[MLive]
The Question:
Brian: So that Mike DeBord quote I posted in UV reminded me that I now root against Tennessee in just about every game they play because they hired a coach who I think is not good at coaching. That's a pretty weird reason to wish pain and demise on a program. What is your weirdest reason you hate on a CFB program?
Seth: Other than Scott Frost’s mom you mean?
Brian: Some people want to hit Scott Frost's mom with a shovel for obscure reasons. Can't be helped. Mmmbop.
Seth: Michigan fans will cut you.
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The Responses:
no no no no no no no no no no just stop making these
Ace: In the conversation that led to this question, Brian mentioned rooting against Stanford because of David Shaw’s crimes against game theory. I have an entirely different reason. When I was checking out colleges after my junior year of high school, my dad turned a Bay Area business trip into a college tour, and at the time I really liked the idea of going to Stanford.
We joined one of their campus tours. The campus was gorgeous, the university essentially sold itself—and then our guide started talking football. Specifically, he brought up The Play—yes, this play—as a selling point for Stanford, saying some hogwash about how it was really the best reflection of Stanford football since they lost but their band did something wacky. (Notably, this was pre-Harbaugh.)
This offended me to my core. Whenever I’m watching Stanford and I think back to this moment, I hope David Shaw takes his criminally bad game management to new lows. The fans won’t care, anyway.
(I still applied to Stanford. I did not get in. That _totally_ doesn’t play a role here.)
[After the JUMP: screw you and your whole coast]
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| Is this real? You don’t know, do you. You think it’s a joke but it might not be. |
Seth: I hate Oregon. I hate their uniforms and their 19 colors and their daddy nike warbucks, and every time someone says Autzen Stadium—which I remind you holds half as many people as the Big House—is the “hardest stadium to play in” because of acoustic engineering.
This is for the weirdest of reasons. In 2007 the Big Ten Network/Fox were having their great pissing match with Comcast, which meant having to go to the bar for Michigan games and never seeing the rest of the conference play. After the Horror, my friend James came up with a solution: we would all become Pac10 fans. We all picked teams and got super serious--like work was suffering because we were on early Pac10 blogs and message boards trying to soak in the talking points. I got Stanford (Harbaugh!), which in 2007 meant mostly gallows humor until WHAT'S YOUR DEAL.
The guy who got Oregon apparently found the RCMB of Oregon web communities, because he was awful. He's the kind of guy who will go off on something and you don't know if he's really into it or really good at pretending he is while playing some sort of meta joke (it's both). So when Oregon trounced Stanford it was the same week-ish that Harbaugh made that comment about the classes Michigan's players take. The Oregon guy and I got into this heated argument that started only half role-played, and touched on everything wrong with college football, which was, in a nutshell, "Oregon."
The joke has been over for almost a decade and I don't believe half of what I was arguing anymore, but every time I see Oregon I remember how much I hated them that year.
The duck, though.
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Brian: I feel like I should explain the Tennessee thing a bit more. I already had some general antipathy for Tennessee for obvious 1997-related reasons. Marcus Ray's bizarre Butch Jones fixation incremented that a bit further, and then Jones hired DeBord.
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| David P. Gilkey, The Freep |
At the time DeBord had been out of coaching for a number of years and was working as a mandarin in Michigan's athletic department. Even though I hate on Al Borges a bunch, he got a job after he left Michigan. DeBord got a sinecure. Strike one. DeBord's never been a QB coach, and Tennessee does not have a separate QB coach to make up for that fact. Strike two. And Mike Debord did nothing but run outside zone his last two years at Michigan. Strike three. I think the reason it drives me so batty is that now I'm looking at the Harbaugh offense weekly and the vast possibilities of manball are opening up before my eyes. Every run game tweak further emphasizes the years I wasted charting this yob's brain dead offense.
I also have significant personal animosity towards DeBord because he failed utterly at CMU, literally quit, literally said he wasn't a head coach kind of guy as he quit, and then wormed his way back in at Michigan to the point where he was Carr's recommendation to take over.
Bill Martin didn't buy that, and even if Rich Rodriguez was a total bust it was still 100% better than anything DeBord would have delivered.
DeBord more than anyone else still in coaching is the living symbol of why Michigan had to eat itself alive for seven years before Harbaugh came in, and I'm holding the hell out of that grudge.
(Tennessee's status as Baylor Lite also fuels my disdain for that program, but that's not a weird reason. That's a reason everyone should agree on.)
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Adam: Ace alluded to Stanford's admissions decision playing into his hatred for their football program. I won't allude to it: Michigan State could be a MAC school (yeah, there's a joke there) and I'd still feel unfettered bitterness toward the institution.
As an only child, I relied heavily on a family friend's advice when applying to colleges. This person was a Michigan State student at the time and said that no matter where I went, I'd want to get into that school's honors program or I'd get lost in the shuffle of a big research institution and be adrift without a community to call my own.
Fast forward a few months and admissions letters start to come in. I get into State. I get into Michigan. I find out in relatively short order that I got into Michigan's LSA Honors Program, which is exciting because there's Honors housing; remember that I'm worried at the time about feeling isolated at college. I haven't heard anything from State's Honors College, so I contact them. They tell me I've been rejected. From State's Honors College. After getting into Michigan's LSA Honors Program. Seriously.
I figure this has to be some kind of mistake and ask if I can reapply or have my application reconsidered or send in final semester grades or something, anything to fix this oversight. I tell them that I'm confused, as I've already been admitted to the LSA Honors Program. Looking back, I don't think that went over the way I thought it would. State tells me that there's nothing I can do except apply again after my first semester at MSU which, uh, hard pass.
It all worked out for the best. I enrolled in the Honors Program at Michigan and made some friends that I still keep in touch with. I took some cool classes and did find that community-within-a-community that I was looking for. In the end, Big Brother took good care of me.