After Appalachian State-What the Upset of the Ages Means for the Michigan Wolverines

34-32. Everyone with interest in college football knows the game to which this score refers. As a Michigan fan in the land of Buckeyes, I will undoubtedly be reading and hearing about my favorite team's debacle for not only the rest of the year, but for years to come. Having attempted to find something helpful to take from the defeat, though, the best I can do is to see it as a moment when Michigan's most glaring weaknesses from the past ten years came together, not only allowing but in fact forcing the team to take notice and address them. This game was not a fluke, and to treat it as though it were would be for Michigan to lose an opportunity to improve itself.

Coaching

First, I respect Lloyd Carr, and I am not advocating his dismissal. He not only coached Michigan to a national title in 1997 (co-title if you are in Nebraska, and I would have loved to see those teams play that year), but with the program in turmoil after 2005, he made some significant changes that made the team very good in 2006. He is by all accounts a great man, and a good college coach.

That said, there is no excuse not to be prepared for a game. Carr admitted in a post-game interview that the Wolverines were unprepared. Appalachian State is a smaller school (a Football Championship Series school, formerly referred to as I-AA), but it is also a two-time defending national champion in its division. The young men there know how to play. At the very least, Michigan's past difficulties facing spread offenses, combined with its having lost most of its defensive starters from 2006, ought to have made Michigan consider the possibility of preparing a bit more for the specific team it would face. To come in unprepared demonstrates a smugness that, to be honest, permeates both the athletic and academic culture at the University of Michigan. Michigan has demonstrated a disturbing tendency over the years to play to the level of its competition, and I think preparations are a major key to this.