The person who began our descent into mediocrity, but gets none of the blame: Lloyd Carr

I blame Bill Martin more than Lloyd Carr.  Martin should have told Coleman that he had a plan to wait until after the BCS title game to go after Miles.  Bringing Les Miles to UM in 2008 would have been a great hire and we probably get 8 to 10 solid years out of him.  

Instead Coleman panicked and took over the search, resulting in us getting RRod.

Lloyd Carr gets plenty of shit, or at least did. Most online Michigan places were packed with vitriol for him, and I'm not gonna get into whether it was deserving or not, but obviously time and the personal tragedies in his family have done a lot to make most normal people move on from any anger they had to Carr. 

At the end of the day, he's the guy who brought Michigan its only national title since integration, and he loved the place. He made mistakes but he didn't get anyone killed or other horrible things some coaches presided over. You could do a lot worse than Lloyd Carr.

I think the real culprit here is Bump Elliott. If he had done his job better we never would have fallen behind OSU in the 1960s and we would have never needed to hire Bo. This is critical because it's Bo's influence that kept us from adapting to the modern game for so long. If Bump does better there is no Bo or Moe and certainly no Carr to screw up the program to this day.  Damn you, Bump.   

Holy shit, just stop. We're not mediocre. Sure we're not with the truly elite teams, but outside of like 3-4 seasons in the last 25 years this program is basically right where it's always been since 1969 - which is very good, top 15 maybe top 10 with 2-3 losses per season. The only thing different is that we're not beating OSU as much, but we're also not dropping that one inexplicable game to an actual mediocre team near as much. Idk, at this point I'd trade a coupe of those to beat OSU I suppose. 

Lol, go fuck your self.  Yeah, our best coach in the last two decades is at fault.  All he did was win titles and at least sometimes beat OSU.  He was way better than Harbaugh.  

I would argue that Michigan isn't mediocre.  We're good, just not elite.  The problem is that our arch rival is one of the 2-3 elite teams in the country.  Has Michigan ever really been at that level?  In Lloyd Carr's thirteen year tenure Michigan had one undefeated season.  He had two 2 loss seasons, five 3 loss seasons, four 4 loss seasons and one 5 loss season.  If anything we are back to where were were under Carr to begin with.  

If Jim Tressel was still the coach at OSU, Harbaugh would’ve beaten them AT LEAST once.

So now the excuse it a coach who hasn't coached in 12 years? This fanbase is starting to be pathletic. News Flash, YOU ARE WHO YOU ARE! Go look at the recruiting classes under JH, This team is finishing right in line with those. Get better players and develop them better, That's it!, that's the key to success anywhere. It's not hard to see. 

Please go away.

Waiting for that "Don Canham really screwed us over" take

This is a horrible take.  Lloyd Carr won us a national title and had us playing for a spot in the National Title game another time.  That's more than Bo could say.

I think Ohio State taking their program to another level is what is to blame.

It really wasn't only Carr on that train to nowhere, it was guys like Joe Roberson, Tom Goss, that kept their hands on the throats of the Golden Goose of the Athletic Department, After Schembechler Hall was built in the late 80's there was never a major facilities upgrade for Michigan Football until 2007 when they broke ground on the Indoor Practice facility. 

We're finally catching up on that front but the fact that Lloyd thought just because he won a NC he could anoint a successor of his own choosing, and then sabotaging RR, and promoting Hoke over Harbaugh back in 2014. 

We've been losing the College Football Arms Race since the early 2000's Harbaugh didn't inherit a blueblood that had a couple of down years he got a trainwreck of a program that has had too much meddling by the former factions of players.

In short there's plenty of blame to go around, the future of Michigan Football and where it ultimately ends up is in the hands of the President of the University. You have to be committed to winning from the top down.

Why you're 100% wrong:

1. Because football is the ultimate team sport.  Lloyd didn't let receivers behind our secondary on Saturday you flipping idiot.
2. Because nothing as big and complicated as this has one person or cause to fix.  
3. Because winning is not more important than integrity, and OSU believes the opposite.

4. Because the fault lies in fans like you: not the coaches, not the players, not decisions that were made in what was then thought to be the best interests of the team but in 20/20 hindsight weren't - in pathetic idiot fans who can't take their brains off the delusional myths they tell themselves, and demand easy solutions to complicated problems.  When the fan base gets its head out of its collective ass I personally guarantee we'll have more wins over OSU.  Without necessarily changing a single thing about the way the team is run right now.  

"He deserves a ton of the blame that we've only won once since he's left..."

—"ImRightYouKnow": Member for 1 month 1 week

Blaming a coach who hasn't coached here in 12 years makes as much sense as MGoBlog blaming you for the OSU loss—we hadn't lost to the Buckeyes this year until you joined.

Eh, 5 years is long enough for JH to overcome those issues.  IMHO there is nothing wrong per se with what JH is doing.  JH has gotten UM back to what they've traditionally been...an 8-10 win team.  What's missing is obviously the conference championships because they can't beat OSU. 

Unfortunately for UM, OSU is better than they've ever been and JH's UM simply can't beat them.  He needs to find a way to become a top 5 elite recruiting destination, ala Bama, UGA, OSU, Clemson, etc., if they wish to compete with OSU.  Personally I don't see that happening in the current landscape of CFB.  Maybe player likeness compensation will change that, but I have my doubts.  Regardless, Carr's issues are not relevant to the last two beat-downs the Buckeye's have given us.

I'd be fine if they raised the thread creation count to, I don't know, 500 or 1000 points.  

The only thing I am mad at Lloyd about is not going for it on 4th down in 2005.  That decision cost us that game and we had that one.  

Uh Lloyd Carr gets a bunch of blame round these parts 

I hate Lloyd Carr. Yes he had a great record but he left the program in shambles for r.r. But Harbaugh should have At least 1 win over osu. J.T. Was short. If we didn’t turn the ball over we could have another. That would have helped in recruiting. I don’t think getting rid of Harbaugh is the answer. If anyone reads the book 3 and out you would understand why I do not like Carr. He would not help r.r. He let any player that wanted out he let them go. 

Yeah sure blame a coach from decades ago. After he won a NC and led the program with class and consistency for many years. Good thinking. 

As my kids often say, "OK, caca."

I'm not trying to be melodramatic, just pragmatic. The rivalry as we know it doesn't really exist anymore, except in words (TTUN, X's for M's during game week, Ohio is the worst state, etc, etc,). I think we've diverged from the original rivalry, with Ohio State literally becoming a football school (and I don't mean in the best way -- football is more important to them than anything else) and Michigan becoming even more of an academic school (great school when I was there, but even more acclaimed and $$ endowed now) with football as a very important component. I can't speak to how that plays out in recruiting in terms of how Ohio State outdoes Michigan, but clearly the emphasis at Ohio State is football first. 

I’ve blamed him the entire time.