This Sucks

I don't know really where to start this post, so I guess we'll pick it up somewhere between the loss to Toledo and the loss to Northwestern.

Somewhere within that stretch of games, I grew to stop caring about this Michigan team.

When I was 15 or so years old, Michigan football was everything. I would live and die with each and every game. I remember being in Oxford, OH for a parents weekend thing when my older brother was going to Miami of Ohio. I was probably 14 or 15 at the time. It was a cold and miserable weekend, much like this past weekend.

While my brother and my parents were out doing some random college parent weekend thing, I stayed at the hotel to watch Michigan host Purdue. It was a very rainy/snowy sloppy game. Michigan won 3-2. It was one of the most difficult games I've ever watched. But we won, and I was happy. The weekend could be enjoyable now.

Maybe I'm just getting older and wiser, or maybe I've been numbed by experiences like losing 4 times in a row to tOSU, or losing to Appy State. I can't believe the staleness of my love and devotion to this team.

I took for granted the looks of downright frustration on Lloyd Carr's face after a loss. It was like he just wanted to take the microphone and toss it across the room at whatever reporter just asked the last stupid question. I took comfort in the fact that I knew Lloyd was just as pissed off as I was...but could never say it.

His weekly TV show with Jim Brandstater was an exercise in futility. After a loss, I didn't know who to feel more sorry for. Jim, for having to try and sneak a question past the stonewall defensive glare of Carr, or Lloyd for having to go through with this "dog and pony show" in the first place. Under the bright studio lights is the last place Lloyd ever felt comfortable.

But, goddamn...the man could coach a football team.

The Rodriguez era has gotten off to a terrible start. Every worthwhile streak we've been able to cling to over the past 5 years of ineptitude (aside from 2006, sort of), has been totally washed away. Michigan is 3-8. And I can't believe I am saying this, but I could really care less if we lose to tOSU or not.

Why? Because I really am starting to question whether or not Rodriguez and his staff are as pissed off as the fans are? Or, at least want them to be.

My senior year in high school, our football team went 2-8. And we had a first year coach. But we payed dearly for those losses. We ran sprints until we couldn't see straight. Our coaches were honestly mad as hell. They hated our effort, they hated our attitudes...they hated us. And we knew it. But they killed us every week. And in the last game of the season, we won.

I don't know what the feeling is like around the Michigan program right now. I can only hope that it is bad. I really do. I want every player to hate playing for a losing team. I want the coaches to hate the way they have coached these players this year. I want there to be so much animosity between the coaches and players that blood is starting to boil.

I want players to fight at practice.

I want coaches to rip face masks off helmets.

I want Rodriguez to use every fucking bad word he knows.

I want there to be 50,000 empty seats in the Big House.

If McGuffie wants to quit the team, I want him to run off the field with tears in his eyes, crying for mommy, with Rodriguez laughing at him.

It is then, and only then, that this team will get it. Because right now, I do not see one ounce of passion or fight in this team. We spent too much time ooo-ing and ahh-ing over Rodriguez chest-bumping his players in the off-season. Until we walk off the field with a crystal football in our hands, I don't ever want to see Rodriguez chest-bump a player. This isn't camp, this is football.

Until I see ANY sense of fight in this team, I will continue to feel the way I do.