The Team Comment Count

Brian

1/11/2011 – Brady Hoke 1, Internet 0 – 0-0

I follow a blog called "Fund My Mutual Fund." The title should be taken literally: the guy running the blog wants you to pledge money so that he can get a mutual fund based on his stock picking method off the ground. He's done amazingly well on a publicly-tracked simulator, has sufficient pledges to break even, and is in the process of getting SEC approval after establishing a years-long track record. He's good.

He struggles when his method (technical analysis) is battered by external events that cause the stock market to veer from a well-established logical way of doing things, which is happening a lot lately thanks to Ben Bernanke. He responds to these events by publicly reminding himself the underlying fundamentals have changed, that logic means one thing when you're talking about five years and another when you're talking about five days and that even if the market goes up for stupid reasons it's going up. Here's one from this morning. He also lacerates the country's financial honchos in sarcasm-laden posts that get a little tiresome the tenth time you read essentially the same thing. He went to Michigan, too. He might be my Tyler Durden, or maybe I'm his.

A couple weeks ago I proclaimed there was a "zero point zero" percent chance that Brady Hoke was named Michigan's head coach because I assumed Hoke's flimsy resume was only acceptable to people who really truly believe that Michigan Men are Michigan Men who make other Michigan Men, who in turn create more Michigan Men until you enter a warehouse and it's like that terrible Will Smith movie with winged helmets.

i-robot

My underlying assumption was that David Brandon was a cold-hearted corporatist who would tell someone to assemble a powerpoint about head coaching candidates and take the Michigan Man stuff as merely a relevant bullet point. I was wrong. Brandon is king of the Michigan Men, and my predictive performance has lagged the market.

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Not much of consequence was said at yesterday's press conference to introduce Brady Hoke—that is the way of things—but at the very end Dave Brandon started pointing and became emphatic and the world rearranged itself:

That's the athletic director version of Kurt Wermers saying "not my kind of crowd." Rich Rodriguez never had a chance after the Ohio State game. Why David Brandon decided to go on with a dog and pony show even he admits was pointless should be a frustrating mystery, but it's not. People had to be placated. This program will eat itself alive if given half a chance.

So maybe Brady Hoke is the best choice. This organ transplant will not be rejected. Given time and an upperclass quarterback or two and a defensive staff that's not utterly clueless, Brady Hoke will quickly prove himself to be the one true Notriguez. He'll quickly improve the program and get Michigan back to being Michigan.

But I think the way this went down proves that all the things rivals say about Michigan are true. This is an unbelievably arrogant program convinced its past glories are greater and more recent than they are, certain outsiders have nothing to teach it. We will enter bowl games against opponents that say "boy, that Michigan just lines up and comes after you," and we probably won't win many of them. We never have, and trying to out-execute Alabama or Oregon seems like a tall order these days.

I hoped we could be block-M Michigan without that, that we could have an exciting, modern offense that pumped out Michigan Men and maybe shredded Oklahoma for 48 points in a BCS game. I hoped we could reboot the program, keeping the things we treasure about it but maybe leaving the dismal bowl record and recent inability to compete with Ohio State behind. For a lot of reasons we can't. We are who we are.

So, no, I'm not super happy. On the field I was done with Lloyd Carr, done with punting from the 34 and running the same damn zone stretch thirty times a game, done with the premise that it's only the players who have to execute on gameday. To me, getting back to being Michigan means going 9-3 and losing to Jim Tressel. I remember thinking "this is the year" every year growing up, expecting great things literally every season until Rodriguez showed up and Mallett transferred. I don't think that now, and I can't imagine feeling like that in the future. Sometimes having an identity feels like having a ceiling.

Non-Bullets Of Explanation

That said and true, this also. On the other hand, the past is not destiny. Jon Chait provides the best possible perspective:

Selecting a coach is a lot like selecting a recruit. The resume is the equivalent of a recruiting ranking. With recruits, a high ranking correlates with success, but a correlation is only probability, not certainty. Sometimes high-ranking recruits flame out, and sometimes sleeper recruits turn into stars.

While I'm down on the hire except insofar as it appears to be the only one that would get institutional support, Hoke could surprise people. He's in a great spot to immediately improve a team that returns damn near everyone and should profit from that momentum. Rich Rodriguez was always pushing uphill; Hoke has a much easier path to positive attention.

I didn't want to say this during the many fire-Rodriguez discussions because it seemed like the most cynical thing imaginable, but cutting Rodriguez loose right now sets the new guy up to look like 2006 Ron English after he replaced Jim Herrmann and inherited Woodley/Branch/Hall/Harris: a freaking genius. We'd find out during The Horror that he was not, but for a year the guy was untouchable. Hoke is going to get all the rope left over from the Rodriguez era and then some.

So, yes, the internet has overreacted.

I will swear now. The inbox is overflowing with pleas of varying levels of politeness to get behind Hoke, stop being so negative, etc. If you phrased it nicely, I appreciate the sentiment and the too-generous belief that I have any influence over the success or failure of Michigan's head coach. I'm not going to change my opinion overnight, however, and this remains a No Sugarcoat zone. No sugarcoat. I can promise that I'll go into the Hoke era looking for reasons he'll work out (you know, on-field reasons, not "Brady Hoke is the best human" stuff), if only because of human nature. His flexibility with Nate Davis and successful deployment of Rocky Long as a 3-3-5 DC gives me hope he's not a stick in the mud, and I'm sure Craig Ross is mailing him the Romer paper as we speak.

If you called me a hypocrite for not liking the hire when I didn't like the three years of shit Rich Rodriguez had to wade through when I haven't said one negative thing about Hoke that does not boil down to "does not have a thrilling resume," please fuck off and die. Especially people complaining about how constantly negative I am when I spent the last three years as the last guy on to die on Rodriguez Hill, as a commenter whose name I can't remember aptly put it. Double especially for people complaining like that a week after calling Rodriguez a "hillbilly" because "only hillbillies leave their alma mater."

What I am negative about is the Carr-era players—like the hillbilly guy above—whose loyalty to the program stops at the water's edge. Aside from one recent Harlan Huckleby outburst, the Bo guys either shut their traps or tried in vain to support the head coach at the University of Michigan. But I've made that point over and over again. (Mike "I support the head coach x1000" Hart is an obvious exception to this and should have been the model for his teammates.) The culture that made the last three years happen is petty and arrogant and utterly fails to live up to the Michigan Man ideal it pretends to espouse, and though I'm about a day from shutting up about it because even I'm tired of it I'm not backing off.

This will be fun. I hope everyone loves Jason Whitlock columns, because we're about to get a boatload of them. As Over The Pylon points out:

In a panicked desperate move, the administration at BSU freaked out and hired an in house coordinator to quiet the fans and hopefully maintain the momentum that was building. Michigan did much the same, only the “in house” became “Michigan experience” and the “maintain momentum” became “rebuild the program”. In BSU’s case, the failsafe went 6-18. Let’s hope for UM’s, Brady’s and everyone associated with the Wolverines’ sanity that the performance isn’t also duplicated, lest they become the target of one particular columnist with a national audience, a significantly close connection to the head coach, and a nicely sized ax that could always use some grinding.

Guh. Win, Brady, or we'll all suffer. Meanwhile, if you'd like a condescending lecture Dan Wetzel has you covered.

Carty on the dude. You can hate on Carty if you want but this is probably more interesting than anything that's been written about him so far:

The thing that separated Brady Hoke from most assistant coaches under Lloyd Carr was the confidence to be the same guy in a media interview as he was when the cameras were off. Michigan assistants never talked much in those days, and when they did, most of them were obviously concerned about saying something that would be met with disapproval by their boss.

Hoke wasn't very polished or made-for-television, something he poked fun at himself. He laughed a lot more than the other assistants did, at least in public. When he did do interviews, he asked more questions than most assistants and seemed genuinely interested in how reporters did their jobs. When a sensitive topic came up, he'd simply chuckle and say, "You know I'm not going to talk about that." He didn't shy away from criticizing players or performances when he had to. I don't ever remember him asking to go off the record or take back something he said, both common practices with assistant coaches at Michigan and elsewhere.

There are a couple more paragraphs to go along with the Ann Arbor News's entire republished archive of Hokemania.

Search fiasco: somehow still growing. I still think Jim Harbaugh was supposed to be Michigan's next head coach before he backed out sometime after it became clear the NFL wanted him badly, thus resulting in the month-long post-OSU limbo and panicked search, but seriously if Dave Brandon means what he says about not offering Miles the job he traded the opportunity to not obliterate Michigan's chances with a few key recruits for some PR. If this was going to be the result Hoke should have been hired two seconds after Rodriguez went out the door—there were no serious overtures made towards anyone else except maybe Pat Fitzgerald.

Elsewhere, Or The Best In Overreaction

Braves & Birds:

My verdict on the Hoke hire depends somewhat on my view of the Lloyd Carr era.  I liked Carr as a coach and as a representative of the University, but I wasn’t upset when he retired in large part because he had not done a good job of surrounding himself with top-notch coaches.  It’s in this respect that he is no Bo.  Bo Schembechler created modern Michigan football and one aspect of his greatness was that his coaching tree was excellent.  Carr, on the other hand, doesn’t have a coaching tree to speak of.  Thus, the two obvious candidates for Michigan’s head coaching position were Jim Harbaugh – a Bo quarterback whom Carr declined to hire when he was looking for a quarterback coach – and Les Miles – a Bo lineman/assistant whom Carr reputedly did not want as his replacement in 2007.  If Dave Brandon’s much-discussed Process was designed to bring back a Michigan Man from Bo’s lineage, then that would have been fine because hiring a Bo protege can be done on merit.  The fact that the Process produced the one sickly branch from the Carr tree is the reason why Hoke’s hire has been greeted by articles with titles like "Advice for the Despondent."

One bit of Maize 'n' Brew:

This team spent the last three years building something, and I spent the last three years not simply waiting for future glory but anticipating it.  Times were certainly tough, but I could still see the payoff at the end.  The top ten offense paired with what I still believe could have been a fast, havoc wreaking defense with a couple more years of experience and depth--and probably a new coordinator.  It wasn't always easy to watch the games, and the losing streaks against rivals always hurt, but I could take the taunts and laughter from other teams fans because I believed.  That belief wasn't ever there under Lloyd.  It was always just an ominous feeling that the other shoe was about to drop.

Another bit was not happy after the hire, either, focusing mostly on the Les Miles discussion that does not and never will end up being an offer.

I have no idea how I got to Hashiell Dammit, but if you reference Straight Bangin' in your post well, that's old school:

You know it‘s a bad decision when one’s first reaction to the news is to draw easy comparisons between Michigan football and the Big 3 Automakers decline and to scramble to the Wikipedia page for the Romanovs to confirm that yes, this moment fits perfectly within the arc of a decaying empire. The emptiness that follows, however, is a bitch.

For its part, Straight Bangin' is "paralyzed." That's probably for the best.

Touch the Banner surveys the team and attempts to find out who fits. Slot receivers have to be saying "WTF" to themselves. HSR wants Michigan Replay back, but I don't think that had anything to do with Rodriguez. IIRC the producer lost his job with the IMG switchover and owned the rights to the name and possibly the music. This totally happened 110 years ago.

Comments

AAB

January 13th, 2011 at 1:38 PM ^

right down to Chait's point about recruiting.  Hoke is a "sleeper" recruit of the Marell Evans type (i.e., a sleeper who wasn't actually under the radar).  Sometimes those guys actually do work out -- Mike Hart was endlessly scouted and not very highly regarded coming out of HS -- but you're still to some extent hoping that you get lucky, which is a step down from Rodriguez who was a solid 5 star (and is proof, like Will Campbell, that sometimes 5 stars don't pan out).  

I sincerely hope that Brady Hoke works out fantastically well at Michigan, but it's going to take at least a little bit of luck for it to happen.

M-Dog

January 13th, 2011 at 2:36 PM ^

During the RR firing press conference, DB said that Michigan had been having some conversations with JH on and off for a couple of years.  So much for being "all in" for RR.

We look like a bunch of insular dinosaurs at Michigan.  Probably because we are a bunch of insular dinosaurs at Michigan.  But that's not going to change just because I don't like it.  At least we now have a coach that the dinosaurs approve of and won't eat.

I hope that frees him up enough to run an offense that throws on first down and third and short once in awhile.

zlionsfan

January 13th, 2011 at 7:53 PM ^

Dinosaur domination :: Earth's history : Michigan domination :: college football history. (Perhaps not all neatly bunched together, though.)

There have been several periods of time when Michigan has taken the field and opposing teams yelled RUN BEFORE THEY GET U....

The question now is whether Brady Hoke is an actual velociraptor or just CGI.

Bando Calrissian

January 13th, 2011 at 7:04 PM ^

 

Except the context of that quote from DB was to answer if he (personally) had "talked to Harbaugh."  NOT Michigan.  

I didn't read that as he'd talked to Harbaugh about the job, but rather him saying that he wasn't particularly close to Harbaugh, but they'd talked a few times over the years informally, but were not close friends.  And I don't know how DB could possibly be inferred to have talked to Harbaugh to get him to take the Michigan job quite literally years before he became Athletic Director.

Blue_Sox

January 13th, 2011 at 2:19 PM ^

Good points. I was critical of your analysis yesterday because of the "bad hire" language that I didn't agree with. But framed in this way, it makes a lot more sense. Hoke is not Harbaugh, but that doesn't mean he can't have success. I hope he will, too.

bouje13

January 13th, 2011 at 2:48 PM ^

RR was like recruiting a 5 star and landing him when he didn't fit your scheme (IE NOT A MICHIGAN MAN WE WILL NEVER ACCEPT HIM)

BH is like recruiting a 2 star and landing him and he fits the scheme perfectly (Let's hope that he's like any of Iowa or Wisconsin players that are 2-3 star guys that they coach up). 

 

The question is who is going to be coaching up Brady Hoke?

erik_t

January 13th, 2011 at 1:39 PM ^

Thank you for continuing to tread the really-not-fine-at-all line between being a grumpy old curmudgeon who hates everything always and OMG NOW I HAVE TO SUPPORT CBH AND NEVER SAY ANYTHING BAD ABOUT HIM EVER. And, further, for doing your best to remind the mouthbreathers of the world that there is a middle ground.

Marshmallow

January 13th, 2011 at 8:02 PM ^

Not only was the culture that made the last three years happen petty and arrogant and utterly fails to live up to the Michigan Man ideal it pretends to espouse, that same culture was present during the 3+ years before and was responsible for rotting the Michigan house to the core.  I support the University of Michigan, not Lloyd Carr's University of Michigan.  The Carr-era players with that attitude bear some of the responsibility for the last three years and really have some nerve to ask everyone to get in line or get out.  I think they should get out.  And I think Brandon should get out if we aren't winning championships in year 3 b/c this is the standard that Rod was held to.  What is good for the goose is good for the gander.  I don't want any more 9-3 mediocrity and Hoke needs to deliver.  I will support him in that regard.  Go blue.  You bastards.

ThWard

January 13th, 2011 at 2:01 PM ^

He's a nice dude, I know him personally.  But he's way out of fucking line here. 

 

Don't contribute to the toxic environment that helped undermine RichRod and then preach "supporting the team."

M-Dog

January 13th, 2011 at 2:22 PM ^

The jet is bad-ass.

The images from this round of Michigan's tri-annual coaching change fiasco that will be seared into my mind forever will be the MGoJet and Les Miles eating grass.

MaizeAndBlueWahoo

January 13th, 2011 at 1:44 PM ^

Miles offered nobody else the job in the same way that the Big Ten invited nobody until they were positive they'd accept.  It's just that it so happened that Nebraska was likely enough the first choice.  I have extreme doubts that there weren't other candidates - Harbaugh, Miles, and possibly others - that Brandon didn't make overtures toward with the implication that "we want you for the job and it's yours if you want it."  Which is the same as an offer.  One of Brandon's biggest mistakes is definitely making it appear too plain that Hoke was a fallback.

AnthonyThomas

January 13th, 2011 at 1:45 PM ^

I don't see this hire as a return to Carr's offense. Perhaps his defense but definitely not his offense. Hoke runs a variety of sets and has said in interviews from yesterday that spread looks are a definite possibility. I don't envision a return to three yards and a cloud of dust. It doesn't work anymore and no one actually runs it anymore. Hoke wants to win games, so he isn't going to run a Lloyd Carr offense.

As for the Romanovs and auto-makers, they collapsed ultimately because they lost support from their people/customers. They gave important jobs to people who didn't deseve them, and those people turned out to be ignorant. I don't see Hoke's hire as being comparable. Those institutions didn't know what they were getting into. Michigan and Brady Hoke know exactly what they're getting into.

mtzlblk

January 13th, 2011 at 3:18 PM ^

However, you are comparing a 30 year old D to a 2.5 year old D that was saddled with injuries and defections. I think a better solution would have been to open the pocket book and get a top-notch DC (perhaps before the GERG hire, who knows what budget RR was working with in trying to hire a DC) rather than trashing the whole thing, Quite simple, getting a proven DC would almost certainly have improved the D with time.

MileHighWolverine

January 13th, 2011 at 3:31 PM ^

How NFL caliber players are on this team right now?  How many that were on the team that lost to App State?  

I want nothing to do with the philosophy that had us losing to any QB who could run a 40 in the high 5's.  Remember, Donovan smoked us under LC's leadership and it carried all the way through to that fateful day against a Div II team.  I am confident that given another year our D would have turned around significantly.

zlionsfan

January 13th, 2011 at 8:00 PM ^

not a DII team. There is a significant difference. It was not a game that Michigan should have lost, but it was not like Virginia Tech losing to James Madison (or even USC that season losing to Stanford).

There's no way to be entirely sure how good I-AA teams are compared to I-A teams, but I think typically the top I-AA teams are ranked somewhere between 45 and 65 by the guys like Sagarin and Massey who rate both (or everyone). While the media was more than happy to portray it as the end of everything, and while it may have felt that way, it was not nearly the upset the HUR HUR HUR crowd would have liked it to be.

MileHighWolverine

January 22nd, 2011 at 2:31 PM ^

in the nation and expected to play in the MNC game.  How in the hell is that NOT the "upset the HUR HUR HUR crowd would have like it to be"?  And I thought before switching the names to 1-AA the conference was called Div II.  Changing the name doesn't change the level of talent on that squad.  And I reiterate, how many NFL'ers did App State have?  How many did we have?  

That was an EPIC FAIL on our part....no way to sugarcoat it.

 

profitgoblue

January 13th, 2011 at 2:00 PM ^

I know what you are saying and it makes sense, but you're wrong with respect to the auto industry.  True, they lost support from their loyal customers, but only because they failed to produce a competitive product and got passed by in their engineering and innovation.  I think this is exactly what Brian believed happened under Lloyd Carr and what he fears will again happen under Hoke.  But like everyone on board states, its only Day 2.  And I, for one, am extremely interested in watching how things unfold.

AnthonyThomas

January 13th, 2011 at 2:12 PM ^

That's what I'm getting at, though I was definitely unclear. The Romanovs never thought that their power could be overthrown, but Hoke knows that his can be if he doesn't perform. I'd argue that the "Revolution" happened three years ago, it didn't work out, Brandon's Gorbachev, the wall was torn down, and now Hoke's the equivalent of Putin. Let's hope our transition is smoother, though.

p.s. this is not me agreeing with DB's process, by the way. If he was going to do it he should have just done it back in November. But it's too late now, and this is where we are.

phjhu89

January 13th, 2011 at 3:42 PM ^

Brian is particularly concerned with exactly what offense and defense Hoke will run - He's making a statement about whether Michigan is a place that is wide-open to new ideas, new blood, and innovation.  He is dead-on in interpreting this hire, whether it is successful or not, as a vote for insularity as the only comfortable option.  There is good reason to be dismayed if it turns out that Michigan can't handle fresh air - new ideas and innovation are critical to the long-term health of an organization. 

AnthonyThomas

January 13th, 2011 at 5:04 PM ^

If Hoke does what I expect him to do offensively, then it should dispell those fears. It's unlikely to be your grandpas's pro-style offense. If it is, then Hoke will probably lose a lot of games, and Michigan will have learned the lesson the hard way. Let's hope they realize the same things that a lot of the board have.

UMQuadz05

January 13th, 2011 at 1:45 PM ^

I'm a few years younger than Brian, and for my entire life up until 2007, I felt that Michigan was a few breaks away from the NC every year.  Reluctantly, I agree and think that those days are probably behind us for good now.  We are a group that would rather be MICHIGAN than potentially go undefeated.  Is this a bad thing?  I'm not even sure.  I like that we have some moral and academic standards- maybe this means the conference title is our new high-water mark.

Also, Mike Hart should be the model for all people, everywhere, all the time.  You know this already.

jackw8542

January 13th, 2011 at 3:35 PM ^

I agree with you when you say we would rather be Michigan than go undefeated but do not agree that they are mutually exclusive.  We want to, indeed must, maintain our standards, but our standards need be no higher in terms of academics and character than Stanford's standards, and they turned out all right this year.  Hoke seems to have the right spirit and strong coaching skills, and if his ability to recruit is as good as many say, he may well bring us championships without sacrificing moral or academic standards.  I am confident they were important to RR as well, from everything I have read and heard, and many of those who tend to think we cannot reach the very pinnacle of success with BH thought we could with RR.  If we could with RR, we still can with BH.  Go Blue! 

bringthewood

January 13th, 2011 at 1:45 PM ^

Brian - I agree with you completely and feel exactly the same way.  I'be been attending Michigan games since 1969.  I'm not down on Hoke but I don't think he is baby Jesus either.  I'm not drinking the coolaid, eating the cornbread or have taken to wearing rose colored glasses.  I wish I was excited and hope to get excited but I feel like the blue hairs who wait for something positive to happen before cheering.  Frankly I'm slightly depressed that the same old stuff is coming back.  I hope to hell Hoke proves me wrong and demonstrates a level of creativity I'm not expecting, until them I'm meh.

TennBlue

January 13th, 2011 at 1:54 PM ^

I wanted to get away from Carrball because it was boring.  I didn't really care if Michigan won - it just wasn't fun to watch.  I pretty much tuned them out for much of the Carr era.  One game looked much like every other.

I gladly accepted the pain of the Rodriguez era just because he promised something new and exciting, making Michigan football worth watching again - win or lose.  Dumping him for Hoke feels like my mother just took away my bowl of pistachio-rum-mint-chocolate-fudge ripple ice cream and gave me vanilla instead.

Even if Hoke turns out to be a big winner, I'm not excited about the future any more.  Michigan football just got boring again.

bringthewood

January 13th, 2011 at 2:54 PM ^

No I agree with him.  I'd be cool with any offense as long is it is not conservative and boring.  Triple option, Carr's last game against Florida, passing spread, running spread.  I know I am bored shitless by the West Coast NFL offense.  I've been to some great 10-7 games but really prefer something a bit different.

Blue in Seattle

January 13th, 2011 at 3:55 PM ^

But I do remember being excited about watching San Francisco rack up points running it.

The thing I don't like about Brian's opinion, and the masses in his clique, are that they ignore Brandon's statement that he wanted a coach who could change his scheme to fit his players.  Most people disappointed with this hire take that to be a statement negative to Rich Rodriguez.  But there is little value of still complaining about a guy you fired.  So i take it as a requirement in this Brady Hoke hire that he deploys a scheme that fits a Mobile and Fast QB and a bunch of fast in space receivers, which is the talent that is here now.

Maybe David Brandon is a liar.  But since there is no resume to prove that, why are we trying to twist an interpretation of what he's stated rather than take it at face value, "the guy I hire will have to work with the players that are on the team"

What is really starting to disappoint me about Brian's point of view is that it is aligning with Drew Sharp's point of view.  

Michigan shows it won't be like SEC

 

Michigan settled on Brady Hoke. There's no getting around that. Convincing the public that Hoke was the No. 1 candidate all along becomes an impossible sales pitch for athletic director Dave Brandon.

He kept Michigan football in a state of limbo for six weeks, and the result of all that self-induced drama is this?

They couldn't get Jim Harbaugh. They apparently weren't comfortable with what Les Miles required, or vice versa. They couldn't get the "can't miss star" who leaves eyes wide and tongues wagging, so they will find comfort in the guy determined to give them what they can specifically appreciate.

I started off loving the Rich Rodriguez hire and immediately noticed the parallels to Yost, as many others did (remember the banner competition of the only 4 coaches hired outside of the Michigan Tree?).  I was also disappointed when he was fired.  But I'm not willing to suddenly decide that David Brandon is clueless based on no information proving that point of view.  I've tried to see hope and a point of view that could prove Brian's analysis of this year's defense was incorrect, that the defensive staff did know what it was doing and it was just a matter of time.

Then the Mississippi State game happened.  A game that all of the analysis on this site pointed to as a repeat of the Illinois game.  Well the defense that showed up for Illinois, showed up for MSU, but where was the offense?  The key undisputed skill that Rodriguez brought to Michigan?

Now of course no one really knows how the process was conducted to fire Rich Rodriguez and hire Brady Hoke.  You can be like Drew Sharp and assume David Brandon is lying and trying to spin a horrible situation into a wonderful one.  Or you can take people's statements at face value, realize that after what the Michigan Fans and Media did to Rich Rodriguez that no sane coach sitting on an incredibly successful program in Division 1 or FBS or whatever it's called now, would want to leave that realm of success only to be torn apart and fight an uphill battle everyday of their job.

So, I take David Brandon at face value.  He said he contacted Brady Hoke early in the process, he said that a majority of his time was spent not just talking with potential candidates, but to coaches who had experience with or against a Brady Hoke team to figure out if he could hire a MAC level candidate at all to step up into the "elite".

I sincerely hope that next week, the swirl of discussion on things that aren't happening (football) goes away and I can come to this Blog to get information about the Basketball and Hockey teams and there struggles against their competition.  Because that is what's happening now.

And by April there will be a spring game.  And then, and only then, will we know what Scheme Denard Robinson is running, what position he plays in that scheme, and overall what a Michigan Team coached by Brady Hoke looks like.

I don't like reading the skewed and baseless opinion of the writers on the FREEP, and I don't like reading it here.  Although, at least Drew Sharp never told me to go fuck myself.

 

maizenbluenc

January 13th, 2011 at 4:11 PM ^

that one that Pac Ten teams used to thump Bo with every time he got to the Rose Bowl. Believe it or not those tricky Pac Ten quarterbacks would, you know, actually pass the ball on first down.

Bo finally turned the corner when Jim Harbaugh came on board.

Me personally - I'd like to see the offense we ran against Florida - the pro set one that actually puts enough points on the board to beat speedy spread offenses.

/s/

ThWard

January 13th, 2011 at 3:04 PM ^

Not true.  At least, I don't fit that bill.

 

I support Coach Hoke.  Seems like a nice guy.

 

The anger from me isn't about the "spread."  The offense undoubtedly was getting good, and next year, only a fool wouldn't expect even better.  But many different offenses can score points, and a "fun" offense without any defense is shitty.  Period. 

 

My anger is based on: (1) those that actively undermined Coach Rodriguez now preaching about the importance of "supporting your HC" - RichRod supporters don't need the lecture.  We know how important that is.  (2) The revisionist history re: Carr's later years.  I loved Lloyd Carr.  All class.  But the decline over the past few years (Tress cementing OSU's status as the dominant player in the Midwest) which culminated with the App State debacle (truly, do people not remember how dreadful it was for a pre-season MNC contender to lose to an FCS school?) was obvious... thus, you can at least appreciate why "we're reverting back to the Carr years" doesn't necessarily make all of us immediately thing "Carr always won 9 games and won the NC in 1997!  Hurrah!" (3) The constant wrongheadedness re: the spread from the local media and the former Carr players who didn't like RichRod (see point 1).  The spread was producing at U of M (not enough to offeset the dreadful defense, I stipulate), and has been successful in every major conference.  The belief that it "can't work in the Big 10" has been both disproved and smacks of arrogant and unentitled regional-superiority (the B10 isn't actually dominating the MNC game these days).  (4) Brandon's apparent belief that his fan base is stupid.  I'll just leave it at that because I'm tired of talking about his farce of a "national search."

 

In sum.  I supported RichRod, I liked that he was trying to go against the B10 grain because I tired of UM teams that hoped to "out talent" other B10 teams every year, and I think he got a raw deal.  I support Coach Hoke because he loves my university, is the HC of the program I love, and seems like a good guy.

 

But my anger is 100% at DB and those that piss on my leg while telling me it's raining.

jackw8542

January 13th, 2011 at 3:40 PM ^

You have to be careful when using the term "Carrball".  His fundamental approach was not bad, but his extreme and growing conservatism as a game progressed was both bad and maddening.  If BH learned how to put together a running game and a passing game from Carr without concluding that from midway through the third quarter on it was appropriate to play to avoid losing instead of playing to keep on winning, we should be okay.  It has never made much sense to me to stop doing what was working because you think a prevent defense will enable you to eke out a win, but we saw that time and again under Carr.  When your opponent is down, make sure you don't take your foot off his neck!

j-turn14

January 13th, 2011 at 3:06 PM ^

but if you tuned out much of the Carr era, you missed some great games and some great players. I feel sorry for you. And if you'd rather root for a team because of the offense they use than anything else, then there's no point in rooting for any one team because every school's schemes are cyclical.