Eastern

Normally I wish the best for former Michigan football coaches. Lloyd Carr is a quality guy, and I want to see his coaching tree prosper.

But not tomorrow. I hope Ron English has a bad day at his new gig. (Actually, I read somewhere that it was Lloyd Carr, acting as an unpaid consultant to Eastern's Athletic Director, who recommended Ron English for the job. Good for him, and it's good to give Ron English a chance. If he can have a .500 record at Eastern, he will deserve to be hired at a school where he has a real chance of success. Eastern is a tough place to win. It's hard enough to be a small D-1 school in a state with two dominant D-1 programs; it's even harder when you're only the second best program in your own county.)

I also wish the best for former Michigan football players. Those best wishes will also be placed on selective hold tomorrow.

Are We Back?

Michigan had a huge win against Notre Dame and for the first time in almost two years, I'm excited about the team.

Jimmy Clausen has been given a hard time in the past by Michigan fans. But in fairness, wow was he good yesterday. Give him a decent offensive line and he becomes Tom Brady, just sits back and picks you apart. Thankfully, Charlie "Schematic Advantage" Weis decided to stop throwing to his outstanding wide receivers in the 3rd quarter and run the ball instead. Good move Charlie--they were dominating Michigan's defense and thanks for shaking things up!

Michigan is not yet a national power, of course, but we're ranked this week for the first time in a loooooong time. That feels pretty good.

Michigan Basketball

This is what I was talking about yesterday. We have a good team, a good coach, and (finally!) hope for the future of the program.

We even have a great blog (who knew?). I didn't start reading www.umhoops.com until the NCAA tournament started, but I'll remember it next year.

Michigan

It's disappointing Michigan lost in the second round, but all in all I'm pretty pleased. This was the best team in more than ten years, and all of the significant players come back for next year. We lose our starting point guard, a walkon who's a legitimate student athlete getting a master's degree in public policy, but that's about it. He's replaceable.

Now I can go back to ignoring college basketball, although I expect I'll be paying attention next season.

Go Blue!

I remember the last time Michigan was in the NCAA tournament. It was my final spring of law school, 1998. Robert Traylor, Lou Bullock, Maurice Taylor. I remember being late for some portrait (for the law school maybe?) because I was watching that team being upset in the tournament. I never would have imagined it would be 11 (!) years until I again got to watch Michigan in the NCAA tournament.

But we're back and we won. Whoo-hoo! Sweet victory!

We. Are. So. Screwed.

Michigan's defense last year was awful.

And we've just hired a man named Gerg. Gerg? Yes, Gerg. Gerg was just fired after going 10-37 at Syracuse, a worse winning percentage than even Michigan last year.

The reviews? Notsogood. Yes, now is the time to commence panic. When the Syracuse football blog's title is He's Your Problem Now, Michigan, it looks like we've chosen poorly:





Wha, was there something else important going on today?

Michigan football is in terrible shape, but things may be looking up.

This is perhaps the only bit of good news in the last couple of years.

Bravo for Bowls!

Finally there's a college football column I can agree with. He's too professional to say that Wetzel's an idiot (but I know he's thinking it). His bigger point is maybe the best argument of all for the bowls:

Bowls are fun.

It's not complicated. They're fun. A bowl game is fun to go, fun to be a fan at the game, fun to watch on TV. I can't wait tomorrow to roll out of bed and catch Michigan in th--wha? Wait, you're joking, right? Seriously? No, that's can't be correct. Really? Whew. That blows.

Michigan. Sigh.

Incidentally, I went to Ann Arbor last weekend for my ten year law school reunion. Aside from the other festivities, there was a football game against Illinois.

Michigan looked awful. That's not true. After the first quarter, Michigan was ahead 14-3. The vibe was positive, happy, relaxed. Life was good.

Then it all went awry, and Michigan played three quarters of truly awful football. Everything went wrong. The offensive line couldn't block, Threet couldn't throw, and the defensive secondary thought it would be a good idea to soak in gasoline and light themselves on fire.

Michigan's defense, the "strength" of the team before the season, gave up 402 yards in the final three quarters (yes, I am enough of a loser to add it up).

We Michigan fans are in unchartered territory. Michigan presently has the longest bowl streak in NCAA history, 33 years. The last time Michigan did NOT go to a bowl game was after the 1974 season. It's worth noting that before 1975, only one Big Ten team was allowed to go to a bowl--the champion went to the Rose Bowl. If more than one team from the conference had been allowed to go to a bowl, Michigan's bowl streak would date to the 1968 season, or 40 years.

I think this is the year it ends, which would be jarring. I have no living memory of Michigan not going to a bowl, and I distinctly remember Michigan losing the 1978 Rose Bowl to Washington, because we were terrible in the first half and dominated the second half (this is why I never liked Warren Moon growing up).

So this whole situation is bizarre. Michigan has had its ups and downs, but the concept of completely throwing a season away is foreign to us. I certainly hope it's only for one year.


As a sidenote, it seems someone was dropping a whole lot of acid in Pasadena in the fall of 1977.

Michigan-Notre Dame

I watched the first half of the game and some of the third quarter, before I (fortunately) had to leave to go to a wedding.

It was not, shall we say, a great game. Michigan fumbled the opening *TWO* kickoffs and was down 21-0 after about ten minutes.

However. I saw plenty of good things and I'm with mgoblog on feeling encouraged. Everyone knew this year was going to be ugly, but we made some progress. We found a quarterback and a tailback. Threet made some good throws and played well. Sam McGuffie looks like our tailback for the next several years, unless he gets hurt (he's a little guy, which makes me nervous).

On the other hand, our defense, supposed to be the strength of the team, was bad. And it's very, very important for our receivers to catch the ball on kickoffs.

Now Michigan has a bye week, which is what they need. Threet should spend it working with the first team offense and hopefully the team will also work on not fumbling.

Notre Dame

I don't like Notre Dame. Not at all. They were terrible last year and I laughed. Unfortunately, Michigan might just be that bad this year. I'm not sure this columnist was joking when he predicted a 3-0 Michigan win in five overtimes.

In the meantime, my fellow Michigan comrades posted an instructive interview with Charlie Weis.

Ron English

Ron English was Michigan's defensive coordinator the last two years. He was there for the Very Good (2006) and The Not So Good (2007). I always liked him; I thought the brilliance of 2006 mostly outweighed 2007.

He was fired by Rich Rodriguez and landed at the University of Louisville, where things look good:

Was there anything to like? Yes. The Cardinal defense was spectacular. Listen to me -- it was spectacular. It held UK to 73 yards on the ground. Dixon's jaunt at the end was a gift, and not preventable given the degree to which the game had slipped at that moment. Ron English deserves a lot of credit for turning an unsure group into a physical unit that gave Hartline no good looks down the field, harassed him incessantly, and bottled up the Dixon/Locke combo before it could get started.

I'm happy he landed. He'll be a head coach some day. Maybe some day soon.

Michigan

It's gonna be a loooooooong year. Utah played poorly, except for their kicker, who was fantastic.

Actually our defense played pretty well. Utah got a lot of yards in the first half, but just 22 points, and they held them to 3 points in the second half.

However. Michigan's offense was awful. Atrocious. The offensive line was astonishingly bad. This is expected (scroll down to Offensive Line). I know we have a new offensive line, but 37 yards rushing? 37? Really? 37 yards rushing?

Bad bad bad. Bad.

College Football Last Ten Years

Just as I did last year, I can also list the top college football teams of the last ten years, which is probably more relevant to high school kids anyway. Same rules as my last post, but no points for any season before 1998. Last year was Ohio State (ugh), Oklahoma, Texas, and USC. This year:

USC, Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Texas are again the top four, although USC is in first. Look for that to continue next year. LSU is rocketing up the charts. Michigan, Miami, and FSU continue to fade. Hopefully we won't keep slipping.

College Football

As I noted a year ago at this time, there's nothing happening in college football right now. So I figured I'd update the chart of the most dominant programs of the last 25 years. As before, the #1 team last year (LSU) gets 25 points, the #25 team gets one point. Teams lose one point per year, to the #1 team of 2006 (Florida) gets 24 points down to the #24 team, which gets one point, and so on. There are a few changes from last year:


Florida State is still in first, but their lead is shrinking fast, and will shrink again next year. They will lose 18 points, so they must finish #7 just to stay even. Similarly, Miami will lose 17 points. Those programs will eventually start to move up again, but probably not next year. Ohio State is tied for #3; and they only lose 11 points next year, so figure they will continue to rise. Ugh.

The biggest improvement was Missouri, which rode its #4 finish last year all the way to #36. They may well improve again next year, but not as much.

Just one school dropped out entirely. That would be Virginia. Next year, East Carolina and Fresno State better finish ranked, or they're gone. Meanwhile Missouri, Cincinnati, and Hawaii are new to the list.

As for Michigan, we dropped from 5 to 7, and we'll need to finish in the top ten next year or else we'll lose more points. It doesn't look good. Oklahoma and USC passed us last year, and this year could be Texas and LSU.

Yessssss!

Naturally, I think this is terrific news.

Michigan Basketball Wins Tournament Game!

Whoo-hoo!

Ehhh, the Big 10 tournament. Against Iowa. It's generally not a good sign when the first sentence of the game summary reads:

Michigan missed 13 shots in a row during a stretch in the second half.

But somehow Michigan won the game. Michigan plays again tomorrow and I believe after that I'll be able to resume not paying attention.

One More Michigan Post

...at least for the next few months.

Michigan's win over Florida was great, of course. I also found it a little sad. In the game, Michigan opened up the offense with four or five receivers and looked to spread out Florida's defense so Henne could pick them apart.

The offense looked great. It was fantastic. Our individual receivers are so big and strong and fast that Florida's defensive backs couldn't cover them one on one.

So the big question is why has Michigan never run this offense before? Michigan has the talent (Michigan always has the talent). Why not open the offense before the bowl game? I know that Henne was hurt much of the year. But why not install the offense from the start of the year? For that matter, why not use it in last year's Rose Bowl?

The problem with Lloyd Carr and/or Mike Debord (Michigan's offensive coordinator the last several years) is that he plays too conservatively. The sad part of this game is that we could have run a more imaginative offense the last several years, scored more points, and probably Lloyd would have gone out after a successful season, not just a successful game.

But that's all in the past. If we can count on Rodriguez for anything, we can know that the days of a dull offense are long gone.

Go Blue!

What a day, what a great way to send Lloyd Carr off.