the sky is messing up my hair thats how fallen it is

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This Week's Obsession: Can Hoke Save Himself?

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?]

Northwestern Liveblog

BiSB •

When your attempts at Chaos are repeatedly unsuccessful, try deploying some basic counters, which can be found in the Chaos Mitigation Playbook.

Dear Diary, The Worst is Over

Seth •

A whole lot of "defense will be better" diaries this week. Rather than steal their thunder, HIT PLAY to listen to my favorite song off my favorite album of all time, and once the strings and charts come in, start clicking things. (Mp3 courtesy of band's official page)

Dear Diary,

Your gentleman caller

Well, he's been calling on another
He loves his forbidden fruit