First off, who saw this one coming? I mean, honestly. Sure, there was that talk that Rich Rodriguez of West Virginia… um.. fame, met secretly with Michigan officials behind the back of the WVU AD, but at the same time, it didn’t seem like it was going to happen seeing as how Rodriguez turned down the overtures of Alabama and their ridiculously large Brinks truck last year to stay at his alma mater (which is NOT pronounced alma matoe… SIDELINE REPORTERS FOR ESPN!).

I was beginning to think that the Alma Mater pull was a pretty strong one considering some coaches would put up with less money, less prestige, etc. just because they’re comfortable at their old stompin’ grounds. That being said, these days, it seems that loyalty goes about as far as the next big “special opportunity,” so we’ll have to see how this one plays out.

Michigan, in what amounts to a reactionary knee-jerk move after losing bad to an Oregon team this past season, decided it’d be best to get away from the type of offense that brought them a National Championship a decade ago, and go with the craptacular, boring-as-hell-to-watch, never-produce-viable-pro-talent-thus-preventing-real-pro-prospects
-from-going-to-your-school-to-play, stupid spread offense that Rodriguez brings to the table. Why is it so crappy? Because it’s supposedly considered to be some great innovation or revolution (or wii perhaps? no? joke too geeky?) of football, but instead, it’s just a rehash of the football that our grandparents watched.

There’s a reason they didn’t used to have 100,000+ seat stadiums back in the day. Because it was BORING. Let me illustrate it to you with my beautiful words as spoken by the always-drunk, and seldom entertaining Brent Musburger:

“The quarterback takes the snap, he fakes the handoff up the middle, runs the option to the outside, pitches the ball, and the runningback gets about 5 yards.”

Rinse, and repeat. Sure, one of the main additions to the single wing has been the forward pass, but count how many times West Virginia passed the ball this year and ask any real five star recruit at wideout if he wants to go play for that. Probably not.

The Rodriguez system worked well at West Virginia, because the system seems to tend to work well against mediocre competition with mediocre players. There’s a reason the single wing isn’t run anymore in the NFL, because with the types of players that are present across the board, it wouldn’t work. There’s also a reason why Alex Smith will most likely lose his job at the end of the season, and that Tim Tebow will flame out in the NFL unless he’s put in as a runningback (although he’s too much of a diva for that thankless job).

We’ll see if Michigan can keep those sellouts going because, whereas it might have been fun watching some scrappy crap team from a crap conference try to run it on every single play, but the Michigan fans, who were already uninterested from the looks (and sounds) of things, might not be so jazzed that their games consist of 2 passing plays down the field for the $100K they’re “donating” to the school for tickets. Then again, maybe I’m wrong. But I’m not. Because I’m awesome.