open letter to fans
I’ve been a huge Michigan fan for as long as I can remember. I live on MgoBlog and live for the Maize and Blue. Since Brady Hoke has been hired I have been disgusted with the behavior and posts of some of my so called Michigan fans. Now I am not saying Brandon handled the coaching search well but we don’t know whatsoever what was happening behind the scenes. What I do know is he hired Hoke. Now Hoke does not have the so called sizzle factor like Les Miles but FWIW all the former players love him to death so that should count for something. This guy didn’t play for Michigan or go there. All he did was coach for a bit for Michigan and you know what…HE LOVES THIS PLACE AND WHAT IT IS ABOUT. So much so he told SDU that he would leave in a heartbeat if Michigan came calling. Now in my opinion that is a “Michigan Man” and he loves the Maize and Blue. I’m disgusted that people are hating on him before he has even coached a game here. Give the guy a chance. We need to unite behind him. Yeah fan support doesn’t get people fired or hired but a united fan base is a powerful thing. At the tailgate, and at the game. He is our coach. A ESPN writer wrote that Auburn fans threw a fit when they hired Chizik because of his record. Well I think they are doing pretty good now even though they pay for players.Just because he doesn’t have the “sizzle” doesn’t mean he will be terrible. He brought with him a O coordinator with a lot of experience that had a SD offense outperforming ours as far as stats. Yeah they play in a weak conference but we didn't exactly perform well againgst teams that were actually good. All I am saying is we don't need to have a fractured fan base and have factions against the guy from the start. Let us please give this guy a chance to coach the team before passing opinions on him. Let us please give the negative comments a rest. In my opinion anyone that is bitching about this guy is a "bandwagon" fan. I'm just excited to go to the first game and see the student section dressed in Maize hokeamaniac T shirts with blue bandanas on and golden lochs.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:51 PM ^
they hurts.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:53 PM ^
I cant upvote but i can hit reply!
January 12th, 2011 at 1:08 PM ^
Again, save your witty responses to times when we can vote. I'm giving this advice as your self-appointed MGoLawyer.
January 12th, 2011 at 1:29 PM ^
You are seriously going to chastise people for replying nonsense to a previous comment? You are by far the worst offender on this board. I read every day as well, and have been a member longer then you, yet you are eclipsing me in point totals. I read your comments and very seldom do you ever offer anything of value. You post one word responses, you elaborate on people's jokes until they are unfunny, and you act as if you are some sort of authority when I assure you that you are not.
You make my MgoBlog existence miserable.
Cheers to Brady Hoke. I hope he is treated with more respect then our last coach.
January 12th, 2011 at 3:42 PM ^
Profit wasnt being a dick. He's been one of my strongest supporters for extradiction out of Bolivia
Deep Breath mgofriend.
January 12th, 2011 at 4:18 PM ^
Disregard him. Keep your eye on the prize. What I need you to do from here on out is be very selective with your posting. Weigh in at the right time. And if you come up with something great, be sure to respond to positive comments so we can really get some momentum going. And it probably goes without saying but keep your nose clean. I'm putting my reputation on the line here (according to ChitownWolverine, this is not saying much) and calling in all kinds of favors with the jury. One more emo whine post and you're finished.
January 12th, 2011 at 4:20 PM ^
but honestly I'm more interested in mgofriends than mgopoints. You sir are at the top of the list!
January 12th, 2011 at 1:31 PM ^
You are seriously going to chastise people for replying nonsense to a previous comment? You are by far the worst offender on this board. I read every day as well, and have been a member longer then you, yet you are eclipsing me in point totals. I read your comments and very seldom do you ever offer anything of value. You post one word responses, you elaborate on people's jokes until they are unfunny, and you act as if you are some sort of authority when I assure you that you are not.
You make my MgoBlog existence miserable.
Cheers to Brady Hoke. I hope he is treated with more respect then our last coach.
January 12th, 2011 at 3:52 PM ^
Re-read the thread, think for a minute, and then formulate your response (if any). Your response here makes no sense other than to provide a reason to attack me.
Also, your argument is growing old. Stop repeating yourself and try attacking me from a different angle. I'm more than happy to engage you in a battle of wits. In fact, I welcome it. I'm professionally trained in arguing and have no doubt gone up against intellects far superior to yours. Lets do this . . .
[Edit: Oh, and take your medicine. It appears as though you have forgotten to take it again.]
January 12th, 2011 at 12:52 PM ^
Paragraphs are your friend.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:54 PM ^
haha I I know, I'm sorry for that. I'm at work ant tried writing it real quick before my boss seen what I was doing. He tried blocking Mgoblog from the server but I just renewed my ISP.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:59 PM ^
... McDonald's monitors all Internet access ports from their NOC in Oak Brook IL.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:55 PM ^
EDIT: Beat me to it...
January 12th, 2011 at 1:09 PM ^
No paragraphs AND "open letter" in the title. A double-whammy!
January 12th, 2011 at 12:55 PM ^
Normally I don't bother reading text walls but I decided to this time. Doing so reaffirmed why I don't read text walls.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:57 PM ^
The people bitching about Hoke, or the people bitching about the people bitching about Hoke.
Listen guy, some aren't going to be happy with this hire, and to be honest thats fine. I'm sure that over time they will come to either like Hoke (if he wins) or continue hating him (if he doesnt) It really doesnt matter as I'm sure that Hoke won't ever see these terrible things written about him.
January 12th, 2011 at 1:02 PM ^
January 12th, 2011 at 1:06 PM ^
He probably won't be able to read it due to the formatting failure, but he's a Michigan fan and just told me that he's never heard of Brady Hoke and turned his nose up when I told him.
P.S. This #1 with fries and a Coke is outstanding!
January 12th, 2011 at 1:12 PM ^
Only time will tell to how well Hoke will do here. I'm willing to give him 100 percent of my support and hope he does well as coach, and helps the team to become a national power once again! I sure wish the people who were anti-RR would have supported the coach. I believe in giving a coach at least 4 to 5 years! So, I will support coach Hoke until his first recruiting class are seniors and hopefully there will be progress every year.
January 12th, 2011 at 1:21 PM ^
I've held season tickets for over 20 years and have rarely missed a game. Don't ask/tell me to blindly support anyone or anything.
I'm ashamed and embarrased at the past 3 years. I've heard fans complain that RR wouldn't attend luncheons as Lloyd did, I've watched as countless writers have lied and exaggerated, I witnessed ND at least gave Weis a chance to coach his own juniors/seniors......I've watched as a large part of the whole formed early opinions and began acting on them. With the power of the pen and the almighty dollar of those we'll never know, it doesn't matter whether I'm "all in" or not. It doesn't matter if I support DB, the team, or a new coach or not. It's an awfully big wheel and it's being turned by someone else.
Sure, I want wins. Sure I want the athletes to enjoy their time here. Sure I'd like to get back to the championship caliber we once were.....but after seeing just how much loyalty means to the powers that be, I'm not blindly supporting anyone.
The AD, the coachs and the administration are going to have to earn my support from now on....and they're not going to get it by protecting their own asses at the cost of others.
January 12th, 2011 at 1:52 PM ^
I am not happy about the Hoke hire. Not because I hate him or anything (I actually know very little about him), but because of the apparent motivations for the hire. Its not about the sexiness of the hire at all (I actually preferred Hoke to Miles). I (and I assume many of the other people upset by his hire) feel that: (1) previous ties to the university should not have mattered and unnecessarily limited the field of potential candidates; (2) "loving" michigan does not win games and anyone who comes here to coach is going to "love" it in all the relevant ways anyway; and (3) the new coach should not have been (or maybe, due to the annoyingness of program alumni, should not have had to have been) the guy that simply was most comfortable to old players and coaches and administrators. I don't think any games were lost against Michigan St. or OSU over the past three years because anyone failed to "get" the rivalries or anything.
All that being said, I am first and foremost a Michigan fan. I will support and pull for Hoke. And sometimes the right guy is hired for the wrong reasons; I hope that this is the case (and am even cautiously optimistic it could be). But -- to those of you who are highly supportive of this hire -- please, please stop trying to force everyone to be immediately and 100% on board with it. There have been many, many arguments about why is this a good or bad hire, and I won't get into them, but suffice it to say that acting as if this is a perfectly ideal hire is silly (as is acting as if it was the worst possible hire in the history of football). And being a fan is also about bitching about decisions one sees as wrong or misguided.
Many of us are still getting over the end of the brief era of Michigan football where it appeared the program was breaking out of its traditional mold. No matter how unsuccessful it may have been, it was exciting for us. So give us a few weeks, let us vent, and we'll be there in the fall screaming like we always have. Go blue.
January 12th, 2011 at 3:34 PM ^
a lot of what you said..... After reading the OP, I just hit reply and didn't bother scanning through the responses.
You can have the upvotes. I'll take the down votes.
January 12th, 2011 at 4:01 PM ^
The more people who say it the better.
January 12th, 2011 at 3:59 PM ^
amen, amen, and to those immediately below.
It's not about Hoke, personally--how can one not like him after the PC--or even professionally, for the most part.
It's now about the direction of the Athletic Department. Rodriguez represented hope for the future direction of the football program, hope for FUN in caps. He's gone and whiloe I would have preferred he'd stayed, I can move on. But as a "liberal" university in the true, non-political sense of the word, it's disheartening to see Brandon embrace our "reactionary" tendencies, again in the true, not political meaning of the word.
RichRod goes, but we're just fine with Beilein's mediocrity, where we are destined to get an exciting upset or three, or near-ones, but where we'll never recruit enough to genuinely compete on a national level--but he gets to be a Michigan man--presumable because he didn't come in with a faction dedicated to seeing him removed.
So for those who call for unity, I am confident Hoke will be treated as well as Beilein, if not better, including by those of us unhappy with the choice.
January 12th, 2011 at 3:06 PM ^
I'm not done bitching about this hire.
To be fair to Hoke, it's not all about him. He may end up surpassing the expectations of even his greatest supporters. I certainly hope that he does, but hope does not alleviate the empty feeling at the bottom of my stomach right now.
After three miserable seasons, it's easy to find yourself yearning for the days when winning seasons were a foregone conclusion, but don't let that blind you to the fact that the Michigan brand of football had become stagnant prior to RR. We won games because we were more talented than our opponent, not because we were more innovative. However, we did lose games because the inverse was true.
When RR was hired as Carr's replacement, a good portion of the fan base thought that we were getting a much needed shot in the arm. We were finally progressing. But the transition turned out to be more painful than we hoped and/or expected. Whether or not that falls on the coaches is irrelevant. The RR era is over and, with the hiring of Hoke/Borges, so is the spread option experiment.
So what does this mean for the future of Michigan football? There will be a point, whether it's 3 years, 10 years, or 20 years down the road, where Michigan football again becomes stagnant. What then? Real or perceived, precedents have been set, such as:
- Radical change (progression?, innovation?) is not going to be accepted with open arms and
- A coach with no ties to the program may never receive full support of the fans and alumni.
You say that you are disgusted about the behavior of our fans.... Well, me too. I'm disgusted that the elitist mentality may have sabotaged Michigan from becoming nationally relevant in the near future.
I'm wondering where your soap box was when fans were calling radio stations to publicly campaign for RR to be fired or when fans were responding to online newspaper articles that they hoped for Michigan to lose so as to better ensure that a coaching change would happen. You didn't save all of your disappointment for those of us who are choosing to express our frustrations in the confines of this blog, right?
January 12th, 2011 at 3:22 PM ^
exactly, its not about Rodriguez, or quite honestly hoke who I believe will not go anyhwere, its the principle involved with all the hypocrites here screaming to fire Michigan's coach for 3 years and now if you don't support hoke, you're the scum of the earth. so be it then.
January 12th, 2011 at 3:55 PM ^
(i.e. The only two things I have to do.)
Being a fan of this administration or this hire are not on that list.