Local Student Seeks Career In Entertainment/Social Marketing/Something With Famous People

This is going to fail.

1. The project, as presented, does not sound like it's designed to replace "The Victors". An "additional thematic song" sounds more like "In the Big House" redux. This is less bad than replacing "The Victors", but only in the way that measles is less bad than smallpox.
2. The project comes across mostly as a way for the students involved to meet famous people. David Banner's name has been invoked, perhaps with his agreement, and the campaign's representative stated “The goal of this song is to get a lot of big names that are associated with the University.” Note that the goal of this project is not to make a good song that represents the university well.
3. As of now, there is neither a tune nor lyrics for this project.
4. Somebody "conceptualized" the project.
5. The Hail and Unite group is seeking $2,750, with $1,750 going toward producing the promo video for the crowdfunding campaign (Of course there's a crowdfunding campaign) and $1,000 to go toward getting a celebrity or two to appear in the video.

I would say it is NOT impossible that a project like this could make a positive contribution to the University. But I think that this project is going about it in completely the wrong way.

To put it simply to its backers, you're going about it backward. If you're interested in anything more than networking with famous people, you have to get the song right first. At least make a demo, bro. Every major piece of music in the MMB canon was written or arranged by a student. Yes, Louis Elbel wrote "The Victors" in 1898, and Lawton and Moore wrote "Varsity" in 1911. But Joe Carl and Al Ahronheim wrote and arranged "Let's Go Blue" in the mid-'70's, and it spread like wildfire throughout the country. My point is, maybe get some lyrics and music down before you tweet at Eminem or ask for funding from CSG.

The Rising Tide

I wasn't even supposed to be here today.

I had a wedding in Evanston this weekend.  I was going to let Geoff reclaim the rightful throne if he wanted and I was going to be content to hold my tongue.

And then Shane was nailed in the helmet, a targeting call that went uncalled, looked wobbly, and came out.  Devin comes in, Devin runs a few plays, Devin loses his helmet.  Bellomy can't find his helmet, so they send Shane back in.  They don't take a time out, which would have solved everything.  They send out an injured Shane Morris (who had a leg injury for sure, whatever other points you want to argue) for one play.

And then the rains of criticism come in, and rightfully they should.  No one is talking about how bad Michigan looked yesterday, and by the way, they did.  No, they're talking about whether your underachieving head coach is now also either willfully ignorant of head trauma issues, or so incompetent that he didn't know that Shane Morris might have had/probably did have a concussion.  Either way, Brady Hoke lost whatever remaining benefit of the doubt/goodwill that Michigan fans had for him.  While we may not handle losing very well, we certainly don't handle being the center of a national controversy well at all.

But you already knew all of that.

To go a little meta for a moment, I no longer know what to do in this space that I grant myself every week.  To wit, if I go silent, then I'm a fair-weather fan who is only interested in Michigan when they are winning.  Well, I'm not say.  So if I speak my mind and talk about the negative things I am thinking of about the team and the program and the department, then I'm being a hater and my negativity hurts everyone associated with the team.  But if I only look at the positives, I'm a propaganda machine for a team that already has plenty of them.

The new reality is that Michigan is in a dark place, darker than I have ever seen it.  And nearly all of it is self-inflicted.  And I'm not sure there's an obvious way out of it.  Some seem confident that the right decisions are being made.  But, being confident in having made the right decision is not the same as making the right decision.

Go buy one of these.  Keep it handy.  We're going to need it a lot over the next few weeks.  Because we're not going anywhere anytime soon.  You pissed us off.  Not because you are losing.  But because you thought you could tell us everything's fine when we know it's not.  So we're not going anywhere, no matter how high the tide gets.