Showing posts with label Brady Hoke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brady Hoke. Show all posts

Monday, December 29, 2014

Well, better late than never.  Four years after I implored Jim Harbaugh to come home, he is finally coming back to Ann Arbor.  Brady Hoke is a good man and a good coach but he was over matched at the highest level of college football.  If there is anyone out there who can revive the storied Michigan program, it is Harbaugh.  It would have been great if Harbaugh had accepted the job four years ago, but in a way it is a blessing in disguise.  For one thing, having coached in the NFL gives him more experience and more credential in recruiting.  If he had taken the job four years ago, he may be restless at Michigan now, wondering about the challenge of the NFL.  Having gotten that out of his system, he may be staying at Michigan for a long time as opposed to jumping to the pros after a few years. So I look forward to a long reign for Harbaugh at Michigan.

Of course fans should not get their hopes up too high in the next few years.  The cupboard is relatively bare as Hoke has not recruited well and the records in the past two years is not going to help.  Add to the great job of MSU in recruiting in the state of Michigan and OSU dominating the state of Ohio, it is going to take at least a couple of years to stockpile enough stars to compete with those two programs.  I see 7-5 next season and 8-4 after that.  Michigan can be competitive for the Big Ten championship in 3 years and maybe win it by the time Harbaugh's first recruiting class are seniors.  I think anything more than that is unrealistic and anything less than that and he would not be worth 8 million per year!

I am not trying to get out of my own predicament or elicit sympathy for being an old man but I made some stupid mistakes in my predictions.  I found the first newspaper where I circled the Big Ten winners that led to a 5-4 prediction.  I has PSU winning originally but had not noticed Illinois playing!  So when I go write my blog I used a different newspaper and I missed the PSU game and couldn't figure out how I came up with 5-4 the first time.  After a while I just decided I must have predicted Illinois winning instead of losing to make it 5-4.  When LBOAYM pointed out that the PSU game was missing, I figured the Big Ten can't possibly win 6 games so I decided to make PSU a loser.  So I should be 4-0 at this point but instead I am 2-2!  Nobody's fault but my own so I will stick with the bad result.  But obviously I am getting old:  not able to count to ten and can't remember what predictions I made in the first place!