Something "silent" happening today - per TomVH twitter
"There's something happening today, but you probably won't hear about it for awhile since it's "silent"…."
Im assuming this is a silent commitment? Or something of the silent but deadly variety? Any speculation?
Discuss.
great !!!!
Zeke Pike!! Then he can help us bring in a Mega Class!!
wherever he goes i seriously doubt he will commit silently
be it michigan or elsewher kid seems like a winner and wants to play with the best people.
Luring a mega class and what he want won't be best served by commiting silently.
just my epinion.
It is a defensive player per Tom Beaver on Scout.
Rivals mods confirmed its a defensive player as well. If we assume it came from one of the prospects at the spring game than it would have to be Ross, TRich, or Day. I don't believe Bolden made it so it would have to be one of those three. I would be ecstatic with any of them!
Please when referring to the potential for a superfriends, top-5 recruiting class, use all caps: MEGA CLASS (!).
Whoever smelt it, dealt it.
SBD?
the race :(
Anyways, hopefully we can hear a rumor on this soon
I've been compulsively updating twitter in an attempt to not study for my final tomorrow :)
<br>Procrastination: 1 me: 0
Could mean any number of things of course although it certainly sounds like another commit.
I'm hoping that the vagueness of the tweet combined with Tom's revelation of the possible MEGACLASS means this has something to do with that.
Commencing forced tempering of expectations...
...so tough to do but no doubt the safest course of action.
Lloyd is back in charge: Equal parts 1990's pro style offense, good defense, and top 10 recruiting classes.
Essentially, David Brandon has said, "fuck it, the 1990's Dominos pizzas weren't that bad. Change fucking blows."
was that bad
Carr never got close to a million bucks to give to an outside coordinator. Michigan is no longer buying its X's and O's on the cheap and hopefully that continues. The only question is whether Hoke can be the figurehead Carr was and bring in that kind of talent (that 2006 team has to be one of the most talented in the last decade). If this ends up being a Megaclass 3-4 years down the road and we don't go back to operating the program on the cheap, the sky is the limit for near and long term future of the program.
Back to the 90s?
I feel like we did something kinda good in the 90s...
Both guys were successful coordinators at other places hired to come to Michigan. Borges also has a long track record of elite-level success (Auburn, UCLA) as well.
Every single Carr coordinator on both sides of the ball was a Michigan position coach who got promoted. This is a huge change to have high quality, experienced coordinators brought in from outside the program and it is one I hope continues if/when the current guys leave.
I usually like most of the stuff you post, but I think you are a little blind in your argument here.
Mattison and Borges both had strong ties to Hoke. Mattison even coached here in the 90's.
No f'ing way is this program going to be run on an ongoing basis where if a Coordinator leaves, we'll be paying top dollar for an outside guy with strong credentials.
Really, this was a one-off event. We spent big money on Mattison (which was a genius hire, don't get me wrong), because we needed to fix the D and he came because of Hoke. Borges simply just played tag-along.
When it's time for either to retire, we will either hire internally, or hire someone with Michigan ties. That is the game.
I don't know if it's fair to assume that. Did Borges have any ties to Hoke before he came to SDSU? Those connections have to start somewhere. For SDSU to land Borges in 2009 was a huge coup.
As for Mattison/Hoke, yeah they worked together here - for two years, 15 years ago. And Mattison committed one of the worst betrayals by taking an equivalent job at a rival school. A lot of Lloyd's boys would have never made that move for any amount of money in the world. This isn't not quite the incestuous relationship we had with Carr/Herrmann and Carr/DeBord.
I could be wrong, but I thought Mattison only went to ND because his daughter was going to school there. Does anybody know for sure if this is the case?
April 17th, 2011 at 11:19 PM ^
Jim Herrmann was LB coach under Mattison.
April 17th, 2011 at 11:52 PM ^
He left because ND was offering a lot more money (big surprise) and perks, which includes free tuition for his kids (which was alluded to, but I don't know if any ended up going there).
Carr coordinators were promotions from within that had no track record of success as a coordinator at the Div 1 level. Hoke, it seems. has learned you are only as good as your assistants and has brought in elite coordinators. Complete opposite ends of the spectrum.
I love the Mattison hire. There is plenty of room for debate about Borges, so let's put him aside. What do you think of the rest of the offensive coaching staff? Their resumes appear lacking, don't you think?
Borges is not elite, not even close. Elite offensive coaches are guys like Chip Kelly or Urban Meyer. Al Borges is pretty good, definitely solid, but nowhere near elite.
Comparing an assistant with a head coach is not fair. Needless to say, Kelly and Meyer weren't walking through the door.
Borges had a ridiculously productive offense at UCLA and was a Broyles Award finalist twice. Rivals named him the offensive coordinator of the year when he was at Auburn. He's had successful offenses at Portland State, Boise State, Oregon and SDSU as well. There aren't too many guys out there with that kind of high level success at two stops or with that long of a positive track record.
Can you name a college coordinator with even a comprable track record? Chow, probably. Maybe Weis (though that was never going to happen). Borges is as good as they come.
I must say its refreshing to see you've come around on Hoke and the boys. I used to really disagree with your posts during the CC, but I've really been enjoying your takes of late.
April 17th, 2011 at 11:57 PM ^
Purplestuff has always, and still is Pro-Rich. But he's smart enough and not so attached to his feelings to refuse to acknowledge good things Hoke has done, and give him a chance. He can still skillfully argue Rich should still be the coach, but doesn't hold it against Hoke. Which is all you can ask, and it's the example to follow if you're a huge Rich fan. (Now Brandon on the other hand....but there are fair reasons for that too...)
April 17th, 2011 at 11:22 PM ^
Nobody had even heard of Chip Kelly four years ago. Point being, he did not become elite until Oregon hired him.
Beavis, you act like it's a bad thing that we fired our 0.405 "cutting edge" former coach.
Look, after the Miss St game, Rich had to go. Using hindsight, he knew he was done at the player's banquet. He had asked Casteel to come save his ass, and he said, "Sorry, Rich". At that point, Dave Brandon had him by the balls.
Rich failed in the bowl game, and was fired.
Dave Brandon went on a "coaching search" in which he fooled everyone, and was going after Hoke the entire time. Really, this is the only thing DB has done that has pissed me off.
My points above are just stating the facts. We are back to being Michigan again. We'll run a pro-style O, with an OC that will drive people crazy. Most people will love the HC, even though we'll likely blow a few games against "easy" teams and not everyone will be satisfied.
The whole "we paid up for assistants this year and that's not what we used to do" thing is a myth going forward. We paid up because Rich broke the program in the eyes of most everyone with ties to the program. The fact that we paid up this season for Mattison, and brought along Borges, is just fixing the leaking holes in the dam. Once those two are done and ready to retire, we're not going to hire some Manny Diaz-type and pay him a shit ton of money.
And the rest of the staff bears this out. We aren't engaging in the arms race with the Alabama, Florida, Texas crowd. We were very fortunate that Mattison loves Hoke, has a new granddaughter in Ann Arbor, and is at the right stage of his career to make this move. Usually, this will not be the case, and we will be crippled in the future by our belief that the best coaches should feel privileged to coach here, and that only those with ties to Lloyd are worthy to don the Michigan cap.
at Texas, Bama, and Florida beyond the coordinators?
And how do you know what will be the case in the future?
right, we have a new AD who decided to spend lots of money by U of M standards for a coordinator in his first year on the job. Who is to say this isnt going to be a reoccuring theme going foreward as long as brandon is in charge
Because they don't exist. Just a straw man for a guy who's named himself after OSU's coach.
No, all I want back about Michigan was the winning, and that's really all that being Michigan was about.
We'll run a pro-style O, with an OC that will drive people crazy.
Not that I really disagree, but I don't think there's an OC anywhere that can leave a fanbase satisfied. Vincent Smith and inside handoffs ring a bell?
If Harbaugh had actually wanted to coach here.
How the hell do you know that?
Piece together every single piece of information that is publicly available and come up with a different story. I'd like to read it.
Anyway, there is the Harbaugh wrinkle as another poster mentioned. I mistakingly left that part out. My bad. But as to what really happened there - who knows?
Doesn't it turn your fact based storyline into a choose your own adventure? Because not knowing how that went could make things go in all sorts of different directions. Did he never really want Harbaugh, and always wanted Hoke? Did they court, but go their separate ways? Did he really want Harbaugh, but Jimmy screwed him? Did Harbaugh really want to come here, but turn to the NFL when his love wasn't reciprocated? And for any of them, why? It changes the storyline quite a bit. And I don't know that we'll ever know the truth, because it's the type of thing a memoir would even gloss over. Or be he said/she said.
OK. Choose your own adventure:
1) Harbaugh was never an option, the entire search was a sham. Hoke was the guy all along.
2) Harbaugh was an option, and didn't come. Then the rest of the search was a sham. Hoke was #2 all along.
Don't piss on my parade, sir. It's really quite simple.
April 18th, 2011 at 12:05 AM ^
Say I go with 2....are you saying that going for the gusto, as it were, and having a fall-back plan is a bad thing? Or just that you think Hoke should have been say, the 5th option? But how do we know he wasn't the second, Brandon did some preliminary inquires to see if someone else wow's him, and no one did, so he stuck with Hoke? Or that it even went the other way, he was inquiring to all sorts of people, gave Hoke a curtesy interview, and was wow'd by him? I have no problem with someone picking apart "the process", because it can be. But if it was Hoke all the way, why didn't we just fire Rich the Monday after OSU, and put Hoke in to recruit immediately? At the very least, Harbaugh has to figure in somewhere.
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<br>So what page do I turn to now?
To be clear, I was talking specifically about your assertion that we won't pay top dollar for an outside coordinator again. I'm not a DB fan, but he was pretty clear making the point that he doesn't feel that we've paid our coaches market value to date. Why do you question that?
RR has won conference titles in a BCS-qualifying conference.
RR has won BCS games.
We brought in someone with a lifetime sub .500 record (and 3 winning seasons against 5 losing seasons), who has never even won his conference (MAC, MWC).
Say that Hoke "gets it," runs good old fashioned "Michigan football," or whatever pablum you want, but bringing up track records just makes you look foolish. Let's all hope Hoke can get his lifetime coaching record above .500 by winning consistently at Michigan.
Is that not what is important to UM fans?