I am a contrarian.  Always have been and always will be.  Consider that we live in a country that elected Dubya twice, and it's not surprising that the general public can be way off base time after time.

Warren Buffett says to be greedy when others are fearful, and he, like myself, is buying stock these days.  Whenever I hear the pundits raving about the Great Depression Part Deux and see downward facing red arrows running rampant, I pull out my wallet again.  Right now, my Ameritrade account is looking pretty grim.  A year or so from now, that won't be the case.

I'm sure it's not difficult to see where I'm headed with this.  After Toledo, we were bombarded with headlines about people calling for Rodriguez's head and "first MAC loss ever" and "what happened to Michigan football?"  Even our intrepid leader Brian Cook was formulating his plan to build a bomb shelter.  But in the words of the immortal Lee Corso, as "acronymized" by Brian, NSFMF.  Let's consider last week's embarrassment one more time.  Take away the early pick-six - a small mistake with a drastic consequence - and we probably maintain a one to two possession lead the entire game.  Not that we should just dismiss that interception outright - it certainly indicates our QB's penchant for brain farts - but we should rest assured that most of his inevitable future mistakes will not lead to immediate 14 point shifts.  Further, if Lopata makes that field goal to tie, there's a good chance we win in OT, which would change "the sky is falling" to "Michigan has a close call."

We are now seeing Michigan as a twenty to thirty point dog in some future games.  I submit that, but for a few fluke occurrences, these spreads would be half of that.  Now I certainly am not saying that we're going to beat Penn State or even that the game will be close.  What I'm saying is that the perception of Michigan as being the equivalent of a mid-level MAC school is inaccurate.  Have we forgotten the second half domination of Wisconsin?  I believe this team still has it in them to play solid football and to be competitive with just about any team in the country.  When this team will start to click, no one knows.  But mark my words - it will happen this season.  There are more wins remaining for Michigan in 2008.  Maybe even some big ones...