What if? Michigan football version

but I'll add to the first one.  I find it hard to believe that even then that news doesn't leak somehow, but let's roll with it and say he keeps it quiet till after.  I agree we don't win. But what then happens is Fisher isn't coach, and we probably get whoever Bobby Knight's first recommendation was. Because he was tight with Bo, and ran a clean program. There was even talk of him coming to Michigan, but he'd have never left Indiana. Considering Bobby's more recent assistants haven't exactly done wonders anywhere, I wonder if we do much better than we have.

"What if the B1G allowed more than one team to go to Bowl games prior to 1975?"

What if the "no-repeat" rule which accompanied this one had been in effect still rather than abolished two years before?

Michigan would have gone to the Rose Bowl in 1973 despite losing to Ohio in November, I believe. I really never understood what their rationale for the "Rose Bowl or No Bowl" rule was in the first place, and in any event, Michigan was actually the first beneficiary of the change in 1975 with the Orange Bowl appearance, I think. 

Everybody else would have had a loss.  We also would have had wins over the next closest competitors in Miami and ND.  Assuming the bowl matchups are the same (as they probably would have been that year) and WVU still loses, Michigan is still the only undefeated team, even with the tie and ends up with the title after the Rose Bowl win.

Moeller was a good coach, and a great guy, but he wasn't exactly Mr. Popular when he left. Otherwise that never would have been able to push him out. He was coming off two 4 loss seasons (back when that was unthinkable) and if sites like this existed they would have been roasting him and giving '93 and '94 nicknames.  And then the next two years after he left were 4 loss seasons too, so if all four had been under one coach, he probably would have been out. (Remember when 4 loss seasons were horrible for Michigan?) For how often people like to bring up "Lloyd did it with Moeller's players" Mo's three best seasons were his first three, with Bo's players.  People remember the more aggressive offense, but forget they still lost games. The sidelines always seems a bit more confused when things hit the fan those years too. 

Now, he was a good man, a good leader, and I have little doubt if he continued we probably would have had similar success on average to what Michigan has done before and after.  I don't think he was going to tank the program. I just don't buy the idea that we were ready to turn the corner to some new level of greatness.  After two "mediocre" seasons, a lot of fans were ready to run him out of town (as they are all Michigan coaches). If he had been 11-1 and 10-2 in the Rose Bowl those two previous seasons, he probably would have survived even the tapes coming out. 

that Mallet was iffy to start with, and the simple act of hiring Rodriguez was the last straw, only to be confirmed by subsequent interaction or lack thereof with Rich.

Furthermore, Mallet made the right choice, he is a prototypical pocket passer with three playing years of eligibility left, and needed to be in pro-style offence to make it to the next level.

By comparison, Denard had two seasons of playing eligibility left, and needed to move more towards a pro-style offense to make it to the next level.

i.e., the shift to a spread coach early in his career made leaving the best career choice for Mallet, and the shift to a West Coast (we'll call it pro-style) coaching staff with two years to go made staying the best career choice for Denard.

And while we're at it, Borges had the dial too far to the West Coast side until after the Iowa game. Only then did they fully adapt to Denard's abilities.