The Easy Way Out

This hasn't been a particularly fun football season.

It has had its moments, sure, but on the whole, it's not fun to watch your team get beaten every week in new and exciting ways. Combine losing, which sucks, with the fact that every team that beats you has been waiting for years to do so, and you get what most Michigan fans are going through. No amount of "what about the previous six years?" will rub out the Spartan's smug grin. No amount of "winningest college football program" will stop the text messaging from random "friends" who probably wouldn't even be talking to you except that you're a Michigan fan and it's your turn in the barrel. Even my NFL team of choice (Colts), who for so long could be relied on to numb (slightly) any Michigan loss, kind of suck this year.

I commiserated with a Notre Dame fan this weekend, who assured me that "things would get better." Yeesh.

I thought (and said so in print) that this Michigan team would finally put all the pieces together against Michigan State. Their relative weakness played into our relative strength, Michigan seemed to have found something with Minor, and on the whole the team appeared ready to take a step forward and make 60 minutes of football happen. They didn't; It didn't; My bad.

As a fan, there is only so much you can do. You can whine, you can stare at a blank computer screen's blinking cursor for an hour, you can break things. I've done all three over the course of this season. I have nothing to show for it except a few posts that never got posted (thankfully), an annoyed girlfriend, and a cracked screen on my cell phone. Those are the culminated results of my being a Michigan fan this sesaon. Hardly impressive.

I am not an apologist. There are certainly things that I wished were handled differently with the switch to Rodriguez, and there are probably more things that I wish were handled better. The easy way out, if you're a Michigan fan, is to blame the entire thing on the coaching staff. The 3rd and long = Death is certainly Schafer's fault. The offensive woes are purely due to Rodriguez's stubborn insistence on imposing his offensive scheme.

I get that. I know that, for those who love Michigan, this season is almost impossibly hard to take. As a result, you see a certain distancing by those who love this team. By blaming the coaching staff, you can say "It's not my team; those aren't my guys." It's a survival technique. Most of the Michigan blogosphere has been resoundingly against employing this technique because the preponderance of evidence suggests that the team will, eventually, be very good with this exact coaching staff in place. I fall into that camp. However, it is hard to begrudge anyone for doing something that simply allows them to get through the day; week; month without feeling too down. This season, if it makes you feel better to blame the new coaching staff, just go ahead and do it - as long as you realize what it is: a survival technique aimed at distancing yourself from the program so that you don't hurt as much when they lose.

You're taking the easy way out, and that's well and good. In fact, there are several message boards around these internets that will allow you to vent all you want about how things should be different, and how we'd be 7-1 with Les Miles and his giant balls.

For those not taking the easy way out, it's going to be rough. I don't see this team winning many more games. In fact, I don't really see this team winning any more games. My advice is to turn off your cell phone, stay the hell away from the internet, and go do something outside. Watch Michigan play on Saturday, and afterwards, do something fun.

If that sounds hollow, it's because it is.