U of M thread (in the Lions Forum) :)

[jaadam4]

I just dont see it. U of M has a borderline epic offense.... against shitty teams. When it comes to quality teams they aren't nearly as good as DickRod thinks they are.

Wisc will blow us out.

[Niffla]

All signs point to the mighty Insight.com Bowl as Mich's destination. Or the Texas Bowl as SLF pointed out. And that includes a potential victory over Wisconsin.

Now if they beat both Wisc & OSU? Then yeah, they'd probably be going to a much nicer bowl.

But the odds of that happening are zero.

[gjdodger]

Hater.

[nhwbrooklyn]

Is Mike Martin out for this game? I know he's not 100%.

I just can't see how UofM has any chance of stopping that run game.

Maybe if they score early, get a lucky turn over, score again, and put unexpected pressure on Wisconsin.... just doesn't seem likely though.

[Mainevent]

Unless the Badgers are just handing the ball over to UM consistently on turnovers, no way this game is close. That 52-30 predictions sounds about right, though UM might not get to 30.

[SeattleLionsFan]

I am about the biggest UM homer this side of Brandstatter but I think Mich has a shot this weekend, if they can not turn the ball over. I don't know that Wiscy can keep up with the speed of these guys.

[LionsWolverines]

I just dont see it. U of M has a borderline epic offense.... against shitty teams. When it comes to quality teams they aren't nearly as good as DickRod thinks they are.

Wisc will blow us out.

Like when we dropped 600 yards on Iowa, who had the 2nd best run D in the nation at that point? Or do you mean when we put up 67 points on Illinois' 15th overall defense?

The offense is only stopping when it's stopping itself (which it has been doing a lot of lately). I do, however, think we lose this one. Watt is an outstanding DE, and I just don't think the defense is going to be able to keep us in it. If Mike Martin is 90% healthy we at least have a chance, but otherwise I don't see us pulling this one out, they'll run all over us.

To win we'd need good mouton to show up, Demens to play great, Martin to be unstoppable, denard to not turn the ball over, tate to play well on the few series he'll inevitably be in on, and the secondary to not give up 17 yard outs or slants on 3rd and 15. It just seems like too much to ask.


Wiscy 56 - 42 with it being not as close as it ends up looking.

[jaadam4]

Are you driving the keep RichRod bandwagon?

[LionsWolverines]

Are you driving the keep RichRod bandwagon?

Meh, I always felt like, so long as we had a winning season and played in a decent bowl, that next year would be the one to make it or break it. Virtually the whole team is coming back next year, with a few bonuses like the injured secondary guys and some solid recruits. (with more hopefully to sign). I'll reserve the right to change my mind, but for now I'd say keep him, and if we don't win at least 10 and beat OSU next season, we make a move, preferably for jim harbaugh.

[jaadam4]

We'll see how you feel after we're humiliated against Ohio State.

[gjdodger]

Hater.

[jaadam4]

lol

[jaadam4]

Ok... This is ridiculous.. There's 35 fucking bowl games? That's retarded.

[gjdodger]

I don't know that you can draw any conclusions from this, other than Dave Brandon is a guy who will talk your ear off.

Dave Brandon, on permanent lights, what he sees on film from football team

BY MARK SNYDER
FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER

Michigan athletic director Dave Brandon addressed the installation of the permanent lights and a number of other topics –- including how he is evaluating the football program –- on "The Huge Show" Thursday afternoon.

On the permanent lights: “I’ve never been a fan of those portable lights that get brought in. They take up a bunch of parking spaces. We’ve got all these generators and back-up generators, we’re never totally sure how reliable they’re going to be, and frankly, the coverage on the field has never been that great? I remember we went into that triple overtime with Michigan State (in 2004,) I was down on the field, there were shadows everywhere and it’s not the way the Big House should be lit.

“So soon after I came on board, one of the things we decided to do was play our first night game, which will be next fall against Notre Dame. I just decided hey, if we’re going to get in the business of occasionally looking at playing a night game, and we were also planning the Big Chill for December, I just said it’s time for us to step up and put in permanent lights.”

“We thought we were going to have to wait until after the Wisconsin game because we thought they were going to have to do more work after the game that they’d have done for the Big Chill, but they’ve accelerated the schedule and flipped the switch literally and hour ago. We drove by and half of them were on and they were still booting up the other half and when we leave here we’re going to run by there because I want to see how that all looks lit up.

“You talk to the players and they’ll tell you, the most exciting, high-energy environments they play in are night games. In some cases, when I talk to the players, they tell us their favorite venue was the night game at Penn State with the white out. I don’t want their favorite venue to play be someplace else.
“Too much of anything is bad. That’s one of my mottos. It’s not like we’re going to get crazy over playing every game at night, because we’ve got 113,000 people to get in and out of that stadium at night, and it creates some operational complexities. But I would tell you that from time to time, certainly if this experiment goes well with Notre Dame next fall, from time to time in special occasions I think it’s great to light up the Big House and play at night.”

•On the football program currently: “I think at this point in the season we’ve seen some really good improvement in some areas, and some disappointments. If Rich was here, he’d be the first one to tell you that. We’ve had a lot to put a lot more young players on the field than we ever would have planned, particularly on the defensive side of the ball.

“There’s three phases to the game of football. I think by anybody’s standard, our offense is exciting and it’s a threat to anybody who tries to defend it. We’ve scored a lot of points, and we’ve certainly moved the ball for a lot of yards. But we turn it over too much, and that’s hurt us. Particularly these last two games we’ve been fortunate to win. You can’t turn the ball over five times a game and expect to win a lot of football games.

“On the defensive side of the ball, this is such a young team. The development that these young men go through from the time they’re 18 and 19 years old to the time they are 22, 23 years old is amazing, the amount of weight they put on, the speed they put on and strength they gain. That’s the case in all programs across the country. We’ve got a bunch of 18-and 19-year-old guys out there trying to chase down and tackle and fight off blocks of 22-and 23-year-old guys. It’s been tough.

“We have two big games to play. It’s important to see how our guys improve, particularly as we step up the level of competition, so I’m like everybody else. I’m anxious to see how this all pans out.”

•On some fans being disappointed, despite the record: “That’s just the way it works. I understand they are giving (Texas’) Mack Brown all kinds of nonsense down in Texas. I think Mack Brown knows how to coach.

“We live in a world where when things don’t go they way everybody wants them to go, you’ve got to come up with somebody to blame. The average fan likes to blame the coach a lot more than they like to blame the players. It’s just part of the sport. People speculate about coaches."

•On how he evaluates the football program: “It’s not as simple as win and loss records. It’s just not. People want to try to make it that simple, but there are so many things you have to look at when you measure the strength of a program. You’ve got to look at your pipeline of recruits, you’ve got to look at your academic performance of recruits as well as your current student-athletes. You have to look at the staff; how the staff’s performing and working together.

“Going in those locker rooms before the game, during the game and after the game and practices, and seeing how the team responds in difficult situations. Going over the game films and finding out exactly where the breakdowns occur and why they occur.

“You bet I do. I do that. I don’t know if that’s normal or not, but I understand, and I can tell you when it’s going real time, even the angles you look at on television you don’t get a real sense for what’s happening. You almost have to play the play back five or six times to really see where did we get it right and where did we get it wrong.

“I’m sitting in on film sessions and having the opportunity to really look at how the game’s unfolding, because I want to know. I want to understand. It’s a big part of our program. I tell people all the time, the University of Michigan athletic department cannot be successful unless Michigan football leads our success. Mark Twain once said, ‘if you’re going to put all your eggs in one basket, you’d better watch your basket.’ Football is our basket, so I watch it very carefully. That’s my job, and I do that.

“But I also get the opportunity to meet the kids. At the end of the season, I can interview kids; I can interview parents. I have access to the entire program and look at it in its totality, and that’s what I’ll do with football as well as the other 26 sports we play. That’s what athletic directors do.”

•On his specific approach: “I’m a hands-on guy, I think most people would describe me as that. In my previous (business) life, I was a certified pizza maker. In stores, I learned how to run every position in the store. I delivered pizzas, I’ve done it all. I refused the tips. I was doing it more for experience and seeing how it worked. That’s how you find out what’s really going on.

“You don’t get it in blogs and you don’t get it reading a newspaper. If you want to know what’s going on, you get inside the program and look at it carefully, and I try to do that with all of our sports. Keep in mind, I’m spending a lot of time with a lot of our coaches and a lot of our student-athletes because that’s how I find out what’s really going on.”

•On reaching the championship level: “That’s a great progression. We in football, as well as every other sport we play, we want to compete for championships. That’s what we’re about. That’s what our brand stands for. That’s why I’m here; expectations are really high. We want to be in a position to compete for championships. We’re not going to win them all the time, but we want everybody that we play to respect us as a competitor that they’re going to have to bring their best game if they want to win.

“I feel that way about every one of our 27 sports, and football is no different. One of the things we really have an opportunity to do these next couple weeks is show what we can do against two really good football programs.”

•On people giving him advice: “With all due respect, I get a lot of advice in this job. You can’t even believe it.

“My emails. Phone messages, emails and letters after a loss would be measured in the dozens. After a win, they would be measured as usually none. So everybody’s content and happy after a win.

“I played for Bo. The three years I was on the varsity we were 30 wins, one loss and one tie and we used to get booed in our own stadium.

“We couldn’t compete on the West Coast. The legendary Bo Schembechler, with a record that is still one of the most successful in the history of college football, he got criticized.

“It’s the nature of the deal, and I understand that. My point is, write me letters, send me email, do what you’re going to do, but understand you only have 5% of the information that I have. You don’t get to go to practice. You’re not in the locker room, you don’t know the kids, you don’t know the coaches; you’re not seeing the dynamic among the staff. You’re not getting the exit interviews from the seniors who talk about their experience with the program, you’re not looking at academic records, you’re not getting input on what’s happening uptown with the behavior of the team. I get everything, and I get to lay it out and do an assessment. I take advice from people but I want to take advice from people who have all the facts, not just 5% of the facts.

“It goes on throughout the season, but it gets really, really intense at the end of every season. Every sport, I’ve got a whole protocol set up where you do a complete review of all aspects of the program. And we not only look at the head coaches and the assistant coaches, we look at the trainers, we look at the doctors, we look at the strength and conditioning staff, we look at the equipment managers, we look at all aspects of the program to see where we’re getting it right and where we’re getting it wrong. If there are things we can correct by training and investment, we do. If there are things we have to correct with personnel changes, we’ll do that, too.”

•On bowl eligibility and what another win can do: “We’re in a mode now where the kids know we’re going to a bowl, but the general feeling in the locker room is every win we can get from here on out just takes us to a warmer climate and gets us closer to a New Year’s Day bowl. It’s exciting for these student-athletes, particularly many of them who have not had that experience based on what’s happened the last couple of years.

“There’s a lot to play for, and this team’s playing for respect. They have been since the beginning of the season. If you look at the three losses we’ve had, my assessment is (against) Michigan State we just played poorly. Those other two losses, we went down by three touchdowns in each of those games and we came back in the fourth quarter and were literally a possession away from being able to win those games back after being three touchdowns down. That doesn’t sound like a team that gives up, that doesn’t sound like a team that lacks confidence. That’s a team that can score quickly and always believes that they’re competing. I like that about this team.”

[gjdodger]

Part two.

•On the defensive problems this year: “If you dig down below the surface of that, the real question is how did we end up with seven or eight freshmen or redshirt freshmen out there playing defense on the field at the same time? How did we get there? When you go back, who could we have gotten recruiting, who did we miss, who left the program early for the NFL and could be out there playing, who got hurt that could be out there being an impact player?

“You can kind of see, it’s like everything else, it’s no simple answer. It’s a combination of losing some kids that really could have helped us by things we couldn’t control, and probably putting ourselves in a position where we were relying on youth more than we want to and we should be.

“There’s one other thing that I think is a valid point that has to be made. Everybody wants it to be the way it used to be. One of the years that I played I think we went six games in a row without the other team scoring a touchdown. Everybody wants to see that again, but look what’s happening in college football. How does Wisconsin put 83 up against Indiana? If you look at the scores around the country, look at Linebacker U., you go up to Penn State and duking it out, somebody wins 40-something to 30-something, we’re in a situation where these offensive geniuses are spreading the field, they’re getting guys in space, they’re creating these one on one match-ups with tremendous speed on the field. There’s just more offense.

“The rules have been changed a little bit to make it more of a scoring-oriented game. It’s harder and harder to stop some of these really, really great teams. Now - defense is a big part of the game, one of the phases you’ve got to get right, and we’ve got to get a lot better. But that’s the challenge. You can’t just go out there and put on the winged helmet and expect to happen. You’ve got to make it happen.”

•On the personnel being part of the defensive issues: “As we sit here in this season, the past is the past. My point of view is, I look at the films. When you’ve got young guys out there, and defense is about reacting, it’s about instincts. You don’t want defensive guys to think; you want them to react and go fast. What happens when you’ve got that many young players out there is they think. I can see it on the film. 'I’m a three-deep guy and my job is be three-deep and somebody breaks out in front of me and you can see this one moment where, wait a moment, am I supposed to get that guy in that one step?' At this level is all you need to let that guy beat you. Some of this is not that the kids don’t have the foot speed they need, it’s just that they’re still trying to get acclimated to the speed of the game and how fast they have to make decisions and move. That’s just all part of developing young guys.”

•On where he expects U-M football to be in the future: “We’re going to compete for the Big Ten championship and the right to go to the Rose Bowl. That’s what Michigan football is all about. That’s why coaches come here, that’s why players come here and I can tell you, that’s why athletic directors come here.
“There’s no way I’m going to be happy until we’re giving rings out again to these student-athletes. I’ve got three Big Ten championship rings. In this job I have, I travel around the country, I go to a lot of events and at those events, former players show up. I’m talking about guys who are in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s and what’s interesting about it is, if they earned one of those rings, they’re still wearing it. They’re still wearing it because it doesn’t matter what happened since, doesn’t matter how long they’ve lived, the very critically important part of their life that they’re the most proud of is when they won the championship at Michigan. And I got three of those rings and I want young student athletes to leave this program with that opportunity to earn those rings and take them off and enjoy them and feel good about them for the rest of their lives.”