Congratulations! You could of kept quiet and thought, "Its no big deal, their just commenting on the internet," but you instead decided to take a strong early lead for Worst Human Being of 2011. I salute you.
Commenting on a person's usage to make yourself feel like a special little flower is brutally pathetic. I should know because I have some questions for you regarding how exactly "The Cardinal's academic superiority" is a complete sentence.
I'd have to take you up on it. I'm in favor of giving Rodriguez one more year, notwithstanding this gaffe with this song. But have you ever been forced to listen to a really loud melodramatic ballad by someone who is moved by every word of the song? It's mortifying. What do you do? Do you make eye contact? Nod sagely like you get what the person is trying to say by playing this specific song for you?
It's another piece of evidence that Rodriguez is totally - pardon the pun - tone deaf when it comes to media relations. Should his public-relations ineptitude reflect negatively on our program? Probably not. Does it? Yep.
Seriously. How much time did you spend killing boars in some Dillon Baxter recruiting thread from 8 months ago? Your point total confuses and infuriates me. I also considered replicating your strategem, but I am unsure whether it is sad or glorious.
Great stuff. Love seeing a U-M team exceed expectations with a great performance on the road. That was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Also kudos to all here for a fun, snipe-free thread.
You always seem like a relaxed dude; credit goes to the avatar. I agree 100%: we have put in the pain, now why on earth would you want to give up right before reaping the rewards?
I don't agree with you, and that's it. You think U-M's record pre-RR says something about how good he is as a coach, and I don't because I don't understand how something that occurred at U-M while RR was coaching WVU should affect my judgment regarding the quality of Rodriguez's coaching. If you explain how it should affect my judgment, then I will agree with you.
On the flipside, I don't think taking Stanford from 1-11 to 4-8 says anything about Harbaugh, either. I think Harbuagh is a good coach because his teams have gotten better every year with age, same as Rodriguez's.
I agree with most of this. It seems Rodriguez has, contrary to the media depictions of him, a colossal lack of cunning and street smarts. He is stubborn and arrogant, which a good coach usually is. However, he lacks nuance, and when the transfer to U-M blew up like it did in the WVU press, he would have been wise to get help managing at U-M. (Note to that one dude who is mad we went 3-9 in 2008: not managing the players from the Carr era.)
Ultimately, I think the story is just writing itself too negatively for him to succeed. That is why, though, that a two-win-per-year (thus far) improvement is impressive to me. He seems to be doing it against long odds. Some people think that Michigan should be a place where everything is in your favor. In my opinion Rodriguez has ceded that advantage and is winning anyway.
That does not make him a hero: results-based decision-making still reigns. My opinion is simple: first sign of regression without first getting where we want to be (Big 10 Championship) means he is gone. It makes me sad for what could have been had the road been more smooth, though.
See above: this proves my point. You just think 3-9 should never happen at Michigan. That's fine. But the quality of the program in the season before the arrival of the new coach has almost nothing to do with the quality of said coach. As we are seeing here, though, it has a lot to do with the expectations of the fans.
I still don't think you are seeing what I am seeing. Here are the records, side by side (I am no good with the tubes, so you get it without fancy charts):
RR Harbaugh
Year one: 3-9 4-8
Year two: 5-7 5-7
Year three 7-4 8-5
Year four: ??? 10-1
If Rodriguez should be fired for taking a team from 9-4 to 3-9, that is a reason he should have been fired in 2008 , not a reason he should be fired now. I think Harbaugh's success in year four is an argument for keeping Rodriguez, not hiring Harbaugh. It shows what someone with a similar trajectory can do.
Your argument regarding Year Zero (the year before the first year of the coaches under consideration) is that it's hard to take a team from 1-11 to 10-1, so Harbaugh is a good coach. I agree. There is no dispute there for any rational person, let alone peope who support Rodriguez.
I do not agree that taking Michigan from 9-4 to 3-9 means Rodriguez is a bad coach.
I do not believe, further, that the Year Zero records mean that the work of Harbaugh and Rodriguez during their tenures is incomparable.
I'm not sure what you are going for here. As you pointed out, Harbaugh has had one more year than Rodriguez. Their records and trajectories are remarkably similar over three years if compared fairly (first year to first year and so forth). The only extreme difference is the record of the respective school in the year immediately preceding year one of the respective coaching regimes (as has been well documented, Stanford: 1-11, U-M: 9-4).
For people using the records to say Harbaugh is a better coach than Rodriguez, for me it amounts to shoddy argumentation. People are saying, "Look, Harbaugh took a team that was 1-11 before he got there and they are 10-1 now. RR took a team that was 9-4 and cratered it, going 3-9 the next year, and they are only 7-4 and looking uncompetitive now."
That leaves out the very important fact that Harbaugh has had one more year to achieve the impressive win total (10) that makes RR look bad in comparison.
Implicit in your comment is an attitude with which I take some umbrage, and that is the lingering anger over the 3-9 season. That is the crater most people are comparing to Stanford's 1-11 season. (As an aside, Harbaugh was 4-8 in his first year, which we should have been had we been able to surpass the mighty-mighty Rockets, the only game I attended that year, aiiieeeeieieieiei....). Most people are angry that 3-9 happened at the hands of Rodriguez, and the thinking is, "Wait, we can't measure expectations against a 3-9 season RR created - he gets held to the Michigan standard. That is 9 wins, minimum, which we had the year before he came."
Myself, I don't care who caused 3-9 (or even really why it happened), I just never want it to happen again. It did happen, though, and some players who contributed that season are still around. But they are now 7-4. I like that progress.
Thinking about it some more, the 4-8 in Harbaugh's first season (of four) should not be an aside. I feel like anti-RR people who are also pro-Harbaugh use 1-11 to mark the improvement of Harbaugh, when it really should be based on his first year, 4-8.
It's not. It's more factual information that informs my opinion about the two coaches, that's all. I agree with you - RR has to get players and keep them. I am merely pointing out that Harbaugh's fourth year (this year, 2010) has benefitted from retaining and developing a lot of players Harris recruited.
For whatever reason, RR has had a lot more roster instability. It looks like U-M's defensive roster will suffer less of that next year. Without making any decisions about what should be done in the (more) distant future (I don't like evaluating a coaching decision now based on what I think has to happen in the future, i.e., "RR gets another year, but next year he has to have X wins," or, conversely, "RR should not get another year because next year he has to have X wins and there is no way he can get them."), I think RR should get another year to see what kind of dividends stability can pay in his fourth year.
I don't know exactly what the hell happened with Emilien and Turner. RR probably should have been able to get a DB with 75-80% of the talent of Dorsey. If we lose three secondary players (not due to injury; Woolfolk is not a part of this discussion) before 2011 starts and the defense suffers as much for it as it has this year, certainly you can't keep saying "but he has no doodz" to justify keeping him.
Agreed. Take a look at the Stanford depth chart. Gerhart was already there. The offensive linemen (3 fifth-year seniors this year) who made holes for Gerhart and are giving Lueck time were also there. In fact, the 2-deep this year is littered with Harris players.
Harbaugh is a great coach, but part of the success he is having is that he has taken guys who went through the 1-11 pain and *kept* them there for four more years.
These are great pictures. Unfortunately, I have a hard time looking at the back side of that dorm without thinking of Courtney Cantor, who fell out of one of the rooms at the top of the "O" and died after landing on that loading dock. I was with my girlfriend that night in the room at the left-top of the "U". Woke up to police in the hall.
I'm with the OP. I'll point out we lost to Toledo two years ago. Beating teams we "should" beat this year is an improvement. 3 of our wins are against bowl-eligible teams, 3 against non-bowl-eligible teams, and one FCS school. Pretty typical for a mediocre BCS team, which is what we are. But it's improvement any way you look at it.
Also, Harbaugh is a good coach. But Gerhart was there for the 1-11 season, not a Harbaugh recruit. Neither were the *three* 5th-year O-lineman. In fact, Stanford's lineup this year is littered with Harris guys. I think they step back BIG next year.
If U-M hires Harbaugh, which wouldn't be terrible, our team will be better than Stanford's next year. But it won't be because of the relative coaching skills of Harbaugh or Rodriguez or the next guy Stanford would have hired. It will be because of the age and experience of the teams, something that people are pooh-poohing a little too quickly here.
Dantonio hasn't won a bowl game. His first year getting double-digit wins is this year, his fourth (In a year MSU doesn't have to play OSU or Indiana or any BCS-conference out-of-conference opponent). Maybe RR can have that kind of success in his fourth year.
Harbaugh has done a great job at Stanford. Stanford is [somewhat] like U-M, but has fewer institutional advantages. Harbaugh would be a good coach for U of M.
Martin in 2007: RR has done a great job at WVU. WVU is [less so] similar to U-M, but has fewer institutional advantages. RR would be a good coach for U-M.
I would quibble with my assertions about how comparable the institutions are (you are probably thinking academics - I would say WVU is easier to get non-academically-oriented football players into, but Stanford has girls and weather). But the main thing Harbaugh (or fire RR) people are missing is that we are not in the post-Carr vacuum anymore. RR supporters are supporting the coach who wants to be here and continue to build on the consistent improvement that has occurred over the last two years.
Who is the best guy to coach this team right now? Rodriguez. When his team demonstrates inexplicable falloff (like if they do worse or no better next year despite having everyone back) I will agree that it is time to move on. But you don't bail on consistent improvement.
Illinois and ND. Both bowl-eligible. Both comparable teams based on talent and maturity. ND is also a main rival in my book. But we have to get better! We have to improve! RR has to get this team moving in the right dir....wait. 3-9, 5-7, 7-5. Uh. Um. Yeah!
Idiocracy. Nobody is telling you to be happy losing. I am telling you to be happy we are better than we were last year. Would you be happy if your work raised your pay every year? Even if it wasn't what you expected, I think you would. If you were able to conceive of a world in which not everyone enjoyed that luxury, which is a world that does exist. Even outside of Idiocracy.
You are giving too much credit to negative people. Nobody in our society ever admits when they were wrong about their opinions. I'm not hoping the team wins to prove half our fanbase wrong. I am hoping our team wins because winning is fucking sweet. I remember wearing my U-M gear to the bar in 2006 (pre-OSU) and being like, "What, what, motherfucker? Woodley gonna fuck you up like a goddam accident." And I was 26. Football allows me to act like a child, which is especially great if you are winning.
See above: it was not so out of hand that UW could have run backwards and won. We get one of those onside kicks and we are right back in that thing. Should it have come to that? No. The team was awful in the first half. But we are not a great team. I appreciate how infuriating that statement is to you, you are thinking, "But we SHOULD be a great team." I am just not as sure that we should be, given the current situation. And I appreciate that you are thinking, "The current situation should have never happened! We are Michigan!" I am also not so sure about that. We rolled the dice to get a coach to win BCS games, not go 10-3 with a noncompetitive loss to USC. That we cannot win our own conference is frustrating, if winning BCS games was the point of hiring RR. All I am saying is that the dues we are paying are required in my mind in order to get the payoff for the reason we hired RR in the first place. But if we improve every year, I see this team on the way to that goal.
Maybe we do. Honest assessment: I can't refute the contention from my OSU friend that OSU has been better nationally than U-M for the last 60 years. Maybe tradition doesn't net you all the 5-stars it once did. Also, with Conference USA and the MAC getting their games on TV at almost-as-good a rate (especially in sports bars) as any big conference, why not be a big fish in a small pond? We need smarter tactics, and RR beats the system by using non-studs in a machine-like way. Unfortunately, their is not a comparable defensive strategy. So that needs to improve, but I don't know how. We can't create Norm Parker-like consistency.
This is a good point. And I don't think the staff will be the same. I was worried when I saw rumblings of Roh or the Roh family having to intercede on his behalf to convince the staff that he is not a linebacker. I mean, that's something that should not have happened. And I think that the defensive coaching staff is going to get reshuffled, and if RR allows systemic problems to remain, he will be gone, as he should be. But this is not the time for a wholesale overhaul. It's time for rational assessment. The defense and special teams have been cover-your-eyes awful. The D will improve with age, but some coaches will probably not be around to benefit. Which is fine by me. But Magee and RR have done a great job with the offense.
As formerlyanonymous said, running every play is not going into a shell for UW. Even cromagnon running calls are effective when they are your bread-and-butter. How many times did Carr do this exact same thing? There were a coupla games every year where all we had to do was show up and run and we would win. The reason we have a new style is that the Carr strategy seemed to fail in the clutch. Watch what happens when these teams (who have played nobody of note - UW out of conference heavy was Arizona State) get behind.
I think it is because the end is nigh. There is little room left for hope that the season will exceed expectations. Oh well. For me, though, that is a reason to enjoy the few remaining games we have! It's a long offseason. If you spend the next two games pouting, you are going to miss the fun of a U-M football gameday. Even if it results in terroble things coming out of Bielema's pie-hole.
These are coherent points. I agree with the special teams stuff. The one criticism that I have is that we apparently haven't considered hiring a special teams coach. I think USC just did, and they have some ridiculous improvement in that regard. Something like matching their last 5-years-worth of kicks blocked in 5 games this year (I'm remembering roughly - that was a local column in the Tucson newspaper). I know almost nobody in the NCAA has a ST coach, and we would lose a much-needed coach elsewhere, but if there is a team who needs a ST coach, he is we.
Football isn't something you try to make sense of. It's not a math problem. You either enjoy it or you don't. I have enjoyed this season (remember 5-0 and Denard lock for Heisman?). It's a successful improvement based on where we were. If you think we never should have been so low, that's fine.
8 wins, if it's improvement (that is, we lose versus OSU in 2010), he stays. You never ditch consistent improvement. I guess I would also say improvement in defenseive metrics would be necessary. The statistical improvement in the offense this year has been stunning and a big part of why RR gets another year.
Way late to this, but I'm going through this enormous thread to gauge how we feel as a fanbase. (Survey thus far says: crappy, schizo). But great point on UW's offense. OSU was the more winnable game going into these two. We are going to be on the rise defensively once all these robo-senior Qbs (Chappel, Stanzi, Tolzein, and junior Cousins) are gone. If your secondary is so young that someone is always open, to have success you have to be facing a QB who is occasionally going to flat miss the guy. As we saw today, that is something these QBs excel at avoiding.
I disagree with one part - I didn't read the whole thing. To say that the Carr regime was dying before our eyes is wrong. Yeah, I was as frustrated with the team as most people, but I looked up how many back-to-back games Carr lost as head coach. The answer is a very small number. The two five-game losing streaks for RR in 2008 and 2009 put him close to Carr's entire tenure in terms of back-to-back games lost. To be further confusing: I am in favor of keeping RR. You can't bail when your team is consistently improving from year-to-year.
Totally Agreed. I like it when hometown kids stay to help the local school achieve something it never has before - and it works out! I also like that its an attenuated dig at Holtz, Spurrier accomplishing something that Holtz never could at a place that seems institutionally disadvantaged.
Recent Comments
Counting on fingers
New experience for me
Not for MSU
You’ve taken my hands
My god please my hands my god
I can’t hold my juice
Congratulations! You could of kept quiet and thought, "Its no big deal, their just commenting on the internet," but you instead decided to take a strong early lead for Worst Human Being of 2011. I salute you.
Commenting on a person's usage to make yourself feel like a special little flower is brutally pathetic. I should know because I have some questions for you regarding how exactly "The Cardinal's academic superiority" is a complete sentence.
That horse, which, if not dead, is in mortal danger of expiring....
I'd have to take you up on it. I'm in favor of giving Rodriguez one more year, notwithstanding this gaffe with this song. But have you ever been forced to listen to a really loud melodramatic ballad by someone who is moved by every word of the song? It's mortifying. What do you do? Do you make eye contact? Nod sagely like you get what the person is trying to say by playing this specific song for you?
It's another piece of evidence that Rodriguez is totally - pardon the pun - tone deaf when it comes to media relations. Should his public-relations ineptitude reflect negatively on our program? Probably not. Does it? Yep.
Seriously. How much time did you spend killing boars in some Dillon Baxter recruiting thread from 8 months ago? Your point total confuses and infuriates me. I also considered replicating your strategem, but I am unsure whether it is sad or glorious.
Great stuff. Love seeing a U-M team exceed expectations with a great performance on the road. That was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Also kudos to all here for a fun, snipe-free thread.
No. You have to win a quarterstaff battle to gain entry. Clemson is old school, son!
You got a problem, buddy. I salute you.
Sssh! This is why we can't have nice threads. But yeah, that's what I was trying to hint at.
I'd be dead if I drank every time the PBP guy said "one and done." As if we needed more ways to use that idiom.
Isn't it nice to watch a U-M sporting event without getting the Fear? It's surprisingly refreshing. Hey-o low expectations.
There are two things I like about that woman. But I can't put my hands, er... finger, on them, er...it.
I've always wanted one of those annoying white guys like Duke and Purdue always seem to have. Metrics! We has them!
I think I know who this is. Good points here; I would have expected nothing less.
You always seem like a relaxed dude; credit goes to the avatar. I agree 100%: we have put in the pain, now why on earth would you want to give up right before reaping the rewards?
I don't agree with you, and that's it. You think U-M's record pre-RR says something about how good he is as a coach, and I don't because I don't understand how something that occurred at U-M while RR was coaching WVU should affect my judgment regarding the quality of Rodriguez's coaching. If you explain how it should affect my judgment, then I will agree with you.
On the flipside, I don't think taking Stanford from 1-11 to 4-8 says anything about Harbaugh, either. I think Harbuagh is a good coach because his teams have gotten better every year with age, same as Rodriguez's.
I agree with most of this. It seems Rodriguez has, contrary to the media depictions of him, a colossal lack of cunning and street smarts. He is stubborn and arrogant, which a good coach usually is. However, he lacks nuance, and when the transfer to U-M blew up like it did in the WVU press, he would have been wise to get help managing at U-M. (Note to that one dude who is mad we went 3-9 in 2008: not managing the players from the Carr era.)
Ultimately, I think the story is just writing itself too negatively for him to succeed. That is why, though, that a two-win-per-year (thus far) improvement is impressive to me. He seems to be doing it against long odds. Some people think that Michigan should be a place where everything is in your favor. In my opinion Rodriguez has ceded that advantage and is winning anyway.
That does not make him a hero: results-based decision-making still reigns. My opinion is simple: first sign of regression without first getting where we want to be (Big 10 Championship) means he is gone. It makes me sad for what could have been had the road been more smooth, though.
See above: this proves my point. You just think 3-9 should never happen at Michigan. That's fine. But the quality of the program in the season before the arrival of the new coach has almost nothing to do with the quality of said coach. As we are seeing here, though, it has a lot to do with the expectations of the fans.
I still don't think you are seeing what I am seeing. Here are the records, side by side (I am no good with the tubes, so you get it without fancy charts):
RR Harbaugh
Year one: 3-9 4-8
Year two: 5-7 5-7
Year three 7-4 8-5
Year four: ??? 10-1
If Rodriguez should be fired for taking a team from 9-4 to 3-9, that is a reason he should have been fired in 2008 , not a reason he should be fired now. I think Harbaugh's success in year four is an argument for keeping Rodriguez, not hiring Harbaugh. It shows what someone with a similar trajectory can do.
Your argument regarding Year Zero (the year before the first year of the coaches under consideration) is that it's hard to take a team from 1-11 to 10-1, so Harbaugh is a good coach. I agree. There is no dispute there for any rational person, let alone peope who support Rodriguez.
I do not agree that taking Michigan from 9-4 to 3-9 means Rodriguez is a bad coach.
I do not believe, further, that the Year Zero records mean that the work of Harbaugh and Rodriguez during their tenures is incomparable.
I'm not sure what you are going for here. As you pointed out, Harbaugh has had one more year than Rodriguez. Their records and trajectories are remarkably similar over three years if compared fairly (first year to first year and so forth). The only extreme difference is the record of the respective school in the year immediately preceding year one of the respective coaching regimes (as has been well documented, Stanford: 1-11, U-M: 9-4).
For people using the records to say Harbaugh is a better coach than Rodriguez, for me it amounts to shoddy argumentation. People are saying, "Look, Harbaugh took a team that was 1-11 before he got there and they are 10-1 now. RR took a team that was 9-4 and cratered it, going 3-9 the next year, and they are only 7-4 and looking uncompetitive now."
That leaves out the very important fact that Harbaugh has had one more year to achieve the impressive win total (10) that makes RR look bad in comparison.
Implicit in your comment is an attitude with which I take some umbrage, and that is the lingering anger over the 3-9 season. That is the crater most people are comparing to Stanford's 1-11 season. (As an aside, Harbaugh was 4-8 in his first year, which we should have been had we been able to surpass the mighty-mighty Rockets, the only game I attended that year, aiiieeeeieieieiei....). Most people are angry that 3-9 happened at the hands of Rodriguez, and the thinking is, "Wait, we can't measure expectations against a 3-9 season RR created - he gets held to the Michigan standard. That is 9 wins, minimum, which we had the year before he came."
Myself, I don't care who caused 3-9 (or even really why it happened), I just never want it to happen again. It did happen, though, and some players who contributed that season are still around. But they are now 7-4. I like that progress.
Thinking about it some more, the 4-8 in Harbaugh's first season (of four) should not be an aside. I feel like anti-RR people who are also pro-Harbaugh use 1-11 to mark the improvement of Harbaugh, when it really should be based on his first year, 4-8.
It's not. It's more factual information that informs my opinion about the two coaches, that's all. I agree with you - RR has to get players and keep them. I am merely pointing out that Harbaugh's fourth year (this year, 2010) has benefitted from retaining and developing a lot of players Harris recruited.
For whatever reason, RR has had a lot more roster instability. It looks like U-M's defensive roster will suffer less of that next year. Without making any decisions about what should be done in the (more) distant future (I don't like evaluating a coaching decision now based on what I think has to happen in the future, i.e., "RR gets another year, but next year he has to have X wins," or, conversely, "RR should not get another year because next year he has to have X wins and there is no way he can get them."), I think RR should get another year to see what kind of dividends stability can pay in his fourth year.
I don't know exactly what the hell happened with Emilien and Turner. RR probably should have been able to get a DB with 75-80% of the talent of Dorsey. If we lose three secondary players (not due to injury; Woolfolk is not a part of this discussion) before 2011 starts and the defense suffers as much for it as it has this year, certainly you can't keep saying "but he has no doodz" to justify keeping him.
Agreed. Take a look at the Stanford depth chart. Gerhart was already there. The offensive linemen (3 fifth-year seniors this year) who made holes for Gerhart and are giving Lueck time were also there. In fact, the 2-deep this year is littered with Harris players.
Harbaugh is a great coach, but part of the success he is having is that he has taken guys who went through the 1-11 pain and *kept* them there for four more years.
These are great pictures. Unfortunately, I have a hard time looking at the back side of that dorm without thinking of Courtney Cantor, who fell out of one of the rooms at the top of the "O" and died after landing on that loading dock. I was with my girlfriend that night in the room at the left-top of the "U". Woke up to police in the hall.
I'm with the OP. I'll point out we lost to Toledo two years ago. Beating teams we "should" beat this year is an improvement. 3 of our wins are against bowl-eligible teams, 3 against non-bowl-eligible teams, and one FCS school. Pretty typical for a mediocre BCS team, which is what we are. But it's improvement any way you look at it.
Also, Harbaugh is a good coach. But Gerhart was there for the 1-11 season, not a Harbaugh recruit. Neither were the *three* 5th-year O-lineman. In fact, Stanford's lineup this year is littered with Harris guys. I think they step back BIG next year.
If U-M hires Harbaugh, which wouldn't be terrible, our team will be better than Stanford's next year. But it won't be because of the relative coaching skills of Harbaugh or Rodriguez or the next guy Stanford would have hired. It will be because of the age and experience of the teams, something that people are pooh-poohing a little too quickly here.
In a thread filled with the pain of fratricidal violence, this made me laugh out loud. "Expensive shiat": good show.
Dantonio hasn't won a bowl game. His first year getting double-digit wins is this year, his fourth (In a year MSU doesn't have to play OSU or Indiana or any BCS-conference out-of-conference opponent). Maybe RR can have that kind of success in his fourth year.
Harbaugh has done a great job at Stanford. Stanford is [somewhat] like U-M, but has fewer institutional advantages. Harbaugh would be a good coach for U of M.
Martin in 2007: RR has done a great job at WVU. WVU is [less so] similar to U-M, but has fewer institutional advantages. RR would be a good coach for U-M.
I would quibble with my assertions about how comparable the institutions are (you are probably thinking academics - I would say WVU is easier to get non-academically-oriented football players into, but Stanford has girls and weather). But the main thing Harbaugh (or fire RR) people are missing is that we are not in the post-Carr vacuum anymore. RR supporters are supporting the coach who wants to be here and continue to build on the consistent improvement that has occurred over the last two years.
Who is the best guy to coach this team right now? Rodriguez. When his team demonstrates inexplicable falloff (like if they do worse or no better next year despite having everyone back) I will agree that it is time to move on. But you don't bail on consistent improvement.
Illinois and ND. Both bowl-eligible. Both comparable teams based on talent and maturity. ND is also a main rival in my book. But we have to get better! We have to improve! RR has to get this team moving in the right dir....wait. 3-9, 5-7, 7-5. Uh. Um. Yeah!
Idiocracy. Nobody is telling you to be happy losing. I am telling you to be happy we are better than we were last year. Would you be happy if your work raised your pay every year? Even if it wasn't what you expected, I think you would. If you were able to conceive of a world in which not everyone enjoyed that luxury, which is a world that does exist. Even outside of Idiocracy.
You are giving too much credit to negative people. Nobody in our society ever admits when they were wrong about their opinions. I'm not hoping the team wins to prove half our fanbase wrong. I am hoping our team wins because winning is fucking sweet. I remember wearing my U-M gear to the bar in 2006 (pre-OSU) and being like, "What, what, motherfucker? Woodley gonna fuck you up like a goddam accident." And I was 26. Football allows me to act like a child, which is especially great if you are winning.
See above: it was not so out of hand that UW could have run backwards and won. We get one of those onside kicks and we are right back in that thing. Should it have come to that? No. The team was awful in the first half. But we are not a great team. I appreciate how infuriating that statement is to you, you are thinking, "But we SHOULD be a great team." I am just not as sure that we should be, given the current situation. And I appreciate that you are thinking, "The current situation should have never happened! We are Michigan!" I am also not so sure about that. We rolled the dice to get a coach to win BCS games, not go 10-3 with a noncompetitive loss to USC. That we cannot win our own conference is frustrating, if winning BCS games was the point of hiring RR. All I am saying is that the dues we are paying are required in my mind in order to get the payoff for the reason we hired RR in the first place. But if we improve every year, I see this team on the way to that goal.
Maybe we do. Honest assessment: I can't refute the contention from my OSU friend that OSU has been better nationally than U-M for the last 60 years. Maybe tradition doesn't net you all the 5-stars it once did. Also, with Conference USA and the MAC getting their games on TV at almost-as-good a rate (especially in sports bars) as any big conference, why not be a big fish in a small pond? We need smarter tactics, and RR beats the system by using non-studs in a machine-like way. Unfortunately, their is not a comparable defensive strategy. So that needs to improve, but I don't know how. We can't create Norm Parker-like consistency.
This is a good point. And I don't think the staff will be the same. I was worried when I saw rumblings of Roh or the Roh family having to intercede on his behalf to convince the staff that he is not a linebacker. I mean, that's something that should not have happened. And I think that the defensive coaching staff is going to get reshuffled, and if RR allows systemic problems to remain, he will be gone, as he should be. But this is not the time for a wholesale overhaul. It's time for rational assessment. The defense and special teams have been cover-your-eyes awful. The D will improve with age, but some coaches will probably not be around to benefit. Which is fine by me. But Magee and RR have done a great job with the offense.
As formerlyanonymous said, running every play is not going into a shell for UW. Even cromagnon running calls are effective when they are your bread-and-butter. How many times did Carr do this exact same thing? There were a coupla games every year where all we had to do was show up and run and we would win. The reason we have a new style is that the Carr strategy seemed to fail in the clutch. Watch what happens when these teams (who have played nobody of note - UW out of conference heavy was Arizona State) get behind.
I think it is because the end is nigh. There is little room left for hope that the season will exceed expectations. Oh well. For me, though, that is a reason to enjoy the few remaining games we have! It's a long offseason. If you spend the next two games pouting, you are going to miss the fun of a U-M football gameday. Even if it results in terroble things coming out of Bielema's pie-hole.
These are coherent points. I agree with the special teams stuff. The one criticism that I have is that we apparently haven't considered hiring a special teams coach. I think USC just did, and they have some ridiculous improvement in that regard. Something like matching their last 5-years-worth of kicks blocked in 5 games this year (I'm remembering roughly - that was a local column in the Tucson newspaper). I know almost nobody in the NCAA has a ST coach, and we would lose a much-needed coach elsewhere, but if there is a team who needs a ST coach, he is we.
Yeah, because UW has shown sportsmanship and a penchant for keeping the score low, so this was a continuation of that trend. Ummmmm.....
This is pretty much awesome. Coherence is overrated.
Football isn't something you try to make sense of. It's not a math problem. You either enjoy it or you don't. I have enjoyed this season (remember 5-0 and Denard lock for Heisman?). It's a successful improvement based on where we were. If you think we never should have been so low, that's fine.
Texas is the laughingstock of the NCAA. Dr. Lou is laughing because he found raisins in his oatmeal.
8 wins, if it's improvement (that is, we lose versus OSU in 2010), he stays. You never ditch consistent improvement. I guess I would also say improvement in defenseive metrics would be necessary. The statistical improvement in the offense this year has been stunning and a big part of why RR gets another year.
We won that game.
Way late to this, but I'm going through this enormous thread to gauge how we feel as a fanbase. (Survey thus far says: crappy, schizo). But great point on UW's offense. OSU was the more winnable game going into these two. We are going to be on the rise defensively once all these robo-senior Qbs (Chappel, Stanzi, Tolzein, and junior Cousins) are gone. If your secondary is so young that someone is always open, to have success you have to be facing a QB who is occasionally going to flat miss the guy. As we saw today, that is something these QBs excel at avoiding.
Millen just said "The Big Nut [Tressel] is not too pleased with that one [Pryor interception]." Big Nut. Word.
I disagree with one part - I didn't read the whole thing. To say that the Carr regime was dying before our eyes is wrong. Yeah, I was as frustrated with the team as most people, but I looked up how many back-to-back games Carr lost as head coach. The answer is a very small number. The two five-game losing streaks for RR in 2008 and 2009 put him close to Carr's entire tenure in terms of back-to-back games lost. To be further confusing: I am in favor of keeping RR. You can't bail when your team is consistently improving from year-to-year.
501
Totally Agreed. I like it when hometown kids stay to help the local school achieve something it never has before - and it works out! I also like that its an attenuated dig at Holtz, Spurrier accomplishing something that Holtz never could at a place that seems institutionally disadvantaged.
Nope. Eric Collins went to St. Lawerence (NY) and Syracuse, and Chris Martin played for Northwestern.