things that will end in blood

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?]

The Dear Leader has been on WTKA a couple times in the past few days, first with John U Bacon and then with Andy Evans. News has descended. Quotes that follow are very close but may be slightly off from what was said (in a superficial way, of course.)

Spring Game

It will exist, and will be at Michigan Stadium on April 11th. MGoBoarders are planning some sort of tailgate that will inevitably descend into a melee when a 14-year-old shows up and says "h1 evr1 whut u thnk bt 4cier"; sounds like a good time.

Also this will probably happen:

Most magnificent sex mullet gets a free copy of Hail To The Victors 2009, yo.

Recruiting

Not a whole lot, obviously, because Rodriguez can't mention anyone until they sign or are enrolled. He did say "the most you can have in a year is 25," but not mention the possibility of going to 27 or 28, which Michigan has the room to do because of the seven early enrollers.

"Never had this many" early enrollers, cited a Florida class with 7 or 8 a few years ago but gave the general impression

DC Situation

A "little bit of progress," but has spent most of his time on recruiting. Done research, talked to some guys. Floated the national coaches convention as a key opportunity to talk with people.

Andy Evans brings up Nick Holt's 700k DC salary, to which Rodriguez says "I didn't know that, geez" and says "we're nowhere near that, obviously." Boilerplate about Michigan opportunity follows.

Rodriguez is looking for the "right fit; the personality has to fit what we want." Chemistry amongst staff wanted—clear implication that Shafer just didn't get on with the other guys. "Whoever has the title of coordinator on defense isn't going run the defense himself… that's the #1 thing I'm looking for, someone to coordinate everyone's input."

Yeah, that Tony Franklin comparison is still looking pretty good.

Has "absolutely not" ruled out an internal hire, but "our schemes aren't going to be radically different from what they were last year," which follows up on his comment the day before saying they would be a 4-3 team with some odd front stuff sprinkled in.

Rodriguez went into more depth on the topic with Bacon:

“You can’t just be a 3-4 guy or a 4-3 guy. At West Virginia we ran a 3-3-5 base, which was a little different. We’ll maintain here the 4-3, 3-4 principle,” he insisted. “We did a lot of 3-4 stuff in our second- and third-down packages this year, and we’ll continue to do more four-man and odd front.

“I know what I want to do philosophically, but I don’t want to change everything because of what we have on our team and what we’ve recruited so far. Our full-time defensive coaches, Jay Hopson, Tony Gibson and Bruce Tall … I’ve coached with Bruce and Tony for several years, Jay this past year but I’ve known him for several years … all have been college coordinators, so they’ve got a lot of experience in the 4-3 and 3-4 packages. They get along great, they are good people and they are going to be involved in which direction we want to go.”

Sound like you can cease your panic about the 3-3-5, if you were one of those guys.

Beilein

Obvious parallel etc etc etc.

Open Date

"We're close" to filling the open date, but no names.

There conversation then went to Meyer and Stoops and stuff, both of whom Rodriguez is friends with and so forth and so on. One interesting bit in here was Rodriguez saying he doesn't get any negative recruiting when going up against either guy but "a lot of other schools do it."

Any interest in the NFL?

"This may seem crazy to people in West Virginia, but I've always taken the approach that you should look at each job as your last." Never coached in the NFL, a college guy, likes the 18-22 range (don't we all ZING!) as you watch the kids mature, etc.