Rival Defenders and White Knights, explain yourselves
I've noticed a curious phenomenon on this blog and the currently active Sparty disrespekt thread reminded me of it. Since there is exactly nothing else going on in the Michigan football universe at the moment, I have a question.
Why do you feel the need to defend OSU, and especially MSU, in every single thread about either team? I'm pretty sure that there's no one on their boards saying "Michigan is going to kick our asses this and every year now that they have Harbaugh as coach", or anything similar.
And yet, every single time OSU or MSU is mentioned here, several people show up in a thread with...
"MSU will be great as long as Dantonio is coach", "We can't say anything until we beat OSU", etc, etc.
WHY?!?!?!?!
Michigan's last Big Ten Championship was 12 years ago. MSU has won 3 since then.
everyone on this blog knows that, what's your point? What I am sick of is everything think we have to act like a bunch of pussies because of MSU's little run the last few years. You can acknowledge that they had good teams and still believe Harbaugh will pound them.
Not acting like a pompous asshole doesn't mean you're acting like a pussy.
Just trolling the OP
They have owned us, split with OSU, won three BIG championships (one tie), won the Rose Bowl, the Cotton Bowl, and went to the College Football playoff. They also have as many 11 win seasons than anybody else in the country the last 5 or 6 years. They may not have been GREAT, but they may have been regular great.
I am not trying to say they are the cream of the crop. However, if we had the same resume as set forth above over the last decade, I would consider it to be the continuation of Michigan's "greatness" as a football program.
In any case, sometimes I think that we are a little too close to the issue to see what Michigan State has really done in the last decade. It pains me to say it because I want to puke on their faces, but they are no longer just a "cute story" of the little engine that could. They have made themselves more formidable than I would have ever guessed they could have.
If I was making a list over the last two decades, no MSU wouldn't be anywhere close to being on it.
If I was making a list over the last decade, MSU still wouldn't be on the list, but wouldn't be super far off from being on it.
If I was making a list over the last 5-6 years MSU would be on my list in the #4/#5 spot.
I don't care about the semantics argument behind great or very good though. To me, MSU is currently a great team and a great program, outside of poor recruiting (which isn't anything new) I don't see any glaring or obvious reasons as to why they will not be great going forward.
That recruiting will bite them in the ass for a season or two here and there though.
Until we beat OSU, we can't say anything.
What are you saying?
I know that a good deal of homerism is to be expected on a UM board, but the fact remains that both our rivals have elite coaches who have proven more in CFB than ours, and have had a lot of success against us lately. Further, not giving our rivals their due as tough opponents lessens our accomplishments in past seasons and undermine the importance of wins against them this season.
I don't really understand the "we can't say anything until we beat x" crowd though, as its summer on a UM forum and all we really have to do is speculate.
Has Dantonio really proven more than Harbaugh on the college level? Dantonio took a historically average team and has them at a near elite level. Harbaugh has taken a historically terrible team with some of the highest academic standards in the country and turned them into a near elite program that is carrying on after he left. I would say that what Harbaugh did at Stanford is more impressive than what Dantonio has done at State. The only difference is the length in tenure. If Harbaugh stayed at Stanford, I think he would have had more success than Dantonio has in the same time span.
But Harbuagh only had one 10+ win season at Stanford, and two winning seasons. Dantonio has 5 in the last six years. I agree with your speculation about Stanford if Harbaugh stayed, but he didn't, and as such hasn't proved himself in the same way.
I'm definitely not saying Harbaugh won't prove to be the better coach, but what-ifs and Shaw wins don't outweigh Dantonio's actual direct success.
I don't feel the need to pop into every thread about those teams. I usually ignore them.
But when they come up, say, in a discussion about recruiting, I prefer intellectual honesty to demogoguery and empty-headed rival bashing. So I will, when the subject is at hand, grant that Michigan State continues to be excellent virtually every season despite having to replace key players without the benefit of top 10 recruiting classes, and grant that Urban Meyer is an excellent coach with lots of talent.
It's not that hard, really. I suppose the OP is addressing grammar Nazi-like obsession with bringing this up every time the topic is broached, and if so I understand where he is coming from, but simply saying that those teams are good and will continue to be isn't defending them at all.
will accept your position, as long as you admit that Tom Izzo is, in fact, a demon, who actively encourages his players and former players to break the law. Fair?
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BURN THE WITCH!
Maybe it's a desire to have meaningful, measured, and realistic discussion about sports rather than an echo chamber of homerism like every other sports board ever?
OSU has been better than us for more than a decade, but MSU has been lucky as hell because without RR/Hoke, there's zero chance of them having a winning streak against us. Michigan football will always be better than MSU as long as we don't shoot ourself in the foot.
Maybe it's because I live in Michigan, but I find MSU fans way more annoying than OSU. I actually respect what the Buckeyes have done (besides the cheating under Tressel) on the football field and for the most part, their fans actually wanted Michigan to be good again. Sparty slappies can't stand to hear any positive news about us, they even hated on Denard.
He's also been very lucky with Cousins and Cook at the helm, it's rare to have back to back NFL QBs leading your team. Even when he got there, he had another NFL QB in Hoyer. I would really like to see how their team holds up with a below average QB. We might find out this season.
It shows that Dantonio knows how to identify NFL QBs. To do that 3 times in a row, that's not luck.....
they have a qb who beat OSU.. He must have played great then! Whats that, he stunk? nevermind that
Actually, let's get more specific than this, and anyone who has had the pleasure of hearing someone speak this way will hopefully agree with me here. Imagine all of the comments in Gameday threads spoken with a Broad Yorkshire accent. I mean that. It makes the deepest, darkest, most existential fandom threads somehow hilarious. It's also the only way I can keep myself sane while modding them.
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I don't know about other people but I don't like to proclaim we're better than our rivals until we actually beat them. I will say that those programs can go to hell for all I care. Both Meyer and Dantonio have shown they're pretty good coaches, though they suck as people. But in general I prefer just saying how good we are/ or gonna be and that with Harbaugh we can definitely win the national championship soon.
Maybe some of us are just realists.
The OP seems to be suggesting that, because there are MSU and OSU slappies who show homerism at every turn, then it's okay for all of us to be homer slappies.
Personally, I don't like to get suicidal thoughts when we're down at halftime to Northwestern, so I prefer to keep my thoughts rational.
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Because it's what separates us from those animals. Our bar shouldn't be rcmb.
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with the Black Knight it's a different story entirely:
are the same. I actually wish that it was possible for everybody to keep a level head during political discussions on this board because there are a lot of smart people on here and honest, fair dialogue may be as important right now as any other time in the history of the country. Unfortunately, everything remotely political erodes into an MSNBC comment board within 10 minutes and the mods have no choice but to intervene.