Brendan Gibbons
Man its good that Michigan finally puts a scholarship kicker onto the field. I was watching a replay of the 74 Mich/OSU game and lantly (sp?) who was a walk on, missed 2 or 3 fgs and lost the game. Hopefully we can have a stable kicking game under RR.
They also mentioned that that 74 team won more games than anyone else in that 4 or 5 year span and never made it to a bowl game. That would blow.
brendan?
damn typos ;/
In case you really don't know, Michigan already has a scholarship kicker on the roster, Bryan Wright. I believe he keeps getting beat out by the walk-ons. Hopefully Gibbons pans out.
didnt know wright was on a scholarship. I believe Carr didn't give scholarships to kickers, so I was glad to see a good kicker in the class. All i can remember of Michigan's kickers is them being walkons.
Actually, Carr did give kickers scholarships. He just didn't give every kicker on the roster a scholartship, so a walk-on could potentially beat out the scholarship kicker and earn a scholarship in the process. RichRod is not doing anything new at UofM by giving a kicker a scholarship.
Rivas was a Carr scholarship kicker. Mesko a Carr scholarship punter.
They have given scholies to kickers in the past. I have a friend who was a backup kicker in the early to mid 90s under Moeller and Carr. He came out of HS in Ohio and was given a scholarship for his whole career.
Just as important is who gets the scholarship. I'm glad they have the kickers camp so they can see these potential recruits in action and in competition with each other. Maybe this will eliminate a poor selection. Preferred walk-ons are also good...you might find a diamomd in the rough who develops during college.
....to "man I'm glad Michigan is finally putting a scholarship kicker on the field" is one hell of an extrapolation.
Garrett Rivas would be ashamed of you.
I of him. He wasn't anything special.
He was on scholarship. The OP suggested having scholarship kickers on the team was long overdue. That is the theory being debunked, not whether those scholarship kickers are any good.
Rivas was the 2nd best kicker ever at Michigan. What do you consider "special"?
but he missed alot of big fgs. Just Epinion.
I'm serious, I can't recall many. Can you break out a few critical misses?
And, would it hurt you to show Gibbons enough respect to edit your OP to spell his name correctly?
He made a lot of big field goals, too. So what?
I'm not a big fan of stats, either. They get in the way of a perfectly good, non-falsifiable argument.
I appreciate the Stongbad reference. My last apartment out here, my roommate and I named our wireless router "trogdortheburninator."
MSU was actually named after a one legged dog.
Point taken. I was wrong that kickers got scholarships. I just didnt remember any good ones getting a scholarship.
In the beginning of the 2007 season, Jason Gingell was ripping it up in practice and was the go to guy for FGs. How did that turn out?
Lesson is how one does in practice means diddly squat when it comes to actual game performance. We Michigan fans know this predicament all too well.
It's Mike Lantry...and he actually won the game in 1974. There is no way in hell that field goal at the end of the game was no good...sh*t, it was practically right down the middle. Anyone who saw that kick would be lying to you if they said that they thought he missed it. Only in Columbus is that kick no good.
Boom Goes The Dynamite:
http://bit.ly/QKb4k
Bring back Epstein!
...bring back Remy Hamilton.
Umm, I can't think of a key field goal Rivas missed. Can you?
that stuck out in my mind.
2004 SDSU Rivas missed 2 fgs that could have put distance between Michigan and SDSU. One of which i believe was a 30ish yard fg that he pushed. Luckily Michigan won.
2005 Minnesota Rivas missed 2 fgs in the 2nd half that would have put Michigan up. Michigan ended up losing the game 23-20.
2005 Nebraska Leon Hall got a pick on Nebraska side of the field and the drive stalled. Rivas missed an easy fg that would have put Michigan up earlier in the game. Michigan lost 32-28.
The 2 in the Minn game were huge. The other 2 I guess are a judgment call because SDSU game we actually won and the Nebraska game we lost by more than a fg.
I just don't buy that Rivas was a great kicker IMO.
....1 game out of 3 or 4 years that you can directly attribute to Rivas missing big kicks.
It took me five seconds to directly attribute more Michigan losses to Shawn Crable (2006 OSU personal foul, 2007 App. St. FG non-block of the inside guy).
debatable. To this day I still don't think the Crable penalty was a helmet to helmet hit. And the fg brings up bad memories ;/
Like I said, a nerve gets struck when Rivas is brought up. I dont know why, but I just dont think he was that great a kicker. I just wasn't comfortable when we needed him to drill a big one home.
Rivas was clutch. He hit several kicks against MSU, PSU, and in the Texas game IIRC.
Regardless of whether it was helmet to helmet (it was), Smith was also like 3 yards OOB.
Didn't Rivas miss a chip shot at the end of regulation that would have won it? Granted, he got another chance in OT and came through, but that was a missed kick of significance. That being said, he was clutch against Texas in the Rose Bowl and if he would have slipped up at any moment in the '04 MSU game, the Braylon show wouldn't have mattered.
Based on no stats whatsoever, I think Mike Gillete, Remy Hamilton, Jay Feely (in the NFL at least), and JD Carlson were better than Rivas. I am not old enough to have seen him, but I've heard good things about Ali Haji Shiek.
Rivas was a four-year starter here. Anyone who starts that long is going to miss some key kicks here and there. On the whole, he was extremely consistent, making around 80% throughout his career. The only knock on him was that his leg wasn't super-strong (his range went to about 47 or so).
But if people are going to crucify Rivas for missing "big kicks" Mike Gillete is not the man to support.
Yeah, but Rivas was only a three-star kicker! We only want five-star kickers, and if we find a six-star kicker, even better!