The Michigan Football Mount Rushmore Post 2006
Who is on your Mt. Rushmore post "The Game" 2006? I realize it was slim pickins for a while.
"The Game" was a defining moment / end of eras for various reasons, which is why I chose it. The nearly two decades that have followed have been fascinating.
Jim Harbaugh of course.
I gotta go Aidan Hutchinson for bringing the program back and be an awesome example of a legacy young man who created his own legacy.
I would go with Jabrill Peppers for bringing the M name and brand back to some relevancy.
I would go with Blake Corum for that final chisel but it is close.
Who you got?
Jake Moody or Denard Robinson
(along with those you already listed)
Any list without Mo Hurst Jr. is just a pretender, not a contender. Dude was scorched earth for opposing centers and guards. He taught me the unmatched importance of a DT who can pressure the QB. And, as if his skills weren't enough, the belly rub.........oh, the belly rub.
Peppers was great but had a short tenure. I'd actually say I valued Jourdan Lewis more. Another MVP of the lost era was Mason Cole. That guy was the most versatile linemen I've ever seen at UM, and there have been some good ones.
Jalen Rose requests you choose another landmark than Mt. Rushmore for your Mt. Rushmore!
I'm designing a social studies curriculum and it turns out Mt. Rushmore is actually controversial. They put it on Native Land without consulting them or something and the sculptor has ties to the KKK and did/was doing a confederate monument at Stone Mountain after Rushmore.
Mt. Rushmore isn't going away and Teddy Roosevelt, GW, TJ and Abe Lincoln were all pretty bad ass. It's still on my list of places to eventually go.
It's a real disappointment in person. I wouldn't waste your time.
It's fine. I'm more frustrated that they had a whole thing planned and then were just like "eh....close enough."
I don't think the sculptures are disappointing. The politics of carving our faces in this rural, native-American land, is a bit disturbing. But what actually disappointed me the most is that they just left the whole rubble field below it. It looks like a strip mine, where the robber barons got their gold and just bolted town. Now, I know it wouldn't be cheap to bust all that out and plant some pine trees, but it's a national monument.......come on. It looks so shoddy.
I think that there are a number of sites in the area that to me, are even more impressive if you make a journey of it and don't mind the drive - Badlands National Park, Blackhills Mountains - Jewel Cave & Wind Cave, Crazy Horse Monument, Custer State Park and the City of Deadwood, the Minuteman Museum and Wall Drug are more touristy sites along the way.
As with much of our past history - it is often selectively forgetting that our American journey was often done at the expense of taking resources & land all while justifying it. If memory serves from my visit to Mt Rushmore - the Lakota tribe is still asking for a return of the land - and has not taken a settlement from a case that reached the Supreme Court years ago.
Beautiful area to visit - but the historical context should also be understood.
While I agree with your post, the fact is everyone alive today had ancestors that have conquered other people and have been conquered by other people. It's a fact of human history and it isn't pretty. The history of native people all over the world is filled with horror stories of what peoples did to each other. And why small regional peoples the world over was a thing until the last hundred years or so. So lets not act like the rest of the world including native tribes were all rainbows and butterflies while europeans were all evil and everyone else was just good people..
Yep, that's a great deal of human history. But "let's not act like it was all rainbows and butterflies" really papers over the fact that the sea-to-shining-sea genocide and bad-faith diplomacy that founded the modern nation-states of the Americas were on a different scale than most of those conquests in history.
And whatever, you can't change history, but: the Indigenous groups who the colonizing forces tried to exterminate still exist, and they're asking for greater sovereignty over the lands their ancestors held sacred, did a much better job of managing ecologically, and were violently cheated out of. There are ways we can move forward without simply throwing our hands up and saying, "Gee, yeah, that was a shame, ah well, alas."
I think the argument is that indigenous groups ALSO pillaged and exterminated another group that was there before them. In fact, this happened all over the Americas before a single European landed there. The concept of conquest is not a European invention - it's an unfortunate part of the history of every nation and group.
But I agree with you, there is nuance to each "conquest" that should not be ignored, in that some were undoubtedly worse than others.
So lets not act like the rest of the world including native tribes were all rainbows and butterflies while europeans were all evil and everyone else was just good people..
I don't think that anyone with a fair understanding of American and world history and a drop of common sense is promoting that particular strawman.
People of decency and good conscience have always existed all countries and cultures. Likewise, all of them have members of their populations who weren't worth shit. You gotta take them one at a time.
Disagree - it's pretty awesome
You may not feel Jefferson is as bad ass if you visit Montcello and do the slavery tour.
250 years from now when humans are eating lab created meat and 80% of species are extinct and the planet is very hot they’ll tear down statues to everyone in this generation for the barbarity of eating animals and destroying the planet. Then 250 years later there will be another round of presentist outrage against past generations.
The problem is Jefferson, in his present, knew slavery was wrong and wrote about it in the declaration. When Lafayette, American ally and Jefferson's friends, returned to America after the war he belittled Jefferson for not freeing his slaves, and there is the entire Sally Hemmings situation, et cetera.
My favorite story was he and John Adams visited visited nail factories in the UK and saw the terrible conditions children worked he: went home, built a nail factory, and put his slave children to work.
Huh, child labor, still happening around the world. In the US.. but we're going to be upset that 230 years ago Jefferson was doing it? I'll never understand the people holding anger and resentment about things that are so far in the past you cannot possibly do anything about it as, it's history. But we openly know what happens today and the child labor and other trafficking issues and yet all we hear today is agenda'd topical tropes. While trafficking labor/xx is a thing that gets ignored.
First off, whataboutism is pretty lame. Using your logic, one could justify nearly any past atrocity.
Secondly, did I say I was upset, angry, or had resentment? I just pointed out that Jefferson was not a "bad ass". He was one of the most brilliant minds in American history but he owned slaves, raped slaves (she was 14 he was 44, he had her entire family locked up, if you want to argue against that point that is your prerogative) , and he did not free his slaves even in death. All this despite knowing that is was morally repugnant and including it in the Declaration.
I always laugh at the whataboutism line. Like we're going to go after what happened in the past and cancel them out. Oh what, human trafficking is a massive problem in this country. A massive problem around the world. From child labor, adult labor to sex trafficking it's all here and present. But you will want to go after what ever in american history you can when we can't do anything about it other than teach it to learn from it. But what can be done today in a real active way to stop horrors affecting humans alive today is to massively go after human traffickers and get the victims of it out of that condition. But go on about something historical in which none of the people you want to talk about are alive today to hold accountable Whataboutism, smh
The purpose of history is to continuously learn from the past and try to apply those lessons to the future. Whereas you are implying that past errors should be ignored because there are current issues. One could use that same logic to say "Why are people saying Hitler is a bad guy? There were genocides before and still genocides today. He also fixed the German economy and built a cool road." This is a hyperbolic statement but it shows how intellectually shallow your argument is. You are simply ignoring the issue by drawing attention to something else.
I study history and educate people for my career. I do not go looking for history to make Americans or Europeans look bad, as you apparently assume. I do learn new, and often terrible, things and than adjust my thoughts/lessons on that person or event. That does not mean I am arguing to remove Jefferson's face from Mt. Rushmore or any such thing. I am just pointing out that Jefferson is a deeply flawed character who should not be revered as a bad ass but studied as an influential, brilliant, and a deeply flawed human being.
Lastly, people can both study, learn, and adapt our understanding of the past while also working to improve the current and future state of our world. I apologize that it is too difficult for you to both learn and to act.
Are you completely unable to separate your considered moral judgments from your current impassioned emotions, or do you just think other people can't?
Jefferson was a massive hypocrite. But so are people in 2023.
We all know that slavery is evil, yet we look the other way on China having Uyghurs doing forced labor in a concentration camp while dozens of US companies including Apple, Nike, Coca-Cola lobbied congress to not put in place tough restrictions on potentially using that slave labor.
We all know eating meat is bad for the environment compared to an all plant based diet and almost all of us do anyways.
Exactly,
Firstly, it'll be closer to 50 years than 250 until people are excoriating the people of the latter 20th & early 21st centuries.
And as for 500 years from now? Wow, you're optimistic!
So...you're saying people should be okay with the despicable and deplorable actions of past presidents...because it's old news?
Or are you only saying that in 250 years...we will he looked at as despicable and deplorable as well?
Just felt like there was too much room for interpretation.
We are cancelling Mt. Rushmore now? 😂
This quote from Nick Tilden, outspoken activist and businessman from the Oglala Lakota nation, might offer some helpful context:
"Mount Rushmore is on stolen Lakota land and its very existence is a symbol of white supremacy. In opposing the ongoing desecration of our sacred land and asking for return of Lakota lands where Mount Rushmore is situated, we’re not saying anything that our parents, grandparents and great grandparents haven’t already said.”
Full article here if you're interested.
Allow me to predict Cali Wolverine will be unmoved by Mr. Tilden's points...🤷♂️
The TEAM, The TEAM, The TEAM.
Some great players, but it took a team effort (players, coaches, staff) to get it turned around.
That's only three. Who would you go with for the 4th, The TEAM?
Devin Gardner - class and humility, all around.
Gotta put Denard on there.
Denard, Hutch, Peppers, Lewan?
Lewan? Really? Seriously? That’s not a typo?
He is arguably the best lineman in that time frame.
That’s right, because an athletes character should never enter the equation. As OJ Simpson’s attorney MC Hammer once said “If his stats are too legit, you must acquit!”
David Molk was equally important and as a bonus, is not a complete piece of shit.
Molk was not as good as Lewan. Stop letting your personal feelings about someone change facts. Btw does this fan base forget there's a statute of Bo still up? The OP wasn't asking which player is the best human being, fans have never based "which player is the best" off of their personal lives.
Molk was a Consensus All American, Rimington Trophy Winner, and was probably the second most important player on that 2011 team behind Denard. The difference in the offensive line from 2011 to 2012 was night and day.
You can always spot the casuals by how little they understand someone like Molk's importance to that line.
Dude, Lewan blew many key blocks including the iconic Clowney decapitation of Vincent Smith that is the most embarrassing play in Michigan history.
It's not the most embarrassing play in Michigan history and damn you for making me mentally relive the several plays that immediately came to mind based on your comment.
"he has trouble with the snap" is more embarressing and it isn't close IMO.
Where does a guy like Jake Long who played before in and after 2006 fit. He was a unanimous All American in 2007.
Jake Long played in '07 iirc and was a #1 pick.
jake long was better
I remember feeling like Lewan was a bit better at pass pro (both of them were elite in pass pro), but I’ve never looked at advanced stats. Also both elite in the run game, but Jake Long was one of the best mauling, donkey hating, “I will kill all of you and drink the blood of your children” run blockers I’ve ever seen. Least predictable run scheme ever drawn up and it mostly didn’t matter (except for when it did 😿). Jake Long could be the sweetest, kindest most gentle soul in real life and I’d still shake with terror if I walked by him even if he was holding a baby and walking a puppy.
IMO, it's hard to definitively say Lewan was the best. By what measuring stick, his NFL career?
I just find it more difficult to name an individual offensive lineman than a skill position player to any so-called "Mt Rushmore" of football players. More than any other position grouping, I look at the O-line as a group rather than as individual players.
I don’t care for him personally, I am going strictly on the field.
Currently…Hutch, Denard, Brandon Graham, and Peppers.
Ask again after this season and there may be a different answer.
I don’t think I can limit mine to just four - here would be my final group: Brandon Graham, Denard Robinson, David Molk, Jeremy Gallon, Jabrill Peppers, Mo Hurst, Devin Bush, Jourdan Lewis, Hassan Haskins, Aiden Hutchinson, Blake Corum, Jake Moody
It was painful to leave off:
Mike Martin, Ryan Glasgow, Jordan Kovacs, Jake Butt, Chase Winovich, Zoltan Mesko