The Doldrums of National Championship Success
It has now been 25 years since Michigan won a national championship in its three most highest revenue-generating sports (football, ice hockey, and men's basketball).
This, coincidentally, overlaps with my first year as an undergrad onward. So, I apologize.
This matches the drought Michigan athletics experienced between Michigan's hockey title in 1964 and the MBB team's lone national championship in 1989.
I didn't have a huge point to this stat, just that it feels generally blah to have had such a long drought of national success. I don't know if things need to change - especially since we've had a consistent pattern of in-conference athletic success for decades, even if not as national champions in prominent sports, and we've enabled thousands of young people to obtain a Michigan degree.
Fire Borges.
I guess I’m more of a “glass half full guy” on this topic. While we haven’t won it all in anything since the 98 hockey team we have won multiple B1G Championships in all sports and all three sports have seen Michigan teams go deep in the playoffs (hockey, basketball) or make the playoffs (football).
So yeah, would I rather we won it all in one of them over the past 25 years? Yes.
But would I trade places with any other school over those years? Not a chance in Hell.
Half full ok - thankful for sure. This is a big FB year at home, our returning QB, third win to set the rivalry back to a rivalry. Lose they year we are expected to win would be a blow.
After TCU I want to be optimistic however that was a choke job plain and simple. The floor is a B1G Championship/Win over OSU. The need is a Playoff win and Championship appearance. To be back to being MICHIGAN is a football National Championship and not another 26 year hiatus.
If that is Half Full I am with you.
Alabama? Just for football.
Another choke job when it counted most. This is the story of Michigan’s big three sports. With all of the money the AD spends it’s high time to set aside an allocation of cash to start employing some good sports psychologists to get these guys in the right frame of mind to become finishers.
For instance, men’s and women’s gymnastics have recent wins which is one more than any of the football, basketball, or hockey programs can say despite make their sports final four more than once, with much higher profiles, bigger budgets, etc. You can’t win 'em all, not even most, but you should be able to win some. But winning none is beyond more than beyond comprehension, it’s statistically unlikely unless there is some salient factor that is a common hidden thread.
Given that the sports are all completely different with different people the only point of commonality is Michigan, which must mean that our teams are not as confident or psychologically prepared to produce under pressure. Coaching the team is not just the Xs and Os and Jimmy and Joes, it’s also about not letting the stage get too big and playing relaxed. I have rarely seen that from Michigan teams in important moments nor do I recall many media features on any of the programs’ employing a sports psychology or mental approach to competing with the exception of what JJ does with meditation and visualization. However, I do remember Kirby Smart talking about the mental preparation and approach that the team went through before last year’s CFP and how it helped them.
Maybe we need start shifting some priorities around. Heck, if UCONN, lowly UCONN that the board likes to kick around so much about their football program, can win 5 of the 6 Final Fours that they have made, why can’t we do better than 1 in 7, why can’t the Hockey team put it together having made multiple Frozen Fours since '98, how can it be that we only have one split football national championship in 75 years? No, I’m not being rhetorical, nor am I asking for the specific reasons for losses those years, I’m asking the meta question, how is it possible that our luck is our luck is that bad. It’s certainly possible, just not probable. There has to be an underlying issue in our preparation or in game performance and I believe it is because our teams, including the coaching staffs are not as confident , relaxed, or psychologically prepared as our opponents.
If our teams and coaches are anything like Michigan fans, they consistently don’t take opponents like TCU and Quinnipiac seriously enough.
Watching the hockey game last night, I didn't see a team who didn't take Quinnipiac seriously enough. I saw a team who skated really hard but were constantly out-muscled by older, more developed, experienced players who were almost always in the position they were supposed to be in.
All of the Quinnipiac goals were what I call hustle junk goals. Create chaos, keep hacking, and eventually the puck may go in. Both of Michigan's goals were incredibly beautiful goals honed out of talent and skill. Yes, Michigan can beat those types of team as is evidenced against Notre Dame, but it's not easy, especially in a one-game format.
That's an interesting point you made. A talented yet younger team gets thwarted by a slightly more mature, more experienced (played more college and higher level hockey) less talented team. If I am not mistaken, the Michigan teams that won the hockey championships were senior-laden as well, weren't they? Maybe the Michigan hockey teams need to play together for a bit longer to push through.
Look at the history of Football, Basketball, and Hockey semifinals. Count the total number of teams who have been in those games. Then count the number of teams who have won it all. College sports is dominated by a handful of teams in each respective sport. I'm not going to write a thesis as to why.
As Michigan fans, we should all be impressed and appreciate the success the programs have had competing in "other teams" sports so consistently. It really is amazing Michigan has been to so many championship games in basketball, even if they have "only" won one. Same with football. As for hockey, there might be an argument there, but the reasons why have been well documented on this blog numerous times.
You should apply to be a head coach at Michigan so you can show them all how it is done, manipulating the minds of teenagers on a huge stage is so simple!!! Have you played or coached on a big stage? What was your experience?
As a matter of fact I have on a national level. And just like Michigan I should have done better when it counted. I didn’t do a good enough job with the mental aspects of the competition. That’s on me. I failed. No excuses.
Of course it’s not easy but that’s how you become a champion, by objectively considering the validity of criticism and constructively acting on it if there are elements of truth to it. No one is saying it’s easy but the results speak for themselves. You are what your record says you are. If you don’t like the narrative or perception then it’s up to you to change it.
Sorry your feelings were hurt.
Classic response dude. What was the competition and at what level? Genuinely curious. Did you call for your coach’s head since you didn’t perform well and didn’t win? I mean you are what your record says you are, right?
And you said the mental aspects were on you, so unless you had no coach your logic is very flawed, you just proved yourself wrong. You just said it’s on the coach to have his players mentally prepared. So which one is it? Can you clarify on that please?
And ummmmmm I’m not sure how someone gets their feelings hurt on a message board from a complete stranger, but that was very kind of you to apologize!
Calling yesterday a choke job is dramatic. They got beat straight up by a team who was better than them. That happens when you reach the final four.
username checks out.
Show me on the doll where the Michigan coach touched you.
No other school in the country can lay claim to as many close-but-no-cigar seasons in all sports as Michigan. It seems to be our peculiar cross to bear.
"Recently" used somewhat loosely - 2 national championship games (basketball), 2 CFP (football), 8 Frozen Fours (hockey) and 1 College World Series title game (baseball). Yikes.
Was so excited just to be there forgot Baseball.
thanks
You can add in a softball WCWS title game, and a field hockey championship game if you're so inclined.
And it's not just recently. Basketball has a long history of championship futility. They have the ninth most Final Fours (eight) of any team, sixth most championship game appearances (seven), and yet only one title, i.e. they're 1-6 in championship games. Only OSU has had similar futility among top-ten Final Four teams, and then after that MSU is the only other of those schools with less than three titles.
Bowl games, particularly under Bo, are another example.
We're just snakebit...
If there’s a positive to take out of it, hoops team is great in national semifinal!
I suppose you can say that we championed "thousands of young people to obtain a Michigan degree".
You guys realize that only one team per season wins the national championship? Once you get to the Final 4 in any sport there are a lot of variables at play. A better way to look at it is to just be thankful that we have strong teams, chips been falling our way lately (Illinois football game), and enjoy the ride!
There's only 1 champion every year so every fan base can really say the same save Alabama/Georgia in football and a few others in basketball.....
I think this is espeically relevant because we're including "revenue" sports - but really, there's 3 sports where there are nationwide audiences tuning in to watch college players - football and men's and women's basketball. We include hockey, but Utah may include gymnastics - where both our men and women have won natties in the last decade - and I'm sure some pac12 schools count swimming and diving - where Michigan has also won a natty a decade ago. Sunnier schools I'm sure count baseball and softball - where Michigan hasn't gotten over the top, but has been a longtime contender in one, and a recent contender in the other.
It sucks to not win the big one - but, objectively, it's great to be a michigan wolverine. These are the good times. Last year was ridiculous for the entire athletic department. Let's enjoy ourselves a bit.
You can't win the title without being in position to do so (Final 4), at least we have been there many times in the last decade....
That is fair
Winning National Championships is really hard. In the last 25 years, there have been 75 (more or less, I'm not clear on 2020) titles contested. Basketball has been hard because of the success of a handful of teams (Duke, NC, Kentucky, Kansas, et.al.) has been a significant barrier. Hockey, probably our best chance out of the three, has been a parade of Plinko where we are alway bringing younger teams with talent to compete with older lunkheads on a non-level playing field (see Alex's and Dave's podcasts for clarification), and Football has seen the rise of the South. We have also had some inconsistency in our coaching in all three sports over the same time period. So my theory would be that there has only been one or two dozen of those 75 years where we have had a real chance, and while you can rag about "Well, we're Michigan, fer Godsake!", there are broad societal forces at play (maybe not so much with Hockey) that would require changes at the University level to counteract. For myself, I like how my Alma Mater has held on to it's principles and have no interest in seeing them compromised at the altar of $$ and Sports. I love how we have striven to be successful in that context. Peddle your disappointment to someone else.
I generally agree with your optimistic take, gramps. I am proud of how Michigan sports has done over the last decade. Winning a natty is hard, and Michigan has been a contender for one in nearly every sport at that time.
I've one caveat tho - Michigan has the resources that we can and should be national championship caliber in every sport. Baseball and softball? Bakich and Hutch figured it out. Football? Sure, the south - but Ohio competed with them for a while. And we've outclassed Ohio of late. Basketball, hockey? Of course we should be. Wrestling? What makes Iowa and Penn State better wrestling hubs than us? What do those two even have in common other than being good wrestling schools?
That's not to say it's easy to be of that caliber - it takes the right leadership (see: Texas A&M football). But Michigan has been national championship caliber - the revenue sports have all been semifinalists in the last decade, including the bat and ball games, with the exception of 2021 quarterfinalists women's basketball . Gymnastics and swimming have won national titles in that time. I'm proud of our Wolverines.
They're evasive like the cure for herpes. Figured you'd understand that analogy better than most OP.
We’ve had a lot of success in the Big 3 just haven’t been able to close the deal in the last game or two. It’ll happen.
I’ve been watching hockey since the 70’s and as I said last night and could be wrong but the last 15 semi finals we are 3-12 and the games we won we had outstanding defense and goaltending, we seem to come into these games with slow starts and giving up a lot of odd man rushes and just not ready to go. Although last years loss to Denver probably doesn’t fit that category, puck luck or whatever we seemed jinxed so I’ve really enjoyed Michigan hockey for years but have decided after last night I’m going to only watch if they make the NC game its just been to frustrating to get so close but yet not finish the job especially when in a majority of these games IMO Michigan has been the better team maybe not but that’s who I root for so maybe I’m wrong.
At this point it still feels like hockey is the most likely one to break through. They could've won it last year, they could've won it this year.
Football has a shot this year, but I just don't know that Michigan football will ever be able to amass the talent and depth to get them to a national title anymore. B1G title + CFP berth may be the ceiling
Basketball seems to be fading at the moment. Looked like our best bet was the Beilein window in 2013 and the few years after
Are other schools of similar academic prowess way ahead on Natty's? I have always followed UM sports with a possibly misguided believe that they try and do things the right amateur status way for their incoming students. Not sure how that has changed but my interest has been lead to believe it still stands somewhat apart from the sports first mills cranking out Natty's. Curious?
Ivy League? No. (Outside of Yale’s fluky hockey title)
Northwestern or Wisconsin? No.
Stanford, Cal Berkeley? No.
Vandy? No.
MIT, Cal Tech, Carnegie Mellon? No.
Purdue? Ha Ha Ha, No.
Michigan is the best, by far, of its academic peers.
If you count any sport, then Stanford leads the way with 131 followed by my Alma Mater UCLA at 120. Those two school are either about the same (UCLA) or better (Stanford*) than Michigan with athletics.
With that said, the vast majority of those titles are in sports nobody really cares about** (outside of UCLA's basketball titles).
*I obviously mean no disrespect to our academics, but I mean Stanford is a private school with resources and prestige Michigan (or any public school) can never match
**I also mean no disrespect to those other sports, but really if Michigan wins a NCAA title in men's/women's golf is anyone here going to really do that much celebrating?
Nice to see you two have a reading comprehension that some here seem to lack and responded in a lucid, informative way as the post requested. Thanks.
This is the best take I have seen on this OP.
Schools that have won national titles since our last one in 1998 that have some kind of academic prowess near or above our own:
- Duke (5 MBB titles)
- North Carolina (3 MBB titles)
- Virginia (1 MBB titles)
- Yale (1 hockey title)
So, not many (10 of the 75 cumulative titles), and definitely none that have a layer of domination across all three sports. In fact, we could easily argue that Michigan's span from 1989-1998 (with national titles in all three of those sports) was the only true anomaly of academic and revenue sport athletic success ever existing at the modern D1 level.
College sports, especially football and basketball, are largely dominated by a small subset of teams. At least as far as winning national titles go.
Michigan is NOT one of those teams.
In the last 17 years of college football, the SEC has won 13 of those 17 titles. And they weren't exactly spread around. Its amongst 3-4 teams. Six of those titles belong to Alabama. LSU has two, Florida has two, Georgia has two, and Georgia looks like its about to start an Alabama-esque run of its own.
Of the college basketball title winners of the last 20 years, more than half of those wins are coming from what you'd call the blue-blood programs (Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, UNC, UConn), and then depending on how you define Villanova the percentage is even higher.
It is very, very hard to break into the highest echelon of your sport.
With these things, if you think national championship or bust, you are an idiot. Or rather, an Alabama fan. Speaking of which, I am looking forward to confused Bama fans after Saban retires. That will be a fun group to watch meltdown. To think, they almost hired RichRod...
One of the things that gets me is how CFB fans assume the present is interminable. In the mid-'00s, everyone thought USC and Texas were unassailable because of their geography. Then it was "the SEC." Then, Bama. Then, Bama, Clemson and Ohio (but mostly Bama). Now, UGA and Bama.
In every one of those situations, there were obvious changes - the head coach. Pete Carroll left. Nick Saban got hired. The SEC had Urban Meyer with Saban. until he went to Ohio. Honestly, the only programs that have consistently competed regardless of the HC were LSU and....Auburn, somehow.
If you want to argue OSU under Tressel, Meyer and Day - I don't buy it. Credit to Tressel - but 2002 was craziness, as was 2007. 2006 was an excellent squad (until they ran into Urban Meyer), but outside of that year, OSU's teams were good but not of the caliber of Meyer's teams. After 2007 Tressel's last few seasons saw a good OSU dominate a bad Big Ten. As for Day, hahahahaha. 2019 was Urban's team and still saw OSU well behind the #1 team. 2020 was a weird year and still saw OSU well behind the #1 team. 2021 and 2022 saw OSU well behind the #1 team...in their conference. He's a good coach but they had a false sense of invincibility/inevitablity. it was an arrogance. We can understand and appreciate that, and laugh at them as they figure it out.
Better to have made it close, than not at all. I'd rather have a shot at it and make it to the doorstep. While it has been a bit painful, ask any of the other teams in any of those sports what they'd trade for even a shot at an NC and I bet you'd find a lot of left nuts offered up!
I'd like to win a natty in football - we are so close, but we all know how sometimes it comes down to luck (which we've had some over the last couple of years). As for everything outside of football - basketball included - I'm happy if we're consistently in the tourney and making deep runs. Hockey I sort of "expect" frozen four caliber teams, but I also know how cruel single elimination hockey is. Don't get me wrong - when the games are on I'm hungry for our Wolverines to win, no matter the sport, no matter if I understand the rules or not (looking at you, gym) - but when I take a wider look at the program and department as a whole, my expectations only get irrational for football.
And to be honest, my expectations have mostly been met. NOW WIN THE NATTY team 144!
First world problems, my friend.
I blame myself.
i guess i've mellowed, in that i really just appreciate the fact that the journey is fun as hell whether or not it results in a national championship.
some seasons give me more joy than others, obviously. the last two years of football have been an absolute delight, and i honestly consider them every bit as enjoyable as 1997. i'd put a few of beilein's seasons in there, too, and several different hockey seasons (yes, including this one). i'd include naz hillmon's last two seasons and katelyn flaherty's NIT champs in that category, too, fwiw.
great, fun-to-watch teams that accomplished stuff and made me happy. so, no. no doldrums.
it's great. to be. a michigan wolverine.
Beilein should have had it.... that call on Burke's clean block cost it for us.
I think everyone already outlined why it's hard/impossible for us to consistently win NCAA titles in most sports.
With that said, I really think hockey is a place where we could do it. We're consistently an elite program and we've got more titles than anyone (tied with Denver)....granted most of them came pre-1960.
We end up with a lot of talent that leaves early which is great - the best prospect want to come here because every kid's dream is the NHL, not to win an NCAA title and that makes us a very attractive program.
But the fact we consistently come so close, makes me truly believe that there's something we can do to get over that hump. I don't know what it is and how we can do it, but I think it's possible for this team to consistently win hockey titles. The other sports, sorry but I just don't think we can ever really expect to be a consistent NCAA champion there's just too many factors against it.
I just.... I really, really want to share a major championship with my kids while they're still youngish and impressionable. I was little in the late 90's but I think those championship seasons in football and hockey are the main reasons for my fandom today. Right now my kids just see Michigan as an inept sideshow. Ugh.
Don't have kids but I can understand that.
I was 10 when we won the championship for football.
I'm born and raised in California with a mom from Michigan. She didn't like sports (my dad did but had no ties to Michigan) but the fact I had family there and they won it when I was a little kid was enough.
Between the undefeated season in 1997 and Steve Yzerman's double overtime goal against St. Louis (this was also the first hockey game I ever watched on TV) I was hooked as a Michigan/Detroit fan and have remained one ever since.
My mom was so bad at sports that probably only in the last few years does she consistently know the difference between the University of Michigan and that school in Lansing.
Here's a nice thought...in each of these three highest revenue generating sports, Michigan has won it's most recent game against both Ohio State and Michigan State...