NCAA 2009

[CountDeMoney]

I said it before RichRod, and I'll say it again--Two words to save Michigan football: Bill. Cowher.

[Ed Anger]

The giant banner Ohio State fans stating they thanked RichRod was funny, yet a bit tasteless. The angry Michigan fan ripping the banner away was hilarious though.

[Ed Anger]

Also, I hope Ironhead's boy stays in school.

[Ed Anger]

This is getting comical.  The worst thing is, OSU will assrape Michigan yet again, and RichRod won't be fired, setting up yet another assrape for next year.

I am just so glad that Bill Martin is retiring as AD.  He has been such a crappy selector of coaches, and has been focussed entirely on uglifying the sports complex, rather than maintaining quality programs.  Michigan football will surely have a new coach as one of the first things his successor does (because, it turns out, RichRod was really Martin's only candidate for head coach to replace Carr; Martin was absolutely convinced that the spread is unstoppable and wanted no one other than the best spread coach in the country).

Oh, and when did Martin take over as AD? When the slide began, in 2000.

Of course, there is going to be another loss to OSU following that change, but this game may become a rivalry game again after that.  Sorry, Ed, but I don't see Michigan having a competitive football team earlier than 2012.

The Big Ten isn't going to comeback without Michigan breathing down the neck of Ohio State and Penn State.

[katmai]

So is Weis out at Notre Dame as they lost 3rd straightt and dropped to 6-5?

[Sophie Scholl]

   Go UCONN!

[Ed Anger]

Well, the Timmay taint strikes again. Ever since the 2005-06 Fiesta bowl, when timmay uttered the fateful words "THE IRISH WILL CRUSH THE BUCKEYES", the Irish have been doomed.

Place the blame where it belongs.

[katmai]

I blame seedy as he is a lapsed catholic.

[dps]

I blame seedy as he is a lapsed catholic.

So's Marty. 

[katmai]

Wow what bad play calling by Les miles and LSU

[CountDeMoney]

Wow what bad play calling by Les miles and LSU

Bonehead O' The Day, definitely.

[Neil]

The giant banner Ohio State fans stating they thanked RichRod was funny, yet a bit tasteless. The angry Michigan fan ripping the banner away was hilarious though.

I suspect you'll be posting the jpeg in order to taunt grumbler.

[OttoVonBismarck]

This is getting comical.  The worst thing is, OSU will assrape Michigan yet again, and RichRod won't be fired, setting up yet another assrape for next year.

I am just so glad that Bill Martin is retiring as AD.  He has been such a crappy selector of coaches, and has been focussed entirely on uglifying the sports complex, rather than maintaining quality programs.  Michigan football will surely have a new coach as one of the first things his successor does (because, it turns out, RichRod was really Martin's only candidate for head coach to replace Carr; Martin was absolutely convinced that the spread is unstoppable and wanted no one other than the best spread coach in the country).

Oh, and when did Martin take over as AD? When the slide began, in 2000.

Of course, there is going to be another loss to OSU following that change, but this game may become a rivalry game again after that.  Sorry, Ed, but I don't see Michigan having a competitive football team earlier than 2012.

I'll be honest the situation at Michigan is very complicated.

The immediate failings are totally the result of Rich Rodriguez.  I watched Rodriguez coach for many years and his offensive output is unstoppable when he gets personnel on the field to run his system, he destroyed SEC Champion Georgia with it and he ran over some of the best teams in the country with it.  The immediate problems that Rich Rodriguez ran into (and the Michigan has suffered with) are:

1.  Rich Rodriguez only knows one way to coach football.  Michigan has enough talent "baseline" that there is genuinely a good chance that someone like me or you could have gone in, kept all of Lloyd Carr's assistants and simply said "let's run our base playbook guys."  We wouldn't come close to a BCS bid or anything, but we'd win 8-9 games.  Just because Michigan had so much more talent when Carr left that they shouldn't be losing to teams like Michigan State etc.  Because Rich Rodriguez only knows one way to coach football, he doesn't have the ability to go in and slowly integrate the team into his system.  Instead he has to totally destroy every bit of what there was, and rebuild it from the ground up.  Carr was well past his prime, and needed to go, but he didn't leave the cupboard bare by any means, and personnel like Mallet et cetera were more than capable football players.  Rodriguez ran off anyone who didn't fit within his system and since everyone was totally new to it, they were guaranteed to execute poorly for several seasons.

2.  Rich Rodriguez doesn't understand Michigan.  The average Michigan fan has an ego the size of a swimming pool, they are one of the few schools out there with as much ego as Ivy Leaguers, Michigan genuinely believes it is simply better than everyone else in the Big 10.  Not in terms of football, not even exclusively in terms of academics, but more they intrinsically believe they are superior human beings to the likes of people who went to Minnesota, Wisconsin et cetera.  (Incidentally this is why I love seeing Michigan do so poorly.)  Because Rich Rodriguez doesn't understand Michigan he doesn't understand he can't go in and rebuild from the ground up because the Michigan ego can't tolerate several losing seasons, which is what it would take for Rodriguez system to truly work at its peak performance.

3.  Rich Rodriguez is an offensive coordinator and still thinks of himself as one, not a head coach.  He has consistently neglected defense everywhere he has coached.  This was fine in the Big East where the overall level of play wasn't that high, and where his explosive offense could simply outscore everyone else.  In a conference like the Big 10, and especially at Michigan Rodriguez needs to care about the defensive side of the ball to actually have a consistent shot at winning a Big 10 title and a Rose Bowl every single year.

Those are just the Rodriguez specific problems.  The bigger problem is that Michigan is more of a 1960s football program in the late 200Xs.  What I mean is, football by and large at the college level has become dominated by "Football Factories."  The best talent comes from football factory High Schools where the star players are groomed from day one to be football players, not student athletes.  These football factory high schools have deep connections with most of the powerhouse coaching staffs at schools like LSU, Florida, Miami et cetera.  Football players from these schools go on to college versions of the football factory high school.  While LSU or U. Miami or Alabama et cetera are certainly fine schools but they essentially create an iron curtain between the football players and the "real" university.  Football players at these schools are being groomed to be the best football players they can possibly be, period.  They are put into very structured degree programs that sometimes feature courses taught by the football or basketball coach, they have a whole staff of tutors that essentially hold their hands through even the very easiest classes and make sure they never become academically ineligible. 

At most levels of college football, you can require your players to be both good players while also striving to create good men.  Dedicated students and quality members of the community.  However, at the very highest levels of college football, where you want to be playing not just for BCS bowl wins but for a BCS Natoinal Championship, I think by and large we're seeing a steady and unstoppable switch to dominance by programs that are all about one thing and one thing only:  football. 

Schools like Notre Dame and Michigan are basically in the same position that the Ivy League schools were in decades ago when they decided to essentially retreat from the major college football game.  You can certainly get success while trying to create "Michigan men", but you won't beat teams like Florida or Oklahoma or LSU on a regular basis.  These schools are powered on extremely gifted athletes who are probably working on a 5th grade reading level because they've been whisked through life on the basis of superior athletic ability.  Unless there's a fundamental shift in how schools like Notre Dame and Michigan view their football programs in relation to the school itself and the culture they wish to create I genuinely don't see how you're going to win long term against schools that have essentially no restrictions in the type of person they can bring into their university to insure dominance on the football field.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I should also add that a systemic malfeasance is also present at the powerhouse schools today.  Paying of players through back-channel means, getting answer keys for tests, going over NCAA regulations on practice et cetera.  At West Virginia it was understood if you played for Rich Rodriguez that you spent more time practicing than you were allowed to by the NCAA.  However, it was never really caught because the players just "self-organized" practice without any of the coaches involvement, and the NCAA can't regulate what a group of young men decide to do on their "own free time."  At Michigan someone spoke out about it and now there's a full blown investigation going on.  But the truth of the matter is, if your program isn't doing this stuff and isn't willing to do this stuff, you can't compete with the programs that do.

I've seen every indication that as much of a religious front Tressel puts on he's exactly the type of coach that is doing this stuff.  Tressel was probably even involved in getting Clarett paid but somehow came out of that whole thing squeaky clean.

[dps]

1.  Rich Rodriguez only knows one way to coach football.  Michigan has enough talent "baseline" that there is genuinely a good chance that someone like me or you could have gone in, kept all of Lloyd Carr's assistants and simply said "let's run our base playbook guys."  We wouldn't come close to a BCS bid or anything, but we'd win 8-9 games.  Just because Michigan had so much more talent when Carr left that they shouldn't be losing to teams like Michigan State etc.  Because Rich Rodriguez only knows one way to coach football, he doesn't have the ability to go in and slowly integrate the team into his system.  Instead he has to totally destroy every bit of what there was, and rebuild it from the ground up.  Carr was well past his prime, and needed to go, but he didn't leave the cupboard bare by any means, and personnel like Mallet et cetera were more than capable football players.  Rodriguez ran off anyone who didn't fit within his system and since everyone was totally new to it, they were guaranteed to execute poorly for several seasons.

I don't entirely agree with the rest of your post, but I think that this part is spot-on.  In fairness to Rodriguez, though, most coaches are like this--they will try to find players that fit their system, rather than changing their system to fit the players that they have available.