Anyone else planning on riding off into the sunset after this season?

exactly.....  I doubt I can do it even though I said I would

Losing next year will be easier to digest.  Our legendary coach is gone. He has pilfered most of the coaching talent. Our new head coach most likely doesn’t have the connections or clout to attract top level coordinators.  Coach Moore is also left with the cupboard being quite bare, especially at QB. This is not in any way shape or form a Day / Urban transition.  
 

My expectations just need to match reality. Probably going to be a season that doesn’t resemble much of the last three. 

Also easy to say when our pets heads are falling off.  If we were bringing back what Georgia has or what OSU is buying hand over fist, hell even Oregon buying two QBs with a good coach, our excitement would be through the roof. 

We are in a weird period - the best thing for Michigan is SEC B10 duopoly (fuck the NCAA) agreeing to an annual salary cap.  Because right now things are a bit outrageous with every player on your roster an annual free agent. 

"There's no way I'm invested in Michigan Football anymore," I maliciously told myself, while pulling up MGOBLOG nine times a day in February.

This was my thought also.  If they go 7-5 and keep recruiting in the high teens for the 2025 class and can't clean up the NIL issues and can't figure out a way to deal with transfer credits they are in danger of sliding out of the top quarter of the Big Ten.

Ohio State, Oregon, USC, Washington, Penn St.  Those teams are not going anywhere and seem to be further ahead on NIL and underclassmen portal players.  Grad transfers are great, but getting some 5 star guys that did not track for one reason or another at their original school would be nice. 

Also, good luck but my guess you will be right back in it.  We all will, it's what we do and we can not stop.

Go Blue!

And starting next week, I'm going to go on a strict diet and exercise regimen.

But tonight it's pizza, beer, cannolis, and a movie.

I hung on tight through the Rich Rod years.  Why the Hell would I consider bailing now?

There's a chance 2023 goes down as "the last college football season."  Not saying it will be, not saying I want it to be, but with all the changes coming (some of which help the players and should happen) it will be a very different sport soon.  

With you, and stated this a few times.

So happy we finished off the era of at least psuedo-amateur collegiate athletics with the title. 

My, "Just want to see one National Title in my lifetime" dream has been met, and the rest can be enjoyed and followed but not really stressed over.

2006 and 2016 were complete heartbreakers.  Beating OSU and winning the B1G the prior 2 years were incredible, but this past year was the ultimate, 15-0, and everything surrounding the program.  It was a movie, will be documentary worthy, and the ultimate dream season of dream seasons all things considered. 

Given Harbaugh, signgate, lat year of era of BCS / 4 team playoff, Zinter injury, northern team winning it all, etc, etc...it will probably go down as one of the most memorable seasons in CFB history, and probably the most significant in modern CFB history.  

In the end, it was Michigan again, Michigan.  Just hope the espn 30 for 30 does a good job and isn't a hit job.

Same. They (the schools, the NCAA, the TV networks) intentionally broke the thing we loved and replaced it with a facsimile roughly approximating the thing we fell in love with so they could wring every penny of revenue possible out of their NFL Lite model.

I think a better question to ask is "Are you willing to embrace the changes?" in terms of the future of CFB.

Before NIL was a thing, most CFB fans agreed players should receive some sort of payment or funding for what they bring to the university and community. Now that it's happening, most folks are seeing the residual effects of paying players in the public domain. We can call the players student-athletes, and they still are, but as Dartmouth delineated just recently, they are also employees to some degree. I never really cared if players got their degree or not but that's almost a moot point going forward.

As with a lot of professional sports, which CFB is becoming more so every day, I figure I'll tune in for the first week of the season, the rivalry games, and the playoffs as I still love football whether players get paid or not. But similar to the OP, the growing disparities amongst the elite haves and have-nots along with players making $100k+ with no contractual obligations and the price of tickets or app subscriptions has cast some doubt into my fandom. It's also made me realize it's ok to be a "casual fan" instead of a "diehard fan". I'm not an alumni of UM and the shit-talking by other fans stopped bothering me a long time ago. I'll be fine, you'll be fine, Michigan will be fine, but when the on field results start to reflect some of these changes, I don't think there's a pathway back.

That is a great way to put it.

The last game was won. The great team and its leaders dispersed back to their homes, or were so affected that they journeyed beyond to the western isles and now reside in myth.

But like in the Tolkien trilogy, The Shire was changed as well, and it marked the end of an era; an end of a magical time, and the beginning of a more mundane age of man. Now we maybe seeing the same thing with college football - run like a feeder league for the NFL.

I feel this deeply.  I'm saying I'll be calmer now...but ask me again when M loses a game on a missed FG or dropped pass and see how I do.  

If Hoke had been given another year, I was really thinking about not watching games the next year or at least 0 effort to do so. I was in Korea so watching games means being sleep deprived. I had a buddy there who said he was a big college basketball fan and then one year just decided to stop spending his time on it. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Harbaugh ended that though.

You think the Alabama fan base expects to win a "natty" next year because I sure dont.

They lost their legendary HC too, my guess is their expectations for the 2024 season have been similarly tempered.  

When Michigan has academic standards, portal admissions and NIL like those schools then you absolutely should have those expectations. 
 

In reality, what Michigan and Harbaugh just accomplished the last 3 years, especially this year, is unparalleled going off the program’s past 20-25 year history. 
 

It’s pretty reasonable until the University makes drastic changes (not holding my breath) most years won’t be like 2021-2023. 
 

You can’t act like Stanford/Northwestern and expect results like Georgia. It doesn’t work that way. 

I think that's an easy one to answer. We shouldn't expect the same because Warde Manual's out here talking about "transformational, not transactional." We had a great team this year, lost a bunch of talent (not to mention coaches), and haven't been playing the game you need to play to have another championship level team coming off the bench. It would be ridiculous for us to expect some repeat year coming up.

Of course, the larger question is--why won't Michigan play the money game we'd need to if we wanted to be Bama? And honestly, for me, I'm glad we don't. Maybe we'd be able to make it work, but plenty of teams play that game and lose anyway (A&M, Ole Miss, Tennessee), and it's not our identity. I think our goals should be 1. beat osu, 2. find a way to maintain credibility as an educational institution in the midst of the SEC-zation of college football. If we can do those two things, I couldn't care less about a national championship.

Because we don't have the built in advantages in talent that the south has, and we don't play the NIL game?

OSU for all those expectations aren't much different than Michigan national titles wise. Michigan has won 74% of their games since Bo began coaching. Might just be better to enjoy it and realize Michigan is a mountaintop team once every 20 years or so? Quite honestly would be thrilled with 2 or 3 more titles in my lifetime as someone in their late 20s.