If You Pretend You Are A Statue Do Not Be Surprised When You Erode Comment Count

Brian

Oblig coach obit. Don't get on my case, man.

Hoke-Rain-2[1]

I mean, he gave Penn State a free shot at the endzone by taking a timeout with three seconds left in the first half.

What do you do with that? How do you put that into your ongoing calculations? Add that datum to the rickety mess that is your ever-shifting, often-hypocritical, prone-to-explode model of your favorite thing in the world, and what happens? I don't know. The brain elects not to travel down that path. The future ceases to exist, replaced by only the ever more nonsensical present. All series diverge. Projection is impossible.

Let's jam that thing in anyway.

5T5IB[1]

Not an improvement, but not any worse either. At that point such a thing was almost expected, after the previous year's offensive line roulette and 27 for 27 and two minute drills that usually took five minutes. Time for some maniacal giggling, then.

On the bright side, even three-and-a-half years deep into a coaching tenure that resembled nothing so much as Wile E. Coyote sauntering off a cliff Brady Hoke still had ways to surprise you.

hokeecoyote[4]

via Seth

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Brady Hoke should never have been Michigan's football coach. This was apparent from the start, as at the time of his hire he had two assets: the fool's gold of an undefeated MAC regular season and a reasonable, if truncated, turnaround job at San Diego State. Aside from that he had five seasons of average MAC ball and zero years as a coordinator. Even the breakout year at Ball State ended with consecutive blowout losses to Buffalo and Tulsa.

When you stake your program to a resume like that you're as likely as not to come out the other end with Tim Beckman or Tim Brewster or Darrell Hazell. An infinite number of nondescript gentleman have had the ball bounce the right way during the furball that is a season in the Mid-American. Some of them populate the lower rungs of the Big Ten when Purdue can't think of anything better.

And then there's Bo.

Bo was on another level, having gone 27-8-1 in league play in six years with Miami. Even he was widely derided. Here is that picture again.

bl006724[1]

In the center is a man who has made a Decision. It's no exaggeration to say that Michigan's best and… most recent athletic directors staked their careers on whether they could separate coaching talent from noise.

All these years later, you get why Canham rolled the dice on Bo. Bo was a legendary hardass who took nothing from anyone and comfortably existed atop the roiling mass of chaos that is any football program, successful or not. He chewed out players on the sidelines, sent them back in the game, and cracked impish smiles at the reaming he'd just handed to the young man. He has a gravitas that stays with the program—veritably looms—a decade after his death. Bo had the proverbial It, and you can understand how he communicated that to Canham in whatever passed for a job interview between them.

That understanding will permanently elude historians attempting to discern what comparable force of personality Brady Hoke brought to a press conference in the Junge Center in January 2011.

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There was a moment, though. Now it's hard to remember that Brady Hoke had two years in which it seemed he was indeed gold that does not glitter. Hoke gruffly intoned "This Is Michigan, fergodsakes" in response to a question nobody remembers. He wore short sleeves in weather ranging from torrid to frozen. His matter-of-fact declarations and tough toughness were his tentpoles. We hung a great edifice of hope on it; Hoke going to and winning a BCS game in year one provided buttresses and filigree and whatnot to the structure.

At a few years remove it's clear that Hoke stumbled ass-backwards into that success. Few 11-2 seasons have been jankier than Michigan's 2011. The Notre Dame game that kicked things off was a deranged exercise in winning against double coverage; Michigan threw 41 times for 2.8 YPA against Michigan State; they had 166 yards of offense before chuck-and-pray time against Iowa; they were one overthrown Braxton Miller pass away from losing to a .500 OSU team; they won that bowl game with 184 yards of total offense.

The signs were all there, even in the moment ("lucky as hell," quoth this space in the aftermath of the Denard After Dentist game). I alternated between excitement at the idea of a head coach who had an innate aggressiveness on fourth down and wondering why the hell they thought Denard Robinson could be Tom Brady.

But the games were won, and the recruits rolled in. Hoke seemed to stroll through a garden of four-stars gathering what he would. For a year or two, everything seemed just fine. In 2013, Michigan beat Notre Dame rather easily. Michigan fans were walking on air. Then someone looked down.

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Rarely in the history of college football has a fanbase been jerked so rudely to attention as already beleaguered Michigan fans were in 2013. The relatively straight line that was the Hoke era turned into a harrowing plunge straight into the bowels of second-and-eleven-play-action hell. Save for an inexplicable Ohio State game, Michigan became the most brutally unwatchable team in the country the instant they left the field against Notre Dame.

Hoke was the same person through the good bits and the bad. He was gruffly nonsensical to start and gruffly nonsensical to end. As success turned to failure, the things we liked about him became the things we hated about him. Remember when this was hilarious?

via Ace

That joke isn't funny anymore.

Despite the fact that people will still swear up and down that Brady Hoke is a great dude, I have less charity in my heart for him than I did Rich Rodriguez when it came to write his obit. A slice from that piece:

Coaches aren't humans. They are walking soundbites wrapped in great swirling cloaks of mythology. Rap on one of their chests. You will get a hollow clang and a statement about senior leadership. Kick sand in one of their faces. You will get a lecture from Peter the Great. Peter the Great will be confused and incensed that he cannot sentence you to hang. Tell one his aunt has been dismembered by bikers on PCP and you will get a statement about senior leadership. Seniors don't do PCP and rip aunts limb from limb, because they have leadership.

Rodriguez was human. He was just this guy. He wasn't supernatural or metallic. If you rapped his chest he would probably get a little weepy. He did not seem like a great leader of men, or a colossus astride anything, or even a dude fully in control of his shit.

Hoke was that coachbot even in impossible circumstances. By the end so many indignities had piled up that I was waiting for him to snap.

It never came. He endured the brutally painful press conference following last year's Minnesota game as a coachbot. He released a statement apologizing to Michigan State for Joe Bolden putting a small piece of metal in their field. At no point did he bite the head off a reporter, or say that his boss had sold him down the river, or do anything at all other than repeat the same goddamn things he'd been repeating for two straight years.

I liked Rodriguez because he seemed like a person who reacted to stimuli. He reacted too much, but at least you could see that he was processing information and coming to conclusions about what it meant.

Hoke did not do this. Whether Hoke was stoic or insensate is in the eye of the beholder; given the chaos around the program my vote is the latter. He seemed to shut down in terror when his dream job turned to a nightmare.

As the competence of his team deteriorated, Hoke shuffled his coaching staff nonsensically instead of making real changes. He stuck with his terrible punt formation and a style of offense unsuited for his quarterbacks. Even after it was clear his disastrous program could not be allowed to continue—the financial ruin it would cause must have been apparent to even Michigan's most recent athletic director—nothing changed. If Hoke thought he had a chance, well, he also called timeout to give Penn State a free Hail Mary.

At least Nero fiddled. Brady Hoke stood there in the rain without so much as shaking a fist at the heavens.

Comments

delmarblue

August 6th, 2015 at 4:32 PM ^

I was happy as hell with a BCS win and thought happy days are here again.  Especially, when we got the lucky break on the VaTech receiver in the end zone.  That was a catch and td.

Perkis-Size Me

August 6th, 2015 at 4:34 PM ^

Very well written, as always. Truly amazing to think back on the 2011 season and how, in hindsight, the whole season was one giant fluke. That ND game, while exciting as hell, featured some bad football coupled with all-time epic meltdowns. Yes, there were some moments like that Nebraska game where Hoke really looked like he was fielding a solid, all around well-coached team, but those moments were few and far between. The Iowa and MSU games were atrocious to watch, we were one overthrown ball from losing to OSU for 11 years in a row, and I still can’t believe how we managed to win that Sugar Bowl with how bad our offense was that whole night.

But winning cures all ails, regardless of how it comes, so obviously we don’t question the numbers. 11 wins. Beating even a bad OSU team. Winning a BCS bowl. It’s all good, man.

Should’ve spotted it again in 2012, but I just chalked it up to the schedule. Lost to 4 top-10 teams, 3 of which were very winnable games. Bama became the national champion. They were just better, I told myself. We were just one season from turning the corner, so I chose to largely ignore the ND disaster, Borges single-handedly costing us a win against OSU, and Hoke having his team woefully unprepared to replace Denard against an extremely beatable Nebraska team in what essentially was a “play-in” game for the Big Ten title. They came so close to knocking off a very good S. Carolina team at the end of the year, I chalked it up to an inexperienced team making mistakes, but gaining the experience necessary to finally take the next step and win the “big” games the following year.

The only thing that has just truly confused me about this team over the last few years is that they started 2013 so well. Looked great against CMU, not allowing a TD, and played a great all-around game against a good ND team. The offense under Devin looked like it could really become something special. How the hell did it all go so bad so quickly? What happened to our team in that week between ND and Akron? Did they get cocky and assume Akron was going to be a pushover? Seemed like after that game, after Akron came within several yards of giving us The Horror 2.0, the team reverted into a shell, played tight, and played like they were afraid to make mistakes. They didn’t look like a team that played to win, but rather one that played not to lose. They looked like a team that took on the personality of its coach: way in over its head, and unsure of its own identity.

Hoke deserved to be fired. The guy was clearly in way over his head and should never have been hired in the first place, but I have to commend him for never breaking, especially after Brandon essentially threw him under the bus and left Hoke to face the media after the Minnesota game all by himself. One of the many things I won’t forgive Brandon for.

Hoke loved his players and his school so much that you could tell he was trying to be strong for them. I hope he took this year off to lick his wounds, and is relaxing on some exotic beach in the Pacific with a Mai Tai in his hand. Whether he deserved this job or not, that man deserved a long vacation after everything that happened.  

ClassOf14

August 6th, 2015 at 4:43 PM ^

Extremely well written as usual, hats off to you Brian. I thought this was going to be a more thorough collection of all the cringeworthy anecdotes we are all actively trying to repress, so thank you for saving us that misery.

In Hoke's case, I have to commend him for doing almost everything right besides coaching football. He recruited well, graduated most of the players, got our APR up, and had a passion and love for M that rivals almost anyone. Ultimately, like you said, he just wasn't competent as a head coach.




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CoverZero

August 6th, 2015 at 6:05 PM ^

The greatest mystery of the Hoke Error is that for all of his talk and bluster about "Toughness, Accountibility and Leadership" and his supposed repuation as a "meat and potatoes guy"...his teams were incredibly

SOFT

UNDISCIPLINED

FOLDED EASILY IN ROAD GAMES

LACKED FOCUS AND PREPARATION

 

So that is really what the Hoke Error at Michigan was:  An Era of Talk.  Brady was soft on the kids and did not hold them accountible for what happened on the field....and it showed.

Gr1mlock

August 6th, 2015 at 6:30 PM ^

Disagree on one point: that gif is still hilarious.   Hilarious and kinda sad and a symbol of Hoke's lack of control or coaching, but still, the shift in expression and reaction just kills me every time, only because we've all been there.  The moment of "No no no no n...wait, that worked?  Ok, cool..." is so very human, I can completely empathize with it.  

The Geek

August 6th, 2015 at 7:40 PM ^

this is such a great read, man.

2013 was so awful. Hoke was exposed and it was ugly. You nailed it.

Loved this:

He has a gravitas that stays with the program—veritably looms—a decade after his death.

I believe we have resurrected that gravitas in Harbaugh. It was a painful ride... But so worth it.

Michigan Fan L…

August 6th, 2015 at 8:24 PM ^

In 2011 at a post-game press conference Brady Hoke was asked if Taylor Lewan had an injury because he was seen in a walking boot.  Coach Hoke responded that Lewan just had an "owie."  Before posting this comment, I had to look up the correct spelling of the word.  It's a term I hadn't heard since The Brady Bunch went off the air in the 70's.  Apropos?

It bothered me at the time but I let it go because the team was winning.  He used the term a few more times over the years and each time I heard it, I cringed.  I always thought it was a toddler-type word, not a word intended for tough 18-22 year old football players.  Besides, Cindy and Bobby were the only ones I remembered who had owies.  And they were both crybabies. 

I've been a Michigan football fan since 1985 and never rooted against my team until 2014.  I thought that the only way Coach Hoke would get fired was if they didn't make it to a bowl game.  That was a rough year.  I didn't care if they replaced him with William Shatner, I just wanted him gone.

If Hoke was referring to injuries as "owies," what other type of baby lingo was he using at practice and during games? 

Anyway, I'm glad he has departed the area, I enjoyed the article, and no more owies and booboos for this Michigan fan.

Go Blue!!!

GoBlueTal

August 7th, 2015 at 11:38 AM ^

If you can keep your head when all about you   

 

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
...
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
...
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!



---



I agree with you Brian, you're a lot more like Rod than Hoke.    

JTrain

August 8th, 2015 at 11:31 AM ^

Good read. I always got the impression Brady was a great guy for any football program. A morally sound guy who cared for the players and their families. A great guy for recruiting (until his record catches up with him). I think you can take him at face value. What you see is what you get. I think he is more of a POSITION coach than a head coach or coordinator though.
I wish him and his family the best of luck.




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