What is LC without an NC?
First off. Happy retirement LC and hope to see you at Radrick Farms soon.
All this LC talk got me to think more about him. I'm a lifelong Michigan fan, have 2 degrees from Mich and a season ticket holder. Most of my adult fandom has been under the LC tenure. What is certain to everyone is that he is a man of integrity. What is not certain to everyone was his coaching abilities. Some say he was a great coach. Some say he was an average coach. Clearly, people can't seem to agree on his on-the-field coaching abilities. But that is neither here nor there.
What I'm curious about is how LC would be viewed now if he had not won that '97 NC. I haven't quite formed an opinion on this yet. Before doing so, I wanted to wiegh in on what the board thinks. Thoughts?
A damn good man.
Still retired on September 1st.
He was still a classic coach and one of the great U of M coaches even without the NC in 97'
why deal in past hypotheticals? he did win a NC.
He would have been run out of town without that NC. The vultures were already hovering. The NC earned him his tenure. IMO, he was a good coach who was being surpassed by an ever-evolving game. We all remember how our defenses were struggling (sans 2006) after the NC year.
=
L-N
Lloyd won a National Title, etc. etc.
He is a damn good man, was a damn good coach, won Big Ten titles.
I don't think you need to form an opinion. The man did win a National Title.
Where is the next "There are..." Post or "Hello" Post? This offseason is getting ridiculous
It would be LC - NC = C(L-N).
EDIT: Of course, if NC=0, then its just "LC".
I did the actual subtraction, not an equality
And if NC=0... is it C that = 0? Because then LC = 0
Sorry, I guess I assumed that the equals since implied equality. My mistake.
And if NC=0, either N=0 or C=0 (assuming this is at least a group).
It can be mathematically proven that Llyod Carr without a National Championship is just Lloyd Carr. (We know C =/= 0 (because Lloyd Carr cannot = 0).
I declare this discussion over.
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
IDIOT!
/sarcasm of poster not understanding reference
Also, I think we are looking for the change in LC, so wouldn't it be d(LC)/d(NC) if d(NC) goes from 1 to zero, or at least something of the such (I don't really know how to write integration on this board, so this isn't a great representation, sorry)
I was told there would be no math.
Lloyd Carr has done more for the school Michigan before his morning coffee than we will ever do in our entire lives.
He would still be a damn fine coach. He accomplished things in victories and with the student-athlete that most programs only wish to accomplish. He was an excellent disciple of Bo and I think that without the NC he would be viewed the exact same as Bo: someone who did great for the University and was true to Michigan. Not many people can be revered in the same light as Bo in today's messed up world, but Lloyd is one such man.
Kudos to him for sticking around far longer than he wanted to - for the good of the University.
He had a win percentage of 75% on average. 9-3 is a solid season in the modern day game where most teams are competitive (yes I know early and mid 1900s coaches sometimes had higher percentages, but there were FAR fewer quality teams back then). He was a classy man, won games, won Big Ten titles, and won the NC. It's rather difficult to assess someone's coaching abilities beyond that especially if you're just going to throw out the greatest accomplishment a coach can have which LC achieved.
What if Jordan didn't win those 6 NBA titles? Is he still the greatest?
Jordan without those NBA rings is Lebron James.
Just no.
These Lloyd Carr threads are infuriating.
The man won the national title. He deserves the respect and adulation that comes with such an achievement. Let him retire in peace.
And, he achieved more than Bo.
Imagine if Bo had won a national title. It seems sometimes that this fanbase needs to remember a very important statistic:
National Championships:
Lloyd Carr 1
Glenn E. "Bo" Schembechler 0
I think that Bo's body of work (194-48-5 - .796 winning pct., 13 Big Ten titles in 21 seasons) outdoes Carr's (122-40 - .753 winning pct., 5 Big Ten titles, 1 NC, 13 seasons). I don't think that one national championship can overcome Bo's greater success on an annual basis.
I'm of the opinion that it is harder to win and win consistently in the modern era, with scholarship limits and added access for every team to recruits, than it was when the Big Ten didn't include Penn State, and was basically Ohio State, Michigan and 9 soupcans.
I think they both did great jobs. I think Carr's job was more difficult given the existence of Penn State and the fact that most teams in the Big Ten during his era had significant peaks that Carr had to deal with.
We're basically arguing over a greater shade of awesomeness. But, I think the degree of difficulty was turned up a notch in the 90s and 00s, as compared to the 70s and 80s.
I agree that it's more difficult to win today than it was in the 70s and 80s, but it should be noted that Schemblecher played much more difficult non-conference schedules than Carr did, which evens the scale of difficulty for me. I also give points to Schemblecher for consistently filling the stadium, which came about during his tenure.
I've got no significant issue with anything you've written then.
So, we've got nothing left to argue about.
Good day sir.
Your points were very good. Thanks for giving me something interesting to think about.
I tried (and failed) to imagine a civil exchange like this taking place on MLive.
Dude - a point thoroughly, completely, extraordinarily well made. However, it appears you have too much time on your hands. Do you want to do some editing for me?
What's it pay? :-)
I actually can't pay you, but I can offer you the services of my administrative assistant:
Deal?
1. Missouri was really good in the 70s.
2. Notre Dame of the 70s and 80s was better than the Notre Dame of Carr's tenure.
3. A lot of the South Carolina and Maryland teams were very good.
4. A fair number of games against very strong Miami teams.
5. A total of 0 games against MAC teams.
6. Schemblecher played 9 games against non-BCS teams out of 59 out of conference games. One of those teams, Tulane, was not really that bad when we played them. On the other hand, Carr played 19 non-BCS teams out of 43 non-conference games.
If you simply look for the proportions of ranked teams that each coach played, it looks a lot closer. However, in my opinion, playing absolutely terrible teams makes your schedule easier in many ways, as it becomes a free win.
1. No they weren't. Missouri was a whopping 66-60 in the 70s. Not really good. In '69 they were pretty good, but in '75 they were a 6-5, much more along the lines of their teams in that era.
2. At the beginning and the end. But all of there were good teams at ND too..they were up and down for most of Lloyd's tenure, whereas vs. Bo they were good...then really bad...then good right at the end. You forget Bo coached just the end of Devine's career, the against Faust, then Holtz's 5-7 and 8-4 years before he had them really up and running again. Mo got more good Holtz teams than Bo (though not Holtz's BEST team).
3. No they weren't. They were average programs at best vs. bad competition...especially in Maryland's case. And again, they were better the first years we played them than the second time around. MD '85- 9-3...'89 3-7. SC '80 8-4...'85 5-6. And really weren't much better around that. I was at that last Maryland game...they were a patsy worse than most good MAC teams.
4. By Fair number, you mean...2? I'll give you they were good Miami teams, particularly the second. But you can cherry pick other good teams from individual seasons for Bo and Lloyd...an Oregon team that was the best in the country until their going to win the Heisman QB blew out his knee...a Utah team that might have been the best in the country...Syracuse with McNabb...
5. True. But 7 against Navy. Which couldn't have won the MAC.
6. Yes, but you're not considering added games. 4 times Lloyd coached 4 non-conference games. 4 times Bo coached 2. Different landscapes. You can bet if they made Bo coach an extra game, they weren't going to add USC each year. And Tulane? Tulane was 6-5. At freakin' TULANE.
And you say free win...I say one more game for injuries to major players that can help or hurt you in the big games. But this wasn't to say who's record was more impressive...just to say the strength of schedule was comparable. I think you're not really considering the era the teams were playing in, where with the reduced scholarships and tv presence, it was more even heavily weighted to the power teams and power conferences. Bad BCS teams are bad now....but they were pathetic back in the day. And many of them were not in the Conferences of today (The ACC of then wasn't exactly Miami-Virginia Tech-FSU like when Maryland was good recently). A lot of those teams were effectively MAC teams.
So Michigan's schedule has stayed pretty consistent, but for the changing times, and the odd really tough, or really easy schedule. Traditionally it's been one major power, 1 pretty good respectable but very winnable game, and one patsy. Now, has it always worked to plan? No. But that has generally been the plan. Not to take on all comers every year.
These threads are so dumb, what happened OP, did you wake up this morning and say "hmmmm lets see how much shit I can start on MGOBLOG." Lloyd Carr is a great man, was a great football corch, and will always be a class A Michigan Man. Lets leave it at that.
The other thread about LC has some interesting debate about his support for RR. But this thread is just useless, and takes the LC bashing way too far. As others said, he did win a NC, and for good reason. It wasn't by chance. Neither were other near misses, such as 2006. And for that matter, the events of 2007 were not due to chance either.
This thread is a waste and should be deleted.
delete this thread?
Please, don't! I was having fun with that distributive property thing-y.
I did math quickly and look bad now!
/Sarcasm
In reality, this thread is worthless stupid speculation. Lloyd DID win a National Title. What's the point of talking about 13 year old what ifs that didnt happen?
These "Lloyd Carr", "Rich Rodriguez", "David Brandon", "Lloyd Carr vs. Rich Rodriguez", "Rich Rodriguez vs. Dave Brandon", "Lloyd Carr vs. Dave Brandon" discussions are starting to piss me off.
EDIT: If this keeps up, I'm starting a "Kirk is Cooler" post to piss off the Patrick Stewart fans just to stir things up.
Trekkies vs Lucas fanboys.
Nerd cagematch.
And maybe you can spar against Wendy5k in the undercard event.
And it wouldn't be close.
Psh, Trekkies vs Lucas' Boiz is smalltime when it comes to nerd battles.
The true holy wars are started over debian vs ubuntu, mac vs pc, ps3 vs xbox360 (because let's face it, the Wii doesn't belong in this group [oh snap!]), emacs vs vi, and what style of code bracketing to use - inline or next line.
Clearly the kind of people that use Ubuntu also don't bracket their code inline.
I would view Lloyd the same way I do today with a National Championship.
Don't we view Bo as a legend and one of the best coaches we have had and he never won a championship?
I think that his legacy would be substantially different if he hadn't won the NC. It's obviously his biggest accomplishment, and it counterbalances the horrendous 8-6 stretch towards the end of his career that included some awful losses and sowing the seeds of a 6+ game losing streak to Ohio State. I think that the way that he held on for a year or two too long would be given more weight in people's minds had it not been for that 1997 NC.
On the upside, I think that Jim Hermann would have been fired much earlier, so if Carr hadn't won that NC, he may have gotten a better DC at some point.
There aren't many coaches who can do things the right way at a major football school and win at the same time. Lloyd Carr was one of those coaches.
Had a great record even without the NC. Of course, that elevates him to a certain level, no doubt.
what if your aunt had balls?
what if we were all OSU fans?
What if the Axis won WWII?
What if Bruce Wayne's partents were never murdered?
What if you were a redneck, would the Foxworthy jokes still be funny?
what if Bo died of the heart attack in 1969?
What if the sun were a red giant instead of a yellow dwarf?
what if the aliens never helped build the pyramids?
what if mel gibson weren't batshite insane?
what if peyton manning won the heisman?
what if money were yellow instead of green?
what if we never had this thread?
Then she would be my uncle!
I think you're question is misprinted. Shouldn't it be: What happened if Lloyd Carr hadn't won half a national title? (Nebraska)