Exciting news for the tailgate, and for food consumption in general...
Come be a part of tailgating history as we partner up with KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese this weekend. Swing by my new location Saturday and be among the first to try delicious new KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese For the Grill. The first mac & cheese from KRAFT you can make on your grill.
By the clock it's gameday eve, and I've just returned from dollar beer nights at Packard Pub, Ann Arbor's newest watering hole. Slightly faded, but still fired up for what I am hoping will be a great weekend. Anyway, I've got some thoughts on the season I thought I'd share with you, in no particular order, and without any grammar checking....
1) Tate Forcier will start Saturday.
For now, this position is about experience. There's a place for Denard and Devin in this offense. Both will certainly play. As the season goes on, depending on our level of success, Denard may start, but Saturday's first series's belong to Tate....until he transfers that is.
2) The defense will be better than last year
That isn't necessarily saying that the defense itself is going to be better, but by virtue of the offense being improved i.e. less 3 and outs, less turnovers, etc., the defense, at least on paper and on the scoreboard, will be better.
3) Michigan will rank in the top 10 in the nation in scoring offense
And they're going to need to.
4) Michigan will beat Michigan State or Ohio State...or both.
Win or lose, I expect us to be competitive in both of these contests.
5) Michigan will start the season 6-0.
Big East bullshit, Brian Kelly's initial offering, FCS, BGSU, @ the Hoosiers, Little Brother
All no problem. See you at homecoming, Hawkeyes.
6) The leading rusher on the team will be Michael Shaw
Anybody else want to relay the "inside information" that Vinny Smith is still limping to me? I think my mom called to tell me about it this afternoon. I mean, everybody still says he's gonna play. He's probably gonna play. I just think the newly eligible Shaw is gonna play better.
7) People are going to sneak booze into those suites.
Rules be damned. If I just dropped a quarter of a million on three years of football games, your gonna have to have a gun....a big gun...to stop me from rolling in with a couple bottles of Belvedere.
8 ) Rich Rodriguez will receive a contract extension after the Wisconsin game, going into Ohio State week.
As I've stated before, they're no going to have him in limbo...that's bad for recruiting. They'll tack a year or two on to his current deal, right before OSU...because timing is everything
9) Michigan will play in the Alamo Bowl
See you in San Antonio.
10) Brock Mealer will walk to the 50 yard line and touch the GO BLUE banner.
And you will choke back tears.
There's a game tomorrow.
GO BLUE!
I'm pretty excited right now. Things seem to be falling in to place. Am I ready? No. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm pretty much a generator and a tent away from the finest offseason in my personal tailgate planning history. For those in the crew, I couldn't be more excited to see your reaction to our new tailgate home.
And then today the rumors began to swirl about the conference realignment. Doug Karsh broke the story, confirming the rumors through his personal inside source just after lunch. We are in a division made up of the three teams of the west: Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska....then add in Sparty and Northwestern. The Game remains at the end of the season. I quipped earlier that the end of The Victors will finally make sense.
Everybody wins. And for those in the "everybody loses" camp, the only way to fix your issues is to have Michigan and Ohio State play every year in the Big Ten Championship Game despite their records, the rest of the conference be damned.
Next year's home schedule is just phenomenal. The ND night game to start...Nebraska and Ohio State to finish.
But 2012? Not so great for a traveler like me. Someone explain to me how to manage @ Nebraska followed by @ Minnesota? 10 years I've been rocking the home and away games, and every year I'm dying for a new stadium. Never happens. Now they're going to give me two in two weeks?
I will let the guys with the beer provide the summary.
Anyway, I give the whole thing a great big thumbs up, and it makes me want to be competitive. This has to work. This has to work right now. I don't want to be re-rebuilding when the league is reborn a juggernaut.
Must win.
Two days. My god...two days.
My priorities and responsibilities are different than yours. Perhaps what you do is considered "real life" by definition, and what I do is frivolous and irresponsible. You're the ant. I'm the grasshopper. You probably think about the future in terms of retirement planning and putting your kids through college, while I can't see past the 2012 recruiting boards and the Luau tailgate menu.
And perhaps Rich Rodriguez to you is just some slick weasel car salesman that understands nothing about the tradition and pageantry of Michigan Football...a cheater...DickRod...etc. To me, he's a misunderstood offensive genius, a master recruiter, and an all around great guy. Seriously, how is he still pulling in high-starred recruits when 75% of America thinks he won't be here in December?
They're saying this is the most important year in the history of Michigan Football. I couldn't disagree more. First of all, 1997 was the most important year in the history of Michigan Football. And I think to pass judgement on a year of college football before it occurs is a little ignorant. I mean, if Michigan goes 8-5, 9-4, or even 7-6, Rodriguez will be retained, and this year will just be another year. We're moving forward. If we go somewhere in the vicinity of 3-9, and Rodriguez is canned, then the most important season is the coming offseason, when we decide whether to bring in Harbaugh to lead the team 25 years after he, well, lead this team. In reality, the only way this becomes the most important season in Michigan history is if we go 13-0, 12-1, or 11-2. In this scenario, Rodriguez is retained, becomes instantly beloved as the haters begin to swoon pretending they were supportive of the regime all along, and recruiting becomes so easy, John L. Smith could do it. National Championships follow, and we all live happily ever after. But let me be Frank with you, 13-0, 12-1 and 11-2...they're not happening.
I believe this will be a normal Michigan Football season. For the uninformed, a normal Michigan Football season is 8-4. We love 8-4. However, with these 13-game seasons (14 next year!) 8-4 doesn't really apply, so I'll say 8-5. And while 8-5 is classified as normal with regards to the 90's, understand that this will be an AMAZING improvement over the last two years, in fact, it would flirt with miraculous. You might say that going out on a limb predicting 8 wins is just like predicting National Championships every year from 1998 through 2007.
I did that too.
I've dedicated the better part of my life to having the best possible time...at all times...and view the pinnacle of each and every year as those 12 faithful Saturdays in the fall. In my time as a devotee, I have felt so many different types of pain that my psyche should probably be studied by a professional. Clearly too many instances to mention here. Besides, most of you have felt the same pain, at the same time. Michigan Football hurts.
But everything is different now.
The past has been filled with over-promising and under-delivering...high rankings proven undeserved. We used to be so disappointed in them when they would lose that first game, undoubtedly a game they weren't supposed to lose. We'd curse their effort, mock the gameplan, blame the officiating. It's funny, I always imagined, though never thought possible, the arrival of this day of reckoning. In my dreams it hurt worse. Maybe it's because I'm older, but this pain doesn't have the intensity of the past pain. Toledo was a breeze to overcome when compared to App State. Losing to Northwestern in 2008 was childsplay (weather aside) by comparison to when they nipped us with a last second field goal in 1996, or when Train fumbled in 2000.
We used to spend all of our time looking for answers: Why does John Navarre throw balls off of lineman's heads?!? Why does Jeremy LeSeur bite on that fake every time?!? Why do we run 5 yard outs on 3rd and 8?!?
We never did figure anything out.
Today the answers are simple: We start walk-ons on defense, our defense sucks, and we turn the goddamn ball over too much.
With all of our great history it's difficult to admit that we are starting over. A bonafied underdog. Off the radar. Not a single preseason magazine even teases us as a sleeper. Not one even has us above fifth place in the Big Ten. We are humbled in a way that we never thought could happen. Let me ask you this...do you think they'd be discussing moving The Game if we had been a little more competitive the last two seasons? And don't pretend we were in it last year just because they decided to play Tresselball at halftime.
Perhaps now we won't take anything for granted. Perhaps we will pay attention. Cheer first downs. Stand up and fight for a team that needs us. Don't you think it might be time to support a coach that should be creating masterful gameplans instead of trying to appease a bunch of spoiled assholes worrying about who is wearing the stupid #1 jersey.
It's time to play. Welcome to my life.
10 years ago, things were different.
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Back then, there were questions going into the season, but not the kind of questions we have today. We wondered if redshirt freshman John Navarre could carry the reigns until Drew Henson's stress fracture healed, pondering if that would be what stopped us from winning all of our games. Because we used to think like that. Not a season was started where we didn't feel like we had legitimate chance of beating everybody on our schedule. We didn't think in terms of bowl games, because they were an absolute given. We didn't wonder how many wins it would take for Lloyd to keep his job, we only bitched about his offensive playcalling. It was a time just before recruiting coverage got out of hand, so we were mostly blind to the shortcomings of our secondary, and we didn't care, because we knew we had enough, because we always had enough. We were in the midst of the longest streak of being in the top 25 in the history of college football. At this time of year, we would complain because our ranking was too low. Now we wonder if we will crack the "other's receiving votes" paragraph at the end of the list.
Our team was full of nationally recognized names: David Terrell, Anthony Thomas, Steve Hutchinson, Drew Henson. Some of them were even Heisman trophy contenders. We spent half of 2000 in the top 10, only falling out after the Drew vs. Drew debacle in West Lafayette. I was 24 years old, Purdue overcame that 28-10 halftime deficit, and I heard my dad drop an F-bomb for the first time.
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Ahhh, the memories.
Tailgates were different back then too. I didn't really know these people...
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I remember feeling left out when they did this. I wasn't quite in the family yet. And take a look at this pic...
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Seriously, click on it to zoom in and look at the food in the background. We used to eat fiddle faddle and fruit salad. A simpler time indeed. Now we do this...
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Also, Captain Michigan used to leg wrestle...
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...now he doesn't do shit except sit around and make people feel sorry for him because he's gotta drink root beer and regular rum by doctor's orders. Just kidding...I love you Larry.
Anyway, as we make our way to the new tailgate space at Pioneer for our season opening Luau this Saturday, we will reach a milestone. A milestone that I'm particularly proud of, and that I'm pretty sure nobody else has crossed...
10 years of tailgating exploits plastered all over the internet.
Sure, I could have realized how much people enjoyed pictures and commentary on those pictures, and then went on to invent facebook...but I didn't, and that's good because I would have been one of those really pompous asshole rich people. I would have had Zingerman's bring the food in every week for the tailgate, and I wouldn't have invited any of you poor folk.
So ya, there's that.
5 days.
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