Doggone it! I really liked the guy after what he did at Ball State, but I was working on not liking him since he took the Michigan job. This article has scuttled my plan. Brady Hoke Is A Michigan Man I find interesting the comments toward the end of the article about Lloyd Carr "coming back" to the program.
He's off to a good start, recruiting very hard, and he's built an excellent staff to support him. Clearly a much better choice for UM than RR was in so many ways. He's also coming in at an opportune time with Ohio State having had so many problems with the program recently. Opportunity is there for him. It will be very interesting to see how he uses Denard Robinson. I look for the UM team and fans to be geeked to the max for the Irish in that game up there.
Sid, thanks for posting this. These positive feeling you are now feeling towards a M coach will soon pass. TOK will be posting some articles from ND Nation in a few weeks that reveal Hoke's true character to a blend of the personality traits of Al Capone, Roman Polanski, and Barry Switzer and responsible for designing the Canadian Football League uniforms M will be wearing when facing the Irish juggernaut. My preference would have been this. I am tempering my enthusiasm given the roller coaster emotions I experienced during the Rich Rod era. M's recruiting under Hoke has been excellent but to remold the team to playing the more physical style of football that M played prior to RR era will take time, probably decades. Plus, it is going to be a difficult adjustment for Denard to transition from running RR's spread offense, for which I think his skills were best suited, to the offense used by Borges at the other schools that **** canned him. I do expect our graduation rate of black players in the Hoke era to remain the same as they were under RR, Lloyd, and Bo. In contrast, Kelly, a larger than life Grand Rapids hero who turned Grand Valley into a football dynasty, now has ND running on at least 8 if not 16 cylinders. Every 4 and 5 star recruit of the past two years is now living in a dorm in South Bend. I envision the upcoming game as a head on car crash at 100 mph between a Ford Flex and the Italian designed and Mexican manufactured Fiat 500. We are going to get flattened and will look like espresso colored tortilla after you get done with us. If we can keep the margin of defeat between 20-30 points, I will be happy.
How's his health? My spies have not yet found anything other than his weight that could cause his early retirement!
I'm guardedly optimistic this season because for the first time in living memory BT refs will not be calling the ND-M game at the big house. Odds on an Excessive Celebration penalty drop from 98% to 6 1/2 % Odds on a TD being recalled on inconclusive replay or a pancake block being called a holding penalty have been reduced from 89% to 4%. I'm really looking forward to this game. Of course it didn't stop me from trading my tickets to the game for 2 to the USC game. You won't find me in biker bars, tattoo parlors or the "big house."