Punt-Counterpunt: Northwestern 2014

the editor can only post the wallpapers people put in the diaries

PUNT

By Heiko "4 AD" Yang

There’s football today. Michigan visits Northwestern for part II of Who Can Score Less During Regulation. That game will be followed by Ohio State and Michigan State in another installment of My Enemy’s Enemy Is Enemy When Other Enemy Is Not Good.

Michigan doesn’t have a new athletic director yet. I haven’t heard back from the department about my application, if you were wondering. Meanwhile we still have all of our 27 varsity sports, the Big House is still standing, and Stephen Ross hasn’t reneged on any of his donations. I’d say Jim Hackett is doing just fine. I had to look up his name just now because I haven’t heard his name mentioned since the day he was hired, which is an excellent sign. No one can call for your head if people don’t know who you are.

Oh hey, it’s snowing. Of course it is. There’s a giant storm in the Pacific sending cold air our way because This Is Michigan, and this is where winter has come and won’t be going away for the foreseeable future. It’s going to be cold until May, and we’re not going to be good at football for another couple seasons at best.

The last time I like this was during Rich Rod’s tenure. That feels like forever ago, doesn’t it? Before Denard, before Tate, before the new luxury boxes in the stadium even existed, we all said, “Just wait till he gets a quarterback who knows how to run his system.” Didn’t realize that we would also have to wait for a running back who knew how to run north and south, a secondary that wasn’t either injured, slow, or running the wrong direction, and a defensive coordinator who didn’t think his middle linebacker was a standup defensive tackle.

This feels different in an important way, though. Whereas I deeply wanted Rich Rod and his players to succeed until the moment he was fired, I’m pretty disinterested in what happens the rest of this season. I’ll watch today, sure. Will it break my heart if Michigan doesn’t win another game? The answer is not yes.

I ran into Vincent Smith last night, said hi and took a picture because I couldn’t help myself. And then I realized exactly what’s different: I freakin’ loved Rich Rod’s players. For whatever reason, Rich Rod’s players made you want to root for them. It didn’t matter how disappointing their performance was, you always felt terrible for them when they lost. Even after Hoke started bringing in stellar recruiting classes, my favorite players from the last few years are primarily Rich Rod’s guys – Denard (obvi), Gallon, Kovacs, Smith, Lewan, Roh, Roundtree … Probably the only guy that comes close now is Dennis Norfleet, and we all know Norfleet might as well have been a Rich Rod recruit.

There’s probably no fundamental difference between the players that these coaches recruited. Yeah, the Pattern™ and whatnot, but I think it has a lot more to do with the Message™, and that all comes back to Hoke. Under Hoke there was a radical change in the way players talked to the media and in public. Their PR training under Hoke and Brandon taught them to downplay their individual personalities and focus on the Team (x3). That’s great and all, but as a result there’s none of the same energy or swagger that four years ago inspired me to blindly apply for a press correspondent job at this blog because I wanted to meet them.

At this point all I see is a bunch of anonymous winged helmets. I couldn’t care less about the guys under the winged helmets, which is a terrible sign and something worth noting for the next head coach -- we can’t root for your players if we don’t know who they really are.

Northwestern 9, Michigan 6

COUNTERPUNT

by Nick RoUMel

Picking this one is a struggle.
No, not Michigan-Northwestern. Who cares? The season has become irrelevant, and pales in comparison to the administrative intrigue. Who will become the Athletic Director? Will David Brandon continue to foment conspiracy theories involving hostile fans and a cabal of scheming Democrats? Will Brady Hoke ever grow a pair?

the editor thinks this is slightly unsubtle

"Gosh I'm so sorry, Coach Dantonio. I prostrate myself before you and grovel! I kiss your steel-toed jackboots in supplication, because my reckless players damaged a square inch of your precious and consecrated holy turf. I do this even though you have yet to apologize for Chris Frey's ejection for targeting of Amarah Darboh, or Chris Frey's helmet hit on Devin Gardner, or when William Gholston tried to screw off Denard Robinson's head like a bottle cap and then punched Taylor Lewan:

“I do apologize, because I recognize that an injury that caused about as much damage to your grass as Dennis Norfleet making a fair catch (or dancing to Atomic Dog), is a far more serious transgression than anything your championship-caliber team may have ever done to ours.

“Plus I don't want you to beat me up and take my lunch money again."

So - back to today’s big game. I mean the one at the bully's house, in East Lansing. The Buckeyes visit the perpetually slighted Spartans, a team that can be favored and still manage to convey being disrespected. This is a team that wears not pads, but the chips of a thousand casinos on their shoulders, led by their fire-breathing coach, who would strangle a kitten for hissing at him wrong.

This is a game where I pray with all my might for both teams to lose, for the Spartans to be embarrassed, for Urban Meyer to remember that he retired three years ago to spend more time with his family, for the "Little Penguin," Jim Tressel, to cast a shadow over the game as long as Maurice Clarett's prison sentence.

But these are pipe dreams. The best I can hope for is for Sparty to be silenced at home, to come to work on Monday with excuses already rehearsed, for the playoff nonsense to stop, and for Dantonio to apologize for his general dickishness.

And if Michigan can manage another game winning field goal in the last micro-second, with the referees’ speedy ball-setting assistance, so much the better:

Michigan 12, Northwestern 10

[ed: the editor does think someone will score a touchdown]