old school
emo

When Men Were Men, Don Draper Was Pimp, And Michigan Was Terrible Comment Count

Brian

draper

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

1962-Michigan (Big Ten)
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.

Comments

michgoblue

December 10th, 2009 at 2:25 PM ^

RR's lack of family value and desire to have crappy defenses have even affected the Bball and Hockey teams. This is totally his fault. Hell, the 1962 teams were his fault, as well. /sarcasm

Joined: 11/16/2009

MGoPoints: 32160

Don

December 10th, 2009 at 1:35 PM ^

Which means I'm an old fuck, but I grew up listening to UM games with my Dad in the very early '60s and generally that meant listening to beatdowns by Sparty and Brutus as well as many other B10 teams. It's sort of a return to my childhood, and all without benefit of Alzheimer's.

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 148237

Steve in PA

December 10th, 2009 at 1:42 PM ^

I've reserved myself to signing day and baseball in the spring as the next sporting events other than my son's basketball games I look forward to watching. I've never felt so horrible about watching sports on TV as I have this year. It's gotten to the point of apathy. I can't even get mad at the stunning underperformances anymore. I can only imagine Manny is thinking, "I came back for this?"

Joined: 08/10/2009

MGoPoints: 6327

bjk

December 10th, 2009 at 8:43 PM ^

What happens after two downer football years in a row?

1964-Michigan (Big Ten)

9/26vs.Air Force (4-5-1)W247
10/3vs.Navy (3-6-1)W210
10/10@*Michigan State (4-5)W1710
10/17vs.*Purdue (6-3)L2021
10/24vs.*Minnesota (5-4)W1912
10/31vs.*Northwestern (3-6)W350
11/7vs.*Illinois (6-3)W216
11/14@*Iowa (3-6)W3420
11/21@*Ohio State (7-2)W100
1/1vs.Oregon State (8-3)W347@ Pasadena, CARose Bowl
 

9-1-0

 23583
You never know. BTW, RE "styling," these have my vote for the away unis. Call me a crustacean.

Joined: 11/26/2009

MGoPoints: 3993

Section 1

December 10th, 2009 at 3:10 PM ^

Nine games. No bye weeks. No crap opponents. Only out-of-conference teams: nationally-ranked Nebraska, and Army. No games before Labor Day. Season done before Thanksgiving.

Joined: 06/29/2009

MGoPoints: 16535

Seth

December 10th, 2009 at 3:42 PM ^

My father told me about things like this. People also walked uphill both ways in the snow, and when they fumbled, were taken behind Section 3 and hacked to death with axes. I always thought he just making shit up to make me feel like my generation had it easy. I never thought these things would come true!

Joined: 10/14/2008

MGoPoints: 149091

CR

December 10th, 2009 at 5:48 PM ^

Or, at least, it has a chance to be better. I don't prefer to count out hockey, yet. Or basketball, for that matter, though the tea leaves are wretched. I thought, perhaps, 1958-59 might compete. We were 2-6-1 in football that year and after beating USC 20-19 we lost 6 of the next 8, though we did tie MSU. Hockey was also bad, the team finishing 8-13. But Bill Perigo had his best year in basketball 15-7 (8-6 BT). 1936-37 evinced a meatball football team (1-7) but hockey was quite good and my recall is that basketball had John Townsend and cranked out a really terrific (some might say "swell")year. I only saw a couple of those games, though. So, in the taxonomy of awful major sports years this iteration is defintiely in the running for the worst ever. I doubt if it won't make it. We could, perhaps, create an algorithm. It might be: Football Win Rate times 45% Basktball Win Rate times 31% Hockey Win Rate times 24% Add these up, find the lowest and, voila, worst year ever. CR

Joined: 10/23/2009

MGoPoints: 2368

MGoAero

December 10th, 2009 at 10:21 PM ^

It's one thing for the 'big 3' sports to be terrible, but it seems much, much worse when 2 of them were supposed to be quite good, and there is no conceivable reason that they should be terrible. Results versus expectations this year must be the worst since well before the 60s.

Joined: 03/16/2009

MGoPoints: 887

uminks

December 10th, 2009 at 11:33 PM ^

We could still have a wining record in b10 Basketball. That would get us in to the big dance. Though I'm afraid this year will be a fight to get into the NIT. Well, I'm too young to remember the 62-63 season, which is a good thing! I'm old enough to remember most of the Bo era!

Joined: 11/10/2009

MGoPoints: 31975

MichiUte

December 11th, 2009 at 10:47 AM ^

"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." Utah is a Mountain West team, thank you very much.

Joined: 12/10/2009

MGoPoints: 4

jcgary

December 12th, 2009 at 11:47 AM ^

I haven't given up on hockey yet. Hockey has had a horrible start but the team normally starts slow (grant it not this slow) and then around the time of the GLI they start putting it together and go on a long winning streak. I am not saying this will happen but I have seen past Michigan Hockey teams do something similar.

Joined: 07/28/2008

MGoPoints: 1189