“Perhaps I can find new ways to motivate them.  But first, more donuts and cider.”  Melanie Maxwell – A2.com As you might expect, callers to the morning shows on WTKA were hammering away at Rich Rod and Greg Robinson.  Even omnipresent caller and ardent Rich Rod supporter Linda from Grand Blanc effectively called for a coaching change. I hate going through this game of classifying Michigan fans, but I think there’s a good portion of us that have been out there notsomuch defending Rodriguez, but instead defending him against critics of his offensive philosophy, the unfair treatment of countless incidents in the media and the circumstances that have led to the depleted talent on defense. Last night twitter was blazing with folks pinning this mess on Greg Robinson, asking for his head with even a few folks wishing Ron English could return, haha.  Sorry, at this point there are no thirdsies for Rich Rod with respect to the defense and the coordinator.   Maybe Gerg has no idea what he’s doing, but it doesn’t matter, it’s on Rodriguez. As far as the talent, yep, they are young and inexperienced but we’re nearly three years in and we can’t stop (or beat) marginal Big Ten opponents.  Rodriguez didn’t give the defense the same emphasis when he came in and yes, caught several…

I’ll be doing my weekly ‘This Week…‘ segment live in WTKA 1050AM studios tonight with Ira and crew, tune into the pregame show in the six o’clock hour for that segment.   We’ll be looking back to one of the greatest ever—triple overtime thriller against Michigan State held six years ago to the day, October 30, 2004: The sponsor of This Week…is Wolverine Beer so here’s where you can find it, or check out the Beer Wench’s Blog.  I’m still waiting to have my first Wolverine beer, perhaps some day soon. You can hear all of the  This Week… clips here.

Duty calls.  Per Brian’s post last night on mgoblog, Rich Rod (via various Angel tweets) apparently announced some pretty major moves in personnel.  After parsing through the tweets Brian made this request: I looked for podcasts on WTKA‘s site but couldn’t find them; maybe MVictors will  be able to dig out exactly what was said so we can parse that into molecules. He’s clutch like that. Here’s the first segment of the show thanks to Ira at WTKA: [display_podcast] . I ain’t got time to bleed, I mean, I don’t got time to transcribe.  If anyone wants to take a run, have at ‘er. [Update:  mgo-transcription and analysis here.]   Relevant transcription only via Brian: On Will Campbell and Quinton Washington: “We made a couple moves with some big guys, some backup linemen. Quinton Washington was a backup lineman; we moved him to nose guard. We kinda traded Will Campbell over to offense, where I think he’s going to be a natural offensive guard. After a week and a half I think both of those moves will probably stick for now. I think Will’s got a future at guard, I think Quinton Washington’s got a future on the D-line.” On the secondary: “We moved around Cam Gordon. We wanted him to learn—well, he played the deep safety, we wanted him…

Mike Rothstein’s Penn State preview included a Q&A with David Jones of the Harrisburg Patroit-News.  It included this: Q: Will the night-time/Halloween atmosphere help Penn State? Why or why not? DJ: "No. This team is slow on D. I don’t see how drunken 19-year-olds in masks are going to affect that."

Ron Kramer’s passing a few weeks back prompted several nice tributes.    Many recalled his habit of bringing apples to the football team including Mark Snyder of the Freep [ed. I can’t find the link!] who mentioned the tradition started before Kramer. This caught the attention of Jean and Jerry Delay & for good reason.  After reading the piece they shot Snyder a note and Mark forwarded it my way (he knows this is my bag).   I thought I’d pass it along: In the article you mentioned that Mr. Kramer continued a tradition which had begun with "an older man." I am pretty certain, as is my brother, that the older man you referred to was our father, Jay J. DeLay. During Mr. Kramer’s student days, my father, who was President of Huron Valley National Bank(now Comerica-Ann Arbor), used to deliver crates of apples to the football players and to the Michigan Marching Band. My brother and I still have memories of the apple crates being tossed to the band members, who at that time, had seats in the stands. Huron Valley National Bank was known as "the apple bank." Apples were not only part of the bank’s logo; they were offered to all customers when they entered the bank’s lobby. My father, who was passionate about Michigan football, and attended…

I was recently forwarded (by a couple people), this piece titled Harmon: "I Know Damn Well I Will" from U-M school of LSA website.  Does it look wildly familiar, from the title, to the screen shots to the video?   It should – I posted a strikingly similar piece in July titled Tom Harmon’s Vows – “I know damn well I will!” (1939) and you’ve seen that video a few times I’m sure. Perhaps the author forgot to mention where he got all that material?   No mention, link or hat tip? I’m not sure, but I asked my friends at LSA magazine to look into it.   It hurts a little bit being someone who’s been quoted in the magazine, is an LSA grad and even a small time but heartfelt donor to the school.    <<Ugh>> Update October 26:   Just got a classy email from Lara Zielin, the editor at LSA Magazine.  She explained the genesis of the story idea, where credit should have been given and noted that they are updating the story online with a credit to this site.  Zielin asked to put responsibility for the omission on her (not the author).

A follow-up on the Banished from the Big House post from last week, where U-M media relations confirmed to me that a couple premium seat holders had their tickets yanked for rowdy behavior during the State game. MVictors reader ‘Mfan’ claims to be a witness to the whole thing: They were actually seated right in front of me. Came in hammered, and brought a flask in. They were loud, obnoxious, swearing, etc… typical of what you’d find at an nfl game. That didn’t go over too well in the club section, especially with kids around. Of course it didn’t help when they started threatening to be waiting in the parking lot for the people that complained. To UofM’s credit, they contacted my Dad the next week to get his side of the story (even though he never complained), then contacted him later to tell him that they were banning the 4 guys from the stadium (with a refund).