UM Football Recruiting - by WM Wolverine

[iam416]

There's pessimistic, despondent and utterly hopeless, and then there's saying you're Nebraska. JFC, have a LITTLE pride.

[Mike]

We’ll I’ve TRIED that!

[lineygoblue]

I think you're spot-on, Mike. The basketball program had to endure Brian Ellerbe and Tom Goss. They made a mild improvement under Tommy Amaker, but then somehow we managed to snag John Beilein, and that led to the renewal of the program. Juwan Howard is now competing for the top players in the country, and Michigan Basketball is not a joke anymore.

What Michigan needs is about 3-4 years of Mike DeBord as HC. Its what Lloyd Carr wanted, and maybe it needs to happen. Maybe after that the football equivalent of Juwan Howard will come along, and get us back on track. And no, .. that's not Mike Hart.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Yep. The gig is up. 2016 probably irreparably broke the program. The only way to fix it is a complete cultural overhaul that doesn’t revolve around coaches from 50-120 years ago.

Honestly, the best thing for the football program long term would probably be to go off into the wilderness for a decade like basketball did. Then reemerge anew. Because as it stands now, Michigan is headed down the same path as Nebraska. I don’t think they’re ever coming back to become an elite program.

The problem with this approach - and I agree completely that the program needs to be reborn - is that I'm not sure you can rip the deep roots of the Michigan football program tree out. You'd have to do that to be successful with a rebirth. The fab five era and it's complete ending precipitated by the Weber fiasco sort-of did that for the B-Ball program.

The football program's rot - the tree so to speak - still has live roots in the form of decades upon decades of former players, school and program administrators, politicians, past and present regents, and donors who have, IMO, without any doubt, influenced the tree's death on multiple levels. That wasn't the intention, obviously, but the football program today is a steaming pile of shit because of that.

One of the best things that happened to the football program BH (before Harbaugh) was the hiring of outsider, Jim Hackett to get Harbaugh signed. Other than the fact that he has turned out to be a colossal failure, the hiring and signing process was golden. Credit to Hackett and those that engineered his hiring. Something like this needs to happen again. I'd hire a team of maybe 3 or 4 people with expertise in specific areas. The hiring of that independent team has to be completely detached from whatever the fuck you want to call (the rot and the roots) that is M culture. All those people who have had a say or have influenced the massive failure of the football program are shut out.

Now, is that approach realistic? It's not going to happen with Manuel calling the shots. He's part of the problem. It would have to originate from the regents. The mechanics of doing something like that would be to hire an independent firm to analyze the programs history - modern is good enough say, from Carr's departure - and come of with a road map identifying how Michigan has fallen from being a good to great football team and regular contender to the current steaming pile of shit, more or less BT bottom feeder and nationally irrelevant. The analysis concludes by naming the team and the guy in charge of it.

The impetus for the regents to act? A half full stadium with the Big House not among the stadiums that get filled every Saturday and the schools that built them bragging about it. Its coming.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The regents must act and hire Jim Herrmann, post-haste, lest some SEC program gobble him up.

[WM Wolverine]

I'm alive, wake me up when M is competing for blue chip talent that the Buckeyes hoard. M is signing alot of 3 stars that even those with rose tinted glasses won't argue will end up 4 stars. I'm barely following.

M is becoming Iowa.

Half the talent from M's roster last season decided not to play and those that were on the field, didn't show up either.

[iam416]

Well, at least you're only at "becoming Iowa." Mike has drifted into the darkest recesses of the human spirit with his :"become Nebraska" nonsense.

[Mike]

I WISH our program was as good as Iowa’s.

[lineygoblue]

I'd take Iowa's success right now.

[WM Wolverine]

M hit a wall last season (tons of guys with eligibility decided not to play, along with key injuries) and every weakness was exposed. More confident the new defensive coordinator has some ability to adapt his defense to his talent/opposition and he's zero coordinator experience.

Will be way more interested in all the pre season magazines to read anything the much younger coaches have to say about football.

Fwiw the Ravens ran a 3-4 that was very blitz heavy, which explains the departure of most scholarship linebackers. This hire (Macdonald) is the key to Harbaughs future in AA, hopefully he can hold the Buckeyes to under 69.

[lineygoblue]

This hire (Macdonald) is the key to Harbaughs future in AA, hopefully he can hold the Buckeyes to under 69.

Michigan should take credit for a W if they hold OSU to under 40. I think they'll score 40 before halftime. Nothing I've seen or heard gives me any hope of anything different.

And that's fine with Manuel and Harbaugh. This is the new acceptable for M football.

[WM Wolverine]

My second sentence in my last post says everything about my thoughts on Don Brown, he's the type of coach bad offenses were afraid to play yet a good offensive coordinator could easily exploit. And Ryan Day is one of the very best OC's (I know he's the coach).

[iam416]

Yes, I still miss Don Brown.

[lineygoblue]

Michigan added a couple of FB commitments over the weekend, a TE/Flex and I believe a DL. I'm not even going to post any stats about them because there's nothing about either of them that would be of a concern to opponents. They're standard mid-level players that Michigan now targets and is satisfied with. The TE/Flex is ranked somewhere in the high 500's on the national list. So, nothing special.

It'd be nice if Michigan could get back to being one of the top players at least in Midwest recruiting. The way it SHOULD be is if we were to list the top 20 players in the Midwest, Michigan should be able to sign anywhere from 5-8 of them. That's the way it used to be. But, in today's world even though I haven't looked at what the top 20 Midwest players are, I'd imagine that Michigan will sign MAYBE 2 or 3 of them, maximum. 3 if they are lucky. It shouldn't be that way.

Nobody in the Big Ten is recruiting anywhere near OSU, so nobody is going to make a dent in their talent advantage. They're set for top dog status for at least the next 3-5 years. The problem I have with that as a Michigan fan is that nobody on State Street seems concerned about that, nor do they care. They accept the status they have now.

[Jeff Buchanan]

I'm not sure the deciders can change the "status, Liney. New coach? I don't thinks so, flush the entire football program staff and build a new one? Neither of those two tings, which make sense to me, are going to happen. So, status quo.

As to M not getting top 100 recruits, or top 150s in state, the reasons for that are crystal clear. More than a decade of mediocre to below average records, losing embarrassingly to conference foes - which directly affects in state and midwestern recruiting - and a failure to be nationally relevant Since Brady Hoke inherited some talent then quickly wasted it followed by what some would consider a sportsman, Jim Harbaugh, who owns the dubious record of being a very high profile performer and over the course of his tenure as M's HC becoming an abject failure if winning championships is a measure of that.

No one should be surprised by where the M football program is and where it will likely remain for the foreseeable future.......fighting for bottom 3 or 4 in the BIG and completely out of it for anything to cheer about in the post season. Never thought I'd see the day.