Troubled Times

Well, I mean, at least Blake Corum looked good. (Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports)

And it takes a lot of nerve to ask how she is doing. 

Start with a weak foundation, you will end in ruins. 

The ways the days and hours pass you'll never understand 

Falling like rain through your hands

"Troubled Times" by Fountains of Wayne from their 1999 album Utopia Parkway

It was more troubling than a blowout might indicate because it was a thousand deaths in the margins.  Michigan decided that it would keep doing what it thought it should do on paper, despite the evidence facing them in the game.  Michigan's defense relies on superb DB play to cover in man, and it showed time and again yesterday that it was going to be difficult.  Michigan State's receivers made some absolutely difficult catches, but they made them when they counted, and that was enough.

Michigan's offense kept running up the middle with little to no discernable effect, lighting first downs on fire like they were trying to keep warm in the old abandoned stadium, then looking confused when they were off schedule on third and longs.  Joe Milton did his damndest to keep things going and did a lot more than he didn't, shades of poor damn Devin Gardner. Still, in the end, Michigan State looked like they wanted to win more, were playing looser and freer, and Michigan couldn't get things together for long enough to get out of their own way and try to win the football game.  When you run a wildcat pass inside the five instead of using your 6' 5" highly mobile quarterback, a play that costs you four points in a three-point loss, maybe you're just too committed to clever?

We're looping back to the feeling of being lost, like in 2014, but without any real sense of where to go next.  That sense of dread that Michigan is slated to forever be something like boring Auburn or store-brand Wisconsin.  Good, very good, but not top tier, and maybe not even second tier.  And there's nothing that can be done about it.  Michigan got the best coach it could get, one that everyone agreed would be a great fit and a great coach, and it's basically still what it was for a long time.  This is, admittedly, a significant improvement over the seven years of RR and Hoke, but it's just not going to happen.  In other years, it was more explicable, a loss to Notre Dame to start the season or twin losses to Wisconsin and Penn State on the road.  But this one, this loss, makes no sense on paper.  When things make no sense on paper, people look to intangibles, and there's a lot of not liking what they see.

For so long, Michigan has taken solace in the past, that once was could be again.  "The world has changed, and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best that we can do is to start over."  What was isn't any longer.  We can celebrate the past, and we should, but we must remember that it is not a guarantee of the future because no one's future is guaranteed.  You have to work hard to earn what you want, and too often, there is a sense that Michigan presumes a birthright path to the top of the heap.  We want to tell ourselves that we're different, but it's a delusion built on years of arrogance.  We refuse to get out of our own way because we so desperately want that world back, a world from many of our GenX childhoods where Michigan was ultra-reliable as long as it wasn't bowl season.  But even the historical record since World War II doesn't bear out this sense of entitlement.  There is a strange simultaneous tendency to get mad at anyone who dares point these things out and gets mad at anyone who dares not give Michigan its perceived due.  Michigan doesn't hold up its end of the bargain in "the best rivalry in sports" and has trouble holding up its end in the in-state rivalry.  We're wandering aimlessly, hoping for a sign that will lead us forward, a sign that will never come, but instead chasing after false prophets, destined to let us down, time and time again.  Yet, there is no sense that the signal is coming, or will ever come to us.  

I often point to the fact that one of the hallmarks of Michigan fandom is the Michigan fan community, the ties that bind us, in person or virtually, across the years, the good times, and the tough ones.  This just feels different because it's just this strange sense of "I'm not angry, I'm not disappointed, I'm just sad."  When so many people tie up their belief in the possibility of something, only to see those ideas slip away from them, sadness becomes the primary feeling, because we've already been through the other notions of what we can do about it.

This column is probably too pessimistic, too forlorn, probably tapping into other strains of sadness that are running parallel but very close to this stream.  In this strange year, it is difficult to see individual notions of what is making one sad, all of the colors are bleeding into one.  It was perhaps too much to expect and even too much to ask to have Michigan football be something more than it's been in decades to lift our spirits; fervent hope still runs headlong into the limitations of reality.

But it would have been nice to keep Paul home and save the football existential crisis for another week.

Darkness

It's not a perfect summary of the day, but... (Jeff Hanisch, USA TODAY Sports)

Nothing is good anymore.  Even the slightly good things feel like they come at a cost.  Sean McKeon scored a touchdown to get Michigan on the board and cut the lead to...well, slightly less and he came away hurt after trying to avoid destroying someone on the sidelines.  That score came after Dylan McCaffery took two hits to the head, earning a pair of targeting penalties, one for each of Wisconsin's starting safeties and was later reported to be suffering from a concussion.

I really don't have anything to add.  It was awful to watch.  It was confusing to watch.  It was frustrating to watch.  And I don't see how it gets better, at least in the short term.  But for the first time, in a long time, I also don't know if it gets better in the long-term.  I know Michigan is never going to be Michigan again, the world has changed too much, the inherent advantages that Michigan once had are gone, and all that is left is a trophy case full of what once was and likely shall never be again.  But I don't want to accept this.  I feel like this isn't the way things should be and the denial of it shall stave off the encroaching despair as if positive thinking alone can make things better.

I'm not declaring myself done, I'm not writing off the season, I'm just over the line of thinking that Michigan will ever be the Michigan of the past once again because it won't.  We had our literal best shot at making that happen and it didn't happen.  There's no logical way forward that gets Michigan back there and at some point, the past is too far gone to recapture it again.  The new world is a harsh and unforgiving place and it cares not what has been before.

So cool, let's celebrate the sesquicentennial of College Football with the two oldest programs in FBS with a meaningless Big Ten noon game next week.  Maybe Michigan won't fumble on their opening possession this time.  That would be something.

End Game

Khalid Hill has a great barber.  (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

I loved the shutout streak.  Drew Hallett and I bonded on Twitter over tracking it.  It was the last thread that connected most of my life of Michigan football, from Bo to Mo to Lloyd to Rich Rod to Hoke.  Michigan may not always win, but dammit, they at least scored points.

When Wile missed the second field goal, I started to worry about the streak.  Slowly, but surely, other people on Twitter began to realize that the streak was in jeopardy!  So when Michigan went four it on fourth down and was stopped, that was it.  The streak, 365 games, nearly 30 years old, was over.  Notre Dame had just stomped Michigan 31-0 and all I could think about was the streak ending.  I was ready to be wistful about the end of the Michigan / Notre Dame series, about how I had hazy memories of Rocket Ismail ruining my day in 1989, about Desmond, about Remy, about the 97 defense, about 09-10-11 and the era of miracles, and Under the Lights.  But with the Streak ending, it's like the fall of a symbolic era, looking shambolic and lost when faced with a talented team.

Part of that was because today felt all too familiar.  As the storms began to pop up on radar Friday night, I thought about Devin Gardner.  I read John U. Bacon's Wall Street Journal piece about Gardner last night while waiting for pizza and my thought was "Man, I hope Devin Gardner doesn't become John Navarre 2.0"  But after last night's performance, it's going to be clear that Gardner will be a lightning rod for criticism of this team.  He probably deserves some of the criticism, but not all of it.  But he's the quarterback, he's wearing Tom Harmon's 98, he's going to get the scorching hot takes launched upon him.

I really don't have anything else here.  I'm tired, I'm sad, I'm frustrated, and I'm hoping against hope.  Maybe when you don't have anything else to say, you just stop talking.  So until next week, we'll just try to move forward together.  We fight for better days.