M-Borg vs. THE Flavortown U Thread, Orig. by Buckeye Paul, absconded w/by talent.

[hack]

Essentially, yeah. If our guys can't beat your guys this year than we friggin deserve our emporer's-new-clothing wardrobe. Every intangible is there.

[hodgkal]

Let's get real. The talent differential between our two schools at this point is huge. There may be some intangibles in our favor but we have a team of returnees that got clobbered by good teams last year. It isn't going to turn around in a year. The long term prospects are brighter but I wish the euphoria among our faithful would quiet down a bit. Anyway it is far better to go into a game as an underdog. And that is what we will be.

[Optimus Prime]

Begs the question, what the hell was Rich Rod doing for 3 years? Hoke may deliver the #1 or #2 recruitment class in the nation, top 5 is a certain. It's amazing how badly the program slipped under RR, embarrassing. Meyer ran the spread-option at Florida and recruited pretty much whom he wanted, amazing talent.

[Rocky Bleier]

Believe Jamie meant that the difference in the ability to draw talent to MSU and Alabama is way bigger than the ability to draw talent to Florida and OSU. And he's right.

That's a given. Never would dispute that. Only point I was making was that I wouldn't fear Urban at tosu as much as at Florida, but as usual have to go around the block to do it.

[Jamie H]

Who went from Florida to Alabama? I know Ohio has strong high school football, but I remember the total ass-whooping Urban's Florida team put on tosu. Unless Urban could pull the same kids he had at Florida, and I think he'd be villified if he didn't take mostly homegrown Ohio kids, he wouldn't be able to reproduce his Florida teams. Do you?

I don't think he would try to reproduce his Florida teams. He is a great coach who seems to be able to turn any group of kids into winning teams. There is a ton of HS football talent in Ohio. Yeah, it is different than the talent in Florida, but I don't think it is as different as you are making it out to be. Ohio produces tons of great players.

Assuming no further sanctions, I think Meyer would be able to build a juggernaut at OSU that rivaled the success Florida had in the SEC.

I wouldn't read too much into one game. Just because Florida beat up OSU in 2006 doesn't mean that there isn't enough football talent in Ohio to compete on a national level. Tressel was inexplicibly terrible against the SEC, even at the same time that Michigan was having plenty of success. Remember that Michigan beat Florida the year following that OSU whooping. I think most of this was Tressel's unbelievably conservative style of coaching. He had the same problems with the SEC that Bo had with the Pac-10. That uber-conservative style wins you Big Ten Titles, but puts you in trouble when you face the top-notch offensive teams. You have to be able to punch with them offensively to win, and OSU was never set up to do that--not because of a lack of talent, but because of the style of their coach.

Honestly, a healthy Meyer at OSU is exponentially the worst case I can think of for Michigan. I can't think of any other coach that would be even 25% as bad. I'm curious--if you aren't afraid of Meyer at OSU, who would you be afraid of? Who would be more dangerous to Michigan?

[Mike]

I'd prefer 5 years of 15 scholarship reductions and multi-year bowl bans..... but that's just me. heh

You're a good man, Ent.

[Mackenzie]

I hear Urban Meyer has hired Brett Farve to be his agent.

[Mike]

His advice: Rock out with your cock out.

[hack]

Let's get real. The talent differential between our two schools at this point is huge. There may be some intangibles in our favor but we have a team of returnees that got clobbered by good teams last year. It isn't going to turn around in a year. The long term prospects are brighter but I wish the euphoria among our faithful would quiet down a bit. Anyway it is far better to go into a game as an underdog. And that is what we will be.

Very true. I'm not expecting a 3-loss season or less, but in context here, I am expecting to beat OSU. True rivalry games should always be closer than a talent gap indicates. The last time OSU played here it took 3 second-half interceptions by Forcier before OSU had that game salted away, and that was even after Forcier gifted them a TD with that end-zone fumble.

Now they are without Tressell and Pryor, and by gametime will have endured a season of turmoil and unusually high churn in the starting lineup. Our team will be almost a full season in with good coaching, and motivated like it hasn't been in more than a decade to win this one particular game. Karma, payback, poetic justice, the forces of good and evil and every other intangible one could imagine will be working in UM's favor. This one game will influence recruiting more than any the team has played in years and years. The guys on the team and coaching staff know that. They must win.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I'm not sure who talent is speaking of when he talks about a big name coach taking over at osu. I'd like to hear his list of candidates. And that's not to imply a big name wouldn't go there. They would.

After the Rodriguez experiment, I think it's safe to say that there's a brand of football in the B10 that seems to match the kinds of kids that play at a high level in the mid-west and the kinds of schemes these kids play within at the HS level. You can't play a finesse football game in the B1G and be anything other than middle of the road within the conference. Tell me if you think team like Purdue, Minnesota or NW, all of whom have run some sort of finesse schemes with the objective being avoid taking on the beef, have ever dominated.

Was listening to Mike Leach on Sirius yesterday talk about this very thing. He made a comment that his brand of offense does not intend to take on the DL at the point of contact but rather to get up field to the second level and disrupt the LBs. Fine, I get this approach but you have to have a pool of talent IN STATE that can play that kind of ball.

That having been said and knowing the culture of osu football, it seems osu would be looking for a guy like Brett Bilema who, despite the fact he is a meat head, cannot be ignored for the job he's done at Wisky following Alvarez. Same goes for Ferentz. They both play a very physical kind of football where the strategy is to beat the opponent up at the LOS not finesse him.

Not saying Bilema or Ferentz are candidates but who plays that kind of football that is a big name right now? Tedford's star has faded and it would seem like there are not a lot of Division 1 teams outside of the B10 that play osu's style of play. I think fickel is the guy and will remain there as long as he doesn't lay a big egg in 2011.

[Optimus Prime]

Meyer left a "well-oiled" machine at Florida for health reasons. Can't see him returning to a cold weather climate (Columbus) to re-tool an OSU program. Meyer wrote recently that he had left Bowling Green to recruit in Florida, left the snow and miserable people of Ohio....75F in Gainsville, palm trees, walked into Swamp and had decided this is where he'd like to coach if the opportunity ever presented itself.

Sorry OSU, it ain't happening, especially hauling the wife and kids back to the snow and cold.

[hack]

Well RR's experiment failed because he seems to have thought his offensive genius mooted the need to be physical, avoid turnovers, win the LOS, and all the other self-evident nuggets of coaching truisms built up over time. That's a common hazard when you hire a guy focused on tactics. It doesn't necessarily mean that a finesse offense can't work in the B10, however. Even if RR was only somewhat negligent of the other two legs of the stool, instead of shockingly negligent, we'd have a very different conclusion on this topic.

I personally don't like coaches who think they can scheme their way past what is tried and true, but if ever there came along an offensive savant who understood that all his scheming is important but never more important than winning the LOS and avoiding turnovers, I'd be pretty interested in that coach.

[Tom W]

...Our team will be almost a full season in with good coaching, and motivated like it hasn't been in more than a decade to win this one particular game...

I?m really looking forward to seeing what impact coaching, particularly Mattison, will have on this team. Something seems to be "driving" him. Afterall, why would he take this job, which seems like a demotion, in the first place? It?s not like he was doing a lousy job in a place where nobody appreciated him. But then again, coaching Ray Lewis and Ed Reed might lose its challenge after a while.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Mike Leach formerly of TT?

I think it's more than just blowing off the defense believing you can score enough points to overcome deficiencies there. At the point of RR's hire and with a good deal of incontrovertible evidence that a run focused spread offense was working for top 10 CFB teams, I thought the spread approach was perfect for Michigan and had the potential of leaving those teams stuck in the notion of pounding the ball in the dust. I think the evidence proves that view was wrong.

Here's the deal for me. Teams that practice defending against a finessing OL are not prepared to deal with an OL that takes you on right at the point of attack. If the rest of your league plays that way, fine. If it doesn't, you might be screwed and M was against teams like MSU and Wisconsin that made a point of pounding the ball against RR's ill prepared defenses.

I'm not letting the defensive coaches RR assembled off the hook. I'd never do that. But after listening to Mike Leach yesterday talk on this very subject with great authority, I'm more and more beginning to believe you can't run the kind of offense Rodriguez tried to bring into the B1G effectively enough to win your league consistently. It seems to be, according to Leach, a mind set that this kind of offensive philosophy brings to the entire team. If you've been listening to Hoke and Mattson you can tell they are working mighty hard to try to change the attitude of the players that RR coached. Not that the attitude was bad it just won't hack it in the B1G for 11 Saturdays.

[Optimus Prime]

Hack, strong analysis...I meant in particular in terms of recruiting. It seemed RR dwelt in the sewers of Pahokee, Fl hoping to find the next "problem-free" recruit. A savvy coach often will get the pick of the litter, given the named brand and resources of AA, especially at a mid-West and National level of appeal.