Analysis of Appalachian State from Sbnation
It's sad that we now have to realistically wonder whether Michigan will rush for positive yards against an FCS team. This is what happens when you allow Dave Brandon and that fool Mary Sue Coleman to control an athletic team. They've allowed Michigan football to slip to a point no one would have thought possible during the Carr years and have shown obvious ineptitutde at garnering, even maintaining, support for the team. Thank God that drunk Coleman is headed out the door to another $200,000/yr part time "consulting" job before she can build another tire-fire like RR. Congratulations Mary Sue, you're paid $500,000+ to work a part-time job and run a historic football program into the ground with your inattention and foolish decisions. And can anyone explain Dave Brandon's genius decision to schedule Appalachian State again? What good will come from this? I doubt any more good than came from installing a giant macaroni on Michigan Stadium's hallowed ground, pasteing tweeting hashes all over the field, putting advertisements on uniforms, or his juvenile and embarassing sky-writing escapades.
If we aren't willing to spend the money to get a real coach, not some bottom-feeder-builder with the word "Michigan" somewhere on his resume, I doubt we'll ever make it back to where we were. Michigan is now at a disadvantage. You can't stock a team with only Midwestern recruits anymore. There needs to be more focus and money placed on revenue sports and less spent on another practice field for teams a total of 67 people in the world care about. I'd take one more win in football over a "national championship" in a non-revenue sport any year.
If you think that MSC ever "controlled" the football team, she's not the one who's a fool.
on MSC. She's the president of the University, not the atheltic program. Is athletics part of her job? yes, but she does, and should have bigger things to worry about on her plate. To me the blame for this really falls on bill martin. Why was he off sailing instead of finding a coach? Why did he never offer the job to Les Miles, a proven coach and a Michigan Man who was more than wanted to be our coach, and worst of all....how in the world do you not know that Carr is retiring? The entire cfb world knew that 2007 was Carr's last season after the app loss, so how is he the only one with his head up his a$$???? Can't say I blame Brandon at all for this. The Michigan coaching job isn't nearly as prestigious as it used to be and it had to be hard to attract a quality candidate with the dysmal record the last 3 years and all the in-fighting we were doing. What quality coach would want to come to a place where half the fanbase loves you and the other half wants to see your head on a stake? I know that's certainly not a job I would want unless it was my absolute dream job....and that's how we got stuck with Hoke. Not really Brandon's fault there, he just picked the least awful candidate in a pool of abysmal options.
Dave Brandon will put enough emphasis on Athletics for everyone. Don't worry about that.
President > AD
that the fans will let him significantly cut the atheltic budget? If this were Texas state or Eastern Idaho University you'd have a fair point. But this is Michigan. Athletics is way to important to the school, it's fan base, and donation money for the President to completely gut the entire athletic department's budget and not be placed on the Hot Seat himself.
Push back? Like he has so far against the B1G scheduling baloney? HALOL!
DB is a company man all the way.
Schlissel has already indicated his belief that when googling "University of Michigan" the links you get at the top should be academic and not athletic in orientation. Whether that translates into conflict with the athletic department is another thing entirely.
I agree that Schlissel would be taking a risk if he tries to take on Brandon right away, but from what my various contacts in the University have told me, there is a thoroughgoing and active dislike of Brandon in the academic community. I suspect that Schlissel would have a great deal of support if it came down to academics vs athletics, but I doubt such a confrontation is going to happen.
They should be focused on the University matters and athletics should be in the background of that for the President of any University. And yes! How is it Coleman's fault for the state we're in. She relied on Bill Martin to make the correct decision regarding our football coach as he knew a lot more about athletics and football than she does. It would stupid of her to disregard Martin's opinion when he knows so much more.
this rant is obviously just an excuse to rail against Mary Sue Coleman under the guise of being about something else.
I thought the last thing that the article brought up was rather interesting, regarding the timing of Appalachian State's official entrance into FBS play versus the conference into which they have gone. It seems like they should be good enough to do OK in the Sun Belt, but you wonder if their recent slide and the performance hit that some teams take from the shock of entering FBS play (or even just changing conferences sometimes) will affect them significantly.
They are right, if you look at their stats from a few years ago versus the stats of the better teams in the Sun Belt, Appalachian State might have even been in the discussion to win that conference possibly (admittedly, my Sagarin calculations are chicken scratch on a circuit map right now).
I know it's cool to hate Brandon for this, but it will be nice to finally beat ASU and downplay the 2007 loss after September.
This. I mean, the Stanford-USC major upset from the same year comes up regularly, and now Stanford is better than USC and has won four of the last 5. Nobody cares that we were a win over OSU away from being in the Rose Bowl that year. Nobody cares that we beat Golden God Timothy Tebow in the Capital One Bowl.
I think Michigan fans bring up the fact that we beat Tebow in the Cap1 Bowl, the same year we lost to ASU as an example of:
1) Beating Urban, even when he had Tebow
2) Lol @ SEC>B1G
Also, that Stanford game (and the fact that Lane Kiffen is an awful coach) is why Stanford > USC is the case today. And I think from a betting line perspective, that was a bigger upset.
I'd be shocked if anybody on the team cares what the A.D. says.
when I was a young kid in the B-School, if the Dean ever happened to be around (dude never spoke to me), I would be a little nervouse. I mean boss' boss and all.
I'll rephrase: While it's reasonable to assume the team respects Brandon's position and authority, I doubt the players will be truly motivated or inspired by anything he says. That will come from their coaches, and from each other.
But we're not as good as we were in 2007, either.
To me this is the real danger of playing Ap State: we struggle to win or, God forbid, lose.
I'd hope for a dominating win with some positive signs of improvement in key areas.
This is App State.
NO WATER IS HOT ENOUGH TO WASH AWAY THE SHAME.
70-0 won't cover our shame... but it wouldn't hurt to try it out.
We won't dominate them. It's gonna be very reminiscent of 2007, although hopefully with a different outcome. They have a very experienced offense coming back from last year as pointed out in the review in the OP, which will give our defense a serious challenge. Furthermore, this is the very first game, so I expect our offense to be extremely shaky. The O-line has a ton to prove, and they won't have had any time to gel, so expect a lot of 3 and out's from us in the first half. Hopefully, we can get something going through Devin's legs and just throwing it up to Funchess and letting the big man go get it, but in my opinion, I don't see us having any run game outside of Devin in the first half. It's going to be very very close, and I wouldn't be shocked to see it come down to a last-second field goal again.
If that's how things go, the temperature of Brady Hoke's seat will instantly get red-hot.
but after reading that preview I am much more nervous about this game than I was 30 minutes ago. I know app state only won 4 games last year, but they return something like 17 starters, so they'll have a ton of experience returning and should significantly improve from last year (that's what we're hoping for from our own squad right?)
Oh and Greg Mattison is a good DC.
Their QB has over 70% completion rate......the rb runs for over 5 ypc.....those are both things we can't say about our team right now. I think it's naive to pretend that app state is copmletely devoid of talent, and it's that line of thinking that was prevelent in 2006, so you'll excuse me if I disregard your comment.
This is their first year in I-A. They went 4-7 against I-AA competition last year. This is their first year with a full set of scholarships. Picture a MAC team in their first year off of probation. They are devoid of what we would consider to be talent. I'm sure that they have their share of "diamonds in the rough" but consider for a moment that even if you took away their Michigan offers, Jeremy Jackson, Thomas Rawls, and Jack Miller would have a vastly superior offer list to just about anyone on the Appy State team. I realize that they were "young" last year. So were RichRod's 2008 and 2009 teams.
We should absolutely trounce this team. I'm not saying that we will, but if our coaching staff if worth a damn, we should.
I want us to win by at least 4+ touchdowns and that has nothing to do with revenge. It would be about the program starting to trend up and getting it's feet back on solid ground. App. St. will merely be a team in the way.
We beat CMU by 5 or 6 TD's last year to open the season up, and look how it ended. Would a 4+ TD win be nice? yea absolutely. But we won't know anything about team 135 until we play Utah... and that's at the earliest. My big measuring stick is going to be staee. That game will tell us who this team really is.
This stupid, stupid doubletalk and armchair pessimism (read: bitching and moaning) is an inch away from straight-up trolling.
Your entire spiel here is "We're going to lose, but even if we don't, it will be close and I'll feel bad, and even if we win by 50, it doesn't matter anyway because we suck."
I have yet to see a misery-free comment from you. Cheer the fuck up.
-Senior QB
-All reports lead to better team chemistry
-Heavy potential for an excellent defense
-Three tough away games, but easy schedule otherwise
Furthermore, I haven't ever publicly laid out my expectations for the season, so you can take your "contending for the B1G and beating both ohio and staee" straw man and shove it. If we only beat one of them, we'll have a great chance of making the title game.
is the only thing that can happen that will make anyone even bat an eye
draw everyone in the nation to this game. It was such a shock in 2007, that if the game is even remotely close, anybody whose not maize and blue at heart will be pulling for app state to pull it off again, and tv's across the nation will flip to this game if the score is within 7 going into the 4th quarter
After all, this isn't relevant to Michigan anym...
Oh, right.
Eff.
I have no memory of that at all. Never happened. I'm interested to learn more about this upstart program from...West Virginia, is it?
Just saw that Appy State gave up 220 rushing yards per game last year as a I-AA team. They tossed the ball around the yard a lot but they didn't run it very well. It looks like they are a I-AA version of Indiana.
If our first stringers have to finish this game then Hoke should start polishing up his resume.
If we don't win this game, I'll lead the lynch mob to Schembechler Hall.
Hopefully I can leave the torches and pitchforks locked up in my shed.
shame on you, fool me twice...shame on me. Everybody wants to know what to expect from this game. 2007 was such a shock that no body wants to be fooled that badly again.
P.S. I think that even if we had won the NC last year, people would still be analzying this game. It's not an indiciation of how far the program has fallen (all though I admit the Michigan program is at best a middle of the pack B1G program right now), but rather a fear of seeing the Horror 2
Easy there, big fella.... we need you around. You're too important to lose.
I think it will end up being like many, many non-conference games I've seen over the last 40 years. We'll sputter early in the first quarter, then get it together and go out to a comfortable lead by the half, do nothing at all in the third quarter, ASU gets a couple of scores to make us grumble early in the fourth, and a late U-M score or two will make the score look a bit more respectable. Something like 41-20.
I was at a sports bar outside of Des Moines, where I got laughed out of the joint by a combination of Iowa and Iowa State fans. Iowa beat Northern Illinois that day, and Iowa State lost to Kent State the night before, and so you can imagine how humiliating it was for me to get mocked heartily by those douchebags.