A Blog Post About Michigan From Hope College Professor Jeff Polet

Submitted by GBOD79 on

Here is a very well written article from Professor of Political Science at Hope College Jeff Polet:

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=5749

Its a good read and I thought I would share it with all of you!

ish

September 15th, 2009 at 3:26 PM ^

from the article:

"My guess is that most Sparties were younger brothers who routinely got walloped by their older siblings."

Has he been speaking to Hart?

IanO

September 15th, 2009 at 3:48 PM ^

I lol'd:

Teams aren’t built anymore to win in Ann Arbor in late November, but to win in Orlando in January. They don’t recruit from their home bases, big strapping farm boys to Iowa, union boys to Michigan, steel mill workers to Penn State, Wisconsin linemen who milked and slaughtered cows, Minnesota players right off the lumber yard, murderers and gamblers to OSU. I guess drama majors to Northwestern. None of us can figure out why they’re in the Big Ten.

The King of Belch

September 15th, 2009 at 4:53 PM ^

As of this point in the season and RR's tenure, I respectfully disagree (we'll see how it plays out). It may have been out of necessity, but Tate threw 33 passes Saturday, and I think it is likeley that the passing numbers will be substantially higher here than with RR's teams at WVU.

I believe RR came here not to duplicate what he had there. I think he came here to recruit better talent at all positions and to use it in a far more diversified way.

In reply to by The King of Belch

Engin77

September 15th, 2009 at 5:02 PM ^

RR appears to be a practitoner of Continuous Improvement, who believes that if you don't obsolete your product, someone else will. I laugh when I hear the pundits comparing every M QB or QB recruit to Pat White; RR will adjust the offense to suit the talents he has. Last year's offensive malaise was due to a near total lack of talent and experince, not a failure of the scheme.

In reply to by The King of Belch

jmblue

September 15th, 2009 at 5:30 PM ^

We also ran the ball 38 times. Prior to the final drive, the ratio was 37 runs to 26 passes. Yes, we will most likely pass the ball more than WVU did with White, but that's pretty easy to do - they ran it 74% of the time in 2007. Our run/pass ratio probably won't be much different from what it was under Carr.