New Routine

Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh reacts towards a game official after a call during the second half of U-M's 38-21 loss on Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020, in Bloomington, Indiana.  (Doug McSchooler/AP)

It doesn't hurt at all and I couldn't figure out why.  It's not because I don't care, because I do.  Perhaps not as passionately as I did in my youth, but I still care, but it is a level of caring tempered by realities both small and larger. It's not that it wasn't expected, hardly, I was going to be fully and completely shocked if Michigan managed to pull this off.  No, it was just, it was a game, one of several, being played at noon on Saturday, and Michigan, like a lot of teams in 2020, did not look very good in their playing of it.

It was the last connection to be severed.  Every connection to the Bo era had been broken but one.  That Michigan's last loss to Indiana was in 1987.  A winning streak begun in the dying embers of the Schembechler era, carried through Moeller and Carr, inexplicably moved through the direst ebbs of the Rodriguez and Hoke years, and in spite of some wild endings, carried through the Harbaugh years.  All things must pass* and yesterday in Bloomington, it finally did.  That cutting of that link did perhaps reminds us, finally, that the past is truly in the past.  We can honor the past, celebrate the past, but we cannot be beholden to the past, held prisoner by it.

Indiana earned it, there's no doubt.  Indiana looks like a team in control of what it wants to do and making it happen.  Michigan looks like a team that thinks that they can show up and play and that should be enough.  I am sure that people much better versed in interpersonal group dynamics and 
the like can explain better what is going on with Michigan, but right now, it's just not a very good football team and time is running out for it to get better.

Until next week.




*-unless you're Ohio State, which it was pointed out in an AFLAC trivia question last night that they are they only team in the AP Poll era to never have a 5 game losing streak.