Hoke's a badass
Interesting article about how Brady Hoke's original dream job was to be a member of the secret service for POTUS
As an intern with the parole office, Hoke experienced the sheer reality of working in such a dangerous profession, coming to a standoff with a man wielding a butcher knife. “We knew this guy was screwy,” Hoke told the Union-Tribune in 2009. “Every day, I carried a .357, because some of these guys could be pretty violent. My partner was carrying a Colt .44.
With a title like "Hoke's a badass", you should have given it a SIIAP. "Suck it if already posted".
I did another search and couldn't find anything, so I removed the "siap" tag
This picture reminds of Chris Farley's SNL Schwarzkopf bit: "I want Holyfield!"
about this guy, the more I love him. Seriously.
I've been reading recruiting posts and watching Hoke point for 5 months now. His badassness has already been established.
Agreed, He is a well established bad ass. We have one major thing to learn about the Man, and every day a say a small prayer that it turns out his coaching ability matches his badassness, his recruiting ability, and his skillfullness in the pointing category.
his skill in the pointing area then, well my head would explode just thinking about it!
start at 21 seconds
Amazing to me that this is where we are now in terms of hopes and expectations. Who would have thought that anyone would even consider Hoke's ceiling to be that high, or non-existent?
I'm hoping for a self-fullfilling prophecy with Hoke. The team is going to be better next year, and that was going to happen regardless of who the coach was. But since Hoke is the new coach, he will (rightly or wrongly) be given credit publicly for the improvement. That will make him look good, even if he's not responsible. Looking good, coupled with media love, which he will get for not being the last coach, will result in people believing he actually is good. If people believe he is good, well, recruits are people too, so good players will come play for him. Having good players will make the team actually good, and it will look like Hoke is responsible for it all, even though I really think this was set up for any warm body of a coach who got hired after Rich Rod.
Maybe this was the plan all along...the brass realizing that Michigan had gotten stale, and instead of trying to drag us forward, forcibly pulling us backwards to set up a slingshot propelling us to greater heights. Putting a Michigan Man at the helm of the rocket gives us all something we can latch on to and love while we enjoy the ride.
Seriously, any warm body that followed Rodriguez? I could not disagree more. Not any warm body could have stood up at the podium his first day and spoken with such straight ahead clarity about his love of Michigan. Right then he put the college football world on notice and he hasn't missed a beat in building on that.
I honestly could not disagree more either. I don't think that he meant any warm body, as like... Michelle Bachman. I think he meant more along the lines of any functional coach. Hoke has a lifetime sub .500 record. He has never held the spotlight before. I think that if we didn't hire a convict or a complete idiot, he was going to get praise.
I almost negged you, but then I realized I bitch when people neg others who hold opposing opinions. I try to limit my hypocrisy.
People who point(!) to Hoke's career record tend to ignore the fact that he's orchestrated two program turnarounds. He took Ball St to historic heights and gave SDSU a 9 win season for the first time in about 30 years, IIRC.
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<br>All I'm saying is that all .500ish coaching records are not alike.
Agree entirely...I'd add that if he can win one or two that he should have lost it would be huge. This never happened for Rodriquez (unless you count ND last year, but their issue was QB health, not winning on the field while losing on the scoreboard). Hoke will have several games where we will be the dog, but that are winnable. If he can steal one or two he'll have a solid set of wins next year (8 or 9), and it's off to the races.
Second.
A lot of people, led by Rich Rodriguez, continue to claim the team would've been better this season no matter who was coaching, and as evidence they typically point to the three straight seasons of increased wins (suddenly, seven wins at Michigan somehow is viewed as setting the stage for huge success, but only because it came after seasons of five and three victories. RR was a master at lowering expectations).
Yet, in looking at last year's team, it was in utter collapse the final third of the season, and it had digressed as the season went along, as it did the two previous seasons. That was the momentum heading into this season -- none. The team won seven games total after starting 5-0. The defense, on the heels of two previous defenses that were the worst in yet another hot start that turned out to be a mirage. It also established a new low as the worst defense in school history. Bringing back that coaching staff, with all those returning 'starters' on defense, would have again produced one of the worst defenses in school history. Rodriguez was a terrible evaluator and recruiter of defensive talent, and Greg Robinson was worse. Robinson didn't even like recruiting, probably because he's not any good at it.
Here is my claim: The program was about to turn the corner into becoming annually mediocre, a Big East-like team with flashes of excitement on offense that would fail against quality teams and not produce wins against any team that can play defense. And a defense that would get pushed around by even middle-of-the-road Big Ten teams. There is literally no real evidence to suggest that a team in full collapse as the 2010 season ended going to be better in 2011. You can't keep pointing to the great, turnover-prone offense, which was not so great and was not even the problem. My guess is it would have more of the same and Michigan would not contend in the Big Ten. And my guess is it would have been another team that got worse as the season went along, not better, as the little guys RichRod loved continued to get injured and/or overpowered.
It is an arrogant, passive/aggressive shot that RichRod takes at Brady Hoke by claiming the team was about to get better. He's trying to take credit in advance for any success Hoke has, when in fact much of what Hoke is doing is to completely renovate the fundamental craters RichRod left on this program in its defense and special teams. And his one-man offense certainly did not scare the quality teams on our schedule. There are three areas that you have to be fundamentally sound in to win. RichRod was terrible at two of them. And the rankings of his recruiting classes were false, because those lofty rankings were based on the inclusion of a handful of talent athletes who could not get through a month of school. He drove our graduation rate to the lowest in the history of Michigan football. Just what is it that convinces anyone we were about to get better in the two phases of the game in which we were one of the worst teams in the NCAA? It's a false narrative created by a former coach who wants to get hired again.
If we have success this year, it will be because of the quick work Hoke, Mattison and the rest of the coaches do in patching up the defense enough to improve it substantially, at least to keep us in the games, and by somehow finding a kicking game that is not the laughingstock of college football. But I would expect we'll still see our defense get overwhelmed by the best teams we play.
Hoke has arrived with a real defensive blueprint and long experience about what it takes to win in the Big Ten, and he brought in talented offensive and defensive coordinators -- and, hey, a special teams coach. If we succeed this year, those will be the major factors. It's not so simple a warm body could do it. We had one of those running the defense for two years.
Yeah, we get it, you hated RR and you love to hear yourself talk (or type) about it. But that does not make your assesment of what UM was going to be any more correct than the folks who saw UM in line for more improvement.
BTW, Didn't a 7 win season that included an 0-2 finish preceed our 11-0 start to the 2006 season? Followed by another 0-2 finish.
It's nice that Brady Hoke got himself a better Defensive Coordinator. They gave him a million fucking dollars to do it.
And of course now I'll get criticized, for not being All-In With Coach Hoke. When in fact I've never said anything negative about Hoke. Far more than what can be said for D.C. Dave with respect to Coach Rodriguez.
I cringe at getting back into this debate, but Rodrigeuz did hire a good DC in Scot Schaefer. It's debateable why it didn't work out with Schaefer, but money wasn't the only reason Rodriguez didn't have a good DC.
Indeed, Rodriguez may have hired a perfectly good DC in Schafer. But you look at the end of the '08 OSU game, and I was there; it was pandemonium.
Moreover, I might not be stressing the money thing, if it hadn't been for David Brandon, who knows a thing or two about the relevant details, essentially saying that Michigan had a serious problem with hiring and compensating top-talent football assistants.
OSU '08 is a tough thing to draw many conclusions on Schaefer. It seemed he was essentially neutered by then, so who really knows who shoulders the blame for that debacle. Part of being a successful employee is learning how to deal with a boss you don't necessarily gel with, so Schaefer obviously has some culpability in it all. It was just a mess all the way around.
I agree that Brandon coming out and saying we need to pay more for coaches is a relevant factor in all of this going forward. It's impossible to know who Rodriguez would have hired to replace Robinson. One hand says the increased money would have led to a better candidate while the other hand says he had a poor track record of selecting DCs, so what's to say money would have made any difference.
Let's see. Coach Rodriguez had a great DC at WVU; Jeff Casteel. He asked Casteel to come to Michigan and Casteel said yes, before balking when WVU said that Stewart would take over. (And Casteell would be begged to stay.)
Then Rodriguez hires Schafer, who is a solid talent but didn't work out for reasons I don't claim to understand.
Then after 2008 Rodriguez asks Casteel, again, but no deal is made.
Then in 2009 Rodriguez selects Greg Robinson (at a pay rate that is little more than what Casteel is getting at WVU, and is about a third of what Michigan would eventually pay a Greg Mattison), as what is probably Rodriguez's third, fourth or fith-best choice.
Then at the end of 2010, by at least a few rumored accounts, Rich goes to Dave Brandon (as opposed to Bill Martin) for the resources to make a serious bid for Jeff Casteel. But by then, the real decision was whether Rodriguez would be dismissed. And we know what happened.
For my part, I'll be interested to learn more, as all of the biographers and autobiographers write their versions of the events.
Well, he was able to get that million for his D coach because Michigan didn't have to pony up 4 million to his previous employer and pay him 3 million to coach the team. Maybe if Rod would have volunteered to pay his own or at least half of his own exit clause he would have been able to hire better assistants. Of course his blind loyalty to his posse of yes men might have procluded that from happening anyhow.
But the details (and resolution) of those buyout deals have everything to do with two schools' lawyers, and virtually nothing to do with the coaches themselves. (I think it would be silly to "blame" anything on Hoke or on Rodriguez for any of their contract-transfer arrangements.) And in fact, Rich Rodriguez did undertake to make three separate $500,000 payments to West Virginia.
I agree with you 100% there. That's not to say RR did all he could in getting the best DC he could but Mattison wasn't an option for him.
Also, how is RR saying the team was going to get better a shot at Hoke? I would have thought the Anti-RichRod coalition would have had enough ammo from the time RR was actually here but I guess not. They have now taken to twisting his words into things they weren't intended to be.
I try to stay out of the Rodriguez debate but you are absolutely right about the passive- aggressive shots. In response to those I will rise to Hoke's defense but I'm pretty sure I won't do better than you did here.
Thank you for that. Listening to apologist's reel on about how we were "on the verge" or just needed one more year to see the fruits is like nails on a chalkboard.
God bless the man(RRod) and may he find happiness and success in his future endeavors but he was just flat floundering at Michigan and no amount of strategically placed lipstick can change that pig.
By far the biggest thing I look forward to from Hoke is that regardless of record, he won't stand there and make excuses, blame his players or his predocesser and act as if he just walked into a dumpster fire of a program and its not fair to expect too much from the team because he's had to completely rebuild it in his own image. That and no Grobin tunes or crying at press conferences.
I believe both that: (1) the team probably would have been better this year under Rodriguez than it was last year; and (2) it's unfair and inaccurate to say that improvement was inevitable under any new coach.
I agree with many of your points and want to add a couple more. First, we weren't even as good as our 7-6 record last year. With a few exceptions (UConn, Bowling Green, etc.), our wins last year were close and our losses were not. I think there's some luck involved, and there's no reason to believe we'll be that lucky again next year. Second, we're undergoing a major transition (scheme changes, coaches getting to know players, etc.) with reduced practice time. Given that they coincided with a coaching change, I think the practice time cuts will hurt more than most people realize.
has had a special teams coach every year of the RR era. It just turns out that Gibson sucked at everything he did. (Although our special teams weren't terrible outside of field goals.)
...awesome.
Having met Hoke in person at the NY Alumni event, I think that the gun was probably unnecessary. He is a big dude. When I patted him on the back, it was like patting the side of a barn. I am a pretty big guy, and a friend of mine saw my pic with him in my office and remarked, "you look like a child next to him - he is huge."
he is actually quite tremendous.
Well atleast now he knows how to deal with the spartans
Maybe He'll shoot Brutus the Buckeye in the foot just to make him dance. I'd pay to see that.
Wow, nothing like condoning violence on a Friday morning...
Please insert Hoke?
Hoke: GUN!
As long as we're making requests - all the secret service guys as Hoke?
Not only is this awesome, but it is even more awesomer (yup, more awesomer) because of the picture of Hoke that you picked. I actually laughed out loud and now my secretary thinks I am insane.
that is well done. very funny.
Where's Lloyd Brady?
And please please having him pointing out a possible target.... please.
This looks shopped, I can tell by the pixels.
Thank you for your art.