Beat Ohio

In the past, BiSB and Brian have pointed out how amazing it is that Ohio fans actually have a song about how they don't care about Michigan. Albeit, it is limited in lyrics with words with less than 3 syllables for ease of remembrance, that type of mindset is just comical. When I told my father in-law that actually Michigan fans care less because we have 2 other rivals to spread the hate towards and we just didn't have the time nor care to write a song about Ohio, his head exploded.

Shut those MF'ers OUT!!!!!!!!!

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1867747-local-car-dealer-to-give-out-free-cars-if-michigan-shut-out-ohio-state?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial&hpt=hp_t3

from '81 or '83?

Just wanted to put my two cents in the week of the biggest game on the regular season schedule.  Brian and the responding posters have written an encyclopedia on the whole issue of “fickle.”  This may be piling on, but my response to Brian is that everything you say is objectively true, but C’MON MAN!  You bring THIS attitude to the week of the Ohio State game?  How exactly did you expect Coach Hoke to handle that question at a news conference?  Let me offer three possibilities, roughly based on comment found in this blog site:

 

“Yup, our OC is a cretin, and George Cstanza would make a better position coach that the guys we have working with the offense this year.  I fired all of them just before this press conference.  So, anyone want to call offensive plays for us this Saturday?  We’re having an open try-out on Thursday, after the Lions game is over.”

 

Or  perhaps,

“Listen fellas.  What do you think we can accomplish with a whole slew of interior O-line recruits, each and every one of them well on the way to the ‘recruiting bust’ career path?  You think it’s bad now?  Wait till next season when they are one year closer to the ‘Big Will Campbell Career Achievement Award,’ and we have sent our two tackles to the NFL while replacing them with more of the same.  You think this Saturday will be ugly?  Hey, enjoy it while it lasts, cause 2014 will be much worse.”

 

Then there is my personal favorite,

“Thank you all for coming.  We all worked very hard and ran a tough an competitive campaign.  However, just a few minutes ago I called Coach Meyer and congratulated him on his impressive victory.  I look forward to working with him to bring the Conference together for the Bowl season.”

 

There have been numerous demands on this blog for “accountability” with the coaches and players on this team.  The thing is that what these folks really want is “accountability” in a press conference where they can all see it.  Coach Hoke is the “boss” of the assistant coaches and players.  You are asking him to communicate to his people in public, in a press conference messages that are best said one on one, in private.  That’s not accountability; that’s putting people in the stocks on the village green and pelting them with rotten tomatoes.  Call me nuts, but I don’t think that is effective leadership.  So, I circle back to my original question, what answer was he supposed to give?  Given that he was not going to throw his team under the bus in public, and that he was not going to reveal the game plan that would change everything where OSU could hear it and take notes, what answer could he have provided that would have satisfied you?

 

Let we also comment on the whole Coach Borges mishegas.  If it were my decision, I would fire him and the entire offensive coaching staff after we play in the Manny’s Bail Bonds Bowl in Fresno, CA.  However, it is not my decision; it’s Coach Hokes’.  Again call me crazy (lots of people do; just ask my wife), but I have greater confidence in Coach Hokes’ judgment on this issue than my own, or in the judgment of any of the self appointed loudmouths (I include myself in this category) in this blog.  If Coach Hoke thinks his current staff has the people to make things better next year, I’m OK with that.  However, I do think Coach Hoke’s position needs to be open to discussion if we continue to see no improvement again.

 

We all think we know what will happen this Saturday, and we have a reasonable and informed basis for believing that (discussed ad nauseam in the many excellent posts to this blog).  However, at the start of the season, we all had a reasonable and informed basis to believe our team would be 8-4 to 9-3 during the regular season.  Then after the Notre Dame game, we all had a reasonable and informed basis to think Coach Borges could call an excellent game and that we’d be 10-1 or 11-0 heading into this weekend.  Point is that even with all the excellent attempts to understand what is happening (and I mean that sincerely; I have learned a ton and understand much better after reading all the outstanding posts on this web site), all our analysis means precisely jack-s___  if a team full of 19 and 20 year olds finally “get it” and start playing to their potential.  Let me make one attempt to rationalize some sense of hope.  Beating a pretty good ND defense actually happened.  Laying 42 points on a better than expected Minnesota team actually happened.  Winning a track meet against Indiana when the defense couldn’t adjust to the Hoosiers’ offense really happened.  It would be so Al Borges for him to have been working on a whole new offensive concept since the Michigan State game that he has kept under wraps for Ohio State, believing it would not be necessary to hang with the likes of Nebraska, Northwestern and Iowa (and he was two plays away from being exactly right about that).

 

Finally, let’s talk about the karma deficit.  After several decades of lording it over the Little 8 (along with Ohio State) and growing complacent, for our sins we were given 4 or so seasons where we lost each and every one of the Ohio State games and the Bowl game following, The Horror followed by the laying an egg for the Ducks game, three years of having a coach who was inexplicably awful in every facet of coaching (and has done solid work both before and after coming to Michigan), and the current fine kettle of fish with his successor.  Meanwhile, our biggest rival goes out and hires the most sanctimonious and simultaneously ethically challenged coach in the history of college football (“whitened sepulcher” only scratches the surface with ex-Coach Tressel), who then goes on to own two Michigan coaches; they cheat, and not just “practice time” infractions, actual athletes getting actual money and other perks; they stone-wall the NCAA, twice (first Coach Tressel lying to the NCAA when he should have revealed the tattoo business, and then covering up with the connivance of the Ohio DMV the whole car business); they win a Bowl game with ineligible players; evade more serious sanctions by blaming Coach Tressel to the NCAA, then once the NCAA and its staff of Jacques Clouseau have gone away, they carry him off the field on their shoulders before a national TV audience (“ha, ha, we sure put one over on you”); for their sins, they suffer only one season of a .500 record; they hire another ethically challenged coach and promptly go 12-0 against inferior competition (including, alas, our team), and then celebrate their “undefeated” season when they were ineligible to play in the post-season; then go 11-0 in the following year with the said ethically challenged coach (so they have never lost with him in charge), and head into their game with us in the conversation for a national championship, and when our entire team is in disarray.  Call me nuts, but this is the best set-up I have ever heard for a team getting its richly-deserved comeuppance in a truly epic fashion.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1867747-local-car-dealer-to-give-out-free-cars-if-michigan-shut-out-ohio-state?utm_source=cnn.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=editorial&hpt=hp_t3

 

Theres that...

CLAP CLAP CLAP

and send the mullets in red packing for their trip back to ohio.

   What would be more fun to see; a big Michigan upset victory on Saturday, or Al Borges put in a headstock and pelted with rotten tomatoes by the entire town of A.A.? I myself would take the win over O.S.U., but I'd bet a fair number of people would choose the other. T.I.C.

It's great..to be...a Michigan Wolverine!!!!