College Football Week 5 thread

If your Michigan team is being curbstomped by the likes of Utah and Minnesota in the Big House, not to mention being pounded by Notre Dame, the complete lack of offense, the whole QB fiasco, etc., your seat is going to be scorching. Losing to Notre Dame 31-30? People won't be happy but at least you're close. The loss to Utah was far more lopsided than the 16-point margin suggests. And the Utes are a team that got spotted a 21-point lead by WAZZU last week and promptly did nothing for the last three quarters.
I guess my answer would be, in this case it for sure gets tacked onto everything else. But take away everything else and there should be talk of firing, IMO. What transpired on Saturday is inexcusable. Hoke's comments since have made the situation far worse, which I didn't think would be possible.
Or put another way: if I have a son who's a star senior high school football player being recruited by Michigan right now, my first question to recruiters today is this: "Will Brady Hoke be the coach next year at Michigan?" If the answer is anything but a firm no, I'm telling Michigan to get lost. No way in hell would I let my child play for a coach (to say nothing of the coaching staff as a whole) like that.

 

If I'm Michigan's AD, I'm on the phone with my attorneys telling them to find a loophole in Hoke's contract to fire him for cause for playing an obviously head-injured player. At the very least, I'm calling the player's dad to let him know you have the kid's back if he wants to sue the school.

 

Burns, to follow up on your question and to look at the big picture, I'd say any big name/historical power program facing Michigan's current situation would be looking for a way to get rid of its coach. We saw it last year with USC, for example. You can take out Michigan's name and insert Alabama, Ohio State, FSU, whoever you want. There are programs where going 7-6 makes a coach's seat extremely hot. It would take a miracle at this point for Michigan to go 7-6 this season. They are 2-3 but have been totally uncompetitive in those three losses. Even if Minnesota ends up being really good this year, getting curbstomped by a team like that at home carries heavy consequences when you're a program like Michigan. If Urban Meyer was flopping like this at tOSU, we'd probably be seeing the same reaction.
It just so happens Hoke gave the powers-that-be at Michigan a just cause for firing him in how Morris was treated on Saturday. If Brandon doesn't fire Hoke this week, the heat will spread to him and rightly so.

 

LSU's quarterback problem is that they're trying to ride the hot hand with two young guys who are obviously going to struggle at times against an extremely difficult schedule.
Harris stunk in his first game action this season, and Jennings played well. Then Harris played well for a stretch and Jennings stunk. In a couple of weeks, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the pendulum swung back the other way.
That's how it goes with young players, and young quarterbacks in particular -- they have good and bad moments while they learn and get their feet under them. That's just how it is. There's nothing wrong with it. But in the meantime they have to try and win football games, so they can't commit to one guy or the other and ride out the struggles. And, against an SEC schedule that includes a competent Florida team and a friskier than expected Kentucky squad, plus the entire SEC West gauntlet, it's a recipe for an 8-4 or 7-5 season.

 

Brandon is in the middle of the shitstorm himself. He's essentially been hiding under the bed since Saturday.

 

Brandon sure seems to be distancing himself from Hoke ...

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/college/university-michigan/2014/09/30/brandon-morris-probable-mild-concussion/16466313/

A few hours after Hoke says Morris has not been diagnosed with a concussion, Brandon releases a 1 a.m. statement apologizing for all the mistakes made and says Morris has a mild concussion. By my count, in the 14-paragraph statement by Brandon, Hoke's name appears once.

What really stands out is what a clusterfuck that Michigan sideline and coaching staff was during that period.

 

There's something out there that the reason the press release took so long was the medical staff refused to lie about concussion. IF that's the case, good-bye Hoke and Brandon.

 

A 1 a.m. press release huh? Fucking cowardly.

 

Also possible that they were concerned about violating Morris's HIPPA rights by
putting too much info out.

 

This picture says it all. No way anyone would accept Hoke's claim
that he was not aware.

The score was 30-7. The only thing that Hoke should have said was
"Son take a seat and I'll get the trainer. You're done for the day"

 

Wow. That's a smoking gun right there. "Coach Hoke, if you thought it was an ankle injury, did it strike you as odd at all that the staffer was holding Morris' head and neck area as he came off the field?"

Good takedown from Drew Sharp in the Freep: http://www.freep.com/story/sports/columnists/drew-sharp/2014/09/30/michigan-wolverines-dave-brandon-drew-sharp/16466573/

The most interesting thing to me was that Morris was diagnosed with a concussion on Sunday and Hoke wasn't informed of that until after he had his press conference on Monday. I read elsewhere that they practiced Sunday night. I hope Hoke and the medical staff didn't allow Morris to participate in that practice.