Diminishing Returns on Enthusiasm Unknown to Mankind: Indiana 38, Michigan 21

October 24th was a row-the-boat-induced aberration. What appeared to be a “good enough” defense combined with what seemed to be the greatest ground and pound party in the Big Ten was propped up by Gopher inadequacies, and subsequently folded seven days later against Little Bro. On that day, in front of the 3rd largest crowd watching a football game in Washtenaw County that weekend, the defensive backfield speed was exposed and the ground game fizzled. On Saturday in Bloomington, the secondary didn’t magically improve despite our prayers to Yost. The ground game, now riddled with OL injuries, is but a shadow of itself 14 days prior. Unfortunately, there are no Minnesotas left on the schedule (though maybe there is a Penn State of similar caliber), and the simple eye test, the one that failed us a couple weeks ago, is providing a crystal clear referendum on Michigan Football: This is one of the bottom teams in what is proving to be an overall mediocre Big Ten, even by Big Ten standards.

The only possible respite from this nightmare seems to be a Wisconsin-Doesn’t-Wash-Their-Hands Covid-induced bye. Sure, you could say covid effectively destroyed 2020 Michigan Football when it coaxed early retirement out of Ambry and Nico. But swirling rumors (if you believe some stories floating around the boards) of further expansion of a gap between staff and player are concerning and can only be aggravated by the in-person day-to-day rah rah aspect of Michigan football moving to zoom meetings. Anyway, as of Monday it looks like the Badgers are injecting enough bleach at the 11th hour to make that game happen. No excuses. Everybody is dealing with this at some level. The buck stops with Jim.

We all wanted him. We all wanted that quick turnaround. It was the perfect story and the perfect fit. But, we knew what we were getting into. We had heard the rumblings. His history showed diminished returns on Enthusiasm Unknown to Mankind at his previous stops around year 4. Despite our confidence that the alma mater effect would not let that happen here, perhaps it is. More disappointing is that Michigan didn’t seem to get that signature moment like Stanford or San Fran. They both got to the edge of greatness. We have had to settle for being on the edge of being on the edge of greatness. That's one additional degree of Kevin Bacon away from where you need to be to have the law of averages sneak you a championship. The Wolverines have hit that “two steps away” spot in about half of the Harbaugh years. That’s those early-November-appearance-in-the-CFP-poll years, or basically any year where the winner of The Game would be going to Indy. Those were almost enough. Michigan got really really close. If JT was in fact short maybe history changes. But now they seem to be flirting with a lesser tier. To a point where today, just 3 games in, the Wolverines have played themselves out of the discussion for the season, with prospects for the future dwindling.

Greg Bartram-USA TODAY Sports

I don’t know how this Michigan team will play with their backs against the wall the way they are right now. I know how previous teams have reacted to similar circumstances under Harbaugh: they lose. Michigan loses games in which they are underdogs under Harbaugh at like a 95% clip. When there’s no respect, they don’t seem to be motivated to prove otherwise. They just plow forward with the idea that being Michigan is enough, a concept that when it was successful in the 70s through the 90s was pretty badass. But when it’s not successful (like the last 20 years) it becomes a liability that breeds apathy and lack of preparation.

On Saturday, with so much to prove after what I affectionately refer to as App State III (Toledo was App State II), Michigan was manhandled from start to finish.

When Michigan was on defense, the entire country (including Don Brown) knew what Indiana was going to do and when they did it, Michigan couldn’t stop it. There seems to be a small handful players whose talent overcomes a scheme that doesn’t fit the remainder of the defensive personnel available, and they are the only reason things weren’t more lopsided…and then 2 of them got injured. Compounding not having the horses for the race were issues at a fundamental level in the form of a bevy of offsides penalties that showed a straight up lack of discipline, or preparation, or both.

When Michigan was on offense, the entire country knew what Michigan was going to do, and they did it anyway, and kept doing it, despite failure. Without Joe Milton’s raw talent and Devin Gardner-like toughness the Wolverines might not have sniffed the end zone. Joe Milton is a good enough quarterback to lead Michigan to a championship. In a few more games, he might even go from good to great. But he can’t do it all. Obligatory shout out to Ronnie Bell here, who plays above his talent and wants so badly to carry this team.

I don’t know how or if this can be salvaged, both at a season and a program level. People like to hammer the $7 million salary Harbaugh is paid to go 0-5 against OSU, and 1-1000 against ranked teams or whatever. That’s all fine and good, and has its place in the pantheon of Michigan fan frustration. But personally as a fan, season ticket holder, and donator to the program, I am very much more interested in not being embarrassed any more than we have been already in 2020. Recovering from what has happened by effectively checking down to a manageable scheme on both sides of the ball that uses cool gimmicks and innovative coaching to maximize the talent on the roster — that’s how you earn your salary. Show improvement. BETTER TODAY THAN YESTERDAY, BETTER TOMORROW THAN TODAY, amirite?

When everything seems to be crumbling and the breaks aren’t going your way, that’s what the money is for. You’re supposed to be able to turn this shit around. And man, there’s no one we’d rather have do it than Jim Harbaugh.

Go Blue.

Theme Change Alert

We interrupt the longest in season between-post break in UMTailgate.com history, in this the worst football season ever, to announce a change in theme for Saturday.  In short, it's too cold to fry turkeys...more to the point it's too cold to pre-smoke the turkeys...so we are switching the theme for the final home game under Brady Hoke to "Soups and Stews and Filet Finale."

I'm bringing a chili and the sausage and cheese chowder and I'll have them on the double boiler all day.  Gus is bringing the steaks and we'll have them sizzling around noon, likely with a side of loaded smashed potatoes and a mushroom gravy.

The Michigan Indifference

This is probably going to be brief (edit: guess not), but we'll see where it goes.  They say that opinions are like assholes, everybody has one, and if you've spent any time on the internet or turned on a television in the past few days, I think you might come to the conclusion that everybody has at least two, which makes for a weird situation, at least biologically. 

Brady Hoke is a Michigan Man, a guy that molds young men, a guy that knows the histories and traditions of Michigan Football, and a guy that believes in the idea that we can and will win because we are Michigan.  He likely does one thing every week in practice that has nothing to do with the next game, but is preparing us for Ohio State.  He never wears red.  I've heard from people close to him that he's known for outdrinking his staff, and I once attended a practice where the wad of skoal lodged into his front lip was as big as I have ever seen.  That's why that one side of his mouth has a little stroke-like deadness to it at pressers...because 10 minutes earlier it was blown up like a balloon.  He's a man's man, your average everyday tough fat uncle.  He loves.  He hugs.  He wrestles Greg Mattison.  He coaches...albeit poorly at this level.  He's emotional and passionate, and in the right non-media setting, he says all the right things.  He will fire you up and make you believe, and that no doubt is the reason he is such a great recruiter.  He's probably great in a job interview.  Unfortunately, he arrived here in a time machine from 1999, and he is neither prepared nor aware of the way the world around him works.  Kids are different.  If you ignore social media, you are doomed to fall victim to it.  Mistakes are magnified, spread like wildfire, and they require immediate and truthful responses.  Apologies work man!  Bullshit does not.  "I don't know" does not.  You can coach within the walls of Schembechler Hall, but you cannot hide behind them.

It seems the UM athletic department has violated Canham's Maxim: Never turn a one day story into a two day story. This is far from done.

— John U. Bacon (@Johnubacon) September 29, 2014

If Brady had showed some competence or candor prior to Saturday, particularly with the media, the Shane Morris situation would have been much less serious.  If Brady had acted swiftly and responded to the issue with vigor, anger, or public self deprecation, it would have been much less serious.  If Brady was molding football players into game winners when he wasn't too busy molding men into the next great generation of fathers, it would have been much less serious.

I find it hard to believe that Brady maliciously put a possibly concussed player back in the game.  I think he didn't know, and that's probably as bad or worse.  He didn't see the hit.  He doesn't wear a headset.  As we wait for the magical medical documents we were promised at the presser, we don't know for sure yet what happened to Shane Morris, why he stumbled into his lineman after getting speared, or if he had a concussion.  The problem is, our Coach says he doesn't know either.  Ignorance is bliss I guess.  That's one happy fat bastard.

But this is not about Shane Morris's scrambled noggin.  In fact, this whole situation with Shane is taking away from the fact that the Gophers just handed us our ass at home in front of about 90,000 people.  The team is ill prepared, unmotivated, and folds at the first sign of adversity.  The stadium gets progressively more empty as each week passes.  Aside from the allure of night game number three, there is nothing to look forward to.  If you're (stupid) like me, and you go to the away games, the MSU and OSU trips are looking about as appealing as a warm glass of the sweat wrung out of Brady Hoke's underwear.  There is not a recovery option here.  "But if we win out" is not on the table.  2014 is over in September, snatched rudely from a fan base that has already been waiting too long to return to above-the-mean, let alone prominence.  Reflecting back to App State, I said at the start of the season that Michigan Football died in 2007.  It seems now they've hired a band of rogue orderlies to dig up and hump the corpse.  We're at that point where that douche in the cube next to you that has never seen a game and doesn't know Harbaugh from blue balls is knocking on the divider and asking "What the fuck?!?"

We need to get Les Miles up here to have sex with Hoke's wife.

— Just win. (@MarktheNomad) September 29, 2014

And then there's Dave Brandon, whose resume does not need to be gone over again.  What do we do with him, and when?  Brandon or no Brandon has no effect on the on-field performance. But if a lame duck Brady has to be axed, we obviously don't want DB around to pick up the pieces and make our next move, right?  "Whatever" is the proper response here I think.  Akin to "what about the recruits?" when it comes to firing Brady, it just doesn't matter anymore.  The timing of their inevitable exits should be inconsequential at this point.

It’s time to stop thinking about what the best timing and scenario is for Brandon and Hoke’s exit. Just go guys. We’ll figure it out.

— umtailgate (@umtailgate) September 29, 2014

As I stare at my twitter feed looking for something, anything that might be some semblance of news, some start to the closure, I wonder if I'm just impatient or spoiled.  Worse things have happened to better, well, at least similar programs.  But time marches on and we become more and more disconnected from a team we never expected to be hard to love.  Nearly 40 years of greatness, and sometimes even excellence.  We are not conditioned for this, and it's a test of fandom I guess.  It's become difficult folks, and that's for me...a guy that used to pretend to be Jim Harbaugh (but chubbier) snapping the ball playing tackle football on the cement floor of my parents basement at 8 years old, a guy that wept in the stands for Kordell to Westbrook, and again for Woodson down the sideline.  A guy that has been in attendance at every game, wherever and whenever it has been, for fifteen years, and most home games for several years prior to that, and that started a website dedicated to drinking and eating before every one of those games.  I reside less than a mile from the 50 yard line.  This is my life, or at least a really significant part of it.  There were times when I pointed and laughed at those of you that take it less seriously because you didn't get to feel the level of joy I got to feel when things went well.  Now I envy most of you, for being able to turn it off, to realize it's just a game, and because you don't have to feel this pain.  The scariest part is that the pain is starting to go away.  There is something much more powerful than The Michigan Difference, and that's The Michigan Indifference.

I have always lived under the assumption that there are people that are smarter than me making the decisions...people that know what I know and more, but have the donation dollars to back it up.  These are the policy makers.  The money talks.  I hope I'm right about that.  I hope somebody somewhere is doing something.  Making plans, lists of coaches, lists of AD prospects, figuring out what it might take to get one of the Harbaugh brothers to come home and save us from ourselves.  Saban, Narduzzi, Miles, or somebody I'm not even thinking about.  The home run.  The uniter.  THE coach.  The splash that will make people forget about the last 7 years.  I hope you are out there, anonymous rich guy that reads Mgoblog in the morning and makes ten million dollar deals at night.  Do something.

GO BLUE!  See you in Piscataway.

Staff Predictions for Utah

I forgot to do the staff pics last week.  Well, that's not exactly true.  I remembered and I didn't feel like it.  I only mention that because when you look at Tuba's prediction, you might say "wow, that escalated quickly."  But for context, he had us beating Miami of Ohio by 1 point.  So here we go...

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Tuba's Prediction:

You see utah and I see the end of a career.

Michigan 34 utah 40.

Dave Brandon doesn't make it to January but Hoke gets one more year. This is the beginning of the end and it's for the better.

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Webmaster's Prediction:

I can't give up yet.  I can't.  I don't know how we are going to win this game, and everybody that has access to a microphone is saying we won't, but we will.  And it might be a big win, but nobody will know or care, least of all this tainted and angry fan base.   Brady finds a thick spot to stand on the ice for one more week.

Michigan 38 - Utah 28

This is Purgatory Fergodsakes

Saturday in a paragraph:  It was really cold.  Iowa tried to give us the game in the first half, and we went into the pink locker room with a 14-point lead.  Because of that lead, we ignored the fact that nothing we were doing offensively was working, and made no adjustments.  This is Michigan...halftime adjustments are for pussies.  Iowa and Kirk Ferentz made adjustments on both sides of the ball, and summarily beat the shit out of us for the next 30 minutes.  This is not nice to say, and I hate to say it, but barring something special...like really special...on Saturday, I will remember team 134 for one thing:  being soft.  I don't know that I've ever seen us pushed around like we were in Iowa City.  It was embarrassing.  The cherry on top of the shit sundae was a game ending turnover by our senior quarterback.  And that, my friends, was Michigan at Iowa 2013.

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I've kept the '97 Michigan Big Ten Elite episode from BTN in my DVR for several weeks now.  I watch it every now and then.  The occasional Hoke quotes in it make me happy and give me hope because of his ties to...well...to the only thing we have left to hold on to.  But I don't even know if that is worth a pass anymore.  It wasn't long after that magical season that a good number of us turned on that regime...a young Donavan McNabb and the inability to win west of the Mississippi will due that to you.  

I spent some time going through some old games as well.  OSU '95 and '96 were at the top of my list, perfect to fuel this weekend's (very) remote possibility of an upset.  It was oddly uninspiring.  The '98 Rose Bowl followed, and I added in Under the Lights #1 for good measure.  Still nothing.  I ended with OSU '11, which culminated with a gatorade drenched Brady Hoke surrounded by a crowd of fans rushing the field, saying what I thought of at the time as all the right things.  

He says very little of substance these days, maybe he never did.  He seems to be more open than Lloyd used to be, but he's not.  Besides being a "molder of men," Coach Hoke is a master of coachspeak.  And I'm not trying to say that's a good or a bad thing, but it is a "Michigan-thing," which is a phrase used to describe an environment where we lie to reporters and fans, pretend everything is all right and that "This is Michigan" so we will be OK...evoking a certain passion for better times in history, especially in the absence of anything tangible in the present.  This history is a history we hold dearly, despite the fact that Nick Saban has accomplished more in a few years at Alabama than the entirety of that history.

Michigan will forever languish unless we unburden ourselves from a history that's now almost completely irrelevant.

— Alex Cook (@Alex_MnB) November 26, 2013

Life moves pretty fast in this social media driven world.  And so the question is here, even though we all answered it with a resounding "yes" after his first season.  Is Brady Hoke the guy?  The problem with that question is that even asking it starts us down a slippery slope that compounds losses with losses of recruits.  

Imma take a couple Officials after the season myself 🙌🙇

— Breezy (@JabrillPeppers) November 26, 2013

Nobody loves a story of the mighty falling than the people that give us our sports news every day...even though we haven't been mighty for some time.  And so the snowball grows.  And despite the fact that everybody knows we have no business winning this weekend, and likely never did, that loss will add to the problem.  A shitty bowl invitation will follow and be mocked.  A loss at that embarrassing Bowl Game and we'll be thisclose to lame duck status.  

And then what do you do?  Start over?  Is this bigger than Hoke?  Do you like the Jerry Jones Brandon path we are taking?  Shit, there's not even a president of the university available to make that decision.  

Or is it smaller than Hoke, and remedied by sacrificing an assistant or two?

I'm pretty sure Dave is just going to stand by Hoke and his staff for another year, which seems to be the easiest choice.  Of course, this comes with its own caveats as it puts a ton of pressure on the staff and players.  We'll be subjected to a season of Hot Seat banter, and ESPN.com polls of how many wins Hoke needs to earn his 5th year.  Players will be subjected to coaching questions.  Recruits will be called everyday to reconfirm their commitments.  

We're in a bad place.

As the patience wears thin, so do all things Hoke.  "Fergodsakes" and "Beat Ohio," once kitschy and fun, are becoming punchlines.  Fans that enjoy such things are being looked at as mindless lemmings.  The fan base is split again, nearly RichRod style.  

As always, there is an answer to this problem, and it's the same answer it's always been:  WIN.  No one is poo pooing WE ON or WE HAD SUBS IT WAS CRAZY.  We don't mock Bacari's endless motivational tweets, and his patented #HALOL...because basketball seems to improve year to year, seems to develop players, and most importantly, it WINS.

In the likely absence of a football win this weekend, the wins need to come soon, often, and in many cases, always.  

So here I am, unable to muster up enough spirit to expect the upset and wavering in my belief in Hoke's plan moving forward...yet also unable to say it's time for him or anyone around him to go, if for no other reason than for continuity...and my blind hope for the best.  

We are caught between Hoke and Change.  In this place there is only one thing we can do: wallow in that sea of red in our home stadium and hope for the best...continuing to pull for the men on the field despite our feelings for those leading us on the sideline.  

Man, I could have copied and pasted that from 2010.   

Keep Calm and Go Blue!