I don't understand how Bush insists he didn't cheat. Taking improper benefits was against the rules, i.e. cheating. What am I missing? This isn't a defense of the rules; it's reasonable to argue that they were stupid then and should never have been the rules. But they were the rules, and he broke them, right?
I don't think this has direct implications for us. I believe this is a decision made by the Heisman Trust, which is separate and distinct from the NCAA. The NCAA never mandated that Bush's Heisman trophy be taken away. The Heisman Trust did that on its own and is now reversing the decision citing a change in NCAA rules and the overall environment. If I'm correct, there are no implications here for the Stalions stuff.
Does this mean Connor Stalions won't be able to take over Michigan football after all? Or will it simply require another hundred or so pages in his manifesto?
Rich Eisen had Daniel Jeremiah from the NFL Network on and asked him what the NFL thought of the whole scandal. "Nobody in the NFL cares." "They have a bunch of NFL players, they're big, they're strong, they're physical and they beat people up." Worth a quick listen.
Bo speculated that the 10 year war was so intense that even a bowl game afterwards was a letdown emotionally, and he pointed out that Woody's bowl record sucked during that stretch also (2-6). And after Woody retired, Bo's bowl record got a lot better. (I believe 6-7 after Woody retired, which obviously isn't great, but is much better than prior to that).
Moeller's record was better in large part because he had teams that underachieved and therefore played inferior opponents. The bowl games were a way to partially redeem disappointing seasons.
Carr's record was close to .500, as you noted, and anything close to .500 is what should reasonably be expected assuming your team is playing an opponent that's about as good as you are.
RichRod and Hoke sort of don't count, IMO.
That leaves Harbaugh, and his record is a serious mystery. We had some bad luck against FSU (no Peppers,, lost Butt early, etc.), Georgia was much better than we were, and we were overconfident and had very bad luck against TCU. So some of that was maybe flukey, but I can't explain the overall poor record.
What was the root cause of the awful start in 2019? One theory said the locker room was divided. Shea Patterson didn't show the kind of leadership and work ethic he should have during the off season (golf, golf, more golf), and the team felt he was handed the job over the harder-working McCaffrey in a way that violated Hargaugh's stated emphasis on meritocracy. Harbaugh pulled the season out of the fire, but it was still a disappointment with a huge gap between the highs and the lows. We did abuse Notre Dame though, so that was fun.
Good point regarding the coaching staffs under Carr and Hoke. True of RichRod too, right? Butch Jones had enough success at CMU to get the Tennessee job and fail there, but did anyone else under him ever do anything?
Agree. In nine seasons after leaving West Virginia RichRod managed to finish .500 or better in conference play just two times. Zero at Michigan and twice out of six at Arizona. That's not a small sample size.
Related: why did Carr go from supporting RichRod to hating him? I assumed it was because of things RichRod did, like make ill-advised comments like "the country club days are over" which served to disparage Carr and his staff and to piss off the players on the team who loved Carr. RichRod swiftly lost the locker room in 2008 which made that year worse than it needed to be.
Was Dave Brandon the reason Harbaugh chose the 49ers over Michigan in 2011? There is a rumor that someone close to Harbaugh told him he would not want to come back with Brandon as his boss. Seems credible, but it also seems equally credible that Harbaugh just wanted to try the NFL.
Which of these possibilities reflects Connor Stalions' state of mind: (A) he thought he was cheating, (B) he thought he had found a loophole (recall that when the story first broke a lawyer from OSU said he read the rule carefully and didn't believe anything that was initially alleged was against the rules*) or (C) he literally didn't know that the rule existed -- didn't know he was doing anything wrong.
*The argument, as I recall, was that this wasn't advanced scouting because scouting implies that a scout was involved (either a member of the staff or someone who earns a living as a scout vs a random dude attending the game at the request of someone else). And the analysis further concluded that the rule against video taping was limited to the home stadium or the field of play or something like that? I don't remember that part as well. Either way, the rule was put in place during an era in which video equipment meant video equipment, not when everyone has a phone in their pocket that can shoot video.
On (C) Pete Thamel had to first explain that the rule in question existed because otherwise nobody would have known about it. The NCAA rule book is like a silly phone book. It wouldn't surprise me at all if (C) were the correct answer.
Will anything come of the smoke that Catapult employees who previously worked at Ohio State were sharing film with current employees of Ohio State? Seems like there should be a clear IT trail of who accessed files and did X, Y or Z with them.
Why did Borges not change the play on the 2 point conversion in 2013?
[Fwiw, I think there's a lot of revisionist history around Borges. The editorial view on him was overly negative because he didn't run RichRod's offense for Denard. But in my view (a) he couldn't do that because it just wasn't an offense he knew, and (b) after a few games he came up with a blend of a RichRod spread and an offense he did know, and it worked pretty well. After we went 11-2 in 2011 Borges was rumored to be a candidate for an OC position elsewhere, and people here were worried he might leave. Then he stayed, and offense got progressively worse, partly because the OL was terrible. We literally had one OL recruit in the 2010 class and two in the 2011 class, which meant Hoke needed to bat nearly 1.000 on his 2012 and 2013 classes, which he did not. Borges wasn't a star OC, but he was good and things got much worse when Hoke made the disastrous move to go with Nussmeier.]
Here's one: In the App State game there was a stretch of at least a series or two when Mike Hart was not on the field, and I want to know why. Was he dinged up? He came in later and played well. I suspected he was being disciplined for something (maybe getting pissed off and in a coach's face during the game when it was going south) and that the coaches intentionally held him out as punishment and then put him back in when it became clear we needed everything we had if we were going to win the game, but it was too little, too late.
Likewise, Debord seemed to treat a large part of the game as a scrimmage. We were trying to run the ball, weren't succeeding, so rather than have our NFL QB Henne throw to our NFL receiver Manningham or our borderline NFL receiver Arington, we ran into stuffed boxes to "practice", only opening things up when we were legitimately scared of losing. Is my suspicion that Debord was thinking that way correct?
Likewise, was Debord the acting head coach for the first two games of 2007? Lloyd wanted to retire after 2006. Bill Martin talked him into coming back for one more year. I suspect Lloyd handed the day to day keys to Debord and was acting like a hands-off CEO type coach in 2007 until it was obvious the wheels were falling off, and then Carr jumped in to save the season. [When Bo retired following the 1989 season, Moeller tried talking him into staying, letting Moeller do the hard stuff of running the day to day things, but Bo said, no, I'm either going to be retired or I'll be all-in. I'm assuming Carr knew that conversation took place and that it appealed to him in 2007.]
Was Crable penalized for a hit out of bounds or was it roughing the passer? I recall it being the latter but don't have full confidence on that point. I just remember the point being made that Smith was no longer a passer. He was a runner, so the fact that he was also the quarterback should not have mattered, and therefore it was a bad call by the officials. Today it might have constituted targeting because he hit Smith in the head, but there was no targeting penalty back in those days.
For those who aren't enthused, do you at all care that he was a top 100 recruit? I get that guys are mis-ranked a lot, but from what we've heard it sounds like he's exactly the kind of guy Dusty May can work with over the course of three years. And none of us were excited about Stu Douglass or Zack Novak when we signed them either. With a virtually empty roster, keeping a spot for GWIII for the distant future seems like a good move.
2022 Barrett hammered Miyan Williams with 13:05 left to play in the 4th when CJ Stroud dumped it off to him in the flat. Barrett got up a full head of steam, and Gus Johnson described it as a "voracious tackle".
Cade is much better than every one of these guys. It's a shame he became toxic and left because we would be in fantastic shape if he had been as patient behind JJ as, say, Donovan was behind Blake.
Sorry to nitpick, but your statement is wrong in both directions. 2009 and 2010 were, statistically, literally the worst defenses in Michigan history (ranked over 100th nationally both years, 107th in 2010 to be specific). 2011 was 6th. We had great luck with turnovers in 2011 and, I believe, bad luck with turnovers in 2010, but when you improve literally 100+ spots nationally, luck only goes so far as an explanation.
Agreed, it was brilliantly played to make sure that the drip, drip, drip was never-ending. All that said, it ultimately backfired by making a focused, close, determined team even more focused, more close and more determined. We'd have probably won it all anyway because we were simply the best team in college football, but this whole saga, though crappy for us fans, actually helped the team I believe.
Maybe things have changed in more recent years, but I can assure you that for a very long time in the 1980s and 1990s Illinois fans *did* hate us on approximately the same level as MSU and OSU fans. I attended the 1989 Illinois game in Champagne, which was effectively for the conference championship that year. Jeff George was Illinois' QB. Michael Taylor was ours. Tony Bowls had a big day. Jerrod Bunch sealed it with some tough runs late to kill the clock. Anyway, the vitriol from Illinois fans was unlike anything you've ever seen. Widespread, intense, hatred.
It's obvious why MSU and OSU hate us, but Illinois is perplexing. The only thing I can come up with is that Bo hated Illinois for firing Gary Moeller after three years on a five year contract and replacing him with a cheater named Mike White (if memory serves). Bo knew Moeller was doing things the right way and needed time. Illinois hired White, cheated massively, won quickly and then got hit with well-deserved NCAA penalties. So Bo abused Illinois when he got the chance. He had a 70-21 win and a 69-13 win. I assume he was outspoken about his disdain for them also, but I don't know of anything specific he said.
The other angle is that Illinois has no natural rivals. Northwestern was historically too inept to qualify, and Illinois didn't really have anyone else.
Regarding "should have won two", I'm not going to argue for or against that statement, but I'm going to make an observation: If we watch the last moments of the game, we remember Malcom Butler's interception and the obvious question of why didn't they run it in with Lynch. But the long pass play that got them inside the 5 was pretty flukey too. With 1:15 to play, a pass from Wilson to Kearse takes them from the 38 to the 5, is tipped by Butler, tipped by Kearse, bounced off Kearse's knee, he tips it again and then he finally secures it while lying on his back. It's not as extreme as the helmet catch that cost Brady another Super Bowl, but it's a play that, if it had it cost him this one, people would have pointed to as an example of pretty bad luck. If you take away both (arguably) flukey plays, who wins? We'll never know.
We hypnotized Day to make him punt on every fourth and short, and we infused the gatorade and water supply with estrogen to counter the overwhelming toughness from such a tough team that is very, very tough and is NOT compensating in any way for the self-loathing that comes with being a program that was once known for toughness and is now a glorified 7 on 7 squad.
The semi-diary post from the guy with years of experience in college athletics rings very true right now. Warde is reactionary, slow to respond and generally unprepared for change, even change that is obviously on its way.
“Seriously?” No, that’s not what he’s saying. The setting up for failure is an unintended consequence of taking the most important pieces of the staff, not the reason for doing so. In my mind the question is whether it’s even crossed Harbaugh’s mind that he’s materially lowering Moore’s chances of succeeding but doesn’t care or whether it hasn’t occurred to him. Harbaugh is single-minded and focused on one thing. It’s not unreasonable for people to imagine he would have enough affection for Moore and his alma matre to leave enough pieces that they can both succeed, much as Stanford did the last time he went to the NFL. One of Jim’s strengths is identifying and hiring good assistants. If anyone were to tell him his ability to win in LA would be contingent on taking most of his staff at Michigan with him, he would laugh.
Doesn’t add up. He told the team he on Wednesday he was staying. Then we hire a DC so he’s leaving. Unless Moore promised him something and broke his promise, Wink’s hiring changed nothing. If Clink wanted to be DC, Moore would have said yes or no on Wednesday.
Some trivia about that play -- Kolesar played with contact lenses, and when he looked up for the ball the lens on one of his eyes slid out of place off the pupil, and he couldn't see clearly. He kept running just hoping the lens would slide back into place so he could see, and fortunately, it did. A little detail that nobody in the stadium would have known, but it could have been disastrous.
(1) There's no way the Chargers are giving Herbert a 10 year contract. (2) Herbert was asking UM to give him more than the Chargers are giving. Add those two together and it's difficult to believe he "wanted to stay in Ann Arbor." If he wanted to stay, he'd say here's my deal from the Chargers, match it and I'll stay. He didn't do that. He wants to follow Harbaugh.
Agree, take everything with a grain of salt, but if that actually happened, ten years is not a reasonable request. That being said, there's no way the Chargers would give the guy a ten year contract either, so I'm not sure what to make of such a rumor.
What is the downside to ignoring the 7 day posting rule? Is some bureaucrat going to castigate Michigan for adding to the very short list of black head coaches in college football?
Hi background is more TV than sports, but to the extent it was sports, it was MLB. I assume he immediately saw no distinction between Stalions and the Houston Astros. In Houston's case, the coaches and executives knew about the scheme and approved of it. And MLB itself had recently warned teams to stop doing anything along the lines of what Houston did. (Similary, in the New England Spygate thing, the NFL had warned teams not to do what NE did, and NE went ahead anyway.) There was no gray area; Houston knowingly, intentionally cheated. And as Deion said, it's a huge advantage in baseball. None of those considerations apply to what Stalions did, but Petitti didn't know enough about either situation to draw any distinctions, and Harbaugh / Michigan are not sympathetic victims of the idiocy that went down. Fortunately, we delivered the only real F You we could by winning it all anyway.
I think the four individuals starting will be better than the best four individuals you could pull off the 2023 line, but going from nine obvious playables to ~6 is slightly uncomfortable. I'd still bet on 2024, though.
It was such a luxury to be able to play these guys 30-40 snaps a game, and I think it's unrealistic to expect that we'll be just as good or better late in games. Hopefully we can develop enough quality depth to keep them in the 40-50 snaps range most of the time. One thing I noted before the OSU game is that their DL was very good but had no depth. The starters never came off the field. And sure enough, in the fourth quarter when we needed to possess the football, they couldn't get us off the field.
There's so much blind faith in Orji on this board right now. I suspect he's far below the level Milton was at in 2020 as a passer, but a lot of people apparently think passing, reading defenses, etc, are "nice to haves" rather than "must haves".
To me the open question is how do the pieces fit together. Day is making a lot of changes, but are they components of a cohesive plan that will compliment each other, or is it almost randomly hoping everything meshes. They landed a QB who is not in the Ryan Day mode. OSU insiders think he'll look much better because he'll be throwing to better receivers. What is O'Brien's offensive philosophy? Will they run his, Day's or some kind of blend? They added a good RB, mostly for depth and a change of pace, I guess. Their biggest issue is OL, and they added a center who Alabama couldn't coach up to snap the ball. Maybe they'll move him to guard, but what happens with Hinzman who got benched for telling the truth? All is forgiven there on both sides? It feels like Day is panicking. All change is not good change. He has repeated the line often enough about the team that wins the rushing battle wins The Game that I think he believes that. Unfortunately, he's a passing game guru. If he tries to change his identity, that risks detracting from what he is really best at and pushing him into an area in which he has no competitive advantage.
I don’t think you can look at Darrell Funk as the primary culprit for the 2013 offensive line. In 2010 RichRod signed a recruiting class with one OL recruit in it. One. And in the 2011 recruiting class there were three recruited by RichRod, one of whom (a kid from Florida named Tony Posada) quit football altogether during fall camp in August 2011. So at the start of the 2011 season we had a total of three OL recruits from those two classes who should have been the core of the offensive line in 2013 and 2014. Instead we were forced to hope that Hoke’s 2012 and 2013 OL recruits would be ready early, and they weren’t. That hole in our recruiting was a ticking time bomb. All this isn’t to say Funk wasn’t part of the problem; I honestly have no opinion on that. But you have to go a little deeper than just pointing the finger at whoever happened to be the OL coach at the time.
I was fortunate to attend the Penn State Judgement Day game in person. The final score really should have been 34-0. Penn State was given a ridiculously generous spot on a 4th down play on their scoring drive. Fourth and ten, they gained 9, and the ref gave them 11. I was certain that guy just didn't want the previously-undefeated #2 (?) ranked home team to be shut out.
Rutgers did not play the first football game. A Michigan fan historian whose name escapes me studied it and say no way was that game what we recognize as football today. If I'm not mistaken, Brian's pre-season publication published that refutation of the Rutgers claim. Basically, Rutgers made a specious claim, has repeated it forever, nobody ever tried to verify if the claim made sense, and everyone just shrugged their shoulders and said, "OK, they were the first."
I'm nitpicking, but I knew we were starting Henne because I had read it on an early message board (maybe the Victors board), that Guts was injured and Henne was going to start.
I always thought Griese was a work in progress that whole season. He continually improved, and adding the deep ball came late in his development. The Brian Griese who started the season would not have been drafted, but he developed into a 3rd round draft pick, and he kept developing in the NFL to the point where he made the pro bowl one season.
In the 2010 and 2011 recruiting classes we (RichRod) signed one and then three OL recruits. The class with three included a guy from Florida, Tony Posada, who literally quit football during fall camp of his freshman year. Those two classes should have been the upper-class OL protecting Gardner in 2013 and 2014. Instead we had to hope and pray that the young OL Hoke recruited in 2012 and 2013 could be ready early, and it didn't go well. But I've always believed that if Gardner had played for Harbaugh with even a marginal OL he would still be in the NFL as a backup at the very least.
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Or Lloyd-esque, dating back to Brady-Henson. Vlad will play 25, Wolf will play 14, and whoever performs better will get the final minute.
I don't understand how Bush insists he didn't cheat. Taking improper benefits was against the rules, i.e. cheating. What am I missing? This isn't a defense of the rules; it's reasonable to argue that they were stupid then and should never have been the rules. But they were the rules, and he broke them, right?
I don't think this has direct implications for us. I believe this is a decision made by the Heisman Trust, which is separate and distinct from the NCAA. The NCAA never mandated that Bush's Heisman trophy be taken away. The Heisman Trust did that on its own and is now reversing the decision citing a change in NCAA rules and the overall environment. If I'm correct, there are no implications here for the Stalions stuff.
Does this mean Connor Stalions won't be able to take over Michigan football after all? Or will it simply require another hundred or so pages in his manifesto?
Terrell Pryor was suspended for five games by the NFL for tattoo gate. Goodell does a lot of very stupid things.
Rich Eisen had Daniel Jeremiah from the NFL Network on and asked him what the NFL thought of the whole scandal. "Nobody in the NFL cares." "They have a bunch of NFL players, they're big, they're strong, they're physical and they beat people up." Worth a quick listen.
https://youtube.com/shorts/v30gfDyg6cY?si=7hox5L9K4OM7BYEf
And when I saw the OP, this is the link I was expecting to be included.
Bo speculated that the 10 year war was so intense that even a bowl game afterwards was a letdown emotionally, and he pointed out that Woody's bowl record sucked during that stretch also (2-6). And after Woody retired, Bo's bowl record got a lot better. (I believe 6-7 after Woody retired, which obviously isn't great, but is much better than prior to that).
Moeller's record was better in large part because he had teams that underachieved and therefore played inferior opponents. The bowl games were a way to partially redeem disappointing seasons.
Carr's record was close to .500, as you noted, and anything close to .500 is what should reasonably be expected assuming your team is playing an opponent that's about as good as you are.
RichRod and Hoke sort of don't count, IMO.
That leaves Harbaugh, and his record is a serious mystery. We had some bad luck against FSU (no Peppers,, lost Butt early, etc.), Georgia was much better than we were, and we were overconfident and had very bad luck against TCU. So some of that was maybe flukey, but I can't explain the overall poor record.
What was the root cause of the awful start in 2019? One theory said the locker room was divided. Shea Patterson didn't show the kind of leadership and work ethic he should have during the off season (golf, golf, more golf), and the team felt he was handed the job over the harder-working McCaffrey in a way that violated Hargaugh's stated emphasis on meritocracy. Harbaugh pulled the season out of the fire, but it was still a disappointment with a huge gap between the highs and the lows. We did abuse Notre Dame though, so that was fun.
Good point regarding the coaching staffs under Carr and Hoke. True of RichRod too, right? Butch Jones had enough success at CMU to get the Tennessee job and fail there, but did anyone else under him ever do anything?
How did Tim Drevno go from being a very successful offensive line coach to a complete idiot so quickly, and why did it have to happen here?
If DJ Durkin had not been fired when he did, would he have surpassed Brian Kelly for "most deaths responsible for" by an acting Division 1 head coach?
Agree. In nine seasons after leaving West Virginia RichRod managed to finish .500 or better in conference play just two times. Zero at Michigan and twice out of six at Arizona. That's not a small sample size.
Related: why did Carr go from supporting RichRod to hating him? I assumed it was because of things RichRod did, like make ill-advised comments like "the country club days are over" which served to disparage Carr and his staff and to piss off the players on the team who loved Carr. RichRod swiftly lost the locker room in 2008 which made that year worse than it needed to be.
Was Dave Brandon the reason Harbaugh chose the 49ers over Michigan in 2011? There is a rumor that someone close to Harbaugh told him he would not want to come back with Brandon as his boss. Seems credible, but it also seems equally credible that Harbaugh just wanted to try the NFL.
Which two schools voted Michigan 3rd in the final coaches' poll following the 1997 season or which school voted us fourth?
Related, which schools voted to send OSU back to the Rose Bowl after the tie in which Dennis Franklin was injured?
Which of these possibilities reflects Connor Stalions' state of mind: (A) he thought he was cheating, (B) he thought he had found a loophole (recall that when the story first broke a lawyer from OSU said he read the rule carefully and didn't believe anything that was initially alleged was against the rules*) or (C) he literally didn't know that the rule existed -- didn't know he was doing anything wrong.
*The argument, as I recall, was that this wasn't advanced scouting because scouting implies that a scout was involved (either a member of the staff or someone who earns a living as a scout vs a random dude attending the game at the request of someone else). And the analysis further concluded that the rule against video taping was limited to the home stadium or the field of play or something like that? I don't remember that part as well. Either way, the rule was put in place during an era in which video equipment meant video equipment, not when everyone has a phone in their pocket that can shoot video.
On (C) Pete Thamel had to first explain that the rule in question existed because otherwise nobody would have known about it. The NCAA rule book is like a silly phone book. It wouldn't surprise me at all if (C) were the correct answer.
Will anything come of the smoke that Catapult employees who previously worked at Ohio State were sharing film with current employees of Ohio State? Seems like there should be a clear IT trail of who accessed files and did X, Y or Z with them.
Why did Borges not change the play on the 2 point conversion in 2013?
[Fwiw, I think there's a lot of revisionist history around Borges. The editorial view on him was overly negative because he didn't run RichRod's offense for Denard. But in my view (a) he couldn't do that because it just wasn't an offense he knew, and (b) after a few games he came up with a blend of a RichRod spread and an offense he did know, and it worked pretty well. After we went 11-2 in 2011 Borges was rumored to be a candidate for an OC position elsewhere, and people here were worried he might leave. Then he stayed, and offense got progressively worse, partly because the OL was terrible. We literally had one OL recruit in the 2010 class and two in the 2011 class, which meant Hoke needed to bat nearly 1.000 on his 2012 and 2013 classes, which he did not. Borges wasn't a star OC, but he was good and things got much worse when Hoke made the disastrous move to go with Nussmeier.]
Here's one: In the App State game there was a stretch of at least a series or two when Mike Hart was not on the field, and I want to know why. Was he dinged up? He came in later and played well. I suspected he was being disciplined for something (maybe getting pissed off and in a coach's face during the game when it was going south) and that the coaches intentionally held him out as punishment and then put him back in when it became clear we needed everything we had if we were going to win the game, but it was too little, too late.
Likewise, Debord seemed to treat a large part of the game as a scrimmage. We were trying to run the ball, weren't succeeding, so rather than have our NFL QB Henne throw to our NFL receiver Manningham or our borderline NFL receiver Arington, we ran into stuffed boxes to "practice", only opening things up when we were legitimately scared of losing. Is my suspicion that Debord was thinking that way correct?
Likewise, was Debord the acting head coach for the first two games of 2007? Lloyd wanted to retire after 2006. Bill Martin talked him into coming back for one more year. I suspect Lloyd handed the day to day keys to Debord and was acting like a hands-off CEO type coach in 2007 until it was obvious the wheels were falling off, and then Carr jumped in to save the season. [When Bo retired following the 1989 season, Moeller tried talking him into staying, letting Moeller do the hard stuff of running the day to day things, but Bo said, no, I'm either going to be retired or I'll be all-in. I'm assuming Carr knew that conversation took place and that it appealed to him in 2007.]
Did Les Miles really sleep with Moeller's wife, or why exactly did Carr hate him and blackball him, resulting in the hiring of RichRod?
Was Crable penalized for a hit out of bounds or was it roughing the passer? I recall it being the latter but don't have full confidence on that point. I just remember the point being made that Smith was no longer a passer. He was a runner, so the fact that he was also the quarterback should not have mattered, and therefore it was a bad call by the officials. Today it might have constituted targeting because he hit Smith in the head, but there was no targeting penalty back in those days.
For those who aren't enthused, do you at all care that he was a top 100 recruit? I get that guys are mis-ranked a lot, but from what we've heard it sounds like he's exactly the kind of guy Dusty May can work with over the course of three years. And none of us were excited about Stu Douglass or Zack Novak when we signed them either. With a virtually empty roster, keeping a spot for GWIII for the distant future seems like a good move.
2022 Barrett hammered Miyan Williams with 13:05 left to play in the 4th when CJ Stroud dumped it off to him in the flat. Barrett got up a full head of steam, and Gus Johnson described it as a "voracious tackle".
Cade is much better than every one of these guys. It's a shame he became toxic and left because we would be in fantastic shape if he had been as patient behind JJ as, say, Donovan was behind Blake.
Sorry to nitpick, but your statement is wrong in both directions. 2009 and 2010 were, statistically, literally the worst defenses in Michigan history (ranked over 100th nationally both years, 107th in 2010 to be specific). 2011 was 6th. We had great luck with turnovers in 2011 and, I believe, bad luck with turnovers in 2010, but when you improve literally 100+ spots nationally, luck only goes so far as an explanation.
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/years/2011-team-defense.html
Agreed, it was brilliantly played to make sure that the drip, drip, drip was never-ending. All that said, it ultimately backfired by making a focused, close, determined team even more focused, more close and more determined. We'd have probably won it all anyway because we were simply the best team in college football, but this whole saga, though crappy for us fans, actually helped the team I believe.
Maybe things have changed in more recent years, but I can assure you that for a very long time in the 1980s and 1990s Illinois fans *did* hate us on approximately the same level as MSU and OSU fans. I attended the 1989 Illinois game in Champagne, which was effectively for the conference championship that year. Jeff George was Illinois' QB. Michael Taylor was ours. Tony Bowls had a big day. Jerrod Bunch sealed it with some tough runs late to kill the clock. Anyway, the vitriol from Illinois fans was unlike anything you've ever seen. Widespread, intense, hatred.
It's obvious why MSU and OSU hate us, but Illinois is perplexing. The only thing I can come up with is that Bo hated Illinois for firing Gary Moeller after three years on a five year contract and replacing him with a cheater named Mike White (if memory serves). Bo knew Moeller was doing things the right way and needed time. Illinois hired White, cheated massively, won quickly and then got hit with well-deserved NCAA penalties. So Bo abused Illinois when he got the chance. He had a 70-21 win and a 69-13 win. I assume he was outspoken about his disdain for them also, but I don't know of anything specific he said.
The other angle is that Illinois has no natural rivals. Northwestern was historically too inept to qualify, and Illinois didn't really have anyone else.
Regarding "should have won two", I'm not going to argue for or against that statement, but I'm going to make an observation: If we watch the last moments of the game, we remember Malcom Butler's interception and the obvious question of why didn't they run it in with Lynch. But the long pass play that got them inside the 5 was pretty flukey too. With 1:15 to play, a pass from Wilson to Kearse takes them from the 38 to the 5, is tipped by Butler, tipped by Kearse, bounced off Kearse's knee, he tips it again and then he finally secures it while lying on his back. It's not as extreme as the helmet catch that cost Brady another Super Bowl, but it's a play that, if it had it cost him this one, people would have pointed to as an example of pretty bad luck. If you take away both (arguably) flukey plays, who wins? We'll never know.
We hypnotized Day to make him punt on every fourth and short, and we infused the gatorade and water supply with estrogen to counter the overwhelming toughness from such a tough team that is very, very tough and is NOT compensating in any way for the self-loathing that comes with being a program that was once known for toughness and is now a glorified 7 on 7 squad.
They did more than make the tournament the year after Webber left. They made the Elite Eight, and if I recall correctly, that was a close game.
Orji is the most-loved QB in history among QBs who have never thrown a pass in a game.
Excellent point. And patience is a pretty rare trait in almost any context these days.
The semi-diary post from the guy with years of experience in college athletics rings very true right now. Warde is reactionary, slow to respond and generally unprepared for change, even change that is obviously on its way.
“Seriously?” No, that’s not what he’s saying. The setting up for failure is an unintended consequence of taking the most important pieces of the staff, not the reason for doing so. In my mind the question is whether it’s even crossed Harbaugh’s mind that he’s materially lowering Moore’s chances of succeeding but doesn’t care or whether it hasn’t occurred to him. Harbaugh is single-minded and focused on one thing. It’s not unreasonable for people to imagine he would have enough affection for Moore and his alma matre to leave enough pieces that they can both succeed, much as Stanford did the last time he went to the NFL. One of Jim’s strengths is identifying and hiring good assistants. If anyone were to tell him his ability to win in LA would be contingent on taking most of his staff at Michigan with him, he would laugh.
Doesn’t add up. He told the team he on Wednesday he was staying. Then we hire a DC so he’s leaving. Unless Moore promised him something and broke his promise, Wink’s hiring changed nothing. If Clink wanted to be DC, Moore would have said yes or no on Wednesday.
Some trivia about that play -- Kolesar played with contact lenses, and when he looked up for the ball the lens on one of his eyes slid out of place off the pupil, and he couldn't see clearly. He kept running just hoping the lens would slide back into place so he could see, and fortunately, it did. A little detail that nobody in the stadium would have known, but it could have been disastrous.
(1) There's no way the Chargers are giving Herbert a 10 year contract. (2) Herbert was asking UM to give him more than the Chargers are giving. Add those two together and it's difficult to believe he "wanted to stay in Ann Arbor." If he wanted to stay, he'd say here's my deal from the Chargers, match it and I'll stay. He didn't do that. He wants to follow Harbaugh.
Agree, take everything with a grain of salt, but if that actually happened, ten years is not a reasonable request. That being said, there's no way the Chargers would give the guy a ten year contract either, so I'm not sure what to make of such a rumor.
What is the downside to ignoring the 7 day posting rule? Is some bureaucrat going to castigate Michigan for adding to the very short list of black head coaches in college football?
Hi background is more TV than sports, but to the extent it was sports, it was MLB. I assume he immediately saw no distinction between Stalions and the Houston Astros. In Houston's case, the coaches and executives knew about the scheme and approved of it. And MLB itself had recently warned teams to stop doing anything along the lines of what Houston did. (Similary, in the New England Spygate thing, the NFL had warned teams not to do what NE did, and NE went ahead anyway.) There was no gray area; Houston knowingly, intentionally cheated. And as Deion said, it's a huge advantage in baseball. None of those considerations apply to what Stalions did, but Petitti didn't know enough about either situation to draw any distinctions, and Harbaugh / Michigan are not sympathetic victims of the idiocy that went down. Fortunately, we delivered the only real F You we could by winning it all anyway.
It was such a luxury to be able to play these guys 30-40 snaps a game, and I think it's unrealistic to expect that we'll be just as good or better late in games. Hopefully we can develop enough quality depth to keep them in the 40-50 snaps range most of the time. One thing I noted before the OSU game is that their DL was very good but had no depth. The starters never came off the field. And sure enough, in the fourth quarter when we needed to possess the football, they couldn't get us off the field.
There's so much blind faith in Orji on this board right now. I suspect he's far below the level Milton was at in 2020 as a passer, but a lot of people apparently think passing, reading defenses, etc, are "nice to haves" rather than "must haves".
Les Wexner, among others, I'm guessing. He's an alum and a fan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Wexner
Should also edit to fix your link.
https://www.si.com/college/2024/01/11/jim-harbaugh-loves-michigan-so-why-would-he-leave
To me the open question is how do the pieces fit together. Day is making a lot of changes, but are they components of a cohesive plan that will compliment each other, or is it almost randomly hoping everything meshes. They landed a QB who is not in the Ryan Day mode. OSU insiders think he'll look much better because he'll be throwing to better receivers. What is O'Brien's offensive philosophy? Will they run his, Day's or some kind of blend? They added a good RB, mostly for depth and a change of pace, I guess. Their biggest issue is OL, and they added a center who Alabama couldn't coach up to snap the ball. Maybe they'll move him to guard, but what happens with Hinzman who got benched for telling the truth? All is forgiven there on both sides? It feels like Day is panicking. All change is not good change. He has repeated the line often enough about the team that wins the rushing battle wins The Game that I think he believes that. Unfortunately, he's a passing game guru. If he tries to change his identity, that risks detracting from what he is really best at and pushing him into an area in which he has no competitive advantage.
I don’t think you can look at Darrell Funk as the primary culprit for the 2013 offensive line. In 2010 RichRod signed a recruiting class with one OL recruit in it. One. And in the 2011 recruiting class there were three recruited by RichRod, one of whom (a kid from Florida named Tony Posada) quit football altogether during fall camp in August 2011. So at the start of the 2011 season we had a total of three OL recruits from those two classes who should have been the core of the offensive line in 2013 and 2014. Instead we were forced to hope that Hoke’s 2012 and 2013 OL recruits would be ready early, and they weren’t. That hole in our recruiting was a ticking time bomb. All this isn’t to say Funk wasn’t part of the problem; I honestly have no opinion on that. But you have to go a little deeper than just pointing the finger at whoever happened to be the OL coach at the time.
I was fortunate to attend the Penn State Judgement Day game in person. The final score really should have been 34-0. Penn State was given a ridiculously generous spot on a 4th down play on their scoring drive. Fourth and ten, they gained 9, and the ref gave them 11. I was certain that guy just didn't want the previously-undefeated #2 (?) ranked home team to be shut out.
Rutgers did not play the first football game. A Michigan fan historian whose name escapes me studied it and say no way was that game what we recognize as football today. If I'm not mistaken, Brian's pre-season publication published that refutation of the Rutgers claim. Basically, Rutgers made a specious claim, has repeated it forever, nobody ever tried to verify if the claim made sense, and everyone just shrugged their shoulders and said, "OK, they were the first."
I'm nitpicking, but I knew we were starting Henne because I had read it on an early message board (maybe the Victors board), that Guts was injured and Henne was going to start.
I always thought Griese was a work in progress that whole season. He continually improved, and adding the deep ball came late in his development. The Brian Griese who started the season would not have been drafted, but he developed into a 3rd round draft pick, and he kept developing in the NFL to the point where he made the pro bowl one season.
In the 2010 and 2011 recruiting classes we (RichRod) signed one and then three OL recruits. The class with three included a guy from Florida, Tony Posada, who literally quit football during fall camp of his freshman year. Those two classes should have been the upper-class OL protecting Gardner in 2013 and 2014. Instead we had to hope and pray that the young OL Hoke recruited in 2012 and 2013 could be ready early, and it didn't go well. But I've always believed that if Gardner had played for Harbaugh with even a marginal OL he would still be in the NFL as a backup at the very least.
https://www.annarbor.com/sports/um-football/spokesman-true-freshman-offensive-lineman-tony-posada-has-left-the-michigan-football-program/