SUCH a good movie. You chivalric fool; as if the way one fell down mattered. On Wednesday this week I had to put our family dog down—he was 14 and been slowing down since we lost my dad, and he had a stroke during the night, and it was sad but undeniably the best way and best time to go. Afterwards I was supposed to collect my daughter, get the roundtable posted, then get to the facility that's trying to get my Mom able to walk again within the impossibly small window her insurance company will pay for it. I didn't want to engage the sympathy choir, nor was I ready to go fixing things or move on. Instead I wandered into a breakfast place and ordered a coffee, and stared at texts of things people say when your heretofore ridiculously fortunate family is going through the mother of all mean regressions.
After a time I struck up a conversation with an older dude who from his Michigan hat I identified with the super Michigan-stickered car outside. He was, of course, a current player's dad, and other than his kid who's the best player in the entire world, he had a lot to say about the darkness hanging over this program that twinkling lights could only temporarily keep at bay.
He echoed a lot of what another player's brother said in a diary earlier in the week:
The program is in shambles. Bo is not coming back and it's time to move on. The cult like adherence to tradition and "this is Michigan" is the very reason we are plummeting towards rock bottom. We don't need another Bo or another Michigan Man, we need a competent, forward thinking administration who will take advantage of the massive institutional advantages Michigan provides.
The players are acknowledging reality while doing everything they can to make sure there's a team tomorrow. We got a glimpse of this from Gardner's aneurism of leadership
…and another from a letter to the players by their senior punter:
"Play for the guys in your class who you texted the day you committed, and live in the dorms with. Play for the elementary kids back home whom you've never even met, but know who you are and where you play. Play for your high school coaches, the guys you've met at combines, your family, your friends. Finally, play for yourself. Pride in yourself means that, win or lose, you worked and competed as hard as you possibly could until the schedule provided no more games to play."
When the fall is all that is, it matters.
[After the jump, I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it. We're a knowledgeable family.]
The Oracle told me that I would fall in love and that that man...
the man that I loved would be The One.
The Matrix. I began linking these last week but might as well include the entire six-part series on the coaching candidates by Ron Utah. I am renumbering to something that makes sense to me because I am Gen X. Episode IV: A New Harbaugh, Episode V: The SEC Strikes Back, Episode VI: The Return of the Red Guy, Episode I: The Phantom Mentions, Episode II: Attack of the Spread O-Clones, and Episode III: Revenge from the Sticks.
Ron has a scoring system for his guys that's like GPA. The other coaching candidate reviewer in the diaries, alum96, came up with a separate matrix a 5-star scale of the dudes he's reviewed. He needs to be tougher on the "is he a dick" category, but that's quite a gray area since the great coaches tend to be some kind of asshole.
I don't like his method though because it doesn't separate, say, success as an assistant from dominating a major conference for 10 years. I ran this for the last five Michigan hires, and Hoke (!) was the best candidate (46 points) because he got fives things far less important that "has won football games," like "will he come?" and "will he stick?", and not being a dick, ethics, and fitting the culture. Bo was a 45 on Ron's scale, Mo got 43, Lloyd 42, and RR a 39.
I propose a new scale. Try this sheet. Under my weights (hover over the categories on the google doc for explanations) I broke the coach things into categories and subcategories, weighted toward more important aspects of coach desirability. There's 120 possible points, which would be a guy who invented the offense AND defense that everybody now uses, and left the school he turned into a superpower to win multiple Superbowls. The short version of Michigan hires since Bo, plus Jim Harbaugh c. 2014, at the time we got them:
| Category (Possible Pts) | Bo | Mo | Carr | RR | Hoke | Jim H |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Previous Coaching Success (50) | 11 | 12 | 9 | 27 | 8 | 31 |
| Expertise (30) | 13 | 14 | 11 | 15 | 8 | 15 |
| Team Building (15) | 7 | 10 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 10 |
| Long-Term Program Health (15) | 9 | 9 | 13 | 7 | 14 | 8 |
| Short-Term Program Health (10) | 5 | 8 | 7 | 3 | 3 | 7 |
| Attractiveness (120) | 45 | 53 | 47 | 59 | 38 | 71 |
This passes the eye test at least: Hoke and Carr were most attractive for the long-term health of the program, while Rodriguez had a history of winning and a perfect expertise score on one side of the ball, but deficiencies in other areas. If you're looking at this and wondering why Bo would seem like less of a sure thing than taking the interim tag off of Lloyd Carr, I resubmit Canham's face.
Harbaugh on the other hand looks like a home run because he's turned around moribund programs on three different levels.
We lost a lot of games to injury. Via m1jjb00 Michigan is behind only Maryland in the conference in % of starters' starts lost to injuries this year. He adjusted for quarterbacks and counted suspensions with injuries, but Braxton Miller and Venric Mark things don't count. They probably should since their coaches were planning on them going into the season. Like, Michigan rightly gets credit for Magnusson being out, but isn't it a bigger deal that Penn State lost an All Big Ten caliber guard in Miles Dieffenbach?
Post-Brandon spring cleaning. Things we want to keep. Things that should be destroyed.
Post-fanapocalyptic Etc. From the Student Section thinks Dave Brandon's efforts to reform are probably genuine but too little too late. Best and Worst liked that the focus of fans was on screaming encouragement at the players to win football games. Erik in Dayton on why people protest. Inside the Box Score is lights-themed. People meeting Michigan people. Third down and guh.
Your Moment of Zen and Compliance Under Provision 6 of the Norfleet Atomic Dog Act of 2560
Via Melissa Storch