This is your future under Jim Harbaugh
Tired Harbaugh defensive players faking injuries to slow down better teams:
Ranked, one- to three-loss teams losing decisively to mobile QBs under more sophisticated offenses:
We are all frustrated with our won-loss record under Rich Rodriguez. But if we can get the defense fixed, we have a shot to be the next Oregon instead of the next Stanford. Kudos to Harbaugh for doing so much at Stanford, with their admissions standards et al. - not trying to downplay that achievement. But it is far from clear that he would have that record if he was playing our schedule every year. I have spent a lifetime as a Michigan fan rooting for 9-3 and 8-4 and the occasional 10-2 teams that almost always lost when it counted the most.
I, for one, am willing to go through this difficult period in order to take our program to a level where we are consistently contending for MNC titles, rather than winning Big Ten titles and losing bowl games. I am not nostalgic for that era of consistent disappointment, and I dread consigning another generation of Michigan fans to the same fate.
November 28th, 2010 at 12:52 PM ^
Any team can lose because of turnovers etc. The point is that, any given year, there are 5 pro-style teams that are solid in all three phases of the game, and still lose. That extra edge comes from having a superior offense.
Why is it so hard to imagine a spread team with a fundamentally sound defense? We don't need to have a pro-style offense to have a fundamentally sound defense. This is the utterly moronic sentiment I am hearing tonight.
November 28th, 2010 at 12:08 AM ^
2009 for a pro-style team to win a national championship.
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<br>Any style can win, if the talent is there.
November 28th, 2010 at 12:12 AM ^
November 28th, 2010 at 9:13 AM ^
Stanford's "low scoring pro-style offense" finished the regular season averaging 40.3 ppg while UM's offense averaged 34.3 ppg (including 22 pts scored in 3 OT against Illinois).
Btw, Wisconsin's pro-style offense averaged 43.3 ppg in case you were thinking about arguing that the Pac-10 defenses are "so much worse" than Big Ten defenses.
November 28th, 2010 at 12:55 PM ^
Analyzing the productivity of our offense without appreciating the impact of our terrible placekicking isn't useful. But maybe you blame RR for that too. Not that you wouldn't have a case -- but I see that as terrible luck rather than bad coaching. Fair-minded people can disagree.
November 28th, 2010 at 1:04 PM ^
...he's the one who decided to offer Gibbons (the scholarship kicker) despite the fact that there was not one *single* major program interested in the kid, let alone offering him (according to Rivals the only schools with any interest were Central Florida and FLorida freaking Atlantic, that should have told him something).
November 28th, 2010 at 2:50 PM ^
I'd say that RR has a well-established track record (esp. from his days at WVU) for recognizing underappreciated talent. The guy turned Ryan Mundy into an NFL player. Maybe he's terrible with kickers--or maybe it was bad luck. Either way, if you want to blame him for that, I'm not going to fault you for it. It's on his watch and it's his recruit. I still say it's bad luck. The guy was a highly ranked kicker coming out of HS.
November 27th, 2010 at 11:01 PM ^
"Michigan under Harbaugh will be just like Michigan under Bo"
What the hell was I thinking by supporting Harbaugh? We don't want that!
November 30th, 2010 at 12:53 AM ^
Missed the point.
Oogles of 10 win seasons, no championships rings. Sounds good now, but think about it: eras end. The days of "three yards and a cloud of dust" are not really upon us anymore. CFB is flashier, and a lot more spread out.
Oregon, Auburn, TCU ... all BCS 1-3 and they run spreads. In fact, a majority of all ranked team run some version of the spread.
And Rodriguez practically invented it.
Martin hired Rodriguez because we needed something new, something drastically different. Sure, it's been a bit of a pain, but his recruits are only sophomores! Yes, the bar is lower because of a disasterous 2008, but the improvement year in and year out is there.
November 27th, 2010 at 11:03 PM ^
Why don't people understand this, same clowns who want harbaugh are the ones who say the Pac 10 blows, thus arguing against their own argument.
November 27th, 2010 at 11:06 PM ^
You have no idea what Michigan would do with Harbaugh. You are talking out of your ass.
Nobody goes 11-1 every year. When is the last time Michigan went 11-1 twice in a row?
November 28th, 2010 at 12:09 AM ^
Michigan under Harbaugh blah blah
how the FUCK do you know that? You have a crystal ball on your lap right now?
Coming to Michigan means better recruits, better facilities, bigger stadium....
This is utter bull. Hey, listen, even if he doesn't win a title every year here (man, those expectations of yours are realistic) the season he is having is far superior to RRod's best season in the much weaker Big East.
November 28th, 2010 at 12:57 PM ^
That the Pac-10 this year is stronger than the Big East was in 2007. Indeed, one can make the opposite case.
November 29th, 2010 at 11:03 PM ^
South Florida football program was started in 1997 and spent 4 years in 1-AA and then moved up to 1-A in 2001. They were pretty much a new and young program when they entered the Big East in 2005. Same thing with UConn, they were mostly a D1-AA program until they made the move to the Big East in 2004. With Rutgers being a poor team at the time and with Pitt struggling, the conference schedule was very favorable to WVU between 2004 through 2007.
November 30th, 2010 at 12:54 AM ^
Harbaugh is 2 years ahead of Rich Rod in the coaching transition.
People don't even want to give Rodriguez a chance to get to 11 wins, they'd rather play Notre Dame and kick a coach out the second he doesn't put up 10 wins.
November 28th, 2010 at 9:22 AM ^
"...the Pac-10 is weaker than the Big Ten."
But the Big East, where RR had his limited run of success, is better than the Big Ten? You are not actually making that argument, are you?
When the Big East was still a decent football conference (e.g. when VaTech, Miami (YTM), BC were still in the Big East and Syracuse didn't suck), RR won 3,9,8 and 8 games in those first 4 years. After the Big East fell apart and had to take in teams like UConn, USF, Cincy and L'Ville, RR finally started winning a lot of games. Btw, Rutgers went from perennial CFB doormat to consistent bowl team the same year RR started winning 11 games (2005). Those two facts lead me to believe that RR's "success" was a product of the major watering down of his competition level in the Big East rather than any great improvements in his teams.
Yes, in case you are curious, I made this same argument about RR's "success" when he was first hired in 2007. I was very skeptical about his ability to ever be more than a mediocre coach at UM and I believe my skepticism has been justified after seeing the on-field results.
November 29th, 2010 at 4:56 PM ^
November 28th, 2010 at 12:16 AM ^
November 28th, 2010 at 7:24 AM ^
Harbaugh did not recruit all of that talent to go to Stanford. They went 1-11 before he got there but they were rebuilding and had some good recruiting classes before he came. If you are going to say he has done such an incredible job rebuilding Stanford maybe we should see all of the facts. You can't just say wow Harbaugh is doing an amazing job because he's rebuilding at Stanford and now they are good. What kind of talent was he working with when he got there? I see a depth chart full of young players who were ready to step in a play. He had talent to work with, RR did not.
Through 3 years Harbaugh and Rodriguez have similar records at their respective schools and yet we talk about Harbaugh like he has worked some magic in making Stanford a good football team. It's not like his admission standards stopped him from getting NFL players. It's not that hard to win at Stanford, they even did so under Tyrone Willingham. Maybe when he actually wins something we can annoint him but at least win a bowl game or a conference title before you are talked about as being a better coach than a guy with 4 conference titles and two BCS bowl wins. I mean we have all of these people saying Rich Rod has to win his bowl game this year and yet Jim Harbaugh couldn't win the Sun Bowl in his 3rd year at Stanford.
November 28th, 2010 at 1:07 PM ^
He is in his fourth season, so Harbaugh recruited a lot of the talent of this year's 11-1 team. And Toby Gerhart was recruited by no major schools (Gerhart's offers included Duke and Nevada).
November 29th, 2010 at 11:28 PM ^
RR only won 1 BCS game, the Sugar Bowl against Georgia I believe. The Fiesta Bowl game (in 2007) victory is credited to Bill Stewart as RR did not coach the game.
November 30th, 2010 at 12:55 AM ^
It wasn't Rodriguez's team that won would be stupid. And I know for a fact you're not stupid.
November 30th, 2010 at 1:29 AM ^
I didn't say that it wasn't RR's team, I'm just saying that giving him the credit of winning 2 games might be somewhat overstated and the game win is credited to Stewart (if you want it to take it literally). It was the team that he brought in and coached up to the end of the regular season. The game planning and coaching during the bowl season was mostly to those stayed. All in all, whomever is credited with winning the game is not really all that important.
November 27th, 2010 at 10:47 PM ^
Harbuagh's record at Stanford is: 4-8, 5-7, 8-5, and soon to be 11-1. And in case we forgot, Rodriguez is 3-9, 5-7, 7-5. Bascially, the magical panacea that is Jim Harbaugh had almost the exact same record as Rodriguez through his first 3 years. What are people really hoping for here? At least Rodriguez has a track record of sustained success at other coaching jobs, what does Harbaugh have?
November 27th, 2010 at 10:51 PM ^
Dumb argument. Stanford was nothing before Jim arrived. I agree that the cupboard wasn't full when Rich arrived, but it wasn't as bare as it was at Stanford. And what about Randy Shannon? He goes 5-7, 7-6, 9-4 and now 7-5. No guarantee there is progression year-to-year. BS argument.
November 27th, 2010 at 10:53 PM ^
Again, I'm not agitating for Rodriguez to be fired, but this point is so fucking stupid, and has been repeated so many times that it makes me want to blow my head off.
First -- it is a hell of a lot harder to recruit at Stanford than Michigan. Stanford is a historic joke of a program, and has the hardest admission standards in Division I-A.
Second, in Harbaugh's first year, Stanford beat #2 USC. In his second year, they defeated Oregon State, who finished the year ranked 24. In his third year they defeated #11 Oregon, and #20 USC, and finished the year RANKED 21 (coaches poll) and 19 (AP).
There is NO comparison between Harbaugh's third year, in which Stanford beat ranked opponents and finished ranked, and ours, in which we eked by the Indiana's and UMass's of the world and got handily defeated by all decent opponents. Harbaugh defeated ranked teams every season he's been at Stanford -- Rodriguez hasn't done it once.
There are arguments for keeping Rodriguez. But the "Rodriguez has done just as good at Michigan as Harbaugh has at Stanford" argument is so obviously, moronically wrong that everyone who brings it up makes themselves look stupid, and does not help their case.
November 27th, 2010 at 11:00 PM ^
There are arguments for keeping Rodriguez. But the "Rodriguez has done just as good at Michigan as Harbaugh has at Stanford" argument is so obviously, moronically wrong that everyone who brings it up makes themselves look stupid, and does not help their case.
I never said this. Harbaugh has accomplished plenty at Stanford, but it is far from clear that he can win MNCs at Michigan. Talking about the last three years is only partially related to how the next ten years will go.
November 27th, 2010 at 11:19 PM ^
I know you never said that. I was responding to Mr. Vociferous, who did say that. Which is why my post appeared, indented, under his comment.
November 28th, 2010 at 1:00 AM ^
Honestly, I was shocked when I looked up Harbaugh's record online. From all of the talk and from what I remembered of the upsets over USC and whatnot, I would think that he was turning out 8-9-10 win sesaons that last couple of years at Stanford. Instead, I learned that they didn't crack .500 until last year.
Yes, Stanford is tough to recruit to, but its the Pac-10, its California, and the wins over USC bought a lot of cred. So its not that fucking hard. And dont give me that admissions bullshit. Its football -- where's there's a will there's a way. Also, yes Stanford was 1-11 the year before, Harbuagh got there, but minus the talent that graduated before Rich took over, we were pretty damn close to the same thing.
Basically, all I was saying is that the big hope is for a guy that upset a couple of teams in his first 3 years while posting a sub-.500 record. And then in his 4th season, he put out a good team. I'm just sick and fucking tired of people wanting to kick out Rodriguez before he gets a chance to -- just like Jim Fucking Superhero Lord of Football -- put up a good season in his 4th year. We have like 20 starters returning. 9-10 wins should be easy. If he can't do it then, then fine, hit reset.
November 28th, 2010 at 8:18 AM ^
And dont give me that admissions bullshit. Its football -- where's there's a will there's a way.
If you don't realize why this is a stupid thing to say, on a Michigan message board and this year of all years, maybe you should do a little reading on the team's recruiting this past year before posting again.
November 30th, 2010 at 1:00 AM ^
- Big Ten >> Pac-10. Pac Ten teams are playing opponents who have won, on average, 4.7 games. Big Ten teams lead all conferences in average opponent wins, going up against teams with an average W total of just over 7. Perhaps Stanford didn't have much, but the Pac 10 has gotten weaker and weaker since his first year.
- Stanford isn't historically a joke of a program. 12 Rose Bowl appearances shows there's at least some history there.
Perhaps you're right that you can't directly compare them -- but if you can't do that, then there's no arguments for bringing him here. For example, all the pro-Harbaugh people can spew the same shit and can be countered with the same reasons. The comparisons are irrelevant.
November 27th, 2010 at 10:58 PM ^
What is Harbaugh's conference record at Stanford and would you care to post it in comparison to Rich Rodriguez's conference record at U-M?
November 28th, 2010 at 1:06 AM ^
Learn how to use the internet yourself. If you want him fired, then fine. Fucking fire him. I don't give a shit anymore and I'm tired of arguing with dickbags like you. You have your mind made up and there isn't shit I can say to make you change your mind. Just be careful for what you wish for because we are very close to becoming Notre Dame -- washed up program with a revolving door of coaches that the national mindset wonders why people still care about us.
November 28th, 2010 at 1:28 AM ^
I already know the answer and judging by your vitriolic response, so do you. There's no comparing their respective records, so, of course, your only response is to resort to personal attacks.
Totally ruined.
November 28th, 2010 at 8:19 AM ^
Why don't you learn to use the internet to look up the term "rhetorical questio"?
November 28th, 2010 at 12:59 PM ^
What do you think Harbaugh's record would have been at Michigan in 2008, with Nick Sheridan as your starting quarterback, and your top QB, OL, WR, WR and RB graduated?
November 28th, 2010 at 7:38 PM ^
I'm not so sure Mallett would have transferred if Harbaugh had been here. Arrington, Boren and Mitchell may have stayed as well. This brings up another of RR's shortcomings: roster management.
November 29th, 2010 at 1:43 AM ^
And everything to do with the fact that Mustain transferred to USC from Arkansas. Mallett's first choice had always been to play at Arkansas, but he didn't want to sit behind Mustain for 3 years. That's why he came to M. When Mustain went to USC, his dream job was handed to him.
November 30th, 2010 at 1:01 AM ^
So, you're saying the PAC-10 is on equal footing with the Big Ten?
Yep, can't take your argument seriously... at all.
November 27th, 2010 at 10:47 PM ^
Huh...you know what else the future would be with Harbaugh?
Beating mediocre teams 38-0 while blocking punts and making field goals and forcing 5 turnovers while committing none instead of winning 67-65 with 5 turnovers and no special teams whatsoever.
Woe is us if that's our future...
November 27th, 2010 at 10:48 PM ^
Are you paying attention!?
November 27th, 2010 at 10:50 PM ^
in the Big Ten
November 27th, 2010 at 11:57 PM ^
doesn't work in the Big Ten.
November 27th, 2010 at 10:50 PM ^
Can we also fix the offense while we're fixing the defense? Yards mean nothing -- it's executing, i.e., scoring points, when it matters.
November 27th, 2010 at 10:56 PM ^
Let's just focus on scoring. This offense will be able to put up 60 points a game against big physical big ten defenses. I can't believe that a Michigan fan's concern is actually offense. I am practically ashamed to be a fan as the same team as you after this whole year you are complaining about offense, and not as concerned about our defense.
November 27th, 2010 at 10:58 PM ^
This offense will be able to put up 60 points a game against big physical big ten defenses
Yep. Just give me a call when that happens, mmmmkay?
What was that score again today?
November 27th, 2010 at 11:01 PM ^
I think you have a hard time sensing sarcasm. We are all super pissed on what happened today, but I was being VERY sarcastic.
November 27th, 2010 at 10:51 PM ^
I, for one, am willing to go through this difficult period in order to take our program to a level where we are consistently contending for MNC titles, rather than winning Big Ten titles and losing bowl games.
Let me understand this more fully. Harbaugh's teams - which are sound on offense, defense and special teams - are somehow doomed to failure while our teams - which are horrendous on defense and special teams and are extremely mistake-prone on offense - are destined to win the national title?
November 27th, 2010 at 10:57 PM ^
Jim Harbaugh's teams will be just like what we've had pre-RR: Solid, top-20 teams that aren't good enough to win MNCs.
RR, provided he can bring the defense back to Michigan standards, will contend for MNCs.
If you don't believe that RR is capable of coaching a Michigan-level defense, than my scenario will not come true. I believe he is capable of it. To me, that is the only rational discussion to have about the coaching situation.