however many of these I feel like writing. Part 1 is going to focus on… you guessed it… Michigan. After spending a week and a half cycling through the patented Doug Hill stages of grief* here’s what I’ve come up with:Is Michigan Any Good? Ehhh… maybe. Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll ever know because I think the Big Ten sucked this year. I already covered this but somehow it went from hands-down-best-in-the-country-and-&$#@-the-committee-for-not-putting-in-probably-2-teams-last-year to pretty much hot garbage. Michigan played two good teams all year and lost to both… (although I DO think U-M is a much better team than when they played Notre Dame). The Bowl game won’t prove anything because a) half the defense will (or at least should) decline to play in the bowl game. Gary has already declared he’s not playing. Which brings me to b) The bowl game is stupid. There’s only 4 “bowl” games that matter: 3 playoff games and the Rose Bowl… and even the Rose Bowl is pretty much just a name now. On to question 2
Why is Michigan playing Florida again? I don’t know man… Maybe they feel like all the old people from Michigan that retire down there make it like… almost an in-state rivalry or something? I mean it kind of makes sense… You’ve got the rich bastards who are probably old enough to have attended school when Michigan would occasionally beat OSU… and you’ve got the “Native Floridians” who probably remind those old people of the OSU fans they hated in their youth… I mean there’s a reason why the WRIF morning show has a whole segment entitled “Man… Florida’s F’d Up”
So what the hell happened?/Should Harbaugh/people get fired?/Is U-M doomed? As pissed off as I was about parts** of that game… No. As I mentioned previously… or later.. depending on how your reading/space time works*** people are idiots****. I keep hearing people talk about the offense being boring and outdated. Too predictable and two stubborn… “Fire Pep, Fire Harbaugh. This offense will never win in modern college football. This is too much Lloyd Ball” Shut up. This offense did exactly what it was supposed to do. It scored 39 points, over 400 yards, over 35 min time of possession. It gave up one turnover until late in the game when the… 3rd? 4th? string QB was forced into the game and had to throw up prayers because the game was already over. You know what the record would have been going into Saturday had the offense done this in the previous 3 years? 2-1. And that’s assuming the ToP increase didn’t negate any of OSU’s scoring drives in 2015. How many times has Don Brown’s defense given up 39 points since he’s been here? Once. How many times has he given up even half of that before the offense can’t get them a first down’s worth of rest on multiple consecutive drives? I don’t know because that’s too much research for 12:00 at night but… the point is this offense wins the big ten in 2016 and 2017. This offense should have won this game. This team lost because there zero pressure on Dwayne Haskins. I don’t know if Gary and Winovich were too hurt but for the first time all year there was zero pressure rushing four guys and there was no blitz strategy to remedy this. This team lost because Brandon Watson was completely outmatched and the defense did not adjust to compensate. This team lost because the number one defense in the country made Ohio State look Elite for the first time all year. Don Brown’s defense lost this game… You know who the one person on this coaching staff that I’d say “don’t let him leave, pay him all the moneys if you have to” is? Don Brown.
*Anger, Depression, Apathy, Listening to idiots talk about it on the radio, yelling in my car at the idiots talking about it on the radio, talking about “what really happened” to my poor family members who happen to mention football or Michigan, or sports, or something completely unrelated so that I have to quickly change the subject back to football…
** “Parts” is an understatement
*** “You already made that joke” Or will I already still have not made it yet.. in the future? Plus I still don’t know how you read.
****I fully admit that I’m an idiot about this stuff too.. If I were really any good at this I’d have a million dollar job as a sports analyst, or a football coach, or a very successful gambler or I’d at least win my own damn survivor league….