When were you most disappointed in the program?
Seems to be a lot of excitement and optimism around the upcoming season. So of course this got the Maizen side of my brain thinking; what event in Michigan sports history caused you the most disappointment or embarrassment as a fan (or even a player for some of you fortunate few)?
After what happened in Maryland recently, watching Sugar Shane get put back in the game after an obvious concussion is mine. Made worse due to the lack of awareness and headset worn by Hoke.
August 16th, 2018 at 8:58 PM ^
If only he had made the guys stretch too much, it all might have gone down differently.
August 15th, 2018 at 10:17 AM ^
A strong contender for my own deepest disappointment in the program was when, in September and October of 2009, we could not even muster much support for Rodriguez, and against the Free Press and Michael Rosenberg, from the core football constituency; namely, former football players and coaches. Rick Leach and Gary Moeller were, among a very small number of other football team alumni, supportive. But by and large, the football alumni were disgracefully AWOL in that fight.
It was MGoBlog's finest hour, without question; Brian Cook and his blog become the clearinghouse for the public relations war against the Freep and the rest of lamestream media.
And later, it became Dave Brandon's finest hour, when he refused to go the 'political correctness' route and be apologetic in the NCAA investigation and in the release of the final report.
Though all of that, the most inactive-if-not-disloyal contingent in Ann Arbor were the football alums.
August 15th, 2018 at 11:55 AM ^
Again, it wasn't just the losing. The guy just got fired due to a sexual harassment suit in Arizona. Does anyone really think he was clean as a whistle when he was the head coach here for 3 years?
And while I agree the "Michigan Man" shit was off-putting, the guy wasn't cut out to be a good ambassador for the school. For a fanbase that prides itself on not being Michigan State / Ohio State, the RichRod was exactly the kind of hire those schools would make.
August 15th, 2018 at 11:41 AM ^
I was lukewarm about the RR hire, but was devastated when they hired Hoke. He was not qualified. He then went 11-2, beat OSU and proved most people wrong...until he didn’t. His next 3 years was a complete embarrassment.
August 14th, 2018 at 10:58 PM ^
Y2014.
Empty stadiums.
Losing to rutgers and Maryland in the same year.
Concussion gate.
Giving away football tickets with coke cans.
Osu winning the title.
August 14th, 2018 at 10:59 PM ^
Yeah, but … M00N!!!!
You also forgot Frank Clark.
August 14th, 2018 at 11:01 PM ^
Arabian goggles was up there too
August 14th, 2018 at 11:15 PM ^
2002 Citrus Bowl. Michigan 17, Tennessee 45. UofM was always competitive in my lifetime until that game. It foreshadowed the decade+ to come.
August 14th, 2018 at 11:43 PM ^
ST3 - you and I are from the same era. I always enjoyed your posts, and felt the same way at many times. This was certainly a low point. Syracuse 98' was another beat down that was a shocker. For me, Toledo in 2008 was pretty bad. We couldn't do anything right except give the game away. Off the field stuff is never fun, but from a performance standpoint this was a low point for me. App State would have run Toledo off the field (Toledo's coach was fired at the end of the season even after beating UM).
August 14th, 2018 at 11:16 PM ^
2008. RR yr 1
August 14th, 2018 at 11:22 PM ^
Off the field stuff it was pretty much a lowpoint for me when Dave Brandon had the skywriting incident happen. The following two match-ups Michigan got absolutely MANHANDLED against MSU in East Lansing. Ugh
August 14th, 2018 at 11:32 PM ^
Every year they get further from a time when they were a championship-winning program.
August 14th, 2018 at 11:35 PM ^
From a football standpoint, people will always say App State. I get it...lower division...blah blah blah.... but they were a national championship team. For me, it's the 2008 loss to Toledo. Our only loss to a MAC school. And they went 3-9 that year, too.
August 15th, 2018 at 8:27 AM ^
Yep, it's Toledo. We lost to 3-9 Toledo, fergodsakes.
August 14th, 2018 at 11:37 PM ^
The trajectory of the entire UM program changed the day Bo died. UM is bigger than players on a field and fans in stands and alums in boxes. UM was Bo for ~30 years and has never recovered since his death. We have not been the same - nor performed the same - since that week.
August 14th, 2018 at 11:42 PM ^
2014. Not even close.
August 14th, 2018 at 11:45 PM ^
How dysfunctional our leadership was in the transition of Carr’s retirement It lead us into the dark years. Too many people share the blame.
August 15th, 2018 at 10:48 AM ^
Fairly or unfairly, that whole fiasco and the aftermath really tarnished Mary Sue Coleman's legacy in a lot of eyes.
August 14th, 2018 at 11:46 PM ^
Last year losing to State.
August 14th, 2018 at 11:55 PM ^
No.1
November 17, 2006.
The day Bo left this world. This started the decline of our beloved program. He was The Dean...the touch stone to the traditions that ARE Michigan Football.
Thankfully we've regained some of that with HARBAUGH...but we still have some work to do to get all the way back.
No. 2
Brandon and all the bullshit gimmicky crap he tried to thrust upon us. The stupid skywriting stunt...so low class...only to get skull crushed by those bastards. Cutting down the nets?
No. 3
Have to agree...Toledo and App State.
August 14th, 2018 at 11:57 PM ^
I would have to say the 2008 season. I drove 1000 miles to see the Toledo game and we lost at home. Very embarrassing and I remember telling friends that RR may not win another game that season. Well, MN played awful and we got 3 wins. The defense was talented but RR tried to run a spread offense without spread players. If Harbaugh was coaching the 2008 team he would have wont the Utah, IL, Toledo, Purdue and NU. That would be at least 7-5.
2nd would be the 2012 season. After Hoke had his great 2011 season, he came back down to earth in 2012 and the wheels fell off in 2013.
On the bright side, this bad stretch of Michigan football made it possible to get Harbaugh as our coach.
August 15th, 2018 at 12:03 AM ^
Yeah, I'm going to have to concur with several others and say 2014.
2008 produced a worse record, but that was the first time Michigan had produced a bad team of any kind in my lifetime, and there was, at the time, hope for a better future. 2010 showed that the future wasn't there, but we had Denard.
Going into 2014 we weren't enthusiastic. The kickstarter languished below threshold for two weeks before we finally got it over the hump. The points were broken around then and the board was insufferable. We were stuck with DB and Hoke and expected maybe 9-3 (our three toughest games were on the road, but the rest were all slam-dunk winnable games) which would keep Hoke in for another year of mediocrity.
Then the season hit. The team was awful. There was that lightning delay which caused the game against Utah to be finished up in front of maybe 2000 fans who knew we were going to lose. There was the Minnesota game, which in addition to the Shane fiasco featured: Hoke starting Morris because Dave Brandon told him to, Morris being terrible, and the team getting stomped at home by Minnesota. Then we followed it up by losing TO RUTGERS.
Then things started to get bad. There was the whole DB and Hoke drama, of course, but we also had games to play. One of them was at Michigan State, which most will recall was an absolute humiliation--down 28-3 for much of the game, score a late TD, MSU promptly dunks us again to close out the game. 186 total yards.
There were a couple of wins, but one of them was the M00N game. That's right, a game that is famous for being a horrible game that was scoreless for most of its running time. That's what it's known for. One of the five wins.
And then there was the Coke promotion, the Maryland game, and all those thousands of empty seats and dispirited fans watching Michigan lose... to Maryland.
In short: There were 5 or 6 events in 2014 that would easily, easily be the low point in 95% of Michigan's football seasons. They all happened in one year. Brian was writing about going bowling. Nobody even wanted to watch the games.
It was as bad as it gets.
August 15th, 2018 at 1:22 AM ^
You forgot the whole stake in the ground incident at EL for which Hoke later apologized. So sad.
No question 2014 was the most DISAPPOINTING year/time in Michigan football.
The OP asked for embarrassing as well. So if the categories are separate, The Horror is absolutely without question the most embarrassing moment in Michigan football history.
Everyone remembers that game. Opposing fans and random people still mention that to this day to me sometimes. We all remember 2014 for the agony but no one outside of M fans and our rivals even remember that season. And it was mercifully and immediately corrected with the firing of Brandon and hiring of Harbaugh such that there weren't lasting effects on the program.
The embarrassment from the Horror still lingers and it kick started what would become 8 dark years of M football.
August 15th, 2018 at 8:52 AM ^
Yup, 2014 had 6 low points any one of which could arguably be THE low point of the worst 10 year period of Michigan football.
You left out one that was my personal low point: getting pantsed by ND in the last game between the two teams for a while. I wanted that win badly, as a final "Eff you!" to them for ending the series in such a douchy way. We lost; it happens. But the way we lost was indescribable! After the first two drives ended in missed FGs, not a single possession that came even close to scoring. Repeatedly getting gashed for scores on short passes. The dawning sensation that the two guys who were supposed to be our best player on defense and offense, Blake Countess and Devin Gardner, were our biggest liabilities (and frankly were better players as freshmen, before our stellar "player development" got its meathooks into them).
I watched that game in a standing room only Michigan bar. I threw my hat on the floor and stomped on it, in public, more than once. (Later in the season, during the Maryland game, the bar owner asked how my hat was doing.) I left the bar before the end of the game, and immediately deleted the MGoBlog app from my cell phone. I didn't watch any games, or go to any Michigan fan web sites, and avoided hearing college football scores for the rest of the non-conference part of the season. I finally calmed down and came back just in time for all the other low points you described (making Gary Nova look like Tom Brady was a particularly piquant moment).
August 15th, 2018 at 12:07 AM ^
When Wisconsin ran it 200 times in a row in 2010... because they knew they could.
August 15th, 2018 at 3:06 PM ^
I left after they ran the same play 9 times in a row and scored to make it 31-0.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU... Rodriguez.
August 15th, 2018 at 12:10 AM ^
2008
3-9. A full season of misery. That Toledo loss was worse than App State. Toledo coach was even fired after that season.
August 15th, 2018 at 12:19 AM ^
The only time I ever remember seeing an interception run 100 yards back for a touchdown.
Thanks, Steven Threet.
August 15th, 2018 at 10:03 AM ^
It really wasn't. The App State loss came when Michigan had a team that was supposed to compete for a national title. The Toledo loss was just a bad team beating a less bad team.
August 15th, 2018 at 12:39 AM ^
There have been some moments. RR fared pretty well against ND. But, other than Hoke's first year the majority of RR and Hoke's tenures were pretty disappointing. Last season's offensive production, or lack thereof, was also pretty disappointing making some games almost unwatchable because we knew the defense could only keep us in it so long if the offense couldn't do anything.
August 15th, 2018 at 12:51 AM ^
Most embarrassing...
...Sitting inside Michigan Stadium during multiple Ohio State games, over multiple years, seeing over half of the stadium dressed in red, listening to the "O-H-I-O" cheer/chant go around our stadium.
The most embarrassing and depressing part of that is how many of our fans sell their seats away for a profit and essentially sell away any home field advantage.
August 15th, 2018 at 9:29 AM ^
This is the most irritating thing to me, currently. Obviously a lot of low points over the past decade but that's the past and we can't change it. This is an ongoing thing. Did I think we we're going to win vs OSU last year? No. They had destroyed MSU and we had to start John O'Korn. But I went anyway, because that's what fans do when their biggest rival comes to town. They don't sell their tickets to said rival's fans. I was more pissed about that last year than the actual loss.
August 15th, 2018 at 1:24 AM ^
There were plenty of lowlights from the 2014 season. Obviously the Minnesota game and the concussion incident were among the most embarrassing/disappointing/infuriating/depressing moments of that season. To me, what sticks out in my mind the most was the Utah game. Until then, I had never gotten the sense that the players weren't trying their hardest. Even at the lowest point of the Rich Rod era, it never seemed like the players were just mailing it in. But the visibly uninspired and borderline lethargic performance by the offense in that game was really eye-opening and depressing.
There was one play in particular I'll never forget that epitomized the downward spiral into which the Hoke era had descended: just before the game was suspended at about the 7:00 mark in the 4th quarter due to lightning, Shane Morris threw an interception after taking what seemed like forever to snap the ball (despite trailing by 16 points, the staff ran about ten seconds off the play clock in getting the play to Shane, in all likelihood due to Hoke's chronic game management issues). On the ensuing interception return, no one seemed to move with a sense of urgency in preventing a pick six, and only a desperation shoestring tackle by Morris himself prevented the touchdown. Coupled with the concussion incident the following week, to me that's the Hoke era in a nutshell.
August 15th, 2018 at 1:45 AM ^
The concussion incident makes a ton of sense... and I get the obvious lowpoint. Ironically, just before that - the entire 3rd Quarter we get beat 17-0 after a 10-7 halftime score and honestly the stadium was about 40% full for the Morris incident.
August 15th, 2018 at 1:36 AM ^
Every year in November, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, sometime around 3pm EST seems to be a pretty annual low point for some time now.
August 15th, 2018 at 1:38 AM ^
The way the team played in the bowl game loss to Kansas State told me that he Hoke era was in a downward spiral that would not be recovered from.
August 15th, 2018 at 6:35 AM ^
2008 was a step change downward for the program on which I grew up and loved since the mid-70s. We’ve mostly recovered with Harbaugh, but until we start beating rivals regularly (especially OSU), we’re still wandering in the desert.
August 15th, 2018 at 7:00 AM ^
I was probably most disgusted overall with the program during and aftr that Minnesota game. It was clear there was no leadership anywhere from head coach to AD and to put a player back in after that hit was incompetance. Overall most pissed off after a loss was probably ND the same year. I launched a pretty profanity laced tirade at the coaching staff after that one.
August 15th, 2018 at 7:05 AM ^
Worst moments in order:
1.) 2007 vs Appy state
2.) shutout loss to Notre Dame in 2014
3.) Morris Minnesota incident in 2014 (I was at the game)
4.) End of the 2007 season. Wondering how this talented of a team went 8-4 at the end of the regular schedule
5.) End of 2013 season, and how unfair it was to Rich Rod that Hoke was not fired at the end of that season (say what you want about Rich Rod, but at least his wins INCREASED each season. Hoke’s did not).
6.) 2013 final play against Ohio State.
7.) Hearing Rich Rod in a press conference say that even Vince Lombardi couldn’t fix this defense.
August 15th, 2018 at 8:57 AM ^
7 - Yeah right. Greg Mattison seemed to do pretty well with all of your players on D in his first season. It was a crime he didn't win the Broyles Award for the top assistant coach that year.
August 15th, 2018 at 7:33 AM ^
Harbaugh made me forget my Horror_brandonhokerodriguez_ible memories...onward!
August 15th, 2018 at 8:16 AM ^
Stretch gate
August 15th, 2018 at 8:22 AM ^
You nailed it. That Minnesota game was a mess. The handling of the situation was even worse. Michigan is supposed to be the Leaders and the Best, and I think that saying goes far above and beyond on field results. We fell far short of those expectations pretty much universally that year.
August 15th, 2018 at 8:34 AM ^
I haven't even read any of the comments yet as this is slam-dunk, no brainer for me. It was the day RR was hired. I could not have been more pissed. When the news broke, my mother-in-law was over and she was a WVU grad and big RR fan. I of course let her know how much I hated this hire.
August 15th, 2018 at 8:52 AM ^
As far as a specific moment, it was during and after the '09 OSU game. I swear that crowd was, at best, 50-50 between Michigan and OSU fans. Maybe even slightly in OSU's favor. You heard the O-H-I-O chant far more consistently and far louder than any chant Michigan fans tried uttering. As close as the score was that day, the game seemed to never really be in doubt. Tate turned the ball over, what, three times within OSU's red zone? Just seemed like OSU was toying with Michigan the whole day.
I was relatively young into my Michigan fanhood at that point, but that game was when I realized for myself that this team just can't ever seem to stop getting in its own way against OSU, and almost appears to be cursed. Save for a couple of years ('08, '10, '15), Michigan loses this game not because OSU is better, but because Michigan becomes its own worst enemy. Turnovers, piss-poor play-calling, penalties at the worst possible times. You name it, Michigan finds a way to lose to OSU because of it.
Anywho, the worst part of that '09 OSU game for me was walking back to our house, going past the Union, and seeing several drunken OSU sorostitutes jumping up on top of the Union sign and throwing up the O-H-I-O hand signs for several pictures. They made sure every Michigan fan passing by knew what they were doing, and absolutely no one said anything or tried to stop it. OSU just had us beat, both on the football field and psychologically. Their team and their fans expect that no matter what happens, even if they go down 28-0 at the half, they will come back and win that game. They don't just think they can do it. They KNOW they will do it. And many Michigan fans expect that no matter what happens, until proven otherwise, we will find a way to lose that game.
August 15th, 2018 at 11:15 AM ^
The reality is, OSU has had far more talent and/or better coaching for almost 15 years now. The feeling Michigan fans continually have of "if this play had happened" or "if Michigan hadn't made that turnover" or "if Michigan just had that one player" is not an issue of Michigan getting in it's own way or finding a way to lose. That would imply Michigan was on equal footing with OSU.
The sad reality is Michigan has had to play near perfect football to even be close to OSU and inevitably college kids are not going to play a perfect game. Frankly, it's a credit to the players effort that many of the games over the past 15 years have been close.
We'll see how the season plays out, but this year feels like the talent and coaching capability of Michigan is fairly equal across the board with OSU.
August 15th, 2018 at 8:54 AM ^
Seeing the fanbase fracture and slowly eat itself during the Rodriguez years. Debates over whether he was a "Michigan Man", bullshit NCAA violations regarding practice times, NFL alumni going on Monday Night Football talking about "Lloyd Carr's University of Michigan". Seeing that tribalism emerge in the wake of the program resetting bummed me out.
August 15th, 2018 at 8:59 AM ^
Yep, the past fifteen years or so have had plenty of moments when we needed to look up the plural form of the word "doofus."
August 15th, 2018 at 10:00 AM ^
2014.
It takes a truly impressive level of sustained ineptitude with no real hope for the future for me to feel depressed and apathetic about Michigan football.
The 2014 season did that to me. I didn't even watch the last three games. Haven't to this day.
August 15th, 2018 at 11:02 AM ^
Few things are worse for a program than fanbase apathy. People aren't mad anymore. They just stop caring. That's what happened to me after the 2014 game against Rutgers. Just decided it was a lost season and not worth getting upset over.
Didn't watch more than 3-4 minutes of the MSU game, and while I did watch the OSU game, there was never a doubt in my mind about how it would end. I was even sitting around some very rational OSU fans who told me they were surprised Michigan was playing as well as it was, but Michigan could've gone up 28-0 at halftime and I still would've been convinced they'd find a way to lose.
The only real emotion I felt that year was for Gardner. Felt awful for him. Took a beating week after week, got benched, sent back into the lineup again, and proceeded to take more beatings from opposing teams and from the media. That's a man who deserved better from his coaches. If only he could've been around when Harbaugh got here.