I happened to log in to the ol' MGoBlog tonight from Amsterdam (not a half mile from a joint-vending "coffeehouse" no less) so clicking on this thread took on some extra humor value. (No I didn't try one.)
I do speak Spanish - I took it in high school and got pretty good, then didn't use it for a decade until Monday, but it's coming back pretty quick. In my experience Mexican Spanish is pretty easy, it's a slow cadence and not a lot of idioms and interjections that made something like Carribean Spanish extremely difficult for me to converse in.
I've been told (this was a few years back) that if you include the estimates of the homeless, the population goes up about 20% and is in striking distance of largest population. In any case, the city limits are huge, esp compared to most American cities: ~40km on a side.
As for safety, stay in the right places and don't make yourself a target and you can feel pretty safe - I live in DC and it's the exact same story. Speaking some semblance of Spanish seems to ward off the clumsiest pickpockets and scam artists but that's anecdata.
We're in a relatively affluent touristy/business zone and the city makes sure the area is safe, a la New Orleans.
Are we going McCarthyist on MGoBlog? Brian has a right to voice whatever opinion he has. He's not employed by the athletic department as a media cheerleader.
IANAL, can anybody else confirm/deny this? Disclaiming ownership of your person by posting a picture on facebook would seem like a likeness-rights lawsuit waiting to happen.
It seems he's one mediocre season from getting canned down there, so is extracting another raise the right move?
Unless DB rejected him and not the other way around (which is a possibility), Miles could wind up unemployed within a couple years when he could have been at Michigan with full support.
In the glory years of his career, Ufe had the luxury of a stable, winning program - he never had to worry about criticizing, commenting on controversial topics, etc. He could trust he'd just have to show up and call the game.
I feel badly for Jim Brandstatter - covering a losing team is bad enough let alone covering a coach who didn't come from your college coach's tree and no doubt having everybody and their mom ask you for your opinion which you desperately don't want to discuss.
"I think Carr was advocating Kirk Ferentz for the job three years ago."
This makes me think Carr IS losing it. Carr has to understand how unlikely it is we can pry a coach from another Big Ten team who has built a solid program. This just smacks of fantasyland to me.
On the other hand I understand at that time it was thought that Iowa had peaked earlier in the decade and was running on fumes. Still, intraconference moves are bad juju.
Make it stop, DB, hire somebody and make this madness stop. I'm on vacation between jobs and so I don't even have work to distract me from following every morsel of rumor and innuendo!
The stories of JH's carousing are legend, but I'm not aware he has any baby mommas. Harbaugh has three kids with his ex-wife, one of whom is an adult and on the staff at Oregon State. He just had his second child with his current wife, to whom he was married before she got pregnant.
Bo had longtime assistants (Carr, Moeller) who were natural choices to be head coach when he left. I am surprised Carr didn't set that sort of thing up. If it is true he was asked to stay later than he wanted by Bill Martin, he should have insisted on naming or at least suggesting a successor. That that didn't happen suggests to me that Lloyd had really checked out by the time he retired, "nothing can keep me down" speeches notwithstanding.
Brian and others have been saying "if Hoke hadn't coached at Michigan he wouldn't be a candidate" as if his stay at Michigan doesn't matter. It DOES matter. A guy who is risky but qualified for the job is a much better risk when he knows the program and you know you won't have to waste time bringing him up to speed on traditions, history, etc.
"In my opinion this is one of the biggest detriments of Lloyd Carr’s tenure – failure to develop a viable coaching candidate. "
I agree - in effect Lloyd retired at the wrong time in his career wrt to the program's health. His elder assistants were old or had been moved out of the program, while the younger ones like English weren't quite ready to become the head coach. Thus we had to go outside the program, yadda yadda yadda, here we are today.
What is weird is how Lloyd just sort of backed out of Schembechler Hall without a lot of comment about program transition. Did he recommend anybody to Martin? Any closed-door meetings? The whole process suggests to me that LC didn't advocate for anybody on his staff. What's even weirder is that everyone knew Carr didn't have much time left, but he didn't work with Martin to bring on a staffer with the intent of promoting him to HC.
Perhaps English was the guy, but was untenable due to his defensive struggles?
I concur - Miles is radioactive and unless the school wants to put a hard ethics clause in his contract and risk a Mike Leach instant-firing circus, I find it hard to believe DB can hire him given we're on probation already.
People need to wake up to reality - this search is going to involve a huge risk one way or another. Hoke is qualified for the job. He's done two impressive turnaround jobs. There's no evidence he's going to return the program to a "conservative" risk-averse Lloydball mindset (which would be preferable to the abject failure we see today on D and ST). He's down with the program tradition but having been a head coach he knows what will need to be changed for the good of the program. I actually think his resume and demeanor are very similar to Jim Harbaugh. He's not a guy who has coached at a lower conference for a decade without getting a sniff at a big job, he's definitely moving up the coaching ladder.
Would he be a "safe" hire? Yes. That doesn't mean he isn't the best one, or couldn't take the program to the top.
Not cool ESPECIALLY given that a Congresswoman was shot up at a constituent event not an hour ago. Really no sense charging up an ultimately frivolous event like the coaching search when crazy people are willing to kill for their beliefs.
On the other hand, if Miles is leaving he's apparently not only not told his players butbluntly lied to them:
Russell Shepard just told me Les Miles assured team he's coming back. Not going to Michigan. … So have many others.
He did cut that one guy with a form letter so maybe they haven't checked their mail recently.
I've made my opinion clear on this: Miles is old, has enthusiastically adopted the tao of SEC, and just saw his program take a more serious hit from the NCAA than Rodriguez did. Even if it works out in five years Michigan is going to be saddled with a coach exactly as old as Carr was when he retired and will either get to experience the extended senescence of a guy who's already wacky or experience yet another transition. I would prefer Brady Hoke.
"He said, 'They have rumors going around about (me) going to Michigan, but it's not true,'" Jefferson said. "'It's nonsense.' He said hasn't spoken to anybody, anything about Michigan. We're going to stick with that and get ready for next year." …
"He told us this is his football team and this is where he's going to be," Ridley said. "We respect our coach, and this is our coach for right now, and we're going to enjoy him as long as we can. Coach Miles is a Tiger. This is his group of guys, and he's proud of us. I think this is where he will be next year."
There's also the fact his players have quoted him as saying, last night, that he's staying at LSU. I lived in Seattle when the Rick Neuheisel deal went down from Colorado to UW. Right before he signed with UW, while he was negotiating, he told the players he wasn't leaving. Call me self-righteous, but I'm not comfortable with a coach who will out and out lie to players because it's in his self interest.
I think Harbaugh did the right thing refusing to answer questions and asking for patience instead of issuing mendacious denials.
"Bringing Hoke in to play smash mouth football sets us back another 3 years at best."
Wait a minute, isn't Jim Harbaugh - the guy everybody wants - a "smashmouth" guy? He runs plenty of schemes, but he's not exactly a spread option guy and he hangs his offense's hat on running with power.
With that in mind, I don't see why this is objectionable with Hoke. SDSU's bowl game and Ball State both looked to have plenty of spread elements going on.
Brian may revoke my MGoBlog card here but I don't have a lot of trepidation about Brady Hoke. Hoke's major shortcoming appears to be he's not Jim Harbaugh, the sexiest coaching candidate of the year.
He's accomplished two impressive turnarounds, just like Harbaugh. His defensive mindset is badly needed. He's got a GREAT offensive coordinator in Al Borges. He's qualified for a major D-I job. He knows Michigan and respects the program (not arguing for the UM connection per se but somebody who knows what he's getting into, like Bo did.)
Given that JH is not walking through that door, I don't have a problem with Hoke.
Is he a perfect candidate? Absolutely not, he's a risk. I think the anxiety is that he'll be Carr-style, striving for stability and conservatism at the expense of reaching for the top. But there are no perfect candidates, and certainly no slam-dunk successes we can lure to Ann Arbor, so the program is going to have to take some kind of risk in one direction or the other.
"but I do know that I don't want to have to go through another coaching change in 3-5 years because Harbaugh goes to the NFL."
I understand flight risk, but isn't this like saying you'd rather date an ugly chick than date a hot woman who might break up with you for another guy?
"Team president and CEO Jed York said the next general manager will pick the coach to replace Mike Singletary, who was fired Sunday when the 5-10 49ers were eliminated from the NFC West race.
Baalke confirmed Friday that he will "visit" with York...but again, they first must hire a GM so he can then hire the next head coach. That will not come until next week, sources said."
So the Niners are going to put a press on Harbaugh Tuesday morning, but won't make any offers to coaches until they've gotten their front office in order next week? If DB offers, it's going to be first thing Tuesday morning. The Niners are going to miss the window while they dither with their GM position, which it appears they are going to fill from within anyway.
To those asking why he would want the 49ers job: I liken Michigan to the college sweetheart you know you could be happy with the rest of your life, and an NFL job to the hot chick you've always wanted to root but never really got the chance and now she's offering herself to you. You know it's over and oh it never really began but it's a risk your loins want you to take.
"The question was not wheather Non AQs could beat teams in 1 game scenerios. The question was wheather or not they could handle a weekly grind of a major conference. That is still TBD."
Yes, but that question is unanswerable...there is no time machine to transport BCS busters to the beginning of the season in a major conference and check the results. So we can either categorically dismiss them on the basis of untestable counterfactuals, or we can come up with some kind of metric that tells us when the system "should" take them seriously. For the most part, the standards in place now are fair - you have to be a really really good non-AQ team to get into the BCS. That keeps the level of play high and keeps lame midmajor teams from getting hammered in big bowl games.
I'm not that concerned about the question, though - if Auburn had lost to Alabama or South Carolina, TCU would have played for the national championship. Ditto Texas last year. The opportunity is there, the non-AQs are "option 1b" in the event two BCS-conference teams don't make it unbeaten.
TCU and Boise State's high rankings were the result not just of their play this season, but how they've stacked up against their competition and BCS-conference opponents over the past decade. That's the way polls work, your ranking is a function of expectations and past performance.
I wrote a story for Brian's 2007 HTTV annual about Jim Harbaugh's coaching career. Talking to a significant number of his associates and family, I never once encountered so much as a rumor he was interested in the Michigan State job.
Henning may be confused with JH's attempts to get the Eastern Michigan job, which was way back in 2004. I remember it being discussed on the radio the week of UM-OSU 2003. JH was then on the Raiders staff as a QC or somesuch low-rent position. He didn't get the EMU gig and took the USD job.
Motion can confuse a defense and reveal their weaknesses, but that depends on whether the offense confuses itself with motion. Teams also use a lot of dummy motion with no real tactical purpose except making the defense think something's going on.
You can get a lot of the same results of motion with pre-snap shifts. I do recall seeing Michigan shift a lot.
I really think the bowl game - with everyone healthy and a few weeks to tweak the defense and special teams - will tell us everything we need to know. If Brandon makes demands he shake up his staff, which he probably should, they'll have the new people on the phone ready to open real negotiations by the time the game is over.
If Michigan wins going away (and/or if secret discussions with JH stall out) we'll keep the coach. If RR doesn't have the ship running tight in all phases, all bets are off.
I yawn in his general direction. Wilbon is not a reporter making editorial decisions based on his dislike for Michigan. Nor is he fomenting conspiracy theories and launching them secretly inside Schembechler Hall.
He's a full-fledged press personality. Nobody takes his words as anything other than his opinion. If he's pissed at getting hammered by ND and Michigan, that shows we were successful back then. Something to emulate for the future.
If he wants to waste press space playing out his schadenfreude inferiority complex, I welcome him to do so.
Recent Comments
I do speak Spanish - I took it in high school and got pretty good, then didn't use it for a decade until Monday, but it's coming back pretty quick. In my experience Mexican Spanish is pretty easy, it's a slow cadence and not a lot of idioms and interjections that made something like Carribean Spanish extremely difficult for me to converse in.
I've been told (this was a few years back) that if you include the estimates of the homeless, the population goes up about 20% and is in striking distance of largest population. In any case, the city limits are huge, esp compared to most American cities: ~40km on a side.
As for safety, stay in the right places and don't make yourself a target and you can feel pretty safe - I live in DC and it's the exact same story. Speaking some semblance of Spanish seems to ward off the clumsiest pickpockets and scam artists but that's anecdata.
We're in a relatively affluent touristy/business zone and the city makes sure the area is safe, a la New Orleans.
That is all.
Are we going McCarthyist on MGoBlog? Brian has a right to voice whatever opinion he has. He's not employed by the athletic department as a media cheerleader.
"wants to live in the land of fruits and nuts with all the liberals."
LOL!
IANAL, can anybody else confirm/deny this? Disclaiming ownership of your person by posting a picture on facebook would seem like a likeness-rights lawsuit waiting to happen.
Hey, what site was that you got the pageview info from?
It will almost shirley be posted on MGoBlue later today.
That presser was awesome. It's peanut butter jelly time.
Mr Toledo just got his ass ripped - "this is Michigan for God's sakes!" that was awesome!
There goes the talk about toughness and competing. A tough man's game!
I like the hire but he could have brushed his hair before his presser.
It seems he's one mediocre season from getting canned down there, so is extracting another raise the right move?
Unless DB rejected him and not the other way around (which is a possibility), Miles could wind up unemployed within a couple years when he could have been at Michigan with full support.
posted before my little pony's edit
I'll help code the Droid app if someone is developing it - who on the board said they've got it in the works?
I love your license plate. Where do you live here in the Old Dominion?
I heard Lt Dan has poor mobility in the pocket.
Better late then never but I wanted to give you props for your phone-in to EDSBS Live last fall.
Brian's not 40 yet.
In the glory years of his career, Ufe had the luxury of a stable, winning program - he never had to worry about criticizing, commenting on controversial topics, etc. He could trust he'd just have to show up and call the game.
I feel badly for Jim Brandstatter - covering a losing team is bad enough let alone covering a coach who didn't come from your college coach's tree and no doubt having everybody and their mom ask you for your opinion which you desperately don't want to discuss.
TOUCHDOWN BILLY TAYLOR! TOUCHDOWN BILLY TAYLOR!
Still gives me watery eyes every time I hear it.
"I think Carr was advocating Kirk Ferentz for the job three years ago."
This makes me think Carr IS losing it. Carr has to understand how unlikely it is we can pry a coach from another Big Ten team who has built a solid program. This just smacks of fantasyland to me.
On the other hand I understand at that time it was thought that Iowa had peaked earlier in the decade and was running on fumes. Still, intraconference moves are bad juju.
Make it stop, DB, hire somebody and make this madness stop. I'm on vacation between jobs and so I don't even have work to distract me from following every morsel of rumor and innuendo!
The stories of JH's carousing are legend, but I'm not aware he has any baby mommas. Harbaugh has three kids with his ex-wife, one of whom is an adult and on the staff at Oregon State. He just had his second child with his current wife, to whom he was married before she got pregnant.
"He can coach two teams, give me a break."
This is funny, friend!
Bo had longtime assistants (Carr, Moeller) who were natural choices to be head coach when he left. I am surprised Carr didn't set that sort of thing up. If it is true he was asked to stay later than he wanted by Bill Martin, he should have insisted on naming or at least suggesting a successor. That that didn't happen suggests to me that Lloyd had really checked out by the time he retired, "nothing can keep me down" speeches notwithstanding.
Brian and others have been saying "if Hoke hadn't coached at Michigan he wouldn't be a candidate" as if his stay at Michigan doesn't matter. It DOES matter. A guy who is risky but qualified for the job is a much better risk when he knows the program and you know you won't have to waste time bringing him up to speed on traditions, history, etc.
"In my opinion this is one of the biggest detriments of Lloyd Carr’s tenure – failure to develop a viable coaching candidate. "
I agree - in effect Lloyd retired at the wrong time in his career wrt to the program's health. His elder assistants were old or had been moved out of the program, while the younger ones like English weren't quite ready to become the head coach. Thus we had to go outside the program, yadda yadda yadda, here we are today.
What is weird is how Lloyd just sort of backed out of Schembechler Hall without a lot of comment about program transition. Did he recommend anybody to Martin? Any closed-door meetings? The whole process suggests to me that LC didn't advocate for anybody on his staff. What's even weirder is that everyone knew Carr didn't have much time left, but he didn't work with Martin to bring on a staffer with the intent of promoting him to HC.
Perhaps English was the guy, but was untenable due to his defensive struggles?
I concur - Miles is radioactive and unless the school wants to put a hard ethics clause in his contract and risk a Mike Leach instant-firing circus, I find it hard to believe DB can hire him given we're on probation already.
People need to wake up to reality - this search is going to involve a huge risk one way or another. Hoke is qualified for the job. He's done two impressive turnaround jobs. There's no evidence he's going to return the program to a "conservative" risk-averse Lloydball mindset (which would be preferable to the abject failure we see today on D and ST). He's down with the program tradition but having been a head coach he knows what will need to be changed for the good of the program. I actually think his resume and demeanor are very similar to Jim Harbaugh. He's not a guy who has coached at a lower conference for a decade without getting a sniff at a big job, he's definitely moving up the coaching ladder.
Would he be a "safe" hire? Yes. That doesn't mean he isn't the best one, or couldn't take the program to the top.
Not cool ESPECIALLY given that a Congresswoman was shot up at a constituent event not an hour ago. Really no sense charging up an ultimately frivolous event like the coaching search when crazy people are willing to kill for their beliefs.
On the other hand, if Miles is leaving he's apparently not only not told his players butbluntly lied to them:
He did cut that one guy with a form letter so maybe they haven't checked their mail recently.
I've made my opinion clear on this: Miles is old, has enthusiastically adopted the tao of SEC, and just saw his program take a more serious hit from the NCAA than Rodriguez did. Even if it works out in five years Michigan is going to be saddled with a coach exactly as old as Carr was when he retired and will either get to experience the extended senescence of a guy who's already wacky or experience yet another transition. I would prefer Brady Hoke.
I'm probably alone in this, I know.
UPDATE: More from LSU players:
Seems fairly unambiguous there.
There's also the fact his players have quoted him as saying, last night, that he's staying at LSU. I lived in Seattle when the Rick Neuheisel deal went down from Colorado to UW. Right before he signed with UW, while he was negotiating, he told the players he wasn't leaving. Call me self-righteous, but I'm not comfortable with a coach who will out and out lie to players because it's in his self interest.
I think Harbaugh did the right thing refusing to answer questions and asking for patience instead of issuing mendacious denials.
"Bringing Hoke in to play smash mouth football sets us back another 3 years at best."
Wait a minute, isn't Jim Harbaugh - the guy everybody wants - a "smashmouth" guy? He runs plenty of schemes, but he's not exactly a spread option guy and he hangs his offense's hat on running with power.
With that in mind, I don't see why this is objectionable with Hoke. SDSU's bowl game and Ball State both looked to have plenty of spread elements going on.
Brian may revoke my MGoBlog card here but I don't have a lot of trepidation about Brady Hoke. Hoke's major shortcoming appears to be he's not Jim Harbaugh, the sexiest coaching candidate of the year.
He's accomplished two impressive turnarounds, just like Harbaugh. His defensive mindset is badly needed. He's got a GREAT offensive coordinator in Al Borges. He's qualified for a major D-I job. He knows Michigan and respects the program (not arguing for the UM connection per se but somebody who knows what he's getting into, like Bo did.)
Given that JH is not walking through that door, I don't have a problem with Hoke.
Is he a perfect candidate? Absolutely not, he's a risk. I think the anxiety is that he'll be Carr-style, striving for stability and conservatism at the expense of reaching for the top. But there are no perfect candidates, and certainly no slam-dunk successes we can lure to Ann Arbor, so the program is going to have to take some kind of risk in one direction or the other.
+1 for the Risky Business reference. Where you going next year? Wisconsin? That's a big school.
Are you confusing him with Tim Tebow?
I hear his contact info is in the online directory.
"but I do know that I don't want to have to go through another coaching change in 3-5 years because Harbaugh goes to the NFL."
I understand flight risk, but isn't this like saying you'd rather date an ugly chick than date a hot woman who might break up with you for another guy?
Something about this story doesn't make sense:
"Team president and CEO Jed York said the next general manager will pick the coach to replace Mike Singletary, who was fired Sunday when the 5-10 49ers were eliminated from the NFC West race.
Baalke confirmed Friday that he will "visit" with York...but again, they first must hire a GM so he can then hire the next head coach. That will not come until next week, sources said."
So the Niners are going to put a press on Harbaugh Tuesday morning, but won't make any offers to coaches until they've gotten their front office in order next week? If DB offers, it's going to be first thing Tuesday morning. The Niners are going to miss the window while they dither with their GM position, which it appears they are going to fill from within anyway.
To those asking why he would want the 49ers job: I liken Michigan to the college sweetheart you know you could be happy with the rest of your life, and an NFL job to the hot chick you've always wanted to root but never really got the chance and now she's offering herself to you. You know it's over and oh it never really began but it's a risk your loins want you to take.
"The question was not wheather Non AQs could beat teams in 1 game scenerios. The question was wheather or not they could handle a weekly grind of a major conference. That is still TBD."
Yes, but that question is unanswerable...there is no time machine to transport BCS busters to the beginning of the season in a major conference and check the results. So we can either categorically dismiss them on the basis of untestable counterfactuals, or we can come up with some kind of metric that tells us when the system "should" take them seriously. For the most part, the standards in place now are fair - you have to be a really really good non-AQ team to get into the BCS. That keeps the level of play high and keeps lame midmajor teams from getting hammered in big bowl games.
I'm not that concerned about the question, though - if Auburn had lost to Alabama or South Carolina, TCU would have played for the national championship. Ditto Texas last year. The opportunity is there, the non-AQs are "option 1b" in the event two BCS-conference teams don't make it unbeaten.
TCU and Boise State's high rankings were the result not just of their play this season, but how they've stacked up against their competition and BCS-conference opponents over the past decade. That's the way polls work, your ranking is a function of expectations and past performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tat1IlFC4A4
I heard the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor earlier this December?
I wrote a story for Brian's 2007 HTTV annual about Jim Harbaugh's coaching career. Talking to a significant number of his associates and family, I never once encountered so much as a rumor he was interested in the Michigan State job.
Henning may be confused with JH's attempts to get the Eastern Michigan job, which was way back in 2004. I remember it being discussed on the radio the week of UM-OSU 2003. JH was then on the Raiders staff as a QC or somesuch low-rent position. He didn't get the EMU gig and took the USD job.
"Scott Wolf, a supposed USC insider is claiming Harbaugh to Michigan immediately following the Orange Bowl."
Sounds like when Harbaugh told reporters Pete Carroll was going to the pros after the 2007 season.
You can't spell Citrus without UT.
This subthread is side-splitting. That was some good sh**!
Motion can confuse a defense and reveal their weaknesses, but that depends on whether the offense confuses itself with motion. Teams also use a lot of dummy motion with no real tactical purpose except making the defense think something's going on.
You can get a lot of the same results of motion with pre-snap shifts. I do recall seeing Michigan shift a lot.
Making my head spin.
I really think the bowl game - with everyone healthy and a few weeks to tweak the defense and special teams - will tell us everything we need to know. If Brandon makes demands he shake up his staff, which he probably should, they'll have the new people on the phone ready to open real negotiations by the time the game is over.
If Michigan wins going away (and/or if secret discussions with JH stall out) we'll keep the coach. If RR doesn't have the ship running tight in all phases, all bets are off.
I yawn in his general direction. Wilbon is not a reporter making editorial decisions based on his dislike for Michigan. Nor is he fomenting conspiracy theories and launching them secretly inside Schembechler Hall.
He's a full-fledged press personality. Nobody takes his words as anything other than his opinion. If he's pissed at getting hammered by ND and Michigan, that shows we were successful back then. Something to emulate for the future.
If he wants to waste press space playing out his schadenfreude inferiority complex, I welcome him to do so.
diclemeg's "It's all about DENARD" thread had me in stiches the entire day at work.
I think he meant to communicate: "unless the athletic department has a financial meltdown, adding lacrosse is only a matter of time."