Woe Blue!

Michigan loses again!


No Bowl Game this year


FIRE RODRIGUEZ

First losing record since the 1960s.

Rodriguez needs to take a long walk off a short pier.

Saturday, November 1, 2008
Lynn Henning
Commentary: Disastrous U-M season didn't have to happen

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Had any of this been imagined -- the losing season, the unfathomably bad defense, the end of the bowl-game string -- as the price Michigan was required to pay to hire Rich Rodriguez, the answer last December should have been obvious.

Michigan needed a different coach. The Wolverines did not need to forsake 2008 to shift into a projected higher gear with a football program that was absolutely intact.

There was no need to cash in the transition year. There was no need to write off Rodriguez's inaugural season simply because he lacked a true spread-offense quarterback.

There was ample personnel on hand to have been better than what we saw take place in the name of Michigan football Saturday at Ross-Ade Stadium.

No, what happened during a horrible 48-42 loss to a not very good Purdue team should bring on some serious and necessary reflection in Ann Arbor.

A feeling here is that the introspection has already begun within Michigan's higher circles, beginning with the man who engineered his hiring, athletic director Bill Martin. It no doubt extends to the office of the president, Mary Sue Coleman, who authorized Michigan's move to hire a coach whose baggage in arriving in Ann Arbor is being dwarfed by the wreckage that is piling up week to week in 2008.

Rodriguez was short and irritable following Saturday's game. That's to be expected. Michigan had a 14-0 lead and lost to a Purdue squad that was going with an inexperienced backup quarterback who merely tattooed the Wolverines to the tune of 48 points and 522 yards of total offense.

But what should be as distressing to Michigan's football camp as this incomprehensible string of losses -- five in a row -- is Rodriguez's attitude.

"I know what's going on," he said Saturday, as if he is aware of deficiencies no one else seems to recognize

Does he really believe that?

No spirit

Is it as simple as getting the quarterback he needs to run his beloved spread? Is it as complex as replacing Michigan's entire roster with Rodriguez-recruited athletes who can be formed and shaped into the kind of team Rodriguez believes he, ultimately, will have at Ann Arbor?

If that's the case, then Michigan should have stayed away from Rich-Rod last December. The goods were here to have had at least a decent, bowl-worthy season in 2008. There were areas that needed help -- offensive line, secondary, etc. -- but as many areas as the teams that have beaten Michigan in 2008 faced coming into this autumn?

You can't be serious.

What the head coach needs to be worried about is that Michigan's football fire has been snuffed in ways that extend far beyond the scoreboard and won-loss column.

The team's defense plays as if it is a bunch of lame-duck athletes waiting to be freed of this new regime.

Never, ever have those of us who have followed Michigan football for years, or covered it for decades, have conceived of a season when players would have lost their soul.

"Let's not finger-point," Rodriguez said of his team's disposition with three games to go. "We don't do that."

Maybe not in a literal fashion, but one of the most pathetic scenes from Saturday's disaster came in the fourth quarter, on a 4-yard scoring pass from Boilermakers quarterback Justin Siller to Greg Orton.

After the official had raised his hands, Michigan defenders Boubacar Cissoko and safety Charles Stewart stood looking at each other along the back of the end zone, all but pointing those fingers Rodriguez never saw Saturday.

What now?

Michigan has been beaten by flashy quarterbacks (Juice Williams, Illinois) and by backup quarterbacks (Siller). The Wolverines were beaten by Toledo and were challenged by Miami (Ohio). Those games featured lousy work by an offense that, in Rodriguez's defense, is crippled as long as Steven Threet remains his No. 1 option at quarterback.

But if that was going to be the case in 2008 -- and he should have seen it coming -- then it should not have been the end of the world to have stuck with a more conventional offense that would have taken advantage of Michigan's existing personnel, which was plenty good.

It still doesn't explain why Michigan's defense looks to be about as inspired as your kids are when you ask them to rake leaves.

The problem with Michigan football, dare we say it, is spiritual. There appears to be zero loyalty to the new regime. It had been looking like that for the past few weeks, and anyone who saw Saturday's transparent exercise in going through the motions would have concluded much the same.

Don't blame the kids. But do concern yourself with a coaching administration that had jolly well better find its new quarterback, its new recruits, and a new mindset, well in advance of 2009.

Plenty of folks simply don't get it. Many of us who long ago knew that Rodriguez had immense coaching expertise, which was on display at West Virginia, believed that he would bring that prowess to Ann Arbor and saw no reason why that ability should not have come reasonably close to getting the most out of his new team.

A man who inherited a program 39 years ago was able to make the transition. Bo Schembechler's immediate success came, largely, because he sized up what he had and made it better.

That should have been the basic promise and premise to this year's Michigan team. That, for all the transition, a typically solid autumn of football would evolve in Ann Arbor.

Not only is nothing of the kind going to happen in 2008, what are the wagers that Michigan football will seriously change in 2009?

It's not personnel. It's what's happening to it that scares the bejabbers out of anyone who knew that Michigan in 2008 was not dealing with an empty cupboard.

It's your move, Rich. And you better have more than your magical spread functioning to overcome a defense that, right now, epitomizes the lost world of Michigan football.

No Motor City Bowl


Maybe Next Year


FIRE RODRIGUEZ