I wish I could upvote this 100x. I feel exactly like Weird Al in this clip. 

We were 5-7 in Hoke's last year, so I'm not sure how we could have been getting worse for three years.   We took a step back this year from 2016 though, and hopefully that's a temporary blip.

Brian started this blog in 2004 right? Imagine how far off of his expectations Michigan football has been since then. 

Depending on when he started in 2004, he's only gotten to write about possibly one Big Ten title and one Ohio State victory. 

Almost every year ends the same way. 

Damn. 

This means that nobody will remember anything Nick Saban ever did.

I feel better.

 

I feel like behind every Sparty fan there is a rejection letter from Michigan. I know several where this is true.

It will be the first post after the site upgrade is rolled out.

Came for Henri, and Henri I received. It just feels less official coming from you instead of Brian.

But this "what are you guys so upset for - none of this means anything" approach to watching us lose. Meh. Not a fan.

I find your ironic detachment to Brian's ironic detachment to be...

Ironic.

I was in Madison watching this game decked out in Michigan gear. I was so frustrated with this game. My wife and brother-in-law, both Badger fans, were just kind of like "what's up with Michigan?". I had zero answers.

No, it didn't ruin my day but the more I thought about the game, the more pissed I became. Not ready to listen to "it's only a bowl game" shit. Most people on this blog, myself included, were excited for this game because it was expected we would win. We had the game won but our team is not mentally strong enough to play through a bit of adversity late in games.

In saying this I don't believe we need to have a fire sale of coaches but I don't understand how great coaches like Harbaugh and Brown don't have their guys mentally prepared to play 4 quarters.

Actually, I agree with both Brian and this take as well.  Our fan base has a problem with careening from one extreme to another.

Either we are:

1)  Too amped up with unrealistic expectations (a side effect of being in the wilderness for so long & thus being unrealistically impatient to again attain "elite" status)--exhibits A, B, and C are the hot takes on this blog's message board, twitter, some of the posters on the paid "insider" sites; (too hot/impatient) or alternatively;

 

2)  Totally detached.  I posted Henri the Otter of Ennui above as a joke, but Brian's "whatever" post encapsulates this attitude as well.  It's a defense mechanism against getting hurt by the program again when people get too emotionally invested in it in the first place, put unrealistic expectations on it, then get disproportionately hurt when things don't work out.  (i.e., too cold/uninterested, which leads to a lack of accountability--I don't want to become simply the "big brother" to the Northwestern Wildcats).

The truth is, I think the right approach is in the middle.  Namely:

• Stay engaged & interested in the program.  Adopting an apathetic attitude totaly removes accountabilty from the equation & will increase the likelihood that the program continues to spin into irrelevancy.

 

• Understand that the probram was BROKEN for a solid 7-9 years.  Yes, it takes some programs only 1-2 years to turn around, but ours was a total black hole of institutional dysfunction. A 4-6 year rebuilding process is not unreasonable.   So partly, chill the hell out.  No coach or player wants to work/play for an absolutely toxic fan base.

 

• That being said, as a pro-Harbaugh guy, I'd say that right now we are NOT "on schedule"--not totally a disaster yet, but behind the curve of reasonable expectations.  In my mind, an "on schedule" season this year would have resulted in a 10-3 type season with wins over MSU and our bowl opponent, and with "eye test"/fancy stats demonsterating improvement among the younger players across the board.  Instead, the coaches largely derp away loses to MSU & SC, and we get only patchwork progress among the young players (and in some cases possibly regression).  The early warnings were there at the start of the season.  We should have been crushing Air Force, Cincy, Purdue, etc. like we crushed Rutgers, Minnesota & Maryland later in the year. Yes we had QB struggles & injury, but we should have been able to steamroll physically inferior opponents with ease.   IMO, Harbaugh is not on the "hot seat" yet, but the Harbaugh Honeymoon is over.  Yellow alert, not red alert.

 

• Harbaugh & his staff should not be excepted from the meritocracy concept. What's good for the goose is good for the gander--first because it WORKS, but also because it's good for morale--leaders shouldn't be asking anything more of their players than what they're willing to put in themselves. I want to see accountability on the coaching/staffing side. What that looks like I don't know since I'm way on the outside & not a "football" knowledge guy. Maybe the staff/scheme/personnel needs a major shake up--maybe it doesn't & it's just a matter of building consistency & stay the course so as not to force these kids to totally change their techniques/playbooks again. Whatever the answer is, the final arbiter won't be seen for another year or two--it'll be the results on the field, period.  We know this is metaphically possible to achieve excellence year in & year out, because other programs do it.  Even if we don't stoop to corrupt methods like some of the other football powers, it's entirely rasonable to build our program to a consistent 9-10 win level, punctuated by frequent 11 win seasons where we compete in the BTCG and maybe a trip to the CFP (if it remains at 4 teams) maybe once every 4-5 years.

 

Bottom line is I think our approach should be "Engaged Concern" right now, not "Apathetic Abandonment" nor "Outraged Panic." 

In my view, barring some catastrophic program collapse or off field scandals, Harbaugh has my 100% support through the 2019 season.  By that time any adjustments (or NON adjustments/"stay the course" strategy) he makes will have worked (or not).  If our oustanding D can remain a top 10 unit over that period of time, all Harbaugh has to do is bring the offense up to a top 30 or so unit in order to produce some excellent squads. 

At that point in 2020 or 2021 it'd be a make or break year for him IMO.  If he can't maintain our D & bring our offense up to a top 30ish unit in another 3 years, (or--less likely--our D slips a bit but our O gets to the top 15 or top 10 zone), then it isn't ever going to happen with a now 56 year old Harbaugh at the helm.  

And at that point, I'd say we search for a young & innovative (but not TOO innovative) coach with a solid 4-6 year track record of consistent improvement/excellence, and who shows a desire to be a "life long" college HC (i.e. potential to be around a good 10-15 years).  So by 2021 for example Iowa Stat's Matt Campbell presuming the Cyclones show additional improvement/consistency he'd have a 5-6 year record at ISU competing against Power 5 teams). Competitive fire & recruiting ability would be a must & having a "Michigan" pedigree would be of only minor consideration.  An "OK" X's and O's head coach can import genius/scheme talent into his staff if he has the temperment/lack of ego to delegate the createive side of things to other guys.

 

Anyway, that's my 10 cents on this slow work day full of everybody else's hot takes & resigned apathy.

As always, Go Blue!

 

 

Amen, reverend.  It is just a game, but it brings a lot more to people when good things happen.  I want to see this program do something great, so I can share that experience with my family, my dad, and my 2 sons.  There are certainly many other ways to do that, but sports can bring people together like no other.

College football post-1997 being what it is, there’s no guarantee that you’d get that Rose Bowl trip even if this program DOES turn it all around and compete for the (somewhat still) “mythical national championship”. The year UM goes 13-0 (gotta win that Notorious B1G Championship game in Indy, after all), the NC2A might schedule the playoffs in Dallas and Atlanta with the championship to be played in Phoenix. Hell, a trip to the Rose Bowl during a year like that might be as much of a consolation as a trip to the Outback Bowl was this year. I absolutely despise what college football has become. The more “modern” it gets, the more old fashioned I feel (and the further behind Michigan’s program falls). Somehow it feels right that we have a running back who shares the name of the actor who plays Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe...we are all “out of time”.

Every year I tell myself that I’ve reset my expectations for this team based on everything they’ve shown themselves to be over the past (insert period of time relevant to the point when you realized that dread is felt equally in anticipation of the next campaign), and every year I’m back yelling at the TV when they tease me by playing well and leading in games they’re favored to lose by 10 before they get high enough for the sun to melt their (helmets’) wings and send them crashing back to Earth, or in the case of yesterday’s bowl game just fall apart completely with the game seemingly well in hand. It’s not that they lose...Bo’s teams lost. Rick Leach was an all-time quarterback at this school and set a record that will never be matched by losing four consecutive New Year’s Day bowl games. These days it’s the WAYS they’re finding to lose that make me lose my cool. They can’t just get pounded like they did against Washington in the 1992 Rose Bowl or get a phantom touchdown called against them as against USC in 1979. The losses against FSU last year and Carolina this year simply defy what any reasonable person should expect and give what should’ve been at least a moderately satisfying resolution to an otherwise mildly disappointing season a punch-to-the-nuts level degree of anguish wondering why the hell I do this to myself EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. when I know who this team is and I know what following them will bring and yet I still do it anyway, the definition of insanity be damned.