A Month is Long Enough

The scary thing about all of this?  I really am getting used to it.  Apparently it only takes two years to erase the 30+ year habit of Michigan going to bowl games.  I'm sitting here, Bowl Pick'em sheets in hand, watching other teams play what have so far been meaningless bowl games with sparse attendance.  It kind of reminds me of all those years of watching the NCAA basketball tournament without Michigan in it.  There's a dance, but we weren't invited.

I went ahead and picked against every team in the Big Ten, and assigned the highest confidence points to each of those games.  That strategy has served me well in recent years, because, as you know, the Big Ten really sucks.  Also of note, Michigan tied for last place in the Big Ten this season.  That makes us the king of suck in a conference of suck.

Super.

It's the kind of thing that makes you question your path in life.  Okay, okay, that's a little melodramatic, but it's the kind of thing that shuts down a tailgate website for a month.  That and unabashed laziness.  More troubling however, is that the future does not look bright.  The defense, which often baffled us with it's ineptitude, loses its only two decent players, and will replace them with walk-ons and freshman, and I'm talking freshman next year.  Warm bodies, that's what we're looking for.  Knowing where to line up and who to cover, that would be a bonus.

The offense will search for a running back to replace injury plagued Brandon Minor and Carlos Brown, and will try to figure out why they continue to cough up the ball at a level that put them at 115th in the nation in turnover margin.  Minus the turnovers, we'd be in a different place.  Unfortunately, the idea that the problem would fix itself is what we went with last year.  Obviously, this needs to be addressed, in lieu of finger crossing and blind hope.

We're just sitting here, waiting.  Waiting for either a magical turnaround or for the other shoe to drop.  No doubt that if I'm not typing up some kind of Bowl Preview post at this time next year, it will be the latter.

A belated Merry Christmas to you all.