chance?
Shelbyville Guy #1: Sounds like Springfield's got a discipline problem.
Shelbyville Guy #2: Maybe that's why we beat them at football nearly half the time.

The post is neatly summarized by Shelbyville Guy #2. This is not so good.

*(Which cost five points if offered before the question was over.)

Etc.: Kellen Jones reconfirms commitment, if you missed it in yesterday's recruiting post. Oversigning picks up steam as a media concept. JMFJ on JMFJ. Holdin' the Rope on the early days of Hoke—boy, is that blog name going to be one to explain in a few years.