Must Win For Michigan

Through six games, the University of Michigan football team looked to be bowl bound.  The Wolverines were 4-2 overall, and even though they were coming off back-to-back losses, they were a six point loss to Michigan State and a two-point loss at Iowa.

Michigan fans were sure that Rich Rodriguez's offense was hitting its stride and Tate Forcier was to be the leader of future success at Ann Arbor.  But after a 63-6 win against Delaware State, the Wolverines have failed to return to the win column as it has dropped games to Illinois and Purdue along the way.  Now, Michigan sits at 5-6 (1-5 Big Ten) and there is only one way to become bowl eligible.

And that's by beating (THE) Ohio State University.  And guess what, it's not going to be easy.  The Buckeyes would love nothing more than to make sure Michigan does not get in on the bow bash.  On the other hand, nothing would make Big Blue's season like breaking this lengthy losing streak by busting one upside tOSU.

There is a part of me that thinks UM can pull off the upset and end our long national nightmare known as the Buckeyes' dominance because anything is possible.  Then there is the part of me that remembers the Michigan defense couldn't stop Juice Williams and thinking there's no way they stop Terrell Pryor on Saturday.  Just a subtle reminder that not everything is probable.

Michigan will keep it interesting for at least one half, but it won't matter.  Unless the Wolverines find a way to win the game and make themselves bowl eligible, we'll have an offseason full of "Fire Rich Rodriguez."  And yes, I'm prepared to fire on all cylinders if that is the case.  I haven't been Rich Rod's No. 1 fan by any means, but I'll support a coach/team/system if the end result is more wins than losses.

But it seems as if through two years, Michigan has taken a step back.  Somewhere, Lloyd Carr is retired and laughing -- thankful he is to not have to deal with The Game or The Sweatervest.

In the end, even if Michigan loses, the Wolverines will still hold a 57-43-6 advantage all time.

Suck it, Buckeyes!

(P.S. Edyta says hi.  She's awesome.)

Pigskin Pimpin On A Sunday Night: Bears, Salukis & Much More

Your favorite football feature that is chock-full of cheerleaders is back.

The there were two winners in Sunday's Bears-Cardinals game.  Fantasy football players and, of course, the Cardinals.  Kurt Warner threw five touchdowns, two of which went to Larry Fitzgerald, who notched 123 receiving yards.  Jay Cutler threw for 369 yards and three touchdowns.  All three of said touchdowns went to Greg "G-Reg" Olsen, who became the first Chicago tight end to grab three TD passes since Marty Booker did so in 2001.

Heck, I'm surprised it has been that long, seeing that the Bears haven't had a quarterback since Sid Luckman or a tight end that could catch three passes in a game since Mike Ditka.

However, there were plenty of losers ... the biggest being Chicago DT Tommie Harris.  Wow.  I'll be the first to say that I didn't see the play in real time (because yours truly was cooking up a storm on the grill) but upon further review, his play was inexcusable.  Disgusting to say the least.  It truly was an omen for the Bears defense, which was pummeled by Warner, Fitzgerald and the Cardinals.

However, I feel as if there is something missing in this entire thing, for this is not the Tommie Harris that Bears fans have come to know and love.  Since coming to Chicago, Harris has been one of the most charitable players in the organization while coming off as a humble, stand-up kind of guy.

Then there's the last couple of years, where Harris has fallen apart.  Not playing hard in games.  Not practicing.  Being held out of games.  Holding himself out of games.  So, what's up with No. 91?  Two sources have suggested that Harris is going through some personal problems, which could be distracting Harris on the gridiron.

As for solving this problem right now, a suspension makes sense.  But after that, where do you go with a guy who has lots of years and lots of money still coming to him.

Big ups to The Alma Mater, clinching a playoff berth and a Missouri Valley Football Conference championship with a 34-15 win at South Dakota State.  The No. 3 Salukis opened up a 34-3 lead in the first three quarters of the game against the No. 9 Jackrabbits on their home turf.  The SIU offense took it to SDSU, a team that ranks among the best in the FCS.  Well, that is ranked among the best before Deji Karim rushed for 127 yards to highlight the fireworks.  Quarterback Paul McIntosh added 76 yards on the ground as well.

Think people are still worried about losing Chris Dieker?  I hate to say I told you so, but that would be a lie.

SIU could further solidify its playoff seeding starting Saturday in what will be the last regular season game played at McAndrew Stadium

Southern looks like it is for real and is playing like a team that realizes it is doing something special.  Here's hoping they could keep it up.

Remember when Michigan was good?  You know.  They were nationally ranked and had just knocked off Notre Dame?  Yeah, well that seems like a distant memory now.  The Wolverines are looking like an average team after looking like they were headed to a big bowl game earlier in the season.

I'll chalk a part of the mediocrity to the growing pains of having new players in a new system.  But that's only 10 percent.  The other 90 percent has to come from Rich Rodriguez and his recruiting.  Truth be told, I think Michigan is only one player from being an elite college football team.

Unfortunately, that guy is the quarterback of The Ohio State University.

This whole situation would be a lot better if Terrell Pryor was under center at Michigan.  Remember all those Vince Young comparisons?  They make sense now.  In two years, it's easy to see that Pryor struggles in The Sweatervest's pro-style sets, but excels when he gets to make plays by being mobile.

I'll be under the assumption that Rich Rod could turn it around sooner, rather than later.  C'mon.  He lured Adam "Pacman" Jones and Chris Henry to play football at Morgantown, W. Va.  How could you not get Terrell Pryor to play at Michigan?

Michigan's loss is only softened by the loss of Notre Dame to Navy.

Fighting Irish fans need to start looking at things on a wider scale.  Charlie Weis is taking your team to another bowl game and has produced two pro quarterbacks.  Shouldn't you be happy?

Oh, that's right, you're not.  You're Notre Dame and everything should be handed on a golden platter.  Guess what?  It's not the 1980s anymore.  If you think Jon Gruden is going to save your team?  Think again.  Urban Meyer?  Haha.

News flash, Golden Domers.  South Bend, Ind., is no longer a destination location for high schoolers.  They don't care about the famed Notre Dame mystique, mostly because they weren't alive for it.  You might care about it, but they don't.  Your average 18-year-old high schooler wants to spend the next four years of his life in a place with warm weather and hot babes.

Florida, Texas and California have all three of those.  And that's why those three states have some of the best college football teams.  As a life-long Midwesterner, I know that the winters are very cold and very gray.  Often, I've wanted to escape the lethargic nature that comes with the fall and winter in the middle west.

But if I was a legit college prospects, these would be the most important factors in my college recruitment in order of preference.

1. Girl-to-Guy ratio.
2. Playing time.
3. Location.
4. Coaching
   

Now, that's different from a normal college student.  Kind of.

1. Location: Far enough to be away from the parents, close enough to be a respectable drive home. Far enough south to limit the brutal winters.
2. Instead of playing time, SIU played to my interest in sports writing.
3. My one mistake was ignoring the girl-to-guy ratio.  Probably shouldn't have overlooked that one.
   

So, Irish fans, remember that when you're not bowling with the big boys ... but bowling nonetheless.

Pigskin Pimpin: Week 4

Football stuff and gratuitous cheerleader photos after the jump.

Just because the Detroit Lions actually picked up a win for the first time since 2007 does not mean these ain't your daddy's Lions.  I guess I'll have to be he who brings the bad news.  The Lions -- despite the win -- have still been outscored 86-59 in the season's first three weeks.  And other than the mild success the team enjoyed against the Redskins, the Lions are still cowardly in my eyes.

In Week 1, Drew Brees torched Detroit's "D" for 358 yards and six (!) touchdown passes.  Mike Bell rushed for 143 yards.  Against the Minnesota Vikings, Brett Favre had a pedestrian 155-yard passing game in which he threw two touchdowns without throwing a pick.  Adrian Peterson gained only 92 yards and a touchdown.

Just looking at the box scores is making Matt Forte -- and his fantasy owners -- foam at the mouth.  As for Jay Cutler, he could fatten up on the Lions as well.  But this might be the week in which Forte busts through the wall that has met him thus far in his sophomore season.

For more advice see our special guest blog by Scott Mieszala, "Who's Burning Detroit?"

One of my favorite football players I never got a chance to cover was Deji Karim.  OK, well, I kinda covered him.  Karim wore a medical red-shirt last season -- only one year after ranking third on the football Salukis in rushing touchdowns.  Now that he is 100 percent healthy, Karim is showing why head coach Dale Lennon and the training staff is a genius for talking him into redshirting last season.

Karim opened Southern Illinois' 30-10 win against Western Illinois with a 92-yard touchdown run from the team's first play from scrimmage.  He would go on to pick up 282 all-purpose yards in the 20-point win that helped move the Dawgs to 3-1 overall and 2-0 in the Missouri Valley Conference play.  The win was the school's 400th in the school's history.

Deji is one of those rare backs that combines power and speed.  While a lot of the pre-season focus was directed at SIU's highly touted defense, Karim is turning out to be the offense's "X-factor" early in the 2009 campaign.

More on Karim in the coming days.

Then there's this for friend and faithful TBDS reader Marcus, whose Michigan State Spartans defeated my Michigan Wolverines.

My Michigan Wolverines, you ask?  Allow me to explain.

As a child, the state of Illinois didn't have any good college football teams.  Northwestern had its Rose Bowl run with Gary Barnett before he skipped town for Colorado.  Then there was the Ron Turner Era at Illinois.  So, I latched myself to Michigan's bandwagon because they were on TV every week.  I found myself cheering for guys such as Brian Griese and Charles Woodson.  That carried throughout my high school and collegiate years.

Last season, I un-latched myself from the Big Blue bandwagon because of the hiring of Rich Rodriguez.  As much as I love watching the spread offense, I have two issues with the whole situation.  Issue No. 1 is Rodriguez himself, who comes off as un-trustworthy as your local used car salesman.  I have a slight problem with someone so willing to leave their alma mater at a whim.  My second issue is with the spread offense.

Again, don't get me wrong, I like the spread.  It's fun to watch and fun to write about.  But the spread is like the fad all the kids make so popular, adults find a way to like it and implement it in their lives.  Watching teams like Michigan and Ohio State, who have thrived with pro prospects in pro-style offenses, convert to a modified spread formation is like finding out your mom listening to Drake's mixtape.

The so-called little guys used to use the spread in an attempt to create the match-up problems that come with pitting linebackers against wide receivers.  Now, with everyone running the spread, not only will it hurt some of the game's fundamentals ... it will also hurt pro football as well.  No one runs the spread in the NFL.  Do you know why?  That's because everyone is big and fast.

But now that Michigan (despite Saturday's loss) is starting to reap the benefits of its new system, I might re-latch myself to the Wolverines' bandwagon.

Maybe.

What's up with the Blue & Maize?

It's OK to smile, Rich. You're getting paid well for this.

Somewhere, the powers that be at the University of Michigan must be looking for loopholes because the Rich Rodriguez Experiment isn't just not working ... it's failing.

Miserably.

One day after finally signing his six-year, $2.5 million a year contract with UM, the Wolverines dropped a 35-21 decision to Michigan State at the Big House for the first time since 1990.

If UM is losing to the likes of Toledo and Michigan State, imagine the whooping they'll receive when they roll into Columbus, Ohio to face The Sweater-vest and the rest of the Ohio State Buckeyes.

The loss moved Michigan to 2-6 overall and 1-3 in Big Ten play. The Wolverines have lost four games in a row and are winless in the month of October for the first time since ... who knows, that's a stat I'm too lazy to look up.

The point is this whole Rich Rod thing isn't working out and it doesn't look like it's going to any time soon. Michigan's AD is preaching patience. Why? He's part of the group that helped push Lloyd Carr out the door. Patience, really? I don't wanna hear it.

But do you know what I don't want to hear: that it's going to take time because RR doesn't have the kind of players to fit his system.

Really? Tell that to Southern Illinois head football coach Dale Lennon.

Lennon came to Carbondale with the task of replacing Jerry Kill, the man who single-handedly saved Saluki football from not only the depths of college football hell, but from extinction as well.

Kill's team's can be described in one compound word: smashmouth.

SIU became Tailback U as it ran the pill down its opponents throats on a yearly basis, and its best case study has been the emergence of New York Giants main-man Brandon Jacobs.

But I digress, so I can make my point.

The point is that Lennon has turned SIU's smashmouth offense on its ear by implementing a variation of the spread offense. Each week, the Salukis unveil new wrinkles as first-year starting sophomore quarterback Chris Dieker continues to learn the system.

Dieker won't be confused for West Virginia's Pat White or Florida's Tim Tebow, but he has proven to be mobile enough to elude the pass rush and whatever he lacks in agility, he makes up in arm strength.

Not only has he continued to keep the SIU offense potent as ever, Lennon & Co. have revamped the Salukis' entire defensive system by placing Kill's players in Lennon's linebacker friendly 3-4 defense.

Now, guys like Ryan Patton, James Cloud, Brandin Jordan and Chauncey Mixon are reaping the benefits as the SIU linebacking corps are four of the top five tacklers on the team.

And before you say "oh, this argument isn't valid because SIU doesn't play anybody," allow me to kick it to you with some real talk.

The Missouri Valley Football Conference isn't a joke. In fact, it's equivalent to the FBS' Southeastern Conference.

The Valley has four schools ranked in the Coaches Top-25 poll (Northern Iowa, SIU, Western Illinois and North Dakota State) with South Dakota State receiving votes in the Coaches and Press polls. The newly-rebranded MVFC has also sent multiple teams to the playoffs (that's right, PLAYOFFS) since I've been a student at SIUC.

Did I mention that Brandon Jacobs went was a Saluki? So was Bart Scott. Rodney Harrison went to WIU. Kurt Warner went to UNI.

The point is that talent is everywhere and all a coach has to do is utilize it.

It's apparent to me that Rich Rodriguez isn't making the most of the talent at Michigan.

On the other side of the coin sits Dale Lennon, who sits atop the MVFC with a 5-2 record overall, a 4-1 record in conference play and all while making $2,300,000 less than Rich Rod.