Mailbag question: As a daily reader of the blog

Posted at 8:00am -- 1/21/2010


Mailbag question: As a daily reader of the blog

As a daily reader of the blog, just curious - are you only receiving e-mails that are critical of the current football staff or are those e-mails the only correspondence that you choose to answer? For those of us who look for an unbiased perspective of the current situation, your blog is becoming more difficult to read by the day.

This is not someone who chooses to follow the situation “blindly,” however; I find it hard to believe there are not positive aspects of the program that could be highlighted.

Joey P.

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Thanks for the question. Joey we are going to provide answers for you below. The core of the answers will revolve around reality and truth, at least to the best of the staff’s knowledge and perception. You have written a reasonable mailbag question in a respectful way and we thank you for posing it to the GBMW staff. We also thank you for reading the site frequently. The Michigan football program has faced tough times and painting a rosy all is well picture would be simply that, painting an impressionistic picture. Impressionism, as a cultural movement intentionally distorts reality to conjure and create a picture people like and feel good about.

Every member of the GBMW staff wishes that UM football was at the forefront of the nation’s elite, such as USC, OSU, Texas, or Florida. The truth is the only success the program has enjoyed on the field the last two years are two wins (Wisconsin and Note Dame) against teams that ended up being just ok, not even good. Every member of the staff is passionate about Michigan football and supports the program, mostly in manners not public.

Bad news wears on people, we also are aware of this very real human phenomenon. But more than positive or negative, this site chooses to focus on reality.

With the above preamble behind us, let us turn to providing the information you have sought.

GBMW answers every question that is sent to us, whether it is positive or negative, and that is why even the other day we responded and answered an e-mail question about Coach Rod and Tennessee, even though we strongly believed there was little chance of such a scenario.

We tell you with 100% confidence that we do not filter out any legit questions, positive or negative. The staff answers them all (if legit and related to the site’s content), especially when the questions clearly pertain to Michigan athletics, recruiting, or the blog page. We have even done quite a few mailbag questions concerning other university programs, including plenty of Ohio State e-mails.

After finishing 3-9 (2-6) in 2008, and then 5-7 (1-7) in 2009, while losing the last five games in a row, the questions we receive show an understandable frustration from the Michigan fan base. This group of program followers, for the greater part of the last 100 years, has greatly enjoyed and demonstrated pride in a winning football program, one that is the all-time leader in victories and still holds the record for most consecutive bowl games. If not for the silly Big Ten rules of only sending one team to a bowl, Michigan’s streak would have been over 40 years. It has been a long time since Michigan fans have seen two losing seasons in a row and for that matter just one recent losing season (1967) before the recent spiral.

In regards to the positive vs. negative points on the blog page:

We have talked about the potential of young offensive linemen that we like and how we believe they are a very good young athletic group and the future is bright for these guys. We have also highlighted some of the scout (demo) squad players we have heard good things about this past year and how they might factor into this year. Collectively, the staff has also talked about improvements we have seen in some of the younger players. We have highlighted the strengths on every commit Michigan has taken. But this staff contains coaches and experienced observers who see obvious areas for improvement, just like the UM coaches certainly do.

We are only answering the questions that we receive. So we have no control over the mailbag questions, which are separate from other site material such as commitment articles, football tidbits, hockey previews and recaps, basketball previews and recaps along with our coach's corner articles. There have even been scholarly articles, probably unique on football blog sites, such as “The Other 90 Percent.”

GBMW encourages anyone with a legitimate question to please write in because this is our “slow time” of the year, especially with recruiting winding down and not much happening until spring practices start up. Of greater importance as to why readers should write in is this: From the very start of this website, the mailbag questions have been deemed by the staff to be of the highest importance and simply put GBMW places great value on this daily feature.

And so Joey, we summarize by again thanking you for visiting our site and do not give up, we all hope “The Great Michigan Football Depression” comes to an end. Maybe someday the staff will be busy writing about bowl match-ups, or even (gasp) a real BCS championship Series game.

We, like you Joey, are loyal but also are not blindly loyal. It would be just flat inaccurate to paint an impressionistic picture that the Wolverines have turned the corner and 12 wins are in the bag next year. Now, discussing why Michigan is not winning and what can be done to reverse the recent downturn is not disloyalty, it is a cerebral activity involving a game we all love.

The GBMW staff sincerely hopes you have found our “answers” to be of value. We appreciate and respect your points of view. As you can imagine, there are other communications we get that support not drowning in kool-aid or presenting “positions and comments meant solely for corporate consumption.”

Written by GBMW Staff

Go Blue -- Wear Maize!