The Victors

Brady Hoke, head coach of the University of Michigan Wolverines football club, must be fired. Hoke must be fired because of the steady deterioration of the valiant Wolverines under his watch, & also because Hoke should never have been hired in the first place & it is well past time that mistake was rectified. "Should never have been hired in the first place"? That's right. When Hoke was hired following the 2010 season, had a career losing record as a head coach, 47-50. By contrast, when Bo Schembechler was hired after the 1968 season, he had a career winning record as a head coach, 40-17-3. Hoke had more losses than wins; Schembechler had twice as many wins as losses & ties.

But, one can argue that Hoke is a rebuilding specialist, in taking struggling programs and making them winners; so, a significant number of defeats is to be expected in those tough, early years as Hoke rebuilds (or builds for the first time) the football club. That's a fair point, but one that does not apply to the debacle that has been his tenure at Michigan, as I shall demonstrate.

2014 (because Michigan will not qualify for post-season place & thus will not extend the season into 2015 with a bowl berth*) is Coach Hoke's twelfth season as a Division 1, Football Bowl Subdivision head coach. In six seasons at Ball State & two seasons at San Diego State, Hoke accumulated the aforementioned 47-50 record (34-38 at Ball State, 13-12 at San Diego State); since coming to Michigan, Hoke has lead the valiant Wolverines to a 31-19 record, improving his career record to a winning 78-69. His tenures at Ball State & San Diego State, though not success stories over which to rave, show a pattern of steady, though unsustained improvement.

Ball State Cardinals, Mid-American Conference (M.A.C.)
2003: 4-8, M.A.C. 3-5
'04: 2-9, M.A.C. 2-6
'05: 4-7, M.A.C. 4-4
'06: 5-7, M.A.C. 5-3
'07: 7-6, M.A.C. 5-2 (first winning season)
'08: 12-1, M.A.C. 8-0
Overall: 34-38, M.A.C. 27-20

San Diego State Aztecs, Mountain West Conference (M.W.)
'09: 4-8, M.W. 2-6
'10: 9-4, M.W. 5-3
Overall: 13-12, M.W. 7-8

Michigan Wolverines, Big Ten Conference (B1G)
'11: 11-2, B1G 6-2
'12: 8-5, B1G 6-2
'13: 7-6, B1G 3-5
'14: (5-7, B1G 3-5/6-6, B1G 4-4)*
Overall: (31-20 B1G 18-14/32-19 B1G 19-13)*

I wish to draw your eye to two features of this record. With the exception of 2004, Hoke had shown year-on-year improvement prior to his arrival at Michigan. (What happened in 2004? I cannot say. Given the nature of college football, it is possible a bunch of key players from the '03 squad graduated. Such is the nature of the beast.) There is nothing spectacular in two winning seasons at Ball State following four losing seasons, but there is steady improvement.

The second feature is the 2008 season at Ball State, Hoke's most successful: 12-1, 8-0. wow! Of course, look deeper. Without that anomalous showing, Hoke's epithetless Cardinals would have had either a losing record in conference play, or a roughly .500 record. In '09, after Hoke's departure for San Diego State, the epithetless Cardinals went 2-10, M.A.C. 2-6. Well, surely that affirms Hoke's abilities, doesn't it? Absent him, the club collapsed. That is one reading, yes. Or, the stars aligned for the '08 Cardinals, they overachieved, everything went their way, & Hoke picked the perfect time to leave as every talented player in the club graduated or left, leaving the cupboard bear for Hoke's successor. We saw this at Michigan after Lloyd Carr's illustrious tenure. In '07, Carr's final season, the valiant Wolverines overcame the shocking loss to Appalachian State to finish 9-4, B1G 6-2, including a bowl victory over Urban Meyer's epithetless Gators of Florida, lead by Heisman Trophy-winner & two-time National Championship-winning quarterback Tim Tebow. (Forget about the No Fun League; in college, Tebow was a force with which to be reckoned.) In '08, the first season under Carr's ill-starred successor Rich Rodriguez, the valiant Wolverines limped to 3-9, B1G 2-6. Even the most vociferous Rich Rod critic cannot place all the blame on him; as a first-year, incoming coach, what personnel did he have to work with? I love Lloyd Carr. God bless Lloyd Carr. But he stayed too long; toward the end, he wasn't recruiting as he should have been, he wasn't securing the future of Michigan football for after his retirement. Hoke appears to have done much the same thing to his successor at Ball State. The Cardinals overachieved in '08, leaving the cupboard bare for '09.

We see a marked turnaround at San Diego State, but nothing to suggest the epithetless Aztecs were on the verge of replicating Ball State's '08 campaign. In '11, the season after Hoke left for Michigan, San Diego State finished 8-5, M.W. 4-3, almost identical to their 2010 record under Hoke. The more you stare at the numbers, the more it appears that 2008 played at outsized role in Hoke's hiring by Michigan (by the reviled & since departed athletic director Dave Brandon). Hoke didn't remain at Ball State to replicate that success. He didn't stay at San Diego State long enough to do anything impressive. There is zero evidence that Hoke has ever built a successful, sustained program. He had one outstanding year as a head football coach before arriving at the University of Michigan, & it stands out from a record of mediocrity & losing, lots more losing than winning.

At Michigan, Hoke inherited a pretty ideal situation. Rodriguez was widely reviled, but marked improvement was being shown on the field. I'm not defending Rich Rod, he had to be fired—the valiant Wolverines were utterly woeful in two out of the three phases of the game, defense & special teams, & the N.C.A.A. violations offended the Maize & Blue faithful's hard-earned & cherished sense of propriety. But his spread-option offense was started to work. It was infuriating & unconventional, but it was working. If Rodriguez had not been so utterly negligent of the defense, he might have saved himself & enjoyed the kind of success at Michigan that he is currently bringing to Arizona of the Pac-12 (a conference in which there is a gentlemen's agreement against playing competent defense): 10-2, Pac-12 7-2, & regular-season champions of the Pac-12 South, with a berth in the Pac-12 championship game. Hoke came in, made the appropriately reverent noises about the unique glorious of Michigan (we Michigan fans are not a humble lot, & flattery will get you everywhere), & promptly lead Rich Rod's players to an eleven-win season, including a victory over Ohio State (experiencing their own "perfect storm" of difficulties after Jim Tressel's resignation over blatant N.C.A.A. rules violations) & victory in the B.C.S. bowl: 11-2, B1G 6-2.

Since then, the valiant Wolverines have experienced something unprecedented under Hoke: steady decline. Hoke has a reputation as a sterling recruiter, but the more the club is composed of his own recruits & the fewer of Rich Rod's recruits, the worse Michigan becomes on the field. The '11 squad—Team 132—overachieved, winning games they probably have shouldn't, but that uncanny knack for finding a way to win is one of the hallmarks of a good football club. (A good coach finds ways for his club to overachieve consistently, to punch above their weight, until that overachievement becomes simply achievement, the new standard by which excellence is measured. That's exactly what Bo Schembechler did, he raised the bar for what constitutes success at Michigan.) Teams 133, 134, & this year's 135 do not possess that knack. Teams 134 & 135 seem to possess the winning knack's evil twin, the ability to lose to anyone, anytime, without rhyme or reason.

*The final numbers for this season depend upon the outcome of today's contest against the hated Buckeyes of THE ^{(Ohio State University)}. Should the valiant Wolverines prevail, they would become bowl eligible with a regular-season record of 6-6. However, the chances of a victory are incredibly remote. Thus, the more likely scenario is that we finish 5-7, ineligible for post-season play. That would be a third consecutive year of declining performance: from 11-2, 6-2 to 8-5, 6-2 to 7-6, 3-5 to 5-7, 3-5. This is Hoke's fourth season at the helm at Michigan; his first-two recruiting classes should now be seniors & juniors, the backbone of the club playing the majority of the snaps. Yet as observed before, the more of Hoke's chosen players comprise the roster, the worse the valiant Wolverines perform on the field. The longer Hoke stays in Ann Arbor, the worse Michigan does.

Have you watched Michigan this year? It's a comedy of errors, dropped passes & missed assignments & pervasive futility. A comedy of errors, except I'm not laughing. I laugh at inappropriate moment, & usually defend my faux pas by saying that I'm only laughing so I won't cry. I've not cried over this football season, but I've been consistently, wrenchingly sad. I love Michigan, but I don't believe in the valiant Wolverines. I expect them to lose every time they take the field. (I suppose I should be happy that they've exceeded my expectations?) No, that's not right, I don't expect them to lose. They wear the Maize & Blue. They wear the winged helmet. I expect them to win, confound it! But I am unsurprised when they lose. I suppose here I'm quibbling over the various shades of meaning of the word "expect." I expect of them that they win, but in my heart of hearts I expect them to lose. I wish it were not so. But we've been in football Purgatory for seven years under Rich Rodriguez & Brady Hoke & I confess I've begun to doubt that we'll ever find our way to Heaven.

Let's get down to brass tacks: Brady Hoke must be fired. Brady Hoke must be fired because year-on-year the valiant Wolverines are worse under his leadership. Brady Hoke must be fired because his reputation as a recruiter has either been exposed as smoke & mirrors or his vaunted gifts have abandoned him, because his recruits cannot hack it in the Big Ten. Brady Hoke must be fired because he was never good enough to be Michigan's head coach in the first place. Brady Hoke must be fired because he has lead Michigan to our third losing season in the last seven years. Brady Hoke must be fired because four years is long enough to know if a coach is going to cut the mustard or not, & Brady Hoke is most definitely not. Brady Hoke must be fired.

On the other hand…
I wake up in a cold sweat at the thought that Brady Hoke will be given one more year in which to prove himself. On paper, the defense is solid, much more fearsome that it ever appears to the naked eye. The offense is terrible, but this is the first year under a new offensive coordinator, who is saddled with a bumbling disaster of a fifth-year-senior quarterback. Also, not the Michigan faithful themselves but the national sports media are now convinced that Michigan fired Rich Rod too quickly, never really gave him a chance; they are enamored of his success at Arizona (which has not yet manifested itself in a conference championship or a major bowl win, it must be noted) & this might induce the interim powers-that-be inside the Athletic Department to give Hoke one more year to right the ship (which of course he won't). This is what I fear, that will will choose the devil we know & in the process damn† ourselves. We must acknowledge the mistakes of the past & learn from them so as not to repeat them going forward. Firing Brady Hoke would not be another mistake, the man is a disaster who every day dims the prospects for Michigan's future success. He was unworthy of the job in the first place & his consistently proven himself so over the last four years. Brady Hoke must be fired.

Go Blue!

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
The University of Michigan Marching Band, "Temptation" from Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "And now, we feature our percussion section in a Michigan tradition. Ladies & gentlemen, 'Temptation'!… You can't have one without the other. Ladies & gentlemen, the "Hawaiian War Chant'!"

The University of Michigan Marching Band, "Hawaiian War Chant" from Hurrah for the Yellow and Blue (T.L.A.M.)

Freitag, 28 November
Pete Yorn, "Red Right Hand" via iTunes (T.L.A.M.)

†Yes, I know I'm mixing my theological metaphors. How can we be damned when we're in football Purgatory? Purgatory isn't a way station betwixt Heaven & Hell, Purgatory is the waiting room for Heaven. Being in Purgatory assures the eventuality of Heaven. Leave me alone, I'm in hysterics about the woeful state of my beloved football club.