When Men Were Men, Don Draper Was Pimp, And Michigan Was Terrible
It is a grim, cold morning in December of 2009, and Michigan's basketball team has essentially closed the door on its tournament chances by losing to a 4-4 WAC team consisting entirely of guys who got to the game via beanstalk. The hockey team languishes at .500 and escaped the basement of the CCHA by squeezing by a bad Ohio State team last weekend; they're not out of things entirely but it's looking grim for them as well. And the football team's promising start spun into a 1-7 Big Ten tailspin that had half a state reaching for whiskey, a gun, or both.
We are low. My main thought this morning was "how far back to you have to go to find Michigan fans as miserable as we are?" 1984 was the only plausible candidate that popped into my mind: the football team limped to 6-6 and the hockey team was still struggling through the first few years of the Red era. This was my guess on WTKA this morning, but Craig Ross emailed to remind/inform us that in '84-'85 the basketball team was 26-4 and Bill Frieder was the national coach of the year. That football team was also hamstrung by one obvious deficiency caused by injury, and it made a bowl. So that's out.
It was pointless to even look at other years in the Bo/Mo/Llo era, so it was back to the 60s we went, and after a couple of false positives (1967 featured a hockey team that was pretty good and made the tournament) I found it. The last year of equal misery. (Requirements: no tournaments for hockey and basketball and football goes under .500.)
Ladies and gentlemen, 1962-63:
Hockey
Season | Coach | Overall | Pct. | Conf. | Record | Pct. | Place | Tourn. | Postseason |
1962-63 | Al Renfrew | 7-14-3 | .354 | WCHA | 3-14-3 | .225 | 7th | -- | -- |
Big Ten | 0-6-2 | .125 | 3rd | -- |
Basketball
1962-63 Season | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Choose the game you want to display | |||||||
Choose | # | Opponent | Date | Location | W/L | Attend. | |
1 | Ball State | December 1, 1962 | Yost Field House | W-68-58 | 3,800 | ||
2 | Creighton | December 3, 1962 | Yost Field House | W-81-62 | 3,700 | ||
3 | Butler | December 7, 1962 | Yost Field House | L-69-70 | 5,500 | ||
4 | TCU | December 13, 1962 | Yost Field House | W-82-60 | 3,600 | ||
5 | at Evansville | December 15, 1962 | W-73-64 | 8,419 | |||
6 | San Jose State | December 19, 1962 | W-66-52 | 0 | |||
7 | Houston | December 21, 1962 | W-90-88 | 4,600 | |||
8 | at Texas A&M | December 22, 1962 | W-82-79 | 4,000 | |||
9 | Yale | December 29, 1962 | Yost Field House | W-82-71 | 2,600 | ||
10 | Northwestern | January 5, 1963 | Yost Field House | W-78-75 | 6,600 | ||
11 | Iowa | January 7, 1963 | W-88-67 | 7,500 | |||
12 | at Ohio State | January 12, 1963 | L-66-68 | 13,497 | |||
13 | Minnesota | January 14, 1963 | Yost Field House | L-63-66 | 6,700 | ||
14 | at Detroit | January 30, 1963 | Detroit, Michigan | L-70-83 | 7,134 | ||
15 | at Michigan State | February 2, 1963 | East Lansing, Michigan | W-72-71 | 10,577 | ||
16 | Wisconsin | February 4, 1963 | Yost Field House | L-78-81 | 9,100 | ||
17 | Indiana | February 9, 1963 | Yost Field House | W-90-86 | 8,600 | ||
18 | Ohio State | February 16, 1963 | Yost Field House | L-68-75 | 9,775 | ||
19 | at Northwestern | February 18, 1963 | L-62-63 | 4,000 | |||
20 | at Purdue | February 23, 1963 | Lafayette, Indiana | W-71-53 | 7,841 | ||
21 | Iowa | February 25, 1963 | Yost Field House | W-78-70 | 4,600 | ||
22 | Illinois | March 2, 1963 | Yost Field House | W-84-81 | 9,450 | ||
23 | at Indiana | March 4, 1963 | L-96-104 | 5,351 | |||
24 | at Wisconsin | March 9, 1963 | W-82-80 | 7,835 |
Record 16-8 (8-6)
That's not terrible but it wasn't enough to make the 25(!) member NCAA field.
Football
9/29 | vs. | Nebraska (9-2) | L | 13 | 25 | ||
10/6 | vs. | Army (6-4) | W | 17 | 7 | ||
10/13 | @ | *Michigan State (5-4) | L | 0 | 28 | ||
10/20 | @ | *Purdue (4-4-1) | L | 0 | 37 | ||
10/27 | vs. | *Minnesota (6-2-1) | L | 0 | 17 | ||
11/3 | vs. | *Wisconsin (8-2) | L | 12 | 34 | ||
11/10 | vs. | *Illinois (2-7) | W | 14 | 10 | ||
11/17 | @ | *Iowa (4-5) | L | 14 | 28 | ||
11/24 | @ | *Ohio State (6-3) | L | 0 | 28 | ||
2-7-0 | 70 | 214 |
So there you go: anyone under about 57 has never experienced anything like what it looks like is going to go down this year. The last time this happened Don Draper's wife loved him.
For what it's worth, hockey won the national title the next year, basketball would make the Final Four with Cazzie Russell at the helm, and football would… uh… go 3-4-2. Two out of three ain't bad.
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