Dear Diary Puts 2013 Down Comment Count

Seth

old-yeller-002

I bet 2014 won't get rabies and try to kill me!

Let's have one more official reiteration: if the "2013 Must Die" meme shall go forth to the greater internet, let's all be on the same page as to its meaning.

Bronxblue in the Best & Worst* season finale:

While I contend any year when one of your major programs plays in the national championship game and has a player win all of the national POY awards can’t be that bad, the struggles by football and hockey were unexpectedly traumatic.

No.

LSA's 2013 eulogy:

First, allow me to focus on the positive, for it wasn’t all gloom.

No.

Ron Utah's bowl aftermath:

This sums-up our 2013 season

No. For that 2013 gif to be 2013 first you'd need a small child standing by who will be cured of cancer if he manages to break open 10 or more coconuts. The first four would explode, the fifth would almost, and only then would he start slamming his fist on the I-beam and such. Once it's clear he can't get to 10 it'll begin to rain and he'll get one to just barely crack, and that'll be Northwestern. And he'll have a perfect shot at a dark, evil, cancer-loving coconut but it'll rebound and defeat him.

The possibility for good is what separates a bunch of crappy things from real tragedy. 2008 was a bunch of crappy things. 2013 was soul-devouring tragedy. Without the plausible hope of McGary, or a triumvirate of elite commits, or offensive line improvement, or a sweep in Boston, there's no dong to be punched. Putting down a rabid offensive coordinator is one thing; sweet Heiko crying tears for the inarguably good guy he interviewed as he points a shotgun toward the cage is quite another.

Actually if you're looking for a good 2013 analogy, let's go back to the beginning of the season and Eye of the Tiger's comparison to A Game of Thrones. First you come to love the Starks and their dire wolves and their quaint ways, and believe in their mission of protecting mankind from the evils beyond the wall while we wait for dragons to show up and unite everybody. Then they are (SPOILER:) systematically raped, tortured, disfigured, and murdered by a world full of sociopaths. Dennis Norfleet is Aria: you like this character, huh? Okay we'll just leave her out of an entire book then.

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* [Warning: The first two Gallon highlight links go to game reels that both begin with our defense getting shredded.]

We have subs but this is crazy. Inside the Box Score isn't a fan of Michigan's defensive substitutions:

IMG_5048 - Copy
The most mystifying thing about the 2013 defense was QWash's disappearance from it.

On the first drive of the game, I saw numerous subs get into the game. Are you telling me that our guys are getting tired 10 minutes into the game? I want the best guys out there who give us the best chance to win. I want guys to get into the flow of the game, read the queues and start figuring out the offense. Instead, there is a constant revolving door where guys are being shuttled in and out before they get a chance to get into the flow of the game or break a sweat and they spend more energy sprinting to and fro the sideline than they do playing the game.

It's nice to go into 2014 with the 2nd team all having lots of reps, but it's a small nice with a downside of starters who aren't progressing.

By now Ross and Morgan and Wilson ought to be going all game, and the DL starters coming out only when they need a spell. The best line play Mattison ever got was when he was forced to roll with Martin and RVB all game and those two developed such a rapport that they could toy with offenses. "Everybody plays" was great for guys like me in Little League, but there's a reason teams stop doing that at about a middle school competitive level.

The other thing from the box score is Quinton Washington's continued absence. The most plausible explanation is Mattison thought to roll with penetrators against spread-to-run offenses. If that's true, it's more evidence that nobody on this staff even understands that offense, which bane is a two-gapping, double-team-swallowing nose tackle.

zone-read

Etc. Hockey goal-by-goal analysis and poll updates. Great diary from JeepinBen wherein Fielding Yost reminds us not to listen to Sparties who can't fathom why people in their home state root for the other team in their home state. Course after this season I'm kind of wondering myself.

[Yump]

Best of the Board

BLANKET ANSWER TO ALL THE FIRE [COACH] THREADS

Threads popped up at the conclusion of the bowl game to question virtually every position coach. You don't need the one on Funk—apparently Patrick Omameh wasn't the problem guys. But we were pretty happy with defensive backs until Lockett. Now: question. Answer: jamming requires help over the top or blitzing unless you've got the world's greatest jammer whose name also happens to be Jammer. The problem wasn't in DB technique but that Michigan came in prepared to let the country's best receiver match up one-on-one with our cornerbacks.

Given the makeup of this staff it's depressing that there's even a "Coaching question D-Line Edition" thread, but there it is. Answer: the D-line gets plenty of coaching. Hoke coaches the three interior positions and Mattison coaches WDE along with Jake Ryan. Montgomery's job was to be the "Beyoncé" so the rest of Destiny's Child could do their jobs.

BLANKET ANSWER TO ALL THE RERUITING THREADS

Michigan hasn't lost any recruits to weather. Take the million hints that every recruiting guy has put out there so nobody has to repeat depressing things you already know. KThx.

Your Moment of Zen:

Dave Brandon probably thought this was just some terribly clever way to sneak advertising into the Stadium (HA! I have foiled your Socialist rules!). But I thought the Winter Classic looked mighty pretty in our living room.

Big girl, you are beautiful.

Also the words are a lot better than Francis Scott Key's original lyrics: "Get me ooofffff this ship. Get me off this stupid ship. I just came to get my doctor friend, now they're blowing the hell out of a fort…"

Comments

J.

January 3rd, 2014 at 11:40 AM ^

After the Kansas game, I felt the basketball team was playing with house money.  The loss to Louisville hurt, but given where we'd been for years, "National Runners-Up" didn't sound all that bad.  Then we had the summer of anticipation, the build-up to the football season, recruiting, the Notre Dame game...

and Special K played the Chicken Dance.

It was funny; it made me laugh... but it wasn't Michigan.  It was something that Staae would have done before Dave Brandon started doing the things that Staae would do.  And, "2013" started immediately thereafter.

The Michigan athletic department was cursed, and it will remain cursed until we can undo the damage caused by Special K.  Perhaps the glory of the Winter Classic will end up breaking the spell (but only if GR3's ankle heals itself quickly, of course).  Otherwise, maybe we need to take drastic measures -- maybe we need to get 1000 mgoblog readers playing the Chicken Dance backwards at the same time or something... :)

Mr. Yost

January 3rd, 2014 at 12:13 PM ^

It started with Clowney taking Vince's head off and SportsCenter showing it 5 billions times.

Then the NC game (which we should've won...maybe they beat us 9 times out of 10, but that was the 1 game we should've won).

The Wings blew a 3-1 lead over the Blackhawks.

The Pistons passed on Trey Burke who is playing like the Rookie of the Year.

Then McGary got hurt this summer.

 

I feel like I'm missing some other pre-Chicken Dance things, but it was definitely 2013.

 

 

J.

January 3rd, 2014 at 12:56 PM ^

Hmm..  I'll grant you the McGary injury, certainly.  Vince's decapitation, and the Outback Bowl in general, were a disappointment, but none of us really wanted Denard's last game to be in Tampa anyway -- that felt more like 2012 extended to me.

Obviously we were in great position to win the NC game, but I stand by my earlier position -- we were playing with house money.  I remember walking out of the Georgia Dome and thinking, "Damn, that sucked, but I'm so proud of this team, and what a great season this was."

As for the Wings and Pistons -- and Tigers, for that matter -- I guess I was considering those to be outside of the UM sphere.  From my more Michigan-focused perspective, things really seemed to nose-dive immediately after the Notre Dame game.

Regardless, here's to an improvement in all categories in 2014. :-)

Niels

January 3rd, 2014 at 12:33 PM ^

...I would go with a different UTL event, the awarding of the #98 jersey to DG. While I think in general the whole legends jersey thing is a arguable idea at best, the way they did Gardner's really struck me as particularly tone deaf for UM.

For any player to be given such an honor after only starting 6(?) games really bothered me. Not because it wasn't appropriate to honor Harmon (it was) nor because the thing smelled of an inappropriate moment to commercialize such an honor (though imo it was), rather it was simply too soon from a team dynamic to give DG those props.

I, like apparently others on this board, heard from good sources about some real problems in terms of DG's dynamic with the rest of the team. In general I'm pretty removed from the action, so all I can go on is second-hand information. However, if there is even a small bit of truth to the idea that DG hadn't yet "won" the locker room over at that point, then it strikes me as a terrible error to put him out there with Brady, Mark Harmon, etc. while the team (the team, the team....) is put on the back burner. 

Even if the locker room was completely behind DG, I still would not have done the #98 thing at UTL. I get the idea of wanting to market stars, etc. but DG was not one yet based on accomplishments. As an exercise, I thought about other QB's (imagine AJ McCarron getting a Namath jersey, etc) and found very few examples where honoring a star today with the number of a legend felt right. 

 

J.

January 3rd, 2014 at 12:47 PM ^

I think that just sums up the problems with the Legends jersey in the first place.  If you wait until someone beomes a star, you end up with "#11 Jordan Kovacs."  If you don't, you risk inflating someone's ego and having a negative effect upon the team.

I also wonder if there's an additional burden that you're putting on a player by awarding him the jersey.  If Notre Dame were to give Tommy Rees a "Joe Montana Legends" jersey, would we accuse them of comparing the two?  In hindsight, maybe the "New 98" stuff was too much for DG to handle, and might have been too much for anybody else.

(As an aside, maybe giving Peppers a #2 Charles Woodson Legends jersey as a freshman would be asking for similar problems?)

imafreak1

January 3rd, 2014 at 12:34 PM ^

I don't recall any of the Starks being raped.

Tortured... not worth the semantic argument.

But not raped. Never raped.

(This is with regards to the books. I haven't seen the latest season of the TV show.)

I Bleed Maize N Blue

January 3rd, 2014 at 7:12 PM ^

It the book nobles ride horses, so it's much easier for most to escape the mob.  Horses can push people out of the way and trample the fallen, and knights easily strike down with swords on unarmored targets.

I don't remember if Sansa actually got pulled from her horse, but the Hound rides to her rescue in time for them to escape.  If he hadn't, she would have been raped like Lollys.  The show is much less believable, since on foot it would be much easier for the mob to overwhelm even armored knights, and without the advantage of being on horseback, with a higher vantage point and room to swing a sword, how would Clegane be able to track Sansa?

Blue Balls Afire

January 3rd, 2014 at 12:51 PM ^

Our marching band sucks and has sucked for years, overtaken by those slow-witted turds in Columbus and East Lansing and Madison and . . . you get the idea.  

Yes, this is important to me.  

2013 could not end soon enough.

J.

January 3rd, 2014 at 12:59 PM ^

I wouldn't know whether or not the band is any good, unfortunately.  Dave Brandon keeps telling them to stay home from the events that I'm able to attend. :(

(Not entirely true -- but I was angry about the Dallas thing until they fixed it, and I'm still upset about the Arizona game).

There used to be an understanding in the athletic office that the band was an important part of the college experience and what differentiated it from the pros.  Now, not so much.

wahooverine

January 3rd, 2014 at 1:45 PM ^

UM = Theon Greyjoy; 2013 = Ramsay Snow

The National Championship appearance in baskettball was nice but you can think of it in terms of a truly sadistic tease that gives a glimmer of hope;  having it so close you can smell it, then it's cruelly taken away.  The end of the OSU game is another example.  It's almost worse to have the sweet prize in sight, convinced it's yours, only for it to be taken away and replaced with something much much worse.

In Game of Thrones terms, we were Theon Greyjoy in 2013:  an impulsive, somewhat arrogant youth from a once powerful, but still proud royal family, who makes a bold move to recapture that former glory (capturing Winterfell).  It seemed to go well for bit, but it was an illusion, and he ends up imprisoned and sadisticlly tortured for months on end.  At last, one fateful day there is light at the end of the tunnel - a couple hot, naked maidens appear in his prison cell and convince him they are for his pleasure, tell him he is free, strip him down and start sexing him up.   Finally!..no more eating rats and getting finger tips cut off!...  WRONG, here comes Ramsay Snow ordering the girls to his side, wielding a large knife and informing you that, actually, he is going to cut off your penis and keep you in the dungeon.

 

 

 

 

 

RobSk

January 3rd, 2014 at 5:43 PM ^

At one point in those books, I would have said it was impossible for me to see Theon as a sympathetic character. This is before I realized what a sick, twisted guy Martin is. :)  I have a pretty strong stomach for "icky", and Martin came close to stopping me from reading these books several times, just on "dang, I just can't stand this anymore".

Not sure though that I think that UM was ever as absurdly over-confident and blind as Theon. Some UM fans, yes. The actual program, no.

      Rob

Keebs

January 3rd, 2014 at 1:56 PM ^

I generally stick to lurking and reading the articles and posts on here, since they are generally great.  But I honestly can't stomach this whole "Woe is the year of 2013", "Year of Infiinite Pain 3.0" or whatever about 2013.  Yes, the football season was frustrating and disappointing, and a failure.  Yes, it sucks that Mitch McGary is out, and that George Campbell decommitted, and that our offense is a twitching corpse half of the time.  There were some real disappointments.  But everyone seems to be ignoring the good things that happened this year, as well as how much better off these athletic programs are now than 5 years or so ago.  

The good:

-Trey Burke drops Kansas in the tourney

-UTL2 win

-A DAMN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP APPEARANCE in which we played a great game and lost to another very talented and well-coached team

-We came within a 2 point conversion of toppling a much superior OSU team.

I've had a lot of good memories from this year, even if the endings didn't always work out.  There's obviously a lot of negativity around here at the moment, which is somewhat justified, but I think we're beating it to death.  I really hope we can move on to 2014 with some optimism, especially after a good road win over Minnesota.

Wendyk5

January 3rd, 2014 at 2:20 PM ^

Speaking of watching from the sidelines, I'm at the San Francisco airport heading back to the frozen tundra of the Midwest and I'm surrounded by Michigan State fans who appear to be gloating (though they probably aren't). And as I listen in on their conversation, I hear the words "Michigan fans," and laughter and I realize there's nothing I can say to them to put them in their place. Not one thing.

micheq

January 3rd, 2014 at 2:31 PM ^

I also rarely post, but I wholeheartedly agree with Keebs.  I find the extreme negative commentary about 2013 just puzzling.  I had season tickets to basketball from 1988 through the period beyond the Fab Five era, and last season was easily one of the most exhilerating and fun seasons of Michigan basketball I've experienced.  We got a banner and POY hardware for our trophy case.  It even made me start following NBA games to see how Trey and Tim are doing.  

There was no 3-9 football record, no scandal, no Appalachian State.  We have coaches who represent the University well.  We just lost some of our football games en route to a winning, if mediocre, record.  I loved UTL II.

On the non-revenue sports side, we're the landlocked University that won the national championship in swimming.  Again.  And we also won it in men's gymnastics. 

I not only disagree that this was a terrible year, I think it was actually a pretty good year. 

 

tybert

January 3rd, 2014 at 3:09 PM ^

Would have liked a series of watermelons, one for each disappointment (including a watermelon each for the Akron and UConn games), lined up in the Big House and Gallagher smashing one after another with a Sledge-o-Matic. That's had frustrating it was to be a fan of anything (but hoops) this past year.

TheNema

January 3rd, 2014 at 3:39 PM ^

Screw this piece. The "2013 SUCKED" meme is not only moronic, it is a complete slap in the face to the basketball program and treats it as a stepchild.

Those boys gave me a far bigger thrill than our underachieving football program has given me in a long damn time and I will always treasure it in spite of them losing one of the best college basketball games I have ever seen.

TheNema

January 3rd, 2014 at 4:19 PM ^

If that's your take-away, fine. But there should be nothing tragic about losing one of the best NCAA title games ever. Yes, denying Burke his block was tragic. But all in all, Louisville deserved to win as much as we did. We lost a coin-flip game. I went to Crisler the next day for the welcoming back of the team and they were disappointed but not in despair and walked with their heads high. They earned that. My memories of that team will be forever positive.

Personally, I don't see how anything about the football season fits the adjective of "tragic." Outside of the OSU game, it did not cause me heartbreak and sorrow because the failures all made sense. Run MANBALL behind an interior line with no experience and call a bunch of PA plays on third-and-long to get your QB killed, and you are going to be bad. The coaches made their own bed and if they don't get a lot better, we might remember 2013 as the year we got our cautionary sign on them. That might not necessarily be a bad thing if you take the long view.

If anything, the worst part of 2013 to me was Brandon's blog post and the fear that we might have an AD who is so warped and diseased he actually believes that crap.

Niels

January 3rd, 2014 at 7:04 PM ^

As I agree that UM Hoops has been really exciting to watch, the following relates to football (and the AD to some extent):

I don't want to sit shiva for the rest of the winter on mgoblog, but I can't argue with my emotional response to the last couple of months. I've lived through periods of fandom where our performance on the field and/or off the field was arguably worse, but this is the first time I have truly felt like something was "lost" to me. 

It was not just the underperformance of the fb team, though it was hard to see such regression and, dare I say, lack of passion, in many of the fb games. Yeah, it sucked to watch MSU in the Rose Bowl and OSU beat UM (again), for me there was something more than that.

UM sports means something different to everyone, though I like to think that there are certain ethos among that are common currency. For example, focus on the team, accountability for one's actions, and a healthy respect for history without an ND-level of hollow hagiography, and refusal to go to the gutter with other less celebrated programs and/or rivals. 

Things like the unnecessary MSU trolling, the fb coaching staff's unwillingness to accept responsibility for lack of success, the desire to convert the entire economic framework of the AD to a dynamic, tier-ed pricing model while not willing to invest in things like band roadtrips, it's these things that made 2013 such a lousy year to me, and made me wonder whether something more than specific games, recruits, etc. were lost.

I will continue to support and root for my alma mater, but I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge the fact that 2013 was really sad/tragic/whatever.

 

 

dahblue

January 3rd, 2014 at 4:37 PM ^

Need a new post on the front page to push that coconut karate guy down a bit.  So painful to watch, it's like an episode of HBO's "Hello Ladies".

west2

January 3rd, 2014 at 4:58 PM ^

is the year that UM BB  ended up #2 nationally and the sparty FB team will end up #2.   Ya know if M football won the NC what the heck would we complain about?   Would we just go on and on about how wonderful we are?   aaaack how boring.  Lets be thankful for 2013 it was infinitely unpredictable and interesting...

Jimmyisgod

January 3rd, 2014 at 8:41 PM ^

Rough year, but there were some great moments.  Overall pretty awful starting with the Penn State game.  Since then, it's been bad bad and more bad.  The MSU game, Nebraska game, De'Shawn Hand, Iowa Game, Ohio game, McGary, George Campbell, K State game. Sparty wins Rose Bowl and will finish #2, ugh ugh and more ugh.

2014, please be better to us.