Being a Michigan Fan is Miserable

[Eric]

That is all.

Just more pathetic play on the offense. Michigan can't even make a third down or convert field goals. More of the same, nothing new here. I'm just sick of it. Another wasted season. I can't wait to go a weak 8-4 and lose to an SEC school on New Year's Day. Another great season to go into the books.

Eventually I'm just going to lower my expectations and be happy with an 8-4. The thing with Michigan culture is that they expect to be great and in contention for the Rose Bowl every single season when in reality we are like Georgia Tech or Oregon State. No offense to those programs, but those fan bases realize that they aren't going to be in the national title every year and would be very happy to win 8 games and go bowling every single year. The Michigan fans overrate the program. Unless we get Les Miles or Jim Harbaugh, it will be hopeless to shoot for anything more.

[Eric]

Michigan and Ohio State are losing by a combined 49-7. In other B1G news, Nebraska defeated McNeese State on a 58 yard touchdown in a tied game with 20 seconds remaining, Iowa needed everything they had and a little bit of luck to get by a decent Ball State that has absolutely no QB, Michigan State got throttled in the second half by Oregon (no shame in that, but they are the flagship program), Northwestern was handled by Northern Illinois, and Purdue lost to Central Michigan by three touchdowns.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the entire B1G is a dumpster fire. North Dakota State would be above .500 in conference play. Which leads me to my next point: How does a school like Iowa get to a point where North Dakota State has assembled a superior roster? These guys develop right in Iowa's backyard. North Dakota State actually wore out a Big 12 team in the trenches, and here you have Iowa scoring 3 points against Ball State in 58 minutes. And you have the best coach in the country struggling to get Ohio State set in motion, which should be a juggernaut each and every single season. Even without Braxton Miller, the infrastructure should be set up so that a talented backup QB should step in and produce, but no, they struggle to beat the Naval Academy. Start recruiting different players or something because whatever the Big 10 coaches are doing, it's not working.

[Eric]

I'm not even positive how this game is 28-0. Michigan just isn't working themselves into scoring situations. 3rd down conversions, penalties, turnovers, and two missed field goals. They aren't moving the ball with a lot of efficiency, but it doesn't look especially difficult either. I think this is a bit fluky, but the mistakes, as usual, fall on the head of the coaching staff who has once again had this team ill-prepared to play in a major college football game.

[WoVeU]

I am generally overly critical of the B1G...but they look exceptionally bad at the bottom this year, and a bit overrated at the top. I think ND St. could go a game over .500 actually.

*There is skill at Michigan State and Ohio State....but some wrinkles and mental lapses really handicap both of them.

[Vileborg]

After their performance last week I was hoping they had it turned around and were going to flash this year. I was hyped so much I believed they could go into South Bend and win.

[Eric]

Same. I mean, Appalachian State is not as good as they were a few years ago, but they looked so flawless in that game. I thought maybe I could have been wrong about them in the preseason. I still liked Notre Dame who also looked as impressive against a better opponent in Rice, but I thought Michigan could pull off an upset in a classic rivalry game. Wow, how wrong that was. This game was a colossal embarrassment and a failure of the highest magnitude. I haven't felt this sick in a loss since....Hmm....Well, probably the Kansas State game which was two games ago in Michigan football history. Which is saying something since I didn't even watch the second half.

Hoke ought to be ashamed of the product on the field today. Like I said, this was not a talent issue on the drives I saw. Michigan looked able to move the football, there wasn't anything extraordinary that was holding them back. Notre Dame didn't outclass them on the defensive side of the ball, they both belonged on the same field. But if you look at the scoreboard, it looks like Michigan was an FCS team. I don't know what happened.

But, at least we get Miami of Ohio next week! Gardner and Funchess and Green ought to put up some big numbers in that game which will mask the underlying issues that were exposed tonight. Then the fan base will start feeling good about our prospects of beating Utah. To anybody paying attention, this game looks a lot tougher now than it did in the preseason.

[billybud]

It was a bad weekend...for the whole Big Ten..not just Michigan.

Eric mentioned culture...and there are few teams prouder of their winning tradition than Michigan and Ohio State. It has to be tough for the fans...been there myself.

But, things cycle and eventually the wheel comes around again.

[WoVeU]

What I don't get is how some of these big time schools can flounder (relatively) for years...yet you can have teams like South Florida or UTSA go from nothing to highly competitive in a student cycle. I wonder how much the already entrenched department/team culture and fan culture (especially alumni culture) come into play? It seems there has to be some divide between what has been handed down and what is to come?

[Eric]

Yeah, it's surprising how these teams can get into such a funk. Michigan can, for the most part, take its pick of the litter in terms of who they want. Maybe not to the same degree as a school like USC, Alabama, Florida State, or LSU, but they finish high in recruiting rankings every season. I've been thinking for a long time that recruiting services are kind of an ex post facto service where they find who the big schools are looking at and base their rankings on that. That's why Michigan continually "fails" to develop talent; maybe they consistently and systematically pick the wrong guys and the recruiting services boost their grades after the fact.

But to your point about UTSA and USF and North Dakota State and Boise State, etc., there is obviously something that they do right about developing players and scouting. Half of Kansas State's roster consists of walk-ons that they scout. KSU goes out of its way to look around the Midwest and they find these diamonds in the rough that nobody even looks at and they build themselves into a top 25 football team. Now the downside for KSU is that this team has a ceiling because they don't have the athleticism that can push teams through games where they don't execute well. KSU can beat a team like Baylor or Michigan State or Arizona State for sure, but they probably can't have a one-in-a-hundred kind of game where they knock off Alabama or Florida State. But I could be wrong, and we'll find out soon because Auburn faces Kansas State in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, my point in a nutshell is that one of the following has to be true: Michigan's recruits are overrated and the recruiting services are consistently wrong, or the coaching staff is completely inadequate at developing them. Either way, it's a problem. The first being the coaching staff doesn't know what to look for when they go after guys, the second being that they are inept at teaching them the game of football.

[WoVeU]

I think that summarization is the only one available. I mean that only leaves out bad play calling and players not executing as prescribed by the coaching (within their talent level) on the field. The latter everyone has lapses in and I see nothing o the field that would point to this. Play calling I can't and won't completely exhonerate...play calling is subjective. (More to some than others.)

One thing I have found in my years of Fault Analysis on Electrical and Control systems...when the system owner tells me they can't find a problem but they think it is 1 of 2 or 3 things...they are most often right. It ends up being 2 (or even 3) of those things, and generally with a twist (a condition, or mode) they did not expect that allows the problem report the manner in which it does.

I would submit that it is likely both of the things you point to are both true. If it is branding that turns a 3 star guy into a 4 star standout and the coaching staff believes this. Then they will coach and develop that player as such. I think it very posssible that camps and practice could sufficiently lack the speed and intensity for coaches to discern this is a 3 star and not a 4 star. On the field there might only be 4 or 5 plays a game that would allow you to focus in on 1 player and see the difference. You can lose sight of half of these or more by finding the player to have made a "mental error". (I will note, I use 3 or 4 stars...but the bigger differentiation problem is between a 3+ star and a 4- star.) The kicker in this situation is that I think it inevitably affects play calling and game planning. If you think you have more talent than you actually do I can see coaches being more apt to call more basic plays on the typical down and distance sheet and letting talent do the rest.

[Spence]

I think Michigan got caught in the middle with the coaching changes. If you hire a coach to make wholesale changes to your system, then you have to let him do just that. That is the idea about hiring a "michigan man" to coach Michigan. "Michigan Man" means not making wholesale changes to the system. That the system isn't broken just parts. Hiring that coach means you fix the parts. They hired RichRod, but they alumni and power brokers at the school didn't really want to make wholesale changes and what they have now is something that needs rebuilt.

The big powerful schools, in my opinion, should never make wholesale system changes. Pro Style with some tweaks and they will never be down very long. There were some serious power struggles on what direction to take the program and the program faultered. It has happened at other schools. Ohio State would have struggled this year with or without Braxton Miller because of the offensive line. The oline is struggling because of the flux year between Tressel and Meyer. I've never much cared for Urban Meyer, but I'm not ready to blame him for Ohio State's problem yet. The Meyer hire, though, wasn't a wholesale change in systems for Ohio State so we should be OK down the road.

Florida State did things much like Ohio State, in that they didn't have wholesale system changes. Fisher may not be Bowden in personality or style, but he runs very much the same basic system with some "enlightened" changes.The same system, only evolving to fit todays game. Nick Saban runs the same system Alabama has been running for decades, only evolving to fit today's game. I think that Michigan's mistake was trying to completely revamp their system and then not letting him have the control to actually do it. They really should have hired a "Michigan Man" originally.