OT: One of RichRod's ex-QBs grad transfers to Indiana U.
Brandon Dawkins, a "dual threat" QB who played for RichRod at Arizona, is grad transferring to Indiana U:
http://tucson.com/sports/arizonawildcats/football/ex-arizona-wildcats-q…
April 11th, 2018 at 10:03 PM ^
It's funny because he mentioned Nick Sheridan (Indiana's QB coach) and his experience as a former QB under Rich Rod as one of the reasons he transferred to Indiana
April 11th, 2018 at 10:31 PM ^
April 12th, 2018 at 12:26 AM ^
Sheridan will always have the glory of being carried off that Metrodome field.
In all fairness to Sheridan, I've always understood from the people I know who were and are close to the program that Sheridan walked on to learn how to coach. He never had the right constitution to play in front of 100,000 people. Which is particularly disappointing, I understand, because he was pretty decent in practice. Oh well.
But regardless of his success on the field, I bet he learned a bunch that is helping him in his coaching career. So jokes aside, what this player said could be fairly rational.
And while Sheridan was quite a bad player for Michigan, most of that had to do with his actual physical ability, not his understanding of the game, scheme, and techniques. Many, many coaches were pretty awful players. Bill Belichick basically played Center, because in his mind, it was the only way a short, small, relatively unathletic (but smart) kid could have any success. His destination was always coaching too.
Agree. I recall looking a photo about 10 years ago of Nick Sheridan and Threet in their game day gear, and thinking how one of them looks like a football player and the other doesn't.
April 12th, 2018 at 11:43 AM ^
April 12th, 2018 at 12:27 PM ^
Steven Threet and his high school chemistry teacher?
There's definitely some pixels of green grass in between butts there. I think we're safe.
April 12th, 2018 at 12:29 PM ^
This. He wanted to learn how to be a coach.
April 11th, 2018 at 10:06 PM ^
The old-fashioned jalopy engine sputtering sound effect is great.
April 11th, 2018 at 10:11 PM ^
He'll probs line the guy up at lineback haha
April 11th, 2018 at 10:27 PM ^
April 11th, 2018 at 10:38 PM ^
April 11th, 2018 at 10:48 PM ^
April 12th, 2018 at 10:06 AM ^
That isn’t true for a team like Illinois or Indiana.
April 12th, 2018 at 11:21 PM ^
April 11th, 2018 at 10:56 PM ^
April 11th, 2018 at 11:56 PM ^
Because then Michigan would've wound up hiring who in 2008? We weren't getting Les Miles, so we settle for Mike DeBord? Ron English? Greg Schiano? Brady Hoke?
It's convenient to point to Rich Rodriguez as the cause of all our football woes over the past decade, but the seeds for this malaise were sown long before he set foot in Ann Arbor and it's hard to see any other less heralded coaching candidate coming in and doing much better given the state of the footbal program when Lloyd stepped down.
April 12th, 2018 at 10:07 AM ^
I took the opposite perspective. If Alabama had hired RR, they would not have hired Saban therefore not becoming the school we all love to hate. Michigan probably would not have had a marquee hire either, but at least someone else would have gotten the RR curse.
EDIT: Of course there's the chance that RR could have succeeded at Alabama, but that's a hypothetical that I just assume would not be the case given the trajectory of the SEC at that time, and RR's propensity to invest all of his energy in high octane offense, and not enough defense.
I agree. When you consider that Lloyd apparently thought that passing the reins to DeBord would be reasonable, the transition was destined to be some degree of a disaster. Maybe not 3-9, but probably not "Harbaugh," either.
April 12th, 2018 at 11:31 AM ^
These thought experiments are always interesting, but the conclusions have to be evaluated absent the benefit of hindsight. I agree that had DeBord been allowed to succeed Lloyd we probably would've fared better than Rodriguez, but by how much is dependent on several factors. Could he have convinced Ryan Mallett to stay? If Mallett stays, does that convince Manningham and Arrington to stick around for another season? Myself, I'm skeptical that Mallett would've stuck around for any coaching replacement since his heart seemed like it wanted to be at Arkansas.
DeBord saddled with the roster that Rodriguez had in Year 1 probably would've struggled to get to 6-6, in which case the fanbase is still up in arms, because UNACCEPTABLE!
I think you're taking too much away from RR with this answer (excuse?). I will agree that any other coach would not have been as big a splash name as RR was at the time, but that doesn't mean that he would have been a failure. Sure, RR started out behind the curve with traditionalists not liking him. But he dug his own grave by flat out refusing to adjust scheme to the players he did have; blaming those players for his failures as a coach; and doing nothing more than crapping on the defense when he wasn't just ignoring it.
No new hire coach (or player, for that matter) is a guaranteed success. Some flourish where others fail; some fail where many have flourished. Maybe RR was the biggest name in coaching that Michigan could have feasibly hired - but that doesn't mean that someone else may not have been more successful at UM.
Moeller was terrible at Illinois. He was pretty good at Michigan. Pete Carroll was mediocre in New York and New England, but has been a great coach since. Bill Walsh is known as one of the great coaches of all time, was relatively successful in his first stint as Stanford head coach, but could be seen as downright bad in his second stint.
There are wrong situations, circumstances, and times for basically every coach. Belichick was solid in Cleveland and not given enough time (and had ownership issues, etc.), but wasn't great. Saban picked up MSU eventually, but had to take a ton of at-risk players to do so, and still left frustrated that the president, in the late 90s, said "No football coach will ever make more money than the president of this university". Meyer, who has basically had immediate success at every stop, even had the WTF 2010 Florida team.
It goes back to finding the right coach, not necessarily the best coach or the splashiest coach. Rich Rod is still a solid coach, not without faults, but a solid coaching mind (if the game hadn't already started to catch up to him at that time). He was never going to be the right fit. It wasn't just scheme, it was personality, it was a lot of things. And then he quickened the failure by not helping himself.
I still think Ron English would have stubbornly maintained the ship and Michigan would have had a bunch of 7-9 win seasons and would have been mediocre. Some fans would take that in retrospect, but if Rich Rod wouldn't have happened, people would have been calling for English in 3 years too. DeBord wasn't getting the job. Hoke was still way too young. Harbaugh still hadn't risen enough and had pissed too many people off. So unless it was Cam Cameron coming fresh off a 1-15 season with the Dolphins, the hire was going to be an outside hire. Who would have been the right fit? That's hard to say.
April 12th, 2018 at 10:07 AM ^
I always appreciate a good Space Coyote post. I was excited about the RR hire at the time, and I think the average fan probably was as well. I know more about college football now than I did then, thanks in large part to this site and board. The obvious cliche is that hindsight is always 20/20. I agree that the AD made the biggest splash hire he could, and possibly disregarded every red flag that might have been raised leading up it.
April 12th, 2018 at 11:50 AM ^
I still think Ron English would have stubbornly maintained the ship and Michigan would have had a bunch of 7-9 win seasons and would have been mediocre. Some fans would take that in retrospect, but if Rich Rod wouldn't have happened, people would have been calling for English in 3 years too.
The only problem with this assessment is you can't apply hindsight as part of the equation; and the key point is we still probably would've been mediocre. Mediocre still means we're getting beat annually by OSU and not competing for Big Ten titles and nobody would've been happy. It's not like we could've looked into a crystal ball and realized that Ron English would've managed to avoid a 3-9 season that Rodriguez suffered. We would still be struggling to win 8-9 games a season all while the stench of stagnation within the program growing stronger and stronger. There is no better in this scenario.
April 12th, 2018 at 11:00 AM ^
A lot of fans were excited by the hire at the time. RR was at the top level of coaches at the time.
As an aside, this isn't OT since it concerns the roster of a team that is on our schedule this fall.
April 12th, 2018 at 12:22 PM ^
We lost 10/11 multi - year starters on offense the year Carr retired. No coach would have come in and lit the world on fire especially considering that Mallett was out the door no matter who was the coach as he was very much disliked by most of the team.
We would have been much better on D so we likely would have ended at 6-6 the first instead of 3-9 but Debored and English (the two likely guys who would have been handed the keys) were disasters after leaving UofM so it stands to reason the ALSO would have been train wrecks as HC here....our program was in such disarry that we're STILL digging out of it.
April 12th, 2018 at 10:04 AM ^
This guy will run around and frustrate the D a bit, maybe get a score or two, but Michigan will still win the game.
Why post this? Was there no Mike DeBord or Les Miles news available?
Why not? It's clearly marked OT; contains football news about a B1G competitor (even if IU isn't a rival, like Illinois); and may impact this season's game with IU. It's a valid post - no doubt more valid than a lot of others we'll close out this week with. The standard disclaimer applies: don't like the topic, don't read the thread.
April 12th, 2018 at 10:55 AM ^
be happy it wasn't soccer.
/s
hopefully he has preserved a copy of it to watch and show his grandkids.