It’s seems like a simple expectation but you forget, especially in the aftermath of the Alabama and Notre Dame games, that these coaches have a track record of making players better. You are seeing it. The defense confident and fun to watch and they’ve retooled the gameplan with Denard and it’s clearly working. I’ll take this stat line 24/7: 7-11, 2 TD, 0 INT. The Manster Jake Ryan is suddenly a star. The defense is now in the top 10 in the country and the pass defense is ranked third. adidas sponsored Coach Hoke’s undershirt. No word yet on the black pants (Armani doesn’t make blue, people). The Stadium Bridge is almost done. Everything is working. Can I nitpick? Naturally. I realize that Bellomy was just inserted there at the end of the first quarter, but at a minimum I would have tried to draw Illinois offside on the 4th and 1 on the goal line (and either burn a timeout or heck, take a 5 yard penalty, who cares) and I would have gone for it either way. Yes – that seems like a silly thing to say at this point but I felt the need to prove my Michigan fandom. The Misc: * Ford Returns. Once again a nice job by #1000SSS with the Legends presentation. I’m not…
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What President Ford Might Have Said Today
Here’s most of a nice speech that President Ford delivered to the Annual Congressional Dinner of the University of Michigan Club back in March 1975. To me, much of it applies today as ever and if he were around I’m guessing he would have shared many of these memories on the field today: [Introductory portion omitted] You know, as a matter of fact, I can still remember spending a good part of my sophomore and junior years washing dishes in the DKE house–of which I was a proud member–and I mean washing dishes. As a matter of fact, I washed so many dishes I was the only athlete in Michigan history who ever had a football knee and dishpan hands at the same time. [Laughter] As I mentioned a moment ago, I was lucky enough to play football, first on Ferry Field and then in the stadium. And I was lucky enough to start a few games in the football season of 1934–and that was quite a year. The Wolverines on that memorable occasion played Ohio State, and we lost 34 to 0. And to make it even worse, that was the year we lost seven out of eight of our scheduled games. But you know, what really hurt me the most was when my teammates voted me their most…
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#48 Returns. Questions Emerge.
Mark Snyder reports today that Hoke confirmed that Michigan will unretire Gerald Ford’s #48 jersey this season: “I think (the No. 1 will be brought out) in the near future, but I can’t tell you it will be this season,” Hoke said. “That’s something that we’re doing a lot of thinking about. We’re honoring Desmond Howard now with one of our players who really deserves it, and that’s (receiver) Roy Roundtree wearing No. 21. We’re going to do the same with Gerald Ford’s jersey this year. We’re looking at doing it.” Funny, Ira and Sam brought up the topic of unretiring jerseys on my visit to WTKA last week and as mentioned in studio and a couple times before, I’m a big fan of doing this. So it looks like Ford will be the next member of the Legends club, joining Desmond Howard. For what it’s worth I thought the #48 was the one number they might just leave retired since it’s obviously a special honorary distinction, not solely tied to performance on the gridiron (although Ford was MVP of the miserable 1934 squad). So many questions: 1. Why is Ford’s #48 next to be honored? The timing question – I have no idea. I assume they want to honor one former player each year for the next few years,…
