Confessions of a Michigan Football Fan
11 Warriors has an interesting piece on their site where they "invite you (their readers) to spill your sins, real or perceived, against Ohio State athletics." It makes for a fun/entertaining read and I thought we Michigan fans probably have plenty of interesting thoughts to spill as well.
So I guess I'll start with my 3 confessions:
-I love Ann Arbor to death, but I don't think it's the best college town in the Big Ten. I think that privilege goes to Madison.
-I'm a Hoke fan, and I love Mattison and think Nussmeier was a great pick up, but State has the best all-around football staff/coaches in the Big Ten. Hands down.
-Here's my big one... Had we played Nebraska in a BCS Championship-like game back in '97, I think they would've won.
Bonus: I LOVE the movie "Rudy" and have no real negative feelings toward Notre Dame at all.
11 Warriors Link: http://www.elevenwarriors.com/ohio-state-athletics/2014/06/36200/ohio-state-athletics-confessional-2014
KBLOW, I guess my point when I wrote the whole rivalries record argument was that some Michigan fans fail to look at what has transpired over the past 7-10 years (to me, is still pretty recent in football terms) with OSU and MSU and they just go, " look at our overall record in the series, we still kick your ass!" and that right there annoys the living hell out of me.
But I do agree with you, you live in the past or don't.
1. I think Dave Brandon will be the downfall of the entire athletic program. Outrageous ticket prices are driving away my generation to the point where the next AD is going to have extreme difficulties selling out Michigan stadium and soliciting us for big donations in the future. I am to the point where I have soured so much against Dave Brandon I don't want to give a single cent to his athletic department until he is fired or forced to resign. Instead I wil be directing my giving towards my academic program.
2. I believe our priorities our way out of wack for higher education. We place too much emphasis on athletics and not enough on academic research. I would rather have the BTN air symposiums and lectures from our world class professors and researchers in the Big Ten. Yes, I am that big of a nerd I would rather watch a great biochemistry lecture.
3. I firmly believe MSU is juicing with HGH under Dantonio. Dantonio is cut from the same swarmy rug as Perles.
4. Fuck MSU
Cut from the same as Perles? I'd replace Perles with Tressel. He was the DC at ohio while Tressel was coach. Other than that yes I agree with #3 and #4.
This is my second profile due to losing so many points bashing Carr. I couldn't stand him and I blame him for starting this freefall.
I'm not a Devin Gardner fan but believe he should be given a chance this year.
I'm sick of the THIS IS MICHIGAN stuff.
Hate the Seven Nation Army crap or whatever it's name is.
Wouldn't mind blue pants at an away game but no moar bumblebeez!!
Hate music being played in-between plays. This isn't pro sports.
I think ohio is only 2 games behind Michigan in all-time wins in the B10. After this year Michigan won't be the winningest team in the conference. That makes me want to crawl under a rock and hide in shame.
Marcus Ray brags too damn much on WTKA. I turn him off anytime he's on anymore.
It will sound like an odd confession, but I have taken to using Hoke's rather signature "Well..." as a nervous comedic device in meetings when I am asked a question whose real answer probably contains information which I am not at liberty to reveal or which the people in the room would not appreciate too much.
Mod confession - although I have not typed those thoughts here, there were several people during last football season who were the inspiration for some R-rated rants "off the blog", if you will.
Also, get over the headset thing people. Some here sound like they'd be better off commenting on 11w.
I hate Michigan fans who buy into the modern, instant-gratification, win-at-all-cost mentality and lament that our leadership resists the pressures to let the ends justify the means.
I hate the mentality of so many fans who think that because you didn't win the National Championship, that you have no reason to celebrate or consider your season a success; that this mentality makes you soft and willing to settle for less.
I hate how commercial college athletics have become. The experience was better when ESPN was just one station on cable, GameDay wasn't a thing, every conference didn't have their own sports network, and the notion that the experience of a live Michigan game could ever be surpassed by viewing it in your living room was ridiculous.
Say hello to Devin Gardner and Sammy Watkins..I'd take that alllllllll day
what? And just how good Morris becomes is most definitely yet to be determined.
Morris is a definite. I remember reading an interview with him shortly after he signed where he said something to the effect of "I loved Michigan my whole life, knew I wanted to play there forever, but when Rich Rod was hired I started to believe I wouldn't get that chance, I wouldn't have been able to play in his offense". He loves UM so much he wouldn't have gone to MSU or Ohio, but if Rich Rod was still the coach here when Shane signed, he would've been at Bama or a Pac-12 school.
And re: Funchess, his high school was a huge MSU feeder school until recently. He committed during the massive wave of optimism after Hoke took over and I don't think it's a stretch to say he would've gone elsewhere had Rich been the coach.
until we played a real defense, at which point, we'd have been stopped. Like we were. Regularly.
I wish Rodriguez's tenure at Michigan was treated like politics on MGoBlog. There is too many idiots that equate all things Rodriguez as bad despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
I pointed out that his offenses were frequently stopped by capable defenses. The 2010 offense was exciting to watch when it put up 60+ points on Illinois and Bowling Green. But it was hardly fun when the same offense managed seven points against Ohio State. That's so few points, journalists have to use words instead of numerals to express that quantity.
But yes, let's no longer talk about a former Michigan football coach on a Michigan sports blog. Let's water down the content here until it's just block Ms and muppets.
Also, "There is too many idiots" is an amusing statement.
and the end result is that no one really wants to change their opinions. For my opinion (that RR's 2010 offense was really good with the potential to become deadly), the following have been deplored: #2 in FEI and standard yardage metrics that isolate offensive contributions from defense/special team contributions. Diaries have also been written that attempt to find causes of turnovers, differences in redzone vs between-the-20s offense, QB frailty between pro and spread offenses, etc.; nothing has given reasons to question RR's offensive approach.
Others' opinions (that RR's offense was good against bad defenses, but bad against good defenses) are based primarily on the eyeball test, which is impossible to refute because everyone sees what they want to see. Most of the time, the against-OSU scoring offense is cited as why the offense was not good, but then overlook that 1) Michigan outgained every OSU opponent that year except for Arkansas, and 2) scoring offense is strongly influenced by starting field position, field goal kicking, and turnovers, all of which were made much worse by the defense/special teams than the offense.
We can go back and forth on this from now til the start of the season, but given there are pages of threads that have already done this, I just figure it's easiest if mods discourage this. That, or make negs worth more, so that people can self-moderate such pointless discussion. Yes, I realize there are plenty of run-on sentences in this post, in case you use first-draft grammar and sentence structure as basis for judging level of idiocy.
I wanted to keep RR at the time, and yes Denard is great, but he still needs an O-line. And as others pointed out, we still would have been mediocre because of the defense. But, if Martin hadn't been such a penny-pincher and we would have actually paid for Casteel, I bet RR would still be our coach.
i probably wouldn't have t.v. during football season and thus would miss the games on t.v. i also refuse to watch when the games are going bad. i distract with the many other things on the agenda. was so ticked for carr's last game that i went bow hunting and missed the thrilling (victorious) end.
similarly, but for the kids, i would've stopped getting seasons years ago. this will be my 35th yr with football tix.
there was this girl with red hair in 6th grade (oops, wrong blog...)
I miss Rich Rod. I really wish it would have worked out here.
RR was fired 4 days after his last bowl game; Borges was fired 11 days after his last bowl game. If Brandon was waiting for RR to fire GERG, he'd have been given an extra week.
Seriously? Michigan wouldn't pay for Casteel to come. That was the problem. Gerg wasn't even his first-choice. RR hadn't even worked with him before.
I hate that Brandon can't figure out a single, cheesy, thinly-veiled thing to do that would seem to be a form of widespread benevolence and not a money grab.
I hate that Michigan's downfall in football seems to have coincided perfectly with the rise of our rivals, and the overall increase in competitiveness at the D1 level. While ultimately it probably makes the game better long-term, I think a quick rebound is unlikely, and we are going to have to claw our way back.
I love that Hoke coaches an aggressive game, meaning going on 4th at times, going for 2, etc.
I am getting tired of a Hoke press conference. It seems like a mind game of the media trying to trick him into saying something quotable and him giving out pure vanilla by the truckload as a counterdefense. Its only when he's asked about a game situation that he gives a straight up knock your socks off honest answer about what was in his head.
I hate the conundrum with the legends jerseys. Someday there's going to be another actual future Legend and its going to be confounded with a legend from the past. I almost feel like those jerseys should be given to walk-ons as those guys play for the love of the game, they are paying their own way and in most cases, rarely play in games. That to me says dedication. Let them get some notoriety with the legend jersey.
I hate the fact that the troughs came out of the mens rooms. It slows things down unacceptably. I still think they could be fitted with the waterless "cartridges". I went to Wrigley Field and saw them again and was like damn, this is the way its supposed to be! The volume of mens restrooms on the middle level near the north-east end zone is way too small.
There's more I'm sure, this is just a start....
Love your idea of giving the Legends jerseys to walk-ons. It's a great, deserved honor. It honors the best of amateur athletics. And it avoids the future legend issue.
I don't know what section your in, but I always find open urinals. I do jump ahead of the big rushes and sacrifice 1 play to do so, but you can do that strategically and not miss anything important.
I hated the troughs.
My seats are near the SE corner. Rarely do I have to wait very long for a urinal.
I LOVED the troughs. Dong Fest!
All of the stuff other fanbases say about Michigan's fans in the off/early season are true (recruiting being so important, September Heismans, Michigan arrogance, etc.).
I also think the devotion to tradition and the past aren't properly balanced with the realities of modern college football.
Plus the obvious one: MSU has become what we all want Michigan football to be.
Here are mine for the rest of the conference:
Minnesota and Indiana look like the scariest games on the schedule this year (other than the rivals, of course).
Connor Cook is the most overrated QB in the conference, possibly the country.
OSU seems like a really soft team.
Games like Purdue vs. Northwestern at 12 pm on ESPN2 turns off a lot of people from B1G football.
Miss these bastards..
Madison Sucks. It is not the best college town. It isn't even the best college town in Wisconsin.
As for my confession. I correspond with Gene Smith multiple times a year and wish OSU good luck on a number of occassions. He gave me front row seats to "The Game" in Columbus.
I hate that the color maize has morphed to some shade of neon highlighter yellow.
I hate that for a while maize morphed into some fugly orange. I love that it is now bright and it jumps.. I hate people that complain about maize :)
but you're just wrong.
Well, he's not really wrong if by "for a while" he means 100 years or so, and by "fugly orange" he means beautiful maize.
You do realize corn comes in all sorts of colors, and we've just bred it to be yellow and sweeter, right?
Highlighter maize needs to go.
died with Bo. . . .