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Every week, Ryan and Kevin and their Ohio State ilk (thank you for subscribing, by the way!) find a way to turn a low-stakes in-conference game thread into a war zone that probably has our website on some sort of federal watchlist.
The Michigan contingency here is less rabid than they are, but also less haughty than the average Michigan board. Sure, J.J. McCarthy’s leap and Michigan’s total domination of its opponents — with signs or without — is undeniable; we’re taking our victory laps regardless. We also don’t have this vibe:
One thing you will find, though, are our weekly “Rose, Bud, Thorn” game summaries. We each sum up the unequivocal best part of the game (the “rose”), something good-but-developing or worth keeping an eye on (the “bud”), and the thing bugging us (the “thorn”). It’s apparently a mindfulness exercise, and my friends and I often do it around New Year’s Eve to reminisce on the year; I have adapted it for our purposes in the least mindful place you can be, a football message board.
Recently, I asked the boards for their midseason roses, buds, and thorns, both on-field and off. The unanimous on-field rose was, of course, J.J. McCarthy’s vast improvement as a passer and decision-maker:
There were snippets during the late-stage Henne era when we had too many sick receivers to ignore, but this is the only time I can remember a sustained emphasis on the passing attack. J.J. is a legitimate Heisman-quality quarterback, and so many of those throws he’s making are opponent invariant NFL-level stuff.
eggboi
He’s everything we always wanted in a QB, seems to constantly toe the line between aggressive and reckless. One stat I saw today: on 3rd and long (7+): 19/20 for 339 yards and 4 TDs, with all 19 completions going for a 3rd down conversion or TD.
madler09 (bold my emphasis)
The rest of our answers vary, both from week to week and in this midseason evaluation. A regular weekly bud: Kenneth Grant. A quiet, looming thorn: Has Donovan Edwards lost an edge? We muse on this stuff all the time. It’s a good exercise.
It’s also the best way to frame Michigan’s various off-the-field foibles from the end of the 2022 season to now, culminating in CON(NOR)-INTELPRO (workshopping the name):
I think I tend to agree that any punishment [to Michigan] that comes likely comes after this season, but I live in Ohio surrounded by Buckeyes and am married into a family of Spartans, so it’s been an immense exercise to stay sane and not get too deeply into it […]
wilmul
As much as we can laugh it off, it does put a bit of stain on this season (and even the last 2). I don’t think it gave us some huge advantage honestly but it’s something for our rivals to poke us with during what could out to be a very special season.
madler09
Madler’s point is right, and I would extend it to the 2023 season writ large: this season’s success comes at a cost. The specter of Michigan’s off-season dilemmas will leave an indelible mark on Michigan’s best shot at the whole shebang.
This leads me to my own rose, bud, and thorn. I have some on-field thoughts, of course, but then I started typing out my off-field notes, and the word count was getting pretty fucked. My brain also started leaking out of my ears, but it’s unrelated. Therefore, my off-field perspective on Michigan football coming out of its bye week is what you’re going to get.
Thorn: A Definitive Timeline of Fuckery
I’m reversing course, starting with my (very large) offseason thorn before I get to my bud and rose. This is what you’re reading for, isn’t it?
Here’s a rough timeline of the off-field quandaries in which Michigan found itself after the conclusion of the 2022 season. Some of it was unexpected, some of it came at Michigan’s own arrogant hand.
- Matt Weiss. Matt Weiss was fired maybe a hot week after the playoff loss to TCU, but not for on-field reasons. Michigan Athletics terminated Weiss for “computer access crimes” with a university computer. The details of his cyber crimes have yet to be revealed. The FBI is also involved.
- USA Today. USA Today published the story of Mary Moffett and her daughter, Quinn, who died of a drug overdose. Her mother believes her child’s death was the culmination of a “downward spiral” after a Michigan football player allegedly sexually assaulted her, possibly aided by two other players who watched.
- You can read the entire investigative piece in full, but suffice it to say, Michigan’s response to Quinn Moffett’s case was, generously speaking, inadequate. While there is a process to uphold for Title IX concerns, an investigation never gained steam, in large part because Quinn Moffett was deceased. Mary Moffett petitioned Harbaugh several times to take stronger action against the accused from a moral ground; he ultimately did not.
- This is not an active concern for the program, aside from some deserved bad PR. Still, it’s a clear look into Michigan Athletics under Manuel and Harbaugh. Coverups of this horrific nature are part and parcel in this sport, on any team, but it’s always worth remembering Jim Harbaugh is not some infantilized war dad. He’s an asshole that wants to win, just like the rest of them; the difference is the program acts like it’s above it all. That’s pretty relevant to what they’re dealing with now (we’re getting there).
- Shemy Schembechler. Michigan briefly hired the son of the late, disgraced Bo Schembechler to serve as a staffer. The younger Glenn, aka “Shemy,” was an assistant recruiting director for roughly five minutes before someone thought to check his Twitter account, where he had some fuck shit to say about *checks notes* how slavery and Jim Crow were good for Black people. No, for real, this is a real story. I feel like I’m high.
- Harbaugh himself is a Schembechler acolyte, so the latest step to try and reaffirm Bo’s place as a legend and not the fucked up uncle no one talks about anymore was unsurprising, at best.
- Harbaugh to the NFL. Death, taxes, this again. The terminally Super Bowl-brained and deeply annoying Harbaugh to the NFL saga was more than smoke yet again this offseason. A possible contract extension — even amid SignGate — would end all this, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether or not that happens.
- Some unrelated-to-football-but-still-annoying stuff. Michigan’s leadership beyond the athletic department deserves a bullet here. The university, as a boss often does, went into overdrive campaigning against the Graduate Employees’ Organization (aka the Michigan grad worker union) during their multi-month strike. At the end of the Winter 2023 semester, the GEO strike caused such a significant work stoppage that remaining instructors may have falsified student grades, briefly putting Michigan’s accreditation under scrutiny. A new contract has been approved and the accreditation review concluded, but the ugliness of the strike lingers.
- I mention this only because the arrogance of Michigan leaders starts at the top with president Santa Ono and the Board of Regents. They obviously have the interests of the institution in mind, but to respond so brazenly to grad workers for months, such that your school’s accreditation comes into question? Pretty ballsy. It makes me somewhat curious about the president’s flippancy for the arguably less important football task at hand, with Ono and B1G commissioner Tony Petiti meeting today.
- Burger Crimes. It’s weird that there are six things on this list. Fuck. Anyway, you all were here for it. Jim Harbaugh was suspended three games for Level II recruiting violations and a Level I violation for lying to the NCAA about the aforementioned Level IIs. Some of the recruiting violations were, of course, Brown Jug-related.
And here we arrive at SignGate, a now multi-week unearthing of what appears to be Michigan’s elaborate sign-stealing operation run by a fanatical ex-Marine with a porn star name. He ran a “vast network” of spies (aka, potentially paid his friends and associates to go watch games and film the sidelines) with the possible, tacit blessing of Michigan football’s highest leadership. It’s the pinnacle of Michigan’s odd leadership, arrogance, and obtuseness of all scandals prior, combined into one, wild package.
The story is unfolding with new details every day; if you want to hash it out in real time, the boards are here for you.
Anyway, my point in bringing up Michigan’s many sins over the past 10-ish months is that I’m at my fucking wit’s end, you guys. This is my thorn. That I have to keep up with months upon months of mounting bullshit over a coach who will probably not be here six months from now. Or, maybe he stays, and this goes on forever and I die like this.
I only have so much time in my life to continue moving goalposts and spinning agendas for this program. There are very lovely people who can do that all better than me. Me, though? I’m at capacity. I wanted to watch my team — a team closer to a national championship than they have been since I cared about football, let alone Michigan — without an asterisk.
Anyone who thinks that asterisk won’t exist is naïve at best, unintelligent at worst. It will follow Michigan around until they can win it, for real, without bullshit. This leads me to my bud, actually…
Bud: I Have Made Peace With My God
…we’ll soon be starting at the bottom floor. I can accept that, at least.
Michigan will start next season with a dearth of talent, possibly with a suspended coach, possibly with a new coach entirely. The imminence of some kind of punishment will loom over the program for recruits and players with portal decisions to make.
I don’t know what the future portends. It’s possible that by the time I press “publish” on this column, we’ll learn something new about Connor Stalions and his “vast network” of sideline spies. Maybe they’ll try Harbaugh at the Hague. God only knows.
What I do know, though, is that, while the 2024 recruiting class looks more promising than 2023’s, the team will lack continuity in a way they haven’t in years. It’s unclear if a looming punishment or Harbaugh departure might change minds. Plus, Michigan’s 2024 and 2025 schedules are also particularly difficult — call it karmic retribution for how the past few seasons have gone down. It’s a tall ask to be both a young team and face the expanded Big Ten, plus Texas and Oklahoma.
Some find this mindset short-sighted, since the program feels just on the edge of completely falling apart, despite providing the most stable on-field product they have in 20-plus years. I find it peaceful. The end is coming, because all things do end, and I consider myself more prepared for it than anyone. Perhaps some fans will find me detached and cold about it all. You might be thinking I care about this less than others do, and my doomer’s outlook shouldn’t matter.
I disagree, because honestly, coming to terms with Michigan’s imminent decline to mediocrity and ridicule for seasons to come leads me to my rose.
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Rose: This is Still The Year
I’m all in.
I will not take any moment of the rest of this season for granted. Michigan football is the best it’s ever been since I was a fan. I’m not going to forget that, Connor Stalions and his false mustache be damned.
There is no amount of this ridiculousness that will take away from the joy I have as a fan of this football team, whether I like it or not. I’m a self-loathing Wolverine, but a Wolverine nonetheless. When Corum breaks out a run with the technical precision so few have, when McCarthy makes some unbelievable throw, when Rod Moore puts on the Turnover Buffs… I’m there. I’m in it. Whatever outside noise the crew on the call is making, or whatever you philistines on the boards have to say, I simply do not care in the here and now.
I keep thinking back to Patrick’s piece to open the season:
There’s always something to love in college football, though. This season, maybe it’s the chance at one last hurrah for those left behind. Maybe it’s a breakout star you can’t take your eyes off. Maybe it’s that last piece clicking into place, and your team taking its rightful place on the national throne… or the conference throne… or the rivalry throne. Maybe it isn’t tied to a result at all. Maybe it’s just that damn fall air.
The day Stalions’ alleged 500-page manifesto drops, I’ll be here, mentally warped enough to read every word of its strange tenor. When the punishments come down and the homer bloggers have to face the music, I’ll feel vindicated I prepared myself for it. I’m comforted in the relationship I have to Michigan sports — that Michigan does, indeed, play in the dirt, and we, the haughtiest fanbase in America, got caught. It happens.
But in the here and now? I don’t care. I’m still having fun. When the hot dogs are on the grill, warming up the crisp November day, and my friends at the Michigan-Purdue tailgate declare that it’s time for flip cup, Connor Stalions and Jim Harbaugh and all the other B1G coaches whinging won’t mean shit to me. It won’t mean anything to me next year or the year after, either, because my team with a postseason ban starting a bunch of inexperienced players is still, in my mind, better than yours.
When the team runs out of their oh-so controversial tunnel on Saturday night, I will be a rabid dog who believes her team will win a national championship. Because they still can, and they’re going to. I’m untouchable in these moments, and plan to be the rest of the year. When I’m wearing all my natty gear and someone tells me, “it got vacated,” I’ll tell them it was a hack job, even if I do know better.
Tony Petiti can do whatever he wants. I’ll worry about it later. Game’s on.
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