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They're surely waiting to…

They're surely waiting to see how Diebler finishes the season, but there is no way they would have (publicly) made an external hire while the season is going on, unless that coach was out of work at the time.

a city of 900K+ in a metro…

a city of 900K+ in a metro area of 2M+.

This an example of how cities can effectively game the system by annexing lots and lots of land.  The city of Columbus covers 220 square miles and its metro area officially covers ten counties.  

People said this when we…

People said this when we fired Amaker.  No one good was going to come to Michigan, because we wouldn't invest in facilities.  Well, Beilein did come, and he successfully lobbied for facility upgrades.  You hire the right coach and things tend to work themselves out.

My opinion: I didn't like…

My opinion: I didn't like how the Michigan fanbase quickly turned on Juwan Howard. 

Look, I don't care to pile on the man - I loved the Fab Five - but when you inherit a program that has won 30 games in consecutive seasons and reached the national title game one year before your hiring, and then go 8-24 a few years later, with a team of your own recruits, you're going to lose the fanbase.  When you throw in the anger incidents, that only makes it worse.

The Shannon/Love/Kante situations wouldn't have been so disastrous if we'd found replacements for them.  A coach has to have a plan B if plan A doesn't work out.  Beilein lost his share of recruiting battles, and had a recruit (Robin Benzing) fail to qualify, but when that happened, he would find someone else that could fit in the program.  With Howard, if we missed on a guy, that was it.

I wish Howard all the best and sincerely hope this is not the end of his coaching career.  But I think he is probably better suited for the NBA.

I certainly follow our #2…

I certainly follow our #2 and #3 sports.  Manuel's hires in those (Howard and Pearson) didn't work out the best, and yet, they were easy hiring decisions.  Time will tell about Naurato.

Beyond that, our most successful programs have tended to have coaches whose hirings predated Manuel. 

He made the right move here, and in a timely fashion.  I have no complaint about how he handled Howard.  But I'm not sure how much confidence I have in him to find the right replacement.  There is no obvious candidate this time.  I hope my concern turns out to be misplaced.

we’re winning conference…

we’re winning conference titles at an unprecedented rate and competing on the national stage

Well, our #1 sport has been doing that.  For the rest of our sports, it's a mixed bag.

Hubert Davis was an…

Hubert Davis was an assistant coach at UNC for a decade before he was promoted to the top job.  That's quite a bit different.  I think we're talking more about guys who not only have no HC experience, but have been away from the college game for a long time (25 years, in Juwan Howard's case).

The football staff also…

The football staff also brought in Haussmann, an underclassman.  They've understood the parameters and worked within them.

The issues I see are 1) basketball has gone after guys two years running when it wasn't sure they could get admitted and 2) when they didn't get admitted, had no plan B.

So why did the "mutual…

So why did the "mutual departure" happen in the middle of March?

The waiver would be about…

The waiver would be about him returning after declaring for the draft, I think.

I was not a fan of "natty"…

I was not a fan of "natty" for a while, but I accept at this point that it's becoming an "old man yells at cloud" position.

Oh and we replaced half our…

Oh and we replaced half our coaches.

Don't forget that we beat them with Harbaugh suspended, and just days after Partridge was fired.  We should (hopefully) not have that kind of in-season coaching instability again.

OSU also has to replace its QB, and by far its most dangerous player.  And the pressure on them will be massive.

It is true that the French…

It is true that the French political class (like much of the British political class, aside from Churchill) in 1939 was not enthusiastic about war, with the memory of the previous bloodbath still fresh, as well as that significant factions on the two political extremes did not even support the Third Republic as it was.  This was in stark contrast to 1914, when all of the major parties rallied behind the war effort.

Once it was clear (in June 1940) that Paris could not be defended, a majority of the parliament decided to followed the advice of Pétain (himself a former WWI commander) who called for an armistice.  

WWI?  France fought that one…

WWI?  France fought that one to the bitter end and paid a terrible price for it - six million casualties, out of a population of 40 million - a whole generation of men - not to mention being left with a swath of destruction across its entire northeastern border, where the trenches had been.

To put that into perspective, this would be like the United States today suffering 50 million casualties in four years and having the whole northern or southern border zone in ruins.  The scale of carnage of that war is hard to comprehend.  

If that's correct about him,…

If that's correct about him, I wouldn't say admissions did anything wrong.  They offered him a path to enrolling here.  Worthy just had different priorities.

Wasn't Worthy the one that…

Wasn't Worthy the one that tried to do his entire senior year of HS online in one semester, and Michigan said he wouldn't be admitted in January, only in June if he took another semester of high school, and he wasn't interested in that plan?

Considering we were the best…

Considering we were the best team in college fb this year

And 40-3 over the past three seasons, with three consecutive Big Ten titles.  Michigan fans don't need to have any regrets about 2021-23.

I think it's a basic…

I think it's a basic courtesy to not play music out loud in a crowded, public place.  The people around you shouldn't be forced to put up with it.  

It sounds like the elder man…

It sounds like the elder man was complaining that the young guy was playing his music too loud, which apparently offended the latter's personal honor.  

Earbuds, folks.

without the kinds of…

without the kinds of scholarship rules that exist now

I don't think Michigan even gave out athletic scholarships in the 1940s.

And Howard ID'ed guys in the…

And Howard ID'ed guys in the portal - Shannon and Love - that would have been IMMENSELY helpful on those teams but they weren't able to matriculate to UM because of the school's, frankly, archaic view of credit transfers.  

An important aspect of recruiting at this school is identifying players who can get admitted.  U-M, as a rule, wants its undergraduates to complete a majority of their credits here to receive a degree.  Call that what you want but it's unlikely to change.  It's incumbent on any coach here to work within those parameters.  Better to bring in a guy who's a little less talented than Shannon/Love but can get admitted than, well, no one.

The Evan Turner game…

The Evan Turner game happened in 2010.  The NW game happened in 2017.  Trying to make a trend out of two games seven years apart is a reach.

There is no Beilein-era analogy for what's gone on these past few seasons.  The closest comparison I can see is the Ellerbe years.

Like many others, I bought…

Like many others, I bought into the hype when Howard was hired.  I had been a big Fab Five fan and wanted to believe he'd keep the machine rolling.   But in hindsight, hiring a coach who'd been away from college basketball for 25 years (since he was a player) really didn't make a lot of sense.  

There was a time when JB had…

There was a time when JB had a bad string of close game results

I'm curious what you're thinking of?

I remember the 16-16 team (which lost its starting backcourt to injury) losing a bunch of OT games but that's about it.   

We're not going to fire our…

We're not going to fire our admissions people because the men's basketball program - which recently was thriving, mind you - is now in last place.

If our coach can't function within the parameters of admissions, we need to find one who can.

The Maginot Line rule.  Out…

The Maginot Line rule.  Out of date and programs will just go around it through the Ardennes Forest

The Maginot Line functioned as intended.  Its purpose was to discourage the Germans from invading France directly, and instead go through Belgium, as in 1914.  That came to pass.  The Allies expected this to happen, but the problem was that they massed their troops in a way that left the Ardennes sector more lightly defended than the rest, thinking its terrain would be too complicated to pass through.  They correctly anticipated the invasion via Belgium, but thought it would be on the flatter plains to the west. 

The French high command was unimaginative in its thinking overall, but the Maginot Line itself wasn't that bad of an idea.

He was basically a caretaker…

He was basically a caretaker, with no major hires to make.  Football, basketball and hockey all had their coaches in place.  It was, however, under his watch that Ed Martin became closely associated with Fisher's program.    

Reality is he is top 5…

Reality is he is top 5 college coach now.

OK, Saban and Harbaugh are now gone, but would you have considered Sarkisian a top seven coach one year ago?

A single season shouldn't move the needle that much.

OSU was 12-4 entering our…

OSU was 12-4 entering our game.  They're 3-7 since, including today's win.

I think the biggest issue is…

I think the biggest issue is that the tournament tends to be dominated by guard-centered teams while Big Ten teams still tend to build around big men.

I don't think that's really…

I don't think that's really on Ono himself.  He's more of a sports fan than just about any president we've had.  There's just a very strong institutional mindset here of deference to the NCAA that is hard to shake.

A lot of money for a coach…

A lot of money for a coach whose best season prior to 2023 was 9-4.  

Didn't it open for our…

Didn't it open for our players when Harbaugh left?

I don't know what Tuttle's…

I don't know what Tuttle's ceiling is, but the experience he'll have as a 7th-year senior is invaluable.  He'll also have far more talent around him here than at Indiana.

Last year we were 47th…

Last year we were 47th according in KenPom in adjusted D.  We lost a subpar defender (Jett Howard), an average one at best (Dickinson) and one good one (Bufkin).  

We brought in the three transfers and got Llewellyn back.  The thinking going into the season was that we might struggle to score, but our D should be good enough to keep the team afloat.  As it's turned out, our offense has been shaky but not a disaster (69th) but the D has been historically bad (182th).  Up to now, our worst defense in the KP era (2002-present) was the 01-02 team that finished 150th. 

Maybe we expected more than we should have from Reed and some others, but there is no explanation for the team to be this bad at that end of the court.  

This is reminding me of the…

This is reminding me of the end of the Amaker era.  Michigan then was lagging behind in terms of facilities (Crisler was outdated and there was no practice facility)  and this was blamed for some recruiting losses during that time.  It probably was true that was a hindrance for recruiting, and had Amaker won some of the recruiting battles he lost, we may have been better on the court.  But that didn't explain the coaching issues we continually witnessed - disorganized offense, boatloads of turnovers, and regular late-season collapses.  Even if the facilities issues limited our program's ceiling, we were not reaching that ceiling with what we had.

Today, we may face some challenges relating to the portal and NIL, but that doesn't fully explain why this program lost 15 and 16 games the last two seasons while producing four NBA draft picks, or why it's 8-17 (guh) now.  It doesn't explain why the team is shockingly terrible defensively (despite having players who came in from strong defensive programs) or why we've had a Scott Frost-like record in close games over the past few years.

And would have been waxed

And would have been waxed

Why the hypothetical?  The game happened.

2 months removed from us…

2 months removed from us winning a title.

Are you a visitor from the (near) future?

Manuel is blamed sometimes…

Manuel is blamed sometimes for things that are probably out of his control, but you don't have to be an MSU or OSU troll to be concerned that 1) Harbaugh and Beilein, two elite coaches he inherited,  both reportedly had poor relationships with him and 2) the basketball program has utterly collapsed and may be looking for a new coach soon.  To date Manuel has almost exclusively gone for easy hiring decisions - either promoting assistants or hiring outsiders with Michigan ties - but that's not going to be an option this time around.  Do you have faith he'll get it right?

I think if he really wanted…

I think if he really wanted to go back to Oklahoma, he'd have done it already as an assistant.

The NFL could potentially be out there, but that's going to be true for just about any successful coach.

Harbaugh was knee-calling us…

Harbaugh was knee-calling us

That seems really hard to do, especially the middle row (2, 5, 8, 0).

Many argue Michigan didn’t…

Many argue Michigan didn’t trust McCarthy,

Because they didn't watch the games and just lazily looked at his stats.

I'm not sure any of Minter…

I'm not sure any of Minter/Elston/Clinkscale would be here now even if Harbaugh hadn't hired them to the Chargers.  They'd just be on some other NFL staff, like Jay Harbaugh is.  Minter was in line for a pro DC job regardless, and once Elston/Clinkscale were passed over for our DC job, it's not too surprising they moved on.

He's actively hurting our…

He's actively hurting our future success by taking coaches with him.

This seems a little over the top.  Of our ten 2023 assistants, three are joining him in Los Angeles, plus the strength coach.  That's not an especially large number for a coach moving on.  Minter was likely in line for an NFL DC job regardless of what Harbaugh did, and given that Moore chose not to promote Elston/Clinkscale for Minter's old job, it's probably not shocking they decided to move on.  

Herbert is the only departure that is much of a surprise, IMO, but I think we'll be OK with Tress stepping in, given how long the two men worked together.

To be fair to Saban, MSU was…

To be fair to Saban, MSU was under sanctions his first four seasons and only had about 70 scholarship players.  He managed to avoid a losing season during that time, which was a decent accomplishment.  The year they got off sanctions, in 1999, he went 10-2.  He may have gone on to build something there, but LSU came calling and MSU thankfully was too cheap to match their offer.   

I think peoples' opinions of…

I think peoples' opinions of Sheridan are colored by their memory of him as a player.  (Which really isn't a good measuring stick for coaching ability, at all - a lot of great players make lousy coaches and vice versa.)

Montana threw for more yards…

Montana threw for more yards on 42 less attempts in an age where DBs were permitted to be far more physical than they are now.

Worth remembering that he also played most of his career before the salary cap existed, on a team that was absolutely stacked.  

Yeah ... it brings me no…

Yeah ... it brings me no pleasure at all to say it, because I loved the Fab Five and really wanted him to work out as our coach.  But when a coach inherits a program that's coming off back-to-back 30-win seasons and it utterly collapses like this, unfortunately, there's no other plausible conclusion to make.

This is not Jim Harbaugh going 2-4 during a pandemic, in the midst of an otherwise stellar tenure.  This program was exhibiting massive warning signs before this season even started.

The "hard reset" should have…

The "hard reset" should have happened last offseason.  When you've lost 15 and 16 games the last two seasons, what are you clinging to?

Excellent summary.  Only…

Excellent summary.  Only quibble: it wasn't Greg Gard that Howard hit with the slap but his assistant, Joe Krabbenhoft.