brady hoke is henry v

What about this do you think can be saved? [Glanzman]

Ace: There's a very good chance this is moot after a beatdown this weekend, so it's now or never for this question. If you ran the athletic department, is there anything Brady Hoke could do the rest of this season that would convince you to keep him around for another year? If so, what would he have to accomplish over the rest of the year?

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BiSB: There is absolutely room for Brady Hoke to save his job. And it absolutely won't happen.

People get WAY too caught up in wins and losses. Devin Funchess was right: wins are just a statistic. Any time a coach is on the "hot seat," the offseason features constant and breathless blathering about "how many wins Coach X needs to keep his job," as if win totals by themselves tell us everything. Hoke's problem isn't that Michigan is 3-4. The problem isn't that Michigan has lost 10 of its last 15. The problem is that Michigan has been bad at football. The records are merely a symptom of being bad at football. You look at the guy trailing by 10 meters at the halfway point of a 100 meter dash, you don't say to yourself "he's going to lose because he has too much ground to make up." You say "he's going to lose because he isn't as fast as the other guys."

And that is why Brady Hoke will not keep his job. The football team he has assembled is not good, and has shown no signs of improvement over the last four years. Some people got excited last week because "a win is a win," and ignored the fact that Michigan displayed plenty of the same crippling weaknesses that have led it here. At some point, as they say, "you are who you are." The flaws with this team are not small, technical issues. They have deep, fundamental, systematic problems. They can't block. They can't get open. They flat-out can't play the coverage scheme they have been trying to play. They can't... uh... score points. Their special teams, as a whole, are bad. Michigan is just bad.

You don't throw away a coach who is moving in the right direction because he took momentary detour into Derpville. If Hoke can turn this team into the kind of team that can beat Michigan State and Ohio State and (sigh) Maryland, then sure, why not keep him. But if he could do that, we probably would have seen evidence of it by now.

[After the jump: votes of confidence?]

Trapped in enemy territory, their far smaller band weakened by attrition and fearing the superior recruitment of the unchallengeable and suppressive French, the English cower in fear and mull surrender, but for those bowered by their once mocked, portly, stalwart and heroic monarch. Cloaked as a commoner he walks amongst his men.

NARRATOR: With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty; that every wretch, pining and pale before, beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks; A largess universal, like the sun, His liberal eye doth give to every one, Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all. Behold, as may unworthiness define, A little touch of Harry in the night.

And so our scene must to the battle fly; Where- O for pity!- we shall much disgrace, with four or five most vile and ragged foils, right ill-dispos'd in brawl ridiculous, the name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see, Minding true things by what their mock'ries be.

Enter the KING.

(Hover over the links to see which diary is which)

WESTMORELAND: O that we now had here but nineteen-ninety seven's men of England, that have not eligibility today.
 
KING:

What's he that wishes so? My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin; If we are mark'd to die, we are enough to do our country loss; and if to live, the fewer men recruited, the greater share of honour. God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.

By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost; It yearns me not if men my garments wear; Such outward things dwell not in my desires.

But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive. No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England. God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour as one man more methinks would share from me.

For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more! Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host, That he which hath no stomach to this fight, Let him depart; his passport shall be made, And crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship to die with us.

This day is call'd the feast of Crispian!

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd, and rouse him at the name of football season come again. He that shall live this day, and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, and say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.' Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, and say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'

Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, but he'll remember, with advantages, what feats he did that day. Then shall our names, familiar in his mouth as household words: Brady the King, Shoelace and Omameh, Kovacs and Campbell, Demens and Floyd, Barnum and Schofield and Roundtree, Lewan and Toussaint, Hopkins and Gallon and Mealer, Roh, and Black, and Washington and Morgan, Gordon and Countess and Hagerup and Gibbons and Moore, be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red!

This story shall the good man teach his son; and Opening Weekend shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered--

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile. This day shall gentle his condition, and gentlemen in England now-a-bed shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day!

(Take the jump, or close the wall up with our English dead)