Great Feldman article on Biff Poggi - The Most Interesting Man in Coaching (The Athletic $)

Android workaround...long tap/save to reading list/open in reader (I use Pocket...but there are many)

Cliff notes? He played college ball with Dan Marino. Taught history and government in high school for $8,000 a year. Was a hugely successful high school football coach in Maryland. Made a pile of money in a hedge fund he operated with his father-in-law. Poured millions that he earned into St. Francis Academy in Baltimore. Not just football but classrooms, meals, housing and scholarships for economically disadvantaged kids. A blunt, plain spoken emotionally honest leader. The guy who can tell Harbaugh what's what. A major reason for our football turnaround since 2020. Has a mountain of respect throughout football, high school, college and the pros.

He really is one of a kind.

I enjoy the Athletic.  They do a good job.  Plus I get to regularly downvote Nick Baumgardner.

For any Michigan fan this article is not only interesting but makes you feel good about Harbaugh and the whole Michigan program today and going forward.  Stuff like this makes me think I am getting my money's worth.

nice guys finish last, unfortunately

Agreed. It suggests that Comrade Gattis did help to modernize the Harbaugh offense, and that after Gattis left, the Hegelian dialectic between manball and modern concepts was preserved.

“Here’s what I see,” Poggi said. “There’s support here, but it’s divided between Josh and what he wants to do, and some other legacy ideas.” To Poggi, Gattis knew the system that he’d learned under Joe Moorhead well, but several other assistants weren’t on board. They wanted more of what Harbaugh had done in his Stanford days — quarterback under center, using a fullback, things they knew the head coach liked.

“We have a 60-40 room here. And we’re gonna fail as an organization because of this,” Poggi said. “I think Josh is really smart. His offense he knows very well. He’s been hired as a coordinator whether anybody in this room likes it, or doesn’t like it.

“Jim’s hired him to be the coordinator, and because of that he’s got to have confidence, and right now I see a coach that doesn’t have confidence. I see a coach that is looking over his shoulder. I see a coach that is answering questions in a non-confident way because he doesn’t know if the question is a ‘gotcha’ question or an ‘I’m-on-the-team’ question. It’s obviously driving the guy crazy. Josh, is this correct?”

“Yes,” Gattis said. The first-time offensive coordinator acknowledged that he sometimes felt like he didn’t have the group’s support or confidence, which had made things difficult. As Gattis allowed himself to open up, Poggi saw that it created an even more interesting dynamic.

BTW, in the comments, Feldman says that Fox covering Michigan four weeks in a row "DEFINITELY helped find this story and develop a better feel for what it was."

"screen door one a battle ship"

Has me laughing. Here's a prime example of what happens all the time, we want to sound savvy or cool and our brains leap to a phrase that it half remembers. 

(When my guys were kids, I called them "young sons" because it seemed like a phrase that sounded cool. But it never was quite right. Finally, I realized "young son" was simply redundant. The actual phrase I vaguely remembered was "old son," perfect because it gave kids the respect of acknowledging their selves and maybe their old souls.)

In this case, it’s actually a quote from Biff in Back to the Future 2. Totally appropriate given the… Biffing. 

Its a direct quote from Biff in Back to the Future II, so in this situation its completely appropriate. 

No 1VaBlue1 has ever amounted to anything in the history of MGoBlog!

Feldman, the bizarro Kramer.

So....despite winning the B1G title, it seems the final answer is Gattis was part of the problem?