Devin Bush Jr give some thoughts about Michigan football, “Yeah, I need hope, too....."
Co-host Jason Whitlock, a former Ann Arbor News reporter, briefly recounted his time covering the Michigan football team in the early 1990s before asking Bush to “give me some hope” that Harbaugh might turn Michigan into a national-title contender.
“Yeah, I need hope, too,” Bush replied, chuckling. “I got to keep it real, but we just not winning the big games. We have to find a way to win the big games. We got to do it.”
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January 28th, 2020 at 1:13 AM ^
But win one, get into the playoffs and then you probably get a recruiting surge and start to close the talent gap.
And yes...with the NCAA issues that may still not be enough...but it sure as hell wouldn't have hurt.
January 28th, 2020 at 9:45 AM ^
Hoke’s one win didn’t change the tide.Sure it did. Hell, people in Ohio started to believe in him. Jersey sales went up. That was a good start.
January 28th, 2020 at 12:43 PM ^
Yeah. We beat an OSU team with an interim head coach that couldn't decide on a quarterback by a whopping 6 points with a coach that we would later find out is not good at coaching. Can't believe that win didnt change the program..
January 28th, 2020 at 10:51 AM ^
Exactly. I think if Michigan wins that game in 2016, the whole program can breathe a huge sigh of relief and know that beating those guys when they’re is possible. I think they come into those games much more relaxed and knowing that it can be done, vs. now when they all have to be walking around on eggshells, terrified to make just one mistake against OSU.
When you play that way, especially against a team as talented and focused as OSU is, you’ve already lost before kickoff even happens.
January 27th, 2020 at 11:37 PM ^
Recruiting services should start downgrading 5 stars to 4 stars when they commit to Michigan.
January 27th, 2020 at 11:42 PM ^
Maybe they already did?
January 28th, 2020 at 7:54 AM ^
We have to get the 5 stars first.
January 27th, 2020 at 11:39 PM ^
Michigan has a culture of weak minded candy ass mental midgets. We're not a college blue blood anymore bc of our arrogance. We need to be more self aware as a program. Get it fuckin done. Find a way.
January 27th, 2020 at 11:51 PM ^
Michigan needs to be more chimp and less chump.
January 28th, 2020 at 6:40 AM ^
Talent needs to be coming in more diluvial and less marsupial.
Fixed it
January 28th, 2020 at 12:33 AM ^
You can hope in one hand and shit in the other. Guess which one fills up first?
January 28th, 2020 at 12:41 AM ^
It's not about OSU.
UM isn't blowing teams out and then at the end of the season, "not solving OSU's defense/offense".
We've struggled against everyone at times. UM just isn't on top. It's not in that top tier of programs right now.
Michigan hasn't looked "Solid" or "Dominant" in a very, very, very long time.
OSU (and Bama), quite literally, stomps teams to the ground. Like 80-90% of their season is spent throttling teams, and then letting off the gas, sometimes 95-99%.
Only the 2016 team did that for any decent multi-game stretch.
Until we can get back to that, we will not be competitive against OSU.
We can't struggle during the season, and then expect to have a shot against OSU. They are simply too talented.
It sucks, but that's where we're at right now.
January 28th, 2020 at 7:10 AM ^
Yea, because the 2015 team didn't pitch 3 straight shutouts, and the 2018 team didn't win 10 straight games heading into Columbus.
Michigan has been plenty good enough to beat Osu. They just don't show up when it's time to play The Game.
It is about Osu. More specifically, it's about the belief ingrained in Michigan that they can't beat Osu. That's the problem.
January 28th, 2020 at 8:03 AM ^
The problem is that they don't show up enough in the other games. They're not showing up in the OSU game 11-0. In 2015, they should've lose to both Minnesota and IU. The Iowa loss in 2016 hurt more than the OSU loss because I still think we would've finished #4 in the CFP if our only loss was in OT at OSU.
They haven't played up to their potential in most road games since 2006 and that's troubling to me when you have a coach who won some of his biggest games on the road.
January 28th, 2020 at 2:00 PM ^
This is exactly my point.
You can pick out small statistical leaps anywhere on any team at any time.
But we haven't been CONSISTENT.
Every single time OSU faces Michigan (in the last 5 years), they average being unbeaten or 1 loss.
Urban Meyer has 4, count them, F-O-U-R, BIG Ten losses in his entire 7 seasons at OSU. He's never lost more than 2 games in a single season.
We haven't won a conferece championship since 2004. Are you kidding me?
In that time, OSU's won 9 conference championships since we won our last conference title, oh and a National Championship (oh, and a previous National Championship just the year before our mighty conference championship).
We can't win our conference, have never won our division, and contrastingly every year OSU has legitimate National Championship contention, and every other year they win the conference, and go on to the CFP, and have even won it all.
And you think we're on the same level as OSU?
It's factually not the case.
And even worse, if you look at OSU recruits, they actually under-perform given their rankings, future draft picks and NFL performance. They could/should do better.
Michigan can turn it around. They have the resources, coaching, access to talent, and overall ability to do it. LSU was in much the same predicament. And then they weren't. So, this is not doom and gloom. We can do it. And we should. But these are the facts.
I love my team, I love the school, I love the program, I love the coaches, and I love the players, and I love my Falls in Ann Arbor. Wouldn't change it for the world. But I'm not blind to the reality of it either.
January 28th, 2020 at 2:42 AM ^
Clearly, the biggest problem is too many back-biting malcontents in the "fan" base undermining positive karma.
People with poisonous, disgraceful attitudes who drag down everything within reach (then, hilariously, prattle on about the importance of winning attitude and moxie).
A thorough fan-base delousing would work wonders.
Absent that, time for real Wolverines to show pretenders the power of positive thinking. :)
January 28th, 2020 at 5:41 AM ^
I guess at least Hoke's teams did tend to 'get up' and play better vs OSU even if they ultimately lost to non-Fickell teams anyway. Hoke certainly did more with less in that department. I don't know why Harbaugh's teams recently seem to piss themselves. 2016 was all there for the composed win in Columbus, and since then it's been a mess of either crappy gameplans or crappy play. It's a bit depressing because I don't know when this changes.
January 28th, 2020 at 8:23 AM ^
There are two types of preparation...x's and o's and the other (insert your name for it "getting up", mamba mentality in lieu of the Kobe tragedy, focus, intensity, etc. etc.)
It appears UM has had a good x's an o's gameplan overall. Even this year, up against a much better osu team they had a plan that put them in position to stay in this game. This generally seems the case.
Along with that though the guys seem to make all kinds of mental errors. Dropped passes here and there happen but four from a guy leaving early to the NFL a month later? Lazy routes, missed tackles, and as soon as adversity hits you lay down.
Putting osu aside Michigan seems to just fall apart at the first sign of adversity. When things are going good...they roll...as soon as something negative happens you may as well leave the stadium or turn off the tv. This is why (I believe) we keep seeing so many blowouts. They get up like ND they roll. They get punched in the chin and you have the UW, PSU, and OSU game.
I don't think there is one thing but I really don't seem like this is overall and x's and o's preparation thing and is more the "other", whatever you want to call it.
January 28th, 2020 at 10:37 AM ^
I don't think you can say that about the PSU game though. They absolutely got punched in the mouth and could have rolled over. But they didn't and almost pulled it out.
January 28th, 2020 at 9:33 AM ^
Bush was here for 3 years and didn't win the big games either, so it's kind of weird for him to say that.
January 28th, 2020 at 9:40 AM ^
Bush couldn't get our offense to work. He's not going to throw anyone under the bus, but he might as well be saying "we need to get a good QB to beat OSU."
January 28th, 2020 at 12:26 PM ^
I don't know how you fix what's currently ailing Michigan, but I've just come to terms that Michigan is what it is right now. They're not on OSU's level, and given that the program doesn't have the cult-like devotion to this rivalry that OSU has, they're not going to get there anytime soon. OSU, year to year, is simply more talented, better coached, they emphasize winning it more, and they boast a massive psychological advantage in winning this game. Something that grows with every passing year that Michigan keeps losing.
At some point, I just stopped assuming this was a phase Michigan would work itself out of and just came to the conclusion that this is what Michigan is. Outside of a few aberrations, winning between 8-10 games a year has been the norm. That's what the program is, and I'm done trying to convince myself it will be anything more than that.
Yes, it really effing sucks having to share a division with OSU, and I'm confident that if we played in the West or had a schedule like ND's that we would've won 11-12 regular season games a year pretty consistently by now. Hell they probably would've made the playoff by now in at least one of those scenarios. But this is the hand Michigan has been dealt. They have to suck it up and find a way to deal with it.
January 28th, 2020 at 4:25 PM ^
He's not really saying much here that we don't already know. He acknowledges that there's a problem, but he doesn't really diagnose it (which is probably a good thing, since that might require him to throw players and coaches under the bus).
January 28th, 2020 at 10:39 PM ^
Devin Bush knows BPONE.