It’s Hawaiian shirts and coconut bras for Saturday folks….we’ll see you there bright and early!

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!

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.

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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.

3 freakin’ days.

I always operated under the assumption that the life expectancy of a tailgater, particularly people from our group, is significantly lower than that of your average Joe. Then I read this…

But a new paper in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research suggests that — for reasons that aren’t entirely clear — abstaining from alcohol does actually tend to increase one’s risk of dying even when you exclude former drinkers. The most shocking part? Abstainers’ mortality rates are higher than those of heavy drinkers.

That’s right pussy! Keep refusing me when I try to hand you a beer….and you’ll DIE.

I have a triple-linkfest from the Freep, which in much of the Michigan Blogosphere is sacrilege, but The Godfather wants content, and they don’t deliver any papers to his house anymore except the South Bend Tribune, which he needs to find out what the good deals are down there for groceries. But I digress… Mitch Album spent 90 minutes with Coach Rodriguez, and there’s some pretty good stuff in there…

I wish every one of our fans could spend a week in Schembechler Hall. If they spend a week here just hanging around with the coaches and the players — they’d know everything is OK — and they would probably be surprised it’s not what (the perception) is out there.

The staff of the Freep gave their predictions for the season. Telling me that Michigan is going to go 6-6 is one thing, telling me Michigan State is going to go 10-2 is another. Damn you Rosenburg.

Also, Shanon Shelton gets bold, making the call that two Big Ten coaches will be fired, and neither of them is Rich Rodriguez.

AL.com, the official site of…um…the state of Alabama?  Kinda like Mlive I guess, only with a dash of illiteracy.  Anyway, they have an all encompassing article on college football 2010 that provides the double whammy of UCONN being a sleeper pick for the National Championship and Rich Rodriguez as the #1 coach on the hot seat.  FUN!

It’s probably time for you to start to get to know your opponent.  Boston.com profiles the slow and steady rise to success of Randy Edsall’s UCONN.

Michigan State and Ohio State are dirty and poor.  And that’s why all of their dorms are filled with bedbugs.  MATW has more.  Nasty bastards.

What’s more amazing than Maurice Clarett joining the Omaha Nighthawks?  The fact that Jeff Garcia is their quarterback.

4 days people…..4 days.

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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.

So swap out the golf shirt for a Hawaiian shirt, and we’ll roast some pig together.

Oh, and everybody gets Lei’d.

6 days.

UPDATE: After a meeting with the board of directors of the tailgate, we are changing this Saturday’s tailgate theme to Luau.  Please make the appropriate modifications to your wardrobe, and disregard the following.

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of week one’s tailgate theme.  It’s Caddyshack, like as in the movie, which means, well, I don’t know what it means.  I’m thinking golf gear, like Payne Stewert type stuff, and a repeating track of the Kenny Loggin’s hit “I’m Alright.”  But it’s the food that I’m concerned with.  Country Club food?  Not sure what that would be.  Then there’s the Baby Ruth, representing the floating Baby Ruth.  But what can you do with it?  Sure, you can deep fry it like twinkies or snickers, but it’s gonna be hot out there.  I’m not a big fan of deep frying before October.

So what do we do?

Enter Tony D’Annunzio (that’s him on the right).  What?  You don’t know Tony?  Tony is the unsung hero that was unfairly portrayed as a bully in the film.  Danny Noonan baited him into fighting and tried to overcharge him for a Coke while making fun of his accent. Noonan was on the fast track for the caddy scholarship after he won the caddy tournament, and he won that tournament by the narrowest of margins, sinking a putt on 18 to beat none other than Tony D’Annunzio.  Did anybody think that maybe Tony wanted to go to college?  Nope.

So join us Saturday, September 4th as we join together in our new tailgate space to celebrate the life and times of Italian-American Tony D’Annunzio….long story short….Italian food.

9 Days.

It’s becoming pretty clear that QB1 is not Tate’s job to lose anymore.  However, Tate spoke this weekend and I gotta say, if his actual maturity level is anywhere near the maturity level he’s been coached into portraying, he’s going to be a tremendous leader.  He’s saying all the right things:

I got a big head. … The thing I learned after last year was to be humble. It’s such a big jump. It would be hard for any freshman to come in here and do that. You’re not just at any university. You’re at Michigan. It’s Michigan. That’s why I came here. It’s Michigan. It’s different. It’s the top stage for everything. It was hard for me to handle last year, and I learned from mistakes.

And regarding Troy Woolfolk…

I stop by his..room every day.  Every since that day he called me out I feel I’m obligated to show him, show the rest of the seniors, that I’m all in on this team and it’s all about Michigan.

Getting a little bit fired up over here.  It’s like 11 days away people.

The huge Media Day post over at MGoBlog will take care of all of your interview needs from the weekend, and Maize and Brew provides a nice summary of the scrimmage.

Meanwhile….in Columbus…

Everybody’s favorite Buckeye (who was ineligible in 2002, just like the Reggie Bush situation, but nobody did anything about it for some reason so OSU got to keep their tainted-by-bullshit-interference-call national title) Maurice Clarett, who is currently taking classes at OSU, is planning to try out for the Omaha Nighthawks.  We wish the best to Mo in his continuing quest to get his goose on.

I told you last week that the Troy Woolfolk thing was no big deal, Maize and Blog gives you 5 more reasons why you shouldn’t worry.

Prepare yourself for this year’s first theme with this Inception-remixed trailer for Caddyshack.

Please be aware that the writing of this post was rudely interrupted by the great “Titties Twitter About Tate” fiasco.  It was supposed to be about how nobody should panic over the Woolfolk injury because having a crappy and/or inexperienced secondary is as much of a Michigan tradition as winged helmets, the inability to stop running quarterbacks, and predictable offensive playcalling.  I mean, you were likely to be calling for Cullen Christian to get in the game by week two anyway.  So here you go.  The future is now.

And let me be the dispenser of all the “everything’s gonna be all right” kool-aid tonight…Forcier is going to transfer at some point anyway, it’s part of his genetic code, so if tonight’s the night, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.

Probably not the time for this type of musing, but this post is all over the place anyway, so I should mention that barring what I would perceive as a miracle, this is likely Rodriguez’s last year as the Wolverine coach.  As you might know, it’s not as simple as stay or go.  It’s much more black and white…much more concrete.  He is going to be fired, or he’s going to get a contract extension.  College coaches don’t play out final years of contracts, they get extensions so they can assure recruits that they are going to be here.  So if I told you that those are the options…fired or extension…which one would you bet on happening at the end of the 2010 campaign?

I want to believe.  I want to imagine that Michigan will be walking out of the Horseshoe in November with heads held high, whether it be in victory or defeat, and that I won’t be home for New Year’s.  I just don’t see it….yet.

Some other things you should know:

• The New York Times wrote an article about Joe Paterno, and how he is nearing retirement.  The amazing thing is, they wrote the article in 1989.
• Craigslist lovers will appreciate this well-made spoof on WLA.
• The Journal picked up a John U. Bacon article on Zoltan.
• Michigan picked captains the old fashioned way.

And finally, I’m in no position to tell a man how to vote but…

Right.

Go Blue.