Stewart Mandel: Michigan has the "saddest fan base" right now
Well I normally hate offseason filler like this, but Nick from Austin posed an interesting question...the author posits that due to the past 2 years with us, MSU and Ohio, we are the saddest. Though I disagree, much of the negativity on the board over the past 6 months probably means he's on to something. I also take issue with the reasoning he gave for not picking Florida when our experience is not too dissimilar to theirs over the past 3 years and he seems to conveniently forget MSU's 2012 season.
Thoughts? Anyone got suggestions for another fanbase that is sadder right now?
Regardless, can't wait for the fall so we have the chance to turn this narrative on its head.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/college-football/news/20140402/northwe…
(our question is the first on page 2)
If the expectations nationally aren't that high, Michigan isn't the answer to Mandel's question.
I think fans like to think of Michigan as a national program with Big Ten and national title aspirations. But the reality is we're the third best team in our divison, and the gap between third and second isn't really that close.
So maybe sad isn't quite the right term. Most in denial might be better.
I was going to call you a glass-half-empty kind of guy, but I think you smashed the glass against the wall a long time ago.
What do I win?!?
Stop framing things as the "post-Carr" era. The guy stopped winning big games mid-way through his stint and you could see the greater failings coming a mile away. If the guy had stayed on for a few more years, maybe people would be a little realistic about what he was responsible for.
Michigan football has been sub-standard for a long time now and Carr is one of the main reasons why.
This. The "new direction" hire, manifested as RichRod, doesn't happen if not for the stagnation over the latter half of Carr's tenure.
for the last decade. In the last 10 seasons we lost 5 games or more 6 times. 2006 was considered our best year, but it is a clear outlier and we lost the last 2 games and the 2 most important games of the season. 2011 was a good season, but again we lost 2 games, 1 of which was to Sparty who has owned us recently.
In that stretch we are 1-9 against Ohio, 5-5 against Sparty and 2-6 in the bowls.
The decline started before RR.
I was sad when J-Mo walked off the court for the last time.
But other than that, I can't think of a time when I was sad about Michigan Athletics over the last couple of years. I've gone between being ZOMG!!!! HAPPY ( Basketball ), to being RAWR ANGAR!!!!!!!! ( Football ), to being meh ( Bowl Jamez Football ).
numb and losing interest. Thank god for Nussmeier, but I think that this will be a season for fans to read tea leaves, rather than one of big wins. Hope I am wrong.
...it's beyond just losing game sadness. It's more like an era of hopeless mediocrity and that is a result of the poor leadership (AD Brandon & Coach Hoke).
I feel the same. At least when it comes to football (basketball has delightfully been the polar opposite). I don't even really care about recruiting anymore. Old recruits, new recruits...whatever. Same results on the field. And I want to be positive about Nuss, but I'm just tired of almost a decade of "this year will be diferent!" Eventually optimism gives way to realism. And realistically, we are a middle of the pack Big Ten team and have been for quite a while.
Seems accurate to me. The lack of success, the high expectations, the success of our bitter rivals? All of those contribute. A key issue here is lack of hope for the future; a lot of us seem to have real doubts about Hoke's ability to lead the team to the level of success we expect. That means that there's a decent chance he may need to be fired, and then it's back to square one with a hole at the coaching spot.
Let's be real: Michigan hasn't even made the B1G championship game, and the conference is historically bad. How can we not be depressed about this?
I often wonder: if you would have told Bo or Yost or Crisler that in the year 2013, the Big Ten will have twelve teams and a championship game and that Ohio State, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Nebraska will have all played in the championship game while Michigan will have yet to earn a berth, what would they say?
We are overflowing with ennui.
Our offense is what has regressed like a bad joke. We aren't stupid enough to think that it's because the players suck. They don't. But when you try to fit a square peg into a round hole, you're going to get a lot of failure. Borges didn't have the personnel and tried to do these things anyway. However, Nuss is on the record as saying you tailor your offense to meet the needs of the players. That right there is extremely encouraging. No longer will we hear the adage of, "They didn't execute. We will try again next week." That was infuriating - a sign of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I'm not saying we are going to win a national championship this year. But I don't think we will experience the same levels of frustration that we did last year and during the RichRod defensive debacle.
But when you try to fit a square peg into a round hole, you're going to get a lot of failure. Borges didn't have the personnel and tried to do these things anyway. However, Nuss is on the record as saying you tailor your offense to meet the needs of the players.
Borges was on record as saying that too, and that won him a lot of points at the beginning of his career here until the offense started not working. Same with Rich Rod.
We're the "saddest" fanbase right now because it all has a cyclical sense about it, a sort of inevitability, like we've lived it all before and this time we're not sure what will change that.
I think the defense is a bit suspect to honest and do not find to be any where near the upper ecehlons of anything. This is the same defense that let an MSU offense hang 30 points and over 400 yards of offense a week after scoring one offensive TD against Purdue. The perfromances against Akron and a UConn team who's highest point total all season was 28 is not what a good defense would do either. The worst part from my veiw is that the team didn't improve as the season went on. If they had gotten better from week to week that would be one thing but the lines neither line improved very much. The o-line couldn't block and the d-line could seemingly never get any pressure despite having the recruits.
So yes, I am a bit pessemistic but that's not the same as sad.
Its been eight years of "yeah, but if it wasn't for excuse du jour..." I don't care anymore. I don't care if the OL is shit, if the QBs are round pegs in square holes, if the LBs are inexperienced, if the CBs ligaments are exploding, if the OC is stuck in 1985....I just do not give a shit anymore.
Win. On. The. Field.
Excuses are for losers. Do better. And until then, we are what we are. Mediocre. Trying to rationalize it any other way just clouds the obvious.
Well, the manner in which the question was framed didn't seem to speak to sadness so much as perhaps frustration stemming from performance versus expectations. From that standpoint, we probably rank up there as one of the fanbases who does find their team's performance perplexing at times, to say the least, but I think the problems are well-identified and through coaching shakeups they could be helped. At least to me, sadness (in fanbase terms) would stem from a hapless grasping for solutions in the face of broken expectations (some brought up Tennessee, which might be a good example) and I don't think we're quite there - indeed, far from there.
Perhaps I'm more pessimistic than you, but I think we are there. This program started stagnating at the turn of the century and has been lost in the woods since Lloyd retired. In some ways, the current state of affairs is worse than the depths of the Rich Rod era because at least with Rich Rod, we all knew that he had very litttle slack and and would be canned if things didn't turn around. With a 'Michigan Man' coach who says all the right things and was hand-picked by the current AD, I'm just not sure there's enough will on the part of the powers that be to do what's necessary to restore Michigan to elite status. Hence the sadness. We are mired in mediocrity, we have been for a while, and there's no visible light at the end of the tunnel.
That's all that really matters to me. If others choose to be sad, that's up to them.
He ain't too far off, there.
...because even if Michigan goes undefeated and wins the Big Ten they'll likely be sent to the stupid playoff rather than the sacred Rose Bowl. :(
It's not like Mandel went out on a limb to come to this conclusion.
We are:
- 8-10 over the last 20 years in bowl games
- Haven't won a conference title since 2004! That ties the 3rd longest drought in Michigan Football History (#1 = 1951-1963, #2 = 1907- 1917, #3 = 1934-1942)
- 1-9 vs Ohio State in the last 10 years.
- 1-5 vs Michigan State in the last 6.
Hell yea. I'm sad. Now I need a drink.
That bowl game record is pretty much on par with our historical average, so at least we got that going for us, which is nice.
Does it make you sadder knowing we're actually 3 - 8 in the last 11?
I'm trying to find a silver lining, man.
Stop it. You're making me sad.
Notre Dame is
- 3-11 over the last 20 years in bowl games (only made 14 bowls in 20 years)
- Has not won a national championship since 1988.
- Never won a BCS bowl game during the BCS era (since 1998). Last BCS-type bowl win was Sugar Bowl in 1991.
- 3-9 vs USC in last 12 years
- 2-6 vs Michigan in last 8 years
There are a lot of programs you can do this for.
Now we're using perpetually underachieving Notre Dame as an example of how we're still OK? They used to be the team we laughed at. And now they're our statistical company? Hell, they haven't won one since 1988, but at least they played in a national championship game this century.
I don't think anyone is arguing that Michigan is anywhere near OK. The point is that you can make these lists for a lot of schools like Notre Dame, Tennessee, Nebraska, or Penn State. If anything, it is saying that the expectations at Michigan are higher than what they are at Notre Dame and those other schools right now which is probably a good thing.
Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at. Maybe I didn't word it right.
Yeah, "at least we're not Notre Dame" just doesn't cut it anymore.
The Bowl record doesnt bother me. We won a BCS Bowl as recently as 2011.
We do need a Conference Title but that isnt gonna bring me down...
Michigan State
1-5 in the last 6 but 7 of the last 12 with a 6 game winning streak and a win as recently as 2012. We still hold a demanding lead in the overall series and we took it to them in basketball this year.
Seriously, one 4 game losing streak followed by a Michigan win and then a bad loss to their first good team in years isnt enough to make me sad....sure they won a Rose Bowl, but it was their first since 1988. Nothing is more annoying than a little brother who gets cocky with his first taste of success. I cant wait until we smack their asses back down to earth.
Ohio State
Yeah, 1-9 sucks but we kicked their asses in hoops and Aaron Craft looked like a dumbass. We still have the alltime series and we will eventually go on a run against in football to even it back out. I just know it. At least we played an epic game against them this year. Honestly I respect Hoke a lot more after that game because he had the stones to go for it on the 2 point conversion. Sure, we didnt get it, but at least we gave it a shot.
We have recruited very well and have a TON of young talent coming up the ranks. We will be back within a few years. Might sound cliche but I really believe it. Just give it time.
And when it comes to basketball, we are looking better than ever.
(I wrote this for my own mental health as much as I wrote it as a response to your comment. I just need to reaffirm my own belief)
Nah. We've had a bit of a rough run, but there are football programs in way worse shape that are just as proud. Heck, in the B1G you have Illinois and Purdue that look like tire fires yet had success semi-recently.
But yeah, beating some rivals would be nice.
8-5 and 7-6 makes me sad.
8-5 and 7-6 makes Minnesota the talk of the B1G, Nw the Engine that keeps on winnin', Purdue "Back on Top," Penn State a team perserveering through sanctions, and IU the best Hoosier team since the early '90's.
Perspective.
I'll take my saddness (for now) and expect it to disapear with a 10-3 season.
When we have posts lke the one above where people are whining about a comment some OSU coordinator made about BH coloring a playbook and then this post where the OP is asking for help finding other fan bases in worse shape than ours, I have to say I agree with him.
I do have to say that I differentiate between negativity and saddness though. Personally I have been angry as hell the past couple of years but there have been plenty in this fanbase that have taken the saddness, whinning about everything route. People can neg me if they want but I think he's pretty accurate in his assessment.
For me anyways, I'm with you in that I've been angry/annoyed for, I don't know, 6-7 years now? But I'm tired. Being continually angry and annoyed takes work. And I just don't have the energy to deal with that anymore. And that's where the sadness comes in. When you're too apathetic to be angry, and just look at the program as a shell of its former self, that's just sad. And one BCS bowl win amidst a sea of 8-5/7-6 seasons isn't going to fix that. Its been almost a decade of cloudy days, with one random sunny day in the middle, and that's just depressing.
Reading this made me really sad.
Not only has this thread bummed me out, its distracted me from doing the work I need to be doing for the last 30 min. And now I need to stay an extra 30 min to finish.
Double dong punch.
are sadder fans but football wise I feel we are pretty low right now. Like someone said before, I am not even sad anymore, I am finding it hard to get jacked up like I used to about football. I almost expect 4-5 losses every year with two of those always being MSU and Ohio.
I am just not exctied right now. I miss basketball already.