How do we replicate OSU's modern success?
1. We are at point A. Let's start talking about how we get from point A to point B (being a NC contender). Let's stop re-re-re-analyzing the past. Let's start, simply, talking about how best to get from where we currently are, to where we would like to be.
2. Where we are. We are the 3rd richest college football program in the country (behind just Texas and Texas A&M, according to Forbes' latest summation). We have the 2nd biggest fanbase/tv audience in the country (behind just OSU, according to the NYTimes' latest summation). We have the biggest alumni group in the country. We have facilities that are second to none. We have academic and athletic support-staff that is second to none. We have the biggest stadium in the country. We have a high school-to-the-NFL pitch that is as strong as anyone's. We have the best academics-football combo in the country. Where we are, Point A, is a pretty nice place to be.
3. Where is OSU? Leave your BS at the door, please. OSU is an outstanding, public, Big10 University. They have the exact same admissions standards as us. And I'm sure their generic "general studies" degrees are just as incredibly easy as ours. Our administration -- from Lloyd to Harbaugh -- has given its head football coaches everything they need to compete. Facilities, Assistant salary pools, recruiting budgets, private jet use, support staff, marketing, fan support, you name it.. we have it at the absolute highest level. Michigan football coaches get everything they need to succeed. Don't listen to lazy a-holes like Harbaugh...who don't even go out on recruiting trips, or research coordinator hires, let alone assistant hires...cry foul. The state of Ohio produces more talent than the state of Michigan, but it's not THAT big of a difference. Count the 4+ stars that have come from each state over the past 5 yrs and you'll find it's about the same. There's a reason OSU's recruiting has had such a national emphasis the past decade. And leave this BS about "cheating" at the door, too. If Juwan Howard was in Columbus signing the classes that he is here.... you people would be absolutely unbearable to listen to. Michigan players get benefits. OSU players get benefits. Stop acting like this is Yale. Stop acting like OSU is Ole Miss. STOP MAKING STUPID EXCUSES. How do we get from point A to point B??
4. Recruiting. Look at OSU's staff. 9 of their 11 on-field coaches have been named to 247/Rivals Top-25 Recruiter lists. Day, Wilson, Alford, Hartline, Studrawa, Coombs, Mattison, Johnson, Washington. They have two other young guys who probably will as well soon. Look at our staff. We have 4.. Gattis, Sherrone, Warinner and Jean-Mary. Ohio State emphasizes recruiting more than we do. Plain and simple. They don't have Urban Meyer's son who doesn't recruit that well on staff, or Josh McDaniels' brother, or NFL/Old School guys who don't like to recruit.. or who just aren't very good at it (Zordich, Shoop, Nua, Brown). At OSU, being an outstanding recruiter is a pre-requisite. And being an *outstanding* (not okay, or good, or even really good) recruiter is something that needs to become a prerequisite to working here too. We need a head coach who understands the importance of this.
5. Culture. How many times in the past 6 yrs have you read a story about some disgruntled player's (aka child's) mommy and/or daddy complaining to Harbaugh about how their son is being treated?? This is a high school program. It's where kids go to school and then play football after class. At OSU, it's a professional operation. It's focused. It's where high school kids go to become pros, and where they take classes on the side, and where their mommies and daddies can't baby them. This is 2020. If you want to be a Lawyer, a Doctor, a Teacher, a whatever... go to Northwestern, go to Vanderbilt, go to an Ivy league school, go to Rice, go to Stanford, whatever. If you want to be an outstanding NFL player with a great fallback option (and a great masters you can pursue as a 5th yr, or in the pro off-season)... come to Michigan. And this isn't 6th grade camp where your parents get to second guess the counselors. This is billion dollar business. This is training to become a professional. This is cut-throat, cream rises to the top, soft washes out. This is beat f******g Ohio State or f*****g else. We need a head coach who comes from a Saban/Meyer/Dabo-like no-nonsense professional background. Someone who can set the culture here and treat this like a professional program.
6. Coordinators. Last 5yrs, who have OSU's coordinators been? On offense, it's basically been Urban (one of the greatest offensive minds of his time) passing the torch to Day (seemingly one of the best offensive minds of his time). Kevin Wilson...one of the modern Big10's greatest offensive minds...has been in the background. Tom Herman, Mike Yurcich, Tim Beck. It's 2020...even Nick Saban is giving up 40 pts in playoff games. You have to be innovative, you have to be able to score. If your head coach isn't a great offensive mind, he'd better know how to hire one. Josh Gattis.... we made a big deal out of this guy.... he wasn't even Mike Locksley's backup OC at Bama, he was Locksley's backup's (Enos) backup. Pep Hamilton went to the XFL after being here. Tim Drevno was coaching RB's in the Pac12 after being here. It's been a joke. Look at OSU's D-Coordinators over the last 5yrs. Kerry Coombs...NFL guy (who also happens to be one of the best recruiters in modern Big10 history). Jeff Hafley...NFL guy (who was probably the best DC in all of college football in his one season before becoming a HC, and also TORE IT UP as a recruiter). Greg Schiano... NFL HC (who was set to be Bill Belichick's DC between the Tennessee fiasco and the Rutgers return... and who recruited the HELL out of the northeast). Luke Fickell.. another of the all-time best modern Big10 recruiters, who may now be the frontrunner for our HC'ing job. Alex Grinch was an assistant as well in that span. Durkin was a fine DC, and recruiter.. before his issues. But Don Brown was just a gimmick ACC DC who's never recruited other than 3-stars and New England talent. These OSU guys aren't getting paid or supported more than Michigan coordinators. They're just smarter, better hires. And we need a coach who knows how to spend our money wisely.
*****
To summarize a long story. Point A is an outstanding place to be, for us (we're very blessed to have a number of things). Point B --> being an annual NC contender; a program that rivals or even bests OSU's.. is a very realistic goal. We need a new head coach who A) Sets a professional culture. B) Emphasizes the importance of recruiting and hires great recruiters (maybe perhaps himself even being a great recruiter). And C) Who knows how to spend our top-notch money well on coordinators. We need someone with talent, with hunger, and schooling in the modern ways.
-Mario Cristobal's seen how it's done in Saban's program. He's had some success already in running his own. Excellent recruiter. Excellent hire'r of recruiters and coordinators.
-Jeff Scott. He's seen how it's done in Dabo's program. He's just starting off on his own. Venables, in the same token, has seen how Dabo's done it as well. Both are great recruiters personally.. hopefully they'd hire great ones, too. Tony Elliott..not as great a recruiter as the other two...but there.
-Urban would obviously be the ideal hire, if there's enough money in the world to get him. I don't care about his idiot ex-assistant/Earl Bruce's nephew's ridiculous domestic situation or texts at this point.
-Joe Brady and Lincoln Riley are the kind of outstanding offensive minds Meyer and Day are/were. Lincoln's got some good experience running his own show. Brady's seen it done right at LSU.
-Fickell, Campbell, Fleck, either Stoops, others.
I don't know who the right answer is. But I know that this is far from a hopeless situation; in fact, I think it's still an outstanding situation. And the issues that need to be addressed to get us from point A to point B are, in my opinion, far from insurmountable.
November 16th, 2020 at 8:49 AM ^
Hire Steve Ryan to replace JH and we will change the culture of the team. This guy is a winner and motivator.
November 16th, 2020 at 8:57 AM ^
1. Get better players
3. Get better coaches
November 16th, 2020 at 8:59 AM ^
How do we replicate OSU? Get a bigger bag!
November 16th, 2020 at 9:14 AM ^
And then what? This bag man garbage is just a weak crutch. The gap of talent is wider between Michigan and Sparty, than it is between Michigan and OSU...and yet, Sparty's first year coach is able to get his players and coaches ready for that game.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:40 PM ^
Go jump off a bridge and never come back. Please. Quit your stupid baseless whining and bitching. You're a fucking idiot and you don't know anything. That you speak with such authority on an issue you know absolutely nothing about makes me fear like hell about any children you might have.
November 16th, 2020 at 9:01 AM ^
Hire an elite HC, which no proven ones like Meyer are on the market. OSU got lucky.
November 16th, 2020 at 9:27 AM ^
Did they get lucky with Ryan Day too?
November 16th, 2020 at 9:43 AM ^
Nope. Meyer identified a talented guy and then the Admin gave him a month long extended interview in 2018 while Meyer was "suspended".
November 16th, 2020 at 10:52 AM ^
Did they get lucky with Ryan Day too?
No, Meyer mentored him. In case you forgot Meyer's office is in the same building as Day's. Day is merely following the blueprint Meyer taught him.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:35 PM ^
There's no luck about being competent.
November 16th, 2020 at 11:58 PM ^
Day fired all of Urban’s friends and revamped the defense, it was evident that the product was starting to slip under Urban. Day benefitted from the infrastructure that Urban built - particularly Pantoni, Marotti and others but Day took it to another level by making changes
November 16th, 2020 at 3:12 PM ^
It's hard to call OSU lucky when they've not made a bad head coach hire in 70 years.
John Cooper I guess would be the worst Ohio State head coach since the war cut the Paul Brown era short and forced them into some screwy hires as they got the program back together, and by the end of the season Cooper and Jim are going to end up right around the same winning percentage.
That's not luck, their admin just doesn't accept shitty football and makes sure the people in charge of hiring/firing know that every hire has to be good one. Michigan has had one AD who seemed to know what he was doing and since then Michigan's Athletic Department has just been a bunch of empty suits promoting from within and hoping the old tree still has some branches. The one time anyone hired from outside the family, it was a guy nobody bothered to vet or prepare him for internal expectations
November 16th, 2020 at 9:12 AM ^
Think outside the regular box. Hire Steve Ryan. The guy is a proven winner and he motivates his team. He just wins. He could possibly be our Jim Tressel. If we have to look inside the box how about Gary Peterson (former U of Washington) coach?
November 16th, 2020 at 9:35 AM ^
Culture Change.
We all love Bo, but it is time to modernize. Harbaugh was a regressive hire and it is showing. College football is not won with fullbacks anymore. It is won with 300+ yard passing days and 30+ points no matter your opponent.
If you want to be OSU then we have to get someone who knows that program. That someone appears to be Fickell. He was there under Tressell and Mayer. My only reservation with Fickell is that the guy has never had to recruit Ohio "against" OSU. Recruiting Ohio while at OSU has to be the easiest thing in the world. And then at Cincy he is positioned for OSU to direct kids they don't want, but also don't want going to other big ten schools his way. If he jumps to UM (Or MSU for that matter) he loses that relationship and now has to recruit Ohio from a disadvantage.
That said I'm not sure the key stakeholders (Athletic Department, Boosters, University Faculty, etc.) want to be OSU. And as long as the money keeps coming in there is really no reason to change.
November 16th, 2020 at 9:46 AM ^
"And then at Cincy he is positioned for OSU to direct kids they don't want, but also don't want going to other big ten schools his way."
How do you know this? It's a strange idea that gets repeated on this site.
Is it really reasonable to assume that every Ohio kid who wants to play at OSU will, when it's clear he's not quite OSU material, follow their "advice" (or whatever) and go play at a vastly different school when he could to to Kentucky / MSU?
November 16th, 2020 at 10:08 AM ^
I don't have any evidence. It just seems logical for the following reasons.
1. Strategy. Depriving your opponent of talent and opportunities to make inroads in Ohio is desireable from OSU's perspective. If you know you don't want a particular kid because lets say you have a 5 star coming from elsewhere do you want that kid going to a conference Rival where you will have to face him every year and he may be extra motivated by spite? Or do you want that kid going to a school you rarely play and no matter how well they perform you can win head to head recruiting matchups against? I'm not saying OSU recruits for Fickell. Just that they may recommend a kid give Fickell a chance.
2. Fickell is deeply associated with the OSU program (1999, and 2002-2016 including a one year stint as Interim HC). Why wouldn't he leverage that in recruiting his home state?
3. History of doing it.. Bacon writes that Woody Hayes encouraged Catholic Ohio kids to go to Notre Dame instead of UM and he had a policy of never playing Notre Dame in his book "Bo's Lasting Lessons".
November 16th, 2020 at 1:18 PM ^
All your points make sense, but you didn't address my question.
If a kid wants to go to OSU and finds out there isn't room for him, there's an ocean of other schools available (including the MAC-tastic ones in his state, of which one, Miami, is quite good academically). Would Cinci be on the list? Sure. But, I really don't get why the kid would take direction from a school that spurned him. It doesn't make any sense.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:48 PM ^
We are talking a different language if you think college football recruits are concerned about academics. If they were, then Miami OH would dominate the conference year in and year out as it blows the rest of the MAC away in academic prestige.
It is not so much "taking direction" as it is talking positively about Fickell at Cincinnati. And then the rest of the intangibles kick in. OSU already is negatively recruiting against UM/MSU/PSU. And then there is the social hit to these kids, how many will lose friends over going to a rival big ten school? How many have family members saying they'd disown them if they went to UM (Spielman's dad said as much)?
And honestly we are off on a tangent. My point was that Fickell doesn't go head to head with OSU at Cincy. So I'm not sure how he will do recruiting wise in OH were he the coach at UM becasue he has never had to deal with recruiting against OSU.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:33 PM ^
Why the fuck do you think they want to lose?
November 16th, 2020 at 9:37 AM ^
You’re asking the wrong question. It would take a decade’s worth of great play (something we haven’t had in 17 years) and then hiring an all-time great to come in to put us at OSU’s level. Sure, getting the all-time great coach first would speed up the process but the odds of that happening...
What you should be asking is how we replicate what MSU did 2010-2015 and what PSU did 2016-2017 - that’s a lot more realistic and is still a higher level than how far Harbaugh has gotten us.
November 16th, 2020 at 9:37 AM ^
Get the best offensive mind/recruiter combo you can find. Get the new staff in before McCarthy hits the practice fields. Start the new generation with the the 2021 class (if we can hold most of it together). The worst outcome would be McCarthy is coached by a lame duck staff and has to relearn an offense when a new staff comes in.
I would throw a bus load of money at Cristobal, Brady, or Riley. Riley makes 6.15 Mill right now. We can beat that, give him $10 mill a year with enormous goal incentives. He's proven he can beat OSU both on the field and in recruiting and is a true QB whisperer. He would be a home run hire for me. Brady would be similar but less proven. Cristobal would be one step lower for me but he would be a solid not home run hire. These guys might seem like a reach but I think it's much more reasonable than thinking Urban is walking through those doors...
I think settling for Fleck, Fickell, or Campbell will be a huge mistake and only prolong our misery another 5 years. In terms of Venebales, i'll wait until a former DC proves he can win as a HC in the current offensively driven era. Not an ideal pick for me.
November 16th, 2020 at 9:57 AM ^
I completely agree those 3 coaches should be at the tip top. Cristobal, Brady, or Riley (though the latter seems very unlikely). Campbell is another I could really get behind.
I don’t want Fickell period. Fleck may be ok, but not that exciting a hire.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:34 PM ^
Agreed.
November 16th, 2020 at 9:55 AM ^
Step one - flush anyone who looks at anything OSU does and thinks "that would not fly at Michigan" down the toilet.
November 16th, 2020 at 10:13 AM ^
Ironically a year ago we were making fun of schools that had their athletes in online classes. Well that argument has to be out the window now since COVID has made all classes online.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:29 PM ^
Uh-oh..... you're making sense. You must be a troll. Michigan is Harvard you asshole, don't you know!?
November 16th, 2020 at 2:55 PM ^
Actually JFK said he was a graduate of the Michigan of the East, Harvard University. Not the same. Geography is a lost art at the Columbus football school?
November 16th, 2020 at 2:30 PM ^
What the fuck does OSU do that's below board??? You're such a fucking loser. Go cheer for Brown.
November 16th, 2020 at 9:57 AM ^
Sacrifice all values for winning. After 20 years of doing so, we'll be in the same spot as OSU. I'm talking cars, tattoos, etc. We need to recruit football players, not student athletes. And then don't even let them go to school.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:28 PM ^
What the fuck are you talking about you fucking douchebag? What fucking values would you give up by hiring competent coaches and recruiters?? Go jump off a fucking bridge honestly. Michigan doesn't need fucking loser retard fans like you.
November 16th, 2020 at 10:02 AM ^
CBS Sports Radio covered this on Saturday.
For Michigan to compete with Ohio State, we'd need to pay players going rate to come to Michigan. It's that simple but we're not going to do it because that's not who we are.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:27 PM ^
How fucking stupid are you??? Why would we need to pay players?? If we had....say Urban....and he put his people in place... you don't think we'd be as good as OSU in a few yrs?? How did some of you fucking retards even learn how to turn on a computer?
November 16th, 2020 at 10:18 AM ^
I thoroughly appreciate this kind of analysis. Not all this BPONE, woe is us, we'll never be good again kind of listless depression that is in the fan base.
As an engineer, this is the kind of attitude we need to have. What does it take to get from A to B? And once that's identified, execute. And Michigan truly is fortunate enough to have the tools to get there. There is no legitimate reason why we shouldn't be competing at the highest level.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:25 PM ^
Thank you. You must be an MSU troll or something. Not endlessly bitching and moaning and making up baseless excuses about how the "administration" doesn't want us to win spending all those hundreds of millions of dollars on the program...... or how "ohio state doesn't have class....and cheats"
You don't sound like a stupid ass bitching whining moaning complaining not problem-solving michigan fan at all. Total troll.
November 16th, 2020 at 10:47 AM ^
1. I've got an undergrad degree from UofM (Ann Arbor). It wasn't worth s**t til I added a masters to it from a different Big10 school. Same as anywhere else. Michigan is barely a top-25 school.. in fact its tied with party-school USC as the 25th best school in the US according to USNews' latest ranking. Georgetown, Berkeley, Emory, UCLA, Notre Dame, Cornell (and all the other Ivies-Brown, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Y/H/P), Washington-St. Louis, Rice, Vandy, Duke, #9-Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Cal-Tech, U-Chicago, Stanford, MIT. Those are all better schools than Michigan according to the best recognized objective source. I'm sorry you thought you went to an elite school.. unless it was a graduate program at UofM.. you didn't. Your parents paid $60-200K for you to get shown power point slides by GSI's in auditoriums for 4yrs at a basic, public midwestern university. If your GPA is 0.1 lower than an OSU grads'...all else being equal...he's getting into the grad school program, not you. Drop the Michigan is an elite school bulls**t. The grad-school's, of course. The undergrad program is just cash cow.
2. Why in the f**k would anyone from OSU "troll" the Michigan board. That's like a 30yr old going to a retirement home and making fun of all the residents because he runs faster than them. Do you not understand how f**king sorry they feel for us?? We're a joke. A complete joke. We're not even fun anymore. We're just an afterthought. A speedbump before their real season begins. You think they'd waste time "undercover" pretending to be Michigan fans??
3. Hire a coach who runs a professional f**king program. Someone who's got experience in a professional program. Someone who's seen how it's actually down in the modern era at the highest level. Someone who's worked for Saban, Dabo, OSU, or the like for a long-enough time. Hire someone who can recrut. Someone who can hire recruiters. Someone who can hire good coordinators. It's not unethical. It's running a f**king program correctly. It's not being a f**king national laughingstock.
4. OSU, MSU, Alabama, Florida, whoever. They have the exact same NCAA admissions standards as us. They follow the exact same rules as us. We are not a private school. Our administration does not in any way hamper Harbaugh from getting recruits in. We're not ND, we're not Stanford, we're not Rice. It's hard to get transfers in sometimes, that's true, but a relatively small deal. Local papers would be very critical if a guy with a wrap sheet signed into a class, that's true too.. but that's also a small deal. How many high schoolers with criminal records have ever gone onto become standout big time college football players? Less than 5% of them I'd imagine. Those aren't the kind of kids you typically want anyways... from a work-ethic, discipline standpoint. And whatever basic-basic program OSU offers to student athletes who don't care about academics... I'm sure ours is just as easy. Even if you have to take "Spanish" for a couple of years. And no, f**king "Spanish" is not a "hard" class.
If nothing else, the soft losers who never played football and don't know anything about football, and who make up the majority of this s**t hole board.... if nothing else... you perfectly represent the softness and ineptitude of Michigan football in the 2000's.
Oh yeah. "Bama North". That was my hope of what Harbaugh would turn us into. The dominant program of the north.
Bye.
November 16th, 2020 at 11:21 AM ^
I got an undergrad engineering degree from Michigan and I am doing pretty good with no masters...not sure what degree you got that wasn't "worth shit". Michigan, MSU and Clemson DO NOT have the same admission standards...I applied to those schools and the requirements were very different.
November 16th, 2020 at 12:46 PM ^
I'm pretty sure the OP is an undercover OSU fan, which begs the question... why? We get treated fairly decent around here if you're not being a dick... and MGo IS a Michigan blog after all.
To your point though... I believe the "admissions standards" discussion is centered around student-athletes on scholarship, not the general student body. You're pretty naive if you think UM's (or any other public D1 team) athletes would all qualify for undergrad admission without the "athletic scholarship" portion attached to their application. His point is valid.. UM/OSU, etc. all admit athletes under the minimum NCAA eligibility requirements.
November 16th, 2020 at 1:15 PM ^
When it comes to athletes completely agree, I dont care to make excuses for such things. This is not new even though people like to use it as a reason to make themselves feel better. Michigan failures go deep as in administration culture deep. Michigan administration has always been scared to take the next step, they are content with good/okay results when it comes to sports as long as they dont run into any "scandals". Even guys like Meyer and Saban would not be able to save us, unless the school and boosters get behind the football program and the idea of win at all cost.
It was fun to compete with OSU back in the days when we both had the same system, then Tressel came aboard and took you guys to the next level, while we stayed still. Then the rest is history.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:22 PM ^
Ridiculous stupid ass assumptions. The administration is trying to win. It's why they paid a coach $10M/yr and a huge assistant salary pool. Top-notch facilities. Biggest stadium in the world. Private recruiting jet. What aspect of the administration giving Harbaugh everything he could ever want feels like they don't want to win? How the fuck can people possibly be this dumb??
November 16th, 2020 at 3:26 PM ^
Has anyone else come to the realization that it is just incredibly hard to put together as successful of a college football program as Bama or OSU (I would include Clemson but they don't have the longevity yet).
It took probably the best college football coach of all time to bring Alabama to where they are now. There is only one Nick Saban and the only other coach to even approach him was Urban Meyer, who coincidently helped cultivate the only other CFB dynasty (OSU was much more Georgia/Florida, less Bama before Urban came around). That is two programs that happened to land two of the best coaches of all time.
Now look at other storied football schools:
Georgia (Michigan south with better recruiting)
Florida (up and down every year)
Miami (hello?) Florida State (haha)
USC (can't even compete in the PAC 12)
Texas (see above sub PAC 12 for BIG 12)
Notre Dame (on par with us, if we didn't have to play OSU)
Nebraska (checked to confirm. Still sucks)
That is a lot of national championships, booster money, recruiting hot beds, and total wins without much to show for the past 10-15 years. Two legendary head coaches (Meyer and Saban) and one up and coming legend (Dabo) have totally dominated the past decade of CFB and have only widened the gap between them and the rest of the country. What makes you think Michigan should be contending with OSU and Bama if other schools with just as much if not more resources and money can't. This is just the reality we live in. It's Bama, Clemson, and OSU's world, we just live in it.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:23 PM ^
No shit.
November 16th, 2020 at 2:24 PM ^
How fucking stupid are you that you think I'm talking about general student admission standards???
November 16th, 2020 at 11:39 AM ^
I call bullshit, Monsieur Troll. @buckeyejonross gave you some good alumnus advice.
Why double down on the lie? You are busted. Own up to it.
November 16th, 2020 at 10:48 AM ^
I'm don't think all of the above state opinions are equal. OSU and Michigan don't have the same academic entry requirements. Maybe the NCAA qualifications are the same for entry but Michigan won't allow certain student/athletes admission to the University. I'll use the Shea Patterson, Van Jefferson and Deontay Anderson scenario as an example. Shea Patterson, Van Jefferson and Deontay Anderson all applied for admission to Michigan. Only Shea was accepted. Van was denied admission to Michigan but was admitted to Florida which has higher academic standards than OSU, Clemson and Bama. Deontay was denied admissions as well and ended up at Houston. Those types of scenarios happen often at Michigan. So we are not playing on the same level for recruits. I think we could recruit at an elite level if we admitted the same athletes as Bama, Clemson and OSU. I don't see a problem with it. The athletes that would be given special admissions status would only count as about 2%-4% of the total student body. With the resources in the athletic department these student athletes would get so much additional support. This new admission policy would, in no way, diminish the Michigan brand. I assert it would improve it by allowing the athletic department to achieve Elite status. Also, we don't allow most of our student athletes to sit in the athletic facilities and take online classes. Michigan requires students go to class. I'm certain there are students as OSU, Bama and Clemson that never see a classroom because they are there to play football. Michigan needs to focus on being Elite in all sports. They must evolve with the culture of sports being king. They will always be Michigan.
If we were to make a coaching change I would go after Jeff Scott or Jeff Candle. Recruiting Ohio is a must for this program.
November 16th, 2020 at 10:53 AM ^
Those are transfers genius. Transfer credits and UofM don't mix for whatever reason.
And "ohio" recruiting is not "critical". This isn't 1990. Ohio talent isn't what it used to be. Do yourself a favor and actually look at how national Ohio St.'s recruiting has been. Crazy right? Having some knowledge of something before you make a declaration???? Crazy.
November 16th, 2020 at 10:58 AM ^
Let's not forget....Greg Mattison was here for Hoke's entire tenure, and for the first four years of the Harbaugh era. I'm sure he had a few conversations with Harbaugh and Brown about philosophy and talent development.....and tried to figure out how to beat our offense every day in practice.
Then, Washington was here for a year. Working very closely with Brown.
Losing TWO defensive assistants to OSU and getting boatraced both those seasons by OSU.....I'm sure.....had no correlation. ?♂️
This year....no spring practices, a bunch of inexperienced players playing, and no "warm up" games.....along with COVID opt outs.....along with key injuries......has made Michigan, Minnesota, and Penn State all look awful.
Getting to "OSU level" isn't going to happen any time soon. But.....remember.....even the factory that is OSU has brain fart moments. Remember them getting crushed in back to back seasons by far inferior teams (Iowa and Purdue)? Even they are subject to looking like crap....and they are in a FAR BETTER position, in national perception and recruiting.
I'm not happy with the hot garbage that has been on display for the last three games, but this is a crazy year.
With that said.....our measuring stick of OSU isn't a fair comparison. It's like running a race and starting 300 yards behind the starting line, and bitching about not winning the race, against the raining gold medalist.
We just need to get some perspective, and start trying to be a great Michigan team, and stop measuring ourselves against what OSU is doing.....with their 20 year head start.
November 16th, 2020 at 11:06 AM ^
No. You are absolutely wrong. If you're running a software company (I'll speak in terms you nerds can understand), and some other software company is continually kicking the sh*t out of you for 20yrs.... you look at what the rival software company is doing better than you and adjust. You copy methods. You replicate. Maybe once you recognize what's making them so successful, after a thorough analysis... you're able to do it even better? And you surpass them.
You don't just make up unsubstantiated bs and cry to your investors for 20 consecutive years about how they're unethical and can't do calculus.
November 16th, 2020 at 1:43 PM ^
didn't michigan's football program start with a gigantic head start on ohio state?
November 16th, 2020 at 11:07 AM ^
It's not very hard being a student at Michigan if you play football. I know this because the current head coach at Michigan said so in 2007. The idea Michigan can't be great because Michigan wishes to be noble warrior poets is just silly and it's why everyone makes fun of Michigan.
November 16th, 2020 at 11:08 AM ^
THANK YOU!!