Not for a damn second because our situation wouldn't improve

Valenti was saying a rumor of a UM recruit visiting state and hoke letting him slide anyone know more exactly ?

Just fire Borges and whoever is in charge of the oline. Hire a non-retread michigan man idiot as OC. Make Hoke head recruiter/PR/placate idiot donors guy. Pretty simple really. Zero chance it happens.

What difference does it make? Peppers is gone either way.

This. Who would we hire? The search would begin and end with Miles. A guy like Kevin Sumlin could stand outside Dave Brandon's window Say Anything style and he still would never be hired.

If Hoke gets canned after next year, the bluebloods are going to need to have a serious come to Jesus moment and realize that Bo is dead and he's not coming back.

The non-retread Michigan Man idiot as OC will never happen fo sho.

Agree that it wouldn't really improve much, just curious really, better question is what do you think we will need to go through for the big wigs to realize that we need to branch out with our thinking

I don't know about the bluebloods per se but the old players that are regulars on WTKA in Ann Arbor are not at all ready. Andy Mignery, Marcus Ray - those guys are still full-on "HOKE IS THE RIGHT GUY, WE'RE NOT FIRING HIM." I expect a '97 championship team & company revolt (i.e., the same guys that sunk RR, Dhani Jones, Mark Bihl, Braylon, Friends of Lloyd Still in the AD, etc.) if Hoke isn't given his full 8 years to prove himself, or whatever they think justice demands he gets.

Frankly given all the constraints of the culture, plus the low-attrition, plus the recruiting (even if we lose Peppers and no Hand, it's very solid), plus the reality of alot of transitions involve deep craters/attrition/etc., (see: RR), the best path forward is still to stick it out with this group for another year, at least. Well, fire Borges for all I give a **** so long as that doesn't cost us any talent. But the rest can and should stay.

Another transition induced crater could put us on the Tennessee path where we just never recover on any timescale, and I feel like this AD can't hack the A-list hire (see: RR) due to cultural problems and the B-list hires from the Michigan Man Approved List is down to like Cam Cameron or some ****, and I don't even know where we go from there, other than the hottest MAC coach, which is basically where Tennessee is at now.

All the We Are ND jokes are funny and ****, I'd even take it if we got a Brian Kelly type coach in two years or whenever our Weis Hoke Era is over. Like, a guy with a proven track record at multiple stops - I can wait two years for that.

But who knows how the **** it would go down. I don't trust DB to be able to beat back the Lloyd crew and the blue-bloods AND conduct a meaningful search and not **** it up 10 different ways. Bill Martin couldn't do it. DB already proved he couldn't do it. They'll just call Les Miles, get rejected, shrug, panic, then hire Stan Parrish or something. So let's not bother. Unless your Harbaugh/Miles agent and looking to leverage us for an extension, giving Hoke one more year to fix the mess is better than giving the Keystone Kops in the AD another chance to **** everything up.

It could be worse. Greg Schiano will probably be looking for a job by then.

oh gawd we would probably ****ing rescue him from that ****storm in Tampa and Dave Brandon would be proud of himself for it. And isn't Schiano really enamored with the PSU job anyway?

Actually this is ****ing perfect:

Raiders:Lane Kiffin:Tennessee:USC::Bucs:Schiano:Michigan:PSU

Book it. WE ARE ND TENNESSEE

Can some Tennessee fan link me to some clownshow UT equivalent of freakbass and their YouTube videos? Wait, are there any Tennessee fans left?

I have no interest in firing Hoke. I do have interest in firing Borges and opening the wallet and hiring the hot OC mind from wherever. Obv get a new o-line coach as well.

Unfortunately not confident any of this will happen tho.

Pretty awful viewpoint

wat

How does Michigan improve under any viable HC candidate when transition costs are taken into account?

Not surprising given you think this is a 10 win team with Shane Morris

I want a ****ing head coach who when asked about the national championship in the presser after he gets hired doesn't say "well durrrrr duh duh durrrrr no. Big 10 championship durrrrrrr."

Say you want to win the whole ****ing thing.

The one interesting dynamic is who replaces MSC in July. She has been very involved in the football program's decisions the last 6 years. If the new President is similar, all bets are off.

The costs of firing another HC this soon after the last would be dreadful. Anyone else other than Mattison can comfortably leave, hopefully Borges has already been told that these next two games are his audition for whatever poor souls hire him next.

The thing with the new President is that they will have literally dozens if not hundreds of priorities. Hard to envision the football program (superficially firing on pretty high cylinders) in the midst of a totally self-funding athletic department swimming in endless piles of gold doubloons becoming anything the President really gets hands on with. And their leverage is with the AD.

I really don't think the President will change much. "Oh, you're raking in millions over millions, but you're football program is 7-5? What's the problem here?" will be most people in academias reaction. Remember the Athletic Department is a distraction for most of the academic side, it's a necessary evil - it's not a passion. If Brandon has it on solid financial footing, the university writ large isn't going to get in his way. And Brandon is a former regent with plenty of influence around the power structures.

It depends on who comes in obviously but it's hard to see much changing with the admin changing. imo of course. Anything could happen.

Don't care about firing the OL coach. Think it's a bad idea even. The kids who've been here (Schofield and Lewan) have done just fine

Yeah but there's no video board.

You are one iteration off. You had an offensive genius who blamed his predecessor for going 3-9. You replaced him with a mid majors flavor of the month who won 12 games with a gimmick offense. We're just one year a head of you, but now you will have to win a playoff game to get embarrassed by the SEC.

I think a lot of the OL problems go back to what's wrong with the offense as a whole: on a week in week out basis the kids aren't getting reps at base plays that they can execute. It's the same problem the defense had under Gerg with the constant rotation of personnel and schemes. See the Jack Miller experiment, tackle over, etc. That's on Borges, not Funk.

I'm not suggesting that the President is going to force Brandon's hands in firing Hoke or how he runs the football program. But, I do think it's extremely possible that a certain type of President is going to want to have input in a coaching search if it came to it. MSC played that role, and any good leader should want to have input in a major decision involving one of the U's best assets.

y'all are talking about a "coaching search" like that's happening.

we should talk about the impending destruction of the earth via alien invasion (can it least happen before Saturday at noon?) because that's just as likely.

There was a great piece about this on mgoblog - that got promoted to the front page. Basically about how Borges is of course responsible if you let a guy (or guys) who can't execute be the singular failing point of the offense.

For instance: you know one way to protect a young, inexperienced interior line? Spread the other team out! When you line up with *ONE* eligible WR (we do this all the time) and line up 3 tackles next to two TEs, well ****, of course the other team is going to stick 10 guys in the box. You're telling them what you're doing!

Borges biggest problem, far and away, is that. Right there. When we can't run with 5 lineman and a TE who can't block, his response is to throw out another TE who can't block on the field. Interior line getting destroy by gap blitzes? Put in a RB who can't block to pass protect. Derp derp derp. Of course that's an execution problem you ****ing clown. Shame on Fitz Toussaint for not figuring out how to block after 5 years. But shame on Borges for making Toussaint responsible over and over again to pick up a blitz. Just sit Toussaint down, put Dileo out more, make the defense put another guy outside instead. You accomplish the same thing.

How about another WR out wide? That's within the rules! We can do that! And if they blitz with their linebackers, run a ****ing slant. Borges responses is always more MANBALL if Original Manball failed, due to insufficient Manballness. Another WR over by the sideline that necessitates the other team to bring in a nickle package and put a body on the outside accomplishes the same thing. If the other team is still stacking the box, throw to the open guy.

Borges just won't do it. Or will, but he has to flail for 3 quarters (or like, 10) in a row to get there.

This is also where the bluebloods and stodgy fans and whiny troglodytes come in for blame: if this coaching staff is always and perpetually reflexively turning to MANBALL and ashamed to implement spread features into the offense, you can kinda understand given that they might have seen it as their mandate. The bluebloods and the associated crowd that's been taped to their seats since 1965 got their knickers twisted by RR's basketball on grass and convinced themselves that despite its increasing explosiveness and being 2nd in the nation in FEI offensive output or whatever, the spread was responsible for random and variable turnovers, for every loss, missed FGs, for GERG sucking, for Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War, whatever, because they didn't get it and just blamed every bad thing for it. How many clowns ran around yelling about how the defense was bad under GERG because they practiced against the spread and IN THE BIG TEN (despite the fact like 6 teams run the spread) YOU NEED TO MANBALL IN PRACTICE, TO PRACTICE. All that ****.

So I give Hoke/Borges the slightest of passes since they're just giving like 75% of the crowd what they want, which is offense played like its still the Johnson Administration, and for whatever reason RR/GERG's terrible defenses validated their belief the spread wasn't fit for real men.