Clearly Michigan's season to date has been an unmitigated disaster and no one thinks it can be salvaged. So I went to the record books for some perspective and was surprised by what I saw. The last four times that Michigan has lost 2 games out of its first three, it went on the win the Big Ten. In 1980, it opened 1-2, finished 10-2 and won the title outright. In 1982, it started 1-2, finished 8-4 and won the title outright. In 1988, Michigan started 0-2 missing a last-second FG against ND and blowing a 16-or-17-point lead against Miami. The Wolverines finished that season 9-2-1 with an outright Big Ten title. Finally, in 1998, Michigan was a defending national title team (note I did not use the definite article "the" as there were two of them) and lost badly to ND and Syracuse. In many ways the Syracuse game was a mirror of this year's Oregon game. That Wolverine squad finished 10-3 and was conference co-champions (but got smoked by Ohio State the other co-champ).
While all 4 of these teams lost to ND, none of them started a season 0-3. So, I'll wait until late Saturday evening before I think about entering a positive frame of mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment