An appeal to rationality & perspective

The best thing you can do for your sanity is stop watching UM football during the Brady Hoke Era. All it will do is leave you angry and disappointed. The same as the Lloyd Carr era, post-1997, when Charles Woodson made LC look so good for one season.

Look, as long as clueless, smarmy, money-centric douchebags like Dave Brandon are running our AD (thank you MSC for DB and BM), and clueless fans like the ones that make a disproportionate amount of posts in the commenting section of this blog (e.g. Nantucket Blue's eloquent voice of reason today) are there to defend him, we're screwed. These idiots are vocal and influential -- and cheer when we pass on a guy like Brian Kelly, and scoff at OSU when they hire Urban Meyer. It's hopeless.

As someone who has watched this crap for more years than I'd like to admit, the best thing I can tell you to do is just stop supporting it. Your relationships with friends and family will be stronger, your hair will last longer and your weekends won't feel like they were pissed away.

Brady Hoke is an average to poor coach, just like his mentor Lloyd Carr. While he's at the helm, the playcalling will always be predictable, the game management will always be mind-numbing, and the action on the field will be boring as hell. This is Michigan football for the next 10 years.

We regressed to 8-4 this year with only one quality win (i.e. Northwestern), which we needed a Hail Mary to pull out. Yet, we have lots of senior leadership and one of the most dynamic players in college football. How is it that we do not have 1 RB who can get us 1 yard? "This is Michigan fergodsakes."

Rationale I'll never understand:

1. "Borges wasn't fumbling the ball today. It's not his fault."

2. "Man, I'm sure glad we passed on that Brian Kelly guy and his 11-0 record because his face gets purple on the sideline or he wears cowboy boots when he's at a bowl game in Texas. Or man, glad Urban Meyer isn't our coach because he's an asshole, no matter what his 2 NC's and 12-0 record might say about his coaching skills."

3. "Hoke is a MAN for going sleeveless in 30 degree weather. So what if he still loses 4 games - 2 to our biggest rivals -- at least he's consistently superstitious. How admirable!"

4. "I trust our coaches. They know a lot more than I do. They must have seen something I didn't see when they kept running up the middle on 3rd down in the second half against OSU. Or putting Denard into passing situations against ND. Question nothing."

5. "I support Hoke's no-visit recruiting policy. So what if we continue to drop blue-chippers just because they want to look around a bit and satisfy their curious 17-year old minds. It's not like they shouldn't know exactly what they want to do with the rest of their lives by their Junior year in high school."

6. "Borges will look better when he gets his players in. We must ignore his results at other institutions because this is Michigan fergodsakes, and everything will be different here."

7. "I don't care if our offense is boring, I just want to win. Wait, what did you say? Urban Meyer's offense is both fun to watch AND they win? NO WAY."

I'm not going to say anything negative about Mattison because the score should have been much worse than it was. However, I was not impressed with how easily OSU was picking up first downs throughout the game. Their offense seemed to move effortlessly down the field and then our D just made a few huge plays at key points. OSU won the field position game in the 2nd half largely due to being able to move the ball at will against our defense, even if they left it down on our side of the field without putting points on the board.

Bottom line is this. Brady Hoke was 47-50 when he arrived at Ann Arbor for a reason. That lack of success, when compared to guys like Urban Meyer and Brian Kelly, starts to make sense when you see timeouts being pissed away at non-critical times, predictable playcalling on 3rd down, the inability to appropriately evaluate talent (e.g. using Bellomy vs. Gardner against NEB) and the program's inability to wrap up blue chip recruits at key positions of need (i.e. RB and WR). Whether fans want to admit it or not, Michigan is destined to be mediocre during the Hoke era, and because Hoke is DB's puppet, and MSC could care less about athletics, we're stuck with it for a minimum of 10 years.

Best thing you can do is check out. Go for walks with you partner on Saturdays, or play with your kids in the yard. Rake leaves even. If you absolutely need a UM sports fix, watch the men's basketball team.