Jack Kennedy (former UM QB) blog at Big House Report

It's called common sense.

I'll have to fire up my stats software to run a sensitivity analysis, but I have a hunch that "we suck at football" and "the coach is going to be fired" may be strongly correlated. Might even be a causal relationship!

you're right, of course.  I just have that OSU debacle in my head from 1968.

The problem is that a fan gets in his head that "Bo turned the team around in a year" without the context you have provided. 

They then post it in various message boards, talk to their friends about it, complain in my section (you know who you are, clown that sits behind me) and soon enough myth becomes conventional wisdom. 

The new guy (cough...Harbaugh, Miles etc.) is going to have enough to deal with let alone this ridiculous expectation level by uninformed "fans".

Well.... 1968 was a decent team... and Bump had success with the 64 team, but between those years...were a lot of lean years.

So when someone says "Bo turned the team around in 69"...really they mean "Bo turned the program around and in to a monster".  Look at every year from 69-79 and you will see an amazing turnaround of a program that struggled for most of the 1960s.

So there was a turnaround...

You're wasting your time trying to convince anyone here of anything. People have already made up their minds that Coach Hoke is incompetent because of the losses and because of his populist down-homey speech patterns.

No one on this blog is willing to consider the possibility that rebuilding an O-line from scratch with mostly underclassmen in a new blocking scheme is not the same as reloading an O-line with underclassmen who still have years of experience playing 2nd-string to one of the best O-lines in the country. So what if OSU has 4 underclassmen on its line? Each one of them was getting practice time with that dominant line OSU had last year, learning exactly what their responsibilities are, how they should communicate. It is far easier to learn a skill by doing it alongside experienced masters in an established culture of excellence than it is to learn a skill by doing it alongside other novices while that culture is being built.

To make matters worse, our most talented players and leaders have been neutralized by a string of injuries that makes AIRBHG look relatively normal by comparison. When you only have three upperclassmen on offense (Gardner, Funchess, Norfleet) and all three of them have played multiple positions in multiple offensive systems and all three of them are playing through injuries, you are not going to have a successful offense no matter what. I don't care what Urban Meyer has done with his young players at OSU, it is simply not reasonable to compare plugging young and talented players into a system that has been firing on all cylinders to building a new offense from scratch out of players that are young and/or learning a new position and/or playing through injuries.

This fanbase has completely irrational expectations and zero understanding of the magnitude of the rebuild project that this coaching staff has been presented with.

Personally, I am with Marcus Ray, who said before the season even started that the team would struggle majorly this year and that at least one more year would be needed before we start seeing the results that we expect.

"...and go go bed"

not once did Kennedy mention money, nor did he tell you to shut up. he is a graduated player that sacrificed his time and his body for the good of the team, and he knows more about Michigan athletics than even you, WD. you should try rereading what he had to say with the perspective that he is not your enemy but an informed person with many of the same concerns you have and some inside perspetive that we all lack.

Sometimes people inside an organization lose perspective. In my opinion, anyone who thinks Hoke has had acceptable performance over the last four years has flawed perspective. Anyone who thinks that the regression Michigan has suffered since RR left could be corrected by Hoke next year has trouble dealing with reality. There is no basis for concluding that Hoke will turn things around. His failure to attend to details, like getting 11 players on the field for punts, and foolish strategic decisions, like moving DG to WR so there was no qualified backup QB against Nebraska or the decision to redshirt Kalis when it was obvious there would be a need for new OGs in 2013, combined with incomprehensible game decisions like the punting formation he insists on, tell us that Hoke will continue to fail at Michigan if he remains as coach.