UofM Wolverine Pre-Season Football Viewpoint

     It's too bad University of Michigan football has to take it on the lip with the negative spin whirling around about Coach Rodriguez's practice violations.

     The worse thing about the UofM issue is its timing and its target. I recall the day when a football player stayed at practice until the coach blew the whistle and said, "hit the showers."  We hated it, it hurt, sometimes I felt so overworked my mind wouldn't let me fall to sleep, I'd walk like a cripple until my shin splints, sore thighs, and sprained fingers warmed up again, then somehow I'd forget about it until the next day.

     When players get really tired some of them just seem to get injured. Necks and knees from missed tackles, bad blocks, make an exhausted player think he needs to yell for time out. Put some ice on it, suck it up for the money. I can't recall a starter quitting under any condition. No matter how dark, cold, wet, uncomfortable, starters find a way to make it work. They do that and then they hit their books and pass there classes. Starters are also the first to cry when they lose a game they know they should have won. They are also less likely to put the blame on others when mistakes are made. Blame doesn't help a team practice does. You play like you practice. It doesn't work the other way around.

     Just like individuals who have good practices are likely to have good games, teams are much the same.  A defense that understands its purpose as a team will drop the egos, take their positions, and flow to the ball. It doesn't matter if its a pass or run. Team defense is like a school of Parana fish attacking and disabling their targeted feed.

    The offense has to have the same egoless commitment to move the ball and score.  Sometimes you have to practice longer to get it right. Which means you may have to tell your girlfriend(s) you're going to library until the damned thing closes its doors so you can keep your grades up. It isn't fun, but it is necessary. College is preparation for life. Football is preparation for the games in life that some people are going to play with you whether you like it or not! Their objective is simple: to make you lose. Life is hard. So football is hard too.

     Michigan is an elite school on all levels. That means the athletes who come here are more special than the guys who get to go to other schools.  The coach has to be special too. They have to know how to sustain a winning program, keep their winning players, and keep winning athletes around the world interested in coming to our school for the future of the program.  The Michigan Alumni, the Athletic Department are some of the smartest people in the world. They help create an environment of influence and success. There has been no program that has combined athletic prowess in a variety of sports and sustained undergraduate and graduate academic excellence like Michigan has. This is a very special place. Oh sure Notre Dame, Florida, Alabama, Ohio, USC are all 'special', but let history reveal that they are not as 'special'. 

     Now, boys, don't you think every team in the nation would like to knock you off your shining little pedestal and laugh in your wake? They aren't going to come gunning for you because of last year. No. They're going to come gunning for you because you don't intimidate them by your mere reputation anymore. They're going to try and make you lose year after year after year until the Michigan mystic is nothing more than a mere legend, like Camelot.

     Coach Rodriguez was contracted because he sustained a winning program in W.V for many years. It's too bad he received death threats after leaving that school. Frankly if that's the kind of environment he had to coach under he was better to leave.

     From a player standpoint I don't like coaches.  They yell at you, hit you with other peoples helmets, force you to do things you don't really feel like sometimes.  But the better ones bring out the best in young men. They do it when you're exhausted, hurt, angry, dehydrated, and hungry by asking you to go one more time. Brrrrrp! There goes that damned whistle again.

     Since I couldn't take my frustration out on the coach I'd to take it out on the other players. You know, the RB, the TE, the WR because that's what the coach really needs. He isn't my psychologist, he isn't my father, and if I wash out of the program there are seven more guys ready to step up! A hard practice will make some guys  mean sons-of-you-know-what. I did not see a team on Michigan's field last year that played like they wanted it bad. I didn't see a team of players who made the other teams pay for how hard a Michigan player has to work to make the grade.

     For the last few seasons before Coach Rodriguez got here one thing was clear to me. The Michigan defense was giving up too many yards for Michigan to sustain a championship program. No excuses please.  Opponents racking up 300-400 yards increases the risk of losing. So if you have to have two-a-days until the season starts do it. You'll feel better when you start winning again. The game is always easier.

     Last year the offense was two sporadic to compete on Michigan's familiar level. Player changes needed to happen. You can't keep a 280lb. behemoth at guard if he can't pull quickly and move with a spread offense pocket. You have to have a quarterback who is lightning quick on his feet, and who can think of two to three variations on the same play, and execute with precision, every time. You've got to have backs who run off tackle and sweep outside or take the quick pass at 5 or 35 yards down field. So there is going to be personnel changes from the way Michigan was doing things all these years. Changes upset the status-quo.

    No doubt some seniors who would have played under Carr didn't. New players, recruits and transfers who may never have been consider to wear the blue have been asked to come here. Changes.  Do I need to remind you that Bo's first season was no pleasure trip either.

     This is the summer before the season. There are no classes yet. I find it interesting that some 'players' complained about the elongated practices, and that this news broke a week or so before the season. Seems to me some people are trying to get in Wolverines heads and soften their resolve to cowboy up. I doubt that the starters won't let it bother them though. Those guys have steel trap minds, which is why some of them get to play the big game and get the glory despite their disdain for the coaches, their shin splints, their fractured fingers, and pinched nerves. 

    If the Michigan football team collapses under this pressure and lacks the resolve they need to change the hearts and minds of the world then they aren't a Michigan calibre team to begin with.