Are we prophets or stone chuckers?

I would expect nothing less from the more emotional fans. Coach Rod had the audacity the unmitigated gall to mess with their self esteem

I am an exremely emotional, but very rational fan. As much as it hurts to see the loss on Saturday I understand it will take some time with the youth of the players. I am not using that as an excuse because the problems we are having go beyond youth. I am sorry, and this is just my opinion, but I don't see how anyone could "chuck stones" at their team. Even if it turns out that all the nay-sayers in the beginning where right about the hire (I am not one of them) is it gonna do any good to sit back and say "I told you so"? No, it won't. What we as fans need to do is support this team through thick and thin and I promise we will reap the benifits!

Once a year, you've got to stone someone. It helps ensure a solid harvest.

What blows my mind is how quickly we forget our preseason expectations. Before the season, it seemed unanimous that we would win from 6 to 8 games. We expected to pull off an upset or 2 (ND) and to lose a game or two we shouldn't have (Il). We expected the defense to be bad and the offense to be streaky, and they are.

I realize this loss was painful but going into the season a lot of us expected to lose it anyway as this is the same Illini team that routed us last year. They have been lightning in a bottle all year and needed a spark like the one they got when they stuffed us. Everyone needs to just chill. We were 3-9 last year and now everyone is furious we won't make a New Years Day bowl.

...but you may want to tighten up the grammar and spelling. Some white space would be really nice, too.

Once I stopped my eyes from hurting, though, I agree with most of the points you make. We knew there was going to be an adjustment, we are now in the middle of one. A victory over Purdue next week would at least stop the bleeding.

Once UM becomes bowl-eligible, they should play a team weak enough that they can end the season with a victory, even if Forcier is still hurting. Hopefully, though, Tate Forcier will get time to heal to at least ninety percent, and we will get to see the return of "Forcier v.1" for whatever bowl game they end up playing.

A bowl game with a healthy Forcier would be a great way to finish the season and regain some momentum for next year.

most fans is that they are not used to losing like this... i know i wasn't ready for it last year. but i understood that it was going to take time. most people looked at what RR did in his second year at WVU and thought that michigan was going to be a 8 maybe 9 win team this year and it gave them false hope. the win over ND didn't help at all because fans looked past the major prooblems with this team such as: not being able to stop the run or to cover a deep pass. the IU game opened a lot of eyes and some people realized that maybe their expectations were set a little to high, and its gone from there. fans were justifying losses to state and iowa because the games were close even though michigan played like dog shit for 52 mins in the state game. no one expected us to beat PSU, but the way they lost didn't help. which brings us to saturday, we saw michigan play decent for a half and a portion of the 3rd quarter. but i have never seen a team lose all hope after one series. that goal line stand just killed michigan. and in return it brought out all of the haters in the process. the people that you are going hear call into the radio shows this week are fair weather fans. these are people that were probably rooting for state last year because they have to cheer for a winner. the sad part is that these are the fans that every body associates michigan with.

I'm sorry but I don't trust the judgment of anyone who spends 45 minutes to an hour waiting on hold so they can bitch that "Losing to Illinois is unforgivable!" for 15 seconds.

In the thread that got locked yesterday, somebody said something to the effect that this team is like ND's team from a year ago. I would contend that this team (in terms of experience and where they are on the development curve) is much closer to ND's 2007 team (a near total lack of experienced talent and a true freshman QB). The only difference being this team is already two wins better and still likely headed to a bowl game.

The present is understandable to anyone who knows anything about college football and the future is extremely bright. People who don't get that are morons who should not be given the time of day.

Not Ludacris.

Forgive a moment of grammar-nazi weakness because Ludacris the crappy hip-hop artist was born in Champaign, IL.

...how one cough-up will bring back all the doubters and RichRod haters in full-force - the same ones who were probably estatic after the Notre Dame game.

The amount of negativity on other Michigan blogs is astounding, if not stupifying.

This team is exactly what we though it was: a 6-7 win squad that will probably win a game it shouldn't (ND) and inevitably cough up one it shouldn't also (Illinios). We are what we are - an inexperience squad forced to early action due to a gap in the recruiting cupboard and are currently decimated by injuries.

Spoiled have we been the last half-century to fool ourselves into thinking that we would always have a 9+ win team, always be ranked, always be in a New Year's bowl game, always beat tOSU and now the last decade should have eliminated that myth. Gone are those days, parity is here to stay.

Yet the fact that there are still the uninformed, unintelligent and delusional vocals in our fan base that demand Notre Dame-esque respect and are calling for RichRod's head on a platter while we are admittedly going through a REBUILDING stage blows my mind. It makes us look as clueless as the "Fire-Tressel" posts on the O-Zone after a Purdue loss.

We are not Texas A&M, we are not Florida State, we are not Tenneesse. The difference between the Auburns, the Notre Dames and Nebraska's compared to the current powers of USC, Florida, LSU, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma is that those schools were astoundingly patient when the right man for the job was in place after going through rebuilding seasons - I only hope for the sake of the program that we are willing to give RichRod that same type of leinency that his past track record deserves.