Must Win Tuesday

I'm not a big fan of the term "must win" it's way overused in the sports world. It's almost as bad as using coaching "genius", but tonight is a "must win" for the Wolverines. In fact, all of the games for the rest of the year are "must wins" for Michigan if they have hope of breaking their NCAA tournament drought.

The remaining schedule looks like: MSU tonight, at Northwestern, Minnesota, at Iowa, and finishing the year at home against Purdue.

Michigan needs 20+ wins to be in the conversation of the NCAA. Let's hope the "moral" victory against #1 UConn can help propel the Wolverines to a late year win streak.

Being Lane Kiffin: So you get fired from the Oakland Raiders for basically not communicating with the 200 year old owner, you land on your feet by getting a high profile college gig at Tennessee, you hire your father as defensive coordinator, you tell a 5 star QB "thanks but no thanks", you steal a high profile Florida WR from the Gators on signing day, you call out the National Champions head coach by saying that he "cheated" when he really didn't, you get reprimanded by the SEC for making those comments and now this....................

Tennessee notified the NCAA it found a Southeastern Conference coach committing recruiting violations - the Volunteers' own Lane Kiffin.

In letters to the NCAA and SEC, the Tennessee athletic department said the secondary violations occurred in January. One violation occurred when nine prospects on an official visit to the school participated in a mock press conference at Neyland Stadium's media center.
Another violation occurred when a fog machine was used as a recruit entered the field at Neyland Stadium during his official visit on Jan. 9.

A fog machine and a pretend press conference? Are you kidding me? Were the Business School and Law Schools closed? Did the Library get flooded? I guess Coach Kiffin needs gimmicks to sell recruits on the University of Tennessee. Which is sad and sends the wrong message to 18 year-old kids.

BTW: Kiffin joked he got 39 out of 40 on his NCAA recruiting test? I'm guessing me might need to retake it!

Coach you just got hired on December 1st. What is going to happen when they start playing games?

Does anyone want to coach at Louisville? I wrote an entire post on the coaching turnover at Louisville recently. It's been downright crazy. They have pretty much replaced their entire staff in less then a year, with only the offensive coordinator Jeff Brohm staying on board. Until yesterday of course, when head coach Steve Kragthorpe let Jeff go. This program is in complete disarray.

State's turn to schedule a D1A School: Montana State will play Michigan State in its season opener in 2009, traveling to East Lansing, Mich., for the Sept. 5 game.

Louisville Football is losing more then games

As Wolverine fans, we have shared the pain of losing lots of things over the past 14 months or so. We have lost a 5 star QB, an offensive lineman that didn't like to run, a number of recruits, and 9 football games.

It seems if there was bad news in college football it was somehow related to Ann Arbor and our historic Michigan program. Well, hold your heads up high Wolverine fans. There is another program that is going through similar struggles and seem to be losing people and games at a higher rate.

The Louisville Football program hasn't been the same since Bobby Petrino left for his brief visit in the NFL. Louisville has had a similar hard time adjusting to"big change" and their new head man Steve Kragthorpe who is now starting his third year. The wins and losses on the field are one thing, but Louisville is losing coaches and players at a very alarming rate. Let's just take a quick look at the coaches and players that have left the program just this off season.

• Ron English, DC left for the head coaching job at Eastern Michigan (Ron was there for one year)


• Eric Lewis, DB Coach followed Ron to EMU to become the DC


• Bill Miller, was promoted to Louisville DC's and then quickly left for Kansas


• Tony Nelson, Running Backs coach left for Notre Dame


• Mark Nelson, Special Teams Coach was not asked back


• Matt Simms, Son of former NFL QB Phil Simms and brother of NFL QB Chris decided to transfer. Matt would most likely have been the starter heading into Spring Ball.

How can one program suffer so many losses in a matter of a few months? How are these changes going to effect recruiting? How can there be any stability in this program that is trying to rebuild itself back into a Big East power?

I don't have any answers to those questions, but it's easy to see how this program could struggle for years to come. This program has zero consistency right now. A coach can not rebuild his staff from scratch every year and think they will be competitive. Kids won't want to come to Louisville and even the kids in the program wonder if this is the right place for them. We all know recruiting is the lifeline to success in College Football and right now Rivals ranks Louisville's 2009 recruiting class #71 in the country with 18 verbal committed recruits and only 1 four star player.

As Michigan fans we feel Louisville's pain, let's just hope our turnaround is quicker and we don't see similar losses on and off the field.

Cardinals Speaking English

ESPN is reporting that Ron English will become the next DC at Louisville. The Cardinals are in need of defense (any defense) and Ron might just be the guy to do it.

This article quotes Ron saying that he is considering the job and that Louisville has been very aggressive. Southern Illinois passed on Ron as their next head coach.