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!

Ben Carson apparently is throwing his hat into the ring for president.  So we will have another black Republican candidate in 2016!  Carson is obviously a lot smarter than Herman Cain who ran in 2012.  For one thing he is a retired pediatric neurosurgeon.  But more importantly he is a  U. of Michigan alumnus.  Cain cannot match those credentials.  But like Cain, Carson's candidacy is bound to fail.  For one thing he considered himself an independent until recently even though he worked for Fox News.  He has not held any political office.  In the past he has come out against assault weapons and admitted that affirmative action had helped him.  Those things will be attacked by factions within the party.  It is easy for Republicans to embrace him to make them look more diverse.  It is another thing to embrace him to be their leader.  Carson is capable of doing a lot better than Herman Cain but he will not be the Republican nominee.

Whenever someone mentions about black neurosurgeons, only one other name is mentioned along with Ben Carson.  That is Keith Black.  Interestingly, Black is also a graduate of U. of Michigan Medical School.  He is head of the dept. at UCLA.   While Carson is a perfect example of affirmative action doing good, Keith Black is someone who shoots down the idea that minorities always need affirmative action.  Black made it into Michigan's prestigious 6 year undergraduate/medical school program.  This means he only took 6 years to get his BS and MD which most people take at least 8 years.  You cannot get in if your scores and maturity are not way up there coming out of high school.  So who knows?  Maybe if Carson makes a decent run, he can open the way for another neurosurgeon in politics in the future.

I have a complaint about Steve Nash.  Some people are mad that Nash, having declare himself out for the season, is shown on Instagram hitting a golf ball.  I know that hitting a golf ball is not anywhere the same as playing in an NBA game.  So I don't have problem with that.  But I am disappointed that while he has time to play golf, he has not been showing up at practice and games to support his teammates.  He is still being paid while not playing so at least he can do is contribute SOMETHING to the team.  Young guards like Jeremy Lin and Jordan Clarkson sure can use his teaching.  So how about trying to be the highest paid coach in the NBA for this season, Steve?

Saw a program on PBS last night about Detroit called Detropia.  Things still look very bleak even with the auto companies making good profit now.  It talked about mayor Dave Bing is trying to consolidate the city's population to a smaller area and try to use the rest of the land to start urban farming.  The program did not really talk about how these two things can be accomplished.  It seems to me people are not going to willingly move to another part of the city unless there is a benefit, like a tax rebate.  As Bing said, the city is broke so how is it going to pay people to move?  And how is this urban farming to going to work?  What do they do with the land in the winter when things don't grow with snow on the ground?  Are these programs still on the agenda?  All I know is that I don't want to be in Bing's shoes!

This program made me think about the fires in Bangladesh factories recently.  There has been a lot of calling by activists to stop manufacturing in Bangladesh and other countries where safety violations are rampant.  While that is well meaning, I am sure the people of Bangladesh and other countries don't want the manufacturing to stop.  People who are starving are willing to take whatever safety risks to feed their children.  The Mexicans are willing to risk dying to cross over to the U.S. to find a job.  So the people of Bangladesh are willing to work in unsafe factories.  We should demand that companies from the U.S. do a much better job of policing the factories that make their products.  But in reality we are not doing the impoverish people any favor by taking away their jobs.

The truth is there are more and more people competing for limited manufacturing jobs all over the world.  Detroit will not get significant number of jobs back.  The city will have reinvent itself.  But with the poor public education system, I am not sure how they are going to be able to train the next generation in other types of work.  This will not be limited to Detroit but to rest of America as well.  I can see where the gap between the rich and poor will widen.  If you are not educated enough to get a professional job, you will be stuck in the service economy.  The middle class will shrink.  Having said that, I am not a pessimist for America as a whole.  Most of America can avoid what happened to Detroit and other old cities. Will talk about that in the future.