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This is the first in a series of what I hope will be eleven essays on the state of the Big Ten football programs. I am going in no particular order, as the mood strikes me. These should be wrapped up by the beginning of the season.
Despite the infamous Appalachian State meltdown and thrashing at the hands of Oregon to start the season, the 2007 Michigan Wolverines were roughly as good as the teams that had come immediately before them. Another 6-2 Big Ten season had passed, with another loss to Ohio State--a close loss, as so many had been, but a loss in which the end result was never really in question. That Wolverines team actually finished second in the Big Ten, ahead of Rose Bowl-bound Illinois by way of their head to head tiebreaker victory over the Illini in Champaign. On New Years Day, in Lloyd Carr’s final game as head coach, the Wolverines would hand the recently Heisman-minted Tim Tebow his only out-of-conference loss in the Capital One Bowl.
Nevertheless, there was a sense that the Wolverines were simply running in place. Lloyd Carr was never going to be run out of Michigan, but there was not many feelings of regret or anguish when he announced that he would be stepping down at the end of the year. This was the opportunity to reshape a stagnant program, in much the same way Ohio State had done just half a decade before when hiring Jim Tressel.
The coaching transition did not go smoothly. The obvious first choice to take Carr’s spot was Les Miles, former offensive lineman under “Coach Bo” in the 1970s and architect of the renaissance at Oklahoma State. The only problem with Miles was that his LSU Tigers were in line to go to the national championship, and Michigan certainly couldn’t wait until four weeks before national signing day to announce their head coach. Erroneous media reports forced Miles’s hand, and on the eve of the SEC championship game, Miles locked himself into remaining at LSU, a move that both Tigers fans and Wolverines fans have regretted since.
Left with a less than thrilling array of second-tier choices--Kirk Ferentz, Greg Schiano, Brady Hoke--Michigan decided to poach spread guru Rich Rodriguez from West Virginia. Rodriguez got the Mountaineers within a game of the national championship before an injury to Pat White against Pitt ended their chances (WVU would defeat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl).
Rodriguez was a spread mastermind, but he was also known as something of a mercenary coach, and he was from outside the traditional Michigan family tree. Nevertheless, if new blood was needed, Rodriguez was perhaps the best name available. The transition would undoubtedly be tough--Michigan was set to lose their QB, left tackle, and RB to the NFL draft--but a sudden shock to the system might revitalize a stagnant program.
But while growing pains were inevitable, the 3-9 debacle that followed in 2008 was completely unanticipated. A loss to MAC patsy Toledo would, in some ways, prove more embarrassing than the loss to I-AA champion Appalachian State, and apart from an inexplicable outburst against Minnesota and a somewhat fluky home victory over Wisconsin, Michigan had very little to cheer.
2009 was supposed to be the turnaround year, and after a 4-0 start that included a thrilling win over Notre Dame, the renaissance appeared imminent. Michigan would win one game the rest of the way (over Delaware State), with losses to Purdue, Illinois (by 25 points) and, inevitably, Ohio State once more.
There were still reasonable excuses, to be sure. Both starting quarterbacks were true freshmen, and the better of the two played injured for most of the second half. Their best offensive lineman went out early in the conference schedule, and the line regressed drastically thereafter. Games against Michigan State and Iowa went to the wire and could easily have turned out differently with just a handful of plays going the other way.
This year appears to be even better for Michigan, but to call that a success is to pick up the story from 2010, rather than following it back to 2007. Whatever the merits of the 2010 Wolverines or Rodriguez as a coach, the idea that early struggles would pay late dividends seems quite fanciful today. The best case scenario for this year cannot be more than 8-4, not when games against Ohio State, Penn State, and Notre Dame all come on the road. Add in home games against top-15 outfits Wisconsin and Iowa, and the Wolverines will have to flip a probable loss into a win just to hit that best-case number. Factor in deceivingly tough games against Uconn and road trips to Indiana and Purdue, and the case for 8 wins becomes even tougher. Even the “obvious” wins on the schedule may be anything but; Illinois has just as many regular season wins as Michigan over the last two years, yet Illinois won by 25 points in their matchups against the Wolverines in both 2008 and 2009.
Still, eight wins is plausible. So what? The 2007 Wolverines won eight games--nine, if you count their bowl victory--and it’s hard to imagine a Lloyd Carr team falling quite as far as Rodriguez’s 2008 version, even with the struggles at QB. A return to eight wins would merely be a return to a status quo that Michigan fans had so recently found unacceptable. And if the 2011 version isn’t on pace to be a legitimate BCS team--if you squint hard enough, you might see a Rose Bowl team somewhere in there two years down the line, though it’s difficult--that all that sturm und drang in 2007 and 2008 went for naught.
Unfortunately for Michigan, a failure in 2010 does not mean hitting the reset button and continuing onward. Rodriquez’s recruits are fitted for his system, and any new coach is likely to have difficulty reestablishing the traditional Michigan power attack. Defensive recruiting has been slow over the past two years, and many positions even now are dangerously thin. A failure to make a bowl game this year would mean that many recruits targeted by Michigan will have been in grade school or freshmen in high school the last time Michigan won a bowl game. And as pre-Saban Alabama fans or pre-Pelini Nebraska fans could tell you, it’s a long way back to the top, even for the most storied of programs.
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Fire Phil Emery
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