UM Football: An Old-Timer's Historical Snowflake Perspective
I hated the outcome of Saturday's game as much, if not more, than any MGoAlum/blogger/fan. I've been disturbed by the general pessimism in its wake even more. Not because it is necessarily unwarranted, but because a lot of it reminds me of pitchfork and torches mentality. I'm probably older than most here (except Herm) and have seen pretty much everything and anything happen in a Michigan game, both good and bad. With the exception of the '97 team, every year has been frought with both. I saw the '69 (yes, I was 4 yrs. old) toppling of Woody's unbeatens. I watched Michigan teams that went 10-1, 10-0-1 and 10-1 get snubbed in '72, '73 and '74. I was enrolled when the '84 team only outscored the opposition by 14 total points and went 6-6. People were screaming for Bo's head. Two years later, we had a Big 10 Championship. I watched the RR years end with a 15-22 record and the cupboard left bare. Then came Hoke. So far, 11-2 (Sugar Bowl win), 8-5 (Outback Bowl loss) and 5-1 this year, so far. The cupboard isn't bare, it is fully stocked with young talent. The record is better than the recent past and better than some of Bo or Lloyd's squads. The team is young. Mistakes have been made by both players and coaches. But prior to the season, I'm willing to bet any of us would have said 5-1 is a good position to be in at this point in the season. Michigan still has 6 guaranteed opportunities to play for victory and likely a Bowl game as well. I'll be watching every one of those opportunities with a discriminating eye and a Maize and Blue heart. I hope you do the same. GO BLUE! EDIT: Yes, I also have paragraph formatting issues.
October 15th, 2013 at 11:23 AM ^
October 15th, 2013 at 11:59 AM ^
I would conject that a lot of people have depressingly difficult lives right now (the struggle is real my brothers) and that Michigan football is a couple hours each saturday where we can relax, get lost in a game, and forget about the bullshit.
A game like Saturday's game causes a fundamental destruction of that plan to 'get away and chill'.
Fuck Al Borges for ruining my weekend...
jdon
October 15th, 2013 at 12:14 PM ^
October 15th, 2013 at 12:56 PM ^
You should start watching episodes of Scooby Doo then, because sports are too random to be consistent for your needs. Scooby and the Gang, however, never disappoint.
October 15th, 2013 at 1:30 PM ^
Good one! I was going to suggest something he could watch that would never disappoint but I could not think of anything!! Scooby is good. Or road runner. S/he always wins.
October 15th, 2013 at 4:16 PM ^
So one fanbase is not going to :"get away and chill."
If that's youre goal, sports are probably a bad idea.
Watch Return of the Jedi again. Now 100% more rapey.
October 15th, 2013 at 9:03 AM ^
is why I believe!
October 15th, 2013 at 9:16 AM ^
As long as we're hauling out the torches and pitchforks, might as well have a firefredjackson and firedarrellfunk.
October 15th, 2013 at 9:28 AM ^
This blog is dangerously close to becoming an anti-Michigan football site, if it's not already. There's constructive criticism and then there's, well, not-so-constructive criticism. I just hope this is temporary because of the disappointment of the PSU loss. Let's not become another Shaggybevo.
October 15th, 2013 at 10:05 AM ^
Thats what is crazy to me. You log on here and can't even tell who is actually a Michigan fan for the most part. Its ridiculous. I think a lot of posters react based on jealousy of what Ohio is doing moreso than loving Michigan. Everybody hates to lose, everybody saw that game and knew that we GAVE it away. It happens in every sport and on every level of sports. The Tigers just gave a game away in the ALCS that they dominated and deserved to win. It happens then you play again.
No we are not a top 10 team yet but so what. The world is not ending. This is OUR team, whether there are Jack Millers & Bad Joe Boldens or there are Jabrill Peppers & Dashawn Hands on the roster. If you jump ship now, don't come back when the championships do.
October 15th, 2013 at 11:09 AM ^
My post was sarcastic. I hope that is recognized. I'm not happy with the offensive side of the ball but I'm never one to think I know better than our coaches. I did want RR fired, but instead of bitching about it I just stopped watching. I'm nowhere near that now. We're winning, and most of the games have a high entertainment value for me.
October 15th, 2013 at 11:54 AM ^
he has no history of getting RBs to the nfl. /s
October 15th, 2013 at 9:18 AM ^
trying to stay away for a couple days after a loss sounds like good advice. I read for over an hour Sunday morning and it really didn't help anything. I have to say that I'm super worried about Saturday. IU has a good offense, and their defense can actually fly around a bit more than I've seen in years. This Michigan team is different than most, though. Michigan is really just playing themselves every game this year outside of OSU. If the good Michigan shows up, we win. If we have 4 turnovers and rush 27 times for 27 yards, we lose. Just don't shoot yourself in the foot, and we might have something.
October 15th, 2013 at 9:21 AM ^
You're taking me back to the days when just about everybody in the state was a Michigan fan. And just about everybody was a State fan as well. You had your favorite when the two played (it was pretty much just people directly associated with State rooting for them, most rooted for Michigan in that game). You pulled for both the rest of the year, just as you'd pull for both the Tigers and the Lions. Michigan football carried the banner for the entire state when they played Ohio. It wasn't just U of M vs. OSU, it was a state vs. state event. That's why Sparty comes unglued when you refer to OSU as 'Ohio'. It's a reminder that the team they live through vicariously is the enemy.
October 15th, 2013 at 9:30 AM ^
The thing is, with age and wisdom comes the ability to see the forest and not get lost in the trees. The Al Borges' forest so far three years running, is that against mighty Akron, UCONN and half-scholarship Penn State, nothing "pro-style" has worked, and the only thing that has worked - Gardner's legs - is anathema to what Borges is purporting to install.
Last two years Al's apologists blamed the wrong talent type (Denard, Omame, etc.), now this year they blame inexperience, and now some are blaming some phantom likelihood that Hoke is pulling an "RR 3 3 5" by forcing Borges into manball... Next year Al loses 2 senior starting tackles. Boy can't wait... Notice barely any mention of Penn State? That was just another datapoint consistent with the overall trend, which now clearly indicates that Al Borges and Funk are failures with no clear turn around any time soon, as Michigan now stares down the barrell of the tougher part of its schedule. 8-4 if they are lucky.
The OP is wrong to try and correlate what is happening now, or what has happened in the last 8 years to anything, even the 6-6 of the Schembechler years. I'm an old timer too at 45 and I do remember the days when Indiana was an afterthought, as opposed to the monumental, unguaranteed must win that it has become. If anything it's precisely this type of arrogance, that "we're Michigan and we bounced back from 6-6 under Bo so we'll likely bounce back under Hoke" mentality that is just another cause of our overall decline over the last 20 years. If Hoke thinks this way, figuring "we're Michigan we'll get better", and fails to remove the o coordinator and o line coach poop under his nose come the offseason, the decline will probably just continue.
October 15th, 2013 at 9:27 AM ^
October 15th, 2013 at 10:30 AM ^
I enjoyed reading your post, and your thinking is where I should be, but am not. I must be in my second childhood.
I'm even older than you are. I met Bo as a student when he first came to Michigan; to give you a sense of the era, shortly after he was hired, he gave a speech to the IFC. We all wore suits and ties for the event. I thought he was a madman, but in a good way.
In those days, there were refreshments after the event, and it was all very genteel. The coaches stayed around to talk with us. I guess the Athletic Department thought it would be a good idea to have frat officers be enthusiastic about the team, the team, the team. But I digress. The point is I'm older than dirt, and if I had a brain in my head, I'd share your perspective.
Today, however, in addition to all the stuff you mention in your post, we also have the internet. Oh sure, we can go look at porn. Or we can shop on Amazon or go to a guitar forum. We can entertain ourselves in so many ways.
But there's little on the internet that's more fun than complaining and engaging in some good, old fashioned, shared anxiety about a team that you intensely identify with for god-only-knows what reason.
October 15th, 2013 at 12:40 PM ^
If you're on Medicare, then you're older than I am. But I was IFC Rush Chairman at my old school (where gridiron football hasn't been played in many years and where women's teams that didn't exist when I was a student now are the dominant teams), so I rmember jackets and ties for fraternity rush week. . . . I get your point. Passion for any team you root for tends to overcome reason and logic. I joined the Michigan Family through Parents Orientation, so, while I've followed college football since the 1950s, I'm somewhat late to Michigan football fandom. It makes it somewhat easier to deal with disappointing losses, but I was pounding my fist and shaking my head while watching overtime at Happy Valley. For me, that's not a "classic." Michigan-Notre Dame Under The Lights, Part One: THAT was a classic! "Classic" sometimes depends on the outcome and who you were rooting for.
October 15th, 2013 at 12:45 PM ^
Ugh; Internet Explorer. Why bother anymore? Memo to Self: MGoBlog Does Not Like Internet Explorer!
October 15th, 2013 at 10:23 AM ^
October 15th, 2013 at 10:43 AM ^
...and to go along with the theme, I've learned over the years that perspective is the best remedy for heartbreaking losses like Saturday's.
I do believe that the younger generation actually has it worse than simply not having as many points of reference as those of us who are older. Folks born between roughly 1960 and say 1973 (late Baby Boomers and early Gen X'ers) are in a weird sort of place in that we grew up in an era where we had ready access to mass media, but were not formed by the environment created by the explosion of information coincident with the advent of the Internet Age. instead, we experienced that as young adults and became hearty consumers of its hardware, software and content without having its cycle embedded into our brains. As the news cycle shortened from daily to hourly to zero, we lapped it up but there was still a place in our brain that recognized its shortcomings. We're still subject to its siren call, but somewhere in the back our brain we know we should steer the ship in another direction.
It's why I deciced to simply not engage here or on Twitter in the aftermath. For me, at least, it was a better way to put the experience behind me than venting my digital spleen.
October 15th, 2013 at 10:56 AM ^
was 5-4-1 against Woody in the Ten Year War.
Bo had a losing record in non-conference road games.
Bo was the first to say the schedule was tougher after he retired as head coach.
Clearly, Bo was left with by Bump better players than Brady was by RR.
They are kids. It is a game.
This was the most painful game to watch that I remember, continually rejecting the proffers of victory offered by our opponent.
By the demographics on this thread, I am ancient as I attended the 1969 game as a 14 year old.
We could win out, we could lose out, most likey, somewhere in the middle.
Borges did not coach Gardner to throw the ball to the other team.
Too conservative in the OT, yes.
Should anyone be fired? No.
October 15th, 2013 at 11:13 AM ^
I'm forty and the losses are getting easier to take as I age or the RR era has burned me out. I used to go into mourning for days after I lost when I played then after when UM lost....Must have low T levels or something now. I avoid this place for a few days after a loss for the emotions to die down and level heads to return.
A few things.
-OL is young, I think that in the future we will be running into 8 man boxes with success but now not so much. I just hope we do not get the young RB's "gun shy" Green seemed very tentive to just stick his 240 lbs and make a hole.
-Mighty Stanford and Oklahoma lost. It happens, it sucks to lose but it happens.
-UM still controls its outcome.
October 15th, 2013 at 11:15 AM ^
double post...I am slipping.
October 15th, 2013 at 11:30 AM ^
Yea. We should really be excited about a team that can rarely play for a B1G Title and if they do might just get whipped in Pasadena.
Just like the old days! HUZZAH!
October 15th, 2013 at 11:35 AM ^
October 15th, 2013 at 12:15 PM ^
great thread....i love your levelheadedness. That being said, we are so used to instant gratification in our lives now, young and old...we sit idlely by and watch Bama (oversigning and Jucos) turn around and become a powerhouse after 1 year of mediocrity from Saban, and Urban take over 2 struggling programs (with full cupboards when he arrived) and turn them into title contenders.
Then we preach doing things the right way, which we are doing. We preach building a program by recruiting differently than Rrod, which we are also doing, and just going thru the growing pains of.
As a college football blue-blood, we cannot stand to watch a few others be national powers and creep up on some of our records. I still think Hoke will right the ship, he is smart, he recruiting better than anyone. He has shown he has more in-game clout than Lloyd with less talent overall. Our best players are young, 2010 has 10 recruits left who have mostly developed well under Hoke, our QB is rattled by our young line and only trusts our 2 tackles. Breathe guys.
We lost in a quadruple overtime game in the most hostile road environment of the Hoke era on the back of a couple bad coaching decisions that could have looked just fine if PSU's receivers hadn't made 3 consectuive outstanding plays where we were in position....we also missed 3 game-winners from our reliable kicker.
HIndsight is both liberating and frustrating...We are fine, we are growing.
October 15th, 2013 at 12:33 PM ^
I agree with the OP. But man, if we don't improve our stubborn play-calling, we will be looking at 8-4 as a blessing.
I have not called for anyone to be fired, nor do I believe anyone should be fired...yet. But that doesn't mean we can't have some blunt criticism of some of the more boneheaded choices we've seen from this staff and team.
As I've said before, problems abound:
- Turnover-prone QB
- Inexperienced and ineffective OL
- Mediocre DL
- LBs who don't cover well and don't blitz well
- DBs who play too soft
- Stubborn offensive play-calling
- Overly-conservative defensive play-calling
- Clock management
- Terrible TE blocking
But as the season has unfolded, so have a few strengths:
- Gallon and Funchess
- Deep passes from DG
- QB runs w/DG
- Two good safeties, and a strong secondary overall
- Very good run-stopping LBs
- Jibreel Black's pass rush
- Depth on defense
We need to do a better job of taking advantage of our strengths, and minimizing our weaknesses. I think the board is justifiably frustrated that's not happening.
That said, it doesn't mean we need to fire everybody or assume we're going to lose every game.
October 15th, 2013 at 12:50 PM ^
I was 17 in 1969. Started "following" Michigan football in 61-62, mostly had to listen to games on the radio, few were televised.
I expected this to be a roller coaster season. I said somewhere that it depended on how quickly to Oline gelled and that if we beat ND with decent Oline play we might see 11+ wins. I said that if we lost to ND probably more like 8-9 wins. I was right about the line, but wrong that ND would be the test.
I have dealt with worse seasons and watched much harder games to lose especially against OSU during the 10 year war.
It's easy to call for a coach's head behind internet anonymity. It was much harder when you had to have that conversation face to face. There was a price paid to personally crap on a coach's reputation, intelligence, loyalty to his team and school, in public. Disagreements about calls, were based on outcomes and alternatives, not personal slander. Yes you could opine about the possiblity that a coach had lost his edge or even suggest that his performance be reviewed, but anything approaching the personal vitrol spewed over the last three days would simply not have been tolerated in public.
Every one of these coaches followed a long tough path to get to Michigan. One where they were measured at every step. The toughness and objective success required to make that trip deserves our respect.
I don't agree with many calls made by Borges, Hoke, and Mattison, but I respect that they have earned the right to make those calls and acknowledge that, even when they appear to be wrong, they probably made them for reasons beyond my understanding of the game.
If it takes the rest of this season to fix the team's issues, and all of next season as well, I won't like the trip, but I can see what they are building and am willing to give them time to finish. Then if things are still disfunctional it will be time to review coaching performance.
Three or four years to rebuild a football program is not a particularly long time to someone who has been a fan for 50+ years. I know what dominance feels like, and I am willing wait for its return. I realize that is a hard thing for people to accept in an instant gratification society, but that is the timeline to success.
October 15th, 2013 at 2:21 PM ^
October 15th, 2013 at 1:01 PM ^
Iowa was ranked #1 in 1985 for part of the season. Michigan was #2, setting up a 1 vs 2 showdown in Iowa City. Iowa kicked a last second field goal to beat Michigan 12-10. Iowa then lost the following week in Columbus. Michigan tied Illinois 3-3 two weeks later, then won the rest (including the Fiesta Bowl vs Nebraska) to finish 10-1-1 and ranked #2. Iowa lost in the Rose Bowl to the Pac 10 representative (UCLA I think).
Ed: This was supposed to be a response to comment #53.
October 15th, 2013 at 1:13 PM ^
is sooooooo much different than before. I am 52 and yes we would plow over the b1g teams most of the time (occisional Minny or purdue upset)...but now the other teams are relative on our level and OSU's. Have you guys noticed how many games OSU has played since Meyer has been coach in which they were in a close game? In 1 1/2 years about 8 or 9!!!!! That would never happen back in the day...The difference is Meyer makes just enough difference in the game that they win those 8 or 9 close games....Hoke screwed up massively in the PSU game first with the DOG, then playing prevent D on the last drive, no passes before our last drive and of course...passive in OT while O'brien went for the throat in the 4th OT.....I have to admit I never liked BO because he was the same way...Moeller, now that was my man and I hate the fact that the building I own was responsibile for his demise...Carr was OK I guess, but I hated RR...Hoke started out the gambling type...but he has regressed...I hope the PSU game is a wake-up call that winning games takes BALLS!
October 15th, 2013 at 1:23 PM ^
I turn 60 next month. I would love to offer some gems of wisdom, but this thread is just making me feel old and depressed. Time to watch my recording of UTL1, take an Ativan and get excited about the Indiana game.
Go Blue ... for years and years and years ... Ah screw it, forever