here.
End the internet today. Winner.
I'd tell Michigan fans to stop agonizing over the Crable play. That was *not* a national championship team. Look at what happened to OSU ... and us, against USC.
I'd bat away that lucky completion that Nebraska had against Mizzou so Lloyd et al. Wouldn't have to "share" the championship.
We were tied 3-3 with USC at halftime in a "neutral" site game. Pete Carroll's staff made better adjustments than Carr's staff did. And iirc, Mario Manningham didn't play in that game.
Florida clowning Ohio State doesn't mean anything for a hypothetical Michigan/Florida game. Styles make fights.
I recall a Michigan team with many of the same players moving the ball at will up and down the field against Florida the following year. (Part of our success can be attributed to changing our offense for the bowl game...which reinforces my point above.)
That interception was the 2004 Rose Bowl. Went right off of Braylon's heel.
I went to every game that season save Indiana, and something just didn't feel right end-to-end about that Rose Bowl trip. After that slugfest of an OSU game, that team was drained, mentally and physically. Lloyd was also pretty much sleepwalking in the leadup to Pasadena. Losing Bo was a much bigger hit on him than a lot of people believe, particularly with the timing and the way it happened.
This ^^^
And I'll add that the "slugfest" would not have been close had Bo not died the day before that game. Michigan would have beat the snot out of OSU had they not had a program altering death to deal with. You say the players didn't know Bo, but I'm sure most of them had spoken to him at some point - if even just to say 'Hi' going past each other in a hall. He was always around that team, and kept an office in his building. That the team, and coaches, performed as well as they did against OSU is a credit to them. The RB game was just too much to ask after losing out on the MNC game.
That adjustment by USC was so damn simple and we could have countered it just as simply. You know their "complex" adjustment was having Booty roll away from Woodley. That was it. One of the true barometers of great coaching is, of course adjusments - and no one did it better than UM under Bo. So damn many people tend to forget, except for his first 4-5 years, he worked with far less talent than both Mo and Lloyd. He lost 3 games his first season, as everyone knows. Over the next four season, UM lost a total of 4 games. Mo wasn't around long enough to get a proper gauge of how effective he would have been over sixty minutes. And that was fun, watching game winning/losing decisions over the course of the entire game. 1972 - kick a damn fg, Bo. He was around long enough, however, to usher in a new era of Michigan football.
Lloyd certainly didn't ask for the job, and overall he did surprisingly well, and just as surprising were some of the things he did and did not do. Except for a few seasons, we really didn't know when UM was going to start playing. Some of our preseason OOC performances were freakishly terrible. It was almost as if his switch was not engaged until conference play began. I mean the differences in team perfornance was dramatic and obvious.
You do correctly recall we had a lot of players return to face FL in 2007. FL, however, could not claim the same, especially on defense. Also, was an offense that probably made 8 out of 10 UM fans ask, "Just where the hell has this been and why now?" That was a very young FL defense we rolled and even though we employed a spread passing attack, there is no way to know how successful that would have been against thein NC defense of a year earlier.
and that 80 yd? screen pass to beat us was the best possible example of why Bo should have recruited him, if for no other reason, just to set him on the bench so he could never beat us. I mean that was SOP for he and Woody both. "We have three men on our roster we consider better than him at that position(spot didn't matter), but we really don't want to face him." I think this was even truer when it came to instate players. Although I'd later purchase a home in the Reeths-Puffer district and it is the alma mater of both my late wife and my son, we attended Friday Night football games to watch Johnny Williams. He was recruited by a few Big X schools - the lightweights,PUR, NW and well we see where he ended up. But damn, he was exciting to watch as a h.s. rb. Two years later, another Muskegon area RB appeared on the scene, Curtis Adams from Muskegon Orchard View. Because he chose Central, where he'd become an AA, I doubt he had any offers from the Big X. Different type of runner than Johnny - combination of speed and power, Curtis was the one cut and gone type. It's only natural for the locals to want this kid to go to UM but his career highlight in AA probably would have been meeting a freshman qb by the name of Jim Harbaugh his senior year.
Both did go on to have NFL careers so they were decent, but looking at UM RBs during that period, Butch Woolfolk, Stanley Edwards, Ricks, Wilcher...... yeah, if he had been offered, I'm sure he still would have gone to Madison. I was debating, after your question, where and when am I going? Do I go back and try to convince Johnny to listen to Bo if he did, indeed, offer? That would be the course I'd take if he did receive a UM offer because he would have received the UM degree, but not sure if he would have seen enough time to get the NFL offer. So your suggestion is probably best. As happy as I was for local boy, heartbreaking is the proper word. BTW, I did get to watch him and A.C. during their championship USFL season in 1983.
Yeah Michigan had swag that year and talent to boot. The USC game was so dumb. USC was good but weren't a better team I thought. Michigan shit the bed that game. The defense could only hold those talented kids for so long from Cali. Offense sucked that day. As for Florida and Ohio State game that year, OSU shit the bed because that is what they do 99% of the time. They can get up for Michigan because they are dangerously obsessed but pretty much suck in the big games out of conference. Even with the top recruiting classes that Urban has brought in the past 5 or 6 years. They aren't really that impressive of a program. Exception being their last national title. Anyway, I think Michigan would've handled Florida. The game is about (matchups) and Michigan matched up really well with them everyone always said. That said, the 2006 team was not elite by any means. Jake Long and Manningham were talented studs on offense but the rest were pretty much okay. Yeah Hart and Henne were great at times but weren't the guys to take over a game ever when it mattered. Don't believe me? Proof is in the pudding. The defense is what made that team but even against a descent bucks team, still coudln't hold them.
6 catches for 78 yards and a 2-yard run (see here). According to the box score and play-by-play they had 3 turnovers to UCS's 1 and turned the ball over on downs inside the red zone (in addition to be being outgained by 118 yards).
That team needed another playmaker in the secondary. With my time machine I'd put Jourdan Lewis or Jabrill Peppers on that team, and talk Lloyd into retiring after the Rose Bowl.
hearts ripped out and kicked with Bo's passing and that loss in Columbus. They were not the same team in the Rose as the one that was jacked sky high to play that Thursday night before The Game in 2007.
2007, late November. Sit down Lloyd and Bill and Jamie and company. Tell them to get on the same page.
And convince them that the page they need to be on is to hire Jim Harbaugh.
Hah, here I am thinking about the same thing except I would do it again with less fun and more responsibility. If I had known then what I know today....
...what I didn't know then.
...what I didn't know then.
To tell Borges to change the two-point play after OSU calls a timeout.
2016 to tell the Michigan defense that Curtis Samuel was going to get the ball to win it all in OT after the controversial Barrett run.
why not just go back a little further and change the result of the 3rd down play (where Michigan had Samuel dead to rites for a huge loss) or the 4th down play?
To beg Harbaugh to just go for 2 in the 1st OT
1865 and 1963
Foil two assassination attempts
Stay in Dallas for the weekend
Pick who I want at Ruby's
Come back and share experience on MGoBlog
Get Negbang'd
Sports: 1984 for the Tigers World Series.
Non-Sports: 1994.
^This guy's putting in work while the rest of you talk hypotheticals. If you keep drinking til you blackout, you'll time travel to a new location in the future.
In all seriousness though keep your chin up and good luck. It'll get better soon.
If I ever get married, there will 100% be a very explicit prenup.
because a judge can throw out a prenup if he/she feels like it. I know a guy who had his thrown out because the ex wife's therapist claimed she wasn't in a good mental state when she signed it. Complete bullshit. The court system is very very unfair to men.
I'll walk down the aisle and punch the groom in the face, turn around and leave. It will take him a few years before he realizes why I did it but he'll understand when the time is right.