I'm not going to feel comfortable going to busy restaurants or sitting on airplanes until there is a vaccine or other major breakthrough. I hate being sick more than just about anything and even worse than being sick would be having to isolate myself even further from the few loved ones I live with.
Unfortunately, my S.O. is less risk-averse than me and I suspect she will find it impossible to resist going back to her busy social life as soon as it's allowed, even if it's not entirely safe. So even if I stay away, I'm extremely likely to get sick anyways if she goes out and catches it.
Might just be recency bias, but beating the brakes off of MSU last year felt cathartic. It was the first time I watched a rivalry game in the Harbaugh era and what was "supposed" to happen actually happened.
But more importantly, the sparty fanbase was entirely resigned. There was no more hope, no more chip on their shoulder, no "defeat with dignity" angle to take. Sparty fans that used to love bringing up football don't even want to talk about it. You try to bring it up and all they want to talk about is stuff from years ago.
That game was just a thorough beat down of a completely inferior team by a team with better players, better coaches and better execution from kickoff to the final whistle. The cherry on top is that Michigan basically ended Dantonio's career and forever put a permanent damper on his legacy. It was delicious and I shall relish it for the next two years or whenever the next time comes that we get to beat them again.
I would love to see more written about the relationship between the academic part of the university and the athletic part, and how that relationship has changed over history. The latest Bacon book touched on this and I found it fascinating.
Hard to see the point of marriage when you grow up seeing half the married adults you know get divorced while many of the half that stay together don't seem to be happy about it. It seems like the strength of a relationship has way more to do with the two individuals involved than the presence of a ring and a piece of paper.
This seems like the best case scenario at this point. It sucks but it's probably most likely that we will not have a football season at all.
Without a vaccine, proven cure, or general herd immunity, it seems grossly irresponsible to have people play contact sports with other people from across the country, not to mention packing hundreds of thousands of people into stadiums across the country every week.
MAYBE you could play football in empty stadiums if you could test every single player, coach and staff member for coronavirus every week and isolate anyone that tests positive. Then you can avoid spreading it on the field. But that's an expensive proposition when you have no ticket revenue. Sure, Michigan and most of the Big Ten could afford it, but a lot of teams can't.
Unfortunately, it just seems like there is a very low probability that football gets played in 2020. What you'll probably see is first teams will cancel their summer practices, then their non-conference games, then try to delay the conference season start, but eventually the whole season will most likely be scrapped.
I'm hopeful that some kind of breakthrough in testing and treatment will come between now and the fall, and maybe by then a big chunk of the population will have immunity because they will have been infected and recovered. But I think we should all be prepared for the most likely outcome of the trajectory we're currently on.
Especially when for most of us, the answer to what we can do to help is just stop hanging out with people you don't live with and wash your hands as much as you can.
I'm afraid it's already too late for football season. Packing hundreds of thousands of people in stadiums week after week and having fans and teams travel around the country just seems incredibly reckless without a vaccine or 100% containment. I doubt we'll get either of those things by September. Maybe if we had taken the South Korea path of massive testing and militant isolation back in Jan/Feb, we could still have a football season, but I'm just not counting on it at this point which really bums me out.
Yes. Listen to the scientists and doctors who actually have a stake in the health of the population, not the guy who is trying to get hotel bookings back up and keep the DOW above 20k regardless of how many families lose loved ones in the process.
We can move the date sooner if we all just stop moving around as much as possible. You can literally save thousands of lives by just sitting on your couch all day! This is an opportunity!
If everyone just froze in place for 2 weeks and isolated everyone that got sick, it would be over because the virus would stop moving to new hosts and it would just die out.
The virus needs to keep moving from person to person to stay alive (yes I know it's not technically a living thing). Viruses don't want to kill people or make them sick, they just want to replicate. Each person that gets infected either builds up an immunity that gets rid of it or the person dies. The virus needs to find a new host to jump to before the infected person build enough antibodies or dies.
The virus has other weaknesses too: it doesn't hold up well against soap and household disinfectants. It doesn't travel well through the air beyond 6 feet. It can only hold its structure for 3-4 days on smooth surfaces, and less time on porous surfaces. It doesn't seem to travel well through water like many bacterial diseases. It hasn't jumped to other species like dogs or cats. And so far (major knock on wood) it doesn't seem to mutate super quickly.
Most of us have no control over how many tests can get produced, how many masks can get made or how many ventilators can get distributed. What we all can do is stop in-person interactions as much as possible, wash our hands constantly (my rule of thumb is to wash hands any time switch tasks and any time I walk by the sink), and keep disinfecting all surfaces as often as possible.
Everything that the actual scientists are saying seems to indicate a longer timeline rather than shorter. So much of it depends on people just taking social distancing seriously and getting testing way up.
My optimistic guess is that most people who can keep their jobs and don't have severe sickness will start to feel like things are getting back to normal around December this year. However, if I was a betting man, I'd put my money on "no sooner than July 2020 and no Later than May 2021".
Obviously that's an extremely wide range, but that depends on what "back to normal" means for you. It seems like U.S. cases won't peak until mid/late April, probably between 1 and 2 million. I hope that by July this year, testing in some localized areas might be robust enough to allow the majority of people to start moving around more. For example, the state of Michigan could declare in July that anyone who tests negative twice in two weeks can go back to offices, factories, retail stores and maybe classrooms and places of worship. People who test positive will still have to be quarantined obviously, and at-risk people will likely be asked to stay isolated longer. There will be hot spots that continue to bubble up until late this year, probably December.
Things like Football games, concerts, street fairs, packed bars and clubs probably won't be happening any more this year unfortunately. It really sucks, but I'm already counting on Michigan football going on hiatus until 2021. I'm crushed of course because football season is my favorite time of the year, but it just seems incredibly irresponsible to pack hundreds of thousands of people from around the country into stadiums every weekend before there is a vaccine.
I think the very best case scenario for football is that by fall enough tests are available that athletes, coaches and athletic staff can get tested weekly, allowing them to play, but in empty stadiums. I could also see the NCAA delaying the season by a few months, but that seems even less likely at this point. The most likely scenario is that we won't have any college football until fall 2021.
I'd set the over/under on the "stay at home unless you absolutely have to" state of the world ending on June 15th with the exception of local hot spots (about 4 months after it started - that seems to be what was needed in China).
I'd set the over/under on "life is no longer constrained by the virus itself" at a year from now, so March 24, 2021.
Yeah it seems like there's two rules of action that everyone should be taking:
1: Actually do all the things you're SUPPOSED to be doing anyways to stay healthy during flu season.
2: (new rule) stop participating in any activities that involve being physically close to many people, especially strangers. (Exceptions: getting groceries & essential household goods, going to work if you can't work from home.)
THESE are the kind of questions I wish the experts would answer!
- Getting take-out seems fine. I think Dr. Fauci even recommended it for people who want to get restaurant food.
- Having a small 2-4 person study group seems ok as long as everyone limits contact with outside groups too. A risk, but seems low (for now).
- Is it ok to play poker with 4-5 friends who haven't traveled or shown symptoms? Seems ok, but who knows?
- Is it ok to play ultimate frisbee with people? Seems riskier, but probably better than basketball. But I don't know!
- Is it ok to go hang out with my family at my parents' house (50s) if we keep the group small and avoid physical contact? No idea!
One thing I'm almost certain was a massive mistake was all the st. patrick's day parties I saw around Ann Arbor this weekend. Crowds of 20, 30, 40 people packed into living rooms, porches, small front yards. Drunk people hugging, holding hands, dancing closely. Plus people are going from party to party, mixing with others. You couldn't ask for a better situation to spread if you were a virus. If there was one person that was carrying the virus and they went to 2 parties and a bar, that could turn into 1,000 cases in two weeks. Yikes...
Having drinks at home with your SO and/or 1 or 2 best friends seems like it's worth the risk. Spending time with people you love is what makes life worth living. But the darty lyfe, party-hopping culture should probably be stopped entirely for a few months.
Seems like a good class, but what really catches my eye is Clemson's 6 five-stars, more than the next two schools combined(!). It's just so laughably obvious that Clemson is paying their recruits from that stat alone.
It's like when Harry Markopolos took one look at Bernie Madoff's numbers and knew he was a fraud. Outliers like that just don't exist without cheating, and I know we've all become incredibly jaded about the NCAA but come on already. I know pretty much every school that's in the top 3 recruiting rankings is probably cheating but sometimes it's just so obvious it makes you laugh.
Anyways, go blue and best of luck to the incoming class, they chose the right place.
Also, pretty sure even if we had 115,000 Michigan fans and zero OSU fans in the Big House on Saturday, we still would've lost by several scores. The crowd makes a big difference in closely contested games but really can only account for a 3-7 point advantage at best.
This is absolutely true. The difference between Home Team Michigan and Away Team Michigan is night and day. I haven't missed a home game in years and the MSU game this year was one of the loudest games I've ever seen there. Visiting teams vastly under-perform their averages at Michigan Stadium.
Hard to blame students for not showing up when none of the current undergrads have ever seen a win over Ohio State while in school. Heck, if you're an undergrad now you haven't even seen a *close* OSU game in the Big House unless you are a 7th year senior. Anyone under the age of 25 has been conditioned to associate Ohio State games with anguish and/or disappointing boredom.
Notre Dame games? Those are exciting! MSU games? Fun! Any highly ranked team not called Ohio State that has come to Ann Arbor since 2015 has been a pretty exciting experience win or lose. Students show up for those even when it's pouring rain or freezing cold.
It also doesn't help that The Game is at noon on the Saturday after Thanksgiving now, which means students from out of state have to travel halfway through their break in order to get back to campus in time to attend.
Clemson and Michigan State are the only two teams that have beaten Ohio State more than once since 2011.
Michigan has come within one play of beating Ohio State 3 times since then and failed to get that one extra push every time.
There is no silver lining here. We are just like pretty much every other team who has played OSU this decade, just with a little less good luck than MSU. And OSU will continue to get better while Michigan seems to have hit its ceiling of 10 wins per season and only being able to hang with top-5 programs for one half. We've got the strongest coaching staff Michigan has seen since arguably the 90s, pulling in good to great recruiting classes every year, but even that is no match against OSU having a decade worth of top 5 recruiting classes combined with zero scruples about prioritizing football over literally everything else. The gap between us and Ohio State is about the same as the gap between us and Indiana, and we know how that match up has gone for the past few decades.
Unfortunately the answer is very simple: talent and luck.
Look at who has beaten Ohio State in the past 5 years:
2015: MSU
2016: PSU, Clemson
2017: Oklahoma, Iowa
2018: Purdue
2 of those losses were due to Ohio State matching up with a program that was as talented or more talented than their squad (Clemson, Oklahoma). The rest of the losses were to teams with similar talent to Michigan, but those teams got a lot of lucky breaks combined with some really baffling coaching decisions made by Urban Meyer.
Ohio State will never make baffling bone-headed coaching decisions against Michigan, and the talent gap will not close within the next couple years. So unfortunately, we just need to get lucky and play zero mistake football. The first half of 2016 times 2.
Oddly, coaching staff seems to have little impact on the rivalry. Ryan Day v Harbaugh isn’t that different from Urban Meyer v Hoke. Greg Mattison’s D-lines looked terrible against Ohio State’s offensive lines. Now he’s at Ohio State and probably going to win a National Championship. If you think Harbaugh Couldn’t go to Columbus and win 12-15 games every year then you’re kidding yourself. There’s like 3 coaches that are impactful enough that they could come in and immediately start beating Ohio State right away: Urban Meyer, Lincoln Riley and MAYBE Nick Saban. Even then, they’d need a lot of luck, something that Michigan just doesn’t have in this rivalry for some reason.
This gets back to the question of whether the CFP's goal is to pick the "best teams at the moment" or the "most deserving teams". It seems like the CFP committee chooses whichever philosophy will help them get Alabama and Ohio State into the playoff.
If Michigan beats OSU, it's hard to argue that they're not one of the best teams at the moment. But then OSU can go and crush whoever comes out of the Big Ten West and that will effectively sweep their loss under the rug.
Michigan-USC is probably the most likely to get the players hype after another loss to Ohio. I have friends from California who think USC would crush Michigan even though the Trojans have been exceptionally mediocre lately, so I've been interested in that matchup for years. Like it or not but big brand names still matter, and facing USC is far more likely to motivate Michigan players and staff than another ho-hum trip south to play B1G Adopted Member Florida again.
If he keeps up his success he could probably make more money by going to USC as Urban's DC and possible Heir Apparent when Urbs inevitably has more "health issues"
Yeah 99% of Michigan fans understand that we're celebrating not just because Michigan blew out Sparty (which is lovely) but because Michigan ENDED THEIR PROGRAM. It's over. Our team broke their team. Kaputt. How often do teams get to deliver the final death blow to a rival's favorite coach and program? The finality of it is glorious. That's why it's so fun to keep celebrating.
I think the winning strategy is to be aggressive from drive 1 and don't let off the gas. It seems like the Spartans always start with some unearned confidence, but their will can be broken, and when it is, they just collapse. So the strategy should be to break their will early and then press your advantage. Don't turtle - I don't want to see an Carr-ball if we're up 14 in the 3rd quarter.
Tactically, I would start by testing their defense with our base run offense and see if they bite. If we can't get 4+ yards on the first run because they're stacking the box and putting a spy on Patterson, then go straight to Nico-ball or test their linebackers with some Ronnie Bell/Peoples-Jones slants. Force them to respect the 4 NFL receivers we have. Stretch them horizontally and the run lanes will open up.
If the run game is getting you 3+ yards a pop in the first quarter, I think you have to stick with it. The MSU Defense can get tired if you keep the pressure on and don't let them off the field. It will be cold, which is an advantage to the team that can establish the run first. I doubt we'll see many long runs or huge plays from our run game, but a consistent battering in the 1st and 2nd quarter will pay off in the 3rd and 4th quarters.
Their secondary isn't terrible, but they can lose focus on longer developing plays. If the offensive line can give Patterson some time, then there will be opportunities deep, where the MSU defenders seem to get lost.
Finally: HOLD ON TO THE DAMN BALL. The way to lose this game is to start giving up turnovers.
I totally know this feeling. It sucks but my past experience has made me incapable of imagining anything but a nerve-wracking 4 hour slog with the possibility of a loss looming until late in the 4th quarter at best.
I admire all those Michigan fans who are optimistic about some kind of blowout, but I fear they will be gravely disappointed. A close win would be great to me. A loss is still a very real possibility if we can’t hold on to the ball.
Respectfully, I must disagree. No way Michigan is up 21-0 at the end of the 1st quarter. Even in Sparty’s 3-9 year they played a strong 1st quarter and had our defense on their heels. Michigan will be lucky to be up by more than a touchdown at halftime. My guess is 0-0 at the half is more likely than 21-0 after the 1st quarter.
I completely agree with this. Until conference champions get auto-bids in the playoff, I have no problem with Michigan playing nothing but pulse-free teams in the out of conference schedule. Collect the Ws and move on.
Completely agree. The CFP committee has demonstrated over and over again that wins over bad teams > close losses to good teams. This only applies to Power 5 teams though. If you’re not a P5 school then you do have to schedule the most rigorous OOC schedule possible and win out to even be considered. This is why Harbaugh’s Play-off idea would be a big improvement. ADs can feel free to schedule really good OOC games, knowing that they can still get in the playoff with a conference win. I’m fine with a 9-10 game conference schedule if it means the other 2-3 games are home-and-home games against iconic teams like LSU and Texas, instead of tomato cans (boring) and service academies (yikes).
100% agree. I’ll be happy with any win over an MSU team backed into a corner. These players have one game to salvage their season and their coach’s reputation. They’ve been practicing for this game every day since August. Michigan has been prepping for Ohio State since August, but not necessarily for Sparty. If MSU can clean up their bit mistakes and if Michigan reverts to their early season foot-shooting, MSU can win this. People also forget that Dantonio has no morals or sense of sportsmanship, so he will coach his team to play as dirty as possible. I hate that some people will be disappointed if we win something like 21-17, but this is going to be a rock fight and getting the W will be hard no matter what. Yes I want to blow them out as much as anyone but like the commenter said, this is not going to be Notre Dame 2.0. It’ll be more like Iowa 2.0.
That last sentence speaks to a deeper truth and points out a correlation/causation issue within this topic.
Basically, do U of M grads make more money because they have a U of M degree, or are the types of people with the talent and ambition to go to Michigan also the types of people who tend to make more money anyways?
I think right out of college the brand of your degree matters a lot for your starting salary. When you start to extrapolate out to 5, 10 years and beyond, the correlation between having a Michigan Degree and an above average salary is still strong, but that long after graduation people aren't being paid more because they have a U of M degree, they're getting paid more because the kinds of people who have the talent and work ethic to get a U of M degree in the first place are going to be more valuable in the workplace.
TL;DR people who are ambitious and talented enough to go to Michigan are also ambitious and talented enough to make more money than the average person.
Really interesting - I'd love to see a comparison to other Big Ten schools.
I know someone who is debating whether they should try to transfer to Michigan from Michigan State and having the comparison data could help convince them to get out of East Lansing haha.
Agreed. It is impossible to underestimate what Dantonio will do to win this game. He has probably been juicing all of his players and Bachie is just the one that got caught. I bet Dantonio is telling his players now that he will give them a golden needle for every targeting foul and late hit they get on Michigan's QBs. I wouldn't put it past him to tell his offensive linemen to gouge out the eyes of all of our defensive linemen every time there is a pile. He'll play as dirty as he can as long as the end result is a W.
Good points. I am just too scarred from reading about the things that should happen in a Michigan rivalry game and then have the exact opposite happen. This applies to both wins and losses.
- Notre Dame this year: narrative before the game is that Notre Dame is the favorite, despite what Vegas says, but if Michigan pulls it off it'll be a close, low scoring win in the rain. Result: 45-14 blowout.
- Ohio State last year: the narrative before the game was Don Brown's defense was looking good enough that all Michigan needed to do was put up 4 or 5 touchdowns and the game would be in the bag. Plus, the revenge tour just needed one more win and Michigan would be playing out of their minds to make it happen. We know what happened.
- Michigan State last year: narrative before the game is the Michigan is clearly superior and they are on the revenge tour roll. They should win this game easily, and may even run up the score. Result: we won, but man it was way closer than what you would expect given the way the teams played.
- Notre Dame last year: narrative going into the game was that the teams were pretty evenly matched and it should be an exciting rivalry matchup. Result: Notre Dame pretty much had it in the bag from the first quarter. It was kind of boring.
- Ohio State 2017: Narrative going into the game was the Michigan would likely get blown out at home and would be lucky to score at all. Result: Michigan was actually winning at halftime and had a good shot at winning outright until late into the 4th quarter.
I could go on but I won't. The point is that there is a pattern of Michigan rivalry games going completely off-script from what the conventional wisdom would say.
In this case, the conventional wisdom is that MSU has a putrid offense and a good defense with some glaring holes. Most people seem to expect something like last year, with maybe a slightly larger margin of victory for Michigan. But since things tend to go opposite of whatever rationality would predict, I'm predicting a Big 12 style shootout with 2OT, ending 49-45. MSU will have over 300 yards of offense and give up less than 100 rush yards on defense. Michigan's secondary will get gashed, and Nico Collins will also get 10 targets. No idea who wins.
2. Michigan’s annual stretch of dominance in between disappointments, by Alex
This is more painfully accurate than any summary of the Harbaugh era. It's a really good program that just can't beat Ohio State. If Michigan had even 1 win against Ohio State under Harbaugh, the narrative about this program would be completely different. Every year it would at least seem like "Harbaugh has done it before, maybe he'll to it again this year!" Instead, it's like "Yeah crushing Notre Dame is fun and the team is improving but it doesn't mean anything because we're just going to lose to Ohio State and finish off with a meaningless bowl game against Florida again."
It sucks, but since 2016 I've chosen to just mentally ink in an L for the Ohio State game and try to enjoy every other win as it comes. If I had to put money on whether Michigan will win the Big Ten East or beat Ohio State first, I'd put my money on winning the Big Ten east, because it seems like it's easier for this program to run the table against everyone besides Ohio State and hope for the buckeyes to lose two other games. I know we'll beat Ohio State again sometime in my lifetime, but it honestly might be 10+ years from now, so I'm not going to set myself up for bitter disappointment every year.
I am more worried about this game than ever tbh. Anyone who thinks Dantonio hasn't been spending every practice since they lost to ASU focused on prepping for the Michigan game, they're kidding themselves.
Dantonio knows that there is one way to salvage this season: beat Michigan. He is spending 90% of every waking hour of every day preparing for that. He could literally lose every game on the remainder of his schedule except for the Michigan game and still be declared a hero and guarantee his job.
Sure, the talent he's working with is not really close to the caliber that Michigan has, but that is always the case. MSU probably already has 3-4 scripted drives that are built to attack Michigan's vulnerabilities. Their defense is probably going to sell out against the run and try to force Shea to make mistakes. And with a bit of luck it just might work!
Especially considering the following: Michigan isn't great coming out of bye weeks - we often see a regression, we haven't beaten MSU at home in forever, Michigan has a history of getting a bit too cocky right after winning big and then going into a perceived lesser foe.
My guess is Dantonio's game plan is something like this:
On offense, bleed the clock and be efficient. Michigan is prone to tanking their own offensive drives, so if you limit the number of chances Michigan has on offense, you can severely restrict their scoring ability. Dantonio will try to slow his offense to a crawl and eat up clock. Go for it on 4th down early and often, pin your punts deep, run the QB a lot. That's what allowed other over-matched teams like Army and Iowa to stay close.
On defense, sell out entirely against the run and blitz like there's no tomorrow on passing downs. Stack the box with 8 men every down. Force Shea to get the ball out quickly, which he's bad at, or get him on the run behind the line of scrimmage where he is prone to bonehead ball security issues. This could mean they let our receivers get some big play opportunities, but Dantonio will be willing to roll the dice on that.
Last tactic: ALL the unsportsmanlike behaviors. Dantonio will give his team free reign to gouge, grab, poke, punch, twist and kick our players at will. His best bet is to injure our players to even the talent gap. He knows they won't all get called. And even if they do call most of them, Dantonio will gladly take a few 15 yard penalties in exchange for getting a few of our best players off the field. They will especially go after Shea - they'll hit him late, hit him out of bounds, target him, anything to get him off the field. And for good measure they will taunt our players and try to goad them into getting flags too. It's going to get very ugly, even by Michigan-MSU standards.
This is all to say, anyone looking forward to a blowout in this one is going to be very disappointed. We could easily lose this game if we don't play flawlessly and fight back against all the inevitable MSU frippery. I'd be happy with any win against a Mark Dantonio squad with nothing to lose.
From the beginning, this was a 1 game season. Sure it would be nice to win some more games, but 3-9 with a win over OSU somehow seems more appealing than another 9-3 with losses to MSU, ND and OSU.
So I totally agree with this game plan. It's how Dantonio manages to keep things close every year no matter how terrible the rest of their season is! But it will never happen here.
I agree that Michigan is more like the Yankees. It almost makes it more painful as a fan because not only do you know what it's like to be on top, you know what it's like to get used to being at the top. You look back and it feels like all your team's best days are behind them. At least when you're historically bad you feel like your best days as a fan could still be ahead of you.
This is so relatable. I entered the "life is a marathon, not a sprint" phase of fandom after last year's Ohio State game. I am doing my best to get a bigger perspective, like at least we're going to win 8-10 games a year and beat MSU most of the time.
Could be worse. It's better than having Brady Hoke, where the trajectory was 3-9 bottom feeder status.
Michigan's trajectory under Harbaugh looks like consistently averaging 9.5 games a year with every other year coming close to a Big Ten championship before having your hopes wiped out in late November and then playing Florida in a good but not prestigious bowl game.
Maybe Harbaugh will get lucky and go to the Rose Bowl in the next few years. But if he does, it'll be because the Rose Bowl is in a non-playoff year and Ohio State just beat the crap out of an 8-4 Big Ten West champion, sending the Buckeyes to the Playoff and the Big Ten West champion to citrus bowl or something. Chances are, half the starters will quit before the Rose Bowl and we'll lose to Utah 34-21.
There are 3 simple things I wanted to see Harbaugh do that now I'm not sure I'll ever see again:
1. Absolutely crush MSU. Like really embarrass them. I want to see one of those wins where it's like 42-0 at halftime and sparty fans don't even want to talk about football for the next year. Michigan always seems to look like the obvious better team, but the score never reflects that, which allows sparty fans to do the most little brother thing ever: whine about irrelevant things that were "unfair" or "could have turned the game around".
2. Go to the Rose Bowl. I grew up watching Michigan go to the Rose Bowl every other year it seemed like. I always thought, you know some day I'll be able to afford to go to the Rose Bowl to watch Michigan. When Harbaugh was hired I was like, awesome, next Rose Bowl we go to, I'm making the trip! Now I don't even bother holding new years weekend open just in case. I booked a vacation to Europe for that week because I knew nothing interesting relating to Michigan Football will be happening.
3. Beat Ohio State. I thought this was something that would happen every 2 or 3 years, but now I just want to see it once!
Statistically speaking it's not that hard to flip a coin 16 times and get tails 14 times. In fact, I just tried it out with a coin flipping simulator and it took 96 flips to get a sequence of 16 with only 2 heads.
That being said, the fact that football isn't a perfectly random coin flip makes it even more frustrating.
This is just child-level stupidity on Perry's part. How hard is it to keep your hands off women who don't want to be touched? And then running away on top of that? I don't think I want someone capable of that level of stupidity on the team.
The question is: how well can he catch and hold onto the ball? I feel like we've had a ton of extremely athletic wide receivers lately but we are constantly getting burned on dropped passes.
I would like to play USC to shut up the people who think they're world-beaters. I would not want to play Louisville because they have lost all their luster and if Lamar Jackson has a game we could lose. On a neutral field I think we would crush anyone else in the top 25 that isn't Alabama.
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I'm not going to feel comfortable going to busy restaurants or sitting on airplanes until there is a vaccine or other major breakthrough. I hate being sick more than just about anything and even worse than being sick would be having to isolate myself even further from the few loved ones I live with.
Unfortunately, my S.O. is less risk-averse than me and I suspect she will find it impossible to resist going back to her busy social life as soon as it's allowed, even if it's not entirely safe. So even if I stay away, I'm extremely likely to get sick anyways if she goes out and catches it.
Might just be recency bias, but beating the brakes off of MSU last year felt cathartic. It was the first time I watched a rivalry game in the Harbaugh era and what was "supposed" to happen actually happened.
But more importantly, the sparty fanbase was entirely resigned. There was no more hope, no more chip on their shoulder, no "defeat with dignity" angle to take. Sparty fans that used to love bringing up football don't even want to talk about it. You try to bring it up and all they want to talk about is stuff from years ago.
That game was just a thorough beat down of a completely inferior team by a team with better players, better coaches and better execution from kickoff to the final whistle. The cherry on top is that Michigan basically ended Dantonio's career and forever put a permanent damper on his legacy. It was delicious and I shall relish it for the next two years or whenever the next time comes that we get to beat them again.
I would love to see more written about the relationship between the academic part of the university and the athletic part, and how that relationship has changed over history. The latest Bacon book touched on this and I found it fascinating.
Hard to see the point of marriage when you grow up seeing half the married adults you know get divorced while many of the half that stay together don't seem to be happy about it. It seems like the strength of a relationship has way more to do with the two individuals involved than the presence of a ring and a piece of paper.
This seems like the best case scenario at this point. It sucks but it's probably most likely that we will not have a football season at all.
Without a vaccine, proven cure, or general herd immunity, it seems grossly irresponsible to have people play contact sports with other people from across the country, not to mention packing hundreds of thousands of people into stadiums across the country every week.
MAYBE you could play football in empty stadiums if you could test every single player, coach and staff member for coronavirus every week and isolate anyone that tests positive. Then you can avoid spreading it on the field. But that's an expensive proposition when you have no ticket revenue. Sure, Michigan and most of the Big Ten could afford it, but a lot of teams can't.
Unfortunately, it just seems like there is a very low probability that football gets played in 2020. What you'll probably see is first teams will cancel their summer practices, then their non-conference games, then try to delay the conference season start, but eventually the whole season will most likely be scrapped.
I'm hopeful that some kind of breakthrough in testing and treatment will come between now and the fall, and maybe by then a big chunk of the population will have immunity because they will have been infected and recovered. But I think we should all be prepared for the most likely outcome of the trajectory we're currently on.
Especially when for most of us, the answer to what we can do to help is just stop hanging out with people you don't live with and wash your hands as much as you can.
I'm afraid it's already too late for football season. Packing hundreds of thousands of people in stadiums week after week and having fans and teams travel around the country just seems incredibly reckless without a vaccine or 100% containment. I doubt we'll get either of those things by September. Maybe if we had taken the South Korea path of massive testing and militant isolation back in Jan/Feb, we could still have a football season, but I'm just not counting on it at this point which really bums me out.
Yes. Listen to the scientists and doctors who actually have a stake in the health of the population, not the guy who is trying to get hotel bookings back up and keep the DOW above 20k regardless of how many families lose loved ones in the process.
We can move the date sooner if we all just stop moving around as much as possible. You can literally save thousands of lives by just sitting on your couch all day! This is an opportunity!
If everyone just froze in place for 2 weeks and isolated everyone that got sick, it would be over because the virus would stop moving to new hosts and it would just die out.
The virus needs to keep moving from person to person to stay alive (yes I know it's not technically a living thing). Viruses don't want to kill people or make them sick, they just want to replicate. Each person that gets infected either builds up an immunity that gets rid of it or the person dies. The virus needs to find a new host to jump to before the infected person build enough antibodies or dies.
The virus has other weaknesses too: it doesn't hold up well against soap and household disinfectants. It doesn't travel well through the air beyond 6 feet. It can only hold its structure for 3-4 days on smooth surfaces, and less time on porous surfaces. It doesn't seem to travel well through water like many bacterial diseases. It hasn't jumped to other species like dogs or cats. And so far (major knock on wood) it doesn't seem to mutate super quickly.
Most of us have no control over how many tests can get produced, how many masks can get made or how many ventilators can get distributed. What we all can do is stop in-person interactions as much as possible, wash our hands constantly (my rule of thumb is to wash hands any time switch tasks and any time I walk by the sink), and keep disinfecting all surfaces as often as possible.
Everything that the actual scientists are saying seems to indicate a longer timeline rather than shorter. So much of it depends on people just taking social distancing seriously and getting testing way up.
My optimistic guess is that most people who can keep their jobs and don't have severe sickness will start to feel like things are getting back to normal around December this year. However, if I was a betting man, I'd put my money on "no sooner than July 2020 and no Later than May 2021".
Obviously that's an extremely wide range, but that depends on what "back to normal" means for you. It seems like U.S. cases won't peak until mid/late April, probably between 1 and 2 million. I hope that by July this year, testing in some localized areas might be robust enough to allow the majority of people to start moving around more. For example, the state of Michigan could declare in July that anyone who tests negative twice in two weeks can go back to offices, factories, retail stores and maybe classrooms and places of worship. People who test positive will still have to be quarantined obviously, and at-risk people will likely be asked to stay isolated longer. There will be hot spots that continue to bubble up until late this year, probably December.
Things like Football games, concerts, street fairs, packed bars and clubs probably won't be happening any more this year unfortunately. It really sucks, but I'm already counting on Michigan football going on hiatus until 2021. I'm crushed of course because football season is my favorite time of the year, but it just seems incredibly irresponsible to pack hundreds of thousands of people from around the country into stadiums every weekend before there is a vaccine.
I think the very best case scenario for football is that by fall enough tests are available that athletes, coaches and athletic staff can get tested weekly, allowing them to play, but in empty stadiums. I could also see the NCAA delaying the season by a few months, but that seems even less likely at this point. The most likely scenario is that we won't have any college football until fall 2021.
I'd set the over/under on the "stay at home unless you absolutely have to" state of the world ending on June 15th with the exception of local hot spots (about 4 months after it started - that seems to be what was needed in China).
I'd set the over/under on "life is no longer constrained by the virus itself" at a year from now, so March 24, 2021.
Yeah it seems like there's two rules of action that everyone should be taking:
1: Actually do all the things you're SUPPOSED to be doing anyways to stay healthy during flu season.
2: (new rule) stop participating in any activities that involve being physically close to many people, especially strangers. (Exceptions: getting groceries & essential household goods, going to work if you can't work from home.)
THESE are the kind of questions I wish the experts would answer!
- Getting take-out seems fine. I think Dr. Fauci even recommended it for people who want to get restaurant food.
- Having a small 2-4 person study group seems ok as long as everyone limits contact with outside groups too. A risk, but seems low (for now).
- Is it ok to play poker with 4-5 friends who haven't traveled or shown symptoms? Seems ok, but who knows?
- Is it ok to play ultimate frisbee with people? Seems riskier, but probably better than basketball. But I don't know!
- Is it ok to go hang out with my family at my parents' house (50s) if we keep the group small and avoid physical contact? No idea!
One thing I'm almost certain was a massive mistake was all the st. patrick's day parties I saw around Ann Arbor this weekend. Crowds of 20, 30, 40 people packed into living rooms, porches, small front yards. Drunk people hugging, holding hands, dancing closely. Plus people are going from party to party, mixing with others. You couldn't ask for a better situation to spread if you were a virus. If there was one person that was carrying the virus and they went to 2 parties and a bar, that could turn into 1,000 cases in two weeks. Yikes...
Having drinks at home with your SO and/or 1 or 2 best friends seems like it's worth the risk. Spending time with people you love is what makes life worth living. But the darty lyfe, party-hopping culture should probably be stopped entirely for a few months.
Seems like a good class, but what really catches my eye is Clemson's 6 five-stars, more than the next two schools combined(!). It's just so laughably obvious that Clemson is paying their recruits from that stat alone.
It's like when Harry Markopolos took one look at Bernie Madoff's numbers and knew he was a fraud. Outliers like that just don't exist without cheating, and I know we've all become incredibly jaded about the NCAA but come on already. I know pretty much every school that's in the top 3 recruiting rankings is probably cheating but sometimes it's just so obvious it makes you laugh.
Anyways, go blue and best of luck to the incoming class, they chose the right place.
Also, pretty sure even if we had 115,000 Michigan fans and zero OSU fans in the Big House on Saturday, we still would've lost by several scores. The crowd makes a big difference in closely contested games but really can only account for a 3-7 point advantage at best.
This is absolutely true. The difference between Home Team Michigan and Away Team Michigan is night and day. I haven't missed a home game in years and the MSU game this year was one of the loudest games I've ever seen there. Visiting teams vastly under-perform their averages at Michigan Stadium.
Hard to blame students for not showing up when none of the current undergrads have ever seen a win over Ohio State while in school. Heck, if you're an undergrad now you haven't even seen a *close* OSU game in the Big House unless you are a 7th year senior. Anyone under the age of 25 has been conditioned to associate Ohio State games with anguish and/or disappointing boredom.
Notre Dame games? Those are exciting! MSU games? Fun! Any highly ranked team not called Ohio State that has come to Ann Arbor since 2015 has been a pretty exciting experience win or lose. Students show up for those even when it's pouring rain or freezing cold.
It also doesn't help that The Game is at noon on the Saturday after Thanksgiving now, which means students from out of state have to travel halfway through their break in order to get back to campus in time to attend.
Clemson and Michigan State are the only two teams that have beaten Ohio State more than once since 2011.
Michigan has come within one play of beating Ohio State 3 times since then and failed to get that one extra push every time.
There is no silver lining here. We are just like pretty much every other team who has played OSU this decade, just with a little less good luck than MSU. And OSU will continue to get better while Michigan seems to have hit its ceiling of 10 wins per season and only being able to hang with top-5 programs for one half. We've got the strongest coaching staff Michigan has seen since arguably the 90s, pulling in good to great recruiting classes every year, but even that is no match against OSU having a decade worth of top 5 recruiting classes combined with zero scruples about prioritizing football over literally everything else. The gap between us and Ohio State is about the same as the gap between us and Indiana, and we know how that match up has gone for the past few decades.
Unfortunately the answer is very simple: talent and luck.
Look at who has beaten Ohio State in the past 5 years:
2015: MSU
2016: PSU, Clemson
2017: Oklahoma, Iowa
2018: Purdue
2 of those losses were due to Ohio State matching up with a program that was as talented or more talented than their squad (Clemson, Oklahoma). The rest of the losses were to teams with similar talent to Michigan, but those teams got a lot of lucky breaks combined with some really baffling coaching decisions made by Urban Meyer.
Ohio State will never make baffling bone-headed coaching decisions against Michigan, and the talent gap will not close within the next couple years. So unfortunately, we just need to get lucky and play zero mistake football. The first half of 2016 times 2.
Oddly, coaching staff seems to have little impact on the rivalry. Ryan Day v Harbaugh isn’t that different from Urban Meyer v Hoke. Greg Mattison’s D-lines looked terrible against Ohio State’s offensive lines. Now he’s at Ohio State and probably going to win a National Championship. If you think Harbaugh Couldn’t go to Columbus and win 12-15 games every year then you’re kidding yourself. There’s like 3 coaches that are impactful enough that they could come in and immediately start beating Ohio State right away: Urban Meyer, Lincoln Riley and MAYBE Nick Saban. Even then, they’d need a lot of luck, something that Michigan just doesn’t have in this rivalry for some reason.
Man the thought of finishing 11-2 with a win over Ohio State and a Rose Bowl champions banner sounds so good after starting the season the way we did.
I agree that 10-3 with a win over TN will feel a whole lot better than 9-4 with back-to-back losses to Ohio State and USC.
But 10-3 with a win against USC would be awesome. Tough choice.
This gets back to the question of whether the CFP's goal is to pick the "best teams at the moment" or the "most deserving teams". It seems like the CFP committee chooses whichever philosophy will help them get Alabama and Ohio State into the playoff.
If Michigan beats OSU, it's hard to argue that they're not one of the best teams at the moment. But then OSU can go and crush whoever comes out of the Big Ten West and that will effectively sweep their loss under the rug.
Michigan-USC is probably the most likely to get the players hype after another loss to Ohio. I have friends from California who think USC would crush Michigan even though the Trojans have been exceptionally mediocre lately, so I've been interested in that matchup for years. Like it or not but big brand names still matter, and facing USC is far more likely to motivate Michigan players and staff than another ho-hum trip south to play B1G Adopted Member Florida again.
I'm still deep in the BPONE for The Game, so I'm fully expecting to play Florida in a bowl game named after food.
If he keeps up his success he could probably make more money by going to USC as Urban's DC and possible Heir Apparent when Urbs inevitably has more "health issues"
Oh…
Art Briles is available.
Oh my god they totally would. They are certainly that shameless and clearly ethics is not a prerequisite for an MSU coaching job.
Yeah 99% of Michigan fans understand that we're celebrating not just because Michigan blew out Sparty (which is lovely) but because Michigan ENDED THEIR PROGRAM. It's over. Our team broke their team. Kaputt. How often do teams get to deliver the final death blow to a rival's favorite coach and program? The finality of it is glorious. That's why it's so fun to keep celebrating.
First: hold on to the ball!!!!! After that...
I think the winning strategy is to be aggressive from drive 1 and don't let off the gas. It seems like the Spartans always start with some unearned confidence, but their will can be broken, and when it is, they just collapse. So the strategy should be to break their will early and then press your advantage. Don't turtle - I don't want to see an Carr-ball if we're up 14 in the 3rd quarter.
Tactically, I would start by testing their defense with our base run offense and see if they bite. If we can't get 4+ yards on the first run because they're stacking the box and putting a spy on Patterson, then go straight to Nico-ball or test their linebackers with some Ronnie Bell/Peoples-Jones slants. Force them to respect the 4 NFL receivers we have. Stretch them horizontally and the run lanes will open up.
If the run game is getting you 3+ yards a pop in the first quarter, I think you have to stick with it. The MSU Defense can get tired if you keep the pressure on and don't let them off the field. It will be cold, which is an advantage to the team that can establish the run first. I doubt we'll see many long runs or huge plays from our run game, but a consistent battering in the 1st and 2nd quarter will pay off in the 3rd and 4th quarters.
Their secondary isn't terrible, but they can lose focus on longer developing plays. If the offensive line can give Patterson some time, then there will be opportunities deep, where the MSU defenders seem to get lost.
Finally: HOLD ON TO THE DAMN BALL. The way to lose this game is to start giving up turnovers.
I wish I could inject all of Brian's MSU-related content directly into my bloodstream. It's so good. This is another one for the ages.
I totally know this feeling. It sucks but my past experience has made me incapable of imagining anything but a nerve-wracking 4 hour slog with the possibility of a loss looming until late in the 4th quarter at best.
I admire all those Michigan fans who are optimistic about some kind of blowout, but I fear they will be gravely disappointed. A close win would be great to me. A loss is still a very real possibility if we can’t hold on to the ball.
Respectfully, I must disagree. No way Michigan is up 21-0 at the end of the 1st quarter. Even in Sparty’s 3-9 year they played a strong 1st quarter and had our defense on their heels. Michigan will be lucky to be up by more than a touchdown at halftime. My guess is 0-0 at the half is more likely than 21-0 after the 1st quarter.
I completely agree with this. Until conference champions get auto-bids in the playoff, I have no problem with Michigan playing nothing but pulse-free teams in the out of conference schedule. Collect the Ws and move on.
Completely agree. The CFP committee has demonstrated over and over again that wins over bad teams > close losses to good teams. This only applies to Power 5 teams though. If you’re not a P5 school then you do have to schedule the most rigorous OOC schedule possible and win out to even be considered. This is why Harbaugh’s Play-off idea would be a big improvement. ADs can feel free to schedule really good OOC games, knowing that they can still get in the playoff with a conference win. I’m fine with a 9-10 game conference schedule if it means the other 2-3 games are home-and-home games against iconic teams like LSU and Texas, instead of tomato cans (boring) and service academies (yikes).
100% agree. I’ll be happy with any win over an MSU team backed into a corner. These players have one game to salvage their season and their coach’s reputation. They’ve been practicing for this game every day since August. Michigan has been prepping for Ohio State since August, but not necessarily for Sparty. If MSU can clean up their bit mistakes and if Michigan reverts to their early season foot-shooting, MSU can win this. People also forget that Dantonio has no morals or sense of sportsmanship, so he will coach his team to play as dirty as possible. I hate that some people will be disappointed if we win something like 21-17, but this is going to be a rock fight and getting the W will be hard no matter what. Yes I want to blow them out as much as anyone but like the commenter said, this is not going to be Notre Dame 2.0. It’ll be more like Iowa 2.0.
This claim is spurious. Michigan = Porsche driving arrogant types. And it's a Public school.
That last sentence speaks to a deeper truth and points out a correlation/causation issue within this topic.
Basically, do U of M grads make more money because they have a U of M degree, or are the types of people with the talent and ambition to go to Michigan also the types of people who tend to make more money anyways?
I think right out of college the brand of your degree matters a lot for your starting salary. When you start to extrapolate out to 5, 10 years and beyond, the correlation between having a Michigan Degree and an above average salary is still strong, but that long after graduation people aren't being paid more because they have a U of M degree, they're getting paid more because the kinds of people who have the talent and work ethic to get a U of M degree in the first place are going to be more valuable in the workplace.
TL;DR people who are ambitious and talented enough to go to Michigan are also ambitious and talented enough to make more money than the average person.
Really interesting - I'd love to see a comparison to other Big Ten schools.
I know someone who is debating whether they should try to transfer to Michigan from Michigan State and having the comparison data could help convince them to get out of East Lansing haha.
Agreed. It is impossible to underestimate what Dantonio will do to win this game. He has probably been juicing all of his players and Bachie is just the one that got caught. I bet Dantonio is telling his players now that he will give them a golden needle for every targeting foul and late hit they get on Michigan's QBs. I wouldn't put it past him to tell his offensive linemen to gouge out the eyes of all of our defensive linemen every time there is a pile. He'll play as dirty as he can as long as the end result is a W.
Good points. I am just too scarred from reading about the things that should happen in a Michigan rivalry game and then have the exact opposite happen. This applies to both wins and losses.
- Notre Dame this year: narrative before the game is that Notre Dame is the favorite, despite what Vegas says, but if Michigan pulls it off it'll be a close, low scoring win in the rain. Result: 45-14 blowout.
- Ohio State last year: the narrative before the game was Don Brown's defense was looking good enough that all Michigan needed to do was put up 4 or 5 touchdowns and the game would be in the bag. Plus, the revenge tour just needed one more win and Michigan would be playing out of their minds to make it happen. We know what happened.
- Michigan State last year: narrative before the game is the Michigan is clearly superior and they are on the revenge tour roll. They should win this game easily, and may even run up the score. Result: we won, but man it was way closer than what you would expect given the way the teams played.
- Notre Dame last year: narrative going into the game was that the teams were pretty evenly matched and it should be an exciting rivalry matchup. Result: Notre Dame pretty much had it in the bag from the first quarter. It was kind of boring.
- Ohio State 2017: Narrative going into the game was the Michigan would likely get blown out at home and would be lucky to score at all. Result: Michigan was actually winning at halftime and had a good shot at winning outright until late into the 4th quarter.
I could go on but I won't. The point is that there is a pattern of Michigan rivalry games going completely off-script from what the conventional wisdom would say.
In this case, the conventional wisdom is that MSU has a putrid offense and a good defense with some glaring holes. Most people seem to expect something like last year, with maybe a slightly larger margin of victory for Michigan. But since things tend to go opposite of whatever rationality would predict, I'm predicting a Big 12 style shootout with 2OT, ending 49-45. MSU will have over 300 yards of offense and give up less than 100 rush yards on defense. Michigan's secondary will get gashed, and Nico Collins will also get 10 targets. No idea who wins.
2. Michigan’s annual stretch of dominance in between disappointments, by Alex
This is more painfully accurate than any summary of the Harbaugh era. It's a really good program that just can't beat Ohio State. If Michigan had even 1 win against Ohio State under Harbaugh, the narrative about this program would be completely different. Every year it would at least seem like "Harbaugh has done it before, maybe he'll to it again this year!" Instead, it's like "Yeah crushing Notre Dame is fun and the team is improving but it doesn't mean anything because we're just going to lose to Ohio State and finish off with a meaningless bowl game against Florida again."
It sucks, but since 2016 I've chosen to just mentally ink in an L for the Ohio State game and try to enjoy every other win as it comes. If I had to put money on whether Michigan will win the Big Ten East or beat Ohio State first, I'd put my money on winning the Big Ten east, because it seems like it's easier for this program to run the table against everyone besides Ohio State and hope for the buckeyes to lose two other games. I know we'll beat Ohio State again sometime in my lifetime, but it honestly might be 10+ years from now, so I'm not going to set myself up for bitter disappointment every year.
Ah! Stop using FACTS against my emotion of existential dread that I have as a result of the 2015 and 2017 MSU games.
Jokes aside, I hope you're right!
I am more worried about this game than ever tbh. Anyone who thinks Dantonio hasn't been spending every practice since they lost to ASU focused on prepping for the Michigan game, they're kidding themselves.
Dantonio knows that there is one way to salvage this season: beat Michigan. He is spending 90% of every waking hour of every day preparing for that. He could literally lose every game on the remainder of his schedule except for the Michigan game and still be declared a hero and guarantee his job.
Sure, the talent he's working with is not really close to the caliber that Michigan has, but that is always the case. MSU probably already has 3-4 scripted drives that are built to attack Michigan's vulnerabilities. Their defense is probably going to sell out against the run and try to force Shea to make mistakes. And with a bit of luck it just might work!
Especially considering the following: Michigan isn't great coming out of bye weeks - we often see a regression, we haven't beaten MSU at home in forever, Michigan has a history of getting a bit too cocky right after winning big and then going into a perceived lesser foe.
My guess is Dantonio's game plan is something like this:
On offense, bleed the clock and be efficient. Michigan is prone to tanking their own offensive drives, so if you limit the number of chances Michigan has on offense, you can severely restrict their scoring ability. Dantonio will try to slow his offense to a crawl and eat up clock. Go for it on 4th down early and often, pin your punts deep, run the QB a lot. That's what allowed other over-matched teams like Army and Iowa to stay close.
On defense, sell out entirely against the run and blitz like there's no tomorrow on passing downs. Stack the box with 8 men every down. Force Shea to get the ball out quickly, which he's bad at, or get him on the run behind the line of scrimmage where he is prone to bonehead ball security issues. This could mean they let our receivers get some big play opportunities, but Dantonio will be willing to roll the dice on that.
Last tactic: ALL the unsportsmanlike behaviors. Dantonio will give his team free reign to gouge, grab, poke, punch, twist and kick our players at will. His best bet is to injure our players to even the talent gap. He knows they won't all get called. And even if they do call most of them, Dantonio will gladly take a few 15 yard penalties in exchange for getting a few of our best players off the field. They will especially go after Shea - they'll hit him late, hit him out of bounds, target him, anything to get him off the field. And for good measure they will taunt our players and try to goad them into getting flags too. It's going to get very ugly, even by Michigan-MSU standards.
This is all to say, anyone looking forward to a blowout in this one is going to be very disappointed. We could easily lose this game if we don't play flawlessly and fight back against all the inevitable MSU frippery. I'd be happy with any win against a Mark Dantonio squad with nothing to lose.
Nice to know but when was the last time statistics accurately predicted the outcome of a Michigan road game?
From the beginning, this was a 1 game season. Sure it would be nice to win some more games, but 3-9 with a win over OSU somehow seems more appealing than another 9-3 with losses to MSU, ND and OSU.
So I totally agree with this game plan. It's how Dantonio manages to keep things close every year no matter how terrible the rest of their season is! But it will never happen here.
I agree that Michigan is more like the Yankees. It almost makes it more painful as a fan because not only do you know what it's like to be on top, you know what it's like to get used to being at the top. You look back and it feels like all your team's best days are behind them. At least when you're historically bad you feel like your best days as a fan could still be ahead of you.
This is so relatable. I entered the "life is a marathon, not a sprint" phase of fandom after last year's Ohio State game. I am doing my best to get a bigger perspective, like at least we're going to win 8-10 games a year and beat MSU most of the time.
Could be worse. It's better than having Brady Hoke, where the trajectory was 3-9 bottom feeder status.
Michigan's trajectory under Harbaugh looks like consistently averaging 9.5 games a year with every other year coming close to a Big Ten championship before having your hopes wiped out in late November and then playing Florida in a good but not prestigious bowl game.
Maybe Harbaugh will get lucky and go to the Rose Bowl in the next few years. But if he does, it'll be because the Rose Bowl is in a non-playoff year and Ohio State just beat the crap out of an 8-4 Big Ten West champion, sending the Buckeyes to the Playoff and the Big Ten West champion to citrus bowl or something. Chances are, half the starters will quit before the Rose Bowl and we'll lose to Utah 34-21.
There are 3 simple things I wanted to see Harbaugh do that now I'm not sure I'll ever see again:
1. Absolutely crush MSU. Like really embarrass them. I want to see one of those wins where it's like 42-0 at halftime and sparty fans don't even want to talk about football for the next year. Michigan always seems to look like the obvious better team, but the score never reflects that, which allows sparty fans to do the most little brother thing ever: whine about irrelevant things that were "unfair" or "could have turned the game around".
2. Go to the Rose Bowl. I grew up watching Michigan go to the Rose Bowl every other year it seemed like. I always thought, you know some day I'll be able to afford to go to the Rose Bowl to watch Michigan. When Harbaugh was hired I was like, awesome, next Rose Bowl we go to, I'm making the trip! Now I don't even bother holding new years weekend open just in case. I booked a vacation to Europe for that week because I knew nothing interesting relating to Michigan Football will be happening.
3. Beat Ohio State. I thought this was something that would happen every 2 or 3 years, but now I just want to see it once!
Statistically speaking it's not that hard to flip a coin 16 times and get tails 14 times. In fact, I just tried it out with a coin flipping simulator and it took 96 flips to get a sequence of 16 with only 2 heads.
That being said, the fact that football isn't a perfectly random coin flip makes it even more frustrating.
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