Of Domers and Michigan Men

Last night, I went to a wedding. Between the road-kill quality chicken and "She's a Brickhouse", I had the opportunity to speak to a fellow guest - a Domer, an obsessed one.

This man was a true believer - he believed that Notre Dame was the Beacon of Light, the paragon of all that is good and right about college football. Further, he believed Notre Dame to be the last bastion of integrity against cheating, violations, fudged academics, and other misdeeds. Citing a recent internet rumor that Comrade Rodriguez had been evicted from 3 bars for drunk and disorderly conduct (for the record, after a half-ass internet search, I could find no record of this) he told me that "Notre Dame could never get away with that". This delusional man told me of Notre Dame's higher standard for players in conduct and academics. Finally, he predicted a 10-win season, almost by virtue of the Gold helmets, Touchdown Jesus, and Charlie Weis's fairy dust (the cinnamon and sugar dusting on Cinnamon Toast Crunch).

Fellow revolutionaries, does this not remind you of a sect within our own fanbase? The people that cling to "Those who stay will be champions" the way that Domers cling to "Play like a Champion Today"? The people who speak of the superiority of "the Michigan Man" versus other fanbases the way this man told me of Notre Dame's morale fiber?

Comrades, Notre Dame's 11 National Championships are as relevant to their superiority today as Michigan sitting on top of the all-time win list - which is to say, not at all. Those who stay will not be champions merely by virtue of playing for Michigan.

The WLA, as a member of the Revolution, doesn't acknowledge birth rights. Michigan will not succeed through the size of it's stadium, straw men such as "The Michigan Man", and pithy slogans. The valiant few on our football team are no different than those at other schools - they are not better people, students, or atheletes by virtue of donning the winged helmet, nor, may I add, are our fans.

No, Notre Dame's Divine endorsement will not lead them to glory any more than the false construct of "The Michigan Man" will lead us. Rather, it is only through blood, sweat, and toil that Michigan will return to glory.

In 1929, Leon Trotsky was permanently exiled from the the Soviet Union, essentially, because he thought he deserved more power than the Politburo felt he had earned. Rather than striving for what he wanted, Trotsky felt he deserved it due to what he had done twenty years previous. Comrades, conviction in our own superiority due to our uniforms and history leads us to the same end as Trotsky - dead, in Mexico, with an ice-pick in the back of the head.

Or the Horror. Whichever.

Comrades

Readers of the Glorious Revolution will now have four more voices of unity to hear from! The Wolverine Liberation Army would like to announce the addition of four (possibly more in the near future) members to our team - welcome Chitown, Big Gay Heart, MRG, and Ninja Football. If those names mean nothing to you, then you don't read MGoBlog. Also, you probably don't read this site if you don't read MGoBlog.

It is imperative that we crush the freedom fighters before the start of the rainy season!

A Special Message from Comrade Rodriguez

Comrades, we find ourselves in a tenuous situation today. The long drought that is the off-season has left the Republic with precious little to obsess over. Our most rabid fans have also become our most delusional, one more WR recruit away from cracking open each others skulls in panic. I stand before you today, Wolverines, to brush away your fears.

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the the nature of football, see nothing but the negative, and are incapable of struggle. These weak minded sheep who cry foul at our class of athletes are the ones who will bring us down! No amount of football success will ever satisfy the mentally dull masses that walk amongst us! You must struggle to keep your mind free and pure, away from these scum!

People of Ann Arbor and fans of the diaspora, despair not. Our team will be strong in due time. Our soldiers will change. I ask you – what did the slow footed behemoths of the previous regime bring you recently? Collapse against weaker nations, disappointment against our greatest rivals? Nobody respects our previous leaders more than I, but now it is time to give history a push and claim what is ours!

The neurotics among us will have you believe that the only way to victory is with an army of five star athletes. These same neurotics obsess so greatly over our every move that they are lost in the trees and cannot see the forest. No program in our world brings home five star athletes in every class! These fools cannot be allowed to propagate their lies.

Do not mistake my words for promises of immediate glory, comrades. Revolution is struggle, and struggle is life! If you cannot stand by athletes, whom you do not even know, in their struggles then who will you stand by? Surely not your friends or family! If you abandon these men now on the eve of their battle, then you will abandon anyone you profess to care for. Remember these weak men, these fools claiming to foresee the demise of Michigan before we have begun our battle on the field, for these are the men who will leave you in your time of need!

Members of the Revolution, this all may seem obvious to you. But we all need reminders of our movement and goals! Crush the undesirable elements of the program where you see them! Drive them from their homes, steal their women, harvest their crops! The nation will be ours!

Checking In

Update from the WLA HQ:

- Apologies for lack of posting, but things have been busy around here and a general lack of interesting football news isn't helping. We are still here though, and we will have an update soon. Not dead, as opposed to the fun at MGoBlog, which is quite dead now.

BREAKING NEWS

HaloScan? Oh yeahhh, HaloScan is here.

Letters from the Republic

Today we feature a letter received from a member of the Michigan fan base. Reginald J. Dickington checks in with us today, from an undisclosed location in Michigan.

I’m as big of a Michigan Man as you’ll find in this fair nation. My life revolves around the Blue and Maize squadron, as you can see from my t-shirt. You see, it, and it’s very clever, takes the character of Calvin from a beloved comic strip (but it’s not really him – too many copyright issues I’m told) and places him in the delightful situation of urinating directly onto a logo suspiciously similar to that of our hated rivals at Ohio University! How deliciously ironic! I find t-shirts like this help me relate to the common man in our crowd, of which there are unfortunately many. You know the types, the ruffians who consume cheap booze before the games and sometimes block the view of my wife Elizabeth. She isn’t much for the football matches, but I pay the extra couple thousand a year to bring her along anyway. She spends most of the game crocheting nude images of young men she fantasizes about, but she enjoys being able to see the big plays of the game. It’s wholly immoral the way those drunkards stand and block her view during these moments. That’s to say nothing of myself – I can’t stand for more than a couple seconds before the tube in my penis comes loose and urine sprays everywhere.

So, as a staunch Michigan Man, I feel it is my duty to address the most pertinent issue facing our boys today – the new road jerseys.

Totally unacceptable! I do not watch Michigan football for innovation or excitement. I support our team because my world view - carefully crafted through years of intentional ignorance, a spoiled upbringing, and relative isolation from the real world - is crumbling all around me! Michigan is a constant force in my life, one that keeps me from knocking Elizabeth down the stairs, buying a Porsche, and paying nubile teenagers to fellate me in the back of a Dairy Queen. I need my Saturdays to feature unchanging uniforms, excessive repetition of marching band standard, and Eisenhower era offensive strategy. I need Michigan to lose early in the year, or else the hordes of plebes get up in arms and excitable. An early loss quashes those emotions and allows me to enjoy the rest of the season in relative peace.

These uniforms, these abominations in the eyes of the Lord, represent all that is going wrong in this unholy world. A negro running for President? Women voting? Beer on Sundays? It is disgusting. If we allow this to stand, soon they will allow the players to “ghost ride” their “whips” around the field and we may even recruit young men fond of “rap” music. Unacceptable.

I plead with you, fellow Michigan Men, to stand in allegiance with me on this petty non-issue. We must preserve the integrity of our program by fighting any and all changes, no matter how small.

I thank you.

Tales of Valor : The 2005 Alamo Bowl

The 2005 Michigan football team was not good. They were mediocre. But in “The Almost Play” at the end of the Alamo Bowl, they became perhaps the embodiment of what makes football beautiful.

Chad Henne lined up to take the snap for the final season. The season had been over, for most, months before. Fans held out hope at the end of the year for a Rose Bowl birth and improbable share of the Big 10 championship, but it wasn't quite right. Unrealistically or not, we had expected more out of this team. Sure, Chad Henne and Mike Hart were only sophomore and sure Braylon Edwards was gone for the NFL and all the other caveats that follow college football and its eternally shifting existence. The team is never settled; we spend every week obsessing over recruits from two years away, transfer rumors, and constant line-up changes and other behavior that makes the volatile NFL seem sane and comforting to us on a Sunday. But in August, the blinders come on, we force ourselves to remember players at their best, and we blot out the ugly truth sometimes.

So Chad takes the snap. He drops back in his semi-awkward gait, and fires a strike in to Jason Avant. Avant, while not the explosive danger of Braylon, was a rock of consistency. He's not going to show up catching too many 70+ yard tosses in Philadelphia, and Braylon will always be on ESPN, but in 9 years you'll be looking through your NFL preview and find Avant somewhere in there. It's an experience you have every year with someone. BJ Askew? Shantee Orr? Who will forget that incredible year Scott Dreisbach was a backup for the Raiders in Madden?

Then, if you freeze the video right when Avant catches it, it all looks so familiar. But just a bit off. Against Oklahoma, Boise got to turn their hook and ladder into legend. Fitting for the late-Carr era then that a team with all the tools to be a perennial contender would find their hook and ladder memorialized as a last-ditch effort in a December bowl game to reach that rarefied 8 win air and make a claim to #19 in the nation? Everything was just a bit off. Boise was fighting for national respect, Michigan was collapsing on the fumes of moderately earned national respect like a weekend 5k enthusiast crossing the finish line after attempting to run the Boston marathon. The play was too close to the boundary, and all Nebraska had to do was string them into the sideline.

As Breaston turned the corner, the always kind of disappointing potential he had was suddenly unlocked. Stevie B was a poet, and he was forced into the lockstep conservatism of the Michigan game plan. With the season over in all facets – nothing to win, nothing to lose, no games left, :00 on the scoreboard and Michigan on the losing end – Breaston came to life. Two defenders close in, and he turns, throws, and completes to Mike Hart, the hero in making that had come from the backfield when Chad released the pass and ran in front of Avant to catch the lateral. Mike stayed true to himself and he didn't juke. He runs directly into the pack of Cornhuskers. With four defenders staring him down, everything pauses for maybe 3 tenths of a second it seems, Hart stops, and the over-pursuing defender from Nebraska leaves Avant free long enough for him to move back, make the catch, and begin the destruction of the traditional football field.

In every play, every players has a specific, defined role. The coaches aren't wrong to force this on players, as well-disciplined football teams are more successful. Free styling is, for the most part discouraged. Many Qbs make calls for adjustments at the line, but few can completely revamp the play with immunity. Just like a diplomat in a foreign country, a QB can break minor laws issued by the offensive co-coordinator , but Peyton Manning cannot go to the line, call for the Annexation of Puerto Rico, and get away with it more than once.

Now the play breaks down. Defenders are always told to go to the ball, but you also don't lateral more than twice during the play in the 2^nd quarter. Now over eager defenders are burned with laterals, mostly harmless, but it really only takes one to do the trick.

Avant takes one more opportunity to define himself. He doesn't try to make any fancy moves or even gain a yard. He steadies himself, does his best quarterback impression, takes a hit to follow through, and springs Michigan from a Nebraska prison on the sideline by going across the field to Mario Manningam, freshman sensation.

Manningham slithers across the field, always looking like he is about to either try and burn through the defense or toss it to a cutback runner. The decision never comes to fruition, and he completes to Avant towards the sideline. This team Avant is under more Nebraska pressure – he throws a prayer as he is knocked down on the boundary.

The ball flutters to a lineman, he can't come down with it, and now chaos breaks down further. Chad Henne, like any mere mortal, has a brain freeze and thinks the play is dead. Or, if you happen to believe in the best of people, Chad was crafting a ruse on the Nebraska defenders, thinking if they paused for just a second that the runner would break free.

Mike Hart is of course (could it be anyone else?) the man trying to run down the ball for Michigan. He bobbles it, falls down, and now it looks like the play is actually over. But Mike didn't have the ball when he fell, the referee doesn't blow the whistle, and Mike takes over.

The moral center of Michigan football for his career, Hart scoops it up and runs as fast as Mike Hart can for 15 yards. Another may have burst through the tired defenders and sprinted to the end zone, but Mike isn't that kind of blazer. Another didn't pick it up though – Mike did.

With two defenders hanging off his jersey, Mike doesn't stop and instead finds the only man around, Tyler Ecker. The teams start to run on the field - because how in the hell could that little dude not have been tackled right there?

Ecker begins his descent into Michigan hell. When most everyone else was done playing, Ecker stayed alive for Hart and then showed some surprising speed. He's got a trailer with him – honestly, I don't remember if it was Manningham or Breaston anymore – and Manningston is urging him on like a jockey running next to this overweight horse. Ecker, because another didn't pick it up, is charging down the sideline in a crowd and thinking touchdown. Michigan fans everywhere are jumping around wherever they are, as the most exciting play in our history is running past the 40 yard line.

It doesn't matter if it's only to finish 8-4. It will be the best 8-4 ever. The past couldn't be changed – the glorious future was foggy, and all we had was an unfamiliar liberating present. With all expectations dead and only one of the most meaningless bowl games in the program history hanging in the balance, Michigan was existing free of all burdens, playing only for the moment. Traditional means of immortality were out the window. The only thing this 2005 team could do to be remembered for anything besides disappointment was to score a touchdown, win the game, and be a permanent fixture on Best Damn Sports Show 50 Most Outrageous Football Moments. Weekday afternoon immortality is better than every day infamy.

We know the ending. Ecker is run out of bounds, the game is over, there is no penalty, 7-5. The argument about a 1997 title split is, in a completely meaningless way, settled in 2005. A battle between two national powers in limbo, passed by and only remembered until the next kickoff.

Immediately everyone asked themselves and others why he didn't lateral it. All I could remember was that it looked like someone else was running behind him and open. To be honest, I only watched the replay maybe two times until writing this. It was all vivid.

Looking at the video now, it's not even clear Ecker could lateral. It looks like Breastingham appears to be almost 10 yards behind him. It's better to remember it this way. Ecker shouldn't go down a villain. Subconsciously, the fan base is projecting their disappointment and anger from that long season on to Ecker. He's an avatar for the problems we could all sense.

Until the team steps on the field this season, this play is the most Revolutionary play in Michigan history. Our great hope for the new regime is that our players will be allowed to play free with their roles. We don't advocate a strategy of complete chaos, only that our new leader unlock the creativity of our athletes. The Close but Not Quite play was Michigan free. Rodriguez will bring the spirit of that moment into a tightly wound controlled ball of destruction.

The Looming Threat of Les Miles

Ever since December, when Comrade Rodriguez was installed as our new leader, there has been a presence hanging in the background. We’ve seen it discussed few times on Michigan blogs, slightly more in their comment sections, and most likely in great detail during private conversations. It’s a rhino in our collective room. Or, more relevant, it’s a gorilla with a chainsaw dick in our collective room.

Yes, one of the biggest themes of this upcoming season will inevitably be: What Would Les Have Done?

Michigan fans are wired to armchair coach and bask in negativity. This is a paranoid delusional fan base, in desperate need of a cleansing, that will latch on to wild rumors, innuendo, and perceived mistakes with a gusto that matches any other fan base in the nation. You wouldn’t know it from the crowds on Saturdays, but the vast majority of Wolverine fans appear to be trailer bred psychotics with a persecution complex, ready to lash out at the world around them at any second.

No matter the efforts of the Revolution, this is unlikely to change soon. These fans will not just disappear over the summer. They will be in the stands against Utah. They will be stationed at your local watering hole. They will be at your house. They will be everywhere.

Envision the scenario. Michigan, still in the transition to a new attack, is sputtering in the first drives. Utah is on the offensive, feeling confident, and moving the ball. The defense is holding, but how much longer? Suddenly, the flood gates open, bad things happen, and Michigan goes in to the locker room down 13-3 at the half.

In a perfect world, the crowd will remain calm, go get a hot dog, skip as much of the halftime show as possible, and return energized.

This is not a perfect world, and that is not what will transpire. In the event this scenario comes true, Rich Rodriguez will be sent to the locker room with a lukewarm, at best, acknowledgement of effort from the M faithful. But in the stands, the mob will be forming. They will question the offense. Question the work ethic. Question the play calling. They will bemoan the strategy on defense.

They will say: “This wouldn’t be happening if we hired Les Miles.”

And it will become a theme throughout the year. The Miles to Michigan contingent was loud, demanding, and violent during the coaching search. While they may have tried to camouflage their true feelings by coming up with reasons why Miles would be a good fit, they really just wanted to be right. These were the people who began the “Miles will come to UM, no matter what, I guarantee it” attitude during the past two seasons. They believed in the Myth of the Michigan Man. They had decided he was the right hire, no matter what anyone else thought, and anything else would be a travesty. The coaching search was rarely about who would be best for the program – it was about having your opinion validated as the correct one.
The Miles supporters quieted when Rich Rodriguez was hired. If Brady Hoke had been hired, they would have rioted in the streets of Ann Arbor. But Rodriguez, a successful coach with a track record of winning and a new philosophy, is tough to argue against immediately. Politically, the Miles supporters needed to lay low, support the hire, and wait.

They’ve started crawling out from under their disgusting rocks already. New recruits are immediately scrutinized for character flaws. Miles supporters quietly stir up dissent – implying that Comrade Rodriguez is less than truthful, not classy, not a Michigan Man, without going full bore. In a delicious twist, they long for the return of the ethics the program had under Lloyd Carr. Yes, the very people who wanted to hang Lloyd in front of Schembechler Hall and declared they only cared about winning are now complaining that the new coach, in his effort to bring winning to Ann Arbor, is not dedicated enough to ethics.

The leading voices of negativity at the venerable MGoBlog (they need not be named here) have been silenced as of late. Are we really to believe they have disappeared forever? No. They will re-emerge, soon, at the first sight of Comrade Rodriguez struggling on the field. By silencing themselves during the off-season, they avoid having to voice an opinion on Comrade Rodriguez. If he falters, they can claim to have known all along he would fail. If he succeeds, they can hop on the bandwagon. It is a cowardly tactic, but these are the enemies of the Revolution. Unable to stand for anything, they sit on the sidelines and wait for the right moment to strike and take the easiest position to defend.

Les Miles will haunt every moment of the new regime. He, by virtue of staying at LSU, has ensured himself a perfect record as coach of Michigan. When the counter-revolutionaries claim that Miles would not have done that, or not have lost that game, it will be impossible to refute them. His perfection in absence is bulletproof.

We leave by asking you, believers of the Revolution, would a Michigan Man have done this? Do not, ever, pine for this Cajun sauce soaked nutjob. Les Miles is not the right coach for Michigan. The Miles Supporters never cared about what is right for the program – only what outcome would make them right. The coming avalanche of Miles-Rodriguez comparisons will only bog down the Revolution with inane arguments and poisonous negativity. Do not let Les Miles hold our nation hostage from the outside – we must be prepared for the fight when the season comes.

Hail Rod!