Michigan football, for me, has become like an addictive substance, when you do too much of it, and pass the enjoyment point. It's like smoking too many cigarettes or drinking too much diet coke. You get to a point where the taste is off, even odious. You don't enjoy it anymore, but you're not going to stop because you remember what it can taste like. 

Saturday can not be over soon enough.  This is going to suck. 

This is why I come to the site.

Sorry to Coach Brown, Magnus, etc.

I should take my own advice and sit a few plays out.

I don't hate you guys (I dont even know you). I basically hate what has become of my favorite thing in this world.

If anyone wants to experience cognitive whiplash for some reason, follow the "saddest tailgate" link back to Brian's season opener post, and read his thoughts on the offensive line and Shane Morris.

It's still gobsmacking to think about the difference between the first two games and the rest of the season.  

and with that, the rest of the blog will follow like lemmings off the cliff.

if you're reminiscing about a 3-9 season, then you've either completly re-written history or are utterly delusional.  at the very least, you're demonstrating the brain capacity of a child - "this is the WORST thing to EVER happen to me."  apart from everything else that happened in that season - the broken bowl streak, toledo, the northwestern snowstorm - we also lost to this guy.  yes, if you're pining for 3-9 then you've completely gone through the looking glass, where sanity no longer applies.

the team is bad, sure.  it happens.  and they may get embarassed on saturday, but that happens too. there is some water bottle story, i think, that brian wrote somewhere back in the day that applies here, and i am taking those lessons and sticking with the team.  you all can live in a 2008 fantasy world where nick sheridan has just beaten minnesota and everything is going to be a-okay.

go blue. beat the bucks.

Here's what depresses me: We probably won't make a staff change. We probably will get better. We'll probably be very good by 2015. But because we keep Al Borges on staff, we will almost always be a game or two worse than we really are. That's who he is: An average FBS OC who can perform well when he's got the personnel, but will rarely win you a game due to his ability. 

Here it is: I've said it before, but it should go on a front page thread:

Over the last four games in regulation, our offense has averaged 208 yards a game.

They've scored 10.5 points per game. 

They're a miracle field goal away from being 0-4 in the stretch.

That's Greg Robinson with RR's meddling level of incompetence and probably worse because the talent is superior on the offense than it was on the 2010 defense. How anyone can try and come up with an excuse for keeping him around is beyond me. Its mind-boggling and it just goes to show there will always be people who want to be different just for the sake of being different. Anyone holding the opinion that Al Borges somehow deserves to be here next year or that all the problems this team faces are down to "youth" is wrong. Even more than that: its idiotic because they spend hundreds of posts, spewing 10s of thousands of words defending the above offensive output. 

My only hope stems from what happened with the basketball team with Beilein making wholesale changes. 

is that I feel Brian is at his best when he's the dejected writer.  

"How did you go bankrupt?"

"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly." -- Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

close win over a mediocre boston college team. loss to northwestern. close win over a crappy indiana team. miserable losses at purdue and penn state. loss to a forgotten alabama team on new years day. 277 points scored in 12 games. just a total a slog of a season - and i know, i was there.

going into 1997, we had one returning starter on the offensive line and an ex-guard replacing an all-american center. Had a new quarterback. the defense lost six starters.  the SI preview suggested that the "M stands for mediocrity."

i'm not suggesting that we'll run the table next year (well, obviously), just that there were lots and lots of reasons to think that 1997 would be another so-so season (and it should be noted - one of those reasons were ongoing concerns about the coaching staff).  one thing we DID have in 1997 was talent.  there's some talent here, and more on the way.

It doesn't stop. Hell I was anti-Carr. I can't stop, I drove to Iowa City and stayed till the end of the game Saturday and part of me doesn't even know why.

Just thinking of 4 loss Lloyd makes me sick and I would have been thrilled with 4 losses this year. This is a 6 loss team this year, it doesn't matter who they play in the bowl they are going to lose.

Just the other day I thought to myself that I could probably better my seats next year since so many people seems to be falling off the wagon and I don't think this program is going to improve much under this administration.

I'm going to hopefully enjoy the hell out of the basketball and hockey game Friday and just hope the game Saturday has a lot of running plays so I can get the hell out of there and be home at a decent hour.

Someone mentioned it only takes 1 and talking about 97. Maybe Peppers is the guy to give Michigan their spark back. Maybe they can use him all over the place and entice more Peppers in the future. One can hope.

I just don't have it in me like I did a few years ago. I'm 28 and over five years removed from leaving campus. When Hoke came people said Michigan was gonna be Michigan again. I don't even know what that means anymore. 

The last time this program could possibly claim that was in 2006, and really back to 2003. I have been to every game since, but I'm tired. Ticket prices are high and the product is bad. My realy reason for going this late in the year is to tailgate with friends and forget about all the daily stress that football takes away for a few hours each week. 

It's not fun anymore. I'm not sure if it has to do with me getting older, but I don't care like I did just a few years ago. Look at the italics below, I was at the 2008 NW game all the way to the bitter end, and loved every minute. Maybe it was the sense that things would get better. They did, slowly. With this team, there's no sense of a better next year. 

I have been a season ticket holder for over 30 years and have attended most Michigan-OSU games for longer than that.  But my fandom has been on a downward trajectory for some time--probably  since around 1998.  I have been missing a couple of games a season of late--when at an earlier stage of my life that would have been unthinkable--sacrilegious.  Things like PSDs, corporate boxes--the availability of tickets via stubhub-- have me questioning whether I will re-up each year.  But  if I didn't then I wouldn't see my football friends--and traditions would die out.

I used to attribute this to having kids--their activities creating weekend conflicts.  But this season has made clear to me that was just my excuse because I didn't really know the reason.  I think I do now.  It is the general malaise that has taken hold.  We certainly won more games under Carr, but those were largely insufferably boring seasons--save 2006 (and it has become clearer with time what an outlier 1997 was--and how truly manifest was Woodson's season).  I get it that 8-4 seasons are decent--but it was more that we won by boring our opponents to death.  That's why I held out high hopes for Rich Rod--though I don't believe I knew it at the time.  And then the horror of RichRod's time--and I mean all of it including this Board.

So like most, we turned to Hoke to bring us/me out of my malaise.  This season has made clear to me that won't be happening within the forseeable future.   Oh we may well get better if recruiting stays strong--though I am fearful that this season will do great damage to recruiting--and return to the world of 8-4.   But they will still be sleepwalking seasons with few signature wins--even fewer against the Buckeyes.

I will still go from time-to-time, watch more often than not and cheer us on.  But it won't be the same--because I just realized it hasn't been for a long time.

I hear you, Brian. I'm just tired. Tired of Dave Brandon. Tired of Hunter Lochmann. Tired of my university trying to market itself to me as if I need to reinvent what I think Michigan is. Tired of the MMB getting shat on. Tired of football that isn't all that much fun to watch, with a trajectory that doesn't look too promising. I'm just tired.

It used to be a Michigan loss would have me seething, in a funk for days. Saturday, it was the third time now that I just turned off the TV and kept talking to my friends for an hour before realizing "wait, we just lost... What am I doing? I should be throwing things right now. Oh, wait, it doesn't matter. This stuff is more important."

I'm with bronxblue, I'm going to watch, but part of me really thinks the mounting shit over the past few years has just killed my fandom. I'm making the trek back to Ann Arbor to sit in the freezing cold in a parking lot for six hours on Saturday. And it's the quality dad time that excites me more than having to trudge into the stadium to be wedged into a tiny seat in a section of StubHub-buying assholes that manage to get in a shouting match with the 35-year regulars every big game, with music and PSAs and noise blared into my ears for four hours... All to watch Devin Gardner get systematically murdered by a thousand Al Borges papercuts.

Dude, let's go bowling.