Message for Brian
January 13th, 2011 at 9:54 AM ^
The process was an exercise in cronyism and lack of foresight. Brian is right to be pissed. Hoke may be a good coach, but he was far from the most qualified out there. Just because Brian is critical of the situation now doesn't mean he won't be supportive of the coach/team.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:01 AM ^
yes, in a vacuum. however, the Rodriguez experiment proved that a DA DA DA "MICHIGAN MAN" needs the job, right now.... because who the hell would want this job after Rodriguez got splattered all over town? I'm still picking pieces of Rodriguez out of my hair after this whole debacle....but seriously I think Brandon played it safe because he realized Numero Uno is unite the fan base again before anything fantastic starts happening. Hire another outsider would've been hard to justify to everyone who just contributed to tearing RR a new asshole.
I just hope the precedent this sets isn't that the best coaches will never want to coach for Michigan because of what has recently transpired. I personally find RR as guilty as anyone else for the divorce of this marriage but I know many across the country don't read it that way.
Hoke better win 5 MNC and go 10-0 against OSU or else.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:05 AM ^
and FYI, I voted for Eisenhower......in 2008.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:49 AM ^
You desperately need to learn where the edit button is
January 13th, 2011 at 6:38 PM ^
I don't give a shit.
January 13th, 2011 at 6:38 PM ^
and i don't give a shit
January 13th, 2011 at 6:39 PM ^
racking up those mgopoints baby one at a time suck it.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:05 AM ^
cronyism occurred under RR if you remember. Some of those coaches should have been fired but weren't.
Brian has the right to his opinion, but if you say that the media didn't support RR from the start, but then for him to do nothing but downplay Hoke and his Pro-style offense (potentially-we don't know for sure what will be run), then he is no better then some of those very same journalists
January 13th, 2011 at 10:52 AM ^
You're right, cronyism (i.e. hiring GERG) was quite damaging to the team's success. That would seem like less of a reason to repeat the same philosphy again. One thing I will give Brian and his criticism of the new coach and his style is that it is consistent with Brian's opinions on offense. He's been a very vocal supporter of the spread system which was just kicked to the curb for a style we initially wanted to move away from with the RR hire 3 years ago. This is a little different from the MSM hating on RR because he's not a "Michigan Man".
January 13th, 2011 at 11:18 AM ^
You seem to misunderstand the word cronyism if you think the GERG hiring qualifies.
January 13th, 2011 at 12:31 PM ^
Wasn't talking about GERG. Talking about Gibson and Dews in particular. Coaches that should have been fired or replaced based on the results on the field. Braithwaite is another example, although that can be forgiven based on the circumstances
January 13th, 2011 at 10:51 AM ^
Hoke may be a good coach, but he was far from the most qualified out there.
You state this and others have stated this, and I have mostly agreed with this sentiment. However, I am humble to the fact that none of us have the level of insight into Hoke's actual qualifications beyond looking at his W/L record and his resume of coaching gigs. None of us have actually sat down with him and interviewed him to hear his thoughts on the program.
We are slaves to the information provided (mostly) by the MSM. We know how lazy/limited they are in terms of ability to gather information, so why should we conclude that Harbaugh or Miles were in deed better or even preferred candidates? I was definitely hoping for Harbaugh and think he would've been a better hire. However, his chief merit is (1) that he's a Michigan legend and (2) the fact that his team, led by the best pro style QB I have seen at the college level since Peyton Manning, had one good and one great season. Harbaugh might have left Michigan for the NFL after a few seasons.
I would definitely have preferred Harbaugh, don't get me wrong, but we just don't have enough information about the different candidates' motives, attitudes and skill sets to make informed judgements on who would have done the best job for us in the long term. I don't mean to defend Brandon, he may have done a horrible job in this, I just mean that even those who have analysed the process in depth have done so with only 40-50% of the information available to them that the search team had. At best.
Coaches are generally hired based on name recognition and short term results, over which they have somewhere between 20 and 40% influence. How many more games would we have won over the last 3 years with Prior at QB, Woolfolk healthy this year and a top rated kicker who lived up to his recruiting hype (yes, Gibbons was highly rated)? 3 more games? 4? These 3 scenarios were all highly likely that didn't pan out. There are probably 10 more like this (defensive recruits that went elsewhere, etc) that were 50/50 situations that may or may not have affected our win/loss record. A coach who was a great success in one situation can do a better job elsewhere and produce worse results - mind you I'm not saying this is the case with Coach Rod.
My point is that Brady Hoke may be the fallback option after Miles and Harbaugh turned us down and a lazy alternative to hiring an up and coming coordinator from outside the program. Or Brady Hoke may be the overall best (or second best) option in the whole coaching world, because his love for the university is more important than any shortcomings he may have in terms of Urban Meyeresque achievements.
Let's hope it's the latter, but we just don't know. Yet.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:55 AM ^
you make very good points. I'll give Hoke a chance, he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Obviuosly there are a lot of people who like him and there has to be a reason for that beyond the fact that he was an assistant at one point.
January 13th, 2011 at 9:55 AM ^
I, for one, am glad Brian is around to temper the mostly baseless optimism surrounding Hoke. Sure, Hoke seems like a great guy and a Michigan man, and thats good. But thus far he has shown to be a mediocre coach.
Brian is an engineer. He bases his analysis off of statistics and facts. If you want a bunch of rah-rah, go read the Detroit News or the Freep or any other of the MSM outlets. As for me, I'll keep coming here for what brought me here in the first place: reasoned, rational analysis. In this instance it's mostly negative, because that's what the facts are.
The only quibble I have with Brian is that our last hire happened to be the hot name/dream hire, and that didn't work so well. Granted I think he deserved another year to prove what he was doing was working, but that's in the past now I suppose.
I support Brady Hoke and Michigan football, and will continue to do so. But it's no good running around with your head in the clouds, ignoring the data we have available to us.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:32 AM ^
Brian loves himself a chart, but in reality, he's been cherry picking data for years to skew it to his opinions. We can hear all about "past record" and stuff, but he's ignored OUR past record for 3 years, and loves him some yardage stats, but ignores things like points, defense, and oh, special teams. Many of his statistical conclusions haven't come to bear year after year (his view on "turnovers" seems to change on a yearly basis). With all these wrong conclusions, either he wasn't a very good engineer, or he's only looking at the number that support his already predisposed viewpoint.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:16 AM ^
on his WTKA segment this morning was his response to a caller saying "well, facts and reason are on my side." Granted, fielding so much criticism is no small task...however, I take issue with that statement for the very same reasons you ring up. There are a billion facts and stats to describe college football, and you can often take many of the same facts and come up with polar opposite conclusions. To say that facts are all on his side is overblown and basically not true.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:44 AM ^
January 13th, 2011 at 9:55 AM ^
Mgoblog hates politics...yet in the past 4 years the the M community has become as divisive as Republicans & Democrats. The parallels are spooky.
I agree with the Hoke criticism and don't believe that we should blindly support it. Our patriotism will be questioned but I remain committed to truth & optimism rather than cronyism and nostalgia.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:13 AM ^
I remember when nostalgia was so much better. If only we could go back to those times.
January 13th, 2011 at 9:57 AM ^
I will not bash Brian for having an opinion, and I felt like he tried to keep it civil an about stats vs. personal attacks on Hoke. That being said, I hated hearing the negativity. Leave it to the Freep and the tools at 97.1 to bash the coach and the program. I understand he doesn't like pro style offense and thinks the spread is the offense of the future, but I would argue that the tri champions of the Big Ten this year would disagree. I hope Brian tries to point out the positives in the future instead of the negatives.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:18 AM ^
2 of the 3 champions lost their bowl games
January 13th, 2011 at 11:29 AM ^
Wisconsin may have lost, but it was a close game and they are as MANBALL as it gets around these parts. They put up a solid game against one of the strongest spread teams in the nation.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:56 AM ^
a non AQ spread team who is never in the top 25 in recruiting
January 13th, 2011 at 12:26 PM ^
I stand corrected. It is much better to finish in the bottom half of the Big Ten than to be a Big Ten champ and lose a bowl game. Thanks for your input.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:25 AM ^
was him saying "we need a decided schematic advantage to win, because we're not a recruiting powerhouse". The latter might be true, but the former isn't necessarily true. We need a good coaching staff to win games (notice how i said STAFF, as in, more than just a head coach). Jim Harbaugh and his great staff were 12-1 at STANFORD! DId they have a decided schematic advantage?
Hoke is a relative unknown with regard to recruiting. He's already got a good handicap because former players and alum support him. Unfair to RR, yes, but that's over and done with...the last thing we need is for players and alums tobe angry with another HC job hire. So how good will Hoke be? WHo knows? Past recruiting classes at Ball State and SDSU are...inconclusive. He was middle of the pack, but middle of the pack at BALL STATE might translate in a good way to Michigan. He said he almost got Mike Martin. I'm not sure how true that was...but damn, if he almost got Mike Martin to go from Michigan to SDSU, that's a positive indication of Hoke.
I'm not saying Brian isn't entitled to his views, or that we should all think Hoke is the coolest thing since sliced bread. But he needs to take it easy with his overwhelming negativity at this point, so early on in a new coach's regime. Or else this will truly become the "anti-RR" scenario.
January 13th, 2011 at 1:17 PM ^
So Hoke was a middle of the pack recruiting in his previous two so that means he'll RULEZ at recruiting in the big ten. If he couldn't beat his peers then, why will he now? And he said that he recruited Mike Martin NOT that he was close to getting him. After RR was hired, Martin flirted with going to ND and not BSU
January 13th, 2011 at 9:57 AM ^
Brian has email, next time you have a message for him, click the "Contact" button at the top.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:01 AM ^
Browser froze - double post.
January 13th, 2011 at 9:59 AM ^
Over this last week, I’ve honestly been disappointed in all the criticism of Brian, on here and on the radio. I know he doesn’t need us to defend him, he’s a big boy. But, he has created this place for us to passionately discuss Michigan athletics, a place where we can all have our opinions.
Why is it wrong for him to have his opinion? He gives it and backs it up with facts and just because he’s not towing the company line, he gets criticized. It’s OK to be skeptical, it’s OK to reserve judgement. Just because you don’t down the Kool-Aid doesn’t mean you don’t still bleed maize and blue. It’s not black and white – there is a lot of grey here.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:11 AM ^
Super point. The only thing that troubled me about this awesome resource is when Rich was coach, and people started to question what was happening from the Michigan State game on, they were treated like they were less intelligent. The evidence was all over our TV screen for most of the rest of the season.
Those sorts of attacks were ego based partisanship gone really really wrong.
People who are very supportive of the new coach, should be mindful of that danger going forward. This is definitely a case where reasonable minds can differ and there is a lot of grey. Especially until all the evidence is in when we see the team play for a couple years.
As much as I don't agree with a lot of what Brian is saying about our condemnation to occassional regional player, he has a lot of intelligence and knows the game really well. His position isn't without reasonable basis.
January 13th, 2011 at 9:59 AM ^
Love that Brian is getting called out for this. Did anyone think we would end up here? No. Did anyone really want Hoke over Harbaugh? No. But we got Hoke, he loves the school, he's going to work hard. Let's support Hoke, not trash him constantly on one of our biggest blogs.
As coach Hoke puts it "How dare us divide what Michigan football is".
January 13th, 2011 at 9:59 AM ^
Well Brian's site works because the fan base agrees with him. If he starts turning into Drew Sharp with facts, people are going to stop listening.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:10 AM ^
Disagree. Brian's site works because he gives us the facts. Period. Sometimes they make us happy. Right now they're making us sad. Brian gives us the most objective view of Michigan Football, in my opinion. Unlike the MSM, he isn't concerned with how much access the coach gives us or whose feelings got hurt at the presser or if the coach is a "Michigan Man" any of the other mindless blither they're usually concerned about.
If Drew Sharp actually gave facts with his opinions, people might actually read him. I say if people don't like the facts, then stop reading and head on over Drew Sharp's way. I think Brian would agree.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:39 AM ^
This is an interesting moment for this site. For the first time that I can remember, Brian, right or wrong, is seriously risking alienating a lot of his readers. There's an opportunity here for another site to emerge, though mgoblog has set a high bar with elements like Tom's contributions, some of the mathlete-type work, etc.
January 13th, 2011 at 9:59 AM ^
I feel like some people on this board worship a false idol. That's not my style, though.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:00 AM ^
So you are criticizing Brian because he is giving his honest opinion? You are right we don't know what is going to happen so instead of you know using the facts we have and making an educated guess he should just anoint Hoke the savior of Michigan? Look everyone here wants Hoke to succeed but if Brian is going to go on a radio show and talk about the new coach I would be really disappointed if he didn't give his actual opinion.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:02 AM ^
is that the attention has shifted from analysis of the team with clever commentary and more into opinion. as such, i feel like the front page content has become less about what happened and more about what Brian thinks should have happened. you can like that or dislike it but it's becoming less of a blog about Michigan and more of a blog about what Brian thinks about Michigan.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:05 AM ^
Well said.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:05 AM ^
It's not limited to Brian. The blog has, for some time, appeared to be a RR-blog rather than a Michigan blog. Even the Hoke hate is usually accompanied by "we didn't need to fire RR". Maybe it'll revert back to a Michigan blog in time.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:39 AM ^
I think Brian's been rather open about his belief that the bowl game necessitated RR's firing.
January 13th, 2011 at 12:38 PM ^
I think you are trapped in what I call "IstillhateRRbubble". You need to let it go.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:10 AM ^
I check this blog religiously. Like about 10 times a day. I love the analysis, the summaries, the previews, the recruiting info and the inside scoop from Brian and the other mods. As for Brian's opinion, I don't mind that it is included and adds to the flavor.
But, I agree 100% with Geaux_Blue that lately this has become an opinion blog and not an info blog. Personally, and not an attack on Brian (as I am obviously still coming here) I find the front page less interesting than the comments lately. I hope that after this final day of temper tantrum, Brian returns to his former self.
Come back, Brian. We need you.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:33 AM ^
Fantastic Post, Geaux
January 13th, 2011 at 11:00 AM ^
But isn't that what happens in the off-season, especially during a coaching change? As you said, Brian is reflecting back on what happened, what he wished happened, and now what he thinks the future holds.
There really isn't any data left to analyze, so the rest is just speculation and opinions. Sure we can reinterpret the data and statistics, but we'll just be recycling the same statements over and over.
January 13th, 2011 at 11:37 AM ^
There is actually new data to analyze, but the time frame of a coaching search is too constricted to allow it to be completed, especially as Brian's writing time became consumed by serving as a clearinghouse for the rumors of various "insiders" and in processing the status of recruits. Extensive data breakdowns and analysis of the coaching styles of the various candidates would likely be illuminating, but it seems clear that the time frame of a coaching search doesn't allow the kind of in depth statistical and in-game analysis that sets this blog apart from almost any other. In the short run, a shorthand analysis of the candidates takes over. (ie Hoke = manball crony).
As time allows, I'm sure Brian and others will get to more in depth analysis of coaching tendencies, etc. Now, that's certainly not guaranteed to change his (or anyone else's) opinion of Hoke or his staff, but it will almost certainly make it more nuanced.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:03 AM ^
needs to let rich go. he sounds like a 15 year old girl whining about being dumped. it's really pathetic.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:04 AM ^
He's entitled to it. He's entitled to post whatever he wants on his site, and we are entitled to criticize him and bring up our own opinions. He wants and encourages that because it's good for debate, and it's good for business.
Brian brought up valid points on WTKA, but he is also being countered by some good ones.
Bottom line is, as he admitted, time will tell and everything right now is speculation.
January 13th, 2011 at 10:04 AM ^
Brian will inevitably embrace Hokemania and voice his support...today is not that day. Tomorrow isn't looking all that good either
January 13th, 2011 at 10:06 AM ^
shouldn't ever coach Michigan thing when he created his first list of potential RR replacements. It would be hard for him to do a 180, at least without ever seeing a practice/ game.
Maybe he can move into the healthy skeptic bucket?
January 13th, 2011 at 10:05 AM ^
In the event you decide to take the drastic measure of boycotting the games this fall, can I get the first shot at your tickets? Price is certainly negotiable. Let me know.
Thanks,
True Blue fan
P.S. I am/was a RR supporter and believe he will win wherever he goes, given the time and support needed. I also have come to the realization that what is done is done, and it is time for us to turn the page. Otherwise, we are part of the problem. This may seem odd, but favorite quote from the presser was, "And how unfair of us to divide what Michigan is." It's not fair to Coach Hoke to act in a divsive manner, just as it wasn't fair when it happened during Coach Rodriguez's tenure. I love Michigan and will support Michigan. I respect your right to state your opinion, but at some point and in some manner it will hamper progress. Go Blue!