Michigan’s new head coach, Brady Hoke, is facing a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, he needs to bring Michigan back to playing Michigan football after the disastrous RichRod experiment. That means moving back to a pro style offense and moving from the absurd 3-3-5 defense that stopped nobody in the Big Ten back to a traditional 4-3. Michigan needs to get bigger, and Hoke has started that process with his 2011 recruiting class.

Yet with respect to the offense, Hoke also has Denard Robinson, one of the most explosive college football players we’ve seen in years. He was perfect for RichRod’s offense, even though that offense and Robinson sputtered against better defenses. It was an all-or-nothing proposition, and naturally Hoke is anxious to move on.

So how does he use Denard Robinson going forward? Hoke says “We’re smart enough to have elements he does well from what he did in the past in our offense.” But he plans on using Robinson as the quarterback in his pro style offense, which will have Robinson taking snaps under center instead of the shotgun and relying on play action.

I’m skeptical this can work. Sure, he’ll still unleash Robinson at times, and I suspect they might use the option play, but Robinson’s effectiveness will likely suffer dramatically under this system.

Robinson made big plays in the passing game last year, but that was because he found wide-open receivers when defenses tried in vain to slow down his running game. This year he won’t have that luxury. I don’t see Robinson consistently making the tough throws demanded in a pro style offense. He’s also very short and that will limit him as well.

We’ll see how this experiment plays out, but I suspect that Hoke will regret taking Robinson out of his element.

A better option might be to have a traditional quarterback run Hoke’s new offense, and keep a version of RichRod’s system around for Robinson to run as a Wildcat formation. He could also use Robinson as a Slash-type weapon in the traditional offense.

Right now their odds of winning the Big Ten are set at 15/1, so few are expecting a breakout year.

With this transition and the drama surrounding the Big Ten this year with the addition of Nebraska and the troubles at Ohio State, Michigan should be one of the more intriguing stories of 2011.

The University of Michigan has decided to punish itself following an investigation into the football program revealed that multiple violations had occurred, including problems relating to length of practice time and activities of graduate assistants.

Here’s a list of Michigan’s self-imposed penalties, via ESPN.com:

Penalties self-imposed by the Michigan football program Tuesday:

• Cut back practice and training time by 130 hours over the next two years, starting this summer.

• Cut number of assistants from five to three and banned them from practices, games or coaching meetings for the rest of 2010.

• Recommendation for two years of probation. The school said it should not be tagged as a repeat offender despite a 2003 scandal in the basketball program.

• Letters of reprimand issued to seven people — including head coach Rich Rodriguez.

• Acknowledged for first time that staffer Alex Herron was fired after his claim of not being present during some activities was discredited by players.

This is all well and good, but as Michigan AD David Brandon noted, the NCAA will ultimately determine what the appropriate punishment is. And it make take months before the NCAA comes to a conclusion about what kind of penalties Michigan should suffer.

That said, it’s noble of the program to take action instead of waiting to hear its fate. In essence, its taking responsibility for what happened and is obviously taking the matter very serious. It’s a shame that such a storied program would have to punish itself because of something like this, but it’s nice to see a University be proactive for once.

Nevertheless, this is just another reminder of the embarrassment that Rich Rodriguez has brought to Ann Arbor. Nothing short of a bowl win this year will save his job.

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]]> http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/05/25/michigan-punishes-itself-for-football-infractions/feed/ 0 http://www.scoresreport.com/2009/09/19/carlos-brown-plays-hero-for-michigan-this-week/ http://www.scoresreport.com/2009/09/19/carlos-brown-plays-hero-for-michigan-this-week/#comments Sat, 19 Sep 2009 21:00:19 +0000 Anthony Stalter http://www.scoresreport.com/?p=24618

Last week, Michigan relied on emerging star, freshman quarterback Tate Forcier, to beat Notre Dame at the Big House. This week, it was a senior running back that stepped up.

In the Wolverines’ 45-17 trouncing of Eastern Michigan on Saturday, Carlos Brown had a career day, rushing for 187 yards and two touchdowns, one of which was a 90-yard rumble in the second quarter to put Michigan up 24-10. The 90-yard jaunt was the third-longest run in Michigan history.

Forcier, the hero last week, threw for only 68 yards on 7-of-13 passing. Of course, he didn’t have to do much as Brown (who had -3 rushing yards on four carries last week against Notre Dame) took over this game from the start.

Eastern Michigan actually hung with UM in the second half thanks to an 11-yard touchdown run by Andy Schmitt to tie the game at 10-10, and a 5-yard Dwayne Priest touchdown run with just over two minutes remaining in the first half to cut the Wolverines’ lead to 24-17.

But the more physical Michigan program started to wear Eastern down in the second half and the Eagles could do nothing to slow the Wolverines in the third quarter. By the time Denard Robinson scored on a 36-yard touchdown run with seven minutes left in the fourth, the game was already over.

No. 25 Michigan (3-0) will open its Big Ten schedule next week at home (what schedule-maker did Rich Rodriguez have incriminating photos of to get four straight home games to open the 2009 season?) against Indiana before playing Michigan State and Iowa in back to back road games to kickoff play in October.

Several players on the Michigan football team claim that head coach Rich Rodriguez and the rest of the program regularly violates NCAA rules limiting how much time they can spend in training and practice sessions.

From ESPN.com:

One former player who started for Michigan last season told ESPN Saturday night that the report was accurate.

The player, who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions from fans, said in-season Sundays at the football facility lasted from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., including a one-hour lunch. That would be an 11-hour day. The NCAA daily limit is four hours, the weekly limit 20.

The same player said required offseason workouts included three-hour lifts on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and two hours of speed and agility on Tuesdays and Thursday. That’s a total of 13 hours; the NCAA limit is eight hours of required workouts.

This player said he would tell the Big Ten or NCAA what players were required to do and believes most of his former teammates would, as well.

A current member of the Michigan football team, who has started, also told ESPN his in-season Sundays at the football facility lasted from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., although he acknowledged the first two hours were spent in treatment, which is not counted against the restricted hours.

As expected, Rodriguez and the program are denying these allegations and have said that no rules have been violated. It’s unclear at this point if Michigan has a serious problem on its hands or if a couple of players are just trying to make things difficult for Rodriguez.

It stands to reason that most teams in college football violate NCAA regulations on a yearly basis. That said, it’s highly doubtful that they’re exceeding regulation times by over six hours like the report claims Michigan has. If these allegations are true, this is yet another black eye on Rich Rod’s short tenure at UM and will certainly hurt recruiting if the NCAA can somehow prove that the program is in violation.

What’s interesting is that even with all of those practices last year, Michigan suffered its worst season in the history of the program. Nice work, Rich.

I realize that this isn’t the best Michigan team in school history, but they’re still expected to beat a MAC school at home. Especially one that’s not even that good. This was the same Toledo team that got blown out by Ball State (albeit a very good Ball State team), 31-0 on their home turf. And before this loss, UM was 24-0 all-time against MAC schools.

Rich Rodriguez doesn’t have “his” players in place yet and once he does, the Wolverines are expected to rebound. But his first year in Ann Arbor has been nothing short of a disaster. They were a complete mess in a loss to Notre Dame, they were blown out at home last week by Illinois, and then today they lose to a sub-par MAC school. It’s almost incomprehensible. This is one of the most storied programs in college football and they’ve absolutely crumbled this year outside of one good half against Wisconsin.

If you listen closely, you can hear the entire state of West Virginia laughing.