Don't Be Two-Thousand and Late
/What? You thought that we would make this team into a national contender, pulling in national recruits from far away states that would win every event at a Michigan high school state track final, without having to sidestep a few landmines? No sir. When you go after athletes of this caliber, in some extreme cases you have to lower you academic standards....your moral standards. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we are selling our soul for National Championships. If we weren't, Stan Parrish, Ron English, and Brady Hoke would be leading your team out of the tunnel in 26 days.
It just comes down to if you can close your eyes and turn away until the wins come. Because when the wins come, you won't care. Urban Meyer doesn't care. Mostly because if he punches you in the face, you'll get a fistfull of ring imprints on your forehead. Deal with it. Playing by the rules and getting only the rare combo of amazing athlete and pilar of the community can get you wins. We've proved that over 130 years. But it also only gets you a National Championship every 50 years. To be honest with you, I'm not sure I'm gonna be around for the 2047 championship, so if we have to dodge some bullets and take a kid or two that might have been slinging nose candy back in his hometown in order to defeat the evil sweatervest regularly, I'm "all in" for it. And so is Billy Mays.
This is what you wanted, even though you may not admit it. That's because you are a hypocrite. You want the stadium to be loud, but you don't really want to cheer. You want the tickets to be cheaper, but you don't want any advertisments. You want a third down atmosphere that strikes fear into the opponent, but you don't want piped in music. You want Maize Outs to be like the Penn State White Out, but you often wear blue. You want the best players in the country to come to Michigan, but you don't want to accept anyone that wouldn't qualify academically if they were applying as a student rather than a football player. You can't have it all. So what you have to do is decide if you want to be Northwestern...or you want to be Florida.
So if you got on perch today and talked about the demise of the program, about how RichRod hastily brought in a dual threat quarterback at the end of his first stab at recruiting with an 'M' on his shirt without fully checking him out, then you are not part of the solution. The solution is WINS. He's not a babysitter. He's a coach. He wants wins. And I want him to do anything possible to get those wins short of checking to see if Maurice Clarrett has any eligibility left. This incident, while unfortunate, is the first of what I am sure will be many off the field problems we will have. And it won't be RichRod's fault any more than it was Lloyd Carr's fault that Larry Harrision liked to show people his wang. Hang in there. You might feel dirty. You might feel uncomfortable. You might not know the words to "I'm in Miami Trick" for the first few games. But in the end, none of it will matter. Because we'll be at a bowl game, playing the SEC, showing Ohio State what it means to represent the new Big Ten, hanging banners and hoisting trophies to Boom Boom Pow.
