The Season of Giving

Is this ai whit or just an ai generic santa? And is there a difference?

It ain’t Christmas yet, though I kinda wish it was. I’d like to fast forward to a time when this whole mess is fixed.

And make no mistake, despite my delusions of positivity based on the Iowa game, we have a mess. We have a team that is well paid and full of talent, that had expectations and goals, and it’s becoming very clear those won’t be met on any level.

Man, things can change fast from one week to the next.

But what doesn’t change? Michigan is the most generous group of gentlemen in all of college football. We gave Minnesota the win of a lifetime, no matter how bad of a team we end up being. Same goes for Iowa, who is wearing a badge of honor for a game where they were manhandled and still managed to avenge a directional school’s perceived clock screwing. And let’s not forget that directional school, Western Michigan, who in a controversial loss found a level of football relevancy that can only be measured by the record uptick in Google searches for “where is Western Michigan.”

More traffic than when they won a hockey natty, to be sure.

And so Michigan, a school known for its philanthropy, continues to give in ways no other school can.

The Michigan Difference: bestowing temporary relevancy to middling football programs.

Memories of the ghosts of coaches past are being referenced. “Practice is great!” says Coach Hoke. “Rich Rod doesn’t understand the Michigan culture,” says Ann Arbor Torch and Pitchfork.

And the unifying feature of past leaders in peril?

Losses.

Two in a row.

Not a common occurrence in Michigan’s storied history, definitely not against the Big Ten, and definitely definitely not to start a conference slate. Michigan is 0-2 in the Big Ten for the first time since Brady roamed the sidelines without a headset on, and that’s without even sniffing what is supposed to be the gauntlet portion of the schedule.

And don’t get me started on the comedy of errors and crappy football that awaits us in November if us and Little Bro stay on our current trajectories.

This is not a diatribe about how it’s not going to work. There’s still time, blah blah blah.

But it is one about how things are not working.

The offense is abysmal, the result of what seems like a cyclical torture test:

QB isn’t trusted.
Defense knows we’re not passing, so we can’t run.
Offense gets forced into passing downs.
QB makes a mistake.
QB is trusted even less.

And around and around we go.

The elite Michigan defense doesn’t look so great when it has to play the equivalent of two games in one afternoon. And special teams, despite a blocked punt — wasted by a quick three-and-out — still managed to look like former Buckeye Kerry Coombs has been sent to destroy us from the inside.

An embarrassing result against an average-at-best team. A trophy game that we have owned for the better part of 50 years.

Lost.

So where do we go from here?

Season goals become game-to-game goals. Scratch for signs of improvement. Figure out how you keep NIL-era talent that might want to abandon a sinking ship.

Find a way to keep it from sinking, I guess.

The new AD takes the reins on January 1. Depending on how things play out between now and then, they might want a fresh face in charge of the department’s premier team.

I’ll just keep tailgating.